China to Me (59 page)

“And that's no lie.” We sat there brooding. “The stomach shrinks in time,” I suggested hopefully. “I think you people get more to eat than I do, over at Hilda's. She's a very careful housekeeper, and she doesn't eat much herself. She doesn't understand. We had lettuce for lunch, just lettuce.”

“No bread?”

“No, we ate our bread for breakfast.”

“We have plenty of bread. I baked it myself. We have some flour.”

“Um.”

Irene brought out a cupcake affair, made without sugar, and insisted that I eat it. May, the amah, looking on, made a grimace intended for a smile. “Miss Hahn very lucky,” she said. “Eats over at Mrs. Selwyn-Clarke's house, then comes home and eats here. Very lucky.”

I glowered at the woman, who must have had a tapeworm considering the way she devoured food. She left the room and went in to Carola.

“If she weren't so good with the baby,” I said, “I'd — ”

“Oh, May. She's pretty bad. Well, Mickey, do you think it's all right now about your pass?”

I said cautiously, “For a while. But someday somebody's going to catch up with me, I think. Let's not be too confident.”

That day came very soon.

Chapter 47

The old people, Father and Mother, suddenly decided that they shouldn't impose on me any more. They went back to Kowloon to live with another daughter, Daisy, where room was made by shoving more people together in a now familiar fashion, and putting up cots. Irene and Phyllis stayed on with me. It was more fun and they felt they had better chances to find work if they remained in Hong Kong.

Getting from the island to Kowloon was not now as hazardous as it had been at first. The ferry was running, and it you didn't mind being thoroughly and lasciviously searched by Indian guards at the ticket booth you could get through. We did mind, though; none of us three went over to the mainland until we couldn't help ourselves. There was plenty of searching to undergo anyway; often the Japanese threw a cordon around some downtown district and searched everyone who was caught inside the barrier. (One of them liked Irene so much he went over her twice.) A house-to-house search for enemies and arms was also under way, but it would take a long time for the search party to reach May Road, and we had no enemies or arms, so we tried not to worry. There were disquieting stories, though, that the search party had a way of picking up whatever items they liked the look of, as they went through the houses.

It is hopeless to attempt to give a detailed picture of conditions. Every five minutes brought a new alarm and at least once a day the alarm turned out to be genuine. We lived in a state of suspended terror, and we learned to dread any knock on the door. Matters that seem small when I look back were grave threats then to our lives. Small things — the fact that the Japanese were going to collect money for water, for example, and would cut it off if payment didn't come promptly — made us thoroughly miserable. We saw our children dying of typhoid or cholera. We didn't have our war legs yet. We hadn't learned to put off our worries until the moment came to grapple with them; it saves a lot of energy to do that.

By nature and training I was less subject to panic than were the refugees in the two buildings that made up our community. All the others, crowded in as they were, sleeping on the floor in rows, in naked, looted flats, upstairs and down, all of them were dramatic, emotional, whipped, scared people. They were Eurasians, Indians, Chinese, even a few European refugees from Czechoslovakia and Denmark. They had quantities of children. They lived on whatever money they had brought with them, but they hated to use it, and they fell eagerly on an extremely meager allowance of food which Selwyn had begun to supply from the hospital leftovers; on alternate days it was possible to get a slice of bread for each person in our two houses, and a half-pint of milk for each child less than five years old. Mixed in with these really needy “volunteer dependents” were a few people who had money but who wanted to save it.

One of these, of mixed blood, part Annamite, I think, learned quickly how to fawn on the Japanese. Pretty soon she was getting more confidence in herself, and she began to cheer up considerably. She was in charge of the rations, the bread and milk; other women started reporting their suspicions of her to Selwyn, alleging that she was stealing the supplies or holding back on her enemies in order to feed her friends. Everyone was quick to accuse everyone else of this sort of thing. Selwyn was livid with rage when he found this out, though her friends had been innocent of any intention to graft in accepting them. There were incredible instances of petty theft and meanness. A British doctor who had been kept out of internment as a member of the Health Department was living with his Eurasian mistress about a mile away. We noticed that he always turned up on distributing days, for half a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk. Since he wasn't exactly a volunteer dependent, Duggie Valentine looked into the matter and discovered that this man actually made rounds every day, to three centers like this one, and in each station took a tax of bread and milk. None of the British could do anything about it because he was getting on well with the Japanese.

It was a nasty period altogether. On the part of the public there was an eager rush to make friends with the conquerors. I discovered that many women have a sort of Sabine complex; they can't wait to get into bed with the triumphant Romans, even when the Romans happen to be duck-bottomed, odorous Japanese. In a way it was understandable. “After all,” they must have felt, “we are desperate; there is security only with the Japanese. Never mind what they look like; they whipped the proud British in record time. The British may have been better-looking and bigger, but the Japanese are the bosses, just now. If I can capture a Japanese protector my family will eat.” Maybe the original Sabines felt the same way. I can well understand it, though I don't like it.

The first local Chinese whose name appeared in the paper as definitely working for the Japanese was Peter Sin. Peter was an acquaintance of mine, a lawyer who had been very successful in his work. When I spoke to him about his actions a few months after this he was worried and defensive.

“They tell me I'm in bad with Chungking,” he said, fidgeting with the pencils on his desk. He was thin and pale. “I can't see that, frankly. Somebody had to offer to take charge, or the people would have starved even worse than they do. Sure, I said I'd take charge of the rice control; why not? Someone had to do it — someone who knows the ropes of this town. But it's no sinecure. Anybody else who wants my job can have it.”

We all joined in execrating Sir Robert Kotewall. Sir Robert before Pearl Harbor had been just about the most British-loving Asiatic you could find. A mixed-blood himself, Parsee and Chinese and English, he went in for being violently Chinese, and often published translations allegedly done by himself of Chinese poetry into English. Whether he did them or didn't, they were pretty bad. He was prominent in all civic politics, and an indefatigable and fluent speechmaker. I heard him once at a Sino-British Cultural Association banquet, and he went on for hours and hours. I think he started out as a clerk in the government, and worked his way up, speech by speech, to his knighthood and a glorious position among the British-tamed cats on the municipal council, before the war. The Hong Kong government were proud of Kotewall and did him honor. It was quite a nice textbook example of how not to run a colony, judging by the results. Sir Robert Kotewall was the very first of the great men to welcome the Japanese. It was Sir Robert Kotewall who made speeches at Jap-inspired mass meetings. It was Sir Robert Kotewall who led the meeting when the new Governor of Hong Kong was welcomed into office; he shouted, “Banzai,” three times, and urged the crowd to do likewise, at the end of his speech. By that time, however, he wasn't Sir Robert Kotewall any more. The Japs made him give up his British knighthood. They didn't let anybody keep British titles, even Britons at home in England; they wouldn't call people “Lord This” or “Sir That” in the public prints. They were all, severely, Mr. This and Mr. That. And poor Sir Robert Kotewall became Mr. Lo Kuk-wo. Sir Shouson Chow was Mr. Chow Shouson. It wasn't his fault, I'm sure; Sir Shouson was eighty years old and probably couldn't help himself. He didn't throw himself into the New Order, at any rate, with the glad passion of Mr. Lo Kuk-wo. No one else did.

I don't particularly blame Kotewall, because I don't quite believe he exists. I mean, I've seen him in the flesh often enough, and heard his voice droning away, but I'm not convinced that there was ever anything to Sir Robert Kotewall but sawdust. The British manufactured him and deliberately used cheap material, so they shouldn't be surprised or hurt because he has gone on fulfilling his destiny as a genuine talking doll, now that the Japanese instead of the British are winding him up. How should he know the difference? The Japs let him make speeches too, don't they?

We read about these things in the morning newspaper, and we read the news about the war, as written up by jubilant Jap journalists whose English was faulty, but whose facts, in general, were dishearteningly correct. It looked very much like a long war. We had to face that. But we couldn't and wouldn't face just how long it would be. The North African situation looked awful too. Everything looked awful. Charles seemed to think Britain was about finished. “We'll have to get over laughing at the Italians,” he said to Tony. “It isn't seemly. They're a third-rate power, but so are we.”

One day I brought Charles his soup and a small carton of cottage cheese, which is about the only thing I can prepare by myself. We used our milk eagerly, that fresh milk Selwyn gave the babies, but we made cheese of it when there was anything sour left over. Emile, proprietor of the Parisian Grill, had opened his restaurant again, and presented me with a dozen cans of some sort of patent chocolate baby food which had milk in it. He said he had bought the stuff for nine cents a tin, to feed his chickens with, before Pearl Harbor, and he insisted on making me a present of it. The kids loved it and we gave it to them once a day. It was a bright spot in my life.

I bounced into hospital feeling cheerful, but Charles looked rather low. “The gendarmes are after you, Mickey,” he said. “Some little squirt calling himself Cheng has been here this morning, asking questions about you. He tried to Draw Me Out on politics too. He said, ‘Just between you and me, Major Boxer, all this stuff Domei publishes in the paper is probably lies, don't you think?' And I said, ‘Probably, but so are the Allied news reports.' That seemed to silence him.”

“You think he's from the gendarmes?”

“Must be,” said Charles, shifting on his pillow. “He wouldn't have dared come from anyone else. That's their way.”

“Well, if they question me, they question me. I haven't broken any laws.”

Charles didn't reply. We both knew that had nothing to do with the case.

Next morning I went over to Hilda's, according to schedule, for breakfast — a cup of tea and a piece of bread.

Somebody rang the doorbell, and when Ah King opened the door somebody asked for me. A slim Chinese youth, in gray flannels with a brightly striped necktie, came into the room. Hilda took Mary and went out.

“Miss Hahn? So. I am Mr. Cheng. May I ask — why aren't you interned?”

“Sit down, Mr. Cheng,” I said. He sat opposite me at the breakfast table and smiled, his spectacles magnifying his eyes. “You want to see my papers?” I asked.

“Please.” He studied them in silence.

“May I see your papers?” I asked as sweetly as I could.

“Oh — I have none. But I do have the right to come here,” he said, equally politely. “I work for the Japanese.”

“I see.” There was a silence and I looked him over, and he began to be embarrassed.

“I have come,” he said, “from the consulate. Mr. — uh — that gentleman you saw before — ”

“Mr. Kimura?”

“Yes, Mr. Kimura. He would like to see you this afternoon, if it is quite convenient. Shall we say three o'clock?”

“That's quite convenient, Mr. Cheng.”

“Thank you.” He was gone.

Of course, I told myself, it isn't really Kimura. Perhaps they will arrest me just outside the consulate door. I called Hilda back and told her.

“If I don't come back,” I said, “please keep an eye on Carola.”

“Oh, my dear!”

We embraced and kissed. I went home then to tell Irene.

“I'm coming with you if you want,” said Irene.

“Would you? Then at least you'll know. I mean, if I go in anywhere and don't come out again — ”

“Don't worry. It's probably just a matter of routine.”

But the rest of the morning was pretty difficult to get through. I couldn't go to see Charles in the morning; visiting hours were from two to five. I went next door to see Tui Berg, whose Norwegian husband had been wounded and was in Bowen Road Hospital.

“Tell Charles the consulate has called me to come this afternoon, and I won't be able to come to see him,” I said. “It may be the gendarmes behind it. I suppose you'll have to tell him that; he's no fool. Just so he won't wait for me and worry when I don't turn up.”

Then I ate something, kissed Carola good-by, called Irene, and off we went. My stomach seemed to want to sink lower than the laws of nature usually permit. My stomach, however, was the only part of me that allowed any thought on the subject. I wouldn't let my mind touch on it. We trotted down the hill at a good pace, chattering about everything in the world but gendarmes.

At the consular offices I caused a lot of confusion. Mr. Kimura's secretary said that I had no appointment with her boss, and I said that she was probably right, but anyway she had better ask him about it. At last, after searching unavailingly through her files for the name of Cheng, she did go in and ask Kimura. This kind of indirect summons is typical of the gendarmerie. Kimura, hearing I was there, hastily sent for me.