China to Me (61 page)

“So des, Chungking. You stay Chungking from 1938 —— “

“Nineteen thirty-nine.”

“Nineteen thirty-nine to 1940. You come to Hong Kong and go back Shanghai —— “

“I didn't go back to Shanghai.”

And so on, and so on, and so on. At last he shot his finger at me and cried, for the twentieth time, “Why, why you marry this Chinese, then come Hong Kong, have baby with Major Boxer? WHY?”

The human frame can stand just so much. Madness took me, and I said, wilting, “Because I'm a bad girl.”

A long silence followed. I slumped in my chair. Then I was electrified. Mr. Yokayama, interpreter, had slapped me heartily on the back.

“No!” he roared. “You no bad girl. Good girl. Go home now.”

The walk back, down the long corridors and the steps, was very short in reverse order. Mr. Yokayama chattered like a happy schoolboy. “If you need milk or rice, come to us. Don't worry.” (They said that to everybody they examined in those days; it was part of the routine.) He also grew gallant in the Japanese fashion, saying that he was not married, and did we have an extra room at my apartment? I said no, we were pretty well crowded in, and it was a shame he wasn't married.

Reeny was still sitting on her kitchen chair, though the sun was low in the sky. Mr. Kung had reassured her, she told me on the way home; he had promised I would come back, and it wasn't too bad waiting. She was amazed, however, to see the change in Yokayama. The roaring lion who entered the Supreme Court had come out, if not exactly lamblike, at least very jolly. She said we were howling with laughter and hitting each other on the back. I think she must be exaggerating a little, but I know I was almost drunk with relief and also with the desire to laugh really loud. I thought the gendarmes had been awfully, awfully funny. But I dare say I was a little hysterical. Anyway, she was puzzled until I got her safely away and halfway up the hill.

We both arrived home in hysterics.

“Do you mean to say that's all they asked you?” demanded Charles in amazement.

“Yep. That's all. Of course you must remember that they asked everything about twenty times over.”

“Strange, just the same.”

“Your boy says they beat him up,” I said, “but he didn't look badly mauled. He must have had pretty much the same experience as mine, Charles, except that they probably slapped him once in a while. They wanted to know where you kept your cables and your code. You know, the Papers.”

“They don't give me credit for much intelligence, do they? What Papers, for God's sake?”

“I don't know. Anyway, the last time the boy came to see me he said that they had asked him to spy on me. He wanted to know if I'd mind. He said they would give him rice and tobacco if he would, so I said sure, go ahead. … But he's not being straight with you, Charles. I'm sure he's run off with all your stuff.”

“Probably. If only you could get my fingernail scissors out of the flat I'd be happy.”

He had said this every day for a long time, and I was getting sore. “Once and for all, Charles, I will not go near your flat. Are you quite mad? Don't you realize they have guards there, waiting? That's the way they got the boy. I don't mind being heroic for something that's worth it, but fingernail scissors — really!”

It was always difficult for him to realize what things were like. Of course when he felt better he saw more clearly, but it was so much like a second-rate movie, around town, that one had to excuse him for not believing in it. I did excuse him after a few minutes, and I was very glad I had a week later, when they closed the hospital gates to us. They said it was because of a cholera epidemic in town, but it wasn't. They refused our parcels for a couple of months and the men nearly starved. Afterward they accepted parcels, twice a week for a while, but we were never to get indoors again. We came to the bottom of the ramp every day until that was forbidden, and then we depended on parcel day to see the men, at a distance. At first, while we knew the guards, they permitted a certain amount of shouting and signaling, but little by little that too was stopped, and when the guards were changed everything was very strict indeed.

Hilda had been staying indoors most of the time. Miriam, Mary's Chinese governess, had married just before the war, and now her husband resolved to take her to Shanghai. Boats were leaving very seldom and they were crowded to capacity, but Miriam's husband managed to get tickets, and at last she left. After that Hilda had Mary to look after, which kept her at home automatically. Sometimes both of them walked over to the hospital with me, but Hilda seldom went downtown. It was safer not to. One of her friends. Max Bickerton, was still at liberty because he was connected with the Colonial Secretary's office, and this whole staff was being kept out until special quarters were ready for them in the camp. Once at least Hilda came downtown to see this man, and he reported to her that she could be easy in her mind about her safety.

“One thing they are definitely not interested in at the moment is the leftist crowd,” he assured her. My good luck, too, heartened her. She was cheering up generally. We were all pretty busy doing whatever we could for Stanley, because the conditions there were terrible, and it was no secret. Vera Armstrong, by dint of her excellent Japanese, managed to get permission to come into town, to try to sell her watch and buy food for the children. She had been offered a job as interpreter in the early days after the surrender, and the Japs had wanted Jack, too, to help them with their legal problems. The Armstrongs had refused the offer because they felt, as Charles had done about me, that they should stay with their own people. Vera regretted it now, because, womanlike, she was thinking more of her children than she did of principle. She stayed overnight with the Selwyn-Clarkes and talked vividly of what life was like at Stanley. She talked so fast that I stared at her in amazement. She was thin and wind-burned, and very nervous and energetic. Otherwise she was normal, but she had grown into camp life so much that half the time I didn't know what she was talking about. Part of the rest of the time she chattered about her things: the furniture of the house, which she had managed to salvage, and their linen and silver. It had been so long since any of us had thought of things, of anything but food and shelter, that we were bewildered. It was only natural, though. The Stanley people were being starved and herded like cattle, but they had no responsibility, nothing to do except to line up and wait for boiled water and food, after they had cleaned their rooms and picked up their blankets. And so their minds went back to their houses, and they clung to the memory of their lives before the war. They persisted in treating the prewar life as the real one; this camp life, they felt, was only a short interlude, a nightmare, and they ignored it. Camp was still full of social distinctions and petty resentments. They played bridge, they talked of their hunger and their pasts, and of the future, all in terms of possessions.

I don't mean to be snooty about the petty resentments. We had those too. Soon after the old couple left Reeny came to me and asked me very nicely if I minded if she invited Auntie Law to stay with us. Auntie Law, she said, was Father's youngest sister (though she was over sixty) and her husband was imprisoned in Shamsuipo with the other Volunteers, and Auntie Law had taken refuge with Auntie May, but Auntie May's house-mate wouldn't let her stay any more. Auntie Law was pathetic, said Reeny. Did I mind? No, I didn't mind.

So Auntie Law moved in with us. She was a portly white-haired lady with a pretty face, a sweet smile, and a maddeningly simple mind. I liked her, but she did talk quite a lot, and it was always about the things she had lost. She and her husband had owned a little farm outside Kowloon, to which they would repair of a week end. They had had a man in charge there, and chickens and ducks and turkeys. I could go into a lot more detail about the farm, because I heard about it with all its appointments day after day after day. You can't do anything about old people, but in the end I was driven to try. It was all the more irritating because Irene and Phyllis, too, often indulged in lamentations over their losses, and for some reason I got tired of it. I suppose partly I was angered because Irene seemed to hold it against me that my things, save for what I had taken with me, were still there. … “Why couldn't you have been looted instead of me?” she would say. “You don't care for things, and I did. I had lovely things. You know, all of this would be gone if I hadn't been here to save it.”

“Well, for Pete's sake, Reeny, you can have it. Take it. Take it all,” I would say. Already I had installed her at the teapot in the place of honor when we had our meals. It meant a lot to her and nothing to me.

“This stuff? I don't want it,” said Irene, turning up her nose. “I wouldn't have it. I only meant it seems such a pity —— “

So when Auntie added her lamentations to the pool I finally turned. “You know, Auntie, things aren't the most important question. You're still alive, and so is your husband. Can't you see that after a war like this, with people dying or being broken to pieces, things don't matter?”

“Mickey forgets,” added Irene with a touch of malice in her voice, “that she didn't lose anything, whereas we did.”

“No, I don't, Reeny. You never let me forget it,” I said.

It was the nearest we ever came to a row.

Chapter 49

The sudden withdrawal of Charles from my daily routine left me staggered for a while, and much more inclined to fret. For a month, however, it wasn't as bad as it was going to be later. We were still allowed to bring our parcels up the ramp and into the building, under guard, and our men lined up and watched us pass by. Though we weren't supposed to talk to them, sometimes we managed to whisper and even to slip notes back and forth, though my upright Charles frowned on that sort of thing as likely to endanger the few privileges we had left. So many things were happening to us outside that I was overjoyed to have those few hurried words once a fortnight or so; there was always plenty to tell him. One of the lower-ranking officers of the guard was friendly too, and when I asked permission to bring Carola to see her father he made elaborate arrangements, unofficially.

This is what happened: I carried the baby with my parcel into the office, where we were always told to sit down and our things were taken in turn, politely and properly. This sergeant scrutinized the things, turning back home-cooked food and things he considered “luxuries” — an undue amount of chocolate, for example, though the men needed it badly. Everything we brought was supposed to be in sealed tins or bottles, to obviate the danger of smuggled messages. This was a double hardship; sealed tins were expensive and scarce, and you couldn't get good food value in most of them. But anyway, those were palmy days, because the officers were nice and because we were treated with courtesy. Partly this was because at that time there were very few of us; about twelve at the most. The kindest-hearted officer is apt to grow callous when he is overworked, but these men weren't being overworked.

So there I sat with the baby, wondering what the sergeant had cooked up. Pretty soon he had trouble deciphering an English word on the list. Then he told one of his men to call an interpreter — i.e., Boxer. Charles came in, did not look at me, sat down at the sergeant's command, and started to work. Presently Carola-began to cry. What the sergeant would have done if Carola hadn't cried is a question, but she did her stuff. She kept crying and crying until the sergeant said:

“Take her into the next office and give her some milk.” I caught on, and instead of telling him she was weaned and it wasn't dinnertime, I went. A moment later Charles came in, alone.

We had almost an hour, though all the time other prisoners were bouncing in, saying, “Oops — sorry,” and bouncing out again. Carola finally passed out and slept, her face upside down on my arm. We had a good long talk, for the last time. There was a lot to talk about. Carola was getting very clever, and showing signs of an admiring passion for Bryan, who could crawl about the floor like a veteran and even said “Mamma” and “Ta.” Carola could only gurgle and sit still, but she thought Bryan pretty hot stuff, and brightened up whenever he came near her. When these important matters had been thoroughly discussed we talked about Stanley, and what Selwyn-Clarke was doing: we wondered what would be the best sort of food for hospital, if it was allowed and if we could get it; we told each other again that the war would have to end someday and in our favor. It was nice of that sergeant, wasn't it? I brought him extra chocolate after that, whenever I could, until he was transferred.

After the excitement of my gendarme questioning died down we took stock of our resources, and the general report made us very gloomy. We were using up everything and nothing was coming in. I had brought my jewels back from hospital, fortunately, before the gates were closed, but as yet nobody was buying jewels. Everyone was hanging on to his money until he knew what would happen. The Japanese had made us afraid of our Hong Kong money by devaluating it in relation to the yen; still the public shied off the yen. The Japs ranted and raved, and made it compulsory to pay water and electricity rates in yen. At last the public, though still they were convinced that the British would come back soon, began to buy a little Japanese currency; they had to. At once things loosened up to some extent for moneyed people, though a lot more people on the bottom of the heap died of starvation. And we were very nearly at the bottom of the heap, it seemed. I knew we weren't really. I was still held up by that conviction, always held by members of the middle class, that it couldn't happen to me. Hungry and worried, I still had that faith. I don't know why. I had learned that I couldn't and shouldn't expect to depend on friends. We were all in the same boat and with a few exceptions we weren't even friends any more. Whenever I saw someone I knew coming toward me I was saying to myself, “Can you help us? Is there anything you can do to help?” and he was thinking the same thing. All the while we talked to each other, saying hearty, ordinary things, we were wondering how we could use each other.