The Piano Teacher (14 page)

“I’ve never met him.”

“He’s always away at school and now they’re having him stay for the meantime with Frederick’s family in England until this all settles down.”

“Oh,” he says. The room is streaked with dusty light from a window. “I’m not an invalid, you know,” he says. “I could probably walk to Central and back.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “You’re to take it easy.”

But he is better, and she sees it, and soon they venture out, to see empty roads, closed storefronts, people scurrying from place to place, not looking anywhere but at the ground.

“There’s been an incredible amount of looting,” she says. “And the government is rationing rice. It’s been rather amazing. I was walking down Gloucester Road and I saw police firing their guns in the air to disperse a crowd, and I wondered, where do those bullets go? When they come down, if they hit someone, can’t they kill somebody that way?”

“Trudy, darling. You always think of what nobody else thinks about.”

“And probably for good cause,” she says. “I’m rather an idiot about everything.”

They walk farther.

“It doesn’t feel like our town anymore, does it?”

“It’s too dreary.”

They link arms and go home, where Angeline is crying in the cellar and the amahs have made a small meal of rice and Chinese vegetables dotted with salted pork. They eat and drink weak tea, feeling the invisible constraints of the reality around them.

 

The next few days are Spartan and regulated, lived as if they might be the last, heightened with the surreal. They eat to sustain themselves, listen to the radio for the latest news, and go to the distribution center for supplies, which are given out sporadically and randomly. One day it’s bread and jam, another it’s bananas, and then it’s flashlights. They take what they can get and go to the black market for the rest as, between them, Trudy and Angeline have a lot of cash. At the black market in town, the atmosphere is tense, the buyers irate at the prices and shouting insults at the vendors, a few having the grace to look embarrassed behind their tables of random goods—the tins of potted meat, the small bags of sugar, the cooking utensils. The price of rice is at an all-time high, and it is as precious as gold. The ground shakes intermittently and the night is lit by fire. They see piles of dead bodies and weeping women beside them. Dominick stops by with provisions he’s got ahold of somehow, and they have the delicacy not to ask. He tells them to stay at Angeline’s for as long as possible. They have not been bothered and that is a good sign. There are a few other families holding fort at their homes as well. Will’s injury makes it impossible for him to go anywhere too far. Angeline’s driver manages to procure the newspaper most days, and the news is grim—the Japanese advancing inexorably and surprisingly fast.

“I can’t believe they still get the paper out every day,” Angeline says. She has not bathed in days and is starting to smell more than musty. She has not heard from her husband. He had last sent a message a week ago when he was fighting for the Volunteers on Mount Nicholson.

“Should we go to the Repulse Bay?” Trudy asks.

“I feel odd not doing anything,” Will says. “I feel like other men are fighting and I’m sitting around doing nothing.”

“You’re injured, you imbecile,” Trudy says. “You’d be more of a hindrance. You’re slowing me down and I’m only putting up with it because you’re a warm body to sleep next to at night. I assure you that others will not feel that way.”

 

The next day they wake up to find the help vanished. Trudy is entirely unsurprised.

“A clean getaway. I’m surprised the dogs haven’t deserted us.” She starts washing the dishes that were left in the basin. He rises to help her. “You sit down,” she orders. “They lasted longer than I thought. Angeline’s always been a beastly employer although she pays twice the going rate.”

“What happened to Ah Lok and Mei Sing?” Will asks, remembering them suddenly.

“I told them they should leave, and they wouldn’t, and so I locked them out of the flat until they went away. There was lots of crying and wailing—you know them. They have relatives I’m sure they’d rather be with.”

“You’re their family, Trudy.”

“But I’m not, really. And it’s more dangerous for them to be with me. They’re not going to be bothered once they’re part of the crowd out there. I’m the one who’s going to get attention, hanging about with all you foreigners.”

“It must have been very hard to make them leave,” he says, reaching for her hand.

She shakes him away.

“It’s fine, Will. Please don’t be sentimental right now. I couldn’t stand it.”

“What day is it?” he asks.

“Almost Christmas. The twentieth, I think.” She looks wistful. “The parties should be in full swing by now.” Then, “Will.”

“Trudy.”

“I’ve some things I’ve had to hide, but I want you to know where, because if something happens, you should go get them.”

“Like?”

“I’ve a lot of money that my father gave me before he went to Macau, and my jewelry too. Altogether, it’s worth a lot of money . . . more than enough to live on for ages.”

“I’ll take note but I don’t need it, if that’s what you’re implying. I’ll be fine with what I have.”

“And I hired a box at the bank, the main one. And I’ve your name and Dominick’s name down as people who can access it. But the thing is you have to both sign for it, unless one is dead, so you have to get along. Although I imagine things are different in wartime. There’s a key. It’s in the planter off my bedroom window in the flat. I’ve brought it inside, and it’s just filled with earth. It’s on the bottom, so you’ll have to dig it out. But if there’s no key, you can still get to it—it will just take a bit longer. Legal things, you know.”

“Noted,” he says.

“You must remember,” she says. “You really must.”

Angeline emerges from her bedroom in a dressing gown and they explain about the missing servants. She collapses into a chair.

“I don’t understand,” she says again and again. “They’ve been with me for years.” Quickly, she becomes practical. “Did they take anything?”

They hadn’t thought to look. They go to the pantry and see their fast-dwindling supplies—rice, a few potatoes and onions, flour, sugar, a few soft apples—untouched.

“Servants get a raw deal,” Will says. “They’re always the last thanked and the first accused.”

“This is survival,” Angeline says. “I’m surprised they didn’t take anything. I would have, and not had a single qualm.”

“Let’s all have a drink,” Trudy says.

“That’s the most sensible thing you’ve said all week,” Will says.

He goes to get a bottle of scotch—they are not in danger of running out of liquor anytime soon. They pour glasses, turn on the radio, and the announcer is reading a message from Churchill. “The eyes of the world are upon you. We expect you to resist to the end. The honor of the empire is in your hands.”

“We’re being abandoned,” Trudy says. “They’re not doing anything to help us. What do Churchill and the goddamned British empire expect us to do? ” Her eyes look hard and glassy but Will sees they are filmed with tears.

 

Every day leaflets fall from the sky, Japanese planes whirring overhead and letting loose propaganda, all over the colony, telling the Chinese and the Indians not to fight, to join with the Japanese in a “Greater Far Eastern Co-Prosperity Sphere.” They’ve been collecting them as they fall on the ground, stacking them in piles, and Trudy wakes up on Christmas Day and declares a project, to make wallpaper out of them. In their dressing gowns, they put on Christmas carols, make hot toddies, and—in a fit of wild, Yuletide indulgence—use all the flour for pancakes, and paste the leaflets on the living room wall—a grimly ironic decoration. One has a drawing of a Chinese woman sitting on the lap of a fat Englishman, and says the English have been raping your women for years, stop it now, or something to that effect, in Chinese, or so Trudy says.

“Hmmm . . .” she says. “Isn’t this a drawing of you and me?” She sits on his lap, puts her arms around his neck, and bats her eyes. “Please, sah, you buy drink for me?”

“It’s of me and Frederick, you idiot,” says Angeline. “Look at how fat the man is.” It’s the first time she’s mentioned her husband in days.

Another leaflet has two Orientals facing each other and shaking hands. “Japanese and Chinese are brothers. Do not struggle and join our side,” translates Angeline.

“They seem to have forgotten Nanking,” Trudy says. “They weren’t so fraternal then, were they?”

“I feel . . . oppressed,” says Angeline. “I think we should turn Will in, don’t you, darling?”

“I think that fellow is Dominick.” Will points to one of the Chinese figures.

“Don’t joke about that,” Trudy pouts. “Why do you think we have so much food? Dommie’s taking care of us, and I don’t really care how at this point.”

“Point taken but not agreed with,” Will says. “Why are those damn leaflets so obvious and inflammatory?”

They hear a car motoring up the driveway and tense their shoulders. Trudy runs to the window and tentatively lifts up the drape.

“It’s Dommie! ” she shouts with relief and goes to open the door.

“Speak of the devil.” Will sits down.

Dominick enters and unwraps a muffler from around his neck.

“Merry Christmas and all that,” he says, languid even in the midst of war.

“And to you,” Will says.

“I’ve brought a few provisions to make it feel extra holiday-ish.” He brandishes a basket from which he extracts the
South China Morning Post,
a tin of pressed duck, a sack of rice, a loaf of bread, two jars of strawberry jam, and a fruitcake. The women clap their hands like pleased children. “Can you make anything with this, Trudy?” He sprawls into a chair, elegant limbs splayed out, the hunter having provided for his women.

“I’m hopeless in the kitchen, you know that.” Trudy grabs the newspaper.

“ ‘Day of good cheer,’ ” she reads. “That’s the headline. ‘Hong Kong is observing the strangest and most sober Christmas in its century-old history.’ ”

“It’s as if Hong Kong didn’t exist before the English got here,” Dominick interrupts.

“Shut up, I’m reading,” Trudy says. “ ‘Such modest celebrations as are arranged today will be subdued. . . . There was a pleasant interlude at the Parisian Grill shortly before it closed last night when a Volunteer pianist, in for a spot of food before going back to his post, played some well-known favorites in which all present joined with gusto.’ ” She looks up. “People are at the Grill and I’m not? That’s a travesty if I ever heard one. I’ve been isolated up here in the Peak and people have been going out? Have you been going out, Dommie? And how dare you not take me with you! ”

“Trudy. It’s not good for women to be out these days. You should be tucked away, safe, at home. Now, mend my trousers and make us some lunch.”

She throws the paper at his head.

“What’s the news?” Will asks.

“Not good for England,” Dominick says easily. “They’re outnumbered and outclassed. There are just so many Japanese and they’ve been properly trained. They’re on the island already, swarming around everywhere. They landed the night of the eighteenth. The English are depending on soldiers who haven’t been trained on the terrain and don’t know what to do. The chain of command is not being well executed. And malaria’s running rampant.”

Will notices Dominick is careful not to say “we” or “our.”

“So we’re not doing well, it sounds.”

“No,” Dominick says evenly. “You are not doing well at all. I think it’s only a matter of time. The governor’s a fool, rejected an offer of cease-fire with some absurd British proclamation of superiority. Has his head in the sand. I’ve been getting news from our cousin Victor, who always knows what’s going on with these things. He’s still at home.”

“Do you want pancakes? ” Trudy interrupts.

“No, thanks,” Dominick says. “I can’t stay long.”

“What are you doing with your time these days?” Angeline asks. “Besides taking care of us, I mean.”

“You cannot believe what is going on,” he says. “You’re in a cozy little bunker here. It’s horrific out there. I’m just trying to keep on top of the situation.” His face is bland and smooth, eyes like black coals. Will wonders if it would be right to call a man beautiful.

“If we hear of a surrender, we’ll leave, since I assume they’ll be looting up here in the Peak first thing,” Will says.

“And if you see any uniforms at all, you should be out of here like a shot.”

“Is there anything else we should be doing? ” Angeline asks.

“No, not really. You have money, I assume. If it gets really bad, I suppose a hospital is the safest place. You know where they are. They’ve turned the Britannic Mineral Water Works factory over in Kowloon into a temporary shelter as well. But then you’d have to get over the harbor. Stay on this side, actually. There’s some Japanese custom that when they win a battle, the soldiers get three days to run wild and do whatever they wish, so that’s the most dangerous time, obviously. Try to be indoors at all times.” Dominick pauses, and looks at Will. “By the way, I’ve got a Christmas present for you.”

He goes back to the car and comes back with a cane, a beautiful one, made of polished walnut, with a brass tip.

“I’m afraid I didn’t have time to wrap it. But I thought you might find it useful.” He smiles crookedly and hands it to Will. “There you go, old chap.”

“Thank you,” Will says. He takes it and hangs it on the arm of the chair he’s sitting on.

“What about me? ” Trudy says. “Nothing for me? ”

“This just fell into my lap.” Dominick says. “I saw it on the black market and I had just enough money for it. Didn’t ask for much. I guess the market for canes is not so good in wartime.”

“Funny, that. I would have thought they would be popular, what with the war creating all those cripples and everything,” Will says.