The Piano Teacher (15 page)

“One might think, yes.”

Trudy stops the exchange. “But the doctor says that Will is going to be as good as new, so he won’t need it in a few weeks, will you, Will? We’ll use it as a poker for the fire, then.”

After Dominick leaves, they sit, the air somehow gone from the room. It feels colder, the evening approaching.

“Turn on the phonograph,” Angeline says. “I want to hear music and dance, and feel normal.”

“And drinks!” Trudy cries. “It’s Christmas and we should be having drinks.”

She fetches new glasses, lights candles, and puts the duck and bread and jam out on the table, and it tastes marvelous, their Christmas supper, with the liquor warming their cheeks and stomachs.

They carry on in this way, Trudy and Angeline dancing, carols playing, Will applauding, pouring more drinks. They drink and dance in the chilly drawing room of Angeline’s grand old house, the twilight encroaching, glasses in hand, tippling until they are all quite drunk and they stumble up to their rooms and collapse. Trudy is sweet to Will in bed, her hands and mouth moving over him until he forgets the dull throb of his knee and the spinning of the ceiling. That is the Christmas of 1941, a wistful, melancholy, waiting kind of day he will remember forever.

 

In the morning, Angeline knocks on their door. Will opens it, groggy, his mouth feeling like cloth. For some reason, she leaves her hand suspended in the air, frozen in midknock.

“Morning,” he says. She looks at him, her face pale and hung over.

“Happy Boxing Day,” she says. “It’s finished. I just heard on the radio. We’ve surrendered.”

TRUDY IS FRANTIC to find Dominick. “He will know what to do,” she says over and over.

“We will just stay here until we can’t anymore,” Will says, trying to calm her. “It will be fine in the long run. The Japanese cannot win against England, and America, and Holland and China. It’s just going to take a little while.”

“Would you mind if I went into town and tried to find him? Or maybe I should try to find Victor,” she says, ignoring him. “I don’t think you should go.”

“I would slow you down, I know.” He cannot calm her. “How are you going to find them? It will be impossible. Just stay and see. It will all be fine, you will see.”

She whirls on him, her face unrecognizable.

“And in the meantime?” She almost spits it out. “What do you suggest we do in the meantime while the Japs are swarming over the town, doing whatever they like, to whomever they like? They’re going to be all over the place, like filthy little ants. What do you think America and Holland and jolly old England are going to do then? Are you going to help me? With your leg the way it is? We have to.”

He hesitates, then takes her shoulder with one hand and slaps her face with the other. “You need to settle down,” he says. “You are hysterical.”

She sinks to the floor, weeping.

“Will,” she says through her hands. “Oh, Will. What are we going to do?”

He gets up with difficulty and kneels down on the floor with her.

“Darling Trudy,” he says. “I will take care of you, even with my terrible, gimpy leg. I swear.”

Later, after he has put her in a bath, and gotten her a drink, there is a knock at the door. With the women upstairs, he goes to answer it, first looking outside to see who it is. A sandy-haired man in uniform is standing by the door.

“Who is it?” he shouts.

“Please, sir, it’s Ned Young, from Canada. With the Winnipeg Grenadiers.”

He opens the door.

“Come in. Are you all right? Are you alone? What the devil are you doing all the way out here? ”

“Yes, sir. I was on a van being transported with the others, as POWs, you know, and I managed to jump off and just walked and knocked on doors that looked safe.”

Inside, the man is revealed to be a boy, so young acne still pocks his skin. His trousers are soiled and he smells to high heaven.

“Have you had anything to eat? ”

“Not in the past few days, sir.” He looks ravenous and polite at the same time.

“Here, sit down here in the dining room. I’ll get you some things to eat.” He gets a plate and puts out some bread and the remaining duck from last night. There’s a beer and he opens it, pours a glass of water as well. The boy falls upon it, shoving the food in his mouth.

“There’s more. Don’t worry,” Will says. “You’ll get your fill.”

“It was awful out there,” the boy says. His mouth is full and he begins to weep. “It was awful. We were in the mountains, in trenches.”

“Don’t talk. Just eat and try to relax.”

The boy goes on, as if Will hadn’t spoken. “I saw my buddy’s guts come out. He was alive. He was talking to me, and his guts were outside. Then I smelled him, he was cooking, his guts were cooking and it smelled like food. I saw a woman with her head blown off and her child sitting next to her, naked, with shit running down his backside, with flies buzzing. We had to leave him. They wouldn’t let us take the child. I’ve never seen such things. We were in Jamaica just a month ago, training, eating bananas. They told us we wouldn’t see any action here.” He weeps and weeps but keeps eating. “And I didn’t have water for days, it seems. I just wanted to die, but I jumped off that truck ’cause I seen what those Japs do. They’re not human, what they do to other people. They’re not human. I saw them rip a baby out of a pregnant woman. I saw them chop off heads and put them on fence posts.”

Angeline walks into the room.

“What on earth?”

The boy stands up, still crying, still eating.

“Hello, ma’am. I’m Ned, Ned Young, from Winnipeg.”

“I see,” Angeline says, and sits down. Will appreciates for once her cut-and-dried sophistication, so needling in peacetime. “Ned Young, where were you? Did you see any of the Volunteers?”

“We’ve lost. We’ve surrendered. I haven’t seen anyone but Japs. They’re so well equipped. They have mountain shoes, and belts with food concentrate, and maps. We didn’t have any of that. They gave us rum for breakfast. They just dropped us here weeks ago and told us we’d have time to train.”

“What did you see in town? ” They want information. He wants balm.

“There’re riots, and dead people. Everything smells so bad, you want to die too. It’s thick out there, the smell, and people are scared, but the scoundrels are out, stealing, burning. They’re taking advantage, before the Japs get everything.”

“Why don’t you rest, Ned,” Will says, realizing he is not able to give them anything. “You bathe and rest. There’s a bed upstairs and we’ll wake you if anything happens.”

Angeline brings him up. When she comes back down, Will feels the need to be outside and get some air. The young boy has brought a tantalizing glimpse of the outside world with him.

“I’m going out,” he says. “My leg feels better and I need to know what’s going on. It’s driving me mad being cooped up in here all this time.”

“Fine,” Angeline says. “Just don’t go too far. When Trudy wakes up, she’ll be wanting you.”

Outside, the sky is still blue, and there are birds singing faintly. Save the occasional plume of smoke, it is quiet and lovely up here on the wide, well-paved roads and green manicured hedges of the Peak. From a cliff-side fence, he can see Hong Kong spread out before him, the harbor glistening, the sky gleaming. It is so still outside, he can hear himself breathing.

“One of those moments,” he says, before realizing he has said it out loud.

 

He comes back to Trudy and Angeline in the kitchen pouring all the bottles of scotch down the sink.

“Don’t worry,” Angeline says. “We got blotto first. And we saved some for you, and our new friend, young Ned Young.”

“Only thing worse than a Jap is a drunk Jap, right? ” he says. “Keep the empty bottles. They might come in useful.”

“We’ve been thinking, Will,” Trudy says, “and we think the best thing to do now is stay here since we don’t know that anywhere else will be any better, but we think that you and Ned should stay hidden. Since it’s so very obvious you are not Chinese, you know. Unless, of course, you are needed to rescue us, but Angeline and I could pretend to be the servants in the house and they might leave us alone.”

Will cocks his head.

“Really? That has rich comic possibility, certainly, but I don’t know if that’s the thing to do.”

“I know it sounds mad, but where would we go? What do you think we should do? ”

“We could go into town and see what other people are doing.”

“But we might not have a place to sleep or anything to eat.”

“Well,” Will says. “Let’s do this. Let’s take the car early tomorrow morning and we’ll go down to Central and see what’s going on there and we can come back up.”

“All of us?”

“Ned should stay, since he’s had a rough time, but you and Angeline can come if you want.”

The next morning, they pile into the car, Ned as well, as he had not wanted to be left alone. He is freshly bathed and absurdly attired in some of Frederick’s clothes, the sumptuous weave of the shirt cloth glowing up underneath his childish face, his torso swimming in tropical-weight wool trousers cut to house Frederick’s not inconsiderable girth, cinched inefficiently by an alligator belt.

The road winds down the mountain, and as they round this curve or that, they catch a glimpse of the harbor and Central, looking eerily similar, just without cars. As they enter town, they quiet, looking at the empty buildings, the barren streets.

“Let’s go to the Gloucester,” Trudy says. “There should be people there.”

They park and walk down Connaught Road. Ned touches Will’s hand and motions to the side. Between two buildings, a man’s body lies, crumpled, blood streaked over his clothes. They pass silently.

“It’s so quiet,” Trudy whispers.

“No cars or people anywhere,” Will says.

But inside the Gloucester, it is bustling, with more people than they’ve ever seen in the lobby of that elegant hotel. They are sleeping on sofas, on the marble floor, the potted plants all moved tidily to one side, forming a verdant fringe to this strange refugee camp. Uniformed hotel boys are scurrying around with cups of coffee on silver trays, trying to serve the unorthodox guests as best as they are able.

“There’s Delia Ho!” Trudy cries. “I thought she had gone to China. And there’s Anson and Carol. And Edwina Storch with Mary. The whole world’s here!”

People throng around the new arrivals, asking where they’ve been, what they’ve seen.

“Can’t help you,” Angeline says. “We’ve been hiding out at home.”

“Undisturbed?” asks an American.

“Quite,” says Trudy. “But eating like dogs. Is there any food here?”

There isn’t much, unfortunately, the hotel trying their best to supply their guests with what remains in their cellar. Trudy sits down to share a rice pudding with Delia, spooning some into Will’s mouth, and then, seeing Ned off in a corner, gesturing him over to have some as well.

“The coffee is atrocious,” she says. “They’ve gone to well water.”

“What’s going on?” Will asks Dick Gubbins, an American businessman who, even before all this, always knew what was going on.

“I’ve been at the American Club, came here to see if I could find out anything. They’re starting to rampage through town, celebrating their victory. Mitzy, that old bird with the antiques store on Carnavon Road, was stabbed by a drunk soldier for nothing at all, for not handing over her purse fast enough, or something.” His voice drops. “And you know what happened at the hospital.”

“I don’t.”

“Awful stuff. They’re just animals, sometimes. The nuns were violated, the other nurses too, doctors bayoneted while trying to defend them. They’re not supposed to touch hospital workers, obviously, but tell that to a bloodthirsty mob. Drew McNamara’s over there trying to clean the whole mess up and see that those responsible are apprehended but everything’s so chaotic now. Under the Hague Convention, police are supposed to be able to keep order, the old Hong Kong police, but I haven’t seen much of them. It’s complete madness out there, I tell you. The Japanese are using some of the British constables to stand guard outside their consulate. I don’t think they understand the concept of irony.

“The Chinese and Indians should be able to move freely. Trudy’s cousin, that Victor Chen, is doing a good job acting as a go-between, trying to lessen the violence and looting. The neutral Europeans should be all right, but it’s touchy there. The Japs have asked for prostitutes, in addition to swarming all over the Wanchai brothels. Hopefully that’ll get some of their energy out. If you get a drunk or crazy one, they’ll swing at your head with a sword and not care if they’ve cut your head off. They’re demanding money and watches and jewelry from anyone they meet on the street. There’s supposed to be a victory parade on the twenty-ninth.”

“Any word on what they’re planning to do with us?”

“No. But if you can get to China, I would. I’m trying to arrange passage now for me and some of my men.”

“I don’t know why Trudy doesn’t go.”

“And you should as well, big guy. Nothing for you here, right? Listen, best of luck, and we’ll have a drink when this is all over, okay? Call me if you’re ever in New York.” They shake hands and Gubbins leaves, trailing palpable clouds of American prosperity and assurance.

Trudy comes over.

“You remember Sophie Biggs and her husband; we just saw them at Manley’s party,” she tells him. “Well, her husband knows some Japanese and so he spoke some to a few soldiers in the street and they thought he was being disrespectful and they shot him in the knee. And he was lucky, Sophie says. He’s not in good shape because the hospitals have been bombed and are operating on the barest of levels. Delia says they’re setting up checkpoints soon, so we’re not going to be able to get around without passes. Should we go back up and get our things? Should we stay up there or come back down here? It is rather more convivial down here in town. I was going a bit stir crazy up there.”