The Piano Teacher (33 page)

“So you’ve got some spunk,” she said, inspecting her glasses. “Glad to see that.”

Claire was silent.

“You’re going to need it,” Edwina Storch said. “There’s a pretty kettle of fish going on, and from what I understand, you are in the middle of it.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Oh, I think you understand more than you let on.” Miss Storch sipped her tea, made a grimace. “Too strong. They let it steep too long.”

“I’ll call for hot water,” Claire said, and raised her hand.

“Don’t bother. I’ve better things to talk about.” She sighed. “You have a fondness for the Eurasian race.”

“Hardly,” Claire protested. “I just . . .”

“And I am sure you know of Trudy Liang, then.” She peered intently at Claire over her glasses. “She was one of the better-known Eurasians in Hong Kong when she was alive. She was from a very wealthy family and so escaped much of the prejudice that comes from being mixed.” Edwina Storch said this with a complete lack of irony. “You know who I’m talking about?”

“Yes,” Claire allowed. “I have heard of her.”

“And that whole business during the war. She was out of the camps because she was Portuguese and Chinese, and I was out of the camps because I thought it better, and I had a Finnish mother and I was able to work it out. If you were persuasive in the early days, these things could happen. It was very confusing and the rules changed every day.” Her eyes shifted, became wistful. “Of course, I couldn’t get Mary out, but I was able to provide for her when I was outside, and brought her packages and all that. It was for the best.

“You know, Claire,” she said suddenly. “You have a face for listening. People must always confide in you. Do you find that to be the case?”

“Not really,” Claire demurred. She thought to herself that Edwina Storch’s face resembled a large, fleshy reptile now. It had shrewd opportunism and greed written all over it.

“You know about Trudy and Will Truesdale, then?”

“I’ve just heard stories, like everyone else,” Claire said. “But it has nothing to do with me.”

“It doesn’t!” Miss Storch laughed, a harsh chuckle. “Oh, I imagine you would like everyone to believe that. But yes, the two of them were thick as thieves. Everyone thought they would marry. If you ask me, he got the short end of the stick. He could have done much better. But no, he was with her, and then the war happened, and a lot more.” She paused. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I asked you here today, or why I asked you to lunch the other week. I wanted to get a good look at you, at your face. But it is a long story. You should eat while I talk.”

The woman looked suddenly very serious.

“You must be different now,” she said. “You must rise to the occasion. And you must be strong. Now is the time for you to make a difference.”

 

In the late afternoon light, the door to the Librarian’s Auxiliary opened. Claire stood, blinking even in the fading light. She was saying good-bye to Edwina Storch.

“Thank you very much for the tea,” she said.

“You’re quite welcome, my dear,” said Miss Storch. “I hope I have been enlightening.”

“Yes,” Claire started. Then, “No. Actually . . . I don’t know.” She stumbled over her words.

“Not the way, dear,” Miss Storch said. There was exasperation in her voice.

“But Miss Storch,” Claire said hurriedly. “Miss Storch, I do feel . . . There is something that I would like to say. When I met you at your garden party some weeks ago, you said that I reminded you of a young you. I just want to tell you that I think that is not at all correct. You and I are as different as can be.” Then she turned and walked away quickly, not looking back.

The sun was setting and Claire could not imagine that it had been an ordinary day outside, before she had entered the dark rooms and into an afternoon of storytelling by a vicious old woman with an ax to wield.

 

Trudy, her slim figure enveloped in looser and looser tunics. Her face growing rounder, her skin mottled with the mask of pregnancy. When had he noticed? It came upon him, like so many revelations, when he was about to drift off to sleep, after another furloughed weekend. He jerked, realized:
a baby.
He could not sleep after that, turning on his thin mattress, restless and wild, his mind aflame.

She had not told him. He had not noticed. It had been so gradual.

His thoughts like an old woman’s. What sort of world is this to bring a child into. How was she going to have a baby during a war. And then the other thought, the one he pushed down, but kept surfacing into his consciousness.

Did those things even matter anymore at a time like this?

Then one day, another weekend, Trudy saying abruptly, “I always knew I’d be one of those women who grew enormous during pregnancy.” The first time she had acknowledged her condition. She said it gamely, over a breakfast of noodles and roast pork, shoveling the long noodles into her mouth like a street hawker, not caring what she looked like. If she had told him a few weeks earlier, before he had noticed himself, he would have been more generous, said it suited her, but he kept quiet. His small, petty revenge. But against what, whom? Not the woman. The war. The unfairness of it all.

And then it grew obvious, suddenly, in that way women look pregnant overnight. Her growth accelerated. She was still small, but her belly swelled and spilled out of whatever loose dress she was wearing. It looked like a tumor to him. He was ashamed he felt that way.

She never said anything else about it.

 

Dominick. His face grown sharp with his newly acquired cunning, his body gone soft with indulgence. Trudy, saying, sotto voce, “Dominick has changed. He’s with that odious Victor Chen all the time. They’re trying to get my father to go in on some Macau company they’re setting up that’s doing a lot of trading with the Japanese. I don’t want my father involved in any of that—he’s not well—but Dommie won’t listen. He’s gone over to Victor’s side.” And in that statement, her profound disappointment. Her best friend, gone. A loneliness. Will was inside. Dominick was changed. Trudy didn’t have anyone anymore.

 

When Will went back to camp, after the first furlough, eager faces greeted him, hungry for news and hope. He distributed what he had brought back—the guards left him alone now, as news had spread that he had a connection outside—and went back to his room.

Johnnie Sandler appeared at the doorway.

“You prefer to be alone?”

“No, it’s all right.” He waved him in.

“So, how was your furlough? Lots of jealous people back here at home base, you know. The news spread like wildfire. You’re either a scoundrel or a hero. Lots of divided opinion.”

“Johnnie . . .” he started. He didn’t know where to begin.

“Anyone still out there that we know?”

“Yes, but . . . They say that two hundred Chinese die every day on the streets. Brutally. Anonymously. Half the hospitals are still closed.”

Johnnie studied his face.

“You look a bit shell-shocked. Is there anything else going on?”

“Too much, my friend. Too much.”

“Trudy doing all right out there?”

Will nodded.

“You don’t know her that well, do you?”

“Just from around,” Johnnie said. “As well as I knew you, I suppose.”

“And what did you think of her?”

Johnnie hesitated.

“That’s a rum thing to ask. She’s your girl.”

“No, really. I want to know.”

“I liked her. What I knew of her. There was always the noise about her, I know, but I’ve learned that most of that is just that—noise. She seems a good sort, just had a lot of attention on her all the time, and I thought that must be hard.”

“Very diplomatic,” Will said.

Johnnie grinned. “What do you expect, old man?”

“Why did you never find someone? I always saw you around with a few girls, never one, never for a long time.”

“Never found anyone who’d have me,” Johnnie said lightly. “Once they’d spent enough time with me, they’d be off like a rocket.”

They sat together for a while. Johnnie brought out some homemade cigarettes.

“The good stuff, rolled from native Stanley grass.” He offered one to Will.

Will shook his head.

“What am I thinking?” He produced two packs of Red Sun cigarettes from his bag under the bed. “I brought these back for you. Japanese, of course, but the real thing, nonetheless. I don’t know if your scruples will allow it.”

Johnnie laughed with delight.

“That’s very good of you, sir!”

They smoked for a while, enjoying the small pleasure of nicotine.

“There’s a few men in C Block who’ve rigged up another shortwave,” Johnnie said. “They haven’t gotten anything interesting, but they’re trying.”

“Trudy’s got in with a bad sort,” Will said.

Johnnie looked at him. “I’d figured as much.”

“She’s in over her head, although of course she doesn’t think so. She thinks she’s doing well, surviving, getting in with those she thinks will be helpful.”

“What does she need?”

“It’s not what she needs. They’re asking her for things. Asking her for things that could compromise others.”

“That is dangerous,” Johnnie said simply. “She should watch out, and you too.”

“Yes,” Will said. “We will.”

“It’s almost time for supper,” Johnnie said, standing up. “Our brilliant cooks have invented a new dish that is startlingly good. Banana peel fried in peanut oil. If you close your eyes, it tastes like mushrooms. I can’t get enough of it.”

“Sounds good,” Will said. He was glad to stop talking about Trudy.

 

Victor Chen, embracing Reggie Arbogast, both in the Western dress, the blue tropical wool suit, red tie. He had thrown a cocktail party for select Stanley survivors after the release. Not the riffraff, of course, but the doctors and the barristers and the company heads. He commiserated with them about what the war had done to them and their countries and plied them with champagne.

And imagine this. Governor Mark Young returning from his Malaya arrest to the site of his humiliation and that of his country. The war is over. Every effort is made to glorify the triumphant return. An RAF Dakota, escorted by Beaufighters and Corsairs of 721 Squadron. A dramatic landing at Kai Tak. Motorcycle escort back to the Pen, and then the ceremony. Guns, uniforms, pomp. He shakes the hand of community leaders, is welcomed back with speeches. And see Victor Chen there, reading a speech of his own, about Hong Kong’s fortitude and greatness of spirit.

 

Otsubo, reading documents in the dark, a table lamp illuminating only a small circle on the desk. His lips moving as he reads, Trudy and Dominick sitting next to each other on a bench in the office. They do not talk or look at each other. They wait for his signal.

 

Was it his imagination? The sound of a man screaming. Will sat up in bed and tried to listen. The sound of the sea came in through the open window, but he did not hear anything else. A child cried out in his sleep. A mother shushed, drowsy.

In the morning, passing by, he discovered Johnnie gone from his room. The room was ripped apart, although the man was fastidious. The mattress lay half off the bed, sheets hanging off.

They brought Will to the interrogation rooms on the east side.

Johnnie, his eyes open, his shirt ripped and dirty. He lay on the floor of the room, a blanket thrown carelessly over him, with only a stool and a bare electric bulb. They had let Will in to see him, a warning, he supposed.

“He didn’t talk,” they said. “So this.”

“He didn’t know anything,” Will said.

“You say,” they said.

“He didn’t,” Will said.

“Do you?” they asked.

Dominick.

He screamed and begged and wheedled. Was prodded with the tip of a bayonet. His cheek scratched so blood beaded up. Then a pinkie finger broken with a mallet. Then all of the others. A week in the hole.

Denied everything. Confessed to everything.

Scratch the surface of a man. See what appears.

 

Wan Kee Liang, Trudy’s father.

Dead in his mansion on the Praia Grande, body wasted away, smell of urine soaking the sheets. A neglected corpse, not found for days.