The Piano Teacher (36 page)

He was a different man, as if a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders. She could feel his lightness.

“Will,” she started.

“And what will you do?” he said as if she had not said anything.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been in touch with my parents but they don’t seem too eager to take me back in. Something about the cost and his pension. I don’t have a job, or any means of getting one, I think. So I don’t know.” She said this simply, without meaning to cause obligation.

“I see,” he said.

“And you?” she asked.

“I don’t know either,” he said. “It seems impossible to stay here, and it seems impossible to leave.”

“Yes,” she said.

“So here we are,” he said. “Two people without places to go.”

“Do you think I should continue with Locket?”

“They haven’t said anything?”

“No, we haven’t spoken since the party.”

“Well,” he considered. “If they haven’t told you to stop, I would go. But then”—he grinned—“I’m sort of perverse.”

“What was it you took from the grave in Macau?” She had been wondering.

“Oh, that,” he said. “Trudy had a deposit box at the bank and she had always told me that Dominick or I could access it. And I got a posthumous letter from her solicitors telling me I could pick up the key after the war when she had been declared legally deceased. She had told me about another key to the same box before the war but I had never tried to find it. And when I received it from the solicitors, I didn’t know where to put it. So I hid it in Dominick’s grave. Thought no one would ever go there. And it felt right. A little dramatic, but right. And I was always looking for what felt right.”

“What was in the box?”

“Some bank books, financial papers. But what she wanted me to have were the documents, the letters, the things that showed what she had done for Otsubo during the war, and what others had done.”

“Others including Victor Chen?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

“And what did you do with the contents of the box?”

“I just had them sent to the right people. Anonymously.”

“But Victor knew it was you.”

“He knew I was the only one who might have access to that sort of information.”

“Are you in any trouble?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “But I’ve been wrong before.”

They sat together, strangely comfortable.

“The thing is,” he said, “Victor Chen was not wrong in some way. The British government didn’t, doesn’t, have the right to own all those irreplaceable Chinese artifacts. They stole them from them in the first place, although they would dispute the verb. But the way he went about it . . .” He shook his head. “That man only knows one way to do things.

“And I didn’t abandon Trudy, not totally. Otsubo stopped signing the furloughs when he realized I wasn’t giving him anything. But there was never one time, or one big reason, that I couldn’t get out. I had a year of furloughs. Trudy would have got me out if I had wanted. That’s one of my deepest regrets. That it just kind of . . . fizzled. She deserved better than that. And I don’t know, really, what happened to her. I don’t know. I suppose I could find out. There are only too many people who would be delighted to tell me all about it. Including Victor.”

“But what could you have done?”

“Anything but what I did,” he said. “Anything but the nonsense I did in camp: form committees, campaign for hot water or more sheets!” His voice rose, grew violent. “I was a coward, a coward. And didn’t do anything to help her. The woman I loved. I did nothing. Hid behind what I pretended was honor.”

“Did Trudy ever . . .” Claire couldn’t finish the question.

“She never said anything. She never reproached me or challenged me. She was always who she said she was. She never pretended to be anything else. That was the beauty of her.”

He straightened his back.

“She behaved as if she believed me when I said I couldn’t help her. But she was so clever—she saw the real situation. But she didn’t say anything; she forgave me.”

He stood up, walked over to a tree, and absently snapped off a leaf. He split it in half, then half again, then scattered the pieces on the ground.

“Hong Kong is always so damn green,” he said. “Don’t you wish for some absence of color sometimes? Some English gray, a little fog?”

Claire nodded. He was unraveling, slowly, and she wanted to give him some room.

He continued. “Sometimes, I hate her for that. That she didn’t call me out on it. That she let me be a coward. It was cruel, in the end.”

Trudy would despise a man who wept, he knew.

“I have this image,” he said slowly. “This image of Trudy running around outside, frantic, like a chicken with its head cut off, not knowing what to do, not having a center, just desperate. I feel like she was desperate. But she didn’t come to me for help. Not after the first time. When I said no, she never asked again.”

Claire reached for his hand, resting on top of his cane. He didn’t yield and she settled for placing her hand on top of his.

“And she wouldn’t have had anyone to confide in. She was totally alone. And I made her that way.”

The air was damp still with the ever-present Hong Kong humidity. A drop of perspiration slowly wended its way down Claire’s back.

She willed him to look at her, to acknowledge she was there, a part of this, but he stared out at the harbor, his eyes blank. Slowly, she realized: His new lightness was not just relief at the passing of his burden. There was emptiness there too.

HE SEES TRUDY, waving on the steps of the Toa, as he gets in the car that will drive him back to Stanley. She has a wistful look on her face, her amber hair lit from behind, the setting sun sinking into the Hong Kong horizon. Pregnant Madonna. She blows him a kiss, suddenly winks. He hates how she does that—always turns a serious moment into a joke. But this is how she lives, how she survives. This is the animal she is. She had never told him anything different. She had warned him.

Arbogast broke, she had told him during this furlough, and he had nodded. “Yes, I saw him afterward,” he said.

“But you know,” she said, her voice slightly panicked, “it wasn’t the correct information. Otsubo is furious. But there was evidence that it was there. An old storage building in Mong Kok. Someone else got to it first.”

“How did Otsubo know that Arbogast might know where it was?” he asked.

She hesitated.

“I think, Victor,” she said finally. “Although I have nothing to back that up. He has his finger in every pie, that man.”

“Be careful,” he said.

“I know.” She nodded. “Otsubo’s tired of me now, anyway. I think we’ve run our course.”

“What does that mean for you?” he asked, careful to mask his relief.

She laughed.

“Oh, nothing good, I’m afraid. Just means I’m under his thumb just as much as always but I no longer have the means to coddle him out of his bad moods.”

“Do you want to come into camp now?”

“Again, with the camp! You cannot cage this bird, my love. I’ve grown used to dark, dangerous freedom and all its attendant humiliations.”

“But you could . . .”

“I am in the process of lining up another . . . sponsor,” she said slowly. “Or one is being lined up for me. So don’t you worry.”

Tears sprang to his eyes, hot, unexpected. He felt as if he might die if she saw them.

“I should go,” he said.

“Yes.”

He turned to go. She caught his arm, studied his face.

“Every time I say good-bye to you, I wonder if it’s au revoir or adieu. You know what I mean?”

He nodded.

“You’ve too much power over me,” she said lightly. “I have to pretend like it doesn’t matter, like you don’t matter. How did that happen?”

He looks at her, his love, her face ruddy with pregnancy, birdlike ankles swollen, this woman, a survivor, six months pregnant with an unwanted child, and finds he cannot forgive her this last transgression. It is easier to brand her a villain and go back to camp, play the victim, lick his wounds. This is what he does. There is no glory in it, but there is survival. And he realizes that is what they are playing at now.

EDWINA STORCH had told her everything, sure that she would pass on the information to Will.

Edwina’s voice in her head, the old woman pouring tea in the dark club.

“Trudy redoubled her efforts to be indispensable to Otsubo. She knew what kind of asset she had in him. I knew Otsubo because he had been of some help to me in getting my pass, and I kept in touch and tried to help him in whatever small matters I might be of assistance.” She had peered at Claire over her spectacles. “You understand, I was not collaborating with the enemy. I thought I would be of better use to England and everyone if I kept abreast of the situation, and there was no reason to alienate the man.” She took off her glasses and rubbed them again.

“And when Trudy started to prove herself really indispensable to Otsubo—you know, the girl knew everything about Hong Kong and all the skeletons in the closet—her cousin, Dominick, who I never liked, started to get jealous. It was as if they were both vying for his favor, and there was only room for one. Dominick was a terrible person. I don’t know if you know anything about him but he was just awful. A sadistic, small man who always felt that life owed him everything. They were both Otsubo’s flunkies and ran around getting him meetings with Chinese leaders and keeping him informed about everything that went on in the Chinese community, and even in the small European community that was still outside. Dominick made some money buying and selling necessities. He would buy it cheap through his sources and charge exorbitant rates to the local market. Very distasteful. He’d also try to get information on who was helping whom and report back to Otsubo. Needless to say, this made him less than popular with their old crowd, but he was certainly the best fed. Dominick was more out in the open about it than Trudy. People stopped talking to him.”

Claire interrupted.

“Did you have to do any work? How did you survive?”

Edwina pursed her lips.

“I’ve always preferred not to dwell on the unpleasantness of the past.”

Claire almost laughed aloud, but saw that Edwina Storch was unaware of the enormous irony of what she was saying.

“There was all this business of the Japanese in Hong Kong trying to enrich themselves. It’s quite common in a victory but there was a lot of chatter about the Crown Collection, which had some extremely rare and priceless porcelain pieces. Otsubo found out I knew a bit about the subject and called me in to get some information. I told him what little I knew.”

Edwina’s eyes sparkled.

“Actually, I knew quite a bit more than I let on but didn’t think it was an opportune time.” She paused.

“What if I were to tell you, Claire, that the governor had just flown into Hong Kong on the eve of the war.” She sat very still, as if in a trance. “He was stepping into a very tricky situation and he knew it. He had just been sworn in and was taking over a colony that was, from most intelligence reports, going to be conquered in short order. He had orders from London, one of which was to secure the Crown Collection which was in Government House. His strategy . . .”

She laughed, interrupting herself. “Interesting story, isn’t it? Politicians are so stupid. No sense at all. His strategy was to tell three different people about the location he was going to have it sent so that it would survive the war. Communications to London were already compromised so he had to think of another way.” She looked at Claire. “I was one of the three.”

“That must have been a great honor,” Claire murmured. She imagined the scene: Edwina Storch summoned to Government House, given tea, scones, a cordial reception from a man who had little knowledge of his new territory, still settling into his private quarters, getting to know the servants, his enormous task, Edwina condescending, as only a woman of her age and experience could be. How did she get away with it for so long and without challenge?

“They knew I had been a long time in Hong Kong and knew a great deal about the people, the history, the place, which I do, of course,” Edwina mused. “And the other two. Well, I found out who they were as well. We weren’t supposed to know, but this kind of information gets around. The governor was nervous and confided in a few people, not the location but our identities. As chatter grew, it all came to light. One was Reggie Arbogast. Do you know him?”

Claire nodded. “Slightly.”

“He turned a bit queer after the war.” Her mouth grew set, grim. An unforgiving expression settled on her face. “And a silly cow of a wife, Regina.”

“And the third?” Claire couldn’t help asking.

Edwina looked surprised.

“I thought you would guess. The third was Victor Chen.”