The Piano Teacher

January 21, 1942

FINALLY, after two and a half weeks, the order comes. Dr. Selwyn-Clarke, the director of Medical Services, has persuaded the Japanese to move the civilians to the empty Stanley Prison on the southern tip of the island, where he believes the fresh air and proximity to the ocean will lessen the outbreak of infectious diseases. Excited, the women gather their belongings and make the beds, filthy as they are-habits die hard even in wartime. Men try to get more information from the guards and are rebuffed. Will gets Ned out of bed and makes sure he is counted.

Lined up outside the hotel, they are packed into large lorries that rumble into life and the children peek through the slats in the back and shout as they pass various landmarks. The children have come to be a blessing, although it is hard on them. They make games out of nothing, play jacks with pebbles, and run around shrieking. Women sit on their bags in the back of the lorry, flesh trembling with the uneven road, society matrons looking as haggard as the governesses and nurses next to them.

Soon, buildings give way to trees as they drive through Aberdeen and into the South Side, where the sea meets the mountains and a lone winding road takes them to Stanley Peninsula. It is quiet here, and seemingly untouched by the violence of the past few weeks.

The vehicles drive through a large gate and into a compound with squat three-story concrete buildings, hastily spray-painted with large A, B, C marks. Soldiers jerk their guns to indicate that everyone should disembark. They are grouped by nationality, lined up to be counted and registered-name, age, nationality, family or single, etc.-an exercise that will grow all too numbingly familiar over the coming weeks and months.

The total: 60 Dutch; 290 Americans; 2,325 British; the rest odds and ends-Belgians, White Russians, foreign wives, even Akiko Maartens, a Japanese woman who married a Dutchman and refuses to leave him for the outside. The guards spit at her and leer, knowing she’s one of them, saying what Will can only assume are outrageous vulgarities, but she ignores them as she waits in line with her husband for their room assignment. She never speaks a word of Japanese, but her bowing and mannerisms give her away immediately. All the enemy nationals have been assembled at Stanley for internment. Will sees faces from that day at the Murray Parade Ground. Everyone says to one another, “I heard you were dead,” smiling and relieved that they are not. Will spots Mary Winkle, the smaller partner of Edwina Storch, looking bewildered. Her constant companion seems not to be with her. The Americans and Dutch have been sequestered in different hotels from the British, the Belgians in their consular office since they are so few in number. From what Will can glean from hurried asides, their experience has been much the same: they are all dirty and hungry. He asks after Dick Gubbins, the American businessman he saw at the Gloucester, and no one has heard anything about him. Hopefully he’s made it across the border into free China.

The Americans have somehow been assigned the best building and, as they are dispatched to their new home, pull together rapidly to organize everything to a fault, arranging to have furniture delivered, sorting out rooming and distribution of supplies, building a store. They are cheerful and productive, as if at a picnic. They seem to have already gotten a government of sorts running, from when they were in the hotels. The first evening, they are seen sitting outside in the twilight, in languorous poses on makeshift chairs, laughing, talking, drinking glasses of weak tea made from smuggled-in tea bags.

The Americans may have the best building, a man he recognizes vaguely says, ushering people through the door of the building he’s been directed to, D Block, but there’s not a lot we can do about it. They all have private bathrooms in their quarters. They seem to have some favor with the Japanese, maybe the governments have some understanding with each other. And our police have the next best one but they won’t give it up for the women or children. They got here a few days ago to get things ready and they’ve taken all the good spots. In my opinion, they should be in the POW internment camp in Sham Shui Po, but they’ve ended up here with us civilians, but what can you do. Will just nods. He is too tired to care. He and Ned go up the stairs and in through a door. You can’t sleep here, it’s our room, someone says from a corner, snarling. Fine, he says, and they keep going until they find an empty room and put down their satchels.

They are divided up, and the fractions get smaller the more people stream in. It ends up with thirty-five people per former prison guard flat, fifty in the bungalows, six or seven people to a room. Many rooms have no furniture at all. Some people rush to mark out the prison guard flats because they are larger and a mite better furnished, but it turns out they are more crowded in the end. There are two or sometimes three married couples per room, and a lot of families in the administrative buildings. The singles in the cells have actually fared better, excepting the bathroom situation, which is a hundred people to a stall, and quite filthy. Will finds himself in an old prison cell, two meters square, with Ned and one other, Johnnie Sandler, a playboy who was always at the Gripps in a dinner jacket, with a blonde and a Chinese beauty on either arm. Amazingly, he still radiates style through his soiled trousers and already-fraying shirt. Unselfish, he’s the first to help, rearranging beds, moving bags. It’s surprising how true personalities shine through after a few weeks of hardship. The missionaries are the worst. They steal food, don’t pull their weight with the chores, and complain all the time.

The first day, after people have established their places, everyone congregates in the large central yard, sitting in the dirt. All are paranoid that they are missing something, a meal, a handout, information. Hugh Trotter gathers the British together and explains the need for a more formal government and some sort of order. Will has talked to him about it, and found Hugh thinking the same thing.

“Why don’t we nominate Hugh as the head of things?” Will says. After a pause, people murmur their assent. “All in favor say ‘aye.’ ” Will looks around. A loud round of ayes. “Any nays? ” Silence. At least in this, their first foray into group politics, there is harmony. That is something.

Hugh elects other people to head up subcommittees. They settle on housing and sanitation, work detail, food, health, and grievances, with others to come as needed. Will is selected to head up housing, to mediate any disagreements stemming from their accommodations.

Sleep is elusive the first night, as they try to get used to the new surroundings; those lucky enough to have beds shift around, unused to the strange creaks. Will is on the floor, which is filthy, with his satchel as a pillow and various articles of clothing as blankets. The stone is cold, even after he puts more clothing down as a mat; he is unable to doze for more than ten minutes at a time. It is a relief when the sun begins to stream through the window and he can stop the charade of sleep.

They come down to posted signs that say all rooms will be inspected for contraband in the afternoon. Most scamper back upstairs to squirrel away their belongings, hoping they will not catch the eye of any of the inspectors.

“I don’t have anything worth taking,” Will tells Ned, “and I don’t think you do either,” and they continue to the dining hall. And at the appointed hour, Will, Ned, and Johnnie watch as a chubby soldier rifles through their things. He holds up a particularly fine cotton shirt, Johnnie’s, of course, and shakes it insolently, while rattling off something in Japanese to his companion.

“He’s going to the ball in that,” Johnnie says. The soldier whirls around and barks out something, clearly that they are to remain quiet while they finish up. He then flings the shirt on the dirty floor.

In the end, they come out better than most. They have given up a few gold cuff links (“Thought they might come in handy for bartering.” Johnnie shrugs), a little box of tools that Johnnie had smuggled in, with pliers, a hammer, and scissors; and a wool hat.

“You did such an atrocious job of packing, they didn’t want anything of yours,” Johnnie observes to his roommates after the men are gone. “Congratulations! ”

“It’s lucky few of us are their size,” Will says. “I think we’d be going around starkers.”

“They can take the women’s clothes. They’d look quite fetching in a nice poplin garden dress, I think.”

They gather in the hallways and compare what’s been lost. Some are beside themselves at the loss of family heirlooms, others happy that they managed to hide their valuables away.

“Did you hide them in your bum, then? ” asks Harry Overbye to the group, an unpleasant sort who is smug because he has a Chinese girl on the outside who he is sure will provide for him. He has a wife he sent back to England some months before, and then he acquired the girlfriend. He is ignored.

“While we’re here,” Will says, “I’m organizing a cleaning detail to make our conditions more pleasant. I’ll have a sheet up when I can acquire cleaning supplies, and I expect everyone will want to pitch in and help keep our temporary home as clean as possible.”

Overbye snorts, but there are general noises of assent from the others.

“Good,” he says. “It’s not the Ritz but it will have to do for now.”

“That’s an understatement if I ever heard one,” Johnnie says.

Will is getting very worried about Ned. He speaks only when spoken to, and then only in one- or two-word replies. He says he feels all right, but he is wasting away, hair thin and matted, eyes dull. He sleeps all day and shows little interest in food.

“Shock,” says Dr. McAllister, when Will asks him. “He’s had such a shock, he can’t process anything. Who knows if he’ll come out of it. This is certainly not the ideal situation for convalescence.” Asked for a tonic, or anything, he throws up his hands. “I have nothing! Not even an aspirin! I’ve put in a request with Selwyn-Clarke and the authorities here for some basic medicines and supplies, but they’ve yet to reply. Just keep an eye on him. Unfortunately, that’s about all we can do right now.”

At dinnertime, they gather in the dining hall, where the separation of countries is again evident. A tall, rangy American businessman, Bill Schott, has been elected camp representative to the Japanese, by the Japanese, and he stands up to address the whole camp.

“The Japanese have decided that we are to man the kitchens and cook our own meals. These will be coveted jobs, so we are going to rotate them so that everyone gets a chance to serve.” He doesn’t say why the jobs will be so desirable, but everyone can see that proximity to food is only a positive thing. “We will also be assigned what I’ll call housekeeping duties, not only our private rooms, which should be kept clean and which will be inspected on a regular basis, but also sweeping the courtyard and other duties as they see fit. I have been assured that these tasks and our conditions will be in keeping with the Geneva Convention, although, technically, Japan is not under its auspices, as they signed the agreement but never ratified it. They say they are agreeing to it for goodwill. We will be given adequate food, as per the Convention, which I believe is some twenty-four hundred calories a day. I have inquired as to mail and contact with the outside world and we are to receive letters and packages on set days of the week. Obviously we will not know whether that is reliable, but they have said they are willing to do it. Our governments are to be notified of our presence here and of the living conditions and we are to have Red Cross representatives come periodically and make inspections. In the best case, of course, there will be arrangements for repatriation and there will be some sort of swap of citizens between countries.” He pauses. “Obviously it is unclear when all this will come to pass. We are, it is important to remember, in a war that is still very much going on. It could be weeks, it could be months. In the meantime, I hope we can all live together in harmony and try to help each other as much as possible while the situation is like this. If anyone has any complaints or comments, please come to me and I will try to make our views known to the camp supervisors, but I’m afraid we are not operating from a position of great power. At any rate, I wish everyone well as we go forth from here. Let’s make our countries proud.”

He sits down. There is an exhalation of air, as everyone digests what he has said. And then hands pop up in the air. Schott stands up again to take questions.

“Do we have any idea how long we’re to stay here? ”

“None at all, unfortunately.”

“Are we allowed to have money? Or can we get money from the outside?” asks a Dutchman.

Schott laughs. He is very rich himself and has already acquired a great many comforts for the American faction, which have all been diligently and enviously noted by the other groups.

“I imagine you’re allowed to have whatever you want, if you can keep it a secret, or if you want to share it with them. I don’t know. This is one of those murky areas you don’t really want to get into officially. Just use your common sense.”

“Can we write letters to the outside? ” Hugh Trotter asks.

“I don’t think so. Or if we did, I think the people we wrote them to would never receive them or get such censored letters that they would be rendered useless-an exercise in futility, I suspect. I will certainly ask, but it seems unlikely. I’ll try to get Ohta, that’s the head of the camp, in a good mood, and ask him then.”

The questions fly fast and furious, mostly routine matters, prisoners worried about their daily comforts. Will starts to eat.

“What about me?” Ned says suddenly to the table. It’s the first time he’s spoken all day.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m registered as British, but there’s no British Ned Young. It’s going to be all messed up. No one at home is going to know I’m here. Where are all the Canadians? ”

“I think your compatriots are at the POW internment camp at Sham Shui Po. It is odd there are no other Canadian civilians, but perhaps they went home before all this erupted. I think you’re better off here than with the troops. And I’m sure Britain has enough Ned Youngs or Edward Youngs-it’s a common enough name-that they’ll take you in first, and then you can sort it out when you’re in. It will be asking for trouble to get you back with your colleagues.”

“No, no,” he says. “It’s all messed up. It’s all messed up now. I’ve done it for myself, haven’t I? No one knows I’m here. Nobody. My mum won’t know I’m alive or anything.”

“It’s all right. You’re here and you’re alive. That’s the important thing. Don’t worry too much about registration and things like that.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” the young Canadian snaps. “You’re all proper and accounted for. I’m alone here.” He stands up and walks out.

“He needs to have a moment,” Johnnie says. “Leave him alone. He’ll be all right.”

Will looks after Ned’s receding body. “It’s hard for him. I don’t think he’s eighteen yet. He’s here, halfway across the world, all by himself, with no hope.”

“Join the club,” Johnnie says. “It’s misery all around here at Camp Stanley. And it’s only the second day.”

After dinner, he and Johnnie go back to their room. On Will’s bed is a neatly wrapped package, with a note. It’s unsigned but it’s apparent that it’s from Ned.

“I wish you the best. Don’t worry and thank you for everything.” He has left the majority of his borrowed clothing.

“How on earth does he think he’s going to get out of here? ” Johnnie sits down on the bed.

“Lord knows. He didn’t want to incriminate himself or us, I suppose, with this rather cryptic note. I’m thinking the worst. He has no idea of the terrain out here, or even in town, no friends, no Chinese language, nothing. Even if he gets out of the camp boundaries, he’s a blind man. And he’s left all his clothes…” His voice trails off.

“Not the sign of a sane man, certainly,” Johnnie offers.

“No.” Will crumples up the note and puts it in his pocket.

In the morning, some internees are talking over breakfast about how they heard gunshots in the middle of the night, toward the southern wall of the camp.

February dawns the next week and it is cold. Hong Kong has a subtropical clime so there is no heating infrastructure and the winter is always an insidious, creeping cold that surprises you in the middle of the night or when outside too long. No sign of Trudy. It’s now been more than three weeks since he’s seen her. It’s getting to be more than disheartening-it’s embarrassing now as people inquire as to how she’s doing. Amahs, houseboys, local girlfriends, and spouses who are still on the outside for one reason or another come to try to see the internees, but the camp is still working out the visitation rules and they are turned away with their packages. Still, their visitors are allowed to leave word that they’ve been there.

Will concentrates instead on winterizing the buildings as much as he can. Beds have been provided, with some semblance of bed linens, but the temperature plummets at night. He’s never thought of the cold in Hong Kong as anything more than brisk, but he realizes now that that was with a proper winter coat and well-insulated walls. Everyone is hunched over, trying to conserve body heat, sleeping with all their clothes on, shivering in the bathrooms, not taking baths. When Will brushes his teeth, the silver water feels like ice. He puts in an official request for more blankets and winter coats, especially for the children, who are running around in their parents’ extra clothing, hems and sleeves trailing the floor. He organizes a patching team that goes around plugging any holes in the wall with a crude mix of mud and leaves. All this does little to alleviate the creeping misery of unrelenting discomfort that clouds their days.

Trudy, when she comes, is unexpected. A guard plucks Will from the lunch queue and takes him to the office of Ohta, the head of the camp.

Expecting a response to his blankets-and-coats request, Will is taken aback when he is told he has a visitor. They have not been allowed yet. But, of course, rules have never really applied to Trudy.

Ohta, a portly man with greasy skin and smudged wire spectacles, gestures that Will is to sit down. He is attired in a Japanese version of a safari suit, but one with long sleeves and pant legs.

“You have a visitor.”

“Is that so? ”

“We have not yet allowed any visitors.”

“I’m aware of that. But I don’t know anything about it.”

Ohta eyes Will over his desk.

“You want drink?”

“Please.” Will knows to accept.

He gestures to the soldier by the door and barks out something in Japanese. Whiskey is poured into small, dusty glasses.

“Kampai!” He lifts up his glass with one pink, porcine hand, and drains it, tossing his head back with a grunt. Will follows suit, with less vigor. Ohta shakes his head as if to throw off cobwebs. “Good!” He pours another.

“Your visitor, your wife?”

“I have no idea who my visitor is.”

“Woman, Chinese?”

“Trudy Liang?”

“Yes. Miss Liang is here to see you.”

“Oh, good.” Will’s heart is beating fast. “Thank you very much.”

“I told her only one time she can come on no visitors’ day. Special for her.”

“Well, she is special, isn’t she? ”

Ohta stares at him.

“No one special now. Everyone same, prisoner or not Japanese. Same!”

“Yes, of course.” Mercurial, he thinks. “Well, I think she’s special because she is to me.” Lame finish.

Ohta gets up. “Wait in room here.”

After a few minutes, during which Will sips at his whiskey, enjoying the warm burn in his throat, trying to calm his nerves, the guard gestures for him to come. They go into a small room with a table and five chairs, where Trudy is sitting, looking uncomfortable. She is thin, her clothes serviceable. Her hair is pulled back into a chignon, face colorless without any sort of makeup. Still, somehow, she radiates privilege.

“Darling,” she says. “I’ve missed you so much.”

He doesn’t say anything about her absence, just asks her what she’s been doing, forfeiting the right to rebuke her for her neglect.

“ Frederick is dead, so I’ve been with Angeline, but she hasn’t really spoken for weeks. I keep telling her she has to cope for Giles’s sake, but she doesn’t seem to listen. She wants to bring him back here but what kind of place is this to be responsible for a child? She doesn’t want to go to England where she doesn’t have any family but Frederick ’s, not that she could go right now, and his family was against the marriage in the first place, so it’s a rather difficult situation. So that’s what I’ve been doing. Besides trying to get a foothold in the new world out there.”

“You’re all right for food and all that? Dominick is taking care of you? ”

“The Japanese are so odd,” she says, ignoring him. “They have this extraordinary custom of defecating in every room of every house they loot. Isn’t that awful? Marjorie Winter’s house was completely soiled-she found it when she went up to get some supplies. The odor! The whole city smells of waste. That’s one Japanese custom I’m not too enthralled by. So extraordinary. They have that beautiful tea ceremony and all that lovely gardening, and then they go and do something like that. And of course, all the women are in a tizzy about rape. You’re not supposed to go anywhere alone. I brought a driver.”

“Ned is gone. I think he tried to escape but I’m quite sure he was shot in the attempt. He was going rather mad.”

Trudy’s face falls. “Don’t tell me such awful things, darling. I can’t stand it as it is. Can we talk about something else? Something else entirely, something quite trivial in comparison. Like how I’m scrabbling all the time. It’s terribly unbecoming. At least here, you don’t have to do that. You just stand in a line and get food handed to you.”

“You have quite a good idea of what goes on here, have you?” It’s the first time he’s been sharp with her and she takes note.

“Is there anything you need that you think I might be able to procure outside?”

“It’s scant hunting out there too, isn’t it? ”

“Yes, but I could get Dommie on it. We have food but it’s rather dear. I could weep when I think of the Japanese bombing the godowns. There was so much food in there, and they just incinerated it all. They said you could smell the food burning miles away. Makes me ravenous just thinking of it. At least there’s no chance I’ll get plump if this goes on. You don’t like plump women, do you, Will? No chance of me getting that way.” She chatters on. “Conditions in Sham Shui Po and Argyle are supposed to be hideous,” she says. “They’re coming down very hard on the uniformed. You’re lucky you’re here. That Jane woman at the hospital really saved you, I think. Very clever of her.”

“Do you think I should be there?” he asks, hard. “Do you think I’m a coward for being here? ”

“Are you mad? ” she says with genuine astonishment. “Of course I don’t.”

How quickly he has lost the ability to gauge what she thinks, he realizes. She is off to something else entirely.

“Do you remember what it was like just three months ago?” she asks. “Conder’s Bar, the Gloucester, the Gripps, the parties. Can you believe it was just a few lousy months ago?”

“No,” he says. “Have you any news of what’s going on out there? We’ve no way of getting any reliable information and it’s driving us mad.”

“Carole Lombard died in a plane crash, that’s the biggest news.” She winces at his reaction. “Sorry, irreverence not appropriate? All right, reality, then. It’s grim all around, darling. I don’t know much but I’ll try to find out for you. The paper now is all Japanese propaganda and says everything is going swimmingly. We can get rice at one of fourteen depots, so that’s usually our main task, getting food. We send the maids to one, and we go to another, and hope one of us gets lucky. But that’s not so grand in the way of news, is it? What else. In the days right after you left, they were in a democratic mood so they were encouraging one and all to go to the old colonial bastions, so you would walk into the Pen and see laborers squatting on the chairs, having tea! They came with the cash they made from looting, to try to see how the other half lived. It was just beyond! It’s difficult to get reliable information-the paper just says that the Japanese are conquering everything in sight and it’s hard to read between the lines.” She pauses. “Dommie’s doing fine, fraternizing with the Japanese. He seems to think he’s one of them. He’s in business with Victor now, a bit shady, but what isn’t these days? When I go to visit him in his offices-he has offices in Central-he always opens up a bottle of champagne. The whole thing makes me quite ill but I drink it anyway. And I see some of Victor. He’s the one who got me in here. Had a word with someone he does some business with.”

“Dommie’s never had a job before and now he’s a businessman?”

“War does strange things to people. I think this might be the best thing to happen to him. He’s rather found himself.” She laughs, an odd laugh.

“He should be careful. At the end of all this, he’s going to have to account for himself. And Victor too.”

“Dommie doesn’t think that way. He’s always lived in the present-you know him. Victor is another story. I’m sure he’s covering his tracks well.”

“But you should warn Dommie that he should think ahead this time. And tell him to be careful of Victor.”

She waves her hand impatiently. “So I’ve been summoned by a Japanese,” she says. “A man named Otsubo who lives in the Regent Suite and is in the gendarmerie, which I’m told is a good thing to have on your side. They’re the military police. He wears a special chrysanthemum pin on his collar, which signifies gendarme-ness. I think he might want me to teach him English. Do you think I should do it?”

“Not you too,” Will says. “Are you going to be best friends with the enemy? ”

“I resent that,” she says. “You know me.”

“I do, darling, and I love you despite it.”

“Very funny, my idiot.”

How are they back to this already? This needling, their sophisticated parrying, from a time when such things mattered.

“Do you think it’s safe?” he says after a moment.

“Well, I’m bringing Angeline with me. She’ll be a chaperone, so don’t worry.” She pauses. “It’s the funniest thing… I’ve had a phrase running through my head all week-plutocrats and oligarchs-and I haven’t the slightest idea what it means. It must have been something I heard somewhere. You’re clever-what does it mean exactly?”

“Plutocrats are the ruling class,” he says. “And oligarchs are governments ruled by a few. I suppose they mean the same thing, really. Why do you think you’ve had that on your mind?”

“Haven’t a clue,” she says, dismissing it as quickly as she brought it up. “So I’ll be a tutor. He’s very important, apparently, head of the gendarmerie. And he lives at the Matsubara-I mean the Hong Kong Hotel. They’ve renamed everything, you know. The Peninsula ’s the Toa now. Maybe I’ll get some special privileges and then we’ll be on easy street.”

“Yes, maybe,” he says. He notices, but is not suitably appreciative of, the “we.” He wishes she would go. He is tired. But when she gets up to leave, he feels bereft.

“I’ll see you again?”

“Of course. I’ll bring things too, what I’m able to scrape together, if you think it would be helpful. Maybe next week if they’re less irritating about the visiting hours.” And she’s out the door, elegant even in her reduced circumstances. He smells her jasmine perfume in the sweep of air she’s left behind.

There are five guards assigned to their building. They patrol the adjacent grounds, do random inspections, and make their presence felt. Most leave the prisoners alone, but one, Fujimoto, a skinny fellow who smells like rancid fish, is particularly cruel and delights in making the men sweep the yard or do one hundred jumping jacks when they are so tired and weak they can barely stand up. Fujimoto has it in for Johnnie, for some reason, and whenever he sees him, he will stop him and have him clean the latrines or dig up holes in the garden-senseless tasks that just reveal the hardness of the man. But he is mild compared with the men who are assigned to investigate covert activities. Word of a shortwave radio gets out and the three men who are supposed to have the components are dragged off to a distant room. Only one comes back, and he is barely alive, bones broken and one eye almost gouged out. He dies later in the makeshift infirmary. “They let him come back alive as a warning,” says Trotter. “That much is clear.”

Lack of food makes them tired. The promised twenty-four hundred calories turn out to be more like five hundred per person-a large bowl of rice is supposed to feed a roomful of adults for the whole day. Sometimes, there is a protein, conger eel or red mullet, but it is often spoiled and melts away to oil when cooked. Still, they eat it hungrily, their bodies ravenous for any fat or taste. People are sick constantly-pellagra, dysentery; wounds never heal, teeth rot, fingernails don’t grow. Will’s lids are hooded and his limbs leadlike. All he wants to do is lie in bed, especially in the late afternoon when everything is dragging. He forces himself to get up and find tasks to do. Many sleep the days away but he can’t abide that. “Doesn’t it seem as if we should be getting something out of this time?” he asks Johnnie. “When people ask what we did during this time, I don’t think the answer should be slumber.”

“Such a good man,” Johnnie says. “Industrious little bee.” But he is also the first to help Will, and never complains.

The next week, Trudy is allowed to visit again, and others are allowed in as well. She is ebullient. The head of the gendarmerie says she is to come twice a week to teach him English at the hotel where he is quartered.

“The food there! You wouldn’t believe it!” Her voice lowers to a whisper. “I eat enough to last me until the next visit. And he’s had me up to the house he’s requisitioned in the Peak, the old Baylor place. He has it as a sort of weekend place. The old staff are still all there and were so thrilled to see me! An odd scene, though. When I went up, he was practicing archery on the lawn and had someone bring me a glass of champagne. It’s as if he were mimicking the life of an English lord. One can almost believe life’s back to normal when it’s like that. And he just wants to chat, get his conversational English up to par. Of course, he’s pumping me for information too, thinks I’m an idiot, but who cares when you’re eating bananas and fresh fish and all the rice you can finish! Can you believe I’ve become such a peasant about food? Anyway, Otsubo is obsessed with lining his pockets. He thinks I will help him, unknowingly, or knowingly. It’s a time-honored tradition of war, I suppose, the officers getting rich off the conquered.”

“And you and Angeline go to teach this man? ”

“He told me to drop her, says he doesn’t need two teachers, but I bring her back loads of food. Told him I’m staying with her and I’m obliged. He wants me to teach him Western table manners. Isn’t that a scream? He wants to know the whole thing, fish knives, dessert spoons. He can’t pronounce the word etiquette since I’ve brought it into his life, but he means to be a master of it. We had lobster the other night and he wanted to know the proper way to eat it. I just smashed away at it merrily and he thought I was joking.”

“So now you’re having lobster dinners with this man? ”

“Oh, it’s not what you think-Dommie was there too. They’re best friends. It’s really quite sickening. I’m just along for the free food. I brought you some too, darling, look.” She looks behind her to make sure the guard isn’t watching, and spills out a duffel sack of fruit and some tins of meat and a small bag of rice. “I slipped the guard who checks the bag some cigarettes at the door so he didn’t bother me but I don’t want this one to go getting any ideas. Don’t go being noble and share this with everyone. I want you to have it, not little Oliver or Priscilla, no matter how gaunt and adorable their wee faces are. It’s for you, and I wouldn’t give it to you if I thought it was going elsewhere. You have to develop a thick skin, Will, it’s wartime.”

“What makes you think I don’t have one?”

“You’re too good, that’s your problem. People like you have trouble surviving in times like these.”

“But you’re having dinners with this man,” he says again.

“Yes,” she says patiently, as if he’s mentally impaired. “It’s not the sort of situation where I can tell him to bugger off. I have to keep on his good side.”

“But surely you can do that without having these inappropriate…”

She cuts him off. “You’ve no idea what it’s like outside. It’s quite the norm. We have to get along with these beastly people until we prevail. Have a plum and shut up.”

When he doesn’t take it immediately, she snatches it back petulantly and takes a bite. Juice comes out of her mouth and Will thinks suddenly that she looks like an animal.

When it rains, it is difficult to rouse oneself. On a cold, damp Tuesday, Will lies in his bed, thin mattress hard against his body, and listens to the rain splatter rhythmically on the roof. He’s not sad, just immobile. The gray wall opposite is trickled with water leaking in, and there is a pool forming on the concrete floor. It’s become a routine faster than he would have thought, internees shuffling around, arguing about food distribution, pilfering, work duties.

There is no damn color here in camp. Their clothes have long faded to gray, the food is all one color-an indistinct muddy brown on the plate, the buildings concrete. He longs for red, magenta, sunflower yellow, a vibrant green. The only relief from gray and brown is the sky, sometimes a glorious bell-clear blue, and the sea, a choppy turquoise. Sometimes he sits at the fence and just stares out. It is absurdly beautiful still, the horizon and the water and the clouds. Dr. Selwyn-Clarke chose the site because he thought the seaside location would reduce cholera outbreaks and other infectious diseases. Unfortunately, it is not the infectious diseases that are the issue, but the lack of vitamins and proper nutrition.

Johnnie walks in, soaked from the rain.

“Lovely day.” He sits down heavily on his bed.

“Can you believe we’re here?” An inane response is all Will is capable of.

“Rather be home, that’s for sure.” He brightens. “There’s a rumor that Red Cross packages have arrived. They might distribute them after dinner.”

“What’s in a Red Cross package? ”

“Food, man! Chocolate sometimes. Diversions. The children have been talking about it all day. I might have to wrestle a little girl for her package.”

In the afternoon, Will hears little Willie Endicott shouting as he runs through the camp as fast as his spindly legs will let him.

“The packages are here! The packages are here!”

Looking out the window, Will can see little Willie’s arms are covered in mosquito bites, which he has scratched until they are red and runny, making his mother worry herself to death because of the malaria. She has covered his welts with valuable toothpaste. He runs, the white-toothpaste-speckled boy, shouting his message, delirious with the notion of food.

The line is tense as everyone waits. When it comes to their turn, the guard hands them a soft brown paper package wrapped in twine. They retire to their room in high excitement to open it.

“Feels like Christmas! ”

Will is finding the package hard to open. His fingernails are as soft as the paper. Finally he is able to undo the knots. They store the string away carefully-nothing is ever discarded these days-and gaze in grateful wonder at what is inside.

“It looks like a scientist packed this! ” Johnnie exclaims.

There are six chocolate bars, slightly moldy, but no matter, a large tin of McVities biscuits, coffee, tea, a good amount of sugar and powdered milk, and some knitted socks and a muffler. These ordinary items look as valuable as gold coins. There is also a bonus: a tiny chess set and, hidden discreetly within, a small piece of paper with rounded, girlish writing.

Johnnie reads it aloud, the muffler tied comically around his head like a turban:

“ ‘Our thoughts and prayers are with you. Keep your spirits up and good WILL prevail. My name is Sharon and I would love to correspond with you if you are able. I have blond hair, blue eyes, and, people say, a ready smile.’ ”

“Lovely penmanship,” says Johnnie, sniffing the paper. “Nice sense of balance, just enough so that the censors wouldn’t get her, yet still unambiguous. And look, here she’s written her address.”

“Delightful,” says Will drily. “ Sharon from Sussex, our savior.”

“I’m going to look Sharon up when I get home,” says Johnnie, tucking her note into his shirt pocket. “She seems like the kind of girl I should settle down with.”

“What about me? ”

“You already have a sweetheart. Don’t be piggy. Sharon ’s mine.” Johnnie shoves an entire bar of chocolate into his mouth.

“Do you know how to play chess?” Will begins to assemble the pieces.

“Is there any money in it?”

“No, but there is your mental well-being to consider. Our brains are beginning to rot in here.” Johnnie is his first friend, Will realizes. He hasn’t made any in the colony, didn’t have to, with Trudy. It feels good.

The next morning, Will sees the little boy from the hotel, Tobias, squatting alone outside the bathroom with his airplane.

“Did you enjoy your chocolate?” he asks.

There’s no answer.

“Where’s your mother?”

The boy just stares at him, his face pale, his fair hair lanky and matted. He works the ragged airplane around his hand, smoothly. It’s become a part of his anatomy.

“Is your mother not feeling well?”

The boy starts to cry.

“It’s all right. If she’s in there she’ll be out in a minute.”

Just then the door bangs open with a crash. Fujimoto steps out, buttoning his trousers. Will steps back instinctively but the man ignores him and walks away.

“I guess she’s not. Do you want to come find your mother with me?” Will extends a hand. The boy looks down at the floor and shakes his head vigorously.

“Listen,” and then the door opens again and Mary Cox comes out. He blinks. Her hand goes to her mouth when she sees Will. She turns away.

“Come on, darling,” she says to Tobias. “Let’s go get supper.” She brushes past Will and scuttles down the hall, dragging the child with her. Then she turns around and stares at him, her face hardening into something unapologetic, fierce.

So that’s how it goes, he thinks. That’s the beginning of how it all changes. We become survivors or not.

He tells Johnnie about Mary Cox.

“That was only a matter of time, though, wasn’t it? Market economy springs up everywhere. People figure out what they have to sell and what they want to buy.”

“Bloodless of you.”

“This war has been bloody enough without me getting all sentimental. And you too, old man. Don’t get all soft on us. It won’t do anyone any good.”

But Will is unable to get the image of Tobias waiting outside the bathroom out of his mind.

At dinnertime, they walk outside to find a scandal of another sort has erupted. Regina Arbogast has accused one of the mothers of stealing chocolate and biscuits from her Red Cross package and is demanding a trial. Hugh Trotter is trying to explain to her that the legal system they have set up is meant for more serious matters, such as mistreatment by the guards, or stealing from the communal kitchen, but she refuses to listen.

“You and your filthy children are eating more than their share! They should have been sent home to England months ago. They shouldn’t be here at all, taking food from others! They shouldn’t be here at all.”

The woman looks ambushed.

“ Regina,” she starts. “I didn’t take your food but you have a family too. How can you talk about children like that?”

“My children were raised right, not like yours. They’re like animals! And mine are in England where they belong! ”

“But yours are grown. I couldn’t send Sandy and Margaret away. They’re too young to be separated from their mother.”

“You should have gone with them!”

“You shouldn’t be here either, then,” the mother says finally. “It should be just the men. All the women and children are supposed to be gone. So you’re draining us of resources as well.”

“What rubbish!” Regina looks as if she is ready to strike the woman. “Your family has always taken advantage of situations. Reggie’s done business with your husband and always said he was a common man, a slippery sort, always getting around things.”

“Just a minute there,” Hugh Trotter interjects. He has wisely tried to keep on the sidelines, but this venture into the personal cannot be ignored. “Let’s keep to the matter at hand.”

“The matter at hand, Hugh,” Regina says slowly, as if he is mentally challenged, “is that this woman has taken some of my personal belongings and you are refusing to treat it in a serious matter.”

“For God’s sake, Regina.” Hugh throws up his hands. “We are bloody refugees here. None of us owns anything at the moment. They were packages for war refugees. Can’t you be a little more generous? We’re all in the same boat.”

“Don’t you dare swear at me!” Her voice goes high-pitched. “We are not in the same boat! I will never be in the same boat as that woman. She is something else quite entirely.”

The Americans are watching from afar, aghast. Sometimes Will feels traitorous, the way he admires the Americans, or not really admires them but feels like he is more one of them. Despite her professed love for Americans, Trudy never really liked them-Will thinks they’re too democratic for her tastes. She likes a little delineation between the classes. Here, though, their system is so clearly superior to anything any other group has. Even in these surroundings, they radiate plenty and wealth. Bill Schott is autocratic, to be sure, but he gets things done efficiently and quickly and has managed to acquire a great many things for his people, mostly at his own expense, it is surmised, but still. Those in the British camp who have the wherewithal to help others rarely do, preferring to hoard what they have for fear of darker days ahead. The Americans have a system for sharing what they do have, although because they are fewer and not so strapped, it must be easier.

Regina Arbogast stomps her foot like a child and cries out.

“This is just impossible! There are no standards at all! Nothing is to be done here. I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.” She walks off in a huff.

“A little diversion is always welcome,” observes Johnnie. “She’s quite a pistol, that one. We’re going to have to watch her.”

Rice, rice, rice. After some two months, it’s all anyone talks about. They have become absurdly creative with it-grinding it for flour, boiling it for gruel and water, trying to stretch it out as much as possible. Food is the main topic. For one glorious week, there is pork on the ration lorry every day, until the story gets out that a pig farm had been shut down for disease and they are being fed the carcasses. Still, most just boil it well and continue to eat it. Beggars can’t be choosers.

The internees steep tea out of dried bark and dry grass on sheets, which they then shred and roll for cigarettes. They have lost so much weight, men’s faces are gaunt, women look decades older. Some suffer excruciating pain in their feet, the result of malnutrition, and cannot walk.

Some people are cracking under the pressure. Reggie Arbogast comes to Will to ask him to talk to his wife, who has stopped talking to anyone, but apparently she has always had a soft spot for Will, a feeling that he had certainly not known existed, and did not reciprocate to any degree. Still, he agrees to go visit with her.

Knocking on the door, he goes in to find a surreal picture-Regina Arbogast sitting on her bed dressed in a crimson evening gown, her hair put up in a messy chignon, some wisps escaping. Her eyes are smudged with black. Looking closer, he realizes it is charcoal. Her lips are messily slathered with lipstick, the crimson bleeding past her lips and onto the skin.

“Mrs. Arbogast,” he starts.

She continues to sit, looking like a grotesque marionette.

“ Regina,” he says. “You must get out. The sun is glorious today.”

She looks at him.

“Will,” she says finally. There is lipstick on her teeth.

“Yes, Regina? The fresh air will do you good if you go outside.”

“Will. You have always been a good man. I have admired you. You came to Hong Kong and were not polluted by it like so many others.”

“Thank you, Regina. I don’t k now…”

“But others are poisoned by it. It’s too easy here, life. As many servants as you want, lives subsidized by the government or your company. Everything is provided. You become weak.”

“ Regina, these are not good things to dwell on. Keep your mind exercised. I think some of the women are talking about putting on a show, a play. You should get involved with them…”

“Paaah! ” She expectorates onto the floor. “Stupid cows!”

He sits, not wanting to provoke her further.

“They are stupid, absurd women, who think a few clever lines will make us forget we’re here, in this tragedy of a situation. I despise them.”

And they, you, Will thinks, but doesn’t say.

“What would you like to do?”

She looks at him incredulously.

“What the bloody hell do you think I’d like to do? Get out of here and go home to England! ” Regina Arbogast seems to have been transformed into a dockworker.

“Language, Regina,” says Reggie, who’s just come through the door. His eyes are dull and sunken. The doctor has told him he needs vitamin C but there is no citrus to be had anywhere.

“Oh, shut up, Reggie.”

Will stands to leave.

“No, you stay,” Regina orders. “Reggie can do whatever he wants. I really don’t give a fig anymore. I have things I want to tell you, Will, because I think you deserve to know.”

“ Regina, I don’t think Will…”

“Reggie! ”

Reggie Arbogast looks at Will helplessly as if to say, See what I am dealing with? and then leaves. Will looks longingly at the door.

“ Regina?”

“Will, you were one of the ones I had high hopes for when you arrived,” she said, like the high priestess of society she had always styled herself to be. “Reggie knew about you from work and always spoke so highly of you. I wanted to have you to dinner many times.” Regina Arbogast’s dinner parties had been sought-after invitations in Hong Kong for their lavish style, elaborate themes, and restrictive guest lists, for those who had cared about such things.

Trudy had laughed at everything Regina did. “So fussy! So pretentious!” she said. “You know, she was a Manchester shopgirl before she married Reggie. All of her airs are very recent indeed. I heard he used to be a very nice man before he met her.”

“That’s very good of you, Regina.”

“But then you took up with that Liang woman. Did you know about her past? I felt she got her claws into you right away. She knows what she’s doing, that’s for sure, that one. She took you off the market before anyone else even knew you had arrived. You know what they call her, don’t you? The queen of Hong Kong!” She laughs. “It’s so preposterous! With her queer half-breed customs and way of thinking she is above everything. Forgive me but she is insufferable. I suppose love makes you blind.”

Will doesn’t know why Regina is talking to him as if he were one of her fellow society matrons and they were gossiping over tea at the Peninsula.

“I don’t know that this is the right time or place for this,” he starts.

“Listen. I have a point. You think I don’t but I do.” Regina Arbogast leans forward. “Reggie met with the governor when he arrived. Governor Young had a secret meeting the first week. The day of the Tin Hat Ball. He wanted to get to know some key people in the colony and ask their advice. He was new to the colony and didn’t know a thing about how it ran. He knew the war was getting close to Hong Kong but he didn’t want it to get out and alarm the general public, the nincompoop. So, at this meeting…” Regina sits back. “Do I have your attention now?

Will looks at her, exasperated and compelled at the same time. “ Regina.”

Satisfied, she leans over again. “At this meeting it was discussed, among other things, what was to happen to the Crown art collection at the governor’s mansion, which, as you might know, contains some priceless pieces, mostly Chinese antiquities that are sensitive because the Chinese think they were stolen, ancient texts and vases and things like that that were excavated. Reggie said they were centuries old, some of them. It was decided that the collection would be hidden away and the location would be divulged to three people in three very different situations so that no matter what happened, at least one would… survive.”

Despite himself, Will is listening, intrigued.

“And, of course, Reggie was one of the three.” Regina permits herself a smile of congratulations. “And he told me about it. But he hasn’t told me where. Or who the others were.” Her smile disappears. “He’s always been irritatingly honorable about that sort of stuff. He values country over anything, something bred into him by his family. I really think he would give me up if it came to that. Maybe even the children. I suppose he was a good choice, then.”

She gets up off the bed and shuffles toward the door.

“I don’t have any proper shoes here, and no one has been able to procure any for me. Do you know anyone? All I have are these terrible slippers that look like they belong in a fish market.”

“ Regina, why did you tell me this? ”

She smiles coyly. It is a grotesque thing.

“I have a feeling, Will. I know things are going on outside, and I know that many secrets and plots are in motion. I just wanted you to know.” She reaches over and clasps his hand in hers. They are dry and reptilian. “Consider it a gift from me.”

Trudy turns up the next week in a well-tailored suit and a hat, carrying the most enormous package will has ever seen.

“The outside is so queer,” she says, pulling off her gloves and sitting down. “There is the oddest society of people you’ve ever seen, a motley crew if I ever saw one. All the Russians who we loathed before are everywhere, and they are even more unbearable. They think they’re somebody now that everybody is gone. They’re worse than the Swiss with their self-righteousness. I was at a dinner with the doctor-you know Dr. Selwyn-Clarke, he’s the official medical adviser to the new Japanese governor who’s arrived, Isogai-and Sir Vandeleur Grayburn, who’s still delicious as ever, although terribly down about everything that’s going on, and this Russian girl, I don’t know if you remember her but her name was Tatiana, always out and about town before, but out in that bad way, drinking a little too much, a little too forward, you know, and she just said the rudest thing to him, the doctor, and she is married now to a Chinese man who is in bed with the Kempeitei and so now she’s bulletproof, or so she thinks… Of course she didn’t bring him to dinner. I think she just married him as an insurance policy. I’m going to shoot her myself when this is all over.”

“Where was the dinner?”

“At the Selwyn-Clarkes’, but you know they have to do it so hush-hush. He had to pretend it was a planning meeting, for supplies and things, which it partly was, but they had guards outside, listening, so it was hardly a casual event. And do you know who’s dead? Crumley, the American who was always at the Grill? I remember the day he came in and told us how he had opened his mouth while he was at a picnic in Shek O and a butterfly flew in and he swallowed it, and now he’s dead. Swallowed butterfly or not. That’s what I think about sometimes, you know.” She speeds up, talking about this and that, nonsense about people.

“Otsubo adores me now and gives me anything I ask for. Look at all I was able to bring you! Ham and coffee, sugar and powdered milk. I’ve unearthed more of that strawberry jam that seems to be everywhere. Honey, even. You do have cause to be jealous now, darling.” But she looks worse than ever, gaunt, with cracked, dry lips and hair scraped back into an untidy bun. Her blouse is very large on her, the collar gaping up behind her neck, as if she’s sinking into it.

“I’ve been trying to think what kind of man he is, and I think I’ve got it. He’s the kind of person who, when you say something, and he doesn’t understand, he will ask you to repeat it, and then again and again, until he understands, whereas most people would politely pretend to get it after the second or third explanation. He’s unrelenting and has no interest in social graces. I suppose that’s why he’s done so well for himself in his career-meticulous and all that.”

“Are you eating? You look like you’re eating nothing.”

“I took Otsubo to Macau and fed him those “beans,” you know, the baby mice that the uninitiated think are beans? He loved them. And they say the Chinese will eat anything.”

“I don’t care about that… you look like death warmed over.” He grabs her hand. “I don’t care if he’s mad about you and you have to do things you don’t want to do… I just want you to be all right.”

She laughs abruptly.

“And how do you know I don’t want to do them?” she asks. “What if I’m a willing participant?”

She thrusts a package toward him. “Here,” she says. “More food.”

“Come into the camp,” he says. “I’ll take care of you.”

“Will, darling.” She cups his face in her hands. “It’s too late. I like it on the outside. I’ve finally got a foothold on the situation, however tenuous.”

The door opens and Edwina Storch comes in with a large package.

“Hullo,” Trudy says. “Are you here to see Mary?”

“Yes,” says Edwina. “Hello, Will. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine, thank you. Mary is as well as can be expected in here. Her good spirits and courage are a boon to the community.”

“Yes, she’s very good,” Edwina says. “What a horrid situation.” She takes in Trudy’s package with a discerning eye. “You’ve gotten a large ration of the jam, Trudy. And coffee! You must know someone very important indeed.”

Mary Winkle enters and the two women embrace, one large, one small. They go into another room.

Trudy looks at the closing door.

“I see her around all the time now,” she says. “She’s quite in evidence in the postwar world.” She pauses. “But I think I like her.”

Will takes her hand. She looks so lost.

“Do you know my best quality? ” she asks.

“Of your many, I could not say, my darling.”

“I see the best in people. I fall in love with people when I see a window into their beings, their shining moments. I’ve fallen in love with so many people but the trouble is I fall out of love so quickly too. I see the worst in them just as easily.

“Do you know I fell in love with you right away? That day at the Trotters’ I had noted you because you were new, of course, and then you sat down at the piano, and you played a few notes, but you played them so well, with no self-consciousness, and no idea that anyone might be listening. It was in that room off the garden and you were the only one there. I was passing through on the way to the ladies’ room and saw you there. I fell in love with you right then, and so I spilled my drink all over myself so I could meet you.”

“Darling Trudy,” he says.

She stands up.

“I can’t bear it,” she says in a rush. “I just can’t.” And then she turns around and leaves. “Eat what I’ve brought you,” she calls out behind her as the door swings shut behind her with a clang. “You need to be strong.” Her voice fades as she walks away.

“Johnnie, I have to get out of here.”

He says it that night, after they have gone to bed, and he can hear his companion’s breath just deepening into sleep. It stops, then starts again.

“You do? ”

“Yes. I’m losing her.”

“I see.”

“Will you help me?”

“Of course.”

But he didn’t need to ask. Of course, Trudy had another way.

“I’ve gotten you a week’s furlough. Otsubo got me a pass that says you’re to do some work for him. Isn’t that wonderful? ”

“What kind of work am I to do?”

She looks at him as if he’s completely missed the point.

“No idea. Some kind of clerical work which you and only you, the inimitable Will Truesdale, are qualified to do. Proper accounting. Plant watering. Japanese flattering. Does it matter? You get to get out of here! Aren’t you thrilled? That’s gratitude for you!”

“What do I have to do? ”

“Are you a complete moron? Nothing!” she cries. “Absolutely nothing. I thought it would be nice for you to get out and see what’s going on outside. No one else has this kind of opportunity, you know.”

“Well, thank you,” he says. “I do appreciate it.”

“You’ll get to see what life outside is like, what my life has become.”

“Perhaps you’ll do an exchange,” he says. “Come in here for a fortnight.”

“Peut-être,” she says. She always reverts to French when she wants to change the subject.

So the next Monday, Will is waiting by the sentry’s bungalow. He has been treated rather well for the past week. Ohta came to see him with a copy of the furlough order, trying to fish some information from him.

“Otsubo has sent for you,” he had said.

“Yes,” Will nodded.

“He is head of gendarmerie.”

“Yes.”

“You have important skill? ”

“Yes.”

Ohta stood for a moment, trying to see if Will would give him anything. When he didn’t, he threw the order on the floor and said he should wait by the gate on Monday. But then Will noticed that all the guards were more polite and that he was not subject to taunts and searches anymore.

Trudy pulls up in a convertible and insists on driving although she is alarmingly bad, screeching the gears and turning far too wide. “What happens when you have a driver all your life,” she says with a shrug when Will finally demands she pull over so he can take the wheel.

“You look well,” he says, glancing over. She’s in a spring dress, now that the weather has gotten warmer, and a wide-brimmed yellow straw hat.

“I found my old tailor, and he whipped up a few things for me. He desperately needs the work and I have events I’m supposed to look nice for.”

He doesn’t ask.

She takes him to the Peninsula.

“It’s the Toa now, remember,” she says.

Trudy is greeted with smiles and bows as she sweeps through the formerly grand lobby, which is now filled with soldiers, steel tables, and other grim army-issue furniture.

“Otsubo has a suite of rooms here so Dommie and I stay in them. He’s requisitioned a place up on Barker Road for himself. It’s better here than the rat hole we have outside. We’re lucky. You wouldn’t believe how people are living outside, two or three families in a flat. Rather appalling, but I suppose it’s wartime. My old place has been requisitioned for some midlevel soldier. Insulting, isn’t it? I thought it was quite nice, myself.”

“How’s your father? ”

“Fine,” she says abruptly. “He’s fine.”

“What are you doing for funds?” Now that he is outside, he is thinking of matters he has not had to worry about in weeks.

“We’re allowed to withdraw a little money every week, but it’s touchy. Not large amounts, obviously, but nonetheless it’s odd for them to know you have accounts that you’re drawing against. You don’t want to make them wonder too much. Everything’s fluid, in a bad way. There are no rules, and even if there were, they could be changed at any moment.”

“Do you have to look out for yourself? Isn’t Otsubo the magic trump card?”

Trudy considers. Her mouth draws into a bow. Will resists the urge to kiss her small, self-preserving face.

“Mmmmm… I wouldn’t say a trump card because he’s rather mercurial. He does favors and then regrets them. He gives and wants to take away. And he has to be persuaded rather strongly not to. Not a generous man. Powerful men usually aren’t. Here we are.” She opens a door into a room that is a veritable palace compared with his quarters back at Stanley. A suite with large windows overlooking the blue sea dotted with boats, plush carpet, thick silk draperies, and fans that swing lazily around and around.

“Welcome to the Pen!” Trudy curtsies.

“Look at this,” he says, sitting on the bed. “A bed made up with actual linens! Curtains to draw against the sun! And I wager there’s even toilet paper in the bathroom.”

“You would be right. And now, do you want to thank me, you ingrate? It’s been complaint and suspicion ever since I cooked this up. Thank me.”

The reunion is sweet, the late afternoon sun slanting through the window, the flat horizon of the sea and the boats floating in the harbor, and Trudy, right here, right next to him. He has thought of her for so long, missed the feel of her skin and the smell of her breath, that he moves as if he’s in a dream. She is quiet, more than usual, and seems skittish. They are both too sapped, too thirsty, to ever be quenched by something as mundane as the physical.

“Tell me the truth,” she says, sitting up afterward, clutching the sheet, “is there a hussy you have in Stanley? Some American vixen who’s stolen your heart? Surely you can’t have been celibate all this time, someone as voracious as you. What else do you have to amuse you in that dreary camp?”

“I’m only voracious around you, you know.” He doesn’t ask her the same question, feels any answer would be unbearable. If he can keep some small part of her for himself, it might be all right. “Don’t mind about those things, and I won’t either.” He extends this olive branch so that their time together might be enjoyed.

She relaxes and curls into him.

“It’s been horrible,” Trudy says. “The Japanese are rounding up Chinese who are sympathetic, shall we say, or pretend that they are, for business purposes, and holding these absurd dinners where their policies are toasted with champagne and they’re lionized as if they’ve made enormous contributions to society. All quite surreal. Victor Chen is hot and heavy with the Japanese, of course, and trying to do business with them every which way. I’m worried about Dommie. Victor is just using him.

“We went to one of these dinners, and an old family friend of ours, David Ho, stood up and offered a toast to Pan-Asian superiority. Now, mind you, he was married to an Australian woman, and devoted to her, but she died a few years back, and he remarried, lucky for him, to a Chinese. He’s such a coward. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. He has children in school in Australia. Don’t know how he’ll be able to look them in the eye now. They are the funniest dinners. They have them in the ballroom of the Gloucester and try to make them fancy but they are just the worst functions you’ve ever seen. Propaganda films, bad alcohol, and hypocrites. Nothing worse.”

“So why do you go to these things?”

She gets out of bed, her body a long rebuke.

“I had forgotten what it was like to have my conscience with me always. Sometimes, Will, you have to do things you don’t want to. We can’t all live in perfect harmony with our integrity.”

He hears her turn on the water. She has always loved baths and used to spend so much time in them she would emerge with her glossy skin pruny and her face glowing with the absorbed heat.

“How’s the water here?” he calls out, by way of apology. Their time is too short to be beset by old complaints.

“Not bad, as these things go. Nothing worse than a lukewarm bath, don’t you think? Do you want to join me?”

She pours in Badedas, bubbling the water hot and steamy. The green, limy smell rises in the heat. Together, they slip and slide, washing each other while careful not to prod too deeply, keeping everything on the surface, their mood as fragile as the bubbles in the bath.

Outside is strange-an odd approximation of free society. Pinched faces, suspicious shoulders, everyone trying to blend in and look inconspicuous. The opposite of normal-Americans speaking softly, British acting humble, Chinese acting shy. Everything is hushed, except for Trudy and Dominick, who’s joining them for lunch. He meets them in the lobby of the hotel and kisses Trudy on both cheeks and nods slightly to Will.

“Hello, darling,” he says to Trudy, handing her a large envelope filled with papers. “This is from Victor. He sends his love.” Trudy blanches.

“Love, is it? ”

As they leave the hotel, Trudy and Dominick walk down the street as if they own it, laughing loudly and wearing flamboyant, obviously expensive clothes.

“If you act as if you’re bulletproof, most people will assume you are, darling,” Trudy assures Will. “Believe me, I’ve tested this theory extensively.” She pulls out a worn blue booklet covered in stamps. “And this helps enormously, of course. It’s from Otsubo and it tells whatever foot soldier stops me that he better treat me with kid gloves or there’ll be hell to pay. Usually, when they see his stamp, they sort of freeze, then shove it back toward me as if it’s on fire, and they bow and scrape to an embarrassing extent. I’m quite addicted to it.”

“And Dommie?”

“He has one with his patron’s stamp. All the best people have one, you know.” Her laughter is brittle.

“And what does Otsubo think of you springing me from the camp? Does he know? ”

“Well, he arranged it for me. I don’t think he’s the jealous type, to be honest. I don’t think you will be spending much time together. Do you want Cantonese food? I’m in the mood for noodles, actually.”

“Chinese?”

“Yes, the other food is unbearable these days since there’s no one proper to cook it.”

“Have you ever missed a meal?”

“Darling, if you miss a meal, the light quite goes out of the day. All Chinese know that. I wouldn’t unless things were absolutely desperate. Dommie knows this little place where they serve the most amazing rice noodles with broth they steep all day long. Of course, it’s better at two in the morning since it’s been cooking all day, but nowadays you’re viewed suspiciously if you’re out late without one of our great leaders.”

“How is the Grill? Still operating?”

“Oh, we still go. It’s pretty jolly, actually. And not all Japanese. There are groups of Americans and British on the outside, and it’s not done to ask why, and the Japanese don’t seem to bother them, and all sorts of other people, you know, Swiss Red Cross, the occasional German. I tell you, Hong Kong right now is the most interesting mix of people. The war just shook out all the people and what remained behind in the sieve is diverse, should we say. There’s this woman, Jinx Beckett, who’s an American, and I can’t quite figure out what her story is and why she’s not in Stanley with you as I’m sure she’s not an important banker or government official. I’m sure you’ll meet her. She is absolutely everywhere, and poky too, nosing around in all sorts of things. And there are still parties. We still go to the Gripps for dancing but they’ll stop the music every once in a while and project these hilarious propaganda films onto the ballroom walls. It’s all about Pan-Asiatic superiority, don’t you know? They don’t seem to understand that they’re screening for a bunch of non-Asiatics. Screaming irony.”

Will sees a newsstand, for him a startling sight.

“I’d love a newspaper. How is the English broadsheet these days?”

“Run by a Swede under the careful watch of the Japanese,” says Dominick. “Result as you would expect. Piffle. I expect you’d like one.”

“I would,” Will says and takes the Standard and the News. Trudy pays.

“It is propaganda,” whispers Trudy. “They print whatever they’re told to.”

“Subtlety, my darling,” Dominick says, shushing her. Suddenly he relaxes and turns to Will. “So, how is it being on the outside?” They have exchanged only the barest of civil greetings. “And is it as atrocious on the inside as they say? Of course, the paper claims that you are being treated as if you were honored guests at the Ritz.”

“Certainly not ideal. But it seems rather fraught out here as well. Everyone tiptoeing around.”

“Is it true that Asbury is in there, doing his own wash like a common rickshaw boy?” A famously haughty banker, whom Will has indeed seen poking around in the dirt, trying to establish a garden, and hanging up his undershirts to dry, as his wife is abed most days.

“He is, but he’s holding his own. Surprising, the dignity that still holds in any circumstance.”

“Yes, we’re not our own men anymore, are we? ” Dominick looks around. “But some are more so than others.”

Will says nothing.

“It’s better to be a free person, though, isn’t it? ” asks Trudy. “We have to mind our manners out here but there’s no one telling us what to do or when to eat. Services are all getting back. Food prices were going up and down but they seem to have stabilized. We can withdraw small amounts of money. Public transport is working, as is the mail, in a way, and people are starting to settle, although it’s still a hard life. You do still run across the occasional corpse in the street, which is unpleasant. And the Japanese do work the coolies quite hard, harder than any Chinese I’ve seen, and they are having a hard time of it. They’re sending them back to China in droves as well. I think they aim to reduce the population by half.”

“Nothing is easy these days, is it? ” Dominick says. “Aaah, here’s the noodle shop.”

After lunch, Dominick goes to work, “such as it is,” he remarks, languid as always, and Trudy and Will go shopping. Trudy frequents the markets in search of treasures.

“I’ve seen things that I recognize from friends’ houses!”she says, rifling through a table of pilfered goods. “The ormolu clock from the Hos’, and that extraordinary dagger that was hanging above the mantel at the Chens’. I wanted to buy them but didn’t have enough money. Those,” her voice drops, “filthy rats just took away everything they could carry, and then the locals came after, and picked every house clean. Enough to make you weep, seeing those ships set out for Japan filled to the brim with all the lovely things our friends had collected. Cars and furniture and jewelry! Many a soldier’s wife is playing tea party with someone else’s Wedgwood these days.”

“Is there food we can buy so I could bring it back to camp?”

“Depends on the day and what they’ve been able to find. Sometimes there’s powdered milk, sometimes there’s crates of mustard. We’ll see.” She pauses. “It’s sort of freeing, this paring down to the necessities. It seems so frivolous to have thought about dresses and picnics.”

“You and Dominick seem to have your meals and lodging pretty well figured out.” He says this striving for a tone without judgment.

“Yes, we do,” she replies carelessly. “But it could all be taken away tomorrow so we must enjoy it while we can, no?”

She cuts down Pottinger Street and into a small alley.

“There’s a small shop here where you can get some amazing things.”

“What’s in demand?”

“Food, mostly. Some people have started speculating in gold and such. We’ll go to the market after this.”

A bell jingles as Trudy pushes open the door. Inside, it is dark and pungent with the smell of teakwood and the waxy oil used to polish it. A curio shop, with scratched, smudgy glass counters filled with Oriental peculiarities. Trudy speaks in Cantonese to the woman behind the counter, who scurries to the back, cloth slippers swishing on the floor.

“What are we looking for here? ”

“Oh, I’m just doing an errand for my master. You know.”

“How mysterious,” he says.

The woman comes back with a man, small, with a bent back, dressed in black silk. He seems irritated. Trudy speaks rapidly again, her small hands outlining a large rectangle in the air. The man shrugs and shakes his head. Trudy’s voice turns shrill. She ends with a sharp outburst and turns to leave.

Outside, the sun is shining, an abrupt change from the dark gloom of the shop.

“So, food?” he asks. She will tell him when she’s ready.

“Yes, food,” she says, taking his arm, an implicit gesture of thanks. “Sometimes, I think you could be Chinese too.”

The wet market seems the same as ever-wizened old ladies with wide-brimmed coolie hats, dressed in black smocks, bent over their wares, calling out to potential customers. Here, a basket of greens; there, soybean curds resting in a container of milky water, with yellow sprouts. He remembers the smell, the green, slightly brackish scent of dirt and water still clinging to the vegetables. He used to come with Trudy on weekends, her mother having told her that she was never to become too grand to go to the market for her own food. “At least, every once in a while,” she says. “Not all the time, of course. And you won’t catch anyone we know here. But I don’t mind. It’s kind of elemental, isn’t it? Deciding which exact onion you want, or what fish you’re going to eat and have them clean it for you.”

“How is it that there isn’t a shortage? ” he asks, as she bends over to inspect some radishes.

“There is, but these are available for exorbitant prices. All the peasants from the outlying territories make the trip into town now because they know they’ll get five or six times what they could get out there, so it’s all concentrated here. They come out with ten watermelons or a bag of watercress. It’s good for the soul to see how basic life can be. Grow something on the land, dig it up, sell it for some money, buy something you need.”

Afterward, when they have procured some tinned foods, vegetables, and cigarettes for Will to take back to Stanley, Trudy takes him for a drive around the Peak, to see all the bombed-out houses and ruined roads. Every wall is crumbling, bricks falling to the road.

“Can you believe what all the bombs did? They’re starting to rebuild, though. They have the slave labor or Volunteer Corps from China, as they call it, and they’re patching up the roads and trying to salvage the homes. Some have been taken over by Japanese military, and they look quite nice.”

They pass a house where some dozen coolies are painting the exterior white.

“The king of Thailand has an elephant that they trained to paint.”

“That is one of your outlandish stories.”

“No, I’m serious. Father said he saw it himself.”

“They had the elephant paint the palace? ”

“Certainly not! I’m sure he just painted the rough outbuildings and barns and things like that.”

“Of course, darling.” They’ve stopped at an overlook where tourists used to come to look over Hong Kong harbor.

“Should we get out? ”

There is a wobbly iron fence, pebbles and dirt underneath, wind with the metallic smell of lingering winter. She leans into him, hair blowing wild, as they look out onto the green sea, the white, stocky buildings crowding the shore and the harbor.

“It looks so peaceful now, doesn’t it? ” Trudy says musingly. “The water in Hong Kong is a different color from anywhere else in the world-kind of a bottle green. I think it’s the mountains reflected in it.” She pauses. “It was quite red with blood just these few months ago. There are boats and bodies on the bottom of the sea, thick on it, I’m sure. It was shocking how quickly things looked normal again, how nature swallows up the aberrations.”

“What happened to Angeline’s house?”

“She’s managed to hang on to it, although I don’t know why she doesn’t come into town. This place is filled with Japanese army officials who have taken over the houses and I don’t see how it’s safe for her here. We have lunch every once in a while, Dominick, Angeline, and I. Try to pretend things are normal.”

“She’s all right, though? ”

“Not really. None of us are.”

They return to the hotel, where Trudy starts to pack his newly accumulated things into his suitcase.

“You’ll be popular when you get back.”

“We have to figure out a way to get supplies into the camps. The children need vitamins and protein.”

The phone rings.

“Victor,” says Trudy when she picks it up. Her voice is even.

“Yes, I did get it. Dommie gave it to me.” She pauses. “I know. I’m trying.” Another pause. “I’ll be in touch when I can, but please don’t call me about this again.” She hangs up the phone with a bang.

“Everything all right? ” Will asks.

“Watch me be frugal, Will,” Trudy says instead, ignoring his question. She starts to brew coffee on a small cooking plate. “This is my third go-around with these grounds. Have you ever seen anything so industrious? Aren’t you proud of me?”

They sip the hot, bitter drink without milk or sugar.

“Oh, I forgot. There’s something I wanted you to see.” She goes to the bedside table and pulls out a folded-up newspaper.

“This editorial was in that ridiculous paper on Valentine’s Day. Dommie wants me to frame it.” She reads, “ ‘The Eurasian is a problem in all British colonies. The term is applied loosely to the offspring of all mixed marriages and to their children, et cetera, et cetera. That Britain and some other of the Occidental powers chose to victimize the Eurasian rather than accept him and make use of his qualities is astonishing to students of the question. The Eurasian could be of great help to these powers, contributing valuable liaison between the ruling nation and the native population.’ ” She looks up. “Want to hear more? ”

“Can I see that?” She gives it to him. He scans it. A column of coarse intelligence.

“The funny thing is, I was talking about being Eurasian to Otsubo about a week before it came out.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Isn’t that interesting? I was telling him how when I was young, the other children would laugh and point at me, and on the streets, some Europeans would take my photograph as if I were some animal at the zoo.”

“It must have been difficult, but those people are just ignorant.”

“Turn the page,” she orders, gesturing to the paper.

“More of your influence? ”

“No, just another example of the absurdities we are subjected to every day. Do you see that piece about the houseflies, there? Where if you catch two taels of houseflies, you are entitled to a catty of rice if you bring it to a district bureau. And I’ve seen people carrying around these bundles of flies. It’s beyond. The Japanese are even more bizarre than the English. I’ve never imagined such a thing.”

Suddenly, she turns to him.

“Did you know I was eight when my mother disappeared? And eight is supposed to be such a lucky number for the Chinese. I’ve always wondered if it was because I was only half Chinese. And half of eight is four, which is a terrible number. You know, it means death.”

“What do you remember of her?”

“Bits and pieces. She didn’t go out much, because she didn’t fit in. She wasn’t English, so the English wouldn’t have anything to do with her, and the Chinese taitais certainly didn’t like her. And she wasn’t strong enough or confident enough to do anything about it. So she had very few friends and she was at home a lot, dressed beautifully with nothing to do but gossip with the servants. I suspect even they looked down on her. My father loved her, married her despite family disapproval, but he was so busy he didn’t have much time for her. She took me to the botanical gardens every once in a while, and to tea at the Gloucester. She wore gloves and a pillbox hat, and the straight skirts. She wanted me to be dressed properly as well. She was very beautiful. But I think she was sad.”

“You’ve never talked about her before.”

“I don’t remember that much.” She pauses. “I remember she told me about her childhood. She was very poor. She was funny about it too. She refused to eat soup, because to her that meant poverty. She had grown up in a house where they threw whatever little they had into a pot of water, sprinkled it liberally with salt, and called it a meal. She didn’t want me to grow up oblivious to our good fortune, but at the same time, I think she liked how the rich felt bulletproof-not her, obviously, but I think she liked that I might feel that way, but worried at the same time that it wouldn’t last. And she was right, wasn’t she? I’m not bulletproof. I’ve come a long way in the world, but the world has changed and I’m not sure anymore of what I am or what I can do.”

After love, they lie on the bed. She shifts away, suddenly shy, and stares at the ceiling. Words burst forth from her, as if unbidden, a confessional fountain she cannot stopper.

“I’ve always known, my love, that I was a chameleon. I was a terrible daughter because my father let me be one. He didn’t know what else to do with me, feeling so guilty I didn’t have a mother. And I was a good daughter when my mother was around. Because she couldn’t imagine anything else. And then when I was older, I was a different person every year, depending on who I was with. If I was with a scoundrel, then I became the type of woman that would be with a scoundrel. If I was with an artist, then I became a muse. And when I was with you, I was, for the first time, I’m sure people have told you, a decent human being. All Hong Kong wondered why someone like you would bother with someone like me. You know that, don’t you?”

She props herself up on an elbow, bronze hair falling across her shoulders.

“But now circumstances have changed, and I have reverted back to form and become a woman who is with somebody because it suits her situation and for no other reason than that simple and venal one. I’m no different from that Russian girl Tatiana, the one I pretend to despise. We’re more sisters than anything else. We recognize each other. I’m sure no one is surprised. Do you understand?”

“Melodrama,” he says. “You’re being absurd.” She is quiet, one hand nervously pulling her hair back from her face, the other fluttering around her mouth.

“Don’t ever say I didn’t tell you. I told you. You must know that I told you.”

The phone rings in the room.

Trudy picks it up and her mouth draws into a tense line.

“Yes, of course. Of course. I’ll see to it.”

She hangs up and turns to him, face unreadable.

“As it turns out, Otsubo is interested in meeting you. Intéressant, non?”

“Is it?”

“I don’t know what his intentions are. But we have to do what we’re told, don’t we? You don’t mind? It’s not as if we have much choice in the matter. Dommie will be there too.”

So that evening, after another silent, hot, soaking bath and having got dressed in silence-Trudy had brought some of Will’s old clothes and they had laughed to see how they hung loose on him, one spot of forced gaiety in a tense afternoon-they are seated in a small room of a restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui, contemplating nuts in a small porcelain dish embellished with red dragons, as Trudy quaffs champagne at a rapid clip. Will lights a cigarette.

“This place any good?”

“Not much to look at but currently the best seafood in town.” They had seen the tin buckets in front upon arriving, large, lazy fish swimming inside, oblivious to their fate.

“He likes Chinese food?”

“Seems to be acquiring a taste.” Her nails clatter on the table as she drums her fingers. “Dommie is late, the fool. Why does he do this all the time?”

“You eat with Dominick often?”

“Every night.”

“Why are there so many seats? Who else is coming?”

“They travel in packs, darling. He wouldn’t dream of being seen without his entire coterie of yes-men and sycophants.”

“And he is, of course, late.”

Just then, the door opens and a string of men is ushered in. It is immediately clear who Otsubo is as the others wait inside the room until he has entered, and wait for him to choose his seat.

“Otsubo-san,” Trudy says gaily, standing up. “You’re late as always.” She looks lovely tonight, dressed in a sleek tomato-red silk tunic dress, her hair swept back into a chignon.

Time to sing for supper. Will stands up.

“Very nice to meet you. I’m Will Truesdale.”

“Otsubo,” the man says gruffly, and gestures that they are all to sit. “Mr. Chan not here?”

“He’ll be here soon. It’s a difficult time to get around.” Trudy sits between Otsubo and Will.

The man is stocky and short, in a finely cut suit of tropical-weight wool. His hair is cut close, military-style, a centimeter long so the oily surface of his scalp shines through. His eyes, porcine and bulbous, sunken in a puffy, smooth face. In short, an unattractive man. Next to him, Trudy looks like a gaudy, gorgeous flamingo.

His men sit down at the table, anonymous in their multitude. They talk among themselves, but quietly, so that Otsubo needn’t talk above them. He orders Cognac.

“Otsubo’s acquiring Chinese tastes,” Trudy says. “He loves XO now.”

“Some things Chinese are good,” Otsubo says. “At least they are Asiatic.”

There is a silence.

“What should we eat?” Trudy asks into the void. “Abalone? Shark’s fin? Would you like me to do the honors?”

Otsubo nods and she orders rapidly in Cantonese. She speaks everything well-Cantonese, Shanghainese, Mandarin, French, English. Some of the men look at her as she is ordering, their faces unreadable. She must be a complete mystery to them, probably straight from the countrysides of Japan, pressed into service for their country to come to this place, where the language and customs are different, where a woman like Trudy flits around like a flamboyant butterfly. They drink beer straight from the bottles, and smoke without ceasing. They are not offered Cognac.

Dominick enters hastily.

“Otsubo-san.” He bows. “So sorry to be impolite. Urgent matters held my attention.” Will has never seen Dominick in this ruffled state.

“You are late again,” Otsubo says. “Bad manner for business and society too.”

“I know, I know. My masters at Harrow were always on me for tardiness.”

Trudy will tell him later, the Japanese love that Dominick was at the best schools in England, they want to know all the details, and that Dominick indulges them at every chance. “They hate it but they love it too. Isn’t that always the case?”

He presents a box to Otsubo. “A gesture of my appreciation for everything you’ve done for me, and for Hong Kong.”

Otsubo grunts thanks but does not receive the box. Dominick, so obviously unused to gruffness, takes a step back, recovers, and slides smoothly into a chair.

“Maybe later, then,” he says to Will, a collusive greeting that implies they are made of finer stuff than this Japanese man.

Will turns away, unwilling to be allies with Dominick, unwilling to be as stupid as he. Trudy pours more tea.

“Mr. Truesdale,” says Otsubo in English. Then he speaks through his translator.

“How are you finding the camps?” The translator is a young, slender man with spectacles. His accent is almost unnoticeable.

Will hesitates. How honest to be? “It’s livable but, unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the camp officers, there are often shortages of food and medicines and, as there are also women and children in the camp, we feel this need acutely.”

Otsubo listens and nods. He replies, “That is a shame. We will look into the matter.” The translator looks nervous.

The first dish is served. Chinese-style, it is a cold jellyfish appetizer. Will has learned from Trudy that a proper Chinese meal unfolds in a certain way. First, a cold appetizer like pig’s feet over jellyfish vermicelli; then a warm one, perhaps sesame-crusted shrimp, a shark’s fin or winter melon soup; a signature dish such as Peking duck, a meat-sweet-and-sour pork or braised beef with choi sam, a fish, a vegetable, finishing always with noodles or fried rice, depending on the region. Chinese don’t take to heavy desserts-enjoying a cold coconut-milk dish or, if especially peckish, apple dumplings fried in hot oil and then immediately crisped in ice water.

Otsubo takes the first portion, then spins the lazy Susan around to his men. Trudy pretends not to notice the slight. She serves Will and Dominick before taking her share, a minute serving of amber tentacles covered in mustard sauce.

After chewing laboriously, Otsubo speaks again.

“There are many illustrious people in the camps, are there not? Leaders of society and business?”

“I suppose there are. But we’re all reduced to the same circumstances now, really. Nobody has more than anyone else.”

“It must be curious for them to be in such a place. Quite difficult to come down so much in life.”

“I imagine it is.”

Trudy has been uncharacteristically quiet.

“Like poor Hugh,” she interjects finally. “I can’t believe that lovely man has to wash his own socks. I don’t think he’d ever made himself a ham sandwich before this.”

They eat the jellyfish. It is cold and rubbery.

Otsubo speaks again.

“And there is a man named Reggie Arbogast?” asks the translator. “A businessman? With ties to government?”

“Yes, Reggie is one of the interned.”

Otsubo looks at Will thoughtfully.

“Is he a friend of yours?” he asks through the translator.

“Friend is too strong a word. We are acquaintances but our mutual experience has made us more intimate, no doubt about it.”

“Have more drink.” The translator fills Will’s glass with whiskey.

“Thank you.” He raises his glass to Otsubo.

“Whiskey good.” The man speaks for himself, pronouncing whiskey “whysky.”

“Yes, very good.”

“Drink. Tonight you are free.”

“Not so bad.” Will holds the door open for Trudy. The evening air is crisp and clean after the smoky, warm room.

“Yes,” Trudy says. She seems happy, relieved the evening is over and her pass has not been revoked. “Better than expected.”

“He’s an interesting…”

A car stops in front of them, and a window rolls down. A pudgy hand emerges and waves Trudy in. She looks sick, then gives him a quick kiss and climbs into the car.

“I’ll see you later, darling,” she says. “Don’t wait up.”

Early in the morning, around three a.m., while he is sleeping restlessly, the door opens quietly and Trudy stealthily pads her way to the powder room. He turns on the bedside light, listens to the water running, and waits for her to come out from her ablutions. When she slides into bed, he sees the enormous yellow bruise starting to form around her left eye. Something about her demeanor warns him not to fuss.

“That’s quite a shiner you have there,” he says.

“He’s surprising, that one,” she says, and reaches to turn off the lamp, plunging them into gray, a wakeful twilight where they listen to each other’s breath.

After a few long minutes, just when he is about to drift into sleep despite himself, seduced by the utter luxury of the soft bedding and the now unfamiliar warmth of another, she murmurs, “You know, when I said surprising, I meant a surprising lover. You knew that, right? He’s not a bad man. Really.” At that moment, lying there with the moonlight glinting off her shiny hair and smooth, glossy skin, he thinks she looks like a scorpion.

He cannot let it go. He sits up. She looks at him, quizzical.

“Trudy.” He stops, to think how to say this. “I need you to know there is a limit.” He raises her chin toward him. “There is a limit to how sophisticated I can be.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not the person you want me to be. Not right now.”

“I should be careful. I should take care.” She says it penitently. “I’m sorry, darling. I’m drunk. Don’t let’s quarrel.”

“Yes.”

She sits up and turns on the light.

“Sleep is not something I can do right now. Should we talk? Should we try to become who we were before all this happened, just for a moment?”

“That’s impossible.” He brings her to him, her head nestled in his shoulder. She smells of cigarettes and liquor. He tells her so.

“I smell like a whore.” She moves closer to him. “I told you Frederick died but I didn’t tell you how.”

“No,” he agrees. “You didn’t.”

“Well, he was able to get back to Hong Kong. His whole regiment had been slaughtered, and since he was the head, or whatever his title was, they allowed him his life and let him walk back, escorted. They let him come back, but they made him carry…” Her voice falters. “They made him collect the ears of all of his fellow soldiers, and he had to put them in a little bag and carry it. They said his hands were soaked in blood and the bag was drenched. And the smell… I keep thinking about it, over and over, and how it must have smelled awful and how it must have been slippery and how he must have been so tired…

“And then, the hunger and the famine right after, before they could reestablish some of the markets. The rumors, the horrible, horrible rumors. Pets disappeared. Even…” A hiccup. “Even babies, they said.”

“Trudy, there’s no end to the misery if you keep thinking about it.”

“And that dinner I told you about, the one where the local swells were trying to get on with the new order, where my family friend who had married an Australian denounced the white races, you remember that one? The one Victor organized?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I didn’t tell you but at that dinner, we were all sitting, all trying to sit in our fancy clothes without feeling too hypocritical, without feeling like we were giving up too much of ourselves and hoping we could still look at ourselves in the mirror at the end of it all, and then at some point in the evening-there had been quite a lot of drinking-Dominick said something stupid. I don’t even remember what he said, but it was silly and clever, you know, like him.”

“I do know,” he says.

“And then the man who had arranged the dinner, Ito, the head of the economic department of the Gunseicho, whose table it was, he just stood up, walked over, and he walked very deliberately, and the crowd sort of hushed because he had this sense of, I don’t know, I suppose you’d call it purpose, and he walked right up to Dommie-we had been seated at one of the best tables, his table-and he stood in front of Dommie and he slapped him across the face. He slapped him really hard.”

She works the sheet through her hands over and over.

“And that sound, you know, it sounded like a gunshot, because everyone had been watching, and it got very quiet, there might have even been a gasp from everybody, I don’t remember, and Dommie sat there, with his cheek getting red, and then he tried to gather himself, he just sort of looked away, and then he picked up his champagne glass, and took a sip. And then the whole room took a collective sigh, and we tried to pick up where things had stopped. And Victor, that bloodless leech, didn’t do a thing about it.

“But it was as if the whole room had been slapped. And Dommie, you know, he tries to be a cool customer, but his hands shook the whole night after. I know you think he’s dreadful and soulless, but you do not know him. You do not know him. I’ve known him all my life and he’s fragile, and can break at any minute, and I want to protect him and save him from himself if that is at all possible. He is my only family out here. We are looking out for each other. He can be a terrible person, but there are reasons for that, you know. Not like Victor, who’s hateful because he only thinks of himself and money. Dommie hates himself, and so he can be awful.” She pauses. “I’ve never told anyone this, but Dominick was never quite right. There was a scandal when he was younger, around twelve, something about him and the maids. He made them… do things, and he did things to them, and they were found out. Someone walked in on them. So his parents were dreadfully embarrassed and they got rid of the maids, young girls from China, paid them off, and sent him to England when he was really too young. They were never really cut out to be parents. I think he was a mistake. And although he had done these terrible things, he was still so young. And he went, and he didn’t speak very good English at the time, and he stuck out with his odd clothes and his funny accent. And then somehow, it got out at the school what he had done, and the older boys… they made him do the same things. They made him… you know. You know what it’s like in those schools. He told me this one night when he was dreadfully drunk. I don’t know that he even remembers telling me. But we’ve always been like brother and sister. So, after that, I don’t think he was ever quite the same. How could you be? And that’s why he hates the English, for the most part, although he is so damn English in so many ways. It’s very complicated. And in the end, I think, we’re all just trying to survive, aren’t we?”

“Sometimes there are things more important than survival.” It sounds self-important but he cannot help himself. He wants to warn her, not for himself but for her own sake. And to defend a horror like Dominick! She was blinded by misguided loyalty.

“Tell that to someone who’s about to go under the guillotine,” she retorts hotly. “Tell that to someone who is about to get shot. I’m sure all they’re thinking about is how to get out of the situation. I’m sure survival is quite important to them at that moment. You might even say, the only thing. You might have the luxury of pondering the dignity of the soul, but… never mind.” She stops. “I can’t explain it to you, or justify to you, or anything, so what’s the point?”

“I’m sorry you feel like you have to justify yourself to me.”

She waves her hands above her slowly, like small satellites.

“This night feels like forever. I feel like Scheherazade trying to prolong the night.”

“Do you think I’m going to kill you come morning?”

“Everything changes when the light comes, doesn’t it?”

Later, he will wonder what exactly she meant.

They go to sleep, or their approximations of it, each careful not to disturb the other.

In the morning, over coffee, she offers her feet to him to be rubbed.

“Everything seems better in the morning, don’t you think?” Her implicit peace offering. She pours cream into her cup and spills some into the saucer. Her hands are shaking a little.

“Mon amour,” she begins.

“Yes?”

“Une question pour toi.”

“Yes?”

“The good general is interested in me for many reasons,” she begins. “One of which is that I’m rather pretty. But, as you know, Hong Kong is filled with pretty women, and so his interest in me has lasted the time it has because he is also very interested in assuring his future while he’s here. An ambitious man, Otsubo. And he thinks I should be able to help him. And being a man of large appetite, he is not content with the occasional wristwatch and woman’s trinket-his sights are set much higher. He’d take land if his government would let him, but it won’t, and he’s getting rather frustrated.” She pauses. “There are those in Tokyo who are particularly interested in the Crown Collection of Hong Kong. It’s supposed to have many priceless Chinese pieces, centuries old, inestimable in their value, politically sensitive, of course. And those have not been found. It’s thought they were secreted away before the war began here. And the Chinese want their heritage back, the Japanese want them for their value, and the English think it all belongs to them. It’s very confusing.

“To make a long story short, Otsubo thinks that a few of the men in Stanley are privy to information that would help him locate these pieces. In particular, he has an idea that Reggie Arbogast knows where it is. I think Otsubo would be handsomely rewarded for locating these items and getting them back to Japan. You know, it’s been a complete madhouse over here with the looting and the ransacking and things turning up in the market places, museum pieces selling for two cents or worthless twaddle being shipped off to the homeland like it’s worth something. No one really knows what’s going on, but he’s determined to find these pieces. He’s had me look through the pawnshops and talk to people, but nothing. So, that is why he furloughed you and wanted to have dinner with you and talk to you.”

“But why would he think I would know anything about it?”

“He’s heard that you are well liked in camp. You’ve been elected head of something or other, haven’t you?”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Do you know anything?”

The abrupt question takes him by surprise.

“Do you wish I did?”

“Does that mean you do?”

He stands up. The parrying is sickening to him.

“Trudy, we’re not at war with each other.”

“No, but we might be at cross-purposes. Will, I need something from you now.”

“Everything I have is yours.” It sounds false, even to him, metallic in his mouth, as he watches her desperate, dissembling face. What does she inspire in him now? Still love? Or pity?

“So, you’ll help us?”

What could he do? She didn’t ask for herself. She asked for them. She was lost already.