China to Me (64 page)

“Only Matsumoto.”

“It could not be Matsumoto. Think hard. Don't you know someone else in Tokyo?”

“No.”

Again he shook his head. It was the first hint I had of what was going on in the world outside on my behalf, but I didn't read it correctly. He misled me. Because he thought this urgent demand to send me away came from his own government I thought so too. I couldn't imagine why it was so. Actually the cabled order must have been the first faint echo of the hell my sister Helen was raising over here with the State Department, but I had no way of knowing that. I was beginning to think I had never had a sister Helen, or any other family. I had been cut off for four months now; it was the end of March. They had been quite full four months, too. Naturally I wasn't taking much stock in my family's power to help me, by this time.

“Well …,” Oda said. We stood up and shook hands all around. “My office is moving to the other side next week,” he said. “I shall be living in Robinson Road. I will come to call on you when I have time. And how” — he dropped his voice in a way which I was beginning to recognize — “how is Boxer?”

I told him as much as I knew.

“I have tried to get permission to see him,” Oda said. “I think I shall be able to see him shortly. Do you wish me to inform him of this decision you have made?”

“Yes, please.”

He remained standing until we had left the office.

We have no telephone in the new house, and no prospect of ever getting one. It was wiser, we discovered, not to have one even if we had been able to pay for it, because all telephone wires were tapped. Ogura therefore sent a message to me through my new pupil, a news agency man:

“Matsumoto will be in town tomorrow. Come to the office if you wish to see him, at three-thirty. He arrives by boat from Canton.”

I was there. I was intensely curious to see Shigei after all this time; I had last encountered him by accident in Hong Kong during the month of early spring that I had come down from Chungking, and our interview then, in the hotel lobby with everyone glaring at us, had been uncomfortable and full of awkward silences.

When he did come in, big and important, surrounded by little Japs like tugs, he was so surprised at seeing me that he stopped short at the door. Then he asked me to go upstairs to Ogura's private offices, and soon he came in, smooth and silent and impassive, wondering, very likely, what the hell he was to say to this embarrassing reminder of his past. For Shigei was a great man now, and full of triumph in his own right, not only as the cousin of Konoye. If he had ever been sincere in his pacifism and in all the criticism of the militarists that he had expressed in Shanghai, it was forgotten now. Perhaps not quite forgotten, or he would not have looked a little foolish, as he did now, when I spoke.

“Well, Shigei,” I said. “Here we are. Fancy meeting you here!”

“I could not believe it,” he said solemnly. “When I last saw you, in the spring of ‘40, I thought I would never see you again. I knew what was going to happen. All this time I assumed you were still in Chungking. I could not believe it, seeing you. What … why … ?”

“You remember Sinmay.” Yes, Shigei did. I told him what I had done. He was slow to grasp it, and very, very much surprised when I was finished. Then I waited for him to say something about the war, but still he talked about mutual acquaintances, and Charles, and other subjects. At last I said: “Well, Shigei?” again, and he capitulated.

“Mickey,” he said, smiling, his whole face suddenly pink, “we are living, just now, in the most interesting period of history. Think of it, Mickey, the most interesting period in the world's history.”

“What happens in the end, Shigei?”

He didn't answer. He sat there smiling, seeing visions. …

“Do you remember,” I said, “a conversation we had once in Shanghai, after Nanking, about the fait accompli? It seems more relevant now than it did then.”

No, Shigei had forgotten. I looked at my watch. It was getting late and he was busy. He was a very important man in the New Order.

“But what is this I hear about your child?” he asked.

“Yes. I have a baby.”

“I inquired for Major Boxer as I got off the boat. I am sorry he was wounded. If I had the time … How does it happen that you have had this child? You did not know Boxer in Shanghai, did you?”

“No. The child? I wanted it and he wanted it, so we had it.”

“You are a nicer girl now than before,” said Shigei. “Tell me, can I do anything for you?”

I looked at him curiously, saying, “I'm all right, thanks.”

“Because,” he said, “as it happens, the new Governor is a very old and good friend of mine.”

“Just ask Ogura to keep a protective eye on me, then, if you would. It ever I am in danger of being interned, perhaps he would appeal to you.”

“I think you will be all right if, as you say, the gendarmes don't mind. … But look, Mickey; I shall be in charge of all my offices from now on. I will travel constantly between Tokyo and Singapore; I shall be able to see you. …”

“Traveling will be interesting for you,” I said. “I must go home. It's dangerous for me to stay downtown after dark.”

He insisted on sending me up the hill in his car, but when we were out of sight of his office I stopped the car and walked home. I didn't know why myself.

In 1943 Ogura told me that Shigei was dying in Tokyo of some mysterious complaint, that his wife would not permit anyone in to see him, and that the end couldn't be far off. Whatever he died of, it was not the pangs of conscience.

Chapter 51

Almost the entire Health Department was still outside of Stanley, in actuality working away under Selwyn's direction, though the Japanese managed to satisfy their own pride by calling the British “advisers” and keeping a few of their own men in the office for show. Colonel Nguchi, the medical officer who had befriended Selwyn, turned out to be a wonderfully lucky accident for us. It seems that he had been one of a party sent by Tokyo, a few years before the war, to Hong Kong on a polite tour of inspection of British methods of hygiene. At that time he had been so much impressed by Selwyn's elaborately formal politeness, in comparison with the usual British offhand manners that he as an Oriental had already encountered, that he made a vow to himself. “Here for once is an Englishman of true courtesy,” he said. All his inferiority complex contributed to the pleasure he felt in Selwyn's attitude. “If ever I have the chance,” he thought, “I will repay him for his politeness.”

It was on his urgent representation to the higher military authorities that Selwyn still retained his position, but that position was always precarious. Selwyn was up against the swollen suspicions of the entire Japanese crowd, the hatred they felt for Englishmen, and the resentment of the gendarmes, who were always jealously watchful of their powers and who felt that Nguchi, a mere medical military man, was trying to put something over on them. The gendarmes were for the most part totally uneducated thugs, whose only aim in life was to get as much for themselves as possible, in the quickest time they could. Nguchi was no Sunday-school teacher, but he did have a vague desire to keep the city healthy. The gendarmes didn't give a damn about the city's health. They hated the city, they hated the Chinese, they hated the British, and they were not fond of the Army and the Navy; they were jealous of their power though they themselves were in the saddle. The Army and Navy, they felt, were a constant threat to their authority. Everything was a threat to their authority.

The only way Nguchi could keep a hand in on this matter of health was to appeal to their common sense on behalf of the Japanese servicemen stationed in town and the Japanese residents of Hong Kong. Cholera among the despised Chinese would mean cholera among the Japs, he reminded them. Grumbling, they admitted this, and Selwyn was suddenly informed that he could now do something which the British Government had never in all his years of pleading permitted — he could inoculate the entire population, by law. Not that he was particularly pleased with this power, for he was not convinced that inoculation against cholera did any good. But the Japanese were superstitiously faithful to Western science, which they love; they love needles and medicine. We were all grabbed and jabbed, sooner or later; in the streets, on the ferry wharves, anywhere. People who could not show little pink cards in proof that they were inoculated were done then and there, even if they had been inoculated a dozen times in the past week. Other treatments followed: vaccination by law, typhoid inoculations by law, and anything else they thought of. Chinese who didn't like it managed to buy fake tickets, of course; one man died as a result of nineteen needle jabs in one day, but he had collected a nice sum of money for his inoculation cards before he died. I myself cheerfully bought a whole set of cards for Carola. She had been done thoroughly by my own doctor, and I was damned if I'd put her through it again in a dirty government medical post. It was noteworthy that the Japanese weren't prepared for this sort of graft. Japanese evidently don't behave like that in Japan. Our liberators were horrified and flummoxed, as they so often were in their dealings with Chinese. They never could catch up. Certain things were outside their experience and beyond their comprehension.

The Medical Department was busy but running as smoothly as one could reasonably expect, considering the difficulties, when disaster fell on them. One of the British doctors jumped his parole and escaped from Hong Kong. I am not going to pass judgment on him now. It was our private belief that he just couldn't bear the prospect of working through the war under Selwyn-Clarke. Many of the doctors hated Selwyn bitterly, and this unprecedented wave of Selwyn-worship which was sweeping the community, foreigners and Asiatics alike, must have been gall and wormwood to people who felt they really knew the man. The medical group that practiced in Hong Kong before the war had always seemed to my innocent opinion to be particularly virulent, one against the other, even for a medical faculty. And if you know anything about them you know how little brotherly love does prevail among rival doctors in most communities. I had been shocked sometimes at the unethical mutual criticism that seemed to furnish an everyday topic of conversation among Hong Kong doctors. So perhaps this man felt that he would go mad if he stayed longer, or maybe he felt that his higher duty called him to escape. Knowing him, I'm sure he felt morally justified in his action. Anyway, he beat it. That was the end of the British Health Department's freedom. Nguchi could not fight the gendarmes any more on behalf of everyone. He did manage to keep some people out, even so; Selwyn still retained his comparative liberty, though Duggie and Nina Valentine had to go to Stanley. A handful of English doctors, chosen by the Japanese, not by Selwyn (including the ration stealer), were still left outside. The rest, and all the enemy-national Red Cross workers who were driving trucks to Stanley, and a lot of other whites who had been associated one way or another with the department, were popped into camp on very short notice. Regulations all over were tightened up too. The gendarmes had one of their field days.

Hilda and Selwyn were ordered to move, henceforth to live in St. Paul's Hospital, usually called the French Hospital, in Happy Valley.

When the gendarmes had satisfied their passion for vengeance, and I had said good-by tearfully to Nina, they let up a little. (Nina, going into camp, had a nasty experience. A gendarme with a chip on his shoulder confiscated all her stores when she was about to go through the last gate at the camp, and he slapped her. Nina is a beautiful, dignified woman, gray-haired and sweet. I still flush with rage when I think of it.) It was permitted that Selwyn bring out from Stanley one patient at a time for X ray at the French Hospital. This person was allowed to stay overnight, or for a longer time if the doctors (Japanese and British) pronounced it necessary, and he was permitted to bring a certain amount of supplies back into camp when he returned. So it turned out that Hilda became a shopper for Stanley Camp's three thousand plus. It was a job requiring a lot of manual labor and more time than existed in one day. The patient would come in to hospital in the evening, duly escorted by Selwyn and guards, give Hilda his list, and go to bed. (Selwyn was angry in his chilly way if Hilda failed to keep fresh flowers in the patient's room.) The Selwyn-Clarkes tried hard to provide him or her with decent food and plenty of it, as long as he was free, but this was difficult.

Next morning Hilda went downtown with two big baskets, and she shopped. Shopping was our chief interest and it was becoming less and less fruitful, more and more of an ordeal. Although Selwyn was mysteriously producing funds for this work, he didn't have much money, and Hilda had to go wearily all along the little side streets which were full of outside street-corner shops and were supposed to be comparatively cheap, haggling and searching and figuring, staying within the limits of the Japanese law on what could be taken in to Stanley and what couldn't, carrying backbreaking loads back to Happy Valley on the tram. After a week or so she asked us, her foreign friends, to help. Then she got the housework coolie to do some of it, for it was much too big a job for one woman. Then we hired an Indian besides.

In time the shopping routine became one of the group's biggest jobs. In camp there was a strong feeling of hysterical gratitude for Hilda, replacing the earlier outburst of jealous resentment. She grew thin, but she told me she felt much better for the work. This sort of thing was what she was used to; she had done it on a larger and easier scale in the old days, when she was working on relief for China. Selwyn permitted himself to express a few words of approval now and then, when he came home late at night.

I still saw Hilda almost every day. When we weren't doing something about Stanley we were shopping for the three military camps, Bowen Road, Shamsuipo (where the enlisted men were), and Argyle Street, the officers' camp. Each camp had one day a week when women were permitted to bring parcels. Bowen Road, as a hospital, still allowed us two days. That meant four mornings a week. Besides, Oda's department now permitted parcels for Stanley once a week; we brought these parcels, carefully wrapped according to specification, to the bank building and listed them there, and turned them in. We had to guess as to what our friends needed, because letters had not yet been permitted from any of the prisoners. But we were sure they needed everything, and we went accordingly, within the limits of the law. Certain things only were accepted, and the rules were chopped and changed every week.