China to Me (66 page)

“Gibby, is it really true this time?”

“It really is, Mickey. I've seen the cables myself. Everyone's wild out at camp.”

“Only Americans?”

“Unfortunately, only Americans. We'll hope the British and the others can follow along later. Maybe if this works out satisfactorily — “

“When will it be?”

“No telling, but probably the beginning of June. You'll have to decide now, this minute. … You're coming, of course?”

I looked at Reeny, and Reeny looked at me. I couldn't talk.

“If it's Charles you're thinking of,” said Gibby, “isn't he pretty well off? After all, he speaks the language.”

“Yes, but he isn't pretty well off.”

There was another long, long, long silence.

“It's a difficult decision to make, all right,” said Gibby.

“Gibby,” I said at last, “if it was your wife, and you were locked up like that, what would you do? How would you feel?”

He thought about it briefly and gave his pronouncement. “If I could decide for her, arbitrarily, and for my baby,” he said, “of course I'd send them away. But if I were helpless, and my wife had to decide for herself, and if she stayed in spite of a chance to get away — well, I would be sorry in a way, but I'd be mighty glad. I'd be mighty proud.”

“Oh, thank you, Gibby. It was like a fence I couldn't get over. Will they understand at home?”

“They will when I've talked to ‘em. Now can you manage?”

“If I had money. I think the other difficulties aren't so bad.”

“That's how it seems to me. You certainly seem to have them under control.” He took a furtive look at Oda, way off on the other side of the room. “He, for example, seems to feel friendly toward your setup. He seems to think you may decide to stay.”

“Does he care if I stay or not?”

“Doesn't seem to. It's a matter of indifference, according to him, to the Jap Government whether or not you accept this chance. Well, the Red Cross is being organized now, and I think they'll fix it so you women can get money out from the officers. The officers are being paid now, you know.”

“I know. Charles managed to slip me quite a wad, last time I ever saw him. Almost two hundred yen. It was back pay, he said, for two months; he gets a hundred sixty a month.”

“Yes. Well, that is going to be made legal, according to Oda. In time Charles can send it to you through proper channels.”

We shook hands, and then I called Mr. Oda and told him I wasn't going. He raised his eyebrows a little, but I think he had expected it. Then we went home again, hastily because it was getting quite dark.

Irene was bitter about the American bankers and me. She felt that they should have tried to help me out more than they did. I argued that they, like everyone else, had their own troubles, but she retorted that they had fewer troubles than most people. “Their house is provided; their rice is provided; they get some kind of salary,” she said.

“Hardly anything, Reeny.”

“They ought to take up a collection for you or something,” she insisted. “They're going away now and won't need any money, and you can't tell me that some of them didn't manage to keep supplies after the surrender. They're helping other girls.”

“Reeny, that's just it; they're helping their own girl friends. They haven't anything left over for renegades like me. Remember, I chose a limey, of my own free will and volition; let me stew in my own juice.”

“It's your bank, besides. They know you have money at home. They ought to try and arrange something. They can. Bankers always can.”

“So they can. But they didn't, and I'm damned if I ask any more.”

Before they left, however, one young bank boy did make a helpful suggestion. “John Stenerson is still here,” he said. Stenerson was the Norwegian manager of the American Express. “He may be able to find you some cash when you're hard up. Ask him,” said young Lindabury. “He said he'd keep an eye on you.”

“Well, gosh, that's a relief,” I said, frankly for the first time. “I've been feeling pretty low.”

The young man at that moment expressed the entire state of mind of the bankers, and of anyone who is involved in his own problems. It was a staggering thing he said, and yet it expressed the innocence of the whole community.

“Why!” cried Lindabury. “Have you been worrying about money?”

I haven't any idea of how the Stanley Camp, the British and Belgians and Dutch, felt about the American exodus. I know how the bankers who had been left behind felt, though. Of course there was a certain selfish relief in the knowledge that they would now have more room in the Sun Hwa Hotel, which was the name of their water-front brothel, but the mothers who were cooped up there with their children must have felt an agonizing jealousy. One of them told me after the departure that she had almost killed an American. They were walking on the roof, discussing the repatriation, which was scheduled to take place in a day or two. The American, Dorothy said, must have forgotten that he was talking to a woman with no hope of freedom for herself, her husband, or her two small children, or he could not have been so tactless.

“Well,” she alleges that he said, in satisfied, judicial tones, “on the whole, it's been a vurry interesting experience.”

She nearly shoved him off the roof.

On the day they were to go all the white people I knew were stirred to wild excitement. We would have no opportunity to see the main crowd going away, but we could at least watch the departure of the bankers from town. They were to go by bus out to Stanley, where the whole crowd would embark together on the Japanese boat that was to take them to Lourenco Marques to meet the Gripsholm. Other people were going too: a Dutch girl who had been interned until now in the Bowen Road Hospital as one of the V.A.D. nurses, a Frenchman who was leaving his Japanese wife behind in Hong Kong to watch the house, and other bits and pieces like that. I stood by the bus as everyone said good-by, talking to the Dutch girl. She told me that Charles was well, and she explained about the parole and why I hadn't seen him.

There was a flurry at the doorway of the bus; people were kissing each ether good-by and weeping. I crossed the road to be out of it. Nobody especially dear to me was going, but I had a stone on my chest. In the crowd on my side of the street was Yoshida, looking on with an impassive face. Billy Poy, an Australian-born Chinese who had been friendly with Yoshida and Nakazawa, was going on the boat as a special favor of the American Government, because he had worked for the Canadian Trade Commission for years. Yoshida was seeing him off, but he didn't want to compromise him too much by any obvious friendship, so here he stood across the street, and I stood next to him, myself being compromised in his company by the minute.

The Foreign Affairs officials finished checking over their human exchanges. There was a shout, and a fresh burst of sobs and waves, and the buses started up. I stood there with my gendarme pal, waving. I was still wondering if I had signed Carola's death warrant by my decision.

“She would want to stick by her father if she could think,” I argued. But I didn't feel very well.

Charlotte had sent word out to me that she would be glad to take Carola home to the States if I would send her. So had Joe Alsop. But even if I had decided to do this Charles's own attitude was uncompromising. In the early days of the surrender a woman going to Macau had begged me to give her the baby and let her smuggle it out to neutral territory. I was so wild that I was ready to do it. Macau seemed a safe place then. For an adult it was possible; Petro had got away through Macau, and now his wife Barbara was on the repatriation steamer and would be able to join him in the States. But a small baby couldn't do that on her own. Also Charles was violently disturbed by the suggestion.

“No, Mickey, no. A child must stay with its mother. No! You must never do that.” I had never before seen him so emphatic. Remembering this made it easier to follow my own selfish desire, and I never again tried to send Carola away from me, even for her own good. When you are not sure if you are right or wrong you must take someone else's decision. I was glad to have Charles to guide me, even in retrospect.

The departure of the Americans hadn't taken place as early as Gibby had expected. Nothing takes place when you expect it in the Orient, and the Japanese are longer in making up their minds than even the Chinese. It was the end of June when I waved good-by to the bank boys. Our children were shooting up. Bryan and Frances were chasing each other around the house, fighting over toys and demanding more than milk to eat. Carola tried valiantly to bridge the tremendous gap of four months between herself and Frances. When the older babies ran after each other I would sometimes hold her up and run after them, bending low so that her wildly kicking feet just cleared the ground and she thought she was running too. I was doing that the day she first laughed, a low, delighted chuckle.

“Was that my baby?” I demanded of Irene.

“Yes,” said Reeny.

I wanted terribly to tell somebody about it, or to write home — Carola had laughed. But there was nobody to tell or to write to, except Ah King, so I went down and told him. He made a satisfactory fuss about it, however; he called his wife and daughter and told them, and then they went out and told the neighbor's servants. I felt better.

The newspapers printed little in the way of news. Through neutrals and daring Asiatics we still got the general outline of the world's doings, but that summer there was a long and dreary time when nothing really did seem to happen; nothing, that is, to cheer us up. Our local paper only yammered over and over about how well Hong Kong was getting along under the Japanese, and how much happier everyone was. But Hong Kong was not getting along well. The military control which overshadowed the civilian government was a deadly influence. In the ordinary way the Chinese can't be kept down. They will trade, they will flourish, in spite of all. But these Japanese measures with slow, stupid, stubborn weight managed to crush all human endeavor sooner or later. Even Japanese tradesmen were complaining. Red tape strangled any attempt at starting business, no matter who made the attempt, friend or enemy. Corruption ate away at the trade that did exist. Yoshida and his kind flourished, but it was better not to ask how. Yoshida suddenly appeared in business clothes and told me he was thinking of quitting the gendarmerie; he spent at least two hundred yen a night, according to Ah King's cousin, who managed a Chinese restaurant that the Japanese patronized. Finally his behavior couldn't be ignored, even though he was a gendarme, and he was suddenly sent back to Japan, or to Formosa or somewhere. Ogura was discreet about it, but I gathered that Yoshida's record of graft had attracted the attention of his chief, even in that milieu of universal graft. We heard constantly of other petty scandals and wrangles. The collaborationists settled down to enjoy the fruit of their labors, and that summer must have been the happiest one they were ever to have. The shoe hadn't begun to pinch yet, and they still hoped for a lifetime of easy money and rewards. Everyone was living on the hump of prewar supplies that were still extant in Hong Kong. There was little normal give and take; all trade was fading away. Farseeing Chinese began to make their plans; one by one they disappeared, sailing down to Kwangchowan and walking in to Free China across the border. We heard all about that avenue of escape. Reeny began to look thoughtful.

It was in August 1942, wasn't it, that America attacked the Solomons? The news came as a shot in the arm to us. We were living on such things; between the secret news bulletins we did nothing but worry about the rapidly mounting inflation, so our hunger for encouragement was becoming ravenous. It is a mistake to think that the Japanese put out only lies and contradictions in their news. The men in charge of propaganda were not well coordinated, and by their contradictions we could tell more from the news columns in the paper than they ever guessed. They didn't suppress outstanding news items, either; perhaps they knew it was no use. They announced the attack on the Solomons, for example. They admitted the loss of the Aleutians too, though that admission was delayed for several days and was then produced as a triumph. “A magnificent psychological victory over our enemies,” they called it, “who had never expected that Japanese would die to the last man, rather than give in. Now they know how hopeless this war must be for them!”

I had a private joke about that. When Attu and Kiska were first taken by the Japanese they promptly rechristened them and gave them Japanese names which I can't now remember. Sometimes you would see a long, stirring account of how life was going for the brave Japanese garrison on these islands. A few days before they announced the loss of those spots on the map I noticed that they were calling them “Attu” and “Kiska” again. Aha, said I to myself, something has happened in the Aleutians! And I was right.

Oda kept his promise and called on us. We invited him to dinner, along with a Mr. Imamura of his office, a man who had been introduced to us by Nakazawa a few months before. We made a great effort and produced a good dinner, considering; Oda watched us all and was very cautious and discreet, but he asked a lot of questions.

“Mr. Imamura,” said Reeny pleasantly, though it was always an effort for her to be pleasant with Japanese, “Mr. Imamura is practically a Chinese, Mr. Oda.”

“Yes, he has lived in Hong Kong and Canton for many years,” said Oda.

“He speaks excellent Cantonese,” said Phyllis. Imamura smiled and bowed.

“Do you know, he was our neighbor in Kowloon,” continued Reeny. “He lived next door to my father's house for seventeen years, and I never knew him.”

“I suppose,” said Oda in a surprising flash, “you never looked at that little yellow man!”

We were all quiet for a minute. Reeny had had a cocktail, and her natural feelings were rapidly getting the better of her. I sat next to her and watched her anxiously; you never knew, with Reeny. The conversation drifted around inevitably to ways and means, the black market, the inflation. Reeny excitedly asked Oda what the government meant to do about her kind of person, the Eurasian who was left homeless, workless, husbandless by the war.