Janice Lee - The Piano Teacher

Jane Lessig brings him a bowl of pudding.

When he gets up to look out the window, the first time he has been up, he is surprised to find that he has a limp.

“I’ve a limp!” he says to Jane Lessig.

“Yes, you do,” she says. “And a fine one at that.”

“I’m feeling much better,” he says. “I think I could be discharged soon.”

“Do you, now?” she says crisply. “We’ll leave that to the doctors, shall we?”

But he does feel better and when Dr. Whitley comes around, Will is dressed and ready to go.

“I don’t think I’m doing much good here, do you?” he asks.

“Will,” Dr. Whitley says. “It’s very different out there. Kowloon ’s besieged and we’re trying to hold out here for as long as possible. There have been enormous casualties. Do you know where you could stay?”

“Could go to Trudy’s? ” he wonders.

“She’s been here every day,” the doctor says. “But I didn’t let her come in. I thought it would be too upsetting for her. You’re not at your most handsome. She said to tell you she’s staying with Angeline and would be by later on today.”

“Oh,” Will says. “Then I’ll stay until she comes.”

The doctor gives him a peculiar look and nods. He’s finished looking at Will’s knee.

When Trudy comes, she is different. He can’t tell why and then he sees-she has no lipstick on, no jewelry, her clothes are drab, no color of any sort. He mentions this to her, sort of an ice breaker to take away from the fact that he is injured, in a hospital, that the world is at war. It is odd to be shy with Trudy. He does not want to seem diminished in front of her.

“I don’t want to attract any sort of attention,” she says. “It’s like walking on pins out there in case you run into a Jap. Father’s gone to Macau. He wanted me to come, but I didn’t want to.” She walks over to the window. “He’s worried about me,” she says, looking down and fingering the cloth of her skirt. “If they win, they’ll be brutal beyond belief.”

“How did you get here?”

“I had Angeline’s driver bring me. We’re camping out at her place on the Peak, although the whole Peak is supposed to be evacuated by now. They think it’s too exposed, but we’ve managed to stay undetected, and it’s quiet up there. She has the dogs and her houseboy along with the amahs and the chauffeur so we have some protection.”

The upper class always do what they want, he thinks, inappropriately.

“It’s nerve-racking, like playing a game of poker,” she says. “You never know when you’re going to be stopped, and people are turning against each other. Old Enderby was roughed up by some Sikhs because they said he looked at them funny. That lovely old man.” She stops suddenly. “How are you feeling? Here I am going on about the outside and you’re all…” Her voice trails.

“Evers is dead,” he says. “But you didn’t know him. He was with me when the bomb got us.”

Trudy looks at him, blank. “You’re right,” she says. “I don’t know him.”

“I want all the news,” he says. “Do you have any? ”

“Angeline says that we’re not doing very well. Apparently they expected the Japs from the south, by the sea, but they came from the north instead and just breezed right through the defenses there. And it’s really awful outside.” Her voice hiccups. “I saw a dead baby on a pile of rubbish this morning as I came here. It’s all around, the rubbish and the corpses, I mean, and they’re burning it so it smells like what I imagine hell smells like. And I saw a woman being beaten with bamboo poles and then dragged off by her hair. She was half being dragged, half crawling along, and screaming like the end of the world. Her skin was coming off in ribbons. You’re supposed to wear sanitary pads so that… you k now… if a soldier tries to… Well, you know. The locals and the Japanese both are looting anything that’s not locked down, and thieving and generally being impossible. They’re all over the place in Kowloon, running amok. We’re thinking about moving out to one of the hotels, just so we’re more in the middle of things, and we can see people and get more information. The Gloucester is packed to the rafters but my old friend Delia Ho has a room at the Repulse Bay and says we can have it because she’s leaving to go to China. We can share the room with Angeline, don’t you think? And apparently, the American Club has cots out and people are staying there as well. They have a lot of supplies, I suppose. Americans always do. Everyone wants to be around other people.”

“I suppose that’s a good idea,” Will says.

“Dommie says it’s only a matter of time before the Japanese have the whole island, so he says it really doesn’t matter.”

“That’s hopeful. Always the optimist.”

“I don’t think he really cares.” Trudy laughs, a shrill sound. “He’s just waiting to see what side he should join. He’s learning Japanese at a fast clip.”

“You know what a dangerous thing he’s doing. It’s not a matter for laughter.”

“Oh, bother!” Trudy comes and sits down next to him. “Your injury has quite done away with your sense of humor. Dommie is a survivor, just like you and me, and he’ll be fine. When can you leave?”

“I think soon. And they’re eager to be rid of me. There are people with far more serious injuries, I imagine.”

“But can you walk and all that? ”

“I’ll be fine,” he says shortly. “Don’t worry about me.”

Dr. Whitley discharges him with reluctance.

“If it weren’t for Trudy,” he says, wrapping fresh bandages around Will’s abdomen and knee, “I would never let you go. I know she’ll take care of you.”

Trudy is sitting at the foot of the bed.

“And the little fact that you have too few beds,” she rejoins. “Will here is taking up valuable space. I’m on your side, Doctor. I was a nurse for two weeks. Remember? ”

The doctor laughs. “Of course. How could I forget?” He turns serious. “Trudy, you must change the bandages daily, and you must cleanse the skin and the wounds with a solution of water and peroxide that I’ll have the nurse make up for you. No matter if Will says he doesn’t need it, you must do it without exception.”

Trudy nods. “I’ll be a model of reliability and efficiency,” she says.

Once at Angeline’s, she sets him up in bed although he feels fine. Their room is messy, with her clothes spilling out of a suitcase onto the floor and her toiletries scattered on the windowsills, the bathroom basin, the bed. There are model airplanes strung from the ceiling and a wooden desk piled high with schoolboy mysteries.

“Whose room is this? ”

“It’s Giles’s-my godson, did you know him?”

“I’ve never met him.”

“He’s always away at school and now they’re having him stay for the meantime with Frederick ’s family in England until this all settles down.”

“Oh,” he says. The room is streaked with dusty light from a window. “I’m not an invalid, you know,” he says. “I could probably walk to Central and back.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “You’re to take it easy.”

But he is better, and she sees it, and soon they venture out, to see empty roads, closed storefronts, people scurrying from place to place, not looking anywhere but at the ground.

“There’s been an incredible amount of looting,” she says. “And the government is rationing rice. It’s been rather amazing. I was walking down Gloucester Road and I saw police firing their guns in the air to disperse a crowd, and I wondered, where do those bullets go? When they come down, if they hit someone, can’t they kill somebody that way?”