Janice Lee - The Piano Teacher

“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.