Janice Lee - The Piano Teacher

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.