Janice Lee - The Piano Teacher

“Where was the dinner?”

“At the Selwyn-Clarkes’, but you know they have to do it so hush-hush. He had to pretend it was a planning meeting, for supplies and things, which it partly was, but they had guards outside, listening, so it was hardly a casual event. And do you know who’s dead? Crumley, the American who was always at the Grill? I remember the day he came in and told us how he had opened his mouth while he was at a picnic in Shek O and a butterfly flew in and he swallowed it, and now he’s dead. Swallowed butterfly or not. That’s what I think about sometimes, you know.” She speeds up, talking about this and that, nonsense about people.

“Otsubo adores me now and gives me anything I ask for. Look at all I was able to bring you! Ham and coffee, sugar and powdered milk. I’ve unearthed more of that strawberry jam that seems to be everywhere. Honey, even. You do have cause to be jealous now, darling.” But she looks worse than ever, gaunt, with cracked, dry lips and hair scraped back into an untidy bun. Her blouse is very large on her, the collar gaping up behind her neck, as if she’s sinking into it.

“I’ve been trying to think what kind of man he is, and I think I’ve got it. He’s the kind of person who, when you say something, and he doesn’t understand, he will ask you to repeat it, and then again and again, until he understands, whereas most people would politely pretend to get it after the second or third explanation. He’s unrelenting and has no interest in social graces. I suppose that’s why he’s done so well for himself in his career-meticulous and all that.”

“Are you eating? You look like you’re eating nothing.”

“I took Otsubo to Macau and fed him those “beans,” you know, the baby mice that the uninitiated think are beans? He loved them. And they say the Chinese will eat anything.”

“I don’t care about that… you look like death warmed over.” He grabs her hand. “I don’t care if he’s mad about you and you have to do things you don’t want to do… I just want you to be all right.”

She laughs abruptly.

“And how do you know I don’t want to do them?” she asks. “What if I’m a willing participant?”

She thrusts a package toward him. “Here,” she says. “More food.”

“Come into the camp,” he says. “I’ll take care of you.”

“Will, darling.” She cups his face in her hands. “It’s too late. I like it on the outside. I’ve finally got a foothold on the situation, however tenuous.”

The door opens and Edwina Storch comes in with a large package.

“Hullo,” Trudy says. “Are you here to see Mary?”

“Yes,” says Edwina. “Hello, Will. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine, thank you. Mary is as well as can be expected in here. Her good spirits and courage are a boon to the community.”

“Yes, she’s very good,” Edwina says. “What a horrid situation.” She takes in Trudy’s package with a discerning eye. “You’ve gotten a large ration of the jam, Trudy. And coffee! You must know someone very important indeed.”

Mary Winkle enters and the two women embrace, one large, one small. They go into another room.

Trudy looks at the closing door.

“I see her around all the time now,” she says. “She’s quite in evidence in the postwar world.” She pauses. “But I think I like her.”

Will takes her hand. She looks so lost.

“Do you know my best quality? ” she asks.

“Of your many, I could not say, my darling.”

“I see the best in people. I fall in love with people when I see a window into their beings, their shining moments. I’ve fallen in love with so many people but the trouble is I fall out of love so quickly too. I see the worst in them just as easily.

“Do you know I fell in love with you right away? That day at the Trotters’ I had noted you because you were new, of course, and then you sat down at the piano, and you played a few notes, but you played them so well, with no self-consciousness, and no idea that anyone might be listening. It was in that room off the garden and you were the only one there. I was passing through on the way to the ladies’ room and saw you there. I fell in love with you right then, and so I spilled my drink all over myself so I could meet you.”

“Darling Trudy,” he says.

She stands up.

“I can’t bear it,” she says in a rush. “I just can’t.” And then she turns around and leaves. “Eat what I’ve brought you,” she calls out behind her as the door swings shut behind her with a clang. “You need to be strong.” Her voice fades as she walks away.

“Johnnie, I have to get out of here.”

He says it that night, after they have gone to bed, and he can hear his companion’s breath just deepening into sleep. It stops, then starts again.

“You do? ”

“Yes. I’m losing her.”

“I see.”

“Will you help me?”

“Of course.”

But he didn’t need to ask. Of course, Trudy had another way.

“I’ve gotten you a week’s furlough. Otsubo got me a pass that says you’re to do some work for him. Isn’t that wonderful? ”

“What kind of work am I to do?”

She looks at him as if he’s completely missed the point.

“No idea. Some kind of clerical work which you and only you, the inimitable Will Truesdale, are qualified to do. Proper accounting. Plant watering. Japanese flattering. Does it matter? You get to get out of here! Aren’t you thrilled? That’s gratitude for you!”

“What do I have to do? ”

“Are you a complete moron? Nothing!” she cries. “Absolutely nothing. I thought it would be nice for you to get out and see what’s going on outside. No one else has this kind of opportunity, you know.”

“Well, thank you,” he says. “I do appreciate it.”

“You’ll get to see what life outside is like, what my life has become.”

“Perhaps you’ll do an exchange,” he says. “Come in here for a fortnight.”

“ Peut-être, ” she says. She always reverts to French when she wants to change the subject.

So the next Monday, Will is waiting by the sentry’s bungalow. He has been treated rather well for the past week. Ohta came to see him with a copy of the furlough order, trying to fish some information from him.

“Otsubo has sent for you,” he had said.

“Yes,” Will nodded.

“He is head of gendarmerie.”

“Yes.”

“You have important skill? ”

“Yes.”

Ohta stood for a moment, trying to see if Will would give him anything. When he didn’t, he threw the order on the floor and said he should wait by the gate on Monday. But then Will noticed that all the guards were more polite and that he was not subject to taunts and searches anymore.

Trudy pulls up in a convertible and insists on driving although she is alarmingly bad, screeching the gears and turning far too wide. “What happens when you have a driver all your life,” she says with a shrug when Will finally demands she pull over so he can take the wheel.

“You look well,” he says, glancing over. She’s in a spring dress, now that the weather has gotten warmer, and a wide-brimmed yellow straw hat.

“I found my old tailor, and he whipped up a few things for me. He desperately needs the work and I have events I’m supposed to look nice for.”

He doesn’t ask.

She takes him to the Peninsula.

“It’s the Toa now, remember,” she says.

Trudy is greeted with smiles and bows as she sweeps through the formerly grand lobby, which is now filled with soldiers, steel tables, and other grim army-issue furniture.

“Otsubo has a suite of rooms here so Dommie and I stay in them. He’s requisitioned a place up on Barker Road for himself. It’s better here than the rat hole we have outside. We’re lucky. You wouldn’t believe how people are living outside, two or three families in a flat. Rather appalling, but I suppose it’s wartime. My old place has been requisitioned for some midlevel soldier. Insulting, isn’t it? I thought it was quite nice, myself.”