Janice Lee - The Piano Teacher

“What does she need?”

“It’s not what she needs. They’re asking her for things. Asking her for things that could compromise others.”

“That is dangerous,” Johnnie said simply. “She should watch out, and you too.”

“Yes,” Will said. “We will.”

“It’s almost time for supper,” Johnnie said, standing up. “Our brilliant cooks have invented a new dish that is startlingly good. Banana peel fried in peanut oil. If you close your eyes, it tastes like mushrooms. I can’t get enough of it.”

“Sounds good,” Will said. He was glad to stop talking about Trudy.

There were bad men.

Victor Chen, embracing Reggie Arbogast, both in the Western dress, the blue tropical wool suit, red tie. He had thrown a cocktail party for select Stanley survivors after the release. Not the riffraff, of course, but the doctors and the barristers and the company heads. He commiserated with them about what the war had done to them and their countries and plied them with champagne.

And imagine this. Governor Mark Young returning from his Malaya arrest to the site of his humiliation and that of his country. The war is over. Every effort is made to glorify the triumphant return. An RAF Dakota, escorted by Beaufighters and Corsairs of 721 Squadron. A dramatic landing at Kai Tak. Motorcycle escort back to the Pen, and then the ceremony. Guns, uniforms, pomp. He shakes the hand of community leaders, is welcomed back with speeches. And see Victor Chen there, reading a speech of his own, about Hong Kong’s fortitude and greatness of spirit.

Otsubo, reading documents in the dark, a table lamp illuminating only a small circle on the desk. His lips moving as he reads, Trudy and Dominick sitting next to each other on a bench in the office. They do not talk or look at each other. They wait for his signal.

There were dead men.

Was it his imagination? The sound of a man screaming. Will sat up in bed and tried to listen. The sound of the sea came in through the open window, but he did not hear anything else. A child cried out in his sleep. A mother shushed, drowsy.

In the morning, passing by, he discovered Johnnie gone from his room. The room was ripped apart, although the man was fastidious. The mattress lay half off the bed, sheets hanging off.

They brought Will to the interrogation rooms on the east side.

Johnnie, his eyes open, his shirt ripped and dirty. He lay on the floor of the room, a blanket thrown carelessly over him, with only a stool and a bare electric bulb. They had let Will in to see him, a warning, he supposed.

“He didn’t talk,” they said. “So this.”

“He didn’t know anything,” Will said.

“You say,” they said.

“He didn’t,” Will said.

“Do you?” they asked.

Dominick.

He screamed and begged and wheedled. Was prodded with the tip of a bayonet. His cheek scratched so blood beaded up. Then a pinkie finger broken with a mallet. Then all of the others. A week in the hole.

Denied everything. Confessed to everything.

Scratch the surface of a man. See what appears.

Wan Kee Liang, Trudy’s father.

Dead in his mansion on the Praia Grande, body wasted away, smell of urine soaking the sheets. A neglected corpse, not found for days.

There was a woman, disappeared.

Trudy clattering up the stairs of the gendarmerie headquarters on Des Voeux Road, stomach swollen, about to give birth.

Looking back to blow a kiss to Edwina Storch, who had accompanied her. Her look wistful, not condemning. We are condemned to repeat the past. Trudy’s mother, gone. Trudy, gone.

EDWINA STORCH was outside by suspect means, people whispered. She had parlayed a dead Finnish mother into a Free National passport and revoked her English citizenship. Mary Winkle had been corralled and sent to Stanley and Edwina sent her provisions as often as she could.

Spotting her on the street, Trudy went over to say hello. She had always had a soft spot for the idea of Edwina, although she had heard odd stories about her tenure at Glenealy Primary. She had apparently wielded her authority with a bit too much enthusiasm and not enough oversight. There had also been a story about a boy who had ended up in the hospital after a too vigorous disciplinary action, but that had been hushed up. He had been Eurasian, the father an English civil servant, the mother a local Chinese mistress, preferred but not legitimate. He hadn’t returned to the school.

“You’re out too?”

“Yes, thanks to my dear, departed mother. Finland.”

“Any way you can. It’s dreadful everywhere though, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but your relative Victor Chen has been very helpful to me. He has the magic touch and can procure anything!”

Trudy’s face darkened.

“For the right price, I’m sure. I’m glad he’s been helpful to someone.”

“You’re cousins, aren’t you?”

“Not exactly. I’m related to his wife, Melody. She’s in California right now. She’s going to have the baby there.”

Edwina’s eyes flickered down to Trudy’s own swollen belly.

“That works out well, I suppose.” Miss Storch lowered her voice. “Until everything here gets worked out, I mean.”

“Yes, well,” Trudy said. “I suppose it will all work out, won’t it?”

“Of course,” said the headmistress.

“Well,” Trudy said. “I hope I will see you around in this strange new world of ours. I’m just on my way to meet Dominick for lunch.”

“Give him my best,” the old lady said. “Yes, we will all get by.”

Trudy watched Edwina Storch walk away, with an odd look on her lovely face.

IN THE LATE AFTERNOON SUN, Will grunted and moved in bed, his sleep disturbed. His head was damp, perspiring in the midday heat. Claire clapped her hands, to see if she could rouse him, but Will just shifted again, whimpered.

She looked at his face, damp with sweat, his mouth moving almost imperceptibly in his sleep, and felt pity for him, for the first time.

“TOUCH ME, ” she says. Her voice is desperate. “I want to feel real again.”

He embraces her, holding her as tightly as he can.

“You don’t know what he made me do,” she says, muffled, into his shoulder. “You don’t know.”

“It’s all right,” he says. “Don’t worry.”

“It’s not all right!” she cries. “It’s not. You don’t know. If you knew, you’d never want to see me again, never touch me again. You could never look at me straight in the face.” She draws back and looks at him, searches his face.

He is quiet. She winces.

“I knew it,” she says. “I knew it. What did I expect?”

“I don’t know what you need from me,” he says.

“This is why I loved you so much,” she says. “Not only because you were so good and you didn’t need anyone and I thought I might be able to make you need me, but because…” and she’s crying, this Trudy he’s never seen, this Trudy who’s as fragile as gossamer and doesn’t care who sees it. “Because no one has ever loved me. They loved my money or the way I looked, or even the way I talked, because it made them think I was a certain way. Or my father, he loved me because he had to. My mother loved me but then she left. No one loved me for me, or thought I was more than a good distraction at a party. It’s the tritest thing in the world, isn’t it? But you loved me. You liked the person I was. I really felt that. And it was a revelation to me. But then, after Otsubo and after I asked you to get me the information, I saw that you changed. Or that your feelings changed. You didn’t love me in the same way anymore. I was changed in your eyes. I wasn’t that person you loved no matter what.” She wipes her eyes. They are red and swollen.