China to Me (72 page)

“If you do it just now you'll make the exchange impossible, perhaps,” he said. “The Japanese have closed their lists and they must deliver every one of us safe to the Americans at Lourenço Marques. Think of what it might mean to thousands of people if you are selfish enough to commit suicide now! You know how touchy the Japs are. I am not arguing with your intention, Corin; your life and death are your own affair. But promise me, at any rate, to wait until the ship has sailed.”

Corin promised, after an argument. That night she wrote a letter to John saying that she was breaking her promise. He had extracted it, she said, under compulsion, because as he well knew she had been in no position to take a stand against him. Now she could not wait any longer. Her death was due, overdue by many months of anguish. “I can't bear the torture of living for another five minutes,” wrote Corin in a precise hand. Then she drank a bottle of Lysol and died.

But the exchange was not, after all, spoiled by this action.

Chapter 57

The selwyn-clarkes were disturbed by the news that Colonel Nguchi, their patron and protector, was going away. The whole setup in the government was constantly changing like that; Noma of the gendarmes was the only official who stayed all the way through while I was in Hong Kong, and we should have expected Nguchi's departure. Probably Selwyn did, but hung on as long as he could and hoped for a miracle. Though Selwyn always had a reputation as an alarmist in his own government, and though I myself had occasion to resent his dramatic presentation of the worst news and his tendency to make gloomy prophecies, he remained tough in his estimation of facts. He was always expecting worse, and so the catastrophe when it arrived usually shocked him less than it did us mere humans. He was no alarmist. He merely foretold calamities which came to pass, and everyone hated him for it.

I saw him working under the new conditions often and often, when I went into the Health Department offices. One day I turned up there with a needy case which did not come exactly under the heading of volunteer dependent. Rather, this lady was a regular dependent, for her husband was a regular soldier, connected with the Royal Army Medical Corps and now interned at Bowen Road. The wife was Chinese and had not been evacuated with the other soldiers' wives because she had been so near her confinement. Now, with the new baby and two older children, she was hard up, because she was a northerner without relatives in this strange southern city. She clung to me because I spoke her dialect and she had very little English. After carrying the responsibility for a very short time indeed I realized I couldn't do it any more and I took it over and dumped it into Selwyn's lap. I have gone into this detail just to show what sort of thing he was up against in his moments of leisure. All of these people, bewildered and lost and scared and hungry, had nowhere to go but to Selwyn. Though he couldn't do anything officially, he did manage somehow to help, and all out of that tremendous saintly conviction that it was the duty of England, through Selwyn-Clarke, not to let down her colonials.

Of course the colonials agreed with him, and I seldom saw signs of gratitude. A handful of women adored him to the point of dying for him; that is true. More than a handful went through torture for him and didn't fall down on the job. But the majority of the women hated him, for cheeseparing, for arguing with them when they made their claims, for not doing more.

Well, there I sat with my regular dependent, waiting to see Selwyn-Clarke. First we waited until he came in; that was one hour. Then when he did arrive, full of the old formality, apologizing just as if my bedraggled Chinese charge and I were people of importance instead of serfs, he was called away by someone in the office. After another hour he was able to talk to us. We had gone through most of the case, with me interpreting, when a uniformed clerk came and told Selwyn that Mr. Kiribayashi wanted to see him.

“Tell Mr. Kiribayashi I will be in as soon as this business is accomplished,” said Selwyn, and resumed his conversation with us.

All of a sudden there was a thump, thump, thump outside the office, and a big bully in uniform stamped in, his eyes blazing. He halted opposite the desk and thundered, “Selwyn-Clarke! You come — now!”

Selwyn turned slowly toward him and surveyed the uniformed gent over his spectacles, just like a reproving schoolmaster. Then he turned deliberately back to me and said, “I apologize for this outrageous behavior.”

Not having his capacity for dignity, I had already jumped to my feet, and my Chinese girl was with me on that. “No, no, Selwyn, you go along. We can finish this another time. Come on, Tai-tai.” I hurried out, expecting to hear a slap at any moment, but I didn't. I dare say Selwyn went in and lectured Mr. Kiribayashi on his manners.

Throughout the occupation I had heard a lot about Nguchi but had never met him. According to Hilda he was charming, though she had never been able to talk with him. He had taken over the house on the Peak, the same house where we had cowered so long in the cellar. He had shown the greatest amiability in the world by doing this, for he managed to preserve the Selwyn-Clarke possessions by virtue of his presence. Going even beyond that, he had kept on the housekeeper, Constance Lam, who was in charge during my visit to the Peak and who had never gone away.

Constance was one of the ladies who wanted to die for Selwyn. He had done her a good turn once when she was very ill; she said that he saved her life, and it is probably true. No longer young and not particularly beautiful, she ran no danger, we assumed, from the licentious soldiery or from Nguchi. He found her at the house when he moved in, and he just told her to go on living there if she liked, so Constance sent for her little niece Annette and settled in. Nguchi sent up an occasional sack of rice or flour, and once or twice he came up in person with a party of companions, intending to have a nice old-fashioned Japanese orgy in his house. Constance, according to her own story, told him that it wouldn't do; she would not permit ladies of the town to stay the night in that house. She says he agreed and never did it again. I can't believe that part of the saga. But it is probably true that he didn't come up the Peak very often. Gasoline was scarce even for officers, and so was time. Nguchi had his fun elsewhere and plenty of it.

Constance stayed on in the Peak house, complaining no more. She was very helpful indeed to Selwyn and Hilda, and kept bringing down things she had picked up here and there around the house — and perhaps from other houses in the neighborhood. One of them was a blue dress which she sold to Hilda and which I promptly tore from Hilda's back when I recognized it, for it was my dress, which I had asked Constance for repeatedly and in vain, as she said she couldn't find it.

All this I heard about Nguchi, without having seen him. Then at last I met him, and how!

There was a doctor in town who was very well known. His name was Li Shu-fan. It still is. He is in the States at this moment, but until July of 1943 he was in Hong Kong, managing cleverly to hang onto his hospital, one of the best in town, and getting by with the Japanese, perilously, but still getting by. People wondered at his immunity, because he had been an intimate friend, we all knew, of T. V. Soong. He was seen everywhere, arousing jealous criticism by his jaunty bearing and his good clothes. He went to the races, he ate, he played around exactly as if there had been no war. I was introduced to him by Mitzi, who had married her Swiss chef. I dined in his flat in the hospital, with the Gattis. I invited him to dinner at my house. Next thing I knew he had asked Maria and me to tea. We went down to the hospital at about four o'clock. It was a long way from town and we wanted to get back early.

I was surprised and vexed to see the other guests. Dr Li had said that he expected Nguchi — it was a farewell party for Nguchi — but he hadn't told me that all the Girls would be there, those fifth-columnist ladies who had been anathema to me since the beginning. There they all were, the darlings of the British cadets and the American bank boys, and now of the Japanese gendarmes — Agnes and Rosamunde and Margaret and the others, dressed up to the nines, chattering and giggling and whispering to each other. Maria and I sat a little apart from them, stiffly. The men were doctors, one Chai, a Formosan who had acted as liaison in the Medical Department since the war, and an old Chinese chap, Dr. Ma, familiar to all of us. We waited for the colonel and made polite talk. Nobody could have guessed, watching Li's smooth hospitality, that all his plans for escape were completed and polished and perfected. He got out two months later, but only he knew what was going to be.

All of a sudden, with a loud whoop and a hurrah, Colonel Nguchi arrived. He had two other officers with him and they were all noisy, but he was the noisiest. He was a short, stocky chap, he needed a shave, but his face was pleasant and he had a sense of humor. He started out, as Dr. Li introduced him around the circle, by kissing each of us, the men too. Chai, who had known him for months, objected strenuously. “He put his tongue in my mouth!” he protested. By that time Nguchi was over at the bar, pouring himself a whisky, and then he came back and insisted on pouring half of it into my brandy, mixing it up and taking back a half portion of the result, which he downed in a gulp. He must have been pretty drunk when he arrived.

A busy half hour followed. I had been talking against the difficulties of language with one of the officers, a Major Ota, when I happened to look around and saw that the Girls had all disappeared. Things had evidently got too rough for their liking, and they had given each other a high sign and slipped away. I had just time to realize this when Ota clapped me on the back, made an imperious beckoning signal, and said, “We go dinner. Come!”

Then suddenly, in spite of Li's fluttering protests, I was being herded into the elevator and carried away. Maria was left behind. I called out as I departed, “Don't worry, Doctor; I'll be all right,” and I really thought I would, because Chai and Ma were still with us. Down on ground level, however, some of my confidence evaporated. There were two cars, a big Army model and a little chummy one. Nguchi now took charge of the party, and he put everybody else into the big Army limousine, then joined me in the back seat of the little car. We all started for town.

I had never before realized how very far town was from Li's hospital, or vice versa. Nguchi was feeling amorous, and though I think I could have managed him all right if we had been able to talk, we weren't able to talk. We just struggled. He was drunk and he must have thought I was being coy. I said to myself, “Well, we've got to arrive sometime, and then I can explain to Ma and Chai, and Chai will talk him out of it.”

But when we reached town I saw through the window that the car ahead of us slowed up, Ma and Chai stepped out and waved good-by, and our car, scarcely slackening speed, went on after the other one. That left me alone with three Japanese officers, all drunk, all strangers. I didn't feel confident at all any more. I went on mechanically shoving Nguchi's hands and feet away, thinking fast. Thought was no help.

When the cars did stop I recognized where we were. It was the Kam Loong Restaurant, that same Golden Dragon where Charles and “the office” had often played host. We got out and joined the other officers on the pavement. There followed a long argument between them. I gathered that Nguchi didn't want any dinner; he wanted to return to his hotel with me. The other officers, not having girl friends, did want their dinner, and they tried to prevail upon him to curb his impatience. Nguchi staggered up and down the pavement between them, talking, and I slipped into the restaurant.

The manager stood behind his little counter, Chinese fashion, and he looked a bit surprised when I rushed in. I was rather pulled about, and though I didn't realize it at the time, he was Ah King's brother and knew me well.

“Get me out of this!” I gasped.

I suppose the restaurant staff had had plenty of experience. They leaped to their posts like veterans. Before I had taken another breath I had been put into a pantry place, and when the officers came in looking for me the manager said, “Missy go upstairs.” They resumed their wrangling, telling Nguchi to follow me to one of the private dining rooms, and while their backs were turned I was whooshed out the back door, into a ricksha and away, waved off grinningly by a couple of Chinese waiters. One of the men who helped me by acting as lookout was Nguchi's own chauffeur.

I didn't meet the colonel again before he left.

The gendarmes didn't wait a week after he had gone, before they swooped down and arrested Selwyn. It happened on a Sunday morning, so early that even Selwyn was not yet awake. He was given time to dress and to take some clothes with him, and then they took him away.

The job was done in really good style. They had planned it down to the smallest matter because, after all, they had been at it for a long time, for months and months. The entire hospital was closed off by police and soldiers. It happened that the former consul general, Reynaud, lay dying there, but his doctor was not permitted to go in and see him. The gendarmes meant to find out everything they could about that hotbed of espionage, and no sick people were going to interfere with their work. It is not true, as some hysterical patients averred, that the soldiers came whooping over the wall as if they were attacking a fortress, but their entry must have been sufficiently melodramatic to put the fear of God and the devil into the French sisters and the rest of the staff.

We first heard it from Hilda's cook, who brought a message from her that she would get in touch with me as soon as possible. They were all held prisoner: Hilda, Mary, Helen Ho, who had been working with them and looking after Mary (Helen was a sister of Kathleen and Yvonne), and a number of others. In the course of the day Constance Lam was brought in and set down there, and a few other people showed up, Chinese doctors suspected of working in the espionage game with Selwyn and the like.