Fortune is a Woman (59 page)

He found his glasses and stuck them on his nose, looking at her. "I planned on being a brain surgeon," he said. "I don't think I'd be much good as a comprador."

Lysandra heaved a sigh. "Promise me you'll think about it," she pleaded. "The Mandarin always said I would need every friend I could get."

Philip was taking no chances and after breakfast Robert and his mother were sent to stay with friends in Kowloon. From there they would adopt the disguise of a peasant woman and her son and be taken under cover of darkness through the New Territories and across the border into China, where they could hide. Tears stung Lysandra's eyes as she kissed them good-bye, wondering when she would see them again, and she watched anxiously from the window as Philip first walked the length of the street alone, checking to see if he was being observed. When he was sure the way was clear he waved Irene and Robert out through the servants' entrance and down the alley behind the building, watching until they were out of sight.

As eleven o'clock approached, Ah Sing helped dress Lysandra in her best blue cotton, white ankle socks, and black patent Mary Janes. Even though it was a hot day she put the beautiful deep-blue silk robe, embroidered in gold and crimson, over the top. The Japanese had already annexed every motor vehicle in Hong Kong, so, accompanied by Ah Sing, who refused to leave her side, they made their way by rickshaw to the office.

The staff had been warned of the visit of the Japanese general and they were standing nervously about in the lofty, pillared reception hall. They stared in amazement as Philip Chen walked through the door with little Lysandra Lai Tsin in her Mandarin's robe, quickly forming a line and bowing respectfully as she walked past, and in turn Lysandra bestowed a regal nod and a smile on each.

The Mandarin's office at the back of the hall was exactly as he had left it; no one was ever permitted to use it and it was cleaned and polished each day by the most trusted workers. His Chinese inkpad and brushes, his silver inkstand and pens and his old wooden abacus were arranged on his ebony-wood desk, just as though he might appear at any moment to use them. Lysandra stared at his portrait hanging on the wall opposite the window and she smiled tremulously at him. Like her, he was dressed in his Mandarin robe and he looked as wise and kind as she remembered. Her knees were shaking and her palms sweating with fear as she sat in a thronelike antique blackwood chair behind her grandfather's desk, waiting for the Japanese general, and more than anything she wished her mom and dad were there. Seeking courage, she glanced again at the painting of the Mandarin, remembering the time he had first brought her here, and she knew he would have expected her to be strong in adversity, the way he had always been.

Philip Chen stood behind her chair to the left and a dozen men, the heads of all the departments, lined up alongside him, while Ah Sing crouched in a corner, fingering the sharp kitchen knife hidden beneath her black smock, ready to kill anyone who tried to harm her beloved Number One daughter.

At precisely eleven o'clock there was a sudden commotion of shouted orders and the sound of booted feet marching across the marble hall. The door was flung open and the Japanese general stood there, surveying them.

Lysandra noticed quickly he was as short as she was, and slender with a little pencil moustache and narrow slanting eyes. Unlike the soldiers his uniform was perfectly tailored; his brass buttons glittered and his jackboots shone and a long cape lined in scarlet was flung across his shoulders. Behind him were half a dozen guards, rifles at the ready, and a young lieutenant who was to act as his interpreter.

The general swaggered into the room, tapping his stick against his palm; he looked at Philip Chen and at the managers bowing their heads respectfully. He stared at the Mandarin's portrait. And then he looked at the blond blue-eyed child sitting in the blackwood throne behind the taipan's desk of one of Hong Kong's greatest companies. The fawning half-smile he had deigned to bestow was replaced with a glance of such fierce anger, Lysandra closed her eyes so she would not have to see it.

He screamed something and the Japanese interpreter repeated it nervously in the flawless English he had acquired when he was studying at Stanford University in California. "The general asks what kind of joke this is that you are playing on the emissary of His Imperial Majesty? He warns you that the reprisals will be severe and instructs you to bring forward the proper taipan of the House of Lai Tsin immediately."

Lysandra pulled herself to her tallest, she tilted her chin in the air exactly the way her mother, Francie, did when she was angry, and said, "Tell the general I am the taipan of the Lai Tsin hong. It is I who shall read the documents he has brought and decide whether they shall be signed."

The general's angry slitted eyes were fixed on her as the interpreter relayed the news and this time she did not look away. She noted with satisfaction that his face turned from scarlet to purple as he tried to decide whether he was being made a fool of.

He looked murderously at Philip Chen, barking still another question at the interpreter. "The general asks your name and why is it the great Lai Tsin hong has a child at its head?"

Lysandra nodded gravely. "Tell the general I am Lysandra Lai Tsin. On his death my Honorable Grandfather, the Mandarin Lai Tsin, left me in sole charge of his empire. You have already met my comprador, Mr. Chen, and these men are my managers. Tell the general that I am the only person with the power to sign his papers, and that I take sole responsibility for my company and my employees."

The general listened to the interpreter; his glance was still uneasy, he realized that if this was a trick all of Hong Kong would soon know about it; he would be a laughingstock and his loss of face would be so bad as to possibly demand his death.

"Ask the girl where is the chop, the Great Seal of Lai Tsin?" he demanded.

Lysandra took the red sandlewood box inlaid with gold from the drawer and removed the carved jade seal. "Here it is," she said, laying it on the desk in front of her. "And now will you tell the general that I wish to see his papers at once."

Her blackwood throne was high and slippery and she wriggled forward, hoping he would not notice her feet failed to reach the floor. The general stared angrily at her; he ordered the interpreter to ask her who her mother was and where she lived? And when he heard the answers he knew she was who she claimed to be.

Burning at having to do so, he clicked his heels and bowed briefly to her before handing her the document, while the interpreter explained that she was turning over her company to be "managed" by His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Hirohito's emissaries. She must affix her signature and the chop and then her comprador and all her managers must also add their signatures to the document. The assets of the company, including this building and all the vessels currently at anchor in the harbor, would be annexed from this moment.

Lysandra turned again to the portrait of her grandfather. Then she looked back at the arrogant Japanese general and then at Uncle Philip and the other silent men and she knew she had no choice.

Using the Mandarin's own brushes she wrote her name in the exquisite Chinese characters he himself had taught her. The seal was applied and the deed was done.

Replacing the seal carefully in its box, she stared fiercely at the waiting Japanese. She pushed back her chair and stood up. "Tell your general he now has what he wants and these offices are his; we shall leave." Her glance collected Philip and the heads of all the departments as she led them from the Mandarin's office without another word.

The general stared after her as she strode past him, her blond head held high. Her black patent Mary Janes and white ankle socks peeked from beneath the richly embroidered silk robe and she clutched the box with the seal of the House of Lai Tsin firmly in her small hands.

For once in his career he had nothing to say and the interpreter looked nervously away, unwilling to witness such a deep loss of face lest the general take his anger out on him.

"She will not get away with this," the general muttered, shuffling the documents she had left on the desk, and his voice shook with anger as he repeated ominously, "She will not get away with this."

A short while later Philip Chen and each of the managers were arrested by the Kempeitei and taken to the Supreme Court building to be brutally interrogated and tortured, and a few weeks later they were imprisoned and put to work as laborers, rebuilding the runways at Kai Tak. Lysandra Lai Tsin was taken into custody and sent to Manchuria, where she was kept in confinement with other important prisoners. A few months later, she was spirited away by Chinese patriots, and after a long and hazardous journey through Russia, arrived in neutral Finland. The first person she saw as she stepped off the flimsy little aircraft was Buck and she fell into his arms, tears raining down her taut, tired little face. "Oh, Buck," was all she could say between the choking sobs as he held her close, his own tears falling onto her tangled, unkempt hair.

"It's okay, little one," he'd murmured. "You're safe now! Soon you'll be home with Mommy." And he thanked God he'd been able to keep his promise to Francie.

They flew secretly to London and from there to New York and a rapturous reunion with Francie. But Lysandra's adventures were kept secret for fear of reprisals on Philip Chen, until after the war when he was released and reunited with his family.

Outwardly, Lysandra's life returned to that of a normal schoolgirl, but the experience had left a permanent stain on her soul that made her feel different from her young friends. Francie tried to get her to talk about it, but somehow she just couldn't tell her mother and she kept the savage images of fear locked away in some secret compartment of her mind, never to be looked at again.

It was Annie who finally broke the barrier. Lysandra had gone after school to have tea with her in the penthouse, an event which she loved both for the feeling it gave her of floating above the city and the fabulous cakes made by Aysgarth's Swiss pastry chef—of which she was allowed to choose exactly two.

"Two cakes are enough for any growing girl who doesn't want to get fat," Annie said briskly, though she herself had grown substantially plumper. Pouring tea into wide blue china cups, she passed one to Lysandra and said, "Your mother's worried stiff about you, you know that, don't you?"

Lysandra stared blankly at her. "Mom's worried? About what? What have I done?"

"It's what you haven't done. You've scarcely mentioned the prison camp and what happened to you."

"I don't want to think about it," Lysandra exclaimed, staring at the chocolate eclair on her plate. It suddenly didn't look as appetizing as it had just minutes before.

Annie said gently, "You know, love, sometimes the only way to get rid of a bad memory is to talk about it, confront it. Then you can say 'The hell with it, I'm rid of you forever!' "

Lysandra stared doubtfully at her. Annie was her godmother, but she was also her friend. She talked straight and never pulled her punches, she wasn't afraid to tell her when she thought she was out of line and she was never stinting in her praise whenever she deserved it. Annie was always impartial and never judgmental and she had the knack of being able to make her see both sides of a question. She never provided the answer, but somehow she showed her how to find one, and now Lysandra recognized that what Annie was saying was true.

She stared silently at her, her blue eyes frightened. Annie had grown stouter and more solid as she grew older. Her hair was gray instead of shiny brown, but her big shrewd eyes were the same and they were filled with affection and pity.

"I just didn't want to upset Mommy and Buck more than I had already," Lysandra murmured, twisting her hands together agitatedly. "I know they blame themselves for letting me go, but it was me, Annie. I was the one who insisted it would be all right. Buck was going and I wanted so badly to see Uncle Philip and—and everything. I put everybody's lives in danger, the Chens', Buck's..."

"And your own," Annie said softly. Leaning forward, she took Lysandra's hot, tightly gripped hands, unlocking them and holding them firmly in her own cool, smooth ones. And suddenly the whole story spilled out about how scared she had really been under the facade of cockiness the day she had signed the Japanese document, of her terror when she had seen Irene and Robert disappear into the night and she had realized she might never see them again, of her sense of desolation alone in the Japanese prison and the despair of not knowing what had happened to Philip. When the Chinese came for her she thought they had come to execute her.

"Everybody thinks I was so brave," she murmured through her tears, "but I wasn't, Annie, I was scared all the time."

"Of course you were, sweetheart," Annie said comfortingly. "Only a stupid person wouldn't have been." She listened to Lysandra's tales of the daily brutality she had witnessed, the beatings and the screams that came in the night, of the scuttling of rats and the smell of vomit and latrines. And though Annie's face was impassive, inside she was hurting for the child.

"And all the time I thought about Mommy," Lysandra said. "I thought how worried she must be. I cried myself to sleep every night thinking of her and Buck, and of you, Annie. I pretended the dogs were curled on my bed they way they do at the ranch and that I could hear the rustle of the wind in the orchard and the whinny of the ponies in the stables. I tried to block all the bad things out and sometimes it worked and I dreamed I was home again."

"And now you
are
home, child, you really are. And that's what you must remember, not the bad stuff. War is evil and it was partly your own fault you were caught up in it, but your mother and Buck were also to blame for giving in to you. You've all suffered for it, but now it's over and you can pick yourself up and get on with real life. Just the way your mother had to when she was a girl, not that much older than you are now. And let me tell you something," she added fiercely, "don't ever say you were not brave, because you were, Lysandra Lai Tsin. Any good soldier will tell you that he is afraid when he confronts the enemy and goes into battle. And you were as brave as any good soldier."