The Fan Tan Players, page 27
The small peninsula where the internees resided was called Chek Chue. The British had named it Stanley after Lord Stanley, and it was, for a brief period in 1842, the administrative centre of Hong Kong. It sat on the southern fringes of the colony and had once been a haunt for Chinese bandits. The fishing village sat in a little gully with a steep funnel-shaped ridge on one side and the Maryknoll Mission on the other. The internment camp was made up from the dormitory bungalows of St. Stephens School and the outhouses of the former colonial gaol. It occupied an area approximately 1100 yards long and as broad as 650 yards across at some points. There were tall wire fences stretching to the throat of the bay and sentry boxes, manned by Sikhs and Formosans, along the perimeter. Yellow dust hung over it on most mornings like a cloud of gnats, raised by the troops of the 230th Regiment attached to the Japanese garrison a quarter mile to the south on Ma Kok Hill.
Stepney was still looking out through the window when he exclaimed, ‘‘Fuck a duck. Look who’s just stepped out from between the prison gates.’’ Friendly and Hoarde leaned forward and stooped to get a better view. They saw the man with the bandaged face blinking at the sharp midday sun, dazzled by the wind, the light, the glare coming off the sea. He’d been in solitary confinement for thirteen days. His pale red hair looked disheveled and his starved chest a little frailer. ‘‘I can’t believe he’s still bloodeh alive,’’ said Stepney.
‘‘Tough as buggery, that Sutherland,’’ Hoarde said. ‘‘Tough as fucking buggery.’’
2
It was hot. Not a whisper of wind. Sunshine washed over Iain’s profile, highlighting the deep splits of skin near his eyes, the gauntness of his cheeks, the dark florid crusts of coagulated blood. In front of him there was a mirror and an earthenware bowl containing freshly drawn water. He was in the small buttery that the internees had transformed into a washroom. The mirror, crazed and spotted, hung from the eaves, while the earthenware bowl balanced on wooden pilings salvaged from the sea. Iain soaked a piece of rag in the water, looked at himself, then dabbed his face with it. Once sinewy and athletic, his features now appeared stretched and withered. At the age of forty-six his rich red mane was turning white. It was the pale hair of an arctic fox. Forty-six! He couldn’t believe he was that old. Would he see forty-seven, he wondered? He flexed his left shoulder. There was tenderness there, under the skin. Was that rheumatism he felt in the joint? Perhaps it was tendonitis affecting the ball-and-socket arrangement, some inflammation of the soft tissue by the clavicle. He winced as he flexed it once more.
His hand touched the scrawny rind of skin by his ribs. He hung back in startled surprise, incredulous that so much weight could fall off of him in two weeks. He raised his hands to the level of his lips. In the cracked mirror he saw how slowly his damaged face was healing, bold bruises over a terracotta complexion. There were snaking scars where the glass splinters had entered his mouth, white ulcers within; his gums were still bleeding, but his tongue was intact. He brought his hands down from his chin. His eyes, known for their sharpness, were sunless. His dazed senses heard noises around him, registered little. His arms felt as slack as tubular seaweed, his back stiff like a turtle shell. But no matter how bad he felt or how miserable he looked, he worried about Nadia more. If only he could see her. He’d received news from her that she and the family were surviving under deteriorating conditions in Macao, but that the Japanese had left Macao to its own devices. Yet, still, he couldn’t help but worry.
Iain broke eye contact with the wasted man in the mirror. Behind him, in the receding shadows, he saw Friendly and Stepney squatting on their haunches, picking weevils out from a tiny sack of rice and crushing them between their fingers. Mr. Yorkie hopped onto Stepney’s arm and clung to the black hair, his long tail trailing in the rice.
Food had become foremost in his thoughts now. Iain was housed with sixty others in a single building that used to be the prison mess hall. It was, he thought, ironic that there wasn’t ever anything to eat in the former canteen. The two meals the internees were given, at noon and at 5 p.m., were never near adequate. Twice a day the brass bells rang and the endless crocodile queues formed, hundreds of mouths chewing on air even before the food hit their plates. They’d grown used to the smell of boiled rice, brown gruel that tasted of dirt, the sound of salvaged eggshells being ground down for calcium, the swarms of flies.
Hunger wound itself round his stomach like a constrictor, ever tightening. He hadn’t taken in solids for over eight days and suddenly his head floated, as lightly as a cork on water. Beriberi, dysentery, suppurating sores, and other flesh infections were dragging him under. He thought about hot bowls of spiced noodle soup, buying laap cheong faan from street vendors on the Rua da Republica, plates and plates of fried eggs and chorizos piled high with crispy buttered toast, sipping a cold beer at sundown whilst gazing out from a bar on the Praya Grande – how he missed the sleepy rhythms of Macao and the laughter of Nadia and her family and the kindness of Izabel and Mrs. Lo.
Iain stretched his arms over his head, executing a fluid, supple bend of the elbows. He brought his arms down and looked at his hands. His fingernails had stopped growing months ago. He stared down at his bare legs – his thighs were still thicker than his knees. With the economic blockade biting, the flour ration had stopped. Rice was now only 3 ounces per meal, potatoes 7 ounces. Meat had ceased completely, but they still received a forkful of fish twice a week, and one egg every ninth day. Neutrals were allowed to send internees parcels once a fortnight, but little of the provisions ever got further than the Sikh guards.
He did weekly health checks on himself – monitoring the increasing limpness of his limbs, testing his reflexes with a rubber ball, tracking the inflammations on his legs, the sharpness of his ribs and wristbones. And he’d long stopped scraping calendars on the walls, talked less and less about the future, and possible repatriation. Instead, he concerned himself with the here and now – the small victories over the trials of camp life. The growing of cabbages, potatoes, beets, the pilfering of goods from the Japanese garrison’s ration store, the continued concealment of the radio and courier links, and the resulting weekly contact with the British Army Aid Group – BAAG – in Waichow, Free China. These became his bedrocks, the things he could set apart and control in a place of forever shifting dangers.
Iain looked once more at the mirror. Out of the tail of his eyes, in its reflection, he glimpsed a small figure behind his own face, a faint thread of black shadow. He experienced a sudden sense of foreboding.
‘‘You are engaging in perilous pastimes. Very dangerous.’’
The voice, speaking in abbreviated sentences, cut into Iain’s fatigued thoughts like a shark slicing through shallow waters. It brought him back with a jolt. He paused, steeled himself, and recognized at once who it was. He dropped his gaze and shivered, feeling an almost overwhelming impulse to flee.
He turned to see Sergeant-Major Hamuri at the door with Hoarde by his side. Hamuri’s uniform, with the chrysanthemum flower emblem of the Gendarmerie embellished on its collar, was crisp and recently pressed. Iain and his compatriots saluted then bowed to the waist. Despite the heat, the Sergeant-Major wore his standard black field boots, studded with nails. Waddling like a constipated duck, he entered the room, looking eager for a skirmish.
Two Japanese sentries followed. One of them shouted, ‘‘Atenshon!’’ and stood rigidly to one side. The other turned and slapped the still genuflecting Friendly across the cheek, kicking him as he fell.
‘‘Nononono,’’ Friendly yelped, clasping his hands over his testicles, imploring them, ‘‘Stop, please stop.’’ Mr. Yorkie jumped from Stepney’s shoulder and hid in a hole in the wall.
‘‘Ken’aku. Very perilous.’’ Hamuri repeated. He spoke in English but broke into Japanese from time to time. ‘‘Radios are very unacceptable things to be hiding.’’ He had a sculpted, mannequin-like appearance. There were no lines at all on his face or forehead. He was looking at Friendly and Stepney. The third man, Hoarde, had retreated to the far end of the room. ‘‘Don’t you agree?’’ They were silent for a moment. Friendly began nodding vigorously. Stepney nodded even more vigorously. ‘‘I am aware of a radio being used in these quarters. Is this information true?’’ he asked.
His question met with silence again. He frowned, lit a cigarette, sucked at it greedily and turned to glare at Iain with frenzied anger.
‘‘IS IT TRUE?’’ he shouted. The words sank into Iain like a skean-dhu.
‘‘No,’’ Friendly and Stepney answered in unison. They drew away from him. Hoarde continued to watch the proceedings silently.
The Sergeant-Major kept his gaze on Iain. ‘‘You enjoyed your stay in the kangoku?’’
‘‘I had a splendid time.’’
‘‘I gather that my colleague forgot to question you about a radio.’’ He sucked his teeth. ‘‘We can be very absent-minded. Tell me, have you been using a wireless?’’
Iain made a face and shrugged.
‘‘Nisemono! Perhaps you should spend another fortnight in the cells,’’ he said in a threatening voice.
Iain ignored Hamuri’s aggressive tone. Instead, he treated the Japanese officer casually, like he would a visitor stopping by to share in a pot of tea or a salesman offering a discounted set of encyclopedias. ‘‘No need to get all uppity, Hamuri. Yes, it’s true,’’ said Iain. ‘‘We had a radio. Up until last month, that is. When we heard that our former camp superintendent, Yamashita-san, was searching for one, we destroyed it with a hammer and threw the bits into the sea, over the fence near the Indian Quarters.’’
Hamuri seemed to hesitate and steady himself. The answer had caught him off-guard. He was expecting a flat denial. An expression of astonished doubt appeared in his eyes. He looked over at Hoarde then back at Iain. ‘‘Destroy?’’ he said, spluttering. ‘‘Why you destroy?’’
‘‘Because we would have been executed if you discovered it. Look, Hamuri, I’ve just spent two weeks getting my mouth torn open by you clowns, I don’t fancy getting my head lopped off too. I’ve got enough to worry about here, what with starvation and unremitting boredom on my doorstep.’’ Iain padded over to the window where a shirt was dangling on a hanger. He patted the breast pocket of the shirt and removed an empty carton of Lucky Strikes, crumpling it in his fist. ‘‘Listen, can I scrounge a cigarette, Hamuri, I’ve flat run out.’’
The Sergeant-Major stared hard at Iain, examining him. A penetrating look that was both smiling and critical at the same time crossed his face. ‘‘The splinter that sticks up from the wood will be shorn away,’’ he said, his eyes bulging with resentment. ‘‘Search everything! Now!’’ he shrieked at the sentries, before sliding his black boots out the room.
When the guards eventually left, having found neither wireless nor any other contraband Iain said, ‘‘How the hell did they learn about the radio?’’
Everyone shrugged.
‘‘Good thing they didn’t think about searching the attic.’’
‘‘When did you move it to the attic?’’ asked Hoarde, his eyes sly.
‘‘Last night,’’ said Iain. ‘‘I found a small crawl space under the floorboards.’’ He bent down and retrieved Hamuri’s cigarette, giving the stub a few reviving puffs, smoking it down until it burned his fingertips. Iain looked at Hoarde. ‘‘You told them about the radio, didn’t you? You led them here.’’
Hoarde shook his head. ‘‘What makes you say a thing like that?’’ His expression grew watchful.
‘‘You could have gotten us killed. What did they promise you, more food and cigarettes?’’
Hoarde froze. ‘‘I don’t know what you mean,’’ he mewled, nostrils splaying atop of his damp beard.
‘‘You’ll do anything to get ahead,’’ Iain leaned his face into Hoarde. ‘‘Even betray your own people.’’
They squared up to each other.
‘‘Get out!’’ said Iain.
‘‘You’d best hop it,’’ echoed Stepney.
Hoarde gave the air a sniff; he tilted his head to the left then spat onto the floor. They watched him leave. When he was out of earshot, Friendly said, ‘‘That bloody Hoarde. Ever since his wife died last Christmas, he’s not been the same.’’
‘‘Why’d you tell him it was in the crawl space?’’ asked Stepney. ‘‘He’ll go running to Hamuri now.’’
‘‘Because it’s not in the crawl space, is it?’’ said Iain. ‘‘I moved the radio this morning. It’s in D Block now, hidden under the floorboards of the shit-house.’’
‘‘Crafty,’’ said Stepney, stroking Mr. Yorkie’s head.
‘‘We bury the bloody thing tonight, though,’’ said Iain. ‘‘Contact BAAG and tell them the wireless will be out of use for a month, then dismantle it, wrap the parts in blankets and bury it behind the old block of the Indian quarters. The soil’s softer by the old block and won’t look like it’s been disturbed. Do it just after roll call. Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone, especially Hoarde. Tomorrow the new camp commandant arrives. He may not be as lenient as Yamashita was.’’
Both Friendly and Stepney agreed.
Iain gave a tight, sour smile then walked over to sit on his bed, which was nothing more than a plank of wood resting on bricks. He was worried about Hoarde, knew he’d try to betray them again. Iain had to watch his step now. A bedbug scuttled across the mattress. Iain caught it and crushed it between his fingers, heard its abdomen pop. He held it up to his nostrils and smelled the perfume of its blood – a sour reek of coconuts and rusted nails. His hand dropped to his side.
The accumulated exhaustion of days without proper sleep overcame him. His eyes looked down and caught the tips of his bony fingers. He couldn’t help but stare at the third finger of his left hand and remembered the day he was forced to hand in his wedding ring and other jewellery over to the Japanese. A painful despair stung him. His whole body bent forward and he held his head in his hands. He wanted so much to be with Nadia, to hold her close. He tried to picture her face, but his tired eyes kept closing. Where was Nadia now, he wondered. Where?
3
The late-afternoon sun danced on the water, sparkling like jadeite charms, angling in, still hot. The sea was no longer rising. The waves had softened. In the distance, to the east, dozens of fishing junks broke the horizon, the peaks of their ribbed sails snapping like hungry barracuda at the flaring sun. To the west, unstirred by the robust wind, a nest of orange-fringed clouds reddened with the twilight.
Under the cover of a withering sky, the junk entered Hong Kong waters from the south, skirting the Po Toi Islands. The sail hung, as it always did, on the starboard side of the mast. Nadia watched the land spread out before her, its colours contrasting against the blue of the sea. She saw mountainous terrain, bamboo forests, shanty towns caked to the lower valleys like ant nests, barren rock peaks and thin waterfalls that gleamed like streaks of bone. The junk entered a narrow stretch of channel. This must be the East Lamma Strait, Nadia said to herself, her heart beginning to thump. It was the first point marked on her map, beyond it, marked with a red circle, was the place she was to be dropped off – Aberdeen Bay. She folded the map carefully along the crease lines and slipped it within the lining of her tunic.
There were fewer buildings on this side of the territory, only a sprinkling of European-style houses, sword-blades of white that stood out against the green. Instead, she saw the dense shade of hills, the tropical foliage, the crowded settlement of sampan communities with their own floating boutiques and restaurants. Here the water gypsies lived, the tang-kah. The stern of their junks were the working and living quarters of their homes. Dressed in pajamas, the boatgirls did their house chores, grew vegetables in tubs of soil, bred chickens and pigs under the mizzens of their crafts.
Nadia was being smuggled into Hong Kong by the water people known as the Hoklo, sea gypsies who specialized in opium running and piracy. They had been paid a handsome sum for the privilege of getting her out of neutral Macao and into occupied Hong Kong. Only the Hoklo knew how to avoid the mines that plagued the waterways. They agreed on a delivery date – April 30th, the day following the Emperor’s birthday, in the hope that the Japanese patrol boat captains would be nursing hangovers, or better still, be off-duty.
The sun sank into the horizon. Nadia stood under the foremast in the sun-dappled shadows, tight against the bow, invisible against the blackened scoop of deck. The floor under her feet was slick with ocean spray. She gripped the scummy ropes of the foremast as if her life depended on it. She wore a broad-brimmed straw hat and the dark, loose trousers of a fisherman made from coarse cloth. Her collarless tunic was fastened down the sides and a length of sash, like a Japanese obi, had been wrapped round her chest. Using hooks and eyes, she’d pulled it tight to flatten her breasts. She touched her compressed bosom fleetingly, nudging first the left breast, then the right, just to see if they were still there. Moments later, her ringless hands went to the back of her neck. Her elbow-length hair had been cropped short at the nape to resemble a boy; as short as it had been when she was in her late twenties; the feeling of bareness felt alien to her, yet comfortingly familiar. Using fabric scissors, she’d cut away the braid which she had been growing for six years, finding the sensation strangely liberating, as though she were Joan of Arc about to enter the battlefield.
Meanwhile, with great deftness, the Hoklo began to haul in their trawling nets, the drag of the trawl bridle showing the fishermen how good the catch was. Because of the mines their fishing was restricted to the six-mile horshoe between the twin Lamma Channels. ‘‘Yut, yee, saam!’’ they crowed in unison, arms straining, ‘‘Yut, yee, samm!’’ Within minutes the fishing holds were alive with pomfret, flowery grouper and humphead wrasse.
