China to Me

by Emily Hahn

  “Oh, good Lord,” I groaned, “actually, I wish there would be a repatriation. They’re bound to take him away someday, now that the Americans are bombing us; they won’t keep any prisoners here to escape back to the Allied lines.” There, I had faced it at last. I ran down to the kitchen and talked it over with Ah King. Even Ah King thought that if by any chance a repatriation took place — well …

  Upstairs I went again, to look at Carola in the nursery.

  “You’ve had ice cream three times in your whole life,” I said. “How would you like an ice-cream soda every day — twice a day? And enough eggs, and fresh milk? And a doctor when you’re sick? And no bombs? And a grandmother?” Carola, who spoke no English, stared at me, and I chattered on. “Do you think there’s still a New York, Carola, with drugstores? Do you think any of my family are still alive?”

  “Tang-kuo,” said Carola, which meant that she wanted a piece of candy.

  Chapter 59

  Except for the uncertainty that one would find anybody at all left in the camps, the parcel-bringing had become fairly routine. We brought fresh fruit when fresh fruit was allowed and we wailed when it wasn’t, and carried our scorned offerings back home to eat there. We waited in tense hope when it was rumored that we could bring lard or margarine; for many anxious months nothing like that was permitted, as somebody smuggled radio parts into Stanley buried in lard, and the built-up radio was finally discovered, and twenty people were implicated and handed over to the gendarmes.

  Any woman who really went in for parcel duty had her day’s work cut out for her. Monday was Argyle, Tuesday was Stanley, Thursday was Bowen Road, and Saturday was Shamsuipo. Each parcel day meant that more than half the daylight hours were taken up with the mechanics of getting there and back. The other mornings and the afternoons were insufficient for the necessary marketing, preparing of the parcels, and finding the necessary sacks or boxes to send them in. Transportation grew less and less, we walked everywhere, and the distances in Kowloon are long.

  Added to this was the anxious business of getting food into the gendarmerie for Selwyn. A dozen women were eager to help, though it was dangerous to show too much of an interest in the prisoner, and it was Constance who seized the coveted honor of carrying the food to the gendarmes’ desk every week. We all took a hand in supplying the food, though we suspected he got very little of it. It was much easier to send things to Hilda and Mary. Hattori did all he could to alleviate Hilda’s lot. Although he was strict about forbidding our communication, he did everything else that he could to help.

  There were clashes, however, between Hattori and the civilian camp, and I was very much worried for a while. Although the Foreign Affairs chief had come to Hong Kong full of the milk of human kindness, he was in a King Cophetua mood rather than the humble state of mind that one has learned to associate with Christ’s sort of charity. He expected the Stanley prisoners to fall on their knees to him in a passion of gratitude. Instead, in truly British fashion they took his favors with offhand thanks and went right on demanding more. They didn’t think he was dispensing favors; they thought he was doing his duty, however belatedly, and they were willing to point out to him wherein he was still falling short. That didn’t go down well at all with Mr. Hattori. Often he came to see me when he had dined next door at the super-geisha house, and he was usually a little drunk and very much wrought up over the latest “impertinent demand” from that troublesome community at Stanley.

  “Letters, letters, letters! Letters every day, and in English! Do they think I have time, your precious Hilda and Lady Grayburn and that ex-Colonial Secretary, to read long English letters every day, and what is more, to answer them? I’ll show them. I’ll write a long letter in Japanese and send it out tomorrow. I’ll quit this job. I’ll hand them over to the gendarmes, and then see if they appreciate what I have been trying to do. … Those British, I’ll — ”

  “Shhhhhh,” I said, anxiously fluttering around. “Now listen. You know what the British are like. You understand them; you’re the only man in Japan who really understands the British.”

  “Yes, and that is why I made the sacrifice and took this dreadful job, but nobody appreciates me, nobody — ”

  “Shhhhh. Of course people appreciate you. But you know the British. It isn’t arrogance, it’s just their way. They lack imagination. They — ”

  “And what is more, they refuse to realize that there is a war, and that Hong Kong has been captured by the Japanese, and that they are no longer the government. Do you know what that ex-Colonial Secretary said today in his long letter? ‘In my capacity as the highest official of the Colony,’ he said. His capacity? They are impossible, those British.”

  After blowing off steam he usually felt better, and Stanley was safe again from the gendarmes until he got another batch of letters. We allowed the vexatious question of his duty to Boxer to slip into the background, where it remained for as long as I could keep it there. In the meantime I gave him another problem, which kept him busy and unhappy for quite a long time.

  My little blackmailing friend Tse Liang had come onto the scene again. His name began cropping up every day. After the Grayburn case was closed and Sir Vandeleur was in prison, Tse was transferred to Kowloon duty with his patron gendarme, Nakajima.

  Then Maria’s Portuguese friends began talking about Tse a lot. He had begun arresting a few of their men, always backed up by Nakajima. In oriental or Chicago style the families of these men paid heavily and got their prisoners out again, but there were two exceptions, people that Tse had old scores against. They remained in jail, hidden away somewhere, and Tse rambled about their houses, tried to seduce their women, and extorted as much of their money as the traffic would bear.

  It’s a long story and I can’t tell all the details, but I dug some of the business out, turned it over to Hattori, and on the grounds that Portuguese were the responsibility of the Foreign Affairs Department I bludgeoned the poor guy into doing something about it. He didn’t like to. It meant stepping on the gendarme toes, and although he always insisted he wasn’t afraid of the gendarmes, of course he was. Protesting to the last, and always telling me that he would drop it like a hot nail if my name ever came up, he went to bat for the Portuguese. There was a terrible stink. Everybody got into trouble — everybody, that is to say, but me. Hattori was stanch and courageous and he won his point at last. Tse ran away, Nakajima was demoted and sweated a bit (which is all the punishment you could expect for a gendarme), the chief of the Kowloon gendarmerie lost face, and Tse’s little private extortion prison was found and turned out and cleaned up and closed. Hattori probably gained a couple of bitter enemies, but anyway, I can now report that one Japanese in Hong Kong really is capable of honest government. Afterward he said to me, “All right for this time, but never again. Never again, do you hear me? Why did you do it anyway? Why don’t you mind your own business?”

  “I really don’t know,” I said, honestly perplexed by my behavior. “I guess it must be the American reformer in me.”

  “I hope that repatriation steamer comes soon,” he said. “British or American, whichever goes first, you are going to be on it.”

  Sophie came rushing and tumbling into the house with another rumor. It was not quite such a distressing one this time, but it was bad enough. The officers were going to be sent away. Anyway, a lot of them were going. She couldn’t tell me how she knew, but she knew. No, it wasn’t that she herself knew where the news came from; she didn’t. But all the women in town were talking about it.

  They were, too. So many of them were talking that I was convinced at last. I didn’t get a fever this time, but I did run around like a decapitated chicken, and the final goal of my wanderings was the august house of the honorable chief of staff to the Governor of Hong Kong, the General Suginami. Yvonne, Carola, Ah Yuk, and I waited on him one afternoon on a special mission. The general was indulging in his favorite sport of archery, out on the lawn.

  We stood there and watched
him shooting bulls’-eyes, and after a while he rolled down his sleeves and took us in for coffee. It was all formal, as usual, and a little bit uncomfortable. He showed us his latest paintings and photographs and fans and things. Finally I came around to the reason for the visit.

  “I’ve heard,” I said, “that the British officers, prisoners of war, are being sent away. Naturally that makes me feel worried about Boxer. Is it true?”

  I would never have come on such a crackbrained journey if Hattori hadn’t encouraged it. Now I understood why; he had wanted the general to hear it for himself. The general, I must say, took it big. I had really startled the chief of staff, he almost dropped his coffee.

  “What? Why — uh — no, Miss Hahn, no. You haven’t heard it correctly. Officers above the rank of colonel, and including the rank of colonel, are going this time. Not Boxer.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much, General.”

  We finished our coffee. I sent Carola home, now that the softening-up process was completed, and Yvonne and I stayed to dinner. We talked about the war.

  “It will not be so long now,” he avowed. “I used to think this war would take ten years, but now, what with the German collapse, it will be over quicker than we figured on. About two years, dear ladies, two years.”

  Neither of us was tactless enough to ask him in whose favor the war would end. Anyway, I knew already from Hattori what the big bugs were counting on: an arranged peace with America. America, the big, rich, lazy country, the nation that was dilettante in her wars because she could so well afford it, would yawn when Germany had been swallowed, would turn over in her hammock and look to the East and say, “What’s that making a noise over there in the Pacific? Oh, Japan? Oh hell, let’s stop this silly war. … Java? Hong Kong? Singapore? Oh, let ‘em have it. Why argue?”

  Next day I received the usual summons from Hattori. “We do not wish to frighten you,” he began gently. “The general especially said that you are not to be frightened. But where on earth did you hear about the departure of those officers? Try to think. You see, Mickey …” He paused and cleared his throat apologetically. “That was supposed,” he said, “to be a military secret.”

  “But honestly, Mr. Hattori, I couldn’t tell you. We all know. Everybody in town knows. I couldn’t possibly trace it. … Oh, I think maybe I could guess. It just might be Colonel Tokunaga. … But if I were you I wouldn’t say that to the general.”

  “No,” he agreed, “that wouldn’t do. Suppose we simply forget it.”

  “You dined last night,” said Hattori accusingly, “with officers. Army officers. I heard about it at the restaurant.”

  “Why, yes. It was a nice party.” I was pleased about that party for a special reason. “It was Charles’s own jailers,” I said triumphantly. “The men who are stationed there at headquarters at Argyle Street. One of them has turned out to be a darling; of course he won’t carry messages to Charles or anything like that, but he does like him a lot and he tells me Charles is awfully popular among the prisoners. And he’s allowed word to go through to Charles, officially, that the divorce is going along smoothly. His friend the captain is nice too. They are both old friends of Needa.”

  Hattori had slowly turned to ice. “You are not to dine with Army men,” he said. “Can’t you see for yourself what an impression that makes? People will talk. The gendarmes will grow suspicious. I will be questioned. I — how can you be so reckless?”

  “But it was all right, I tell you. It was a polite party. I admit I drank too much, but that was only because I used beer for a chaser.”

  “Do not do this ever again,” said Hattori.

  I went home feeling less pleased with myself than usual. I had a headache anyway. That evening, strolling down the hill, I met Yvonne on her way up.

  “I just missed the last bus,” she said, “but I have a message for Mr. Hattori and so I’m walking up with it. Where are you going so late?”

  “To dinner in town,” I said. “Come along?”

  “No, thanks; the family’s waiting at home for me.”

  I went on down the hill, amiably humming. We had dinner in Paul’s flat on top of the bank, with his friend Wong who lived with him, and then I went home in the luxury of a sedan chair. Walking through the streets after dark was still asking for trouble.

  Next morning Helen Ho came in early to see me. “I have a message,” she said, “from Mr. Hattori, through Yvonne. Yvonne is terribly upset. It seems Mr. Hattori is angry with you. He says you are to stop going out at all. You must stay at home. You can only go shopping to buy things for Charles, and over to Argyle to hand your parcels in, and for the rest of the time you must stay home, or he can’t be responsible for the consequences. He says if you disobey he will have no alternative but to intern you. Oh, Mickey, please be careful. I couldn’t bear it if — ”

  I fumed and stewed all day. The minute Yvonne came in that evening I seized on her. “Don’t say anything,” I said. “Is Hattori at home?”

  “Yes, I think he is. I — ”

  “You come with me,” I said. “I want to see him.”

  I ran most of the way, Yvonne at my side talking in disjointed sentences. She hadn’t meant any harm. She had naturally mentioned to Hattori that she had met me, and he had said, “Where was Mickey going?” and she told him, not thinking it would make any trouble. After all, Paul was a neutral, and …

  I burst into Hattori’s living room. He was sitting there peacefully with a large glass of whisky and soda in his hand. He was politely surprised to see us and expressed his pleasure formally at the unexpected visit.

  “Yvonne,” I said, “would you mind going into the bathroom for a minute?”

  She scuttled out. “And just why are you giving orders to my secretary?” asked Hattori.

  “Just why did you send me those orders by your secretary?” I retorted.

  “I was questioned today,” said Hattori, “by the gendarmes. About you. You have disobeyed me; you have gone out again to dinner. You were seen in a public restaurant with this Frenchman. This has gone too far. You would not believe me — ”

  “I dined,” I said, “in the Frenchman’s own flat. I was not seen in a public restaurant because I wasn’t in a public restaurant. Somebody is lying. It is probably the gendarme, but it could also be you. Well now, listen. I agree that this has gone far enough. I thank you for all your extraordinarily kind protection. I can’t accept it any longer; it puts you in too much danger. There are limits to your duty to Boxer. I insist that you intern me, right now.”

  Mr. Hattori waited a minute. Then he said, “You are very noble.”

  “I owe you too much,” I said firmly.

  He waited another minute. Then he stood up and walked around. His face was red and emotional. “No,” he said dramatically. “No. I cannot do that to Boxer. I cannot put you into Stanley, for your own sake and his. I would be failing in my duty. I refuse to intern you,” said Mr. Hattori. “And since you seem to be so upset about my latest order, I rescind it. You need not stay at home. … Would you mind calling my secretary back now?”

  The repatriation steamer became an actual, concrete thing. It was coming; it would be leaving Japan on the first of September. This was to be the American boat; an English one would follow, with Hilda and perhaps even Selwyn. (It never did.)

  “So you will be leaving us,” said Mr. Hattori.

  “It really begins to look like it, Mr. Hattori.”

  “Are you sorry?” he asked.

  “No. Charles will go away soon anyway. For the first time in her life I can look Carola in the face. It will be a great relief.”

  “You’re telling me,” said Hattori.

  Chapter 60

  There were lots of things to be seen to. I must sell everything and get money to give away, to Ah King and Ah Yuk, and above all to the women who had promised to go on supplying Charles with food. I must persuade the Army to allow Charles to give me documents for Carola, about her legal sta
tus. I must argue with the people who didn’t think I should go away.

  “Craziest thing I ever heard,” said Needa bitterly. “Don’t you know that America is near collapse? They haven’t had any coal in New York for two years, and they’re far worse off for food in the States than we are. It’s criminal, taking that kid back to a broken-down country like America. Hong Kong is the best place to be; stay in Hong Kong.”

  “Now I wonder,” I said, “how much you really believe of all that?”

  “Anyway, it’s the best place for you,” he insisted. “Why, those Yanks will put you in jail for fraternizing with the enemy. They’ll raise hell because you wouldn’t come home in the first boat.”

  “But Charles is being sent away soon, I’m sure. Twenty officers went away this last week. What would I do with myself here?”

  “Oh, Charles.” Needa had forgotten Charles. “But he hasn’t any claim on you, Mickey, not a real claim. You’re an Asiatic at heart. Let me be responsible for the kid. She’s such a swell kid. I promise that kid won’t want for anything. As for the war, it’ll be a compromise peace. America’s worn out; she won’t carry on. We’ll be all right; you’ll see. These air raids. are her dying gasp.”

  “Needa, you don’t really hate America, you know.”

  “No,” he admitted, “I don’t. I wish this would all clear itself up.”

  The general asked me to a farewell dinner with Yvonne. “Tell America,” he said, “that there’s no reason we should fight. No reason at all.”

  “Two years more, did you say, General?”

  “Perhaps not quite two years,” he said.

  There were so many things to do that we were glad when the inevitable postponement came along. For one thing, I had not yet persuaded the Japanese to let me say good-by to Charles. It was strictly forbidden, as Hattori explained, and all other women had been turned down when-they made similar requests.