Little Reunions Read online

  That night as she sat in her room in darkness, she suddenly heard Bebe call out to her from the stairs, then emerge with a candle in her hand. Bebe was wearing a gray makeshift nurse uniform. Her hair was casually tucked behind her ears.

  “See how nice I am to you! I walked such a long way to see you.”

  Bebe had been assigned to Wan Chai. It might be better there. Although it is an impoverished district, at least it’s a bustling area with people. It must be safer than holing up in a desolate place outside the city. But would that be where the Japanese army lands?

  “What’s it like where you are?”

  “Horrible,” mumbled Bebe casually.

  “How so?”

  “Things like wounded people with bones sticking out of their arms.”

  “Rose is also here.”

  “Yes, I saw her,” said Bebe.

  When Bebe asked, “Have you received any rations?” Julie replied with resignation, “Not yet. I haven’t eaten anything for two days.”

  “If I had known earlier I could have brought you something. Food isn’t a problem for us. I could bring you dinner.”

  “No need. I still have three dollars. I can buy some peanuts and biscuits at the store.”

  “No, don’t do that,” said Bebe, shaking her head. “It’s expensive and they won’t be any good. You don’t speak Cantonese so the price will be even higher. It’s not worth it. If you can really hold out for two more days—I know for sure that they will issue you rations. My source is absolutely reliable.”

  Bebe was shrewd as always: starving to death mattered little, but being taken advantage of, that was a catastrophe. Actually, Julie didn’t really want to go out to buy anything. There were only two general stores nearby on Caine Road. They were carved out of the rock face abutting the road, backing onto the mountain and facing the sea. The dingy run-down general stores resembled nothing more than shady rural trading posts. Just from a glance while sitting on a passing bus, Julie sensed the unwelcoming atmosphere and the likelihood they would cheat strangers.

  “What time is it? Do you still want to go back?”

  “I’ll stay here tonight, then. Do you have a blanket?”

  “No, I don’t. I’ll get some old magazines to cover you with.” Life magazine was large enough but, being glossy, all too easily slipped off and onto the ground.

  Bebe went upstairs to another room from which Julie then heard the sound of laughter and chatting. Soon Bebe returned carrying two military-issue blankets.

  Julie didn’t ask who provided the blankets to Bebe, and never did learn in which room Rose was staying.

  Having no sheets they had to sleep on the bare mattress. After blowing out the candle, they disrobed and got into bed. In the dark, under the coarse blankets, Julie’s leg grazed Bebe’s thigh. It was cool and firm. Julie was used to her own long legs and was slightly repulsed by Bebe’s legs, which reminded Julie, perhaps because she was so hungry, of the stewed frog legs she ate as a child in northern China. She finally felt relieved because ever since Rachel cautioned Julie against a lesbian romance with Bebe, Julie had been harboring a shadow of suspicion, as she indeed was very fond of Bebe’s olive-toned round face and those Indian eyes that looked like black suns. “Let me press your nose,” Julie would occasionally say to Bebe.

  “Why?” Bebe would respond, but move in closer nonetheless.

  Julie would press down lightly on Bebe’s nose and giggled when she felt an electric current shoot through her arm.

  Bebe would often poke down on Julie’s calf with a finger and exclaim in Mandarin, “That’s the flesh of a corpse,” referring to Julie’s bloodless, pale skin. Perhaps she, too, possessed something that repulsed Bebe.

  Bebe left early the next morning and Julie went to work. At lunchtime, the station chief’s wife brought him a meal consisting of several delicacies and a bowl of ham-and-egg fried rice. Julie felt waves of dizziness as she stood beside his feast. The boys on the roof manning the two machine guns took turns coming down, incessantly inquiring about news of the rations. The station chief said he had made numerous telephone calls to pursue the matter and would, of course, inform them as soon as he heard any news.

  Right up until the end of the shift there was still no news.

  The bathroom in the mission dormitory had just one shallow, gray cement tub. With water restrictions in full force during the siege, it took Julie a long time to fill a jug from the driblets trickling out of the faucet over the tub. She washed one sock at a time. Darkness was falling and soon she would not be able to see.

  “Julie!” cried Rose, standing in the bathroom doorway. “Mr. Andrews is dead! He was killed.”

  Julie’s initial response was a sudden paroxysm of possessiveness. Rose has been here less than six months and is studying medicine. What does she know about Mr. Andrews? Of course, Julie was startled by the news. She could only faintly utter, “How?”

  All the British teachers at the university were reserve soldiers, but Julie had not expected that they had already left for the front lines. She didn’t ask Rose the source of her information, assuming it was Rose’s brother.

  Rose quietly walked off.

  Julie continued to wash her socks. All of sudden she began to sob, but like the faucet over the tub, it took an age of shuddering and heaving to produce a paltry flow of pained tears. Now she understood how death ends everything. Julie had hoped to explain to Mr. Andrews one day what had happened to the money. But what was there to say? Now she sensed the chill of a cold draft escaping from behind a slowly closing stone door.

  Julie had never ever believed in God, but after days of continuous bombing, she understood why, as they say, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” She suddenly raised her head and said silently to the ceiling, “You’ve really been very kind to me. Halting the final exam was good enough; there was no need to kill the teacher.”

  •

  Early the next morning, a maid conveyed an invitation from Miss Donaldson. Julie went downstairs and saw all the boarders gathered in the dining room saying “Merry Christmas” to each other. Christmas Day, and she had completely forgotten about it.

  Near the ceiling was a small window fitted with an iron grille. Sunlight streamed through the interstices onto the dark green tablecloth. Miss Donaldson was treating the boarders to a breakfast of black tea with condensed milk, along with an assortment of biscuits and sweets. Julie kept a few biscuits in her hand to take with her to work. On the way, she bumped into a classmate who told her that Hong Kong had surrendered. Julie couldn’t believe it and went to the Air Raid Defense station anyway. It was completely deserted.

  An overseas Chinese doctor who taught in the medical school stepped forward to take charge. Students from other cities who had nowhere to go were moved into a male dormitory where they were fed communally. The day Julie moved in, Bebe had not yet returned from Wan Chai, but now she heard that someone else was looking for her.

  Julie went downstairs. The chairs in the large refectory were all stacked to one side. She had not thought it would be her classmate Yen Ming-sheng, who approached her with a smile. He was decked out in a natty Western suit and looked like a junior clerk during peacetime. Yen had once been in competition with Julie, but now that the university had closed, everyone went their own way. Is he here to say farewell to show he bears no grudges? She didn’t want people to see them together and think he was her boyfriend. Bebe had once been infuriated to hear people say something or other that put her in the same category as Yen Ming-sheng. Like universities in the United States and England, there was a practice of awarding the passing grade of a gentleman’s C to a poorly performing student with wealthy parents. Students did not aspire to overachievement.

  After some small talk, Julie asked, smiling, “Are you planning to leave?” Julie had her heart set on returning to Shanghai and assumed that others would also want to return to their homes. Yen Ming-sheng’s expression was rather ambiguous and Julie didn’t know why. At th
e time, she was unaware that within a day or two of the surrender, Sally had trekked over the hills with a large contingent heading toward the wartime capital of Chungking.

  Bebe had also been invited to join a group who said they were willing to take Julie as well. Julie felt a bit insulted when Bebe told her that. Obviously, they thought of her as nothing more than the string tied around a juicy leg of ham.

  “The bombing in Chungking is relentless,” Julie said to Bebe. “Don’t you want to go back with me to Shanghai? Your home is there. It’s always better to be at home.”

  Shanghailanders believed Shanghai, even under occupation, was the best place to be no matter what.

  Bebe was indifferent. Chan, the boy who often invited her out, had not left. He had given her a stick of butter he had come across. Bebe gave some to Julie to eat with rice, which was apparently a Persian custom. He also passed her a bottle of chicken-stock soy sauce. Like Bebe, Chan had a baby face but his skin was pale, and he was quite tall and thin. Julie once asked Bebe about Chan. Bebe said he was childish. “He thought he liked me,” Bebe concluded.

  Bebe probably preferred another overseas Chinese surnamed Kwong, who liked music. Kwong also occasionally asked Bebe out. He took lengthy walks by himself, sometimes all night long, when he was in a bad mood. He had already left with Sally’s group so Kwong was probably the one who had invited Bebe to travel together. Later he married Sally on the mainland.

  Julie did not look for a spot to sit down with Yen Ming-sheng and stood while continuing to chat. He didn’t mention Mr. Andrews dying in battle or anything at all about the war. Julie had not seen any of her classmates when she reported in at Happy Valley. The overseas Chinese students who came from afar to study humanities knew full well that Victoria University was weak in that area, but they had only come to muddle through a degree. Better versed in worldly ways, they would never risk the danger of volunteering at an Air Raid Defense station.

  “There’s a bonfire outside the registrar’s office,” said Yen Ming-sheng out of the blue. “They’re burning documents.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re destroying documents,” he muttered, “before the Japanese troops arrive.”

  “Oh, I see.” Somewhat at a loss, Julie stood beside the glass door, her arms wrapped around her, gazing out as though she could see the flames in the distance.

  “Do you want to go for a look?” Ming-sheng chuckled. “It’s a huge fire. Lots of people are there.”

  Julie smiled and replied in the negative.

  “The fire’s enormous,” he said. “Don’t you want to take a peek? I’ll go with you.”

  “You go, I won’t.”

  “All the documents are being burned, even student records, exam results, everything,” he said, then grinned like a cat.

  Now Julie finally saw through the purpose of Yen’s visit. The university did not issue examination results to students—results were only posted on notice boards behind glass that everyone crowded around to read. Julie had always felt embarrassed to linger in the throng. She usually squeezed her way out after a quick glance, which was enough to make an indelible impression. Now the exam records were being incinerated; it was as if her lifetime of achievements were cast into the wind, irrevocably lost.

  Ming-sheng again offered to accompany her to look at the fire. Only with difficulty was she able to send him on his way. She retreated upstairs. Suddenly she recalled a chilling moment in her childhood. Her heartbeat quickened when she realized that the person who had made heavily penciled lines through one of her watercolors was in fact her younger brother.

  After Bebe returned, news from the various first-aid stations continued to trickle in. Julie only heard of one incident of harassment that involved a fair-skinned, round-faced female overseas Chinese student. She was short and once had a bob haircut, like a young Japanese student, but now disguised herself as a boy, wearing a boy’s shirt and trousers, and a boy’s haircut. One day, a Japanese soldier approached her as she was sweeping the courtyard. She escaped indoors, ran upstairs, and stood by a window, indicating she would jump. The soldier didn’t pursue her. That could have been a scene straight out of Ivanhoe.

  Perhaps out of consideration for Hong Kong’s international profile, by the time the Japanese entered the Mid-Levels district, military discipline seemed to have improved. On the stage of the auditorium in University Hall, Japanese soldiers often plink-plonked one-handed on the piano. Once, two soldiers wandered into Julie and Bebe’s room. They sat on the beds and chatted with one another for a while, then left.

  One day, Julie heard there was hot water available in one of the professor’s houses to take a bath. All the residents had been packed off to a concentration camp, and she had no idea why hot water still streamed out of a faucet. She quickly grabbed soap and a towel and rushed over to the house, but the bathroom door was shut and someone was already running a bath. She couldn’t wander far in case others jumped the queue in front of her, so she went to look around the small library halfway up the stairs.

  A vast mess of whiteness covered the library floor, papers scattered everywhere. The house had been ransacked by the poor scavengers who usually gathered firewood around the Mid-Levels neighborhood. In earlier days, on weekends, Julie and Bebe used to chat while sitting on the iron railings by the side of the road, their legs hanging over the side, swinging freely. Fragrance from the small white flowers on the treetops, like little balls of pearl orchids, wafted by in waves. On the slopes below, they would occasionally see bamboo hats with three-inch pleated blue fabric skirts pop out from the mist. Those belonged to the women who gathered firewood. They ransacked the house.

  Julie’s English professor lived here. Looking through his bookcases, she found a copy of Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrated edition of Salomé and tore out every picture. She was determined to take them back to Shanghai to sustain her connection with Western culture.

  Julie waited a long time; the bathroom door was bolted from the inside and no one responded to her knocking. She had no idea if someone was washing clothes or soaking comfortably in a bathtub, asleep. The longer she waited the more she needed to relieve herself. She was afraid that she would end up waiting in vain if she ventured off, giving someone an opportunity to snatch a free slot at the bathroom away from her. Out of desperation, she closed the library door and squatted down. A sound like rain splashing on balls of scrunched up scraps and bundles of loose sheets of paper followed. She remembered when someone once broke into her family home. The burglar had left a pile of excrement behind, which she had heard was a common practice because it was reputed to bring good luck. As a thief, do I have to be villainous too?

  Miss Hsiang and Mr. Pi came to visit Julie, bringing a packet of dried bean-curd skin for her. She in turn implored them to ask on her behalf for any news of boat tickets.

  “We want to leave too,” said Miss Hsiang, nodding her head.

  Every once in a while, Julie had to trudge a long way to inquire in person because she could not reach them by phone. They no longer resided in the hotel and had moved to a rental property.

  Dr. Lee headed the student-relief effort and frequently accompanied Japanese officials on inspection tours. This Dr. Lee was a very short overseas Chinese from Malaya. He had moved into the suite of the former dormitory warden but did not bring his family with him. A group of students, all from his hometown, became his assistants. Among them was a voluptuous but fierce-looking girl who took a position akin to the wife of a bandit chieftain in a mountain lair.

  Every day the students lined up to receive a plate of soybeans mixed with canned beef, ladled out by two boys whose expressions grew angrier and angrier with time, as if they were forced to share their own food with the students. In fact, that was actually the true state of things: late at night a truck pulled up to the gate and took rice and canned goods to sell on the black market—goods that were issued from British government warehouses.

  “Audrey and Mr. Lee are going to
get married,” announced Bebe. “Just a simple civil ceremony, and then they’ll move into an allocated room in the dormitory.”

  Julie knew Bebe felt sorry for Audrey.

  Worse, the rubber plantation probably was no more, and Malaya also suffered under Japanese occupation.

  Rachel had written from Singapore—of course she didn’t mention Lloyd—but now Julie didn’t know if her mother was still there.

  She went with Bebe to the bank—a white building, recently built. Upon entering the dimly lit lobby a large pile of excrement that Japanese soldiers had deposited on the mosaic tiles greeted them. Behind the brass grille all the tellers were on duty. Someone manned each desk in the banking hall. The Eurasian closest to them furrowed his brow due to the stench in the air. Wide elastic bands around the arms of his shirt held his cuffs higher to facilitate his work—a fashionable look in the West in those days, but Julie felt it was a world away from what was happening around her.

  Thirteen dollars remained in Julie’s account and she withdrew it all. Bebe offered to lend her money to buy passage on a boat when a ticket opened up.

  “Leave two dollars here,” said Bebe, “otherwise the account will be closed.”

  “What do I need a bank account here for?”

  Bebe did not share Julie’s sense that the Last Judgment was approaching.

  A corpse was laid neatly on the footpath. Someone must have straightened out his arms and legs. His Chinese jacket and pants, as well as his shoes, were as clean as could be. He had probably been killed by a stray bullet. The battle had ended days ago and he was still there.

  “Don’t look!” Bebe quickly shouted. Julie turned her head and looked away.

  A journey to the city had to include a little fabric shopping. Julie had only recently discovered Cantonese homespun fabric, with its dazzling green leaves and hot pink flowers highlighted with stippled shadows. You would be more likely to see similar patterns in Japan, but nowhere else in China. Julie thought the pattern probably had once existed in China but the technique was somehow lost.