“Sometimes there are things more important than survival.” It sounds self-important but he cannot help himself. He wants to warn her, not for himself but for her own sake. And to defend a horror like Dominick! She was blinded by misguided loyalty.
“Tell that to someone who’s about to go under the guillotine,” she retorts hotly. “Tell that to someone who is about to get shot. I’m sure all they’re thinking about is how to get out of the situation. I’m sure survival is quite important to them at that moment. You might even say, the only thing. You might have the luxury of pondering the dignity of the soul, but… never mind.” She stops. “I can’t explain it to you, or justify to you, or anything, so what’s the point?”
“I’m sorry you feel like you have to justify yourself to me.”
She waves her hands above her slowly, like small satellites.
“This night feels like forever. I feel like Scheherazade trying to prolong the night.”
“Do you think I’m going to kill you come morning?”
“Everything changes when the light comes, doesn’t it?”
Later, he will wonder what exactly she meant.
They go to sleep, or their approximations of it, each careful not to disturb the other.
In the morning, over coffee, she offers her feet to him to be rubbed.
“Everything seems better in the morning, don’t you think?” Her implicit peace offering. She pours cream into her cup and spills some into the saucer. Her hands are shaking a little.
“Mon amour,” she begins.
“Yes?”
“Une question pour toi.”
“Yes?”
“The good general is interested in me for many reasons,” she begins. “One of which is that I’m rather pretty. But, as you know, Hong Kong is filled with pretty women, and so his interest in me has lasted the time it has because he is also very interested in assuring his future while he’s here. An ambitious man, Otsubo. And he thinks I should be able to help him. And being a man of large appetite, he is not content with the occasional wristwatch and woman’s trinket-his sights are set much higher. He’d take land if his government would let him, but it won’t, and he’s getting rather frustrated.” She pauses. “There are those in Tokyo who are particularly interested in the Crown Collection of Hong Kong. It’s supposed to have many priceless Chinese pieces, centuries old, inestimable in their value, politically sensitive, of course. And those have not been found. It’s thought they were secreted away before the war began here. And the Chinese want their heritage back, the Japanese want them for their value, and the English think it all belongs to them. It’s very confusing.
“To make a long story short, Otsubo thinks that a few of the men in Stanley are privy to information that would help him locate these pieces. In particular, he has an idea that Reggie Arbogast knows where it is. I think Otsubo would be handsomely rewarded for locating these items and getting them back to Japan. You know, it’s been a complete madhouse over here with the looting and the ransacking and things turning up in the market places, museum pieces selling for two cents or worthless twaddle being shipped off to the homeland like it’s worth something. No one really knows what’s going on, but he’s determined to find these pieces. He’s had me look through the pawnshops and talk to people, but nothing. So, that is why he furloughed you and wanted to have dinner with you and talk to you.”
“But why would he think I would know anything about it?”
“He’s heard that you are well liked in camp. You’ve been elected head of something or other, haven’t you?”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Do you know anything?”
The abrupt question takes him by surprise.
“Do you wish I did?”
“Does that mean you do?”
He stands up. The parrying is sickening to him.
“Trudy, we’re not at war with each other.”
“No, but we might be at cross-purposes. Will, I need something from you now.”
“Everything I have is yours.” It sounds false, even to him, metallic in his mouth, as he watches her desperate, dissembling face. What does she inspire in him now? Still love? Or pity?
“So, you’ll help us?”
What could he do? She didn’t ask for herself. She asked for them. She was lost already.
Part III
May 2, 1953
MISS EDWINA STORCH, an institution in Hong Kong, hosted occasional ladies’ lunches at her home in the New Territories. She was the headmistress emeritus of a well-regarded primary school in Pokfulam and a renowned expert on Chinese porcelains-an old China hand who had retired to the New Territories. She lived famously in an old house with Alsatians, chickens, an elderly married Chinese couple in service, and another English spinster-her lifelong partner, Miss Winkle. They sometimes came for lunch at the Ladies’ Recreation Club, where Claire had seen them holding court among the other expatriate women, and she had seen Miss Winkle wrestling carnations into submission at Mrs. Beazley’s flower-arranging class at the Duddell St. YWCA. Miss Winkle was small and slight, with frail bird bones, and Miss Storch was large and heavy, with thick calves that ended in a straight line at her feet. They both wore knee-length skirts and white cotton buttoned blouses with Peter Pan collars and often took slow constitutionals around the country-side with their sensible shoes and large dogs. Her invitations were rarely turned down, for some reason that Claire had not been able to glean. So when her invitation arrived in the mail, heavy cream bond with a gold crest-rather much for a retired schoolmistress, she thought-she accepted with curiosity.
Claire drove up to a white wooden gate. She had to get out of the car to open the gate, drive through, and then get out to close it again, with a little hook that had been haphazardly screwed into the wood. Somehow, she didn’t dare leave it open, although she knew some twenty people had been invited for lunch. She drove up a dusty road, past gracious old trees, one with a wooden swing attached to a large branch, to the house itself, a rambling stone structure that seemed on the verge of falling down. There was a porch, with a screen door slightly ajar, but she walked around the house to the back garden, where she could hear music and voices.