1

Quasimodo Sunday was a spiteful day. With little to dull its power from the Luzon Strait to the Canton coast, the tropical storm roared off the South China Sea and hurtled across the Praya Grande. Whooshing across the face of the sheltered harbour, it flashed silver spears of lighting from keyholes in the sky. Marl white sheets of rain, like iron wires, cracked along the ground, drawing a net over the earth. Gutters overflowed and trenches grew fat with broken timber and shards of glass. Everything smelled of dank soil and uprooted trees. At noon, the solid mass of thunderheads had crowded the mouth of the bay, bedimming the shrine of the Sea Goddess, A Ma. By the time the temple stores shut, the pracas were a wilderness.

When the sky boomed as it did during that spring day in 1928, the mail steamers from the Macao and Canton Steamboat Company remained in the typhoon shelters at the end of wharves; they bobbed their long, lean hulls to the crash of the waves with no other sound to be heard along the Avenida da Republica apart from the rain and thunder. Had it not been for the occasional hoot from a foghorn or the ringing of the storm warning bell in the Chapel of Our Lady Guia, few would have stirred from their preoccupations at all. But then, later that night, the pigs started wailing, and they kept wailing for hours. Not because the greystone walls of the Matadouro da Macao were collapsing nor because the abattoir roof was being dismembered by the wind. They squealed with terror because their pens were being overrun by invaders. Blood-eyed troops armed with sword-blade teeth. Rats. Great long files of them that broke like waves on a shoreline. They scrambled from darkened holes, out of the sewers and nullahs. The floodwaters had forced them out. There were thousands of them. And they blew through the streets like a hot firewind.

At the heart of the seafront, the restaurant in the Hotel Riviera, famous for its frescoed ceilings and spicy African Chicken, was overcome with panic. Pandemonium broke out. Voices clashed, bellboys feinted, elderly Macanese ladies shrieked with fright. Shouts of “Aiyaa!” and “Gow Meng!” reverberated from the top floor suites all the way down to the basement cellars. Some guests, gambling over a game of fan tan, raced about helter-skelter, open-mouthed with animal fear in their eyes. Others leapt onto settees, lifting their flapper dresses, baring their white thighs and tearing at their feather boas. The rats had come crashing through the verandah doors just as the coolie boys were laying strips of towelling into the shutter frames. They sprang from the brass hatstands, onto the art-deco dining tables, atop of Edwardian chiffoniers – knocking down boaters and cloche bonnets, smashing Baccarat crystal, upending plates of curried crab and bowls of brandada de bacalhau. They scuttled into the chambres privees, in and out of giant Vuitton steamer trunks, up jazz suit trouser legs and down silk jacquard curtains. They tore at the lemon enamel hairbrushes, at the sterling silver vanity bottles, at the alabaster rouge pots and dressing table jars. Then, like leaping fish, they were gone, hurling themselves off the balconies into the main street below.

Shortly before nine o’clock at night, the rats reached St Lazaris Church. By ten o’clock, the rat-pack had overrun the north of the city.

LINE SPACE

In the poorer parts of town, near the Kun Lam Temple, the rodents shot from under the shadows of the shanty huts, darting into homes, up cocklofts, hiding behind wardrobes and under workbenches. They carried the stink of rotted meat and faeces; weeks-old piss matted to the hairs on their spines. Clawed toes, brown as rust, scraped against doors; long-nailed hands dug into soft, barren walls. The vibrations of their feet passed over houses. Click, clack, click. Upon rooftops, onto drain pipes. Click, clack, click. The rats scurried up the cheekbones of buildings, pressed their snouts under shophouse floors, dangled from telegraph lines. Dogs barked, roosters crowed, women, young and old, screamed. An hour later, Macao, the tiny, dilapidated Portuguese colony, just about connected to the southern tip of the Chinese mainland, thirty-four miles west of Hong Kong, was overwhelmed; the grand old lady of the China coast had been stormed: the grey horde poured in.

By the Largo da Sien there was frantic activity on the cobbled square. It was nearing midnight and a band of wild-eyed rat catchers, covered in oilcloths, directed their dogs with calls and clicks of their tongues. “Hai! Hai!” they shouted as the mongrels went speeding into the darkness, yelping and growling in the distance. The men had set almost fifty baited traps in isolated places; rectangular boxes, three feet deep and about a foot wide made of wood and wire net. They’d filled them with sour bean curd. Each trap had numerous openings on the sides with the wire inverted so that when a rat entered it was impossible for it to escape. The ratters were in the process of setting down more when a bonfire roared to life in the centre of the square. A boy, no more than twelve, stood with his back to the wind, tossing the cages of squealing vermin into the dome of fire, pulling the cages out moments later with an elongated hook. Soon the air, thick with the stink of roasted meat, mingled with the dogs’ whinnying and the ratters’ shouts. Every fifteen minutes two men dragged a sled loaded with wire cages into the square – a hundred or so rats each time. The process went on through the night.

For a further seven hours the rat catchers carried out their macabre work, until daybreak came and the people of the besieged city began to emerge from their homes to acknowledge the wreckage. All along the praya they witnessed the detritus from the storm: telegraph poles bowing their heads, stripped trees with toothpick arms, their branches like broken ribs, metal roofs bent and distended, folded in on themselves, beaches strewn with graveyards of candle-white fish, the short slapping sounds of the surf regurgitating gurgling carcasses of belly-bulging cows, the thousands and thousands of sandflies, the ash-mountains of dead rodents. Everything smelled of wet, mouldy earth and burned animal hair.

LINE SPACE

Behind the city the storm sewers continued to flush surplus rainwater through 30-inch underground pipes, draining all manner of debris into the catch basin that ran through to the sea. It was here that a pale hand emerged. Creeping, sliding, it edged forward like a stiff-limbed crab through the surf. Fingertips wrinkled and waterlogged, the hand tumbled about, twisting with the violent artificial tidal flow. On occasion it recoiled as the heavy wrist-rope caught on some scrap, only to surge forward again once the tangling was freed.

A moment later a pale-elbowed arm appeared, followed by a head. The waxen, beardless face was stiffly cocked to the left shoulder. Lips, ground shut from contractions, were blue, refusing to open; the throat, swollen like a yellow marrow, was choked with a string of rosary beads. The stubble on the back of the corpse’s neck, where a razor had pruned the hair, swayed like tiny weeds, almost fluffy. There was a shard of broken glass imbedded in the flesh of the neck and the bottle-green skin of the sinewy chest was covered in cuts: dog-toothed scars where rats had gnawed through the muscled pectorals.

The water surged again, forcing the rest of the torso through the mouth of the pipe. The body tumbled. Teeth rattled as the head wrested from left shoulder to right. Eventually, the legs materialized, followed by the knees, chewed and glazed with brushstrokes of pink. A foot flopped out, white as milk; no shoe attached, no flesh, no tendons. Just stark bone.

2

Nearby, looking through the teeming rain, from a spray of light in a basement, a tiny face came to a window and stayed there, looking out through the smoggy glass. The Slavic eyes, blue like the colour of the sea, stared into the darkness like mesmerized buttons. A wicker hoarding belonging to Sun Wing Fotografia was being blown across the sky. It was an advertisement display showing a folding camera with rack-and-pinion focusing, and for a time the tear-bright eyes watched it fly over the ruined facade of the old cathedral, over the labyrinth of passageways that made up the heart of the old city. In the manner of a giant bird it glided and curled across the stuccoed houses with the balustraded balconies, making shadows across the Edwardian-style parlours recently wired for electric light, then fanned out its tail and pitched forward over the Rua Central, descending in a slow tight circle towards the harbour.

The monsoon raindrops tapped on the glass. The young woman remained in front of the window and blanched only fleetingly when something silhouetted and grey pressed past the window only to cut crookedly up a drainpipe. She smoothed her dark hair over her ears and touched the tight skin along her jaw; the pane was black enough to reveal her reflection. The window showed a girl in her late twenties; her face slender, beautiful, slightly frowning. She had eyes so blue they could have been cut from the sky. Exertion had added colour to her cheeks and brought a fullness to her lips. She rubbed the back of her shoulders and dipped her head, revealing an elegant expanse of neck and a shingle haircut that gave her a bob at the front and very short hair at the back. Big and doleful, her eyes returned to the puddles of water that had collected on the floor and with a towel she began mopping up the mess. The water felt cool on her bare toes; she fastened the hem of her low-hipped skirt above the knees – an outfit she usually wore when practising the Charleston in her room – and mouthed the lyrics to a popular American song, removing a ring from her right hand. This was not her normal idea of a Monday morning, but it was something that had to be done.

Against the near wall was a rosewood washstand with a copper basin. The girl turned up her sleeves and got to work. On her left was a zinc bucket. Bits of dirt floated in it. She wrung out the towel and shoved it under the window frame where the wet pools were forming. She was dabbing dry the tiny cracks in the casement when she heard footsteps on the landing. Instinctively her fingers sought the ancient scar-tissue that ran along the flesh of her right arm and she began to roll down the sleeves of her blouse.

LINE SPACE

“There’s a fruit store on our street. It’s run by a Greek. And he keeps good things to eat. But you should hear him speak!” she sang. “Yes! We have no bananas, we have no bananas today.”

Another young woman appeared in the doorway of the linen room at the top of the steps. Her hair was also bobbed, and she wore a loose cotton dress that went straight up and down. In her hand she carried a copy of Diario de Lisboa and a moving-picture magazine. She sported rayon stockings with back-seams and her beige shoes were low heeled with a closed toe. The waistline of her dress was dropped to below the hips, giving her a tomboyish look that was made even more masculine by a flattening brassiere. She would have resembled a man almost entirely had her eyebrows not been plucked and pencilled with thin arches. The wood creaked under her weight as she made her way down the stairs. Having negotiated the slippery floor, she immediately busied herself with work, sorting through a basket of pillowcases, sheets and bolsters. She had a little rouge on her bow-shaped lips and, as the fashion of the time dictated, her lower lip was left unpainted, which made her oily Mediterranean skin appear even oilier.

“Covered in mould!” said the girl with the arched brows. She tossed her magazines to the floor, throwing open pages that revealed images of the newly designed Graf Zeppelin airship. She removed a dark cotton slip from the basket; it looked like it was streaked with moss. “This weather! Merda! How we’re expected to live with damp seeping from the walls and clothes that never dry I’ll never know. And now the mail steamers are stranded. I’ve been waiting to send letters home for days to let them have our change of address.”

The young woman at the window smiled politely but did not reply. Instead she kept her head down and squeezed another cupful of water into the tin bucket. She continued humming her tune. There was a slight blush to her cheeks and a small beauty mark on her chin. A few freckles were sprinkled beneath her blue eyes and her hair came to crescent points, kissing her cheeks. She had graceful gestures which matched the elegance of her knife-pleated, low-hipped skirt.

The girl with the painted eyebrows remained silent for a few moments, then announced, “May I introduce myself? My name is Izabel Perera,” she said, drawing in a deep breath and speaking quickly. “We moved into the top floor flat last week. We’re from Barreiro, just south of Lisbon. It took us thirty-two days to get here. We made seven ports of call en route including Algiers, Aden, Bombay and Colombo – what a filthy place Bombay is, decrepit and full of flea-bitten people. We came on the Peninsular-Oriental Line – spent most of the time on the sundeck, writing letters and sipping beef tea. Nice cabins and very clean, but the food!” She made a face. “Sausages, red cabbage, grilled liver! Not nearly enough fish. The fish in Barreiro is wonderful. Barreiro is wonderful. Have you ever been? It’s about six miles from Lisbon and is right on the sea. There’s a lovely church square and a red-roofed town hall and beautiful little white houses that look onto the quiet port. I have a big family there, many cousins. I miss them terribly, especially my brothers and sisters and my cousin Anna.” There was a short pause as she took another breath. “My husband is in the fabric export business. His office wanted him to start buying Shantung and Chinkiang silks and, because Canton is regarded as the centre of the silk-trading world, we ended up in Macao. What’s your name, by the way?”

LINE SPACE

The girl at the window took a few moments to digest the astonishing amount of information. Eventually she said, “Nadia. My name is Nadia Shashkova.”

“Are you the new maid?”

Nadia, conscious of her bare feet, smiled. “No…my uncle’s the landlord here. We run the tobacconist across the road and rent out these rooms. The previous owner forgot to mention the indoor swimming pool when we bought the place. It happens every time we get a bad storm. Have you met my Uncle Yugevny?”

“No, my husband, Carlos, negotiated the rent.” She looked hard at Nadia. “You are not Portugues?”

“Russo,” Nadia conceded.

“But you speak Portuguese….”

Nadia squeezed another cupful into the bucket. “I learnt it at school. Took me a while to master all the swear words.”

Izabel laughed at this, causing her olive cheekbones to redden to a carmine velvet. “Meu Deus. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to sound rude, calling you a servant and complaining about the damp walls. In Portugal we are so used to the dryness. Sometimes we don’t see rain for months. It’s been raining here since we arrived.” She watched over Nadia like a protective pombo hen as water gurgled from the cracks in the window hinges. “Please, let me help you with that.” Izabel grabbed a dry towel, and hitching up her loose cotton dress, squatted on her haunches.

“No, there’s really no need.”

“I insist,” said Izabel. A rivulet of water swelled around her polished beige shoes. She started mopping, glancing at Nadia through her eyelashes. “I like your dress. It’s the cat’s meow!”

“Thank you.”

“Were you born here, in Macao?”

Nadia shook her head. “Russia.” She felt impelled to offer a similar level of detail as Izabel had. “In a village near Tver, about two hundred miles south of St. Petersburg. When I was seven we moved to a city called Chelyabinsk, just east of the Ural Mountains, to live with cousins. We lived there for four and a half years until, eventually, my mother and I came here to be with Uncle Yugevny.” Her voice trailed away as she watched a tiny snail crawl up the wall.

Izabel got to her feet and picked up the almost-full bucket. She shuffled over to the washstand, weaving through an area crisscrossed with flopping strings of washing, and emptied the contents into the basin. When she’d replaced the zinc pail on the floor she cocked her head to her right shoulder and gave a single slow blink of the eyes. “And your husband? What does he do?” she said.

Nadia couldn’t prevent an involuntary flick of the head. “I’m afraid I’m not married,” she said cheerily.

“What? A pretty girl like you?”

Nadia smiled, shrugged her shoulders.

“A single Yelena, eh? Just like my cousin Anna. Well that’s just doocky.” Izabel looked fleetingly out of the window, into the brightening sky. “I remember the days when I was single. Full of parties and dancing until daylight. With two little children running my life now it’s all a distant memory. Still, Carlos and I set aside a few evenings a month to go out and enjoy a good dance or two. Are you out most nights?”

“No, usually I stay at home.”

Izabel made a face. “Sounds terribly dull.”

“Dull?” Nadia said.

“Yes, a good-looking thing like you should be out teasing the boys, showing off your new, short hairstyle, your legs, your garconne look. That’s what being a flapper is all about, isn’t it? Being vibrant and enjoying yourself. Before I was married with children I was out all the time. Enjoying men.” She gave Nadia a nudge with her elbow.

“How do you relieve the boredom?” Izabel asked.

“I read.”

“What, periodicals? I love periodicals.” Izabel glanced at the magazine on the floor. “I’ve been reading this wonderful article about the design for the new Zeppelin. They’ve decided to make a picture show about it. Do you know they’re going to print their own on-board newspaper?”

“No, I meant books, mostly modern American novelists…Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson. I’ve just read ‘The Sun Also Rises’ by a new, young author called Ernest Hemingway. Have you read it?”

“Merda, if only I had the time! My children are little monsters. Where they find the energy I simply don’t know.”

“How old are they?”

“I’ve got two boys, they’re five and six.” She paused and gave Nadia a conspiratorial look. “Maybe we should go out. You, me, and Carlos.”

“Go out?”

“Yes, to try the local giggle water.”

“Giggle water?”

“It’s American slang for alcohol. I picked it up from one of the stage show magazines. ”

Nadia smiled, looked a little surprised. “There’s a strict etiquette of chaperonage in Macao….”

“Phooey!” she said, waving her hand. “Etiquette is for old ladies and pale, skinny men who read Oscar Wilde.”

Nadia continued to look surprised; she didn’t want to say that she often read Oscar Wilde.

“Well we’re a fine pair! Me with two brats and a hoggish husband from Barreiro. You, an unmarried recluse from Russia…and here we are mopping up water that belongs in the South China Sea.”

Nadia laughed.

“What made you come here? Why come to Macao, of all places?”

“My Mamuchka wanted to be with her brother, my Uncle Yugevny. I think she wanted a fresh start, felt she had to leave Russia, leave the past behind….”

“What year was this?”

“November, 1911.”

“Did you come by ship?” said Izabel.

Nadia shook the hair out of her face. “The final part of the journey from Vladivostok was by passenger ship.”

“Well that sounds just doocky! – that’s another American expression by the way – so you arrived in Vladivostok then came here by boat. I bet you had to learn Portuguese pretty quickly. What were the first words you learned, apart from the swear words?”

Nadia smiled at the memory. “Mamuchka and I used to have breakfast in a little Macanese café around the corner. The owner was this tiny man with a huge nose who talked in a high-pitched voice. He’s returned to Porto now, sadly. Every morning he’d ask us the same question: would you like your eggs fritos or escaldados. So the first words I learned were ‘Fritos, por favor.’”

Izabel laughed. “One day you must try my Barreiro omelet. I prepare it with shrimps and sweetened apples.” They held onto each other’s elbows for support as they rose from the floor. There was a tight clap of churchbells in the distance. The pealing chimes stopped just as Nadia wiped up the last remnant of rain with her foot.

“Seven-thirty already,” said Izabel, looking out the window. “The rain has stopped. I’d better wake the monsters.” She began climbing the steps. Small flies gave up their places on the stairs as she approached. “It was nice to meet you,” Izabel said, placing one hand on the door.

Nadia disengaged herself from the wet towels and looked up into the landing. “If the weather clears there’ll be a town parade tomorrow morning, with firecrackers and acrobats. Maybe even a lion-dance. I can take you if you want?”

Izabel paused at the top of the steps and looked at the doorknob. She closed her eyes and gave a laugh that shook her tomboyish hair. “A lion-dance,” she said. Her throat made a soft warm sound. “I used to read about lion-dances when I was a child.”

“It’s a date then?”

“I’ll have to ask Mrs. Lo from across the hall to see if she’ll look after the children…” She nodded. “Yes, all right.”

“Afterwards we’ll have an early lunch at the café around the corner.”

“And watch the acrobats and tumblers perform along the streets.” The honeyed thrill of her words spilled down the stairs and settled in ticklish swirls by Nadia’s feet.

raced down the stairs to see her mother.

Nadia found Mamuchka sitting in the hallway by the kitchen, a console table at her elbow. It was well beyond noon yet she hadn’t changed out of her billowing, tasseled nightdress, its plumes rising and falling with her breathing; she looked stranded, like a marooned jellyfish, the piled, flouncy cloth of her dressing gown resembling the blue float of a Portuguese man-of-war. She was in a plain wicker chair that looked out of the tiny window and onto the street below. Her body, her posture, was held rigid, her face taut. In her hands she held the bowl of soup Izabel had given her an hour earlier. The soup was untouched, cold now.

Nadia placed her hand on her mother’s back. Olga Shashkova raised her head and looked into her daughter’s eyes. They both smiled hugely. Nadia brought the jade monkey pendant to her mouth with satisfaction and kissed it, just as Mamuchka emitted a great, staggered sigh. She did this several times, drawing in a great breath and sighing, as if breathing was a struggle for her.

“How do you feel?” Nadia asked.

“Oh, the way any wife would feel if she was about to meet her husband again after twenty years. Terrified mostly.”

“Mamuchka,” she said, hinting at caution. “There was no mention of Papashka in the telegram.”

“Your father is with Iain, Nadrichka.”

“Mamuchka, please, I urge you….don’t build your hopes up.”

There was a moment’s pause. The sounds of the streets emptied into the house, voices floating in from the cobblestoned lanes. Nadia, restless and intimidated by her mother’s stillness, by her laboured breathing, needed to break the silence. “What are you thinking about?” she eventually asked.

“What, right at this very moment?”

“Yes.”

“I was just thinking whether we ought to make up the spare bedroom. We’ll need to change the bed linen. Otherwise where will your father sleep?”

“Won’t he be staying in your room?”

“I haven’t laid eyes on him for almost a quarter century! I can’t share my bed with a nyeznakawmets, a stranger!”

Not for the first time Nadia felt disjointed. For years she had reeled away from the heartache and grief of losing a parent. Now, all of a sudden, his resurrection was staring her full in the face. What would she say to him? Should she hug him, kiss him? Maybe Mamuchka was right, she realized. Perhaps he was a stranger, an outsider – there was no way of guessing what type of man he had become.

“You know,” said Mamuchka, “your father always hated travelling on boats. He would always get terribly seasick, poor soul. Do you think he will be alright on this merchant navy ship?”

Nadia shook her head and smiled. She relieved Mamuchka of the cold soup. She didn’t know this about her father – that he suffered from seasickness. There must have been dozens of facts about him that she didn’t know. Would she be discovering dozens and dozens more similar facts in the coming weeks, she wondered? She placed the soup bowl on the console table and with her hands she massaged her mother’s shoulders, working the tension out of them, saying, “Let’s go see what the ladies are preparing for Iain’s homecoming, shall we?”

Along the hall, within the kitchen, Mrs. Lo, Izabel and her two children were putting up Chinese characters in red ink, posting eighty-eight symbols of Shou (longevity), Fu (good fortune) and Ai (love, affection) across the wall and trailing them all the way down the stairwell to the ground floor. Nadia saw that the best silver was laid out and the food – two thick loaves of fresh white bread, steamed buns, a suckling pig flavoured with sea salt, a tureen of caldo verde, a dish of roasted almonds, garlic mussels, sausages with green beans, marinated herrings, a fat wedge of imported Portuguese cheese called Queijo da Ilha, a mountain of quavering strawberry jelly, some fruit and three bottles each of red wine, beer and seltzer – was spread out on the kitchen table. There were also dainty bowls full of eggs dyed red with yen chih, for luck, placed in each corner of the room.

When Mamuchka saw the range of dishes she gasped and said, “Bawzhemoy! Are we expecting a regiment of soldiers?”

Mrs. Lo clapped her hands with brio and said, “Ayah! We forget to cook fish. Fish is for good luck. I should cook fish for your hussbun and give him the cheek to eat!” then she said to Mamuchka, “Olga, what year your hussbun born in? If he born in year of pig, we must all wear purple colours for good luck.”

Taken aback by the question Mamuchka had to think hard about this, before concluding, “1865…he was born in 1865…”

“Him an ox! Wahhh! He a very speshow man! He very stable husband with strong heart like a bull! My son Lennox is a dragon. He also a very adaptable and careful character.”

Mamuchka smiled and said, “Vek zhivi, vek uchis - you live and learn.”

“Maybe I still have time to buy fish,” said Mrs. Lo. “One with big cheeks.”

During this exchange, Nadia had to remind everybody three times that there was no certainty that Papashka would be on the boat. “Iain might be alone,” she said.

“What?” said Mrs. Lo, now resigned to opening a can of sardines. “You think Iain will come back empty handed? Like a beggar? Choy! Dakka laisee! Oyo, I no think so!”

Nadia challenged everyone with her eyes. “All I’m saying is we might be disappointed.”

Izabel who had been silent for some minutes decided to speak out, arching her already arched set of eyebrows higher. “Look, whatever happens, we know that Iain is safe. Isn’t that what really matters?” She rubbed Nadia’s arm. “Am I right?”

But who would she actually prefer to have back, Nadia wondered, Iain or her father? She thought about this for several seconds. Iain was her future. Her father was her past. If she had to choose between them she would opt for her future. She felt grateful to Iain, she felt committed to him. Yet something perverse made her hate him for going into Russia, for putting himself at such risk.

“Am I right?” Izabel repeated.

Nadia nodded.

“Do you think we need more wine?” said Mrs. Lo, “We better buy a few bottles of vinho verde…and some fyercrackers, maybe some flowers too.”

“Camellias would look just doocky!” said Izabel.

Mamuchka, who was torn between rapture and apprehension, tried and failed to get into the spirit of things. She said, “Yes, flowers would be nice. No yellow ones, though, and make sure you buy odd numbers. Russians believe that even numbers are for funerals.”

Moments later Uncle Yugevny entered the kitchen. He gave out a yelp of delight when he saw all the food. “Oughtn’t we be celebrating by now? Where is the wodka?”

“The boat doesn’t dock for another four hours!” said Mamuchka.

“So? I am thirsty!” he said. “By the eyes of the domovoi, since when did a Fillipov need a reason to haff a drink?”

“The joy of Russia is drinking,” said Nadia, quoting Prince Vladimir, the 10th century Russian monarch.

“And without drinking we cannot be,” finished Uncle Yugevny.

“We could have a little port, I suppose,” said Nadia.

“Phooey!” said Izabel. “Why have a little when we can have a lot.”

Taking his cue, Uncle Yugevny uncorked a bottle of Sandeman and started filling glasses to the brim, Cossack-style. As he did so, he broke into song. He sang a melody about old Mother Russia. After a while, they all shared in the singing, including Mrs. Lo, who tried her hand at Cantonese opera.

Sitting around the kitchen table, laughing, they all decided a second bottle of port would be a bad idea. Instead they passed around the dish of roasted almonds, and debated whether they should all go to receive Iain at the pier or if it should be left to Uncle Yugevny to meet the ferry alone.

Three hours and a bottle of red wine later it was determined that Uncle Yugevny would go and the women would stay behind and wait. Nadia, her mouth as dry as a communion wafer, applied some make-up to her eyes and changed into a pale yellow cotton dress with an Empire waist and a short hem. She looked into the mirror and took it straight off, putting on a Cheruit-inspired dress instead. Tiny butterfly wings were beating wildly in her chest. She felt vulnerable and squeezed with anxiety.

In the cavernous entrance of their home, under the crystal chandelier, surrounded by red Chinese symbols and taffeta party balloons, Nadia and Mamuchka stood by the front door. They watched the entrance and the shadows that passed along the window, not quite knowing what they expected to see, listening out for the footsteps that would echo in a brand new, uncertain world. They gripped their sides with their arms.

Inhaling a breath, they heard a hand rattle the doorknob from the outside and a key being inserted. The doorknob twisted.

Their ribs felt crushed.

They did not cry. They would not cry.

“Have you tried the prison?” A voice replied from behind. It was one of the female internees helping with the wounded. “I heard he was taken by the guards this morning.” Nadia felt a wave of hope replace her exhaustion and fear. “You’d better prepare yourself,” the woman continued. “A bomb hit it a few minutes ago.” Nadia’s hope dissolved.

Her pulse rate rocketing, she reached the prison enclosure. An inferno was still blazing two buildings away; bodies were being dragged through windows and down ladders, most of them lifeless, asphyxiated from smoke. She heard the fires spit and pop. A horrid fear gripped the base of Nadia’s throat. “Let me through!” She yelled, pushing hard, getting nowhere. “My husband is inside! LET ME THROUGH!”

A few people breached the shattered building, racing through the gap. Nadia shoved past the melee and clambered over the rubble. Masonry broke off in her hands. She feared the building might collapse around her. The east and north walls of the jail had crumpled, its square roof erased. As Nadia took in the wreckage she saw prison cells blown open by bombs, blackened limbs sprawled all over the place, a man dangling from a telephone wire.

A metallic voice came through what sounded like a tannoy system. It was a Japanese guard speaking in English through a funnel-shaped loudhailer. He was giving orders, urging people to stay out of the prison compound, warning of the dangers of exposed gas lines and falling debris. She was fighting back tears now, desperate.

She peered through countless ironwork windows. A pall of smoke and brick-dust shrouded everything. Water gushed over the floor from a splintered main. It was hard to breathe. He’ll be fine, she told herself, he’ll be a little bruised, but fine. She pushed aside scorched brick and stone, searching from room to room, trusting her instincts, all the time reaching, stumbling, sweeping the dirt from her eyes. From somewhere she heard a cry of pain. It came to her with a far-away thinness. Then a distraught voice was screaming, “I’m coming, darling! I’m coming!” Only later did she realize these were her own frantic cries.

Inside a cubicle at the end of a long corridor, she found a metal oil drum, a few mangled rats, some burning embers. And in a puddle of black blood, like an upturned waterspider, there lay a severed hand. She shrank back.

She was standing at the edge of the bomb rubble, peering into the darkness of the smoke-filled room. Papers and documents lay scattered, flying about with every gust of wind. Nadia turned slowly and saw a body covered in ash. His limbs were drawn across at odd angles, like a dead dog on the side of the road. Cautiously, she rolled the body onto its front and saw the face of a Japanese guard. She let out her breath.

A moment later a shadow twitched in the corner of the room and she thought saw something move. A foot, followed by a knee and a darkly stained thigh, slipped in and out of the gloom. It was a man.

He was lying motionless on the floor, his blackened face facing away from her. There were glossy pools of debris all around him, red as printer’s dye.

Drawing the cassock above her shins, she knelt down, wiped her hands on her front and pulled at the man carefully. His back was sticky and slick with blood. She tried to turn him over. His left arm was missing, blown off just below the shoulder. She shuddered. A swirl of wind nudged his hair. She caught her breath.

It was Iain.

Where her fingers touched, his body was as warm as her hand; he was still breathing. Nadia removed her cassock and began to tear the fabric into long strips. She drew the sleeve of his shirt back. When she saw the exposed bone, she pressed the cloth to the stub of his arm. The purple flesh was mutilated and ripped above the elbow.

Despite the pressing she’d made he continued to bleed profusely. With the cassock now soaking, Nadia began removing the obi sash which was wrapped round her breasts. Soon her hands were drenched to the wrist-bones. Hastily, she made a tourniquet and folded swathe after swathe over the wound, six layers thick, coiling it tight. Then she found a short stick and tied it to the tourniquet with a square knot; she twisted the stick until the bleeding subsided. In the darkness Iain’s face looked gaunt and his skin pale, as thin and fragile as volcanic ash. Fastening the stick securely in place, she rolled him very cautiously onto his front and turned his head towards her. “Iain,” she pleaded, “Iain, look at me. You have to wake up.” His breath came in small bursts. “Iain!” she repeated.

Eyelids fluttering, he began to stir. He emitted a long gurgle of pain then began to cough. When he finally opened his eyes, the corners of his mouth lifted in a grimace.

“My feet,” he said with a rush of panic. “The rats were at my feet.”

“Your feet and legs look fine,” she replied, calming him. “There’re some cuts by your ankles, but nothing serious. Your toes are all intact.” She found a scalpel lying across the floor and used it to slice the rope around his ankles. “Iain,” she said. “You’ve lost an arm.”

“Lost an arm?” he said in baffled, faltering voice.

“You’re also losing a great deal of blood. I have to get you out of here. Can you walk?”

“I can walk,” were the only three words he could manage.

He winced when he tried to move. Nadia rocked him to his left side and then to his right side, next with one arm around his waist and the other under his right armpit, she hauled him upright. He swore to himself then gave a stifled howl. Getting him to his feet was like lifting a heavy sack of rice; a deadweight.

“You have to keep your left arm elevated above the heart. Can you do that for me?”

He nodded.

Nadia looked at him. He was panting. The veins on his throat bulged. She gripped him possessively.

“Christ, you’re strong for a wee lass,” he said, trying to make light of the pain that was racking his body.

“My ancestors must have been muzhiks. Good peasant stock.”

From outside, they heard the shouts of the Japanese guards. “How am I going to get you out of the camp?” she asked. “And how am I going to get past the sentries? I’m practically naked.”

“Over there,” he said, jutting his chin towards the fallen rubble. “I was in this room with Takashi and a guard when the roof fell in. He should be over there.”

She propped Iain against one of the standing walls. Perspiration salted the corners of his mouth. As he rested there, bathed in sweat and blood, Nadia began to push and kick the fallen debris to one side. She came to a body and without hesitating, removed Takashi’s tunic, trousers and boots. Her hands fumbled with the buttons, ignoring the large blood-stained patch by his heart; she climbed into his clothes. The shoulders sagged on her and the shirt-tails fell to mid-thigh. She tucked the tunic into the trousers.

“You need his hat to hide your face,” Iain said, his voice thinning.

Nadia disentangled the visor cap from Takashi’s head and pulled it over her eyes.

There was nobody in the corridor. The air was thick with insect-thrumming heat. Gripped with exquisite pain, Iain stumbled outside, leaning his weight on Nadia’s shoulder. Walking out into the open was like walking into a tropical maelstrom – they saw a hazy patchwork of destruction, a shallow trough of smoke and scorched dirt. “We don’t stop for anything,” she said. “Do you understand me? No matter how much pain you feel we don’t stop.” The dull thudding booms had ceased, the sputtering gunfire had stopped. Nadia waited for a pair of mustard-khaki uniforms to hurry past carrying buckets of sand. “Come on, come on,” she heard herself say.

Trembling from blood loss, Iain’s limbs felt soggy and weak. A pang shot up and down his left arm with every step. He lifted his face towards the sun, gasping air, wanting to howl out senselessly. The pain made him clumsy. He tripped, recovered. His vision blurred as dazzling white spots danced before his eyes. She held him close.

The chaos worked to their advantage; nobody stopped or looked at them. It took them a full twelve minutes to reach the entrance to the camp, but the time moved swiftly for them, shooting past like fast-moving images of a cine camera.

At the double gates, Nadia eyed the slouched heap that lay by the post. The dead Japanese sentry hadn’t been moved. She saw the gates ajar, left open by the fire-trucks. Both breathless now, they hurried through the opening and made their way down the road.

Moments later she spotted the Morris Cowley with Father Luke sitting anxiously at the wheel.

“Is that your husband?’

“Yes.”

“What’s happened to him?”

“An American bomb,” was all Nadia said as she eased Iain into and across the back seats.

“What do you expect me to do with him?”

“Get him to a hospital, of course. He needs medical attention.”

“If you take him to a hospital, the Japanese will be onto us within hours.”

“Well, send for a doctor then! He’s going to die if we don’t-”

“It is too risky!” He cut her off. He was playing with the joints of his fingers. “How can I bring a one-armed gweilo and a woman impersonating a Japanese officer into my house? There are neighbourhood watches who report anything out of the ordinary to the military police.”

Nadia banged the bonnet of the car with her hand. She fixed him a ferocious look. “He will bleed to death if he’s not treated!”

“Get into the car,” he ordered. “I will think of something as we drive.” He paused and touched his chest as if in pain.

“What is wrong? Are you hurt?”

“Just a twinge. Hurry we must go.”

The Morris headed towards Repulse Bay. They travelled in a tense, inhospitable silence. From time to time, Nadia looked behind her, studying Iain’s condition. He looked drawn and pale with his teeth clenched between his lips. After several minutes she said, “What if we’re stopped at a checkpoint?”

Father Luke did not reply. He was taking the long route around the island, heading towards Aberdeen. “Even if I took him back to my house, I wouldn’t be able to find a doctor. I have some medicines of my own, but I don’t know what I can really do to help him. He may not make it.”

Nadia did not like the priest talking about Iain as if was not there.

“And even if he does survive,” he went on, slightly out of breath now, “I can only shield him from the Japanese for a short while. They’ll be doing house-to-house searches. They’ll know by tonight that internees have gone missing.” His eyes were on the road. “When is your rendezvous with Costa?”

“In two days.”

“Too long.”

“We have to do something!” She tried to rein in her accelerating thoughts, her flying panic.

They came to Deep Water Bay, passing the derelict golf club. Father Luke’s shoulders stiffened, as if suddenly galvanized by an enlightening thought. “I have an idea,” he said.

“What?”

Father Luke said something that Nadia did not understand. “What did you say?”

“I said I will take you to Sai Kung by boat.”

“Where or what is Sai Kung?”

“It is across the water, in the New Territories. There’s a group of about a hundred Communist guerillas that have been camped out in the Sai Kung mountains for years. They claim to be part of the East River Column. They have an understanding with the Japanese in so much that they leave each other alone. Their leader was a former barman at the Peninsula Hotel. His name is Pang. We went to primary school together. Two of his men used to be surgeons at the Tung Wah Hospital.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know what?”

“How do you know the surgeons are still there? If you’re wrong and the doctors have gone, Iain will die.”

“I know they are still there because some of the guerillas were in my district last week. Once or twice a month Pang orders them to come at night and hand out what they can to the poor. When I asked them about Chung, the surgeon, they said he was still living with them.”

“Are you sure you can get hold of a boat?”

“I can in Aberdeen harbour. A local junk maybe, but we will have to pay.”

Nadia pulled off a shoe and extracted a roll of cash. “I have Japanese Military Yen.” She brightened. “But why must we go to Sai Kung? Why can’t the junk take us to Macao?”

“No, Nadia, these people in Aberdeen are fishermen. They will not risk leaving Hong Kong waters.”

“Then we have no choice but sail to Sai Kung.”

11

The two Hakka women heaved and rocked on their long oar, steering through the narrow harbour. As they swayed to the knocking of the current, the sampan made its way silently through the blanket of morning haze. Below, underneath their bare feet, beneath some removable deck planks, Nadia, Iain and Father Luke lay flat on their backs, knees and arms folded across their bodies like unborn infants. Nadia knew they were entirely sealed off from prying Japanese eyes, yet still she felt more afraid than ever before.

“How are you, Iain?” she whispered, mere inches from her husband’s face.

Iain nodded, his jaw set.

Nadia could feel his head resting on her chest; his breathing had grown protracted. She squeezed his right hand in encouragement. They were both drenched in perspiration.

The only noises she could make out were from bow waves as they slapped against the hull and the creaking of the oar on its rowlock fitting. Even through the wide planks of wood, Nadia could feel the winds begin to escalate. Little eddies of salt air whirled through the tiniest of cracks. She imagined they were leaving the outer harbour now, gliding into the choppy waters of the East Lamma Channel. Everything was black; there was no colour in anything.

Up above, the Hakka women’s loose trousers flapped erratically in the wind. Through the tiny opening Nadia saw their knees bending, straightening, bending again, heard the occasional splash of water. She could see the wrinkled leathery undersides of their bare feet.

The early summer currents carried the sampan out to sea, causing the stern to bob.

Tirelessly, the Hakka women guided the little craft onwards, arms pumping.

Somewhere in the remote distance, she heard a buoy’s bell toll and then there it was: she could see it clearly now – the six-sailed outline, the mastheads with the red pennants, even the bamboo battens. It was a small oceangoing junk.

The junk captain was a florid man with a pirate’s smile. Nadia followed Father Luke down into the galley by way of a series of rickety ladders where the air smelled of scorched tin and chaulmoogra oil. Everything creaked. She could hear a grinding of metal chains and assumed the anchors were being raised. High above, broad canvases flapped noiselessly in the shifting breeze. “This way,” Father Luke said to the two crewmen who were carrying Iain in their arms. The men found Iain hard to lift and harder yet to transport down the rope ladders. They descended, ferrying him on their shoulders, one hand under the other. Iain sucked air through his teeth as they placed him on a bunk.

“How far are we from Sai Kung? How many hours of sailing?” Nadia inquired. Father Luke lit a candle, looking around at the bunks, at the tins of food, the sacks of sorghum and bladders of drinking water.

“About three hours,” he replied. “I will make contact with the guerillas and leave you in their care. You have nothing to fear from them. They are good people.”

Nadia thanked him. She was changing into a set of coolie clothes supplied by the captain Woo. “I feel like I’m backstage in a pantomime, tearing off this dress, pulling on that dress, pulling on trousers, tearing them off again.” She secured the string around her waist and went to boil some water. There was a wooden crate to sit on, beside it was a portable kerosene stove with a single hob.

The junk began quivering now just a little bit as it set sail. The canvases grew noisier, rustling like tall palms. Nadia caressed Iain’s forehead with her hand.

“Will he make it?” asked Father Luke, who sat clutching the left side of his chest.

Nadia gave her husband a kiss on the cheek. Iain responded by raising his eyebrows, keeping his eyes shut. His breathing was slow, his voice leaden. “Of course he will,” she said. “He has to. His daughter is waiting for him.”

Father Luke followed, falling behind with every step, growing more and more out of breath, until finally he had to stop.

Using a stretcher made out of sail-cloth and bamboo, the crewmen carried Iain through the countryside, across a stream, up a steep gradient dotted with trees which eventually thickened into a wood. A deep chasm separated the narrow path from the stream below. Small bedraggled huts formed from bamboo and wattle snaked along the side of the hill like a row of slumbering mice. When the dogs began to bark, the villagers came out and stared at them, curious to the identity of these peculiar strangers. They lay Iain down in the shade and then, later, transferred him into something that resembled a field hospital. After a while the crowd of people thinned.

“Where is Father Luke?” Nadia asked. But nobody seemed to know. Unfazed, she sought out the surgeons and explained what had happened to Iain.

The surgeons, a man called Chung and a woman named Lee-Phua, did what they could for him. From a tiny medical supply they broke open vials of morphine and sulphur satchels. Suppressing the subclavian artery, they cleaned and redressed the wound, stitched up what they could. When they were sure that they had stemmed the bleeding, Chung pushed a long double-sided knife, through the muscle near the shoulder joint and cut away some flesh to make a flap. Once completed, they turned the flap onto itself and covered the exposed bone, sewing it tight, applying tea-tree and iodine to stave off infection. Finally, Lee-Phua padded and bound the stump with gauze and bandages soaked in garlic. He was transferred to a darkened hut.

The very next evening, the same evening that Father Luke’s body was discovered in the chasm by the footpath, Iain developed a high fever.

Being in the camp so long, Chung told Nadia, with the malnutrition, the privation, Iain’s body resistance was very weak.

He was given broth made of roots and certain grasses. But the fever grew worse. He shivered and sweated and when he opened his eyes, his look was far, far away.

They drained the arm of pus and made him drink a tea made from elder flower, opium and chamomile. They gave him lemon balm to help him perspire. His shivering lasted for hours making him delusional. Nadia sponged him with lukewarm water and forced him to take in liquid. Then in the middle of the night something terrible happened. He suffered a kind of febrile seizure. His legs began kicking uncontrollably, his throat cried out. Both Chung and Lee-Phua held him down. “Is he going to die?” Nadia heard herself scream. “Please don’t let him die!” They strapped his legs to the bed with twine. There was froth spilling from the corners of his mouth.

Nadia fell to her knees. The candlelight was a fragile glow. She prayed to Jesus. She prayed to Saint Nikolai Chudotvorets and to the Holy Mother of God. She prayed until the wick burnt down to the stub and guttered and the room turned black with her tears.

He grew deathly still.

Earlier that week Mamuchka, convinced that her daughter was in terrible danger, went to see the Governor of Macao. It was a mother’s instinct, she said. He had no news to tell her. As far as he knew there hadn’t been any fresh reports of Macanese citizens being harmed in Hong Kong or held as prisoners.

“But she was due back yesterday. The plan was that she was to be back yesterday!”

The Governor, mouth downturned and sympathetic, merely shrugged his shoulders.

After a further three days of agonized waiting, a letter arrived addressed to Mrs Nadia Sutherland. It was a Prisoner of War envelope, inscribed ‘Stanley Internee Camp’ on the reverse and franked with Japanese Occupation 2s stamps. Across the front, the words ‘Passed by Censor 3472’ were punched in black ink.

Mamuchka, hungry for any information concerning her daughter or son-in-law, left Valentina with her grandfather and went into the bedroom to be alone. The colour had already drained from her lips. She took a few deep breaths, steadied herself and opened the envelope.

Dear Mrs. Sutherland, she read aloud in her faltering voice. It troubles me greatly to have to inform you that your husband, Iain Sutherland, internee number 6177, has been reported missing, feared dead. This follows a series of USAAF air raids on Hong Kong resulting in bombs landing and exploding within Stanley peninsula. Up until now, a thorough investigation into the list of wounded in Tweed Bay hospital have been for naught. Please accept my deepest sympathies and may God walk by your side during these long dark hours.

The Reverend John Anderson

Chaplain, Stanley Internment Camp

Mamuchka stared at the words for several moments. Her first thoughts were for her daughter, and then a sudden cold stab to the heart told her that Nadia too was nowhere to be found – missing, dead….she did not know. Caged nightmares of every shape and size entered her soul. Something sharp and high-pitched escaped from her chest. Deliberately, she folded the letter back in half and returned it to its sleeve. Seconds later she pressed the envelope to her forehead and began to weep.

Nadia walked down the hill towards the set of Chinese tombstones. She knelt by the newly erected wooden cross. The yellow wildflowers clutched in her hand seemed to her so inadequate. She placed them on the soil. The sky had turned grey.

She trailed her fingertips across the name, so roughly and inexpertly carved into the wood, and felt a tear run down her face.

Behind her, one of the village children stared out across the valley. The little boy was watching a water buffalo as it pulled a plough through the rice fields; he had a small wooden boat in his hands. After a while Nadia took the path down to the hillside creek. The little boy handed her the small wooden boat and with a match she lit the incense stick.

“Incense to purify souls,” she whispered, caressing the lucky glass charm around her neck. She lowered the boat into the water and let it go, watching it drift away, getting smaller and smaller. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself.

It began to rain in the middle of the night. A dispassionate drizzle that thrummed against the wattle roof like falling blister bugs.

Iain’s fever broke in the early morning, just as the hillside trees became tinged with the colours of dawn. He drank some water. Afterwards, he slept for three days and nights. A nurturing, curative sleep. When he woke he thought he still possessed an arm because he reached out to touch Nadia’s face. She beamed him her brightest smile. It took him a moment to remember that there was nothing at the end of his elbow, that his hand had disappeared.

In the ensuing hours, they bathed him in the hillside creek, sponging him, leaving the stump of his arm dry. Once in a while his forearm would itch but when he went to scratch it, it wasn’t there. “My fingers tingle,” he said to Chung, bewildered, “as if a hundred ants are running about on my missing hand.”

A week passed, then two. The pattern of life rarely changed. While Nadia held vigil over Iain, the guerillas went about their lives as per usual. They scythed grass for fuel, harvested rice and root vegetables for sustenance, collected jungle vines and bamboo and palm fronds for shelter construction.

The June rains came and went and all the while Nadia watched Iain age before her eyes; the trauma of the last weeks had weathered him; there were deep creases on his brow and his eyes were sunken. It almost seemed to Nadia that the bones of his face were now visible through his skin. He did, nevertheless, seem to enjoy the fuss that Nadia made over him. She wiped his forehead, soaked his bandages in watered-down disinfectant, fanned him when he was hot, shooed away flies, told him stories about Valentina, offered him handfuls of wild sage to chew to restore his appetite and generally gave him back his self-belief.

Because of the late planting the rice harvest was not ready in July, nor was it by August when a small typhoon swept across the peninsula. Yet, slowly, Iain grew in strength. With his one arm, everything seemed to him strange yet familiar. He found that his relationship with his body had changed. What used to be instinctive – tying a shoe lace, buttoning a shirt, cutting up food – now had to be thought through and planned out.

In time, he learned to do things with one hand, so that by the end of the summer months, he was almost himself again. And as he regained mobility, adjusting to his handicap, he found there was plenty to keep him busy. He contributed to the summer planting in the paddy fields, hoeing and seeding; he fed the long-legged village chickens; he even helped the guerillas restore a Japanese military motorcycle they’d found abandoned in a gully. It had a Kurogane sidecar with a pentagonal body, seating capacity for two, and a mounted 50 calibre machine gun. Listening to the distant sounds of Japanese artillery, Iain would eye the rusting weapon, hoping he would never have to fire it in anger.

Meanwhile Nadia befriended several of the local women, especially Lee-Phua and her sister Lee-Ping. Each morning, having placed fresh wild flower on Father Luke’s grave, with the mist clinging lazily to their clothing, they went digging for water chestnuts in the swollen marshlands at the base of the hills. Often they talked about their own children – their first words, what they liked to eat. But Nadia’s mind was constantly elsewhere. Time and again she thought about Father Luke – had he died as a result of saving Iain? Had it been too much of a strain on his heart? Would he be alive today if she had looked over her shoulder and seen him struggling up the path? Up that steep gradient? Had she pushed him too hard? The guilt gnawed at her. But another type of guilt ate away at her too: Valentina.

Every day she dreamed of her beloved daughter, her parents and returning home, but there was no way of knowing what was happening in the exterior. Occasionally, the guerillas came back with pockets of communication, and once in a while Pang, their leader, would talk of the Japanese laying down their arms. But with hardly any solid intelligence, there was no way of really knowing.

Often, late at night Nadia spoke at length to Iain about Valentina, who was going to turn three in September. They lay beside each other, listening to the cicadas, to the dark, distracting themselves with thoughts of home. She desperately wanted to be with her daughter and each time she thought of Valentina a sweet anguish filled her heart. She talked of feeling helpless, frustrated, stagnant even, like an idle kite left indoors on a windy day. “Is there any way of making it over the mainland to Macao?” she asked, but Iain said no, it was too dangerous. He told her they would have to wait for an armistice or at best Japan’s surrender. But the idea of travelling overland played in Nadia’s mind incessantly. As if a tick had crawled under her skin it itched at her constantly. Yet each time she brought it up Iain hushed her, telling her to be patient.

So, with no distractions from the outside world, they continued to live their day-to-day existence, waiting for the endgame. They slept rough, on lumpy sacks bagged with weeds and sedges and beard grass. They took their water from the stream and from a nearby well. With mud around their ankles, they performed their ablutions amongst the trees and bushes, exposed to the casual glances of their neighbours. Sheltering indoors during the heat of the day, they ate whatever Pang’s villagers offered them and sometimes sat around a table and played fan tan with the Lee-Phua and Lee-Ping.

And all the time Nadia’s frustrations grew like a spate river rising after week-long rains. It seemed to her that the spell of monotony would never be broken. That she would never return home. At length she fell into long periods of introspective silence. But then one morning in August, with the weather cooling, all the guerillas suddenly disappeared. Nadia woke to find the village quiet, deserted but for a few women and their toddlers and a squawking chicken shedding feathers and droppings along the footpaths.

What’s happened, asked Nadia. The old por-pors clacked their tongues. The guerillas had gone to fight, she was told. Rumours flew that with the Japanese on the verge of capitulation, the East River resistance had seized Yuen Long, Tai Po and some of the outlying islands. Nadia also found a note pinned to the door of her hut. It was from Lee-Phua. It wished her much happiness and luck for the future.

The following day a farmer arrived from a nearby village wearing a broad smile and a self-congratulatory air. He had the red flag of the Chinese Communist Party, with its yellow star and black hammer and sickle, draped over his shoulders. “Hirohito’s turnip heads have surrendered,” he cried, his feet stuttering excitedly across the ground. “The war is over.”

Twenty-four hours later, after a tiring journey across land and sea, Iain and Nadia stood on the wharf of Queen’s Pier. Behind them, the bombed-out Victoria Harbour was deserted, hardly a junk or Walla Walla in sight, only a lone sampan bobbed on the water. They tried to find a hotel room, but instead, discovered that the city was gripped with widespread lawlessness and that most of the guest rooms were billeted with drunken Japanese soldiers. The war might have been over but the place was in a state of bedlam; bandits roamed the streets; infrastructure was non-existent; and instead of seeing victorious Union Jacks flying from window brackets, the roofs and sills were lined with Chinese Nationalist flags. There was a perilous sensation of insurgence in the air.

After questioning a pair of military policemen, Iain led Nadia to the former French Mission building where a provisional government was being setting up. The MPs, seeing them dressed in coolie clothes, gave them funny looks but allowed them through. Up on the first floor Iain found a few of his old comrades, recently released from Stanley camp, and asked them what was going on. They informed him that Hong Kong’s fate hung in the balance.

“We don’t know who will receive Japan’s formal surrender,” Friendly told him. “It might be China, America or Britain. The airwaves are full of political jostling. The Chinese Nationalists are looking to claim Hong Kong for their own, but the Yanks won’t allow it. Truman wants the colony received by an American or British officer, you see, but Chiang Kai-shek’s standing his ground. Nationalist troops will be gathering at the border soon.

“But knowing the Yank top brass, they’ll get their way. General Wedemeyer’s dead-set on getting here first. I just hope to God that Harcourt arrives here before him. Yes, we’re in America’s hands now all right, at MacArthur’s beck and call. Hell, we’re not even allowed to hoist the Union Jack unless we get Truman’s prior consent, at the same time the bloody Nationalists are flying their white sun flags all over the place. It’s mindless, I tell you, mindless.”

Later he came across Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Hughes, the most senior Army officer left in the colony. Iain briefed him about his past and his relationship with BAAG and British SIS.

“I just got out of Shamshuipo POW camp so forgive me, old boy, if I’m still trying to find my bearings,” said Hughes. “All I can tell you is that we’re desperately trying to set up a British civilian government. At the same time we’re scrambling to ensure that gas, electricity and water services are maintained. Bloody hellish, I tell you. Trying to restore order is nigh impossible. Even though the Japs have surrendered, their troops are still meant to be responsible for keeping public order, but some of the buggers’ve gone to seed. Kanazawa, their police commissioner, has promised to bring discipline back into the ranks, but in the meantime we’re forced to call on the local Triad outfits to act as auxiliary police units. ‘Course we’ve got nothing to pay the buggers with but that’ll change once the Treasury is up and running. Then there’s the problem of foodstuffs and supplies of course…” he trailed off. “If you’re going to hang around, we could use your help.”

But Iain declined. He said he needed to find a boat to take them to Macao.

“Careful. The waterways are thick with mines.”

“May I have your permission to requisition a Japanese coastal defense vessel? I can engage it in mine-sweeping duty along the Hong Kong-Macao sea passage and help clear the way for Harcourt’s arrival.”

“With your credentials, old boy, you certainly don’t need my permission. But what I can do is give you an authorization letter to employ the vessel and a crew of five beyond Hong Kong waters. You’ll need to gain Kanazawa’s signature too. Meantime, I’ll wire the British Consulate in Macao.” Hughes looked at Iain levelly, whilst taking in, as though for the first time, that he was missing an arm. “We’ve all been through hell, haven’t we?”

“Some more than others.”

“Tell me, why are you so determined to get to Macao?”

“My daughter will be three years old soon. I’ve never seen her. She’s waiting for me.”

Hughes nodded. “Meantime I’ll arrange for you to meet the quartermaster and we’ll see if we can find you a billet and some proper clothes. We can’t have you meet your daughter dressed like a rice farmer, can we?”

“Thank you, I’d appreciate that.”

He gave Iain a clap on the shoulder. “Just make sure you send the bloody ship back, old boy.”

Table of Contents

Line Spacing test