The Surrendered (26 page)

THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON and night passed without incident. Dawn was now breaking, and the dining room was frigidly cold, the windows opaque with a frozen haze from their breathing. They had all gathered here as Sylvie’s father suggested and although the stove was kept lit most of the night (if very low, for the officer had his soldiers confiscate most of the mission’s coal, leaving them with a barrel the size of a large garden pot, and they had no idea how long it would have to last them), the fire had died out and no one could bear to stir from beneath the thin blankets. There were just the eight of them now, as the Chinese helper ladies and their children had been allowed to leave at dusk, Jane Binet sending the two orphans off with them. They had spread tablecloths on the rough plank floors about the stove (the chairs became uncomfortable after a while and Tom Harris had already noted they could burn them, if it came to it) and slept in a communal half-circle, only Benjamin Li lying slightly off by himself. The soldiers were bivouacked in their former rooms and in the main classroom on the other side of the wall. For much of the night they could hear them good-naturedly arguing and laughing as they played cards, their youthful voices and the burnt-hay smell of their low-grade cigarettes almost making it seem as if the soldiers and they were snowed in together in some rustic isolated dormitory. Outside, gusts of wind were casting sprays of dirt against the window, knee-high funnels of dust skittering about the empty courtyard. Across the way, in Sylvie’s family’s former sleeping quarters, the officer had spent the night, his driver having hung a tarpaulin over the window to screen the light.

Reverend Lum slept resting his head in his wife’s lap. Mrs. Lum was the only one who had remained sitting up, her back lodged against the inner wall, so that she could comfort her husband by stroking his forehead, his thinning hair. She was sleeping now with her head bowed far forward. Her husband’s wrist had bothered him all night-it had swelled into a purplish mass, the skin shiny from the extreme distention-and so Betty Harris gave him two separate, full doses of morphine. She was careful in the beginning because he had a weak heart, but the pain was so great that she couldn’t refuse him. Yet they all knew the anesthesia was not going to last. Her kit was meant for emergencies, and she estimated that she had only enough to keep him comfortable for the night and perhaps the next morning. Sylvie’s father, through Mrs. Lum, had informed the Japanese officer of this yesterday evening but he flatly refused to let anyone leave; in fact he had come to announce that he would be interviewing them again, this time the women as well, including Sylvie. Her father furiously insisted that the women be left alone, especially Sylvie, and for some reason the officer had finally assented, saying, “Okay, then,” in perfectly accented American English. Francis and Tom Harris were stunned silent for a moment but then barraged him with protestations; yet he would still not explain why he was again conducting the interrogations, and in the middle of their entreaties and arguments he simply walked out.

Tom Harris restarted the coal stove and set a kettle of water on top. Next door they could hear the yawns of soldiers and the tinkle of their mess kits and soon the smells of boiling rice and cigarettes came to them. Sylvie and her mother served tea and some leftover moon cakes for breakfast but no one was much hungry and they were all getting back under their blankets, to wait for the room to warm up, when a large, stoop-shouldered soldier came into the room. He pointed to Tom Harris and barked an order; apparently he was to be the first for reinterrogation. Harris rose slowly enough as to appear defiant. After kissing his wife he left with the soldier, but as the time kept passing Betty grew anxious, sitting against the wall with her knees up to her chin. Sylvie’s mother sat beside Betty and put her arm around the woman’s shoulder, to offer comfort.

Sylvie kept looking at Benjamin Li. His jaw was tensing, and when she tried to smile at him he could only grin tightly back at her. He took out his cigarette case and got up to smoke in the small vestibule that led out to the courtyard. Last night Tom Harris had asked him if he thought they might try to conscript him-many Chinese men had been forcibly enlisted by the Japanese, to fight against the Communists and elements of the Kuomintang or work as labor-but he was confident his passport would shield him. They had no cause to interfere with a British subject, though he had indeed heard of instances of foreign Chinese being conscripted. The idea of his being taken away by them was as horrifying to Sylvie as what had happened to Reverend Lum, and she wanted to tell him now that if the Japanese did try to take him she would attempt anything for him, to prevent it. Of course she knew the idea was pure silliness, but he should know her sentiment at least and she was waiting for a moment in which she could go and speak to him.

As if he sensed her wish, Benjamin caught her eye and she immediately rose and stepped out into the much colder vestibule. The others, resting quietly in the dim room, hardly seemed to notice. He was already smoking and she asked him if she could have one, too. Bright rays of light shot through gaps between the door and jamb and coolly illuminated the small space.

She had not smoked before and he regarded her with his bright eyes but then took out the case. “I should make you ask your parents, but I have a feeling they wouldn’t mind.” He showed her how to tap it, and when he lit it for her she tried to breathe it in as deeply as he did. She coughed terribly at first, and they both laughed. But she soon got accustomed to it, inhaling ever so gently, letting the smoke come out.

“Not bad,” he said.

“I’m almost fourteen,” she said. “When did you start?”

“I guess around your age.”

“You see? And I bet you didn’t have my life.”

“No, I didn’t. I grew up in one place. I didn’t see what you’ve seen. And I certainly wasn’t in a situation like this.”

“But I’m not scared,” she said.

“But you should be,” he told her firmly. “This is a very dangerous situation. Please don’t think anything else.”

She nodded, feeling chastised. They smoked for a while in silence, though the more she smoked the sillier she felt, like a girl playing dress-up. She dropped her cigarette and stamped it out.

“Listen,” he said kindly, his voice relaxed and low. “I wanted to tell you today, during the meal, that I’ve enjoyed our lessons together. You’re an excellent student, so good in fact that you make me think I’m a master teacher.”

“I’m excelling in mathematics, too?”

“Well,” he said, chuckling, “you know what I mean. You should seriously consider studying Classics when you enter university.”

“Maybe I could study in England,” she said. “You could be my instructor then.”

“That would be nice. But I doubt I’ll be able to get back there again.”

“Where will you go, I mean, after here?”

“I had hoped to settle in Shanghai, though it seems the Japanese aim to make everyone’s plans moot. In any case, you’ll require someone who’s twice the scholar I am, for what you’ll be reading.”

“I don’t care,” she said, feeling suddenly that she was losing control, her voice rising. “I don’t care about that at all.”

“Well, you should. By the time you get to university you’ll have equaled and likely surpassed me in your translations. I told your parents as much. They’re very proud of you, you know. Not only because of the Latin.”

“I’m just a burden to them.”

“You shouldn’t ever think that, Sylvie,” he said, taking her by the shoulders. His spectacles glinted with the reflected light. “That’s surely the furthest thing from the truth. If anything, one might say it’s been you who’s been burdened. I wonder if you ever minded being taken all over the world. Always moving around.”

“Sometimes I wish we could live in one place,” she said, though that wasn’t quite true. She never minded their missionary existence, as it was the only life she’d ever known. But until now “one place” had not included a person like Benjamin Li. “I wish we could all stay here.”

“You know that’s impossible now.”

“I know. I just don’t want to be sent off with the Harrises.”

“How I wish that were still an option. You probably should have left last week, when the Japanese first came through. I thought it then and should have told your parents. Really, all of you should have left then.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, but then didn’t offer any more of an answer. She asked him for another cigarette and he gave one to her. As she waited for him to light it she shivered and he leaned in close to her, cuffing his arm about her shoulders but very quickly letting go, like any teacher might.

“I have something for you,” he said. He reached into the pocket of his parka and gave it to her. It was a small brass medal attached to a striped silk band of blue and white.

“What was this for?” Sylvie asked, rubbing its embossed face with her thumb. “Were you a soldier once?”

“Oh, no,” he laughed. “It’s an academic medal, from my high school days. Though it was a military academy. For some reason they gave these out-to make our accomplishments seem heroic, I guess. They gave great big medals for athletics and martial exercises, but I’m afraid this one is merely for Greek and Latin. I want you to have it.”

“I shouldn’t take it.”

“Why not? I wanted to give you something for your Latin prowess, and this is just the thing. It would mean vastly more to me that you had it than my carrying it around. I just found it again this afternoon among my things and I realized I’d eventually just lose it. I’m hoping you’ll keep it safe for me. Then someday you can give it to someone else. Would you do that?”

She nodded, feeling as though he were bestowing on her an eternal prize, and she already knew that she could never give it away. Beneath all the layers of her clothing her heart was bursting, and, unbuttoning her coat, she asked him if he would pin it on her. As the pin backing the medal was rusty, he did so with care, looping it through her sweater so as not to injure her, but just as he enclosed it she pressed his hand against her chest and momentarily held it there. He pulled away his hand. He looked slightly mortified but her expression was such that he smiled at her and then gave her a quick, deep embrace, her face buried in the rough wool of his coat. They were quiet then. They shared another cigarette. They stood close together but not touching and smoked without talking but in Sylvie’s mind she was already leaning against him with her temple tucked in his neck, her arm locked in his, two people in the shadow of a long-mourned departure. Maybe they were even lovers. She was sure that if he asked her in the freezing vestibule to remove her hat and coat and sweaters and skirt and every other underlay of her clothes that she would do as instructed, with whatever his fancied flourish or speed, hew to the exact line of his wishes until she was all but bared.

The door opened and Tom Harris came in from the courtyard with an armed soldier, the chill rushing in behind them. She and Benjamin let them through and followed and when they entered the classroom Betty Harris jumped up to hug him, shouting, “Oh, Tom! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said, embracing her. “I’m fine.” He turned to Sylvie’s father. “He wants to talk to you now, Francis.”

“What does he want?” Mrs. Lum asked. “How was he able to speak to you?”

“He speaks English well,” Harris answered. “He asked what I knew about those incidents, especially the killing of the officer.”

“What did you tell him?” her father asked.

“What could I? I told him I knew nothing about it, that we had just arrived here at the mission then. But he didn’t believe me and threatened me with this goon, but then in the middle of arguing about it he suddenly stopped the interrogation.”

The soldier barked something and Francis held up his hand to indicate himself and they went across the courtyard. But he was only interrogated for about ten minutes before he returned, saying the questions were the same as Harris had been asked: When did he arrive in the area? In what capacity? With whose resources? Had he ever served in uniform? Where was he on the dates of the bombings and the night the Japanese officer was assassinated in the restaurant in Changchung?

The guard took Benjamin next. As he was being escorted away, Sylvie ran up and hugged him. She took him-and herself-by surprise, but he warmly embraced her in return and assured her that everything would be fine. He didn’t seem self-conscious or concerned that the others were watching. After he left she sat beside her mother, who brushed her hair as she did every morning and night. But this morning Sylvie felt a strange electric tinge at the nape of her neck as the brush tugged at her hair, redolent and oily from having gone unwashed for a week; she sensed her mother was looking at her differently, taking another measure of the line of her features, as if she suddenly possessed someone else’s eyes. Was she imagining what a young man, say, Benjamin Li, would desirously see and linger upon in her daughter? Surely it was an unseemly thought in this circumstance, and yet Sylvie closed her own eyes and nurtured the sensation as it flared down the back of her neck and spine, substituting the brush for a caressing hand, the hand for a cheek, the cheek for the most ravenous mouth, the exhilaration quelled only by the renewed murmurings of Reverend Lum, whose ruined wrist was coming fully awake; the morphine was wearing off. It was the very last dose: from now on he would be in his own body. And yet it was Mrs. Lum who was now crying, very softly and to herself, as if already feeling what her husband would soon have to endure. Sylvie’s mother and Betty Harris had been consoling her but didn’t try to do so now; there was nothing else to say or do. Soon enough his murmurs turned into shuddering, bellowing moans, the terrible sounds seeming to come less from his throat than from the body itself, as if immense sections of earth were shifting deep within a cave.

“What the hell is taking so long?” Harris said. He was standing at the window, staring grimly across the courtyard. It had been nearly an hour since Benjamin had gone.