The man had been in solitary confinement for just under two weeks with his arms tied behind his back for eighteen hours a day. It was his punishment for being defiant to the Japanese sentries. During that period the guards had urinated on him and shoved glass shards into his mouth and nose. When, still, he refused to apologise for his show of disrespect, his tormentors tired of him and let him go.
As he staggered down the hill, away from the prison gates, a few fellow prisoners, stretching their shirtless bodies out of windows, shouted across and waved at him. He didn’t wave back; instead his hands felt the dressing by his mouth with clumsy fingers – the searing pain had lasted almost ten days, but now his chin and gums felt scalded, as though they’d been stung by nettles. There was a metallic taste in his mouth as though he’d been sucking on a greasy spoon. Gingerly, he pulled the bandaging off as he teetered down the slope. His feet felt like they were weighed down with ballasts, but it was his face he was more worried about – there was something very wrong, as if the muscles that he had once used for smiling had been removed. He watched the dirty, ochreous gauze unravel and drop to the ground. He tried to work his jaws. There was no saliva left in his mouth and his lips felt like they’d been glued shut. At his feet lay scraps of cloth. It was then that he had a terrible thought: perhaps they’d cut off his tongue.
According to Sergeant-Major Hamuri, detainee 6177 was released from the Gendarmerie twenty-four hours early as a show of graciousness, a fitting act to commemorate Emperor Hirohito’s 44th birthday, he’d said. To mark the occasion, members of the nearby garrison wore stiffly starched uniforms with high unyielding collars, and the camp commandant attached a chrysanthemum flower emblem to the rim of his cap. Field boots were buffed to a lush chocolate brown, bayonet frogs varnished, and Katana swords rubbed and cleaned with clove oil. Even the Sikh sentries, hoisting their laundry lines on the rocky points that looked onto Tai Tam Bay, decided it was high time to swap their soiled red turbans for fresh yellow ones.
During the morning an electric storm had rolled over Hong Kong, dropping lightning, cooling the baking earth with a Tsssssss of quenching rain. It had soaked the solid ground outside of B and C Block, turning it into mud. But three hours had passed since then and, with the day approaching noon, the April sun was out and the shorebirds and magpies were beginning to call again. It was the Emperor’s birthday. It was also the day that the flour allowance was stopped.
Under the stippled shade of a cassia tree, inside the ration store by the kitchens, a tall man called Friendly, with a frizz of brown hair, stood with his shrunken chest bare, wearing nothing but shorts made from rice sacks. Friendly had once been an architect with Leigh & Orange. By his side, the Yorkshireman, Stepney, a former restaurant manager, bespectacled and stooping with hunger, watched with ravenous eyes. On his shoulder sat Mr. Yorkie, his pet mouse. Stepney was born with a defect to his limbs; his right leg curved outwards at the knee, and his left leg curved inwards, which made him look like a cartoon character swaying sideways in the wind. The two men were smiling – between them they’d found an unlikely source of meat.
The interior of the kitchen quarters was dark, lit by a halo of tiny battery lights, its air stagnant, and the dragging heat stifling. There was the smell of something dank, like mildewed fur, a feral stink which seemed to cling to the men’s sweaty wrists. Friendly’s hand sought the back of the cat’s head, avoiding its teeth and raking claws. He gripped the animal firmly against the wooden block, pressing down with all his weight. Blunt shadows fell across the wall. Stepney was so hungry he brought a hand to his mouth, sucking his fingers with anticipation. The cat scratched and struggled as its hind legs were held firm. Mr. Yorkie shrank back from Stepney’s shoulder and hid behind his neck.
Moisture came off the back of Friendly’s neck as he thrust the cat’s face to the cutting board. Temples dissolved with perspiration, eyes withdrew into their sockets. ‘‘God’s sek, keep the bloodeh thing quiet!’’ hissed Stepney as the animal’s shrieks rang round the stone-slabbed cookhouse and reverberated off the ceiling, soaring over the crumbling, cracked beams and across the wooden work benches and deep, stone sinks.
Another voice, male and impatient, said, ‘‘Fucking get on with it!’’ It was Hoarde, the former sugar merchant, who’d once done trade with Japan – little but skin over bony shoulders. His small beard glistened with sweat.
Friendly with the frizz of brown hair lifted his cleaver and brought it down with a gasp. For a moment nothing happened. Then the struggling ceased and the cat’s head rolled away like a discarded trophy, a daydreamer’s far off look in its eyes. ‘‘Hurry,’’ said Stepney, his spectacles steaming up. ‘‘Fore anyone sees.’’ Friendly nodded. He hacked off the tail and feet. Red smears pooled on the yellowed concrete floor. Next, Stepney’s scraggy fingernails scratched at the loose fur by the neck stump. He pulled the skin away as he would the rind of an unripe grapefruit. There was a loud tear that sounded like tough fabric ripping, followed by a gurgling, bubbling sound which escaped from the animal’s flooded lungs.
Having pulled out the innards, Friendly began sawing through the shoulders and ribs. ‘‘Looks like we’ve got ourselves an extra two pounds of meat today, eh Stepney?’’
The Yorkshireman didn’t reply. He was looking at the pearl-dead eyes of the cat. They stared at him from the floor, unflinching. He wondered whether he ought to shut them. Instead, he looked away out of the window. Mr. Yorkie made a squeaking noise and appeared from behind his neck.
In the near distance, the edge of the camp was fringed with skeletal men and women lining up for a drink, faces tweaking with thirst, lunging forward as if pulled by nose rings. They drank stale water from cups cut from tin cans, their collarbones exposed and vulnerable, all warped knees and lanky shadows. Further away, others sat with their heads in their hands, their mouths so stiff it was as though they were windows that had been painted shut. They were all looking out into the horizon, searching, backs bent out of shape, hoping to see American planes in the blue yonder.
The small peninsula where the internees resided was called Chek Chue. The British had named it Stanley after Lord Stanley, and it was, for a brief period in 1842, the administrative centre of Hong Kong. It sat on the southern fringes of the colony and had once been a haunt for Chinese bandits. The fishing village sat in a little gully with a steep funnel-shaped ridge on one side and the Maryknoll Mission on the other. The internment camp was made up from the dormitory bungalows of St. Stephens School and the outhouses of the former colonial gaol. It occupied an area approximately 1100 yards long and as broad as 650 yards across at some points. There were tall wire fences stretching to the throat of the bay and sentry boxes, manned by Sikhs and Formosans, along the perimeter. Yellow dust hung over it on most mornings like a cloud of gnats, raised by the troops of the 230th Regiment attached to the Japanese garrison a quarter mile to the south on Ma Kok Hill.
Stepney was still looking out through the window when he exclaimed, ‘‘Fuck a duck. Look who’s just stepped out from between the prison gates.’’ Friendly and Hoarde leaned forward and stooped to get a better view. They saw the man with the bandaged face blinking at the sharp midday sun, dazzled by the wind, the light, the glare coming off the sea. He’d been in solitary confinement for thirteen days. His pale red hair looked disheveled and his starved chest a little frailer. ‘‘I can’t believe he’s still bloodeh alive,’’ said Stepney.
‘‘Tough as buggery, that Sutherland,’’ Hoarde said. ‘‘Tough as fucking buggery.’’