When We Were Orphans Read online

  As it turned out, the torn kimono did not incur his parents’ wrath nearly to the extent feared, and certainly nothing momentous came of the matter. But throughout those months following his return, there would come along one little mishap after another to plunge my friend back into his pit of worry and despondency. The most significant of these, I suppose, was the affair concerning Ling Tien and our “robbery”—the “crime from my past” which so aroused Sarah’s curiosity during our bus ride this afternoon.

  LING TIEN HAD BEEN with Akira’s family for as long as they had been in Shanghai. Among my earliest memories of going next door to play are those of the old servant shuffling about the place with his broom. He looked very old, always wore a heavy dark gown even in the summer, a cap and a pigtail. Unlike the other Chinese servants in the neighbourhood, he rarely smiled at children, but then nor did he scowl or shout at us, and had it not been for Akira’s attitude to him, it is unlikely I would ever have regarded him as an object of fear. Indeed, I remember I was initially more puzzled than anything by the alarm that would seize Akira whenever the servant came within our vicinity. If for instance Ling Tien was passing in the corridor, my friend would break off whatever we were doing to stand rigidly in a part of the room not visible to the old man and not move again until the danger had passed. In those early days of our friendship, I had yet to become infected by Akira’s sense of dread, assuming that it derived from something specific that had occurred between him and Ling Tien. As I say, I was more puzzled than anything, but whenever I asked Akira to explain his behaviour, he simply ignored me. In time I came to appreciate how deeply embarrassed he was by his inability to control his dread of Ling Tien and learnt to say nothing whenever our games were disrupted in this manner.

  But then as we grew older, I imagine Akira began to feel the need to justify his fear. By the time we were seven or eight, the sight of Ling Tien would no longer cause my friend to freeze; instead, he would break off whatever he was doing and look at me with a strange grin. Then putting his mouth close to my ear, he would recite in a curious monotone—not unlike that of the monks we sometimes heard chanting at the Boone Road market—the most terrifying revelations concerning the old servant.

  I thus learnt of Ling Tien’s fearful passion for hands. Akira had once happened to glance down the servants’ corridor towards Ling Tien’s room on a rare occasion when the old man had left his door ajar, and had seen heaped upon the floor the severed hands of men, women, children, apes. Another time, late at night, Akira had spotted the servant carrying a basket into the house piled with the dismembered little arms of monkeys. We had always to be on our guard, Akira warned me. If we gave him the slightest opportunity, Ling Tien would not hesitate to cut off our hands.

  When after a number of such briefings, I enquired as to why Ling Tien was so keen on hands, Akira looked at me carefully, then asked if I could be entrusted with his family’s darkest secret. When I assured him I could, he thought a little longer before saying finally:

  “Then I tell you, old chap! Terrible reason! Why Ling cut off hands. I tell you!”

  Ling Tien, evidently, had discovered a method by which he could turn severed hands into spiders. In his room were many bowls filled with various fluids in which he soaked for several months at a time the many hands he had collected. Slowly the fingers would start to move by themselves—just little twitches at first, then coiling motions; finally dark hairs would grow and Ling Tien would then take them out of the fluids and set them loose, as spiders, all around the neighbourhood. Akira had often heard the old servant creeping out in the dead of night to do just this. My friend had once even seen in the garden, moving through the undergrowth, a mutant Ling had taken prematurely from its solution which did not yet fully resemble a spider and could easily be identified as a severed hand.

  Although even at that age I did not entirely believe these stories, they certainly upset me and for some time the mere sight of Ling Tien was enough to set off terrors within me. Indeed, as we grew older, we neither of us quite shook off our horror of Ling Tien. This was something that always nagged at Akira’s pride, and around the time we were eight, he seemed to develop a need constantly to challenge these old fears. I often remember him dragging me off to some point in his house where we could spy on Ling Tien sweeping the path or whatever. I did not mind these spying sessions so much, but what I came to dread were those occasions Akira would persistently dare me to go near Ling Tien’s room.

  Until this point we had kept well clear of that room, especially since Akira had always maintained the fumes from Ling Tien’s fluids were liable to hypnotise us and draw us in through the door. But now the notion of going near the room became for my friend something of an obsession. We might be having a conversation about something quite different, and then suddenly that strange grin would appear on his face and he would start to whisper: “Are you frighten? Christopher, are you frighten?”

  He would then oblige me to follow him through his house, through those oddly furnished rooms, to the heavy-beamed arch that marked the start of the servants’ quarters. Going under the arch, we would find ourselves standing in a gloomy corridor of bare polished boards, at the far end of which, facing us, was the door of Ling Tien’s room.

  First, I would only be required to stand at the arch and watch as Akira pushed himself step by step along the corridor until he had covered perhaps half the distance to that awful room. I can still see my friend, his tubby figure stiff with tension, his face, whenever he glanced back at me, shining with perspiration, willing himself a few steps further before turning and running back with his triumphant grin. Then would come all his goading and bullying until I eventually found the nerve to match his feat. For quite a time, as I say, these tests of courage concerning Ling Tien’s room came rather to obsess Akira, and took much out of the pleasure of going to play at his house.

  For some time yet, though, it was to remain beyond either of us to walk right up to the door, let alone to go through it. By the time we finally entered Ling Tien’s room, we were both ten, and it was—although of course I did not know it then—my last year in Shanghai. That was when Akira and I committed our little theft—an impulsive act whose wider repercussions, in our excitement, we failed entirely to anticipate.

  WE HAD ALWAYS KNOWN Ling Tien would be going away for six days in early August to visit his home village near Hangchow, and we had talked often about how we would then take the opportunity finally to enter that room. And sure enough, on the first afternoon after Ling Tien’s departure, I turned up at Akira’s house to find my friend entirely preoccupied with the matter. By this time, I should say, I was in general a much more confident person than even a year earlier, and if I still felt a little of that old dread of Ling Tien, I would certainly not have shown it. In fact, I believe I was much the calmer about the prospect of entering the room—something I am sure my friend noticed and saw as an extra dimension to the challenge.

  But as it turned out, throughout that afternoon, Akira’s mother was making a dress, which for some reason required her constantly to move from room to room, and Akira declared it too risky even to contemplate our venture. I was certainly not displeased, but I am sure Akira was the one more grateful for the excuse.

  The following day, however, was a Saturday and when I arrived at Akira’s house towards mid-morning, both his parents had gone out. Akira did not have an amah, as I did, and when we were younger we had often argued over which of us was the more fortunate. He had always taken the position that Japanese children did not need an amah because they were “braver” than Western children. I had once asked him during one such argument who would see to his needs if his mother was out and he wanted, say, some iced water, or if he cut himself. I remember his telling me Japanese mothers never went out unless the child specifically permitted them to do so—a claim I found hard to believe, since I knew for a fact Japanese ladies met in their circles, much as the European ladies did, at Astor House or Marcell’s Tea Room in Sze
chwan Road. But when he pointed out that in his mother’s absence there was the maid to see to his every need, while at the same time he was free to do whatever he pleased with no restrictions at all, I did begin to believe I was the one hard done by. Oddly, I continued to hold this view even though in practice, on those occasions we played at his house when his mother was out, one or another servant was always delegated to watch over our every move. Indeed, especially when we were younger, this would mean some unsmiling figure, no doubt fearing dire consequences should any misfortune befall us, standing within inhibiting proximity while we did our best to play.

  Naturally, though, by that summer, we were allowed to move much more freely without supervision. On that morning we entered Ling Tien’s room, we had been playing in one of Akira’s sparse tatami-floored rooms up on the third floor while an elderly maid—the only other person in the house—occupied herself with some sewing in the room directly below. I remember at one point Akira breaking off from what we were doing, tip-toeing to the balcony and leaning right over the rail, so far I feared he might topple over. Then when he came hurrying back, I noticed the strange grin had appeared on his face. The maid, he reported in a whisper, had as expected fallen asleep.

  “Now we must go in! Are you frighten, Christopher? Are you frighten?”

  Akira had suddenly become so tense that for a moment all my old fears concerning Ling Tien came flooding back. But by this point a retreat for either of us was out of the question, and we made our way as quietly as possible down to the servants’ quarters until we were once more standing together in that gloomy corridor with its bare polished boards.

  What I recall is that we strode down the corridor with little hesitation until we were all but four or five yards from Ling Tien’s door. Then something made us pause, and for a second neither of us appeared capable of continuing; if at that moment Akira had turned and run, I am sure I would have done the same. But then my friend seemed to find some extra resolve, and holding out his arm to me, said: “Come on, old chap! We go together!”

  We linked arms and took the final few steps like that. Then Akira pulled back the door and we both peered in.

  We saw a small, sparse, tidy room with a well-swept boarded floor. The window was covered by a sun-blind, but the light was leaking in brightly at the edges. There was a faint smell of incense in the air, a shrine in the far corner, a low narrow bed, and a surprisingly grand chest of drawers, beautifully lacquered, with ornate handles hanging on each little drawer.

  We stepped inside, and for a few seconds remained still, barely breathing. Then Akira let out a sigh and turned to me with a huge smile, clearly delighted finally to have conquered his old fear. But the next moment his sense of triumph seemed quickly to be replaced by a concern that the room’s lack of any obviously sinister features would make him look ridiculous. Before I could say anything, he pointed quickly to the chest of drawers and whispered urgently:

  “There! In there! Careful, careful, old chap! The spiders, they inside there!”

  He was hardly convincing and he must have realised it. Nevertheless, for a second or two, an image went through my head of those small drawers opening before our eyes as creatures—at various stages between hand and spider—put out tentative limbs. But now Akira was indicating excitedly a small bottle standing on a low table beside Ling Tien’s bed.

  “Lotion!” he whispered. “The magic lotion he uses! There it is!”

  I was tempted to pour ridicule over this desperate attempt to preserve a fantasy we had in truth long outgrown, but at that moment I had another sudden vision of the drawers opening, and a residue of my old fear kept me from saying anything. Moreover, I was beginning to grow anxious about a much more likely eventuality: namely, that we would be discovered in that room by the maid or some other unexpected adult. I could not begin to imagine the disgrace that would then follow, the punishments, the long discussions between my parents and Akira’s. I could not even think how we might start to explain our behaviour.

  Just then Akira quickly stepped forward, grabbed the bottle and clasped it to his chest.

  “Go! Go!” he hissed, and suddenly we were both gripped by panic. Giggling under our breaths, we rushed out of the room and down the corridor.

  Back in the safety of the upstairs room—the maid had remained asleep below—Akira reasserted his claim that the drawers had been filled with severed hands. I could see now he was seriously worried about my ridiculing our long-standing fantasy and somehow I too felt the need to preserve it. I thus said nothing to undermine his claim, nor gave any suggestion that Ling Tien’s room had been a let-down or that our courage had been summoned on false pretences. We placed the bottle on a plate in the middle of the floor, then sat down to examine it.

  Akira carefully removed the stopper. There was inside a pale liquid with a vague smell of aniseed. To this day I have no idea for what the old servant used this lotion; my guess is that it was some patent medicine he had purchased to combat some chronic condition. In any case, its nondescript appearance served our purpose well. Very carefully we dipped twigs into the bottle and let them drip on to some paper. Akira warned that we should not let even a drop touch our hands lest we wake up the next day with spiders at the end of our arms. Neither of us really believed this, but again, it seemed important for Akira’s feelings that we pretend to do so, and thus we went about our task with exaggerated caution.

  Finally, Akira replaced the stopper and put away the bottle in the box he kept for his special things, saying that he wished to conduct a few more experiments with the lotion before returning it. All in all, when we parted that morning, we were both well pleased with ourselves.

  But when Akira came to my house the following afternoon, I saw immediately some difficulty had arisen; he was very preoccupied and unable to concentrate on anything. Dreading to hear that his parents had somehow found out about our previous day’s deeds, I for some time avoided asking what was troubling him. In the end, though, I could bear it no longer and demanded he tell me the worst. Akira, however, denied that his parents suspected anything, then sank once more into his gloom. Only after much more pressure did he finally give in and tell me what had happened.

  Finding it impossible to contain his sense of triumph, Akira had revealed to his sister Etsuko what we had done. To his surprise, Etsuko had reacted with horror. I say surprise because Etsuko—who was four years older than us—had never gone along with our view of Ling Tien’s sinister nature. But now, on hearing Akira’s story, she had glared at him as though she expected him to curl over and die before her eyes. Then she had told Akira we had had the luckiest of escapes; that she personally had known of servants previously employed in the house who had dared do what we had done, and who as a consequence had vanished—their remains discovered weeks later in some alley beyond the Settlement boundaries. Akira had told his sister she was simply trying to frighten him, that he did not for a moment believe her. But clearly he had been shaken, and I too felt a chill pass through me on hearing this “confirmation”—and from no less an authority than Etsuko—of all our old fears concerning Ling Tien.

  It was then I appreciated what was so troubling Akira: someone had to put back the bottle in Ling Tien’s room before the old servant’s return in three days’ time. Yet it was plain to see our bravado of the previous day had all but evaporated, and the prospect of going into that room again now seemed beyond us.

  Unable to settle to any of our usual games, we decided to walk to our special spot beside the canal. All the way there, we talked over our problem from every angle. What would happen if we did not return the bottle? Perhaps the lotion was very precious and the police would be called in to investigate. Or perhaps Ling Tien would tell no one of its disappearance, but decide personally to wreak some terrible vengeance on us. I remember we became quite confused about how much we wished to maintain our fantasy about Ling Tien, and to what extent we wanted to consider logically how best to avoid getting into serious trouble. I re
member, for instance, our considering at one point the possibility the lotion was a medicine Ling Tien had bought after months of saving his money, and that without it he would become horribly ill; but then in the next breath, without abandoning this last notion, we considered other hypotheses which assumed the lotion to be what we had always said it was.

  Our spot by the canal, some fifteen minutes’ walk from our homes, was behind some storehouses belonging to the Jardine Matheson Company. We were never sure if we were actually trespassing; to reach it we would go through a gate that was always left open, and cross a concrete yard past some Chinese workers, who would watch us suspiciously, but never impede us. We would then go round the side of a rickety boathouse and along a length of jetty, before stepping down on to our patch of dark hard earth right on the bank of the canal. It was a space only large enough for the two of us to sit side by side facing the water, but even on the hottest days the storehouses behind us ensured we were in the shade, and each time a boat or junk went past, the waters would lap soothingly at our feet. On the opposite bank were more storehouses, but there was, I remember, almost directly across from us, a gap between two buildings through which we could see a road lined with trees. Akira and I often came to the spot, though we were careful never to tell our parents of it for fear they would not trust us to play so near the water’s edge.