“Is there food we can buy so I could bring it back to camp?”

“Depends on the day and what they’ve been able to find. Sometimes there’s powdered milk, sometimes there’s crates of mustard. We’ll see.” She pauses. “It’s sort of freeing, this paring down to the necessities. It seems so frivolous to have thought about dresses and picnics.”

“You and Dominick seem to have your meals and lodging pretty well figured out.” He says this striving for a tone without judgment.

“Yes, we do,” she replies carelessly. “But it could all be taken away tomorrow so we must enjoy it while we can, no?”

She cuts down Pottinger Street and into a small alley.

“There’s a small shop here where you can get some amazing things.”

“What’s in demand?”

“Food, mostly. Some people have started speculating in gold and such. We’ll go to the market after this.”

A bell jingles as Trudy pushes open the door. Inside, it is dark and pungent with the smell of teakwood and the waxy oil used to polish it. A curio shop, with scratched, smudgy glass counters filled with Oriental peculiarities. Trudy speaks in Cantonese to the woman behind the counter, who scurries to the back, cloth slippers swishing on the floor.

“What are we looking for here? ”

“Oh, I’m just doing an errand for my master. You know.”

“How mysterious,” he says.

The woman comes back with a man, small, with a bent back, dressed in black silk. He seems irritated. Trudy speaks rapidly again, her small hands outlining a large rectangle in the air. The man shrugs and shakes his head. Trudy’s voice turns shrill. She ends with a sharp outburst and turns to leave.

Outside, the sun is shining, an abrupt change from the dark gloom of the shop.

“So, food?” he asks. She will tell him when she’s ready.

“Yes, food,” she says, taking his arm, an implicit gesture of thanks. “Sometimes, I think you could be Chinese too.”

The wet market seems the same as ever-wizened old ladies with wide-brimmed coolie hats, dressed in black smocks, bent over their wares, calling out to potential customers. Here, a basket of greens; there, soybean curds resting in a container of milky water, with yellow sprouts. He remembers the smell, the green, slightly brackish scent of dirt and water still clinging to the vegetables. He used to come with Trudy on weekends, her mother having told her that she was never to become too grand to go to the market for her own food. “At least, every once in a while,” she says. “Not all the time, of course. And you won’t catch anyone we know here. But I don’t mind. It’s kind of elemental, isn’t it? Deciding which exact onion you want, or what fish you’re going to eat and have them clean it for you.”

“How is it that there isn’t a shortage? ” he asks, as she bends over to inspect some radishes.

“There is, but these are available for exorbitant prices. All the peasants from the outlying territories make the trip into town now because they know they’ll get five or six times what they could get out there, so it’s all concentrated here. They come out with ten watermelons or a bag of watercress. It’s good for the soul to see how basic life can be. Grow something on the land, dig it up, sell it for some money, buy something you need.”

Afterward, when they have procured some tinned foods, vegetables, and cigarettes for Will to take back to Stanley, Trudy takes him for a drive around the Peak, to see all the bombed-out houses and ruined roads. Every wall is crumbling, bricks falling to the road.

“Can you believe what all the bombs did? They’re starting to rebuild, though. They have the slave labor or Volunteer Corps from China, as they call it, and they’re patching up the roads and trying to salvage the homes. Some have been taken over by Japanese military, and they look quite nice.”

They pass a house where some dozen coolies are painting the exterior white.

“The king of Thailand has an elephant that they trained to paint.”

“That is one of your outlandish stories.”

“No, I’m serious. Father said he saw it himself.”

“They had the elephant paint the palace? ”

“Certainly not! I’m sure he just painted the rough outbuildings and barns and things like that.”

“Of course, darling.” They’ve stopped at an overlook where tourists used to come to look over Hong Kong harbor.

“Should we get out? ”

There is a wobbly iron fence, pebbles and dirt underneath, wind with the metallic smell of lingering winter. She leans into him, hair blowing wild, as they look out onto the green sea, the white, stocky buildings crowding the shore and the harbor.

“It looks so peaceful now, doesn’t it? ” Trudy says musingly. “The water in Hong Kong is a different color from anywhere else in the world-kind of a bottle green. I think it’s the mountains reflected in it.” She pauses. “It was quite red with blood just these few months ago. There are boats and bodies on the bottom of the sea, thick on it, I’m sure. It was shocking how quickly things looked normal again, how nature swallows up the aberrations.”

“What happened to Angeline’s house?”

“She’s managed to hang on to it, although I don’t know why she doesn’t come into town. This place is filled with Japanese army officials who have taken over the houses and I don’t see how it’s safe for her here. We have lunch every once in a while, Dominick, Angeline, and I. Try to pretend things are normal.”

“She’s all right, though? ”

“Not really. None of us are.”

They return to the hotel, where Trudy starts to pack his newly accumulated things into his suitcase.

“You’ll be popular when you get back.”

“We have to figure out a way to get supplies into the camps. The children need vitamins and protein.”

The phone rings.

“Victor,” says Trudy when she picks it up. Her voice is even.

“Yes, I did get it. Dommie gave it to me.” She pauses. “I know. I’m trying.” Another pause. “I’ll be in touch when I can, but please don’t call me about this again.” She hangs up the phone with a bang.

“Everything all right? ” Will asks.

“Watch me be frugal, Will,” Trudy says instead, ignoring his question. She starts to brew coffee on a small cooking plate. “This is my third go-around with these grounds. Have you ever seen anything so industrious? Aren’t you proud of me?”

They sip the hot, bitter drink without milk or sugar.

“Oh, I forgot. There’s something I wanted you to see.” She goes to the bedside table and pulls out a folded-up newspaper.

“This editorial was in that ridiculous paper on Valentine’s Day. Dommie wants me to frame it.” She reads, “ ‘The Eurasian is a problem in all British colonies. The term is applied loosely to the offspring of all mixed marriages and to their children, et cetera, et cetera. That Britain and some other of the Occidental powers chose to victimize the Eurasian rather than accept him and make use of his qualities is astonishing to students of the question. The Eurasian could be of great help to these powers, contributing valuable liaison between the ruling nation and the native population.’ ” She looks up. “Want to hear more? ”

“Can I see that?” She gives it to him. He scans it. A column of coarse intelligence.

“The funny thing is, I was talking about being Eurasian to Otsubo about a week before it came out.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Isn’t that interesting? I was telling him how when I was young, the other children would laugh and point at me, and on the streets, some Europeans would take my photograph as if I were some animal at the zoo.”

“It must have been difficult, but those people are just ignorant.”

“Turn the page,” she orders, gesturing to the paper.

“More of your influence? ”