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By Root 1428 0

school had more girls in the lower primary grade than in the upper one. Kam Sau knew why: it was the extra five pounds of rice per month that persuaded families to send their girls to school. The desire to have them learn the rudiments of math so that they could manage household finances when they married was secondary. Most of the girls did not go on to upper primary classes, let alone to lower middle school. Once they had completed lower primary, they would be fetched back home to do farm work. When Kam Sau planned her teaching, she had to take all these factors into account. So in “handicrafts,” she taught the skills that the girls would need in their lives at home. She did not teach needlework. The girls could learn that from the older women at home. Instead she focused on making paper cuts, lanterns and gift boxes, and writing Spring Festival couplets.

They had prepared the bamboo frames for the lanterns in a previous class. Now she would teach them how to glue on the paper. She had bought a long roll of red tissue paper in town, and ordered two girls to hold it, one at each end. Kam Sau was just wielding the scissors when she heard the rapping at the door.

It was a polite knock, with a hint of hesitation between each rap. It certainly did not sound like a portent of danger. Kam Sau had reached crucial part in the cutting. Without looking up, she asked the girl nearest the door to open it.

It was a dazzlingly sunny day outside and at first, Kam Sau could see only a white glare. The doorway was filled with a couple of jagged shapes silhouetted against the azure sky. She also saw that from each one rose something long and gleaming, but it was a few moments before she realized these were bayonets.

“Do you have any … any food,” mumbled one of the silhouettes in broken Chinese.

As her eyes grew accustomed to the glare, Kam Sau saw that the visitors were dressed in army uniforms brown with dust. Magazines hung on each side of their belts, and their bayonets had suspicious stains at the tips.

Kam Sau took all this in, her head in a whirl. The room seemed to grow dark and her terrified ears filled with a high-pitched hum.

The children. What about the children?

Outside on the slope in front of the school, other pupils were doing their exercises. It should have been Ah-Yuen’s class but he had gone to town for an anti-Japanese teachers’ meeting and another teacher was filling in for him.

How could she attract their attention?

“I’ll go, go to the kitchen and get something for you,” she stammered.

But it was too late. The dark figures were already in the room, forming an impenetrable barrier in front of Kam Sau.

“She … go,” said one of them, indicating a girl standing with Kam Sau.

“There’s some leftover rice in the crockery cupboard,” said Kam Sau, gripping the child’s hand. She traced a message in her palm. The girl’s hand twitched. She had understood.

The soldiers were Japanese and there were three of them: Sasaki, Kameta and Kobayashi. They had been separated from their unit in the Sam Ho Lei area during the march on Tan Shui Ko. They trekked through the forests and across rivers for hours until hunger had forced them to stop at the mud-brick building on the hill.

Even though they were armed to the teeth and could have slaughtered a whole village, they were well aware that hatred was a powerful weapon; a mob of unarmed Chinamen could make mincemeat of them. Their intent was to beg a meal and eat it in peace and quiet, scrounge a cigarette or two if they were in luck, and get back on the road as quickly as possible in hopes of catching up with their unit before nightfall.

But once they were inside the classroom they changed their minds.

To be precise, it was the woman they saw inside that changed their minds.

They had arrived in Hoi Ping and Toi Shan counties in early spring, under cover of a mighty bombardment. They had seen many women since then, country women with faces burned dark by the South China sun, with high cheekbones and fleshy lips, and hair full of dust and straw. In frantic haste, they stuck them