The Communist's Daughter (17 page)

I asked the Bishop if he thought the United Front would hold.

“My daughter has just returned from Shensi Province, where Mao's forces are based. She reports wonderful things. An animated, galvanized people. This is more than a gathering movement. It's a revolution, and I believe it will hold long enough for the Maoists to defeat the Japanese in the north and extend their influence southward toward Nationalist territory. Their support spreads by the day. Chiang's willingness to tolerate the Japanese presence is mocked there on a daily basis by the common people. The United Front will last, but only as long as the Communists need it to.”

He wasn't as interested in specifics, only the larger picture. He was impatient with talk of shifting front lines, supply routes and international aid—all subjects I was deeply interested in. He was perfectly avuncular, though, and in so being could not have been less condescending or superior. His contempt for Generalissimo Chiang, the Chinese Franco, was refreshing.

“Of course,” he said, “the important thing is that the Japanese be repelled. A most barbarous enemy, I believe. There is talk of rape houses they call Consolation Houses. No, we'll accept the meagre Nationalist support until we drive these devils out. And if Chiang can stomach the alliance long enough, we'll use his resources. Land for time, that is what they're saying these days. China has enough terrain to kill an enemy twice or three times as powerful as the Japanese.”

“Land for time?” asked Jean.

“Ceding land so the Chinese forces can regroup—buying time, as it were, acre by acre, in order to put something of a resistance together and establish factories in the west of the country.”

“The farther away from the ports,” I said, “the harder it is for the Japanese.”

“The Japs have a superior air force, but yes, you're right. The existing industries are on the coast. The farther they have to extend themselves, the better for Mao.”

“High-stakes poker,” I said. “How much do you give? How long do you wait?”

“It's the only game the Communists can win at this point. You've seen what the enemy is capable of doing. Peking, Shanghai, Nanking, all cities within a hundred miles of the coast. They can control city blocks and government buildings in Shanghai, but let's see if they can control the Chinese countryside, five million square miles.”

The Bishop introduced us to a Dr. R. K. S. Lim, head of the Chinese Red Cross. The small man bowed politely before me, expertly balancing a cup of tea as he did so. I bowed in return, and the Bishop acted as our interpreter. Lim, noting that my reputation preceded me, said he was eager to have me and my assistant join his organization. “They're in the thick of things, really,” said the Bishop, “but since the Red Cross is a non-aligned organization, your safety is quite assured. But then, anything can happen.”

“Please tell the doctor that we are not concerned for ourselves but for the men offering their lives in the fight against Fascism.”

“May I wish you all the best,” Dr. Lim said, and withdrew.

We were next introduced to Lieutenant Chin Po-ku, the Coordinator of Medical Supplies for the Communist Eighth Route Army, presently engaging the Japanese, and under the military command of General Chu Teh.

“It is an honour, sir, to meet the great war surgeon Bethune,” he said. His hair was parted down the middle, Western style. “The Chinese people have observed your struggle against European Fascism.”

“As we take inspiration from this nation's fighting win.”

“An exceedingly polite race, really,” said the Bishop, smiling. “You'll find that.”

“Tell him I'm eager to put into practice here what we learned in Spain. Tell him that with the right supplies and support, I'll establish units like the one established in that country, where our survival rate on the front lines was close to 90 per cent. Tell him the new medical techniques I bring to the guerrilla war in China will be a shining example to the world, and that I'm eager to get to the front as soon as possible. Please tell him that the first order of business is to arrange for our transport to the Eighth Route Army's base.”

The Bishop obliged, yet despite my expertise and enthusiasm, I was told that issuing a pass ensuring transit north would take some time, since the Nationalist government held that swath of territory. Meanwhile Hankou, as the de facto capital since the fall of Nanking, was sure to provide a stimulating sojourn. It was, the Lieutenant added, full of entertainments and internationals, including spies, British naval officers, black-marketeers and prostitutes.

“And sometimes they're not so easy to tell apart,” said the Bishop, smiling.

Growing impatient, I said, “Tell him I'm here to work. And the sooner the better. I don't care to socialize with expats. Ask him how long we might expect to be delayed.”

“Impossible to say,” said the Lieutenant.

“Days?” I asked.

The Bishop smiled yet again and didn't bother translating the question. “You would do well, Doctor Bethune, to think of this war as an old mule labouring up a mountain trail. Nothing about it moves very swiftly. Nor should it, my good man. History such as this must be savoured.” And with that he took my arm, and Jean's, and delivered us to a small table set with tea and cakes, where we found Agnes Smedley, bottle of gin in hand, holding court with a Finnish industrialist and a short, unshaven Italian journalist.

*

It has occurred to me that I have not spoken much about your mother's family, but sadly I know little of her life before we met. I wish I could tell you some things about her childhood and your maternal grandparents, but the simple fact is I cannot. I know only what she told me. I suppose your mother left me with so little in that regard because we never really understood how precious the time we had together truly was. That it would be taken so quickly. We believed Spain was only the beginning, I suppose. What she told me was that her carpenter father had gone to America in search of work at the age of twenty-eight, never to return. As so many men did in his day, he crossed the Atlantic to find a new life and prepare the way for the rest of the family. After three months he would send for them. With a pack on his back, he climbed aboard the SS
Numidian,
sailing from Stockholm. He promptly found a steady job at a lumberyard in Chicago, on the north side of the river, but also what he hadn't bargained for and couldn't possibly fight against. Enraptured by the dream of new beginnings, he found a life there before his family was able to join him. A fresh start, he heard everyone saying, is the meaning of America. So he fell in love with the pretty German maid who worked at his rooming house in the Swedish neighbourhood of Armour Square. He believed a young German wife was what young America had intended for him. “So there, you see,” your mother told me, “we were left behind, Mother and I. But I always thought of him. I always wondered. Always prayed that the letter telling us to come would arrive the next day, or the next. I still live like that, always expecting something to change in my life. But it never does. Maybe that's why I came here. War changes everything.”

“It changes a person,” I said.

“But I'm still waiting for something.”

“Then I'll take you to America. That will change you. It turns you into something you can't know. There you can never rest, never appreciate. You only aspire. It's like a war.”

“I don't know how we managed,” she said, “to live without a man in the house. I think my mother forgave him, but his absence was always painful. Then one day a solicitor came to say he was sorry to inform us that my father had died. It was a great loss, he said.”

“What happened then?” I asked.

“He'd left money behind, enough that my mother didn't have to work any longer. We moved to the seaside, and when his body didn't come home we had our own services there. My mother prayed that I would have the strength to forgive my father, and I prayed as well. We stood in the sea and prayed and then went up to our cabin and prepared a meal together.” She paused. “When I got older I began to see what my mother had been forced into when we had nothing. I saw that it was not our failure but the failure and shame of living without the protection of a man in a man's world. I began to understand my mother's degradation.” She looked at me. “Does that shock you?”

“I'm sorry,” I said, feeling embarrassed. It is a shameful thing to say. Sometimes we're embarrassed by our silences, if not by our inability to care about things we should have known all along. “This is what brought you here?”

She said, “Prostitution is a form of nihilism, wouldn't you say?”

It is easy to judge those you don't know, but often difficult to accept the ways of those whom you do.

I have wrestled with this thought now for some time. I wish I'd had the chance to meet your grandmother, to stand in the sea and listen to that prayer.

*

It became clear soon enough that the Bishop knew all too well what he was talking about. The transit passes proved a major stumbling block that held us back no less than three weeks. But I decided that I would not spend this time idly, as a tourist samples the local foods and takes in the sights. Everywhere I looked those first days in Hankou, on all the faces I encountered, I saw tales of the greater struggle waiting just beyond our reach. The Bishop was again correct. As the seat of the Nationalist government, the city was lively, bristling with military attachés, British officers, and American privateers (the Flying Tigers were making something of a name for themselves there), diplomats and businessmen, as well as the artistic and society types, the “war tourists,” as your mother called them, that feed off the glamorous danger of a besieged and transitional capital. I was told, I think by Smedley, that the British authors Auden and Isherwood had passed through Hankou only days before, looking for their next book. I knew they'd been in Spain, with the Republicans, and wished them well, but also hoped they were truly interested in the cause.

China was now the only story. Here one saw the many refugees flowing down from the north, the simple villagers and farmers mercilessly ripped from their land and now hapless in a city unprepared for their arrival. But they were not a story. They were a fact. Meanwhile, the international problem was growing. Mixed in with the Tartars, Manchus and Mongols, I discovered around this time the small but very noticeable community of white Russians, blurry-eyed and violent, that favoured certain teahouses and bars in the seedier neighbourhoods. Their daytime melancholy often rose to a peak of drunken violence by nightfall. Early on during my stay, I saw a group of them walking unsteadily down the wet, snowy street, clearly drunk. It was a cold Tuesday evening. One man produced a bottle from his heavy coat—Russian vodka, probably—took a long drink and unceremoniously broke it over a companion's head. That man fell to the ground, stunned, and for a moment remained on all fours, like a beaten dog, blood emerging from his long shaggy hair. I was about to intervene when suddenly he rose and lunged at his friend. They set upon one another in a rage, then just as quickly, and without a word, collapsed into each other's arms in hilarity.

War tourism, so agreeable to some, was obviously not for me. I could not stand by, simply observing. After three days, and at my insistence, Jean and I were given a temporary assignment at the Presbyterian Mission Hospital in Han-yang, a quarter of an hour west of Hankou, until such time as we would be provided with our transit papers north.

We found the hospital in a sadly primitive state, barely limping into the twentieth century. It was in desperate need of supplies and equipment, overrun with TB and typhus, its staff undertrained and overworked. Temporary though we might be, its management would certainly benefit from the expertise of two experienced staff. The director, an ebullient Englishman named Morrissey who enjoyed drinking rice wine and telling stories of his youth in Manchester, was a good doctor, an island of iron will and professional conduct in a country torn apart by internal conflict and a foreign invader. He simply could do no more. Grateful for our help, on more than one occasion he very nearly begged us to reconsider our plans for heading north.

Morrissey, having been in China some twenty years, turned out to be a great and prolific gossip. He knew all the latest, it seemed. He spoke with great relish of an odd romantic entanglement between a Portuguese consular official and a German general's wife; he was very good with a German accent and, for some reason, quite ruthless toward the Portuguese. I think gossiping, along with the rice wine, was his preferred method of saving himself from overpowering anxieties. Occasionally we dined together, Jean sometimes joining us. He seemed to long for English-speaking company and took every opportunity to take me aside for a chat. He had a pretty wife from Hankou and a grown child now studying in England. He was very obviously homesick, despite his deep roots here, and quite despondent when finally our transit passes were issued.

During the almost daily bombing sorties over the city, our orderly descent into the cellars beneath the hospital was uneventful and routine. We treated a variety of wounds, primarily lower-body trauma, as most wounds above the waist prove fatal within twenty-four hours. We moved those patients we could, others remained in their wards. One day, preparing a leg for amputation, I was thinking how grateful I was to be back at work after close to two months away from it, when the sirens sounded. I looked up, and Jean was waiting for my order. This poor man, like so many others, had been subjected to unimaginable horrors over his long journey to my table—on average, over ninety hours—from the nearest front. I walked quickly to the window and watched the Japanese planes on their approach. By then I knew my aircraft. The three planes coming in were the Ki-15 Mitsubishi, a light attack bomber. I turned back to the man, who was still conscious. Just before the sirens started up, he'd attempted to thank me with a salute for doing him the service of cutting off his leg. When I turned to face him from the window, he smiled and mustered what strength he had left to raise his right hand and shoo me away to the basement shelter.