MacDonald shook off Miller’s restraining hand.
“But, the fight against the Americans goes well,” he continued doggedly. “To the victor belongs the spoils, and the Nationalists’ve taken hundreds of millions of dollars off the Americans, so they must be the victors. Their victory was completed yesterday, when the Gimo finally got Uncle Joe … Old Vinegar Joe Stilwell … sacked. A great victory. Now nobody will interfere with the Gimo’s cockeyed strategy.”
The party sat frozen. Dewey Miller leaned back, resigned to allowing MacDonald to finish his tirade. The little Scotsman could hardly make matters much worse. He was voiding the accumulated bitterness of four years of personal and professional frustration spent watching the Nationalists bumble, lie, cheat—and fight the Japanese only when it was absolutely unavoidable. Archie MacDonald was simply restating the facts twenty foreign correspondents had already reported privately to their skeptical employers.
“Finally, the other two wars. The Gimo’s keeping the Chinese people in check. They don’t know any better. He’s also keeping the Communists in check. But the Communists do know better, and there’ll be a day of reckoning. The Communists don’t fight the Chinese people, but the Japs. Meanwhile, the Gimo lets the Americans fight the Japs for him—and schemes to get the Americans to fight the Communists for him after they’ve beaten the Japs. I give you that brilliant strategist and great leader, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek!”
Archie MacDonald paused as if expecting applause. Nonplussed by the silence, he sank into his chair and stared owl-eyed at the company. Dewey Miller recovered first. He draped a heavy arm around the Scotsman’s shoulders and lifted him from his seat.
“I’m sorry, Ladies and Gentlemen,” the American rumbled in embarrassment. “Mr. MacDonald’s had a drop too much. I’d best take him home. My apologies.”
Mary’s high, clear voice broke the silence as the two newspapermen retreated from the banquet like soldiers withdrawing after an indecisive engagement.
“You musn’t be too embarrassed, Mr. Miller,” she said. “Such things happen in Chungking. We’re all on edge. Perhaps you’d care to bring your friend to tea tomorrow about four. You know where to find me?”
“I’ll find you, Ma’am,” Miller replied. “And I’ll bring Archie—if he can walk.”
The following day, Mary Sekloong saw with amusement that the Scotsman could just manage to walk—very gently, as if each footfall might drive his backbone through his skull.
“You had no difficulty in finding us?” she inquired.
“No, Ma’am,” Dewey Miller replied. “We just asked. Everyone knows Mr. Tang is the Sekloong agent in Chungking.”
“Poor man. He’s been very kind, and we’ve usurped his little house.”
Mary glanced complacently around the reception room of Mr. Tang’s second wife’s house. After more than two years, she was still wickedly amused by the juxtaposition of traditional calligraphic scrolls and English hunting-prints. The furnishings were not her taste, though they were anything but ostentatious by the normal Sekloong standard. Reasonably comfortable, they nevertheless appeared extravagantly luxurious in a city where university professors and senior officials lived with large families in single rooms under leaking roofs.
The passing decades had almost obliterated Mary’s youthful indignation against the rigid social barriers of the late Victorian age and her own relegation to the wrong side of those barriers. The years had hardened her to the humiliating disparities between great wealth and extreme poverty. She had, of necessity, deliberately cultivated the Edwardians’ disregard of the plight of the “lower orders”; she had, nonetheless, become ever more keenly aware of their suffering.
Contemplating the reception room, snug with its long curtains and glowing coal fire, she was disturbed primarily because even her authority had been inadequate to remove the unsightly antimacassars from the bulky easy-chairs resurrected from the godown of a long departed British commercial agent. Those graying cobwebs of crocheted thread were, Mr. Tang knew beyond dispute, as essential to the comfort of Europeans as were the chairs themselves.
“I can offer you tea,” she said. “Or would Mr. MacDonald prefer something with more authority?”
“I’d no’ say no to a wee brandy-and-soda.”
The Scotsman’s sheepish manner and trembling hands contrasted with his normal brisk assertiveness. Mary found it difficult to equate the monumentally hungover scrap of humanity that sat before her with the Jovian pronouncements that appeared in her airmail edition of The Times. Yet his obvious weaknesses were not merely endearing; they were in harmony with the lapses she had discerned in the articles that appeared under the attribution: From Our Own Correspondent in China.
Mary possessed a special vantage-point between two worlds because, lacking commercial employment for the first time in decades, she had devoted herself to other purposes. She taught the English language and European history to the children of displaced Chinese intellectuals while discreetly drawing on the Sekloong kwan-hsi connections to provide adequate food and clothing for her students’ families. With their parents’ grateful assistance, she had resumed her long-neglected study of Chinese history and culture. Almost against her will, she had also become deeply concerned with immediate Chinese politics. Though she tried to remain no more than an interested spectator, she found the power struggles engrossing—if often revolting.
“Very good of you to ask us,” Dewey Miller rumbled. “To take the time when your son-in-law’s leaving tonight.”
The big American, she saw, was uncomfortable under her sharp scrutiny. A little charm was in order, as Elizabeth Metcalfe would have said. The memory popped unbidden into her mind: Elizabeth and Hilary. That was a long time ago.
“To the contrary,” she replied. “I’m honored that two busy gentlemen of the press can find time to take tea with an unimportant old lady. I’ve read your dispatches with …”
“Contagious, isn’t it?” Dewey Miller grinned.
“What’s contagious, Mr. Miller?” She responded to the warm humor that lit the American’s face.
“Why, this Chinese palaver. I’ve only been in Chungking a short time, but I know we could go on exchanging high-flown compliments, Chinese-style, for another hour.”
“And no bad thing,” Archie MacDonald muttered, still chagrined. “Better than my brusque Scots … uh … forthrightness.”
“Mr. MacDonald, no one was shocked last night,” Mary interjected. “Startled, perhaps, but not shocked. After all, every Chinese present agreed with you wholeheartedly.”
“Then, Ma’am, why don’t they do something about it?” Dewey Miller asked disingenuously. He had often found intentional naiveté a useful professional technique to disarm his sources’ wariness.
“First, there’s little they can do,” a light male voice replied. “Second, they’re all benefiting—almost all. And finally, though I hate to say so, because they’re Chinese.”
Monsignor Charles Sekloong had padded into the room, wearing Chinese cloth-shoes and a quilted black long-gown that resembled a cassock. The five years since he had emerged from the isolation of the cloister to join the Papal Nunciature in Paris had given him worldly poise. The novice diplomat who waited uneasily for his brother Thomas outside the Moulin Rouge was no longer discernible in the self-assured priest who stopped to kiss his mother’s cheek.
The last year in Chungking had inscribed two vertical lines between his heavy eyebrows. He was, however, concerned not for himself, but for the Chinese people. As Thomas predicted in Paris, Monsignor Charles Sekloong had forcefully rediscovered his kinship with the Chinese after a twenty-year separation. Despite his outward serenity, he was deeply troubled. He reproached himself for the sins of pride and sloth because, he was convinced, he could do more for China than he did. Reporting the frightfully confused situation to the Vatican, while assisting a few individuals, was not enough.
Yet even the Sekloongs’ power could not alter the fundamental
problem, which was geography itself. Civilians were starving and soldiers were malnourished because even the fertile Szechwan Basin could not feed millions of refugees. Supplies from the outside world could take only two routes: the packed-earth Ledo Road, which wound hundreds of miles through mountains and along precipices, or the American airlift from India “over the Hump” of the Himalayas. Their capacity was so severely limited that General Joseph W. Stilwell, the ground commander, and Major General Claire L. Chennault, the air commander, wrangled constantly over priorities for shipments as small as a hundred gallons of aviation gasoline or a dozen heavy machine guns. No capacity could be spared for civilian needs, though, somehow, the black market provided liquor, perfumes, nylons, and caviar at prices not merely exorbitant, but exortionate. The single alternate channel, caravans of mules and horses trudging from Yunnan through Tibet to northern India, was glacially slow. China was effectively isolated, though the Americans could always find an aircraft for a tinsel celebrity like Commander Randall Martin.
“Good afternoon, Gentlemen,” the priest added. “I hope you’re not suffering as badly as I am. Perhaps some day I’ll learn to survive a Chinese banquet unscathed.”
“You’re overdoing politeness, Father,” Dewey Miller smiled. “Archie and I had a skinful, but you were sober as a bishop!”
“You haven’t met many bishops, have you Mr. Miller?” Charles asked. “I just don’t show the drink. Lots of practice, you know. All that altar wine.”
Miller, a backsliding Baptist, and MacDonald, a Presbyterian turned agnostic, warmed to the priest. His wit had a slightly musty, ecclesiastical flavor. It nonetheless bridged the awful chasm between the two worldly, self-indulgent correspondents and the clergyman who had taken vows of celibacy and obedience.
“Perhaps we priests should train ourselves to celibacy the same way, by exposure,” the priest added. “Tibetan lamas steel themselves against temptation by exposure to pornography. To my regret, that method would be heretical. Besides, the temptation might prove irresistible.”
“I’m sure, Father, you could do anything you chose,” MacDonald observed. “But what can we do for you and Mrs. Sekloong?”
“Nothing, Gentlemen,” Mary answered. “Nothing in particular, that is. It’s just that we were intrigued by Mr. MacDonald’s little oration—as was my husband, who regrets that his duties prevent his joining us. We thought a chat might be enjoyable—and, perhaps, useful.”
“Don’t mind Archie,” Miller drawled. “He’s a suspicious type. Probably thinks you’re out to sell us a line—or the Father wants to convert us.”
“Since my son’s never tried to convert me, that’s unlikely,” Mary replied. “And I have no line. The more I learn of China, the more confused I am.”
“The beginning of wisdom,” MacDonald muttered.
“But, I’d like to put one thought to you,” she continued. “Mr. MacDonald, you probably feel apprehensive today. But you know you won’t be expelled for your outburst.”
“No,” Archie agreed, “the Nationalists will just keep on making life hard for the press. But what’s the point?”
“I’ve known General Chou En-lai for many years, though I can’t claim him as a friend,” Mary answered. “He can have few friends. He’s given himself to a cause much more ambitious and demanding than my son’s. But we do get along, and I believe I know a little of his mind.”
Monsignor Charles recalled the long association behind his mother’s light remark. During the brief madness of the Canton Commune in December 1927, Chou En-lai had saved Mary and Charles Sekloong from Communist-led mobs; and, after the Commune fell, they had spirited Chou to safety in Hong Kong. During the intervening years they had met upon a number of occasions, finding themselves drawn together by common pleasure in intellectual disputation. Another bond was Chou En-lai’s apparent affection for James Sekloong, who was to accompany the Communists’ de facto foreign minister when he returned to Chungking within the week to resume his marathon negotiations with the Nationalists.
“I’d like to ask one question, Mr. MacDonald.” Mary’s violet eyes gleamed. “What would happen if you had delivered yourself of a similar outburst against Mao Tse-tung in Yenan?”
“But it couldn’t happen.” The Scotsman was baffled. “Everything’s different in Yenan. Even if I did get that … ah … inebriated, why would I talk that way? It wouldn’t make sense.”
“Archie, you know damned well you’d be thrown out on your tail or worse, don’t you?” Miller interjected. “Answer the lady’s question.”
“Perhaps,” MacDonald admitted. “Though it’s hard enough to get to Yenan. The Nationalist blockade keeps out journalists as well as …”
“Not entirely the Nationalists, Mr. MacDonald,” the priest said. “How many applications have the Communists rejected as ‘inconvenient’? How many correspondents have been allowed in? Have any but the Communists’ very good friends been allowed to stay more than a few days?”
“Aye, there’s a point,” MacDonald conceded. “They’re no’ mad for the free press. But they’re no’ corrupt like the Nationalists. No sickening differences between poor and rich. And they are effective. They know what they want, and they go out to get it.”
“That is the point,” Mary said. “They’re ruthless and effective, and they know their purposes. The Nationalists are trying to preserve the suffering, tattered Republic of China. The Communists are determined to destroy that structure—and then make their own China. Destruction’s always easier than preservation. Mao Tse-tung’s primary objective is not the Japanese but the Nationalists. He’s said so himself—repeatedly.”
“But the Communist guerrilla movement!” Archie MacDonald objected. “It harasses the Japanese and denies them territory.”
“To what end, Mr. MacDonald?” Mary insisted. “Do the Communists fight to defeat the Japanese or to increase their own power? How many real battles have they fought against the Japanese?”
“I should’ve notice of that question coming,” MacDonald objected. “But let me see …”
He drifted into a reverie, recalling the four years since he had come to Chungking. Until the spring of 1944, there had been much more fighting between Nationalists and Communists than between Chinese and Japanese. Since more than a million men of the Imperial Japanese Army were mired in the vast expanse of China, Tokyo had strategically decided to bypass China for easier conquests in Southeast Asia. A de facto armed truce had therefore prevailed until the spring of 1944 when the Imperial Army launched Operation Ichi to take the American airfields in South China and neutralize the growing threat posed by American bombers to Japan’s sea-borne supplies and her home islands. Though some Nationalist forces had fought stubborn delaying actions, the Chinese could not contain the assault. In September 1944 the Japanese had captured Liuchow, the last American base. Yet the Chinese redoubt in the Szechwan Basin remained effectively secure behind its enormous barricades of mountains and rivers. Operation Ichi had, further, virtually exhausted the Japanese forces.
During the past four years the Communists had fought few, if any, set-piece battles against the Japanese. When the Imperial Army directly threatened their Soviet Areas, the Communists had stood and fought, but they had not carried the conventional war to the enemy. Sensibly fearing the overwhelming weight of metal hurled by tanks, artillery, and airplanes, the Communists had instead chosen to harass the invaders. Most of their 400,000 regulars were deployed against the half million Nationalist troops that blockaded and probed the chief Soviet Area with its capital at Yenan. Irregulars had of course harried the Japanese, primarily to extend the territory under Communist control and to enlarge the populace under Communist influence. In large areas of East and North China, the Japanese ruled by day and the Communists by night. Mao Tse-tung was asserting Communist authority throughout China by building a mass political base while Chou En-lai diverted the Nationalists and the Americans with verbal legerdemain.
The Nationalists were almost
equally culpable, directing their efforts chiefly to containing the Communists and to mulcting the Americans. Worse, the Nationalists were ineffective. The writ of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek ran only where Whampoa-officered Central Government troops actually stood. The Generalissimo could neither dictate to local generals, the new warlords, nor inspire them to patriotic sacrifice. He could only cajole and threaten. His worst enemy was neither the Japanese nor the Communists, but the universal insubordination, inefficiency, and corruption that imperiled his tottering power structure.
That structure’s collapse, Archie MacDonald reflected, was an imminent danger, and the Communists were throwing their weight against its foundations. On October 10, Chou En-lai had in Chungking issued a bitter statement that was, of course, ignored by the Nationalist-controlled press. But his attack on the Kuomintang was relayed abroad by Chungking’s foreign correspondents, while surreptitious copies circulated among Chungking’s intellectual community. Public opinion—Chinese and foreign—was Chou En-lai’s chief objective.
The Communist spokesman demanded a “truly representative” coalition government. The proposal, Archie MacDonald acknowledged, appeared reasonable. It appealed to the naive Americans, who still believed Communists and Nationalists could fight together against the Japanese. But Archie knew that both Chinese parties were girding for the battle that would decide who ruled China after the Americans had defeated Japan elsewhere. He further recognized that any coalition government that included the Communists would destroy Chiang Kai-shek’s own shaky coalition.
The mental recapitulation occupied Archie MacDonald for two minutes. Since Britain was only peripherally involved, he could contemplate those indecisive battles and internecine feuds with a certain detachment. Like most correspondents, except the few who sold themselves to either the Nationalists or the Communists, MacDonald strove for objectivity. But no correspondent could live in China and not finally take sides. It was that kind of country—and that kind of war.
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