by Meira Chand
Finally, the desert did its work. Donald’s mind slowly emptied of the nightmares. His thoughts stretched to nothingness over vistas of sand. He wondered then at the shape of his own life, locked in by boundaries of fear and frustration, and glimpsed a desert more parched than any before him. Immediately, he pushed this uncomfortable vision back within himself.
They came at last to the desert town of Ujino. It was no more than a cluster of tents, but they were received hospitably by the headman of the community. For the first time in days they washed, and slept under substantial cover. They ate a feast with their host who slaughtered a goat for the occasion and forced upon them a noxious drink that went to their heads. The Indian Lama was in conversation with their host. He spoke in Japanese to the interpreter.
‘How does he speak your language?’ Donald asked Nakamura as they sat together in the great tent. They were replete with food, and Nakamura’s face was reddened by drink. A close smell of roasted meat and unwashed clothes thickened under the canvas. Lamps of animal fat left a rancid smoke upon the air.
‘He has lived in Japan, and has a Japanese wife,’ Nakamura answered. He appeared very drunk, and began to sing a Japanese song.
‘But he is a Lama,’ Donald protested.
Nakamura shook his head. ‘That is his disguise; I’m not supposed to tell you. But what does it matter? He is on some kind of reconnaissance work for the Japanese Government. We’ve been told by High Command to help him.’
Nakamura shut his eyes and continued with his song. His voice trembled in sadness. Then, unexpectedly, he rose to his feet and began to dance. His hands moved to left and right, graceful as a woman, his body was taut with emotion. In the tent there was silence and his song, if not comprehensible, released its melancholy into the night. At last he sat down and refilled his glass.
‘What was the song about?’ Donald asked.
‘About the role of a man in life. About duty and virtue. About how we must leave all those we love, and the beauties of this world for the greater beauty of valour. It is a song about war, to strengthen the mettle of the soldier’s soul.’
‘It did not sound like a war song,’ Donald replied.
‘Not a war song, a soldier’s song,’ Nakamura corrected. ‘We are not a warring people. We fight when we have to but it does not come easy, and we must prepare our soul for the task, for our country and our Emperor. To overcome our own desires before duty, that is virtue in our eyes.’ Nakamura began to sing again, translating into English.
I see those faces, hear those voices.
My wife and son are waving,
Waving their flags until they break.
Their message to me is to fight well.
I look at the sky, and in the spaces
Between the clouds I see them waving still.
From the deck of the great fleet of battleships
I say good-bye to the land of my birth,
Goodbye to my wife and son.
I look at the place where the sky arches
Above the Imperial Palace
And I swear I will fight well.
The Lama was given a tent of his own. Donald shared one with Nakamura. He could not sleep and went out into the night to sit upon stones amongst the shrubs about the well. He could hear the Lama coughing, then suddenly there was a scream.
In the moonlight Donald saw a snake slither from the Lama’s tent. He walked over quickly and lifted the flap. The Lama was making incomprehensible sounds. Donald struck a match and lit the oil lamp in a corner.
‘Do you understand English? Did it bite you?’ he asked. He was amazed to hear the man reply in perfect English.
‘Yes to both questions. It is poisonous, they all are here. Oh God, I will now die.’
‘Show me the bite,’ Donald demanded. Tilik stretched out his arm, already swelling.
‘Wait,’ Donald instructed.
In his own tent he took from his rucksack his razor and a flask of brandy and then returned to the injured man. He struck a match and ran it along the razor’s edge. After pouring brandy on to Tilik’s arm he made a quick incision. Putting his lips to the cut he sucked hard. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. He spat out and sucked again and again, then rinsed his mouth with brandy. By now Nakamura had also arrived.
‘It should be all right, if you’re lucky.’ Donald tied a bandage Nakamura had unearthed about the wound. The Indian’s thanks were mumbled in a begrudging tone when at last Donald stood up to leave.
‘If you speak such good English, why did you not talk to me earlier?’ Donald asked. The man glared up from his pallet.
‘Because I have no wish to communicate with an Englishman.’ Tilik spoke rudely, confused in the extraordinary circumstances. ‘But I wish you to know I am grateful.’
Donald frowned in exasperation as he lifted the flap of the tent. ‘Well, I suppose that is something. Goodnight.’
In the morning Tilik was feverish but sitting up when Donald again returned to his tent.
‘I am going to live,’ Tilik announced. He had decided he could not be churlish, even if the man was a white-skinned colonial who held his country hostage. His life had been saved. ‘Where did you learn this snake bite technique? Are you also a doctor?’
Donald shook his head. ‘Once in Rajasthan, in the same way, someone saved my life,’ he replied.
‘You have been in India? It is very strange that my life should be saved by an Englishman,’ Tilik said. It was impossible to even explain to the man just how strange it was.
‘You would, I hope, do the same for me,’ Donald smiled.
‘I doubt it,’ Tilik replied. ‘I have no love of you English people. I would have wished you dead. An Englishman killed my father. This I can never forget.’ There was both resentment and bewilderment in his voice. ‘Now, instead, I must thank you.’
Donald laughed and sat down on the floor beside Tilik’s pallet. ‘Tell me why you are here, in these robes, with the Japanese? I know you are not a Lama,’ Donald insisted.
Tilik sighed. He wished to speak to the Englishman. There was a likeable quality that he had not expected to find in a man of his race. Words poured suddenly from him. The Englishman listened attentively.
‘The Japanese are supportive of India’s cause. I carry on the struggle for Independence from here,’ Tilik confided at the end of his story.
‘They would like to exchange white colonialism for yellow, you mean?’ Donald replied.
‘I do not think so,’ Tilik stiffened, aware suddenly of the need for caution. He knew nothing of this man.
Donald scratched his head. ‘We English are not all so bad, you know. Mr Gandhi has some sensible things to say. I respect him greatly. I met him in India on my first visit and again in London.’
‘You have met Gandhiji?’ Tilik sat upright in amazement.
‘I have just published a book on India. I know also of Subash Chandra Bose, although I have not met him.’
Tilik shook his head in perplexity. ‘You are the first Englishman I have ever heard talk like this,’ he replied. ‘What do you think, some say even Jawaralal Nehru will follow Subash in the end?’
‘Nehru will follow Gandhi. He’s his political protégé. Through Nehru the old man has access to the young and Nehru’s political future is assured through his alliance with Gandhi,’ Donald answered without hesitation. Tilik looked at him in renewed amazement.
Donald laughed. ‘Even Gandhi has English disciples, who are dedicated to him and the Indian cause.’
‘That is true,’ Tilik nodded. Until now he had only half believed such things. ‘But they are exceptions. I suppose you are too.’
‘We will meet again, God willing,’ Tilik said the next day, as the main caravan departed. He was not going on to the military outpost. There were headmen to meet in other villages near Ujino.
‘I’m a believer in destiny,’ Donald grinned. He rode on and saw Tilik in his phoney Lama robes grow small against the desert.
&
nbsp; It was still a long ride to the outpost but time was now meaningless. Donald had learned to swim with the unhurried rhythm of the camel, his thoughts spun out, unworried. The terrain had now changed. They traversed rocky plateau land, with spectacular views.
At last they reached their destination. The outpost, on a crag of rock, had been wiped out by communist guerrillas. The bodies of the fifteen Japanese soldiers were already half-buried in the loose sandy soil. What remained of the corpses had a leathery look. Most had already been carrion to the vultures wheeling above.
‘This is the work of Communists,’ Nakamura said.
Later he demanded they drink the remains of some beer they carried, not only to fortify themselves but in farewell to the murdered men. That evening Nakamura did not dance. He spoke bitterly in a low voice, almost to himself, as he sat alone beside Donald.
‘We are being drawn into a trap. We have a large, modern, well-trained army and it is pitted against a poorly-equipped but mobile and invisible peasant force. For our country we gladly die. Young men in mountain villages leave the beauty of Japan, and the rice fields in season reflecting Heaven. They leave this peace to enter the military, to fight for Japan. Gladly, I tell you, we do this. But when I see fifteen men sent across a desert, to live on a piece of windy rock, facing a wilderness hiding enemy hordes, all in the name of expanding our territory, I wonder at the sanity of those we obey. This is not death in valour for our Emperor. This is death for stupidity, for arrogance, for the vanity of an ignorant command of which our Emperor knows nothing.’
‘Look at this land,’ Nakamura swept his arm before him. ‘How can we ever hope to control this continent? It is immeasurable. We can take towns, but that is all. The vastness of the countryside has already slipped from our grasp. This peasant force, these Communists, with their thousand-mile lines of communication, already control this land as we never can. It will never be truly ours, even though we may eventually command it. How many young men must we lose in this madness?’ Nakamura drank down his beer and walked off into the scrub. For a long time he could be seen, sitting on a nub of rock before the barren hills.
The men were buried and the caravan turned back to face the desert once more. Again the rhythm of the camel and the sight of the endless horizon engulfed them. Nakamura’s face was now without expression. Donald thought again of Kublai Khan. Ambitious and brutal, he had risen out of this soil, was of its essence and timelessness. He had been defeated in his conquest of Japan by elements that were alien to him. So too now the Japanese, however stoic and hardy, were scaled down by existence on their tiny island. They compressed further all those things about them, trees, homes, lives, poems, nature itself, in order never to touch the unbounded. How could a people used to so tight a circumference of things, ever grasp the immensity of China?
5
Unreliable Men
May 1937
The weekend after Agnes Smedley’s departure with a further load of medical supplies, Nadya took a walk on top of Nanking’s old walls. Near one of the gates was a steep cobbled ramp leading up to the summit. The walls were higher and wider than they appeared from below. In places between the crenellations grass grew like a field. Through its history the town had been razed many times and preserved few distinguishing features. Nanking had known greatness but was haunted by sacking and retained an exhausted air. Patches of wasteland still stood as the scarred memories of distant battles, like an index to its past. The town spread out flatly until arrested by moats and the massive old walls. These encompassed an area twenty miles by fifteen, punctuated by sixteen gates. The gates were closed each night and opened each morning on a roll of sound beaten out from the Bell and Drum Towers. Whatever the traumas of the past Nanking still stood, its walls refusing to crumble.
Up on these walls a peacefulness filled her, as if all her disparate parts had locked into place. Nadya remembered such a feeling on walks long before, across the steppes in the spring with her father. She remembered that land, wet and green after the thaw, the sun setting slowly in the sky. It was always the land she remembered now, when she thought of Russia. It filled her like an ache. The towns of the steppes were all frontier towns with squat wooden houses and rough-hewn telephone poles. Their ugly monotony and impermanence had settled into her bones as a child. But the indomitable land, harsh and sweeping in winter, glowing and expansive under the summer sun, had entered into her soul. The Siberian summer was as profuse as a wildflower garden. She remembered swinging a purple music case on her way to piano lessons, wet grass soaking her stockings about the ankles. She remembered the dappled Siberian orchids she sought on walks with her father. There had been one with neither roots nor true leaves. Her father had uncovered the coral-like base and explained how the plant derived its nourishment in symbiotic association with a fungus. He admired this hardy perennial whose survival he said was a miracle. We must all be like this in these terrible times, he had told her, able to grow anywhere. The memory of her father filled her as always with desolation. The old feeling of abandonment crept through her. He had taught her early about endurance, she thought in sudden bitterness. He had given her no choice but to learn to live like the strange rootless plant, devising her own survival.
‘We’re not supposed to be here, you know.’ The voice came from behind her.
She turned to face a tall, blond man. He stood silhouetted against the sky on the very edge of the ramparts. Wind billowed up his trouser legs and his jacket flapped like wings. His hair stood on end in the breeze. She had the impression he might take flight, disappearing over the wall like an eagle. He laughed and jumped down to shelter.
‘I love the wind. I wish I were a bird, gliding on the currents. They don’t let you walk on this wall. There’s a sentry already, to escort us down.’ He pointed to a soldier coming towards them.
‘Why can we not walk here, what is the harm?’ Nadya frowned, the old anger at her father still nagging.
‘I didn’t make the rules, it’s not my town,’ the man grinned at her expression.
‘Why are you here then? How do you know this?’ Nadya asked.
‘They told me at the YMCA, where I’m currently staying. However, I thought I’d see how far I got. I like seeing how far I can get with things. Bad habit. Doesn’t lead to a peaceful life.’ He looked out across the city to where the Yangtze glittered, stretching far into the body of China, and drew a breath. For a moment they stood in silence together, observing the distant river.
The breeze blew in Nadya’s face and whipped her skirts away behind her. The massive ramparts and watchtowers of the wall snaked into the distance. Evening was approaching. The sun stained the sky vermilion, gold edged a few dark clouds. Beyond the town was the watery world of the Lotus Lakes where thick cascades of willow trees dissolved into a blue mist. East of the Drum Tower, where much of the foreign community lived, she picked out the hospital with the green square of lawn in the compound. Beyond it the areas of the old town were a concentrated jigsaw of tiled roofs. Houses, hovels, temples and teahouses were threaded by narrow lanes. There was no air to breathe in these packed quarters, pungent with garlic and night soil, charcoal and opium, frying food and drying fish.
The blond man turned towards her as the sentry approached. ‘It’s worth it, isn’t it, even if only for a few minutes? I’ll try again another day. My name is Donald Addison,’ he said. The sentry gestured an order to descend the stone ramp.
‘Where are you from? England? Why are you in China?’ Nadya asked. She stared at him enquiringly.
‘So many questions.’ Donald raised his eyebrows but gave a potted account of himself. The woman before him had a fierce, defensive manner. Something flamed through her, lighting her up. He could not imagine her in repose but only in constant, mercurial motion.
‘I came to China to investigate the Japanese in Manchuria. And then to visit the Communists in their blockaded area,’ he told her, his eyes travelling over her face.
‘What do you want to
mix with them for?’ She remembered Agnes Smedley’s defence of the Chinese Communists even as she said the words, but the man was the kind who could not be agreed with. Everything about him demanded, if not a battle, then some manner of sparring. His eyes never dropped their quizzical amusement, nor left her face for a moment. Once or twice, in embarrassment, she was forced to avert her gaze. He left her with an uneven feeling.
‘Research purposes,’ he smiled. ‘I believe they’re the only hope for this country.’
‘I came out of Russia to escape the Reds.’ She remembered the sound of gunfire and bodies on the roads in Blagoveshchensk. Against her will she was sucked in by some disturbance, dark and strange, within the man. She could not establish distance.
‘I suppose you support Chiang Kai-shek whose Blueshirts exterminate students and intellectuals?’ He shook his head sadly as he spoke. She remembered Agnes had called Chiang a feudal bastard.
‘I see no other hope for this country but Chiang Kai-shek,’ Nadya pushed up her chin. ‘He has brought more unity to China than there’s ever been.’ She did not know enough about Chinese Communists to argue for them one way or another. The talk of people like Bradley or Martha was all of Chiang Kai-shek.
‘Chiang seems more interested in suppressing the Reds than fighting the Japanese. In spite of the United Front he’ll make a pact with Japan and lose the whole of China,’ Donald replied. The setting sun dazzled him for a moment and glowed within the woman’s hair. He had a desire to reach out and touch her.
‘Are you a Communist? There are people who think there might be more stability in China if the Japanese were here,’ Nadya retorted. She did not know why she was arguing so heatedly with this stranger, saying things she did not believe.
