A Choice of Evils

by Meira Chand

  Regret Smollett death, but story excellent. Trail Matsui, your position invaluable. Suggest return immediately Nanking. Rumoured Chiang will not give in.

  He stared down at the cable. Already, The Times considered him as good as any of their better-known war correspondents. He saw again that China could indeed be his, in an unexpected way. His father had done nothing like this. Donald turned to the paper in the typewriter:

  General Matsui, who discussed the Chinese situation with this writer for nearly two hours today, wishes the readers of this paper to be, in his words, disabused of the image of him as a looting Chinese warlord. He wishes readers to know the great pains he has taken to protect foreign interests in Shanghai . . .

  He listened to the frantic clatter of machines about him, and observed the bent heads of the men before them. What could they say that was not now a repetition of each other’s reportage? Only he had the first-hand story of Smollett. Others had written from his copy. Only he had the trust of Matsui. For the first time in days, a new determination welled up in him. He returned his eyes to the keyboard and began to type with vigour. The road ahead was clearer now.

  The Japanese Victory Parade took a route through the Foreign Settlement and the French Concession, much to the distress of its residents.

  ‘Whatever Matsui might say about not entering the Settlement, this is the thin end of the wedge,’ said Donald. He stood with Nadya on a corner of Nanking Road. ‘This is foreign territory. It is not part of the Japanese victory. They’ve no right to parade through here.’ Donald clicked his camera.

  Thousands of marching feet vibrated through the town, blending with the hooves of horses, and the wheels of artillery and mounted guns. Planes flew overhead. The fears of childhood returned to Nadya on the Shanghai pavement. She had heard these sounds before as the Red Army marched through Blagoveshchensk. Her fear was not of Russians or Japanese but of men, brutalised and trained to kill.

  The Japanese residents of Shanghai were closely stage-managed, brought by bus to Nanking Road, their cheers recorded by microphone and transmitted by radio to Japan. Newsreels of the parade were made, police precautions were intense. The Settlement was out in force, its mood surly and unbowed.

  ‘We’ll have a better view up there,’ said Donald.

  He pushed through the crowd to climb onto a plinth below a bank, pulling Nadya after him. The ledge was precarious but the view cleared the heads of the crowd. Before them the twisting body of a khaki serpent stretched away through the Settlement. Beyond, a blackened plain reached to the horizon. Rising Sun flags flew everywhere, and sunlight caught the rifles of the marching men.

  ‘Will nobody stop them?’ Nadya asked.

  As she spoke an explosion sounded. The troops fell to the ground, fixing bayonets. Smoke rose above the mass of people. An order was shouted and the soldiers leaped up, barring all escape routes.

  ‘Someone’s thrown a grenade,’ Donald clicked his camera fast. A man ran from the crowd followed by a Chinese policeman. A shot sounded and the man fell, writhing a moment before his body stilled.

  ‘Thank God the Chinese got him before the Japanese.’ Donald’s face was contorted with emotion. Soon the parade moved forward again.

  ‘Chiang put up a fight for Shanghai, but taking Nanking will be only a technicality.’ Donald was changing the film in his camera beneath his jacket. ‘I predict he’ll withdraw into the interior and leave Nanking undefended. The Japanese will enter without a fight, set up a puppet government and order will be restored. I must get to the front lines and then to Nanking. The centre of action has already moved.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t interested in being in the midst of things,’ Nadya replied.

  ‘Well, I’ve changed my mind,’ Donald answered. ‘I feel I owe it to Smollett. And The Times has ordered me back there.’

  9

  Return to Nanking

  December 1937

  Already a cold and bitter wind cut through the Foreign Settlement of Shangahi. W.H.D. had come to Shanghai. He had only an hour and they spent it in the Chocolate Shop, which had recently been the meeting place of Shanghai’s elite bohemians. Now it was deserted. The menu was reduced. Nadya drank a diluted hot chocolate, W.H.D. a diluted coffee. He turned down his mouth in disaste.

  ‘The Generalissimo and Madame are leaving for Hankow, and I go with them. If the Japanese advance towards us, we’ll move on to Chungking. A temporary government will be set up there and resistance reorganised. Surrender is the last thing on the Generalissimo’s mind.’

  It was the second time in a few weeks that W.H.D. had been in Shanghai. Previously, he had accompanied Madame Chiang Kai-shek who wished to visit her dentist and inspect the front, before the fall of the city. The trip had been disastrous.

  ‘Our car blew a tyre. Madame flew over my head and landed in a mud hole. I thought it was the end. She’s a brave little woman; continued the trip in spite of a broken rib. You take your life in your hands now, travelling that Shanghai-Nanking road.’ W.H.D. shook his head. Just days before the British Ambassador’s car was fired upon by a Japanese plane, in spite of a Union Jack painted upon its roof. The Ambassador, Sir Hugh Knatchbull-Hugessan, was seriously wounded. In London tempers were incensed by this wanton act.

  Upon Bradley’s orders, Nadya handed W.H.D. a copy of the penultimate volume of the Encyclopaedia. TECSAT was finally printed and being packed for removal to Hankow with Chiang Kaishek’s effects. ‘The last volume will be ready in just a couple of days. Maybe I’ll bring it myself to Nanking.’

  ‘Stay here, foolish woman,’ W.H.D. advised. ‘Nanking is no place now, everyone is leaving the city.’

  In spite of Bradley’s sense of urgency, the printing of TECSAT had taken time, due to the departure inland of so much of Shanghai’s labour force. The Japanese had not interfered with TECSAT, although they were now in control of the Settlement. Donald too had stayed on. A further cable from The Times, suggested he report upon Shanghai under the Japanese occupation before leaving for Nanking. The Japanese Army’s advance towards the capital was a drive of terror. Until some days before Donald had seen no urgency to depart Shanghai. Now, as Chiang Kai-shek showed no sign of surrender, it seemed the fall of Nanking was imminent.

  ‘Donald is going back, to be in the thick of it,’ Nadya replied.

  ‘Fool. How is the boyfriend?’ W.H.D. frowned in disapproval.

  Nadya shrugged away the enquiry. She had no wish to explain to W.H.D. the episode of Smollett or its effect upon Donald.

  ‘Cooling off? I’m glad to hear it.’ W.H.D. pursed his lips.

  Nadya had refused to see Donald for some days. Smollett’s death had affected him badly. His behaviour had become unstable, swinging between moods of blackness and drunken bravado. He spat vitriol without provocation. Nadya backed away and each time he followed, meek with apology, only for the cycle to begin again. After tolerating his perversity, she was exhausted.

  W.H.D. finished his coffee and ordered another. ‘You’re well rid of that young man. Arrogant, unstable, his reputation precedes him everywhere. He likes to shock. I suppose it’s not easy to have a famous father, nor to have him shoot himself in front of you. I cannot see what you find in him. Besides, he’s married. What future can you have? A nice girl like you needs security, a husband and children.’ W.H.D. patted Nadya’s hand.

  ‘He’s not married.’ She sat unmoving. And she had heard nothing about his father shooting himself.

  ‘Not told you, has he? The bastard.’ W.H.D. swore. ‘You should have asked me. After that article in Time, I learned a few facts. The mystery about his father’s death was never cleared up. I should think there’s a lot he hasn’t told you.’

  The blood throbbed in her head. She did not want to admit she knew little of Donald but what passed silently between them. The unspoken rule of their relationship was that she should ask him nothing. Now, in the Chocolate Shop, with the hum of war planes overhead and the aroma of cocoa and coffee about her,
anger flooded through her. W.H.D. was delighted.

  ‘I met his wife once, in London at a party. Beautiful woman, journalist, daughter of a famous Peer. There was a rumour about for a while that father and son both shared her. John Addison was a real womaniser. Just rumour,’ he added, seeing the look on Nadya’s face.

  He glanced at his watch and picked up the edition of TECSAT. As they left the Chocolate Shop the cold wind whipped about them again.

  Donald was nowhere. At last she got through to a friend of his at Reuters. ‘He left yesterday on a Japanese troop train. He’s trying to get back to Nanking.’

  She replaced the telephone. Thoughts sat like pebbles now in her mind. There was nothing in the time she had known Donald to prepare her for W.H.D.’s revelations. And why should he disappear in this manner, without a word, even if she had refused to see him? A note at the least was owed her. For the first time she saw Donald three-dimensionally. The image hit her with unexpected power. The shadow of another life swung away behind him. She had accepted a cardboard figure, reading into his life and their relationship whatever she wished. All the while his responses came from experiences hidden far from her. He had not lied, but he returned nothing in exchange for her openness. She remembered the night on the Lotus Lake, she remembered her wish to be honest. And yet, his own secretiveness had forced some measure of the same upon her. Where was trust if no confidence could be exchanged? What was the essence of such a relationship? Perhaps she meant nothing to him.

  It was impossible then not to relive every moment of their relationship, and see herself in an unflattering light. She blushed at the things she had demanded of him in their most intimate moments. Bewilderment dissolved into fury in the light of W.H.D.’s remarks. Donald was no different from Sergei. He walked out of her life, as if nothing had passed between them. He took her trust and tossed it aside, hiding truths about himself.

  Anger raced through her. Donald’s things still littered her apartment. She gathered them up in a sudden fury, stuffing them into carrier bags, and put them outside the front door. A briefcase was left and she opened it, rifling through the papers inside. There was nothing to connect him to the things W.H.D. suggested; no letters from a wife, no diary of confession. She straightened up in a rage. Everything between them until now had been a lie. There were other methods of rebuttal less cruel than the one he had chosen. She could not understand him.

  For a long time she sat, knees drawn up under her chin, on the bed where so much of their relationship had evolved. She stared from the window across the Settlement rooftops, to the smoking ruins of greater Shanghai. Weeks ago the view had been green, with the straw hats of peasants dotting the fields. The rice bowl of China was gone. How would they eat? What seed was there left to regenerate life for those that might survive? She remembered the line of roped prisoners, falling one upon another into their grave. She saw again the carts of bodies in the Settlement, the orphaned children, the refugees beaten by wind and rain, pressed against the walls of buildings. On every corner now children were for sale. Before her everything converged in hopelessness. The cruelty of Donald seemed only an echo of the greater savagery around her. Donald could go his way, but the need to confront him consumed her. All her relationships seemed without resolution. Men slipped into her life and slipped away, without an explanation. Even her father. One moment they were there and the next they were gone, and she of no importance.

  She remembered her father and then, almost immediately, the governess, Mussya. She had been as plump and affectionate as Anna, Nadya’s stepmother, was bony and tense. Nadya had grown up in terror of Anna. A terror she suspected her father shared, always silent before the woman. Even in a childish way Nadya understood her presence was a threat to Anna. She exploited the discovery boldly, a weapon in the battle between herself and Anna for her father’s affection. When he returned from work each day Nadya had run to him, fussing about him, demanding attention. But her father was too much in awe of Anna to play the game to Nadya’s satisfaction. He took the child upon his knee, but under the sour eyes of his wife, his caress became half-hearted.

  Once, Anna went away, back to her family home to nurse a sick sister. Nadya stayed with her father and Mussya. It was summer. Even now she could not forget those three months. Her father was as if reborn. And Mussya seemed no less so. They had celebrated Nadya’s twelfth birthday with abandon. There were picnics and outings and expeditions to find wild flowers. Every hour her father could spare from work was planned with jubilation. In the evenings he played upon his balalaika and sang Siberian folk songs while Mussya accompanied him.

  And then there was the dancing. Mussya danced like the village woman she was, unable to resist the rhythm of the music, caught by swirling emotion. It infected her father who stamped and laughed aloud while he danced. Nadya watched until the delirious throb drew her into their abandonment. In the end she and Mussya collapsed in a breathless heap of laughter. Her father flung himself into a chair. Taking Mussya on one knee and Nadya upon the other, he squeezed them both enormously.

  At night, in the quiet house, she heard movement and whispering in the next room and knew Mussya was there with her father. At first this seemed strange and disturbed her so that she lay awake, straining her ears to make sense of the sounds, or catch a conversation. But, quickly, she took comfort from Mussya’s new status. She hoped Anna would not come back and that Mussya would be her new mother.

  Instead, Anna returned. And with her homecoming Mussya was promptly dismissed. No entreaty from Nadya brought an explanation. The house became silent, only Anna’s angry voice echoing each night through closed doors. Then, one day, her father was gone, vanished into the snowy steppes after Mussya. Even now that moment of abandonment lived with Nadya. She had waited for him to return, then waited for his summons. No message ever came. Or perhaps, it later occurred to her, Anna intercepted messages, holding Nadya hostage. When finally, after many weeks, he did return Nadya had clung to him, desperate. There had been much shouting and a policeman was called. In the end her father departed alone into the night. He walked away, in spite of her cries, without a backward glance. She knew by the set of his shoulders the effort it was not to turn to her, to carry her off with him. She could understand nothing of the matter, defined by adult rules. There was only the knowledge that he had left her to Anna’s harsh resolve. All her life she bore the brunt of Anna’s festering bitterness.

  Later, she heard there were children by Mussya; he had no more need of Nadya. He regularly sent a small financial provision for Anna and herself, but Nadya saw nothing of him. He did not return, nor invite her to stay with his new family. Many years afterwards, as an adult, Nadya understood that perhaps her father had been refused the right to see her by the connivance of Anna and the police. Perhaps the price he paid for Mussya was the loss of his own daughter. Perhaps this loss was Anna’s revenge. But as a child, the pain of abandonment inflicted upon her, was all Nadya understood. She was in her mid-teens before she saw her father again. For some reason then, unexpectedly, an invitation came to visit him and Mussya. She had travelled to their home full of trepidation. And discovered the worst: nothing could be rebuilt between her father and herself. There was only distance now between them, and a dark, sharp hate in her heart. There was no place for her in the circle of contentment her father had built with Mussya. Small children played and shouted. The love he could not give to Nadya, she saw he now squandered upon them. At the end of the visit she had returned to Anna, her anger so great tears would not moisten her eyes. She knew then he was finally lost to her.

  The years with Anna were filled with grim emotion. She could not say Anna treated her badly. In time she even appeared to take strength from Nadya’s youthful determination. He never loved me, she repeated bitterly, over and over again. She seemed to shrink, the wiry tenacity turning to frailty. Those years alone with Anna were also a time of great turmoil in Russia. Her father’s abandonment of Nadya coincided with this political chaos.
It was as if she and Anna were forced to cling to each other in a treacherous sea. Anarchy, typhus, famine. Reds, Whites, bodies in the streets, the rule of the gun. And then the brutalities of the first Five Year Plan with its relentless industrialisation. All these things swirled about her after her father left.

  Eventually Anna took a lover, a minor Party official in Blagoveshchensk, who came and went as he pleased, turning a roving eye upon Nadya. When he appeared she hid herself away, terrified he might approach her. As soon as she could Nadya had gone to work at the Blagoveshchensk People’s Paper, unaware of its future usefulness in employment with Bradley Reed.

  Now, in Shanghai, the desolation she had faced at her father’s desertion filled her again when she thought of Donald. She knew suddenly then she must return to Nanking. She could not let Donald go, turning his back upon her, as she had let her father go. She had the power now to take her life in her hands, directing its destiny. The explanation she had never received from her father, she needed now from Donald.

  And on another level, there was a necessity in this war to do something crazy, to push away the shadow of death that hovered always before her. Nadya got off the bed with new energy. As the war spread to surround Nanking, she could perhaps play a part in the Safety Zone; she could be of use to somebody.

  There was a press pass in Donald’s briefcase, stamped with Chinese characters. Donald had several passes allowing him access to areas of military sensitivity. She put it in her pocket. Journeying to Nanking was no easy matter. Troop trains such as those Donald had used were infrequent. She had no transport but a bicycle, in the garage beneath her apartment. Why should she not cycle to Nanking? A German, she heard, had recently cycled as far as Hankow. If she kept close to the railway line her direction was clear, and a train might pass. She began to pack a rucksack. The journey should take no more than a few days. Every time fear overcame her she remembered Agnes Smedley. A bicycle trip from Shanghai to Nanking would be nothing to Agnes Smedley.