A Choice of Evils

by Meira Chand

  ‘How do you know they’ll give you a pass? You Embassy men don’t seem to have much influence with your military.’ Donald tried to control his desperation. To wait alone in the midst of this rotting pile of bodies filled him with new panic.

  ‘They’ll give me a pass,’ Kenjiro insisted.

  ‘I could climb the wall further down the river after dark. I’ve done it before, a few days ago, after I returned from the Panay,’ Donald announced. Anything seemed better than waiting here.

  ‘The Panay? You were on the Panay? Just wait quietly here, please. If you’re seen climbing any walls, you’ll be shot.’ Kenjiro stared at him in shock.

  Donald watched Kenjiro drive away, waved on by the guards. The shadow of the gate fell upon him. The car mounted the straw ramp and bumped its way forward.

  Donald turned and opened the door of Kenjiro’s car. Cold impregnated the leather. He drew his coat around him. The stench from the gate was overwhelmingly pungent although he held his handkerchief bunched tightly against his nose. From his overcoat pocket he drew out an issue of Reader’s Digest that he had found in Martha’s lounge, the last piece of mail according to her, to reach the besieged city. The words skated before him, he could catch no meaning. The sun disappeared behind some clouds, spreading shadows on the water. The Seta began slowly to steam away, and he looked after it with regret. A fat rat ran out from beneath a bush and crossed in front of the car. On the river the Seta grew smaller. He lowered his eyes to Reader’s Digest once more. It was an hour and a half before Kenjiro returned. As promised he had a pass for Donald to re-enter Nanking.

  The crushed town seemed less disturbing now, after the experience at the River Gate. Donald drove in his own car behind Kenjiro who had siphoned a few gallons of petrol into his tank. They stopped suddenly before a house and Kenjiro turned to Donald.

  ‘I live here,’ he said. ‘I would like you to come in. We need a drink, I think.’

  Donald did not protest. He followed Nozaki up the path to the front door, wondering what was needed of him. It seemed curious after the Panay incident, to be here with this Japanese. And yet, after the River Gate, something now bound them. The effort not to remember encompassed them both.

  Kenjiro’s small rented room held only the basics: a bed, a desk and two chairs. A fern stood on the window-ledge, its green feathers startling in the bareness. A bunch of what appeared to be paper chains festooned a corner. A scroll hung on a wall. It bore many large seals about a central figure.

  ‘It is from a pilgrimage I made with my wife. The seals are those of the temples we visited,’ Kenjiro explained, seeing Donald’s eyes upon it. A photograph of a Western woman stood in a silver frame on the small table beside the bed. Kenjiro picked it up and held it out to Donald. He poured some brandy into Japanese teacups.

  ‘My wife was French, you know.’ Kenjiro sat down. Donald nodded politely. Did the man mean to tell him he was not like the others?

  ‘Was your wife religious?’ he asked, trying to keep the boredom from his voice. He drank back the brandy gratefully.

  ‘Only culturally curious,’ Kenjiro replied. ‘I was not for going on the pilgrimage. Do you know much about Japan?’ Donald shook his head.

  ‘The Panay was a mistake, you know.’ Kenjiro’s voice was suddenly curt. He sat forward in his chair.

  ‘It didn’t feel like a mistake,’ Donald replied. He knew now why he was here.

  ‘I mean it was not officially ordered. It was the doing of a small, unruly group. Some say the man responsible was a Colonel Hashimoto. He is nothing but a troublemaker, an extreme rightist. All he wants is war with the United States. On the other hand it could have been purely an accident, in which naval pilots failed to identify the American flag. The Kuomintang flag has also the same colours as the American flag. A plane flying at speed . . .’

  ‘What good does that do now? People died,’ Donald interrupted, feeling suddenly tired.

  Kenjiro sat on a high-backed chair, the cup of brandy in his hands. Emotions flickered through his face. He frowned, searching for words. ‘We are not a vicious people, you know. Discipline, gentleness, harmony, these are our strengths. We are also sentimental, although I do not expect you to believe me. But our people are submissive, used to obeying authority without question. Our society is structured to bring this about. People are easily open to social or political indoctrination. Our society is not like yours. With us a respect for individual personality is neglected for the personality of the larger group entity. Actions are judged according to their conformity to a set norm, not in terms of individual motivation or conscience. Our concept of virtue is different from yours.’ He rose to refill their cups of brandy.

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ Donald asked, impatient.

  ‘That I do not like this war.’ Kenjiro stared into his cup. The brandy swam into his head, kicking off reticence.

  There was so much he wished to lighten himself of. Every day there seemed more to digest, things that turned his stomach further. It was now known to them all at the Embassy, although little was openly said, that Japanese research into chemical and biological warfare was well established in China. Centres for this grim research stretched across the country, the largest in Harbin. What went on in these places was whispered of and seemed beyond belief. It was said experiments were carried out upon live Chinese captives. Kenjiro had refused to believe these rumours. But in the last few days further talk had alarmed him. It was said that in Nanking itself, not only captives but civilians too were being taken off the streets by the military, to be used for diabolical medical research in a centre near Shanghai. Kenjiro could not keep silent and had spoken to Fukutake.

  ‘There is no way to prove any of this,’ Fukutake also seemed uneasy about the matter. ‘On the other hand, a new calibre of weapon is needed for this age of modern warfare. It is said they are at work on a megaweapon, that would give us untold power in the world.’

  ‘A mega-weapon?’ Kenjiro questioned.

  ‘Not a bomb as we know it, but a container of deadly gas or germs that could wipe out a whole town at one blow. Think of the power such a weapon would give us eventually, now and in the future. For all we know this war may escalate. Some people say we could one day face America. In this regard, the sacrifice of a few captives is nothing if we are to develop such a weapon.’ Fukutake seemed to have convinced himself with his own reasoning. Kenjiro had made an effort to hide his agitation. If even Fukutake talked like this, then perhaps all the vile rumours were true.

  Now, after the experience of the River Gate, the thought of what further layers of ghastly excess might lie submerged across the country, filled him anew with distress. He looked across at Donald Addison. He could say nothing to this foreigner, and hoped the man would never have to know the grim secrets of the military.

  ‘Our society at present has no freedoms, we are ruled and indoctrinated by a military regime. It is dangerous to oppose it.’ Kenjiro risked the comment. Donald looked up in interest.

  ‘Have you opposed it?’ He asked the question humorously. It was difficult to imagine this smooth, quiet man at odds with his duty.

  ‘When I was younger and full of ideals,’ Kenjiro smiled slightly.

  ‘And what happened?’ Donald asked.

  ‘I had to leave the country or face arrest.’ It was a relief to tell the man. If only for a moment, he could disassociate himself from what was happening in Nanking. He looked for some recognition in Donald’s eyes.

  ‘Then how are you here?’

  ‘To live safely means silence in Japan.’ He saw Donald did not understand.

  ‘My daughter made these for me,’ he said, pointing to the chains of coloured streamers on the wall. Donald saw then that each chain was made of small, complexly folded pieces strung together.

  ‘It is called a senbazuru,’ Kenjiro explained. ‘Each piece of paper is folded into a bird, a crane. There are one thousand. The crane to us is the symbol of longevity. The figure of a th
ousand is the symbolic number for eternity. It symbolises a wish. Usually it is made and offered at times of illness. But this is my daughter’s prayer for me, at this time, in China. War is an illness I must survive.’ He thought of Naomi’s small fingers folding the paper, again and again, for him.

  ‘In what way shall we survive?’ Donald asked, remembering the River Gate. He heard Kenjiro sigh.

  ‘Will you write about this, and the Panay?’ Kenjiro asked.

  ‘That is my work,’ Donald replied.

  ‘Neither from here nor Shanghai will anything get through. Such writing will harm the military. They will do all they can to stop you.’ Kenjiro spoke slowly. It was not his place to say such things, yet he felt a bond with this man. The journey to the River Gate had changed them both.

  ‘Your articles are blatantly anti-Japanese. They have been reported back from London to our secret police. I advise you for your own good to keep a low profile. And please, I advise you to instruct Miss Komosky to do the same. She is Russian. On her way back here from Shanghai, she got entangled with our military. She did not leave a good impression. To them all Russians are spies. They will watch her here.’

  ‘Nadya, a spy? That’s absurd.’ Donald began to laugh. He had asked her so little about her journey back to Nanking. The days of illness after the Panay were a blank to him. Kenjiro watched him without expression and saw how the woman’s name ignited emotion in his face. He knew at once there was something between them. The realisation twisted sharply through him, taking him by surprise.

  17

  A Matter of Policy

  Akira Murata was cold, and always hungry. The ground was hard with frost. Battalions were packed into the town so closely that Nanking seemed a Japanese military camp, not the capital of China. He had hoped once they entered the place, the killing, the deprivations, the imminence of death from unseen dangers would immediately cease. He did not imagine it would be like this.

  His unit was billeted in a school next to a temple. There was no water or electricity. Water from the Yangtze was carried in by coolies. More often there was beer or fiery Chinese spirits looted from homes and stores. Victory measures of alcohol were given them with their rations. Everyone seemed drunk. The commanding officers were also often drunk and appeared to encourage the state.

  Akira crept out of the billet and crossed into the temple. No one would care where he was, all discipline had collapsed. Men dropped onto their pallets each night satiated by drink and rape. On the ground floor of their quarters there was a room of captive women for their use. The policy they had been ordered to follow in China, kill all, burn all, destroy all, had taken on a new life in Nanking.

  He found a corner on a once decorative verandah and settled there for the night. He was glad to be on his own, away from the crowded billet. Most of the temple was already destroyed, torn apart for firewood. He pillowed his head on his arm. He did not feel well. Alcohol left him depressed. He stared at Nanking’s battered walls, ringed by the colourless light of the moon, locking him into the town.

  He had had no wish to go to war, but there was no ignoring the Red Paper of conscription. Moral pressure was also great: all his friends were awash with patriotism. Those who refused or claimed to be unfit without real cause, faced forced labour or a firing squad. He had been ordered first to appear for a medical examination. It had been early autumn and still hot. There were several hundred students like himself, waiting for the doctors. The crowded room was without a fan. The boys were stripped to a loincloth. Flies settled upon them, drawn by the odour of their sweat. Akira felt ill. For a week he had eaten nothing, swallowing only large quantities of soya sauce. He had been told this recipe was infallible as a means of avoiding conscription. It induced perspiration and an uneven pulse, as well as a consumptive pallor. The doctor had passed him as fit for duty. In less extreme times a 2-B pass, one grade from the bottom, should have disqualified him. The campaign in China was accelerating; more men than ever were needed.

  He continued to stare at the dark rim of Nanking’s walls. The moon hung bloated in the sky, low and yellow, like a huge lantern. Most moons seemed small, pale and distant, swathed in drifting clouds. This one had settled close to earth, as if to peer into Nanking. He remembered his village and how once, in the autumn at the time of the moon viewing festival, he had climbed a hill with his father to absorb the celestial beauty. The moon had looked from that village in Japan no different than it did from Nanking. It confused him now, this oneness of things, when all the time he was directed to see differences. Everywhere rivers were rivers, birds were birds, cabbage was cabbage, bamboo was bamboo, men and women were men and women with all the same emotions. If he allowed himself to think like this he no longer knew what he was fighting. None of it made sense.

  The tiredness drained his memory. He could no longer recall the things he had done, the times he had pulled a trigger and seen a man slump to his knees. To thrust into a belly with his bayonet was no more now than splicing a sack of grain. He walked in a dream. He could not laugh with the others, urinating over corpses, but turned away. They nicknamed him Snowdrop for his bent head.

  He awoke with a start. Within Nanking’s walls he had dreamed the murdered ghosts of the last few weeks had risen like an army from the ground. They pressed about him in an impenetrable circle. He found he was trembling. Already, it was dawn. The chill of the city whipped about him in a freezing blast. The first light illuminated the sky above the walls, revealing slowly, layer by layer, Nanking’s devastation.

  ‘Snowdrop.’

  A group from his unit encircled him. He looked up at them in a sleepy daze. Once in the sea he seen shoals of fish wheel and turn, as if they were one entity, not a myriad of tiny individual lives. So now, looking up at the men about him, it was as if he saw one person. Faces, minds, emotions appeared to move collectively. They had merged into a bigger form and retained no separate personality. He drew back then before them. It frightened him, this strange disintegration of individuality.

  They had not risen from sleep like Akira, but had come from the theatre of some extravagant action. He observed their heaving breath and reddened faces. All night they had been at their vicious work, like a pack of dogs on heat. He sensed amongst them an emotion he could not describe. If the work of killing could be done in a state of ecstasy, then ecstasy was what he smelled. Their eyes shone with an unreal light. They were lit by a contagion.

  They pulled him up and dragged him forward, intent on adding another to their crowd. He stumbled amongst them. Someone pushed a bottle to his mouth and spirit smarted on his tongue. The sun was rising. It was a fine morning. They dragged him on until they stood before a few miserable houses. Their occupants were beginning to rise. From one home came the smell of cooking.

  ‘Wipe them out. Set them on fire,’ commanded a thin man called Suzuki. He was smaller than the others, but they obeyed him.

  Doors smashed easily and the screams of women and children rose about Akira. He knew the procedure well. He stood umoving as if he watched a film. They saw suddenly that he held back and turned as if at a new diversion.

  ‘Snowdrop, that one is for you.’ They pointed to the end house, pushing him towards it. On the door the characters for happiness were freshly painted. He heard a baby cry. Already, Suzuki was lighting a bundle of straw. Most of the men were still busy with the other houses. Only Suzuki stood looking at him, a leer on his face.

  The door of the house opened suddenly. An old woman ran out and fell on her knees before Akira. Her white hair hung untidily about her face. She rocked back and forth, hands clasped together.

  ‘Don’t harm them, don’t kill them. Only hours ago my daughter has given birth to a child. Have you no sister? Kill me, I am old.’ The woman’s screams filled his head. He needed no common language to understand her words.

  ‘Shut up,’ he shouted. Behind him Suzuki laughed. Others were turning to stare at Akira. ‘Snowdrop? We’re giving you the cream of it all. This is
interesting stuff,’ yelled a man behind him. ‘Kill the old crone. Get rid of the Chinese baby. But not the girl, we can use another young bitch.’ The woman wailed louder.

  Once his mother had cried like this when one of his young brothers fell off a wall and died. He had been only a child then, but he remembered his mother’s howling, as if her soul would burst from her body. She keened on her knees in just this way, disbelieving life.

  ‘Kill me instead,’ the old woman screamed again.

  ‘Do it, Snowdrop,’ the shouts rose again behind him. They were waiting.

  ‘Have you no sister?’ She tried to pull his bayonet towards her.

  Why was she doing this to him? The wind took hold of her words and splayed them about him like pebbles. He heard another burst of laughter behind him. His eyes filled with tears of fury.

  ‘Why are you saying these things to me? I am acting under orders,’ he yelled at her.

  Inside the hut the baby set up a fresh cry. His sister Nami had given birth when he was still in the village. The smooth skin of the child had been like a soft, ripe peach. Akira had gazed in amazement. Everything was minutely formed, the eyes with lashes, the tiny nails upon the hands. He is perfect, he had said, not knowing how else to describe his feelings of wonderment. He remembered Nami now. A sob rose in his throat. He wanted to tell the old woman. Instead, the wrong words came out.

  ‘Shut up, you old bitch. Why must you blame me?’ Anger surged inside him.

  ‘Get it over with, Snowdrop,’ they jeered from the side.

  Now, at last, the words welled up the way he wished. He threw back his head and pumped them out of him again and again.

  ‘I am just a farmer, like you. A farmer. I am a farmer too.’

  He willed the words up to mix with the clouds and cover Nanking. He wanted them all to know.

  ‘Snowdrop. Snowdrop.’ The chant continued behind him.

  He closed his eyes and shot the woman at point blank range. The retort of the gun shook his bones. The old crone crumpled and fell silent at last. He began to sob and could not stop and sank down on the ground beside her.