A Choice of Evils

by Meira Chand

  As they entered the town the sky was hazy with dusk. The hills already folded into each other in deepening layers; the remains of the sunset streaked an upper reach of sky. Fat Man Ping led them down to the river and on to a ferryboat. Had he not been pulled along by Ping, Donald would have made his way to the Terminus Hotel in the foreign concession for a whisky, food that tasted familiar and a bed of smooth white sheets. Now he had no idea where his next night would be, what food he must swallow, what dangers might assail. But this was the manner in which things turned up, by not turning your back upon them. He followed Ping’s massive frame.

  Behind Ping Donald struggled on to a crowded ferry and was squashed between a woman with a basket of chickens and another suckling a baby. A goat began to chew at his jacket. He pulled himself free in annoyance, as the liquor now ached in his head. The dusk grew thicker about them. Across the river Donald could make out the hilly shape of Hankow’s twin city, Wuchang, and the glitter of some lights. Fat Man Ping was at the front of the boat, surrounded by a circle of admiring peasants. He craned his neck above the crowd, pointing Donald out.

  Once the ferry landed they disembarked. Donald climbed a narrow cobbled street behind Ping who gasped for breath, and stopped frequently to mop his great bald head. It was almost dark. Eventually, they passed through a large gate and came into a spacious courtyard. It was crowded with refugee families. Ping and his men stopped and appeared to ask directions of people. Everyone gestured them on. They entered yet another courtyard and climbed a flight of steps. The place was a temple or monastery given over now to the needy. Children ran about as people cooked in battered pans over a few coals. Wounded soldiers lay in a further courtyard, a few makeshift roofs of paper or canvas pegged above the weakest. Ping gave a sudden shout and walked towards a figure stooping over one of the soldiers. The man turned and the light of a nearby fire glowed in his face. Donald stopped in amazement at the sight of Teng. Teng stared at Donald in equal surprise. Fat Man Ping began to laugh and when told of their acquaintance, laughed even harder.

  ‘See how things turn out,’ he bellowed and called to a henchman for more kao liang.

  Teng led them to a house beyond the courtyard and up to a second-floor room. It was bare but for some bedding on the floor and a couple of rickety chairs. Fat Man Ping did not stay long and, after elaborate goodbyes, vanished with his men.

  ‘You take my bedding, I will sleep on a blanket,’ Teng insisted to Donald. ‘But first, food. I can see you are in need of it.’

  He turned to a young man who followed him like a shadow, staring at Donald in a terrified way. Teng spoke to him and the man nodded and scurried away.

  ‘If I didn’t know better I would have thought you were speaking Japanese,’ Donald announced as the man left the room.

  ‘I was,’ Teng replied. ‘He is a Japanese. I speak to him only in sign language unless we are alone. It is all right with you, I know. He is a deserter. My friends picked him up near Nanking. He would have been killed by our people, if not his own. I’ve told everyone he is mute.’ Teng sat down on the chair beside Donald and began to tell him something of his own story.

  ‘Who helped you escape?’ Donald asked.

  ‘Oh, that is of no matter, I think,’ Teng replied absently.

  Akira returned with a pan of rice gruel with a few sparse bits of vegetable floating in it. He squatted down and laid out three bowls on the floor. Teng spoke to him and he gave Donald a sudden, furtive look. It was difficult to read his expression. He was in his early twenties, Donald gauged, with a thin, sensitive face. A few sentences were exchanged between him and Teng.

  ‘He is a farmer and a potter,’ Teng explained. ‘I have told him he has nothing to fear from you. He wanted to know where you lived in Nanking during the siege and I explained. He said he once brought a wounded woman to Martha’s hospital. Everyone thought he had killed her.’

  Donald shrugged. ‘He has killed others, I expect.’ He remembered vaguely hearing of a Japanese soldier entering the hospital carrying a dead Chinese woman. He stared at the man, who looked quickly away, as if he understood the conversation.

  ‘Yes, he has killed others,’ Teng replied slowly. ‘You could say he crossed a line, along with many other men, beyond what is our everyday human evil, into the demonic. When he saw that shadow fall upon him, he had the courage to desert.’

  ‘And what will become of him? What is he doing here?’

  ‘I cannot answer the first question, only the second. Here, he is helping me. There are refugees who need us, and wounded Chinese soldiers.’

  ‘The need for atonement?’ Donald smiled slightly.

  ‘Do we not all have some need for atonement?’ Teng replied. ‘Please, this will get cold. Let us eat. We have little enough to sustain us here as it is, without eating it cold.’ He sat down on the floor and took up his bowl into which Akira had ladled the steaming gruel.

  ‘I had thought before coming here that I would be staying at the Terminus Hotel,’ Donald admitted, looking down at the unappetising meal. The thought of a steak came to him.

  ‘Please go if you wish. You must choose, this world or that.’ Teng spooned up the gruel hungrily. Beside him Akira buried his face in the hot steam of the bowl. The room was filled with the sound of slurping.

  ‘I long ago made my decision. After Nanking nothing can be the same for me,’ Donald admitted.

  ‘That shadow is upon us all,’ Teng replied. ‘And will be always. What this man here has been party to is something we must thank whatever God there is, that we were not pressed into. Goodness can so easily be uprooted. The poor man is trying to find his way out of a shadow that almost entirely consumed him. Now tell me, how is this gruel? Fit for a king, is it not?’

  He watched Donald pick up the bowl and begin to eat. He noticed the clenched look about his eyes, the transparency of emotion in his face. So great was the pressure of testimony locked within them all, that it could make a man appear abnormally disturbed.

  ‘It is no easy thing, to bear witness to such a dark collective experience as was Nanking,’ he said aloud. Donald looked up from his bowl, listening intently as Teng continued.

  ‘It is as if we are asked to answer questions that have lain incomplete through eternity,’ Teng sighed. ‘Yet destiny planted us there for its own reason. We are the eyes of the dead, and the vision for a world that could not see. We cannot escape that role.’

  It was important to affirm that destiny, Teng thought. He had no answers, he had not even a firm religion if anyone had asked him, for he had dabbled in too many. He knew only that reason set narrow boundaries that he could no longer now accept. Each man lived, unknowingly, far beyond the impoverished field of his logic. Beneath that cerebral life the world of the unconscious went on in each one, secretly accruing its own life knowledge.

  ‘A man may spend his life with the seed of a particular knowledge within him. Only at a special moment will it flower for him to grasp its meaning. We cannot step aside from the task we have been given here.’ Teng spoke mildly and returned to his food.

  Donald lay awake on the roll of bedding. In the courtyard he heard the coughs and groans of the wounded, and the occasional cry of a child. In the room Teng snored lightly. Donald listened to the sound, thinking of the courage with which Teng lived his life. He stepped away from nothing. Now, he protected a man who, but recently, might have skewered him like a pig. He felt an overwhelming envy for anyone so sure of his conscience and commitment. From the Japanese there was no sound. He lay with his back to Donald, but there was a tenseness to his body, as if he too did not sleep.

  Donald’s mind was full of the things Teng had said. He had the feeling of receiving something, but could not determine its shape. His thoughts turned again to Nadya. Whatever it was that lay between them, his contact again with Teng seemed to ignite her in his mind. He was restless as he had not been for a long time, with thoughts of her. Something had gone wrong between them that he could not entirely cla
rify. His mind was full of holes. So much did not cohere. Everything had started with Smollett and spiralled down to Nanking. The thought of Nadya still in the town troubled him suddenly now. She was more vulnerable in this warring world than she knew. The idea came to him slowly then, amidst the coughs of the destitute.

  Soon he left Wuchang and made his way back to Nanking. He had no difficulty now entering the smashed city. At the hospital he was informed that Nadya had left for Shanghai, and was working once more with Bradley Reed. He asked for Martha and was told she was unwell. She was being cared for by Franciscan nuns who had returned now to the city. Both Lily and Flora had died. He expressed disbelief and bewilderment. No explanations seemed forthcoming.

  ‘Where is Martha?’ he demanded. They pointed the way to the convent.

  ‘It is better you do not see her,’ said a nun at the door.

  ‘What is wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘The grief of the world.’ The nun sighed. ‘We pray every day that she may find peace. Maybe later, if you are here, she could see you. God willing.’ The nun smiled gently and shut the door.

  There were trains now again to Shanghai. In that city the Foreign Settlement remained intact, but the Japanese were everywhere and a beleaguered atmosphere remained. He found Nadya in her old office.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Her eyes widened, then narrowed in suspicion, as if readying for attack.

  ‘Is there a law against seeing you?’ He took a chair and sat down. She leaned away from the typewriter to stare at him.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘With Teng in Wuchang.’

  She sat forward at that, questions spilling from her.

  ‘We were worried the Japanese Kempeitai might have taken you again.’ He looked at her anxiously.

  ‘They seem to have other things to keep them busy. I am followed most of the time. My letters are opened. They’re watching me. But it could be worse.’

  She told him then about Lily and Flora. ‘It has turned Martha’s mind. She has not spoken since they brought Flora back from the river.’ Nadya bit her lips in distress and looked down at the typewriter, trying to push away the memories. ‘There was nothing I could do. I left as soon as possible.’

  He looked out of the window, to the familiar view of the Bund, now full of Japanese warships. He remembered this was the building from which Nadya had viewed those first shootings, that seemed now a lifetime ago.

  ‘Can you leave? I’ll take you home,’ he said.

  It was the same tiny flat. Potted flowers crowded the window sill. The survival of the Foreign Settlement was something he could not get over. Beyond this island was annihilation. In the whole of China hardly a city survived, but this cultural island went on as before, with barely a geranium petal out of place. And, although in themselves so much was changed, it seemed easy here, in this room, to pretend that all might be the same. He reached out to pull her into his arms, but she drew back, shaking her head. There had been nothing between them since he left Shanghai so abruptly after Smollett. Whatever it was that still tied them, she could not so readily now pick it up. She groped for words to express her feelings and then gave up.

  Instead she busied herself making coffee. ‘This is precious stuff. I got it from the Japanese black market.’ Her hair had grown and fell wildly about her shoulders.

  ‘I can’t cope with anything more,’ she said, attempting to explain her feelings about their relationship. Yet even as she said the words she knew if the man Nozaki were before her, she would not have hesitated.

  ‘I’m going back to England,’ Donald said suddenly. ‘Things are heating up there, Hitler’s making advances everywhere. War is inevitable. Bad things are ahead everywhere. The Times wants me back. What are you going to do here?’ He sipped the coffee and stared at her as she fidgeted nervously with her cup. Regret filled him again, sharp as grief. He never made the right decisions, as if to spite himself.

  ‘Bradley is finally going back to the States for good. He and his wife want me to go. He says he’ll get me a job there. But it’s not so easy, being stateless. I shall find other work here no doubt.’ The flat tone in her voice upset him.

  ‘There is something I want to suggest,’ he said. ‘I have given it much thought. I think you ought to marry me.’ He had not intended to place the words so bluntly before her, he had meant in some way to prepare her. She put down her cup and looked at him with the same shock as when he had entered her office. He watched her attempt to collect herself.

  ‘Please don’t joke.’ Her tone was derisive, her expression on guard.

  ‘I am not joking. I have never been more serious.’ He leaned forward. ‘If you don’t want to marry me in the conventional sense, then don’t, although I would be happy enough to give it a try. But marry me for your own good. Don’t you see how vulnerable you are? War is talked about everywhere, and not just in China, where you could say we have been bystanders. We may have a war greater than any we can conceive, involving all the nations of the world. And you are alone. You are stateless, a refugee if you like. You have no passport, no country to protect you. I can give you that protection. Don’t you see you must marry me.’ He sat back, breathless with the urgency of his speech.

  It took some moments before she replied. ‘Thank you for your charity. But I don’t know if I want to live my life with you, whatever the dangers I face here. You make me feel like a stray cat to which you are willing to give a home.’ Her face was full of bitterness. She pushed the hair off her shoulders, and turned away from him.

  He swore in exasperation. ‘I don’t ask that you come with me anywhere. Stay here if you wish. Do as you like. Never see me again. Just marry me. At least then you will have some security. You will have a passport by which to leave this country if you ever wish. If the Kempeitai get too near you, there will be an Embassy to call to for help. Nadya do this, please.’

  ‘Why are you offering this? It is most suspect.’ She looked at him angrily, trying to evaluate this further phase of erratic behaviour.

  ‘In this whole war you are the only person I can help. I have done nothing to save a single human being. I am not like Teng. The gift to help the suffering has not been given to me. I have lived a useless war. You remember at the beginning of all this, when you were so upset not to hear the gun that killed those peasants? Well, I have refused to hear a single gun, while listening to them all. I can live with it no longer. This is the only honourable thing I can do. I am dying from lack of self-respect.’ The feeling of his own uselessness welled up again in him.

  ‘You are mad. A marriage like this is for the wrong reasons. How can you even suggest it? What does that make me, some form of atonement to ease your war-stricken conscience?’ She stood up in new anger to pace the room.

  ‘It is mad. But I would say I am doing it for the right reasons, not the wrong ones. And even if it is only to know I did one good deed, just marry me. I shall probably never feel this noble again. You will not get another offer from me,’ Donald threatened.

  ‘Oh, I’m quite sure of that,’ she murmured. ‘But what if in a few months, or a year or two, you meet someone you really want to marry, and you’ve already tied yourself up with this honourable Boy Scout deed to me? Or maybe I shall meet someone and wish to tie myself to him. What then?’

  ‘If that should happen, something could be arranged. Annulment probably, for we could prove we had never lived together. And even if that did happen, you would still retain a British passport. But perhaps, in the future, you might even find you wish to take up your position as my wife.’ He grinned with a sudden return to his old bantering style.

  She shook her head. ‘I have no intention of marrying anyone at present. I am happy as I am. It wouldn’t work, I know it.’ He sat before her, an expression of such anguish on his face, that suddenly she almost laughed.

  ‘Maybe it will save your life. Let me at least have the pleasure of knowing I did that,’ Donald argued.

  ‘It is quite cr
azy.’ She could see he was determined for his own strange reasons. The memory of those hours with the Kempeitai returned to her in a rush. She had never been without fear since that day. Even here in Shanghai, she was conscious always of a shadow. They knew what she did every hour of the day. At any moment they might take her again. She turned to look at Donald.

  ‘It is crazy,’ she repeated in bewilderment.

  They were married by a notary within a week. She refused to sleep with him. For so strange a pact to have meaning it was important they abide by the intuitive rules. Whatever might once have passed between them, this was a magnanimous business arrangement for her safety in uncertain times. Within a week Donald sailed for England.

  He kissed her before walking up the gangplank onto the ship. She doubted there would be letters from him; this was something he needed to do for himself. She looked at her new passport, its smart colour and large gold crest and the name now emblazoned on it. Nadya Addison. She turned it over in her hand. It was something held in trust between them, although she might never see him again. Soon, she was sure, he would divorce her.

  31

  Disgrace

  May 1938

  Kenjiro listened to the shuffle of footsteps on the stairs and then the march down the corridor. There was a strong decisive step and behind a quicker, irregular tread that he knew must be Fukutake, trying to keep up. As he expected they stopped before his room.

  Fukutake cowered in the doorway behind the two men. He would already have said whatever it was the men wished him to say. Kenjiro did not blame him, these were difficult times. Or, perhaps, in some ways they were simple times. Decisions were stripped of complexity. Choices were stark. He closed the top of his fountain pen and placed it in its stand, as he did at the end of each day. From the window the shattered roof of the Drum Tower curled against the sky. Great cumulus clouds hung unmoving above it. Leafy fronds thrust out of the black jagged stumps of trees. Nature was reasserting herself upon the drained city. He watched a man push a laden wheelbarrow in the road before the Embassy, and wondered if this might be his last unfettered view of life? How naive and muddled he must appear to Fukutake. How worthless to the men beside him. He stood up without emotion. The men in military uniform came forward.