Hers the Kingdom (95 page)

     "Were you able to see her?" I probed.

     "Twice," he answered. "I went to the university. She is escorted, even there, by an amah—the same old woman who was with her in Shanghai. But this time the amah was willing to help. She raised Ch'ing-Ling and she loves her enough to at least look the other way. And since she speaks no English, we could talk freely."

     He fell silent again, staring down on the street, lost in thought.

     "And?" I reminded him.

     He sighed, and came to sit across from me. "
And
," he said, "she says she feels love for me, she says that were it a matter of her personal happiness she would find no pleasure so perfect as to spend all of her life with me, in harmony and grace."

     "Porter!" I could not help but exclaim, my feelings suddenly rose in my throat.

     "No, wait," he cautioned, "that's not all. It seems that her personal happiness is pretty low on the list of priorities. We talked for no more than half an hour, most of the time just catching up on our feelings. God, Auntie . . ."

     I swallowed. I could not let myself cry.

     He went on, "The next day two very large Chinese men appeared at my door and told me I was to come with them. The next thing I knew I was standing before Ch'ing-Ling's uncle, who said nothing at all for a full five minutes, but just stared at me.

     "Then they brought her in—she explained that she was to interpret for her uncle, but that I was not to speak directly to her or she to me. In this way, the uncle—speaking through Ch'ing-Ling
—explained that a marriage had been arranged for her. She would return to China to become the wife of an officer in the army of General Chiang Kai-shek. It was explained that my friendship with the communist general Wing Soong was well known, that Soong was a mortal enemy of their family, and of Ch'ing-Ling's proposed husband. Therefore, it should be more than obvious that I should under no circumstances ever attempt to see her, or speak to her, again. As a postscript, he said that the amah had been sent back to China in disgrace, that she had lost her place in the family for allowing Ch'ing-Ling to speak to me the day before.

     "What did you say?"

     "I asked to be allowed to at least speak to Ch'ing-Ling. It was mad—talking to him through her and yet not being allowed to speak directly. He said no, not one word was to pass between us."

     "And did she relay that message?"

     "Oh, yes," he said in a voice so low I had to strain to hear, "there were tears in her eyes and her whole body was shaking, but God! She did as she was told. I guess I got wild then. I started talking to her. I said I loved her and that this was crazy—that it was a medieval scene from some world that didn't exist anymore. And then. Jesus! Thinking about it makes me want to strangle him. That old man spoke up—in English. He hadn't needed a translator at all. He had done it to humiliate her. I swear, if his two goons hadn't thrown me out, I would have killed him."

     He was sitting, running his hands through his hair, his head bowed. He looked so troubled, so terribly hurt and vulnerable, and I wanted nothing so much as to absorb the pain he was feeling.

     He looked up at me, his eyes flashing with anger. "The bastard must have influence, because they put me on my ship and kept me there until it set sail. The reason they gave was that I was a 'known agitator.'" He stood once more and began pacing, pacing and thinking.

     "And that, at least, is true, Auntie. I am an agitator, and it's something that doesn't fit at all with her life. Our worlds—they
are
too far apart . . . the chasm is just too great to bridge, if she hasn't the resolve, or the courage, to try."

     
October 3, 1932, the Malibu:
I must return to San Francisco this week for the final sitting for my portrait. Dear Sara has struggled so, and at times she moved so painfully slowly that I think it may have been a mistake for me to have urged her to continue. I worry that she pushes herself beyond what is possible.

     At the same time, she is impossible . . . she will not let any of us see the painting. If I get up to walk about to give my back a rest, she covers the canvas, as if I might try to peek behind her back. I tell her she is getting testier all the time and she is. But I also know that she does that rather than complain about the pain. Thad has been well all summer long. He even gained a bit of weight so we were hopeful that his health was improving, but he is ill again. I hope he won't have to go back into the hospital, he has been in and out so much of late. Willa says that I should not delay my trip to San Francisco on Thad's account. I didn't think that to be strange at first, but now it seems that not so long ago she would call me to observe the slightest change in his behavior or his health. I am not quite sure when it happened, or how, but some time during the last few years Willa stopped believing that Thad would make a full recovery, or that he would change very much. It had been so important to her for such a long time, and now it is not. The startling thing is, I don't know when the change occurred and neither, I think, does she. Perhaps hope does not rush out all at once but, rather, evaporates at such an infinitesimally slow rate that one day it is gone and we don't even notice.

     
October 17, 1932, San Francisco:
Sara
would
have an unveiling party last evening. (My objections never have deterred Sara when she has her mind set.) I agreed only because it was just to be a few very close friends. Kit and Porter, Philip and Dina Cameron, and some of Sara's artist and museum friends I've known for years. It was dress up, champagne and all. Very swell, as Porter put it out of the side of his mouth, gangster style.

     I was a bit nervous, I must admit. But Sara, well. You would have thought she was about to give birth. When she did unveil the painting and we got a look at it, I was at a loss to see what the fuss was all about. It doesn't look in the least like me as far as I can tell, so I can hardly be upset. I was pleased to see that my back doesn't look grotesque, as I had imagined it might.

     The others are being quite silly about it. One of the museum ladies kept talking about "awesome power and force." I must say, it is a very strange experience to see yourself through the eyes of someone else. I don't believe I know the woman in the portrait, but right away Kit said, "Oh, yes." And Porter too. He said, "Yes, you've got her." And Philip. Well, Philip said something that unnerved me, if the truth be told. Philip said, "I don't know, Sara—it's as if you are sharing our wonderful secret . . ." And Sara had answered, right off, "I know that, Philip. It's already been decided that the portrait will remain in my estate, and that it will hang at Wildwood. The portrait is to be Porter's."

     And Porter said, "If I never have a house to hang it in, I'll carry it around on my back." We laughed at that, but it wasn't entirely a joke, I could tell. I had to be careful, then, to make sure my laughter didn't turn into tears.

     Sara is basking in the praise, and for that it was worth every minute. I've told her to find herself a proper subject, now that she knows how she must work, but she says she is not in all that much of a hurry now.

     
October 19, 1932:
Joseph called this morning to tell us that Thad's condition is worsened, that we should return as soon as we could.

     
January 9, 1933:
I am too exhausted to write, so I shall clip the obituary from last Thursday's
Santa Monica Evening Outlook.

     
Thaddeus Reade, age 40, a native of California and lifelong resident of the Rancho Malibu, died yesterday of injuries suffered while serving with the U.S. Expeditionary Force in France during the Great War. He was the son of Mrs. Willa Kerr Reade and the late Mr.
Reade. He will be sorely missed by all those friends and relatives he leaves behind.

     Sally sent white roses, which were placed on the casket. Kit sobbed throughout the service, until finally Porter had to take her home. Willa is dazed. Lucy stays close by and I am thankful, having no reserves of energy myself.

     
January 16, 1933, 3:00 P.M.:
How I envy the Catholics their confessional. I long to tell someone of my sin and be given absolution. We poor Protestants are left with our consciences and our notebooks. So I shall confess here: I have no feeling at Thad's death, none at all. I do not miss him. More than that, I am glad. Glad? Perhaps only relieved. It is as if he lived so on the periphery of our lives that when he slipped over the edge into eternity, we scarcely noticed.

     
11:30 P.M.:
I cannot sleep. Has something died within me that I should be so unfeeling at Thad's death? Willa's pain is real. I avoid her so I do not have to pretend. It is true, I
am
glad. Sara stayed on after the funeral and, seeing the light in my room so late, came to sit with me. I told her, I blurted it all out and all she said was, "What is so terrible about that? We've been mourning Thad for twenty years. We've watched the life ebb out of him. Why aren't you angry, instead, at the waste?"

     Angry. She is right, it should be anger that I feel. At what? At Thad? Or at the forces which came together to deny him a good life? Dear Lord, I wish I knew.

     I shall try my bed again; perhaps if I repeat the Lord's Prayer, sleep will come.

     
January 30, 1933:
I have a letter from Soong, written three months ago. "Arrests and executions on orders of Generalissimo Chiang have decimated our ranks and made it impossible for the Central Committee to remain in Shanghai. We leave tomorrow for the Soviet Republic in Kiangsi, proclaimed by Mao last year. The Central Committee is, now, firmly in the hands of those 'students' who have been to Moscow for training and who continue to insist
that the urban proletariat must lead the revolution in China. A few of us—Chou En-lai and myself included—are tolerated by the party but only after we formally, and publicly, confessed our 'cowardly rotten opportunism' for having been involved in the debacle at Changsha."

     
The debacle at Changsha.
I hadn't the slightest notion what it might be but I was sure of one thing. Soong had explained it in a letter that never arrived.

     I was cheered, even so, by what seemed to me to be a stiffening of resolve on Soong's part. He wrote: "I am stubborn, but I have decided that I will see this revolution through. I cannot say why, but I have convinced myself that in my lifetime I will see a different China, one free of poverty and death and corruption and servitude. If that way is not democratic, it will at least be more humane. For the moment, however, Chiang Kai-shek is determined to exterminate as many of us as he can. Guerrilla units are fighting in the countryside, and soon I will be among them. I carry with me the picture I have in my mind's eye—of you and Porter as you stood together when last I saw you. It is a glorious picture."

     
February 26, 1934, San Francisco:
The ILA—the Longshoremen's Union—is feeling its muscle and is determined to bring the Employers Association up short. It looks like trouble for certain, and Porter of course is in the middle of it. These are exciting times, he likes to tell me. I tell him they are nerve-wracking. On Saturday last, labor union delegates from every Pacific coast port gathered in San Francisco in common cause, and they have put forth these demands: one dollar an hour pay, a thirty-hour work week, and a six-hour day. Not only that, but all hiring is to be done through the ILA halls.

     Well, the employers rejected it out of hand.

     I can only feel that the longshoremen are being unrealistic. There are four thousand of them and only thirteen hundred jobs, and there is an army of unemployed men who will work for any wage to feed their families. It is a ready-made pool of strikebreakers.

     
March 12, 1934:
At President Roosevelt's request, the strike deadline has been postponed so a panel can study the demands. Our President is a cousin of T.R.'s, and quite as flamboyant I do believe, in a different way. He is having a marvelous effect on the country, which is, of course, what I would expect from a cousin of T.R.'s. At any rate, things seem cooled down now so that Kit and I could return to the Malibu, Kit to grapple with the continuing tangle of problems concerning the ranch, and me—to be honest—to bury my head in the sand so I do not have constantly to be assaulted by the troubles of the Great Depression.

     Our brothers in Illinois write that there is no market for the crops and they give away what they can. Porter Farm will hold, but many other smaller spreads have been taken over by the banks and it is a sorry sight, the boys say.

     Traveling south through the Central Valley made me physically ill. Whole families with their possessions piled on top of broken-down cars can be seen along the highways. Dust seems everywhere—on the cars they come in, on the miserable camps they make for them on the outskirts of dingy little valley towns, even on their children. And yet they continue to make their way west, to California—the "land of milk and honey" and the old dream that will not die. They believe things will be better here. Or perhaps they simply must go as far as they can go, all the way to the Pacific.

     Some, not many, find their way into the Malibu in search of work. We have none, we can scarcely afford to keep our own people. Even so, Willa has ordered a camp kitchen set up near the old pier, where anyone who wants can have a free meal. The ranch is still able to produce its own food. Who would have dreamed it could come to this?

     A few days back, Kit and I were driving into town when we noticed a group of men waiting tentatively at the camp kitchen. We stopped to see what the matter was, and discovered that they were Danes—carpenters, actually, who live in a Danish settlement
east of Santa Barbara. They had come in search of work.

     We found the cook, and left them. Kit was uncommonly quiet. We drove for perhaps a mile and then suddenly she stopped the car and executed a turn so abrupt that I thought for a moment we would mire in the sand. She headed back, explaining, "Fate has just presented me with a decision."