Hers the Kingdom (97 page)

     "How old is she?" I asked.

     "Twenty-five," he answered.

     "It is quite young," I started, carefully. "Perhaps not so for Kit and you, but then you grew up in a world altogether different from Ch'ing-Ling's world. While she was being taught the importance of the old ways, you were being steeped in a commitment to change. Soong and Joseph and Philip were the men who guided you in your youngest years, and each of them was extraordinarily dedicated to a purpose, an ideal. You were brought up to believe that you should try to change the world, Porter. But you must learn to be patient with those who were taught other lessons."

     Porter sat, locked in thought. We sipped our tea and maintained silence, balancing with the gentle roll of the boat, listening to the steady throb of the engines. Then Porter said what we were, each of us, thinking: "Ch'ing-Ling is everything I want . . . but I don't believe it is possible for our lives to work together."

     
October 8, 1934:
Willa, Trinidad, and I have moved into Los Angeles, into my townhouse. Let me explain.

     The Casa Blanca has had to be sold, there was no way to keep it and meet ranch obligations. Miraculously, in the midst of the depression, a buyer was found. The Catholic church has agreed to purchase the Casa Blanca for use as a retreat. They are paying fifty thousand dollars. Willa had poured half a million dollars into the mansion, and had never finished it. The Catholics' money will pay back taxes.

     Kit's house—the one built for her by the Danes—was finished in time to receive all of us. I should have realized that was what Kit had in mind when she built it. The old ranch house is in a dreadful state of repair, even if it weren't in use as a ranch office. Kit's beach house is altogether charming and beautifully situated, facing the sea with the lagoon filled with birds to the back, and hidden from the roadway. There are lovely tiled terraces, the Danes having put the leftover tiles from the Italians' kiln to good use. There are four large bedrooms upstairs, three of which have balconies that look up the coastline. It is much smaller than the Casa Blanca, of course, but in my opinion it is wonderfully elegant. It
feels
like the Malibu. The Danes' workmanship is extraordinary. They added artful touches, such as stenciled folk art on the open beams in the living rooms.

     Kit was, I believe, greatly disappointed when Willa decided to move into town. Willa did not do it out of spite. If anything, it is a form of self-punishment, this self-exile.

     Lucy, bless her, is a frequent visitor in our house. She is eighteen now and studying biology at the University of Southern California. Her serious interest, she tells us, is ornithology. At the present moment she is organizing Willa's notes—all of them—in hopes of publishing a scholarly book on raptors. The two of them spend long hours together in the library. Occasionally they drive out to the Malibu and do some hawking. Lucy has even persuaded Willa to take a group of fellow students on a birding study tour, concentrating on the shore birds at the lagoon.

December 24, 1934, Los Angeles:
Today I received a letter, the third since Soong's arrival in Kiangsi two years ago. He writes: "Our very existence is threatened here. Chiang Kai-shek, with the help of the Germans, makes it imperative that we leave this redoubt and travel to the northern provinces, out of their reach. We will be cut off from everything and everyone. Perhaps that is not all bad, however, if it means—as it does—that the Kremlin will no longer be able to direct us, and as Chinese communists we will be free to wage our own brand of revolution. It will be a long journey. We must take a circuitous route and there will be fighting along the way. It will be months before we arrive, and it is unlikely that I shall have another chance to get a letter to you. So there are some things that I must say. First, that I am determined that I shall see the end of this quest, if it means I must live to be one hundred. I am fit, and I have faith. Second, when the time is right, and you will know, tell our son of his heritage, and tell him his father is filled with pride and love for him. Last, remember this. My love for you is eternal."

February 1, 1937:
We had a belated birthday celebration over this past weekend, at Kit's beach house. It was the first time everyone has been able to get together, such is the temper of these times. Even Joseph, who has such trouble moving about, managed to be there.

     Porter brought me a wonderful gift: a newspaper clipping from
The New York Times
, a Reuters report taken from the London
Observer.
A Reuters correspondent in China had managed to make his way into the communist stronghold in Yenan, and to come out again to write his story, part of which read: "The Long March is even now becoming the stuff of legend. Of the one hundred thousand Chinese communists who started from Kiangsi in October of 1934, only 20,000 eventually reached Shensi province, having traveled, in all, 6,000 miles, according to Wing Soong, a high-ranking official in the Chinese Communist hierarchy and one of the survivors of the March."

     I could not have received a more perfect gift, nor could it have arrived on a more perfect day. I read it over and over again, until Sara told me I was going to wear it out with my eyes. Soong was safe, he was alive and he was well. Knowing that gave me the strength to do what I had, all these thirty-three years since Porter's birth, longed to do. My gift to him on this birthday would be the truth. I felt a swelling within me, a wonderful sense of freedom. I began to prepare my speech, which I planned to deliver that evening, when we could be alone.

     Dinner was a family affair, with Lucy holding forth on Spain, in a spirited defense of the Republic, while Joseph teased her by playing the devil's advocate, chiding the Spanish Republicans for repressing freedom of religion and thus inviting chaos. I only half listened. My mind was on that hour when I would tell Porter that he was my son, that Soong fathered him.

     After dinner a small dance band began to play on the terrace, it being an unusually balmy night for February, and Kit and Porter's friends began to arrive. They drove out from Los Angeles and Santa Monica, and a few of the movie people came over from the beach colony. Trinidad and Lucy had strung Chinese lanterns at almost the last minute, which gave a festive glow to the setting, sheltered as it was from the open sea breezes, but with the moonlit beach in full view below.

     It was a handsome group, swaying to the music, soft and sweet songs that were so popular—"June in January" and "Tea for Two" and "Stars Fell on Alabama." From a balcony, Sara and I watched, and felt glad. It was, I thought, a sweet respite—safe and sweet.

     I heard Kit and Lucy come upstairs to bed after one. I waited until everything was still, then I put on my robe and made my way downstairs to the small guest room where Porter was sleeping.

     He was not in the room. I found him in the living room, alone, standing by the big window that looked out to the sea.

     "Porter?" I said, quietly.

     He turned on a light.

     "I was just wondering if it was too late to wake you," he said.

     "What is it?" I asked quickly, "What's wrong?"

     "I have something to tell you . . . I've been waiting for a good time to do it, and I guess there just is no good time."

     I went cold inside. I felt weak and held onto a chair to keep my balance.

     "Auntie," he said, "I'm going to Spain . . . I'm going to join the International Brigade."

July 26, 1937:
We devour the news from Spain. There has been heavy fighting at a place called Brunete, just west of Madrid, these past three weeks, and the Fifteenth International Brigade was in the worst of it. The siege of Madrid has now been underway for nine months, and the Loyalists show no sign of giving in.

     Porter is there, part of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion.

     Abraham Lincoln, who slept in our farmhouse once, long ago.

     I cannot make sense of it. I did not want Porter to go. I wanted to tell him that he was mine, my son, my only child—but I could not. He left without knowing, he does not know.

     I could not tell him, not then. Not like that. It must be a gift, freely given.

     He must live, he must. I could not bear to lose him.

     Kit went with him, when he left. I could not. She told me about it, later—about that last hour in the train station. She had asked him, then, "Are you afraid?"

     And Porter had answered her with a quotation: "You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action—that is, whether he is acting rightly or wrongly, like a good man or a bad one."

     Plato, that old fool.

     Kit had shook her head and whispered, "I hate it, Porter, all the death." He hugged her to him then and told her that he hated it, too, but that there was no other way, that Hitler and the fascists must be stopped in Spain, and now. He said if it could not be done, there would be a bloodbath beyond all we could imagine.

     
April 3, 1939:
On March 28, the forces of fascism won in Spain. Democracy is in tatters everywhere. Madrid has fallen and the war is over. Porter and all of the men who fought for the Republic have learned what it is to lose. Plato is an old fool. Good does not triumph. But Porter is alive. He will be repatriated to England, we have learned. The message we received spoke of complications from a leg wound that has not properly healed.

     
October 9, 1939:
Porter writes from England: "I apologize once more, Auntie, for the delay. I am also glad that I have convinced you to stay in Los Angeles. This is no time for you to be traveling to Europe. The British doctors hum and haw over my leg. They promise me they are doing everything humanly possible to save it, and I believe them. Next week, they say, a decision . . . I am confident that one day they will patch me up so that I can come home. Try not to worry."

     I have not been able to sleep. I pace at night until I waken Trinidad and she comes out and cries. I can't seem to stop her from crying.

     As for Willa, when I try to talk to her she only deflects me . . . usually to something that happened when we were girls. "I was thinking about Grandmother the other day," she will say. "What do you think she would have to say about airplanes and bombings?"

     I confess, I haven't any idea.

     When Kit told her that she was going to England to be with Porter, Willa set about getting a list of names of people that Kit must look up—people Willa has neither seen nor heard from in thirty years.

     I read the
Times
to Willa every morning. It has become a habit. I don't think she listens very much, but only pretends. She
has not wanted to go out to the Malibu of late. Lucy told me of a conversation she had with Willa the other day.

     Lucy said, "Don't you miss going out to the ranch, Grandmother? Don't you want to track the peregrines anymore?"

     Willa didn't answer, but instead asked, "Did you know that an eagle builds a nest in one tree—it gets to be an enormous big thing. The pair returns to it every year until the tree dies or is cut down or simply topples under the weight of the nest."

     "All birds are creatures of instinct," Lucy answered, "bound to the seasons, to the nest, to the ritual."

     "Even so," Willa said, "to watch a falcon soar—to see it catch a thermal and sail so high in the sky that you can no longer see it, but only know it's there, until it flings itself into a stoop, diving at amazing speeds straight down . . . ah, my . . ."

     "That is good, isn't it?" Lucy had asked.

     And Willa had said, "Yes, it is. I do believe that it is."

I DECIDED TO commit this chronicle to paper on the day I learned that Porter was coming home from the Spanish Civil War. The truth was this: I knew I could not let him leave again without knowing the circumstances of his birth, and I was afraid to tell him.

     Just that—afraid.

     In Shanghai, with Soong, I had not been afraid, but Porter had been only twenty-five then, and young still. After Spain, he was thirty-five and no longer young. I became convinced that the truth had been hidden for so long that telling it could be devastating. Perhaps he would feel betrayed. Perhaps he would suddenly discover another truth—that I had been guilty of duplicity, that I was devious and deceitful and not worthy of his love. He would almost certainly think me a hypocrite, for having kept so large a truth hidden from him for so long. Porter's passion for justice was great. I became obsessively certain that in telling him, I would destroy whatever love he might feel for me.

     And yet I knew I must tell him. I could not let him leave again without knowing. I would have to accept the consequences.

     Kit brought him home from the long stay in the hospital in England. He came limping up the walkway to the townhouse, Kit propping him on one arm. He was thin and weary and sad, you could see the sadness in the slope of his shoulders, but the sight of him filled me with thanksgiving.