The Communist's Daughter (15 page)

*

One morning on board, after a difficult night, I was stepping out to meet Alicia and her aunt for another sitting. When I opened my cabin door I was surprised to find Miss Ewen standing there. We startled one another.

“You've surprised me,” she said, regaining her composure.

“You've not come calling for me?”

“I'm just walking,” she said. “Learning the ship.”

“I'm on my way up top. I'll walk with you.” She was dressed in a cream-coloured dress and jacket suit. She was very pretty that day, I remember, with a light grey handkerchief over her hair. “I suppose it's blowing out there a bit,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, “it is.”

As we walked the length of the corridor she asked about the supplies I carried under my arm. I told her about the portrait I was painting.

“You've fortified yourself against this monotony,” she said. “Good for you. On board one has so much time to think. Perhaps a little too much.”

“The mind can go in circles,” I said.

We turned a corner and ascended a flight of stairs.

“I
was
coming to call, actually,” she said. “You caught me in the midst of reconsidering.”

“Reconsidering?”

“Yes, I'm ashamed to say. I wanted to talk to you about Charles.”

“You've reconsidered my proposal?”

“I think he invented his story about someone stealing the money.”

“Why do you say that?” I said. “Do you know something?”

“There is no evidence that anyone entered his quarters. I've spoken to the Captain on this matter. There's nothing to go on but his word. We already know of his drinking. That's the only thing we really do know.”

“What do you suggest, then?” I asked.

“It's a terrible mess. It's all unravelling, isn't it.”

We came upon a hatch leading out to the promenade deck. I pushed it open for her and touched her elbow ever so slightly as she stepped over the small rise and out into the morning sunshine. “I feel so traitorous. Villainous. The fact is, I just don't know.”

“You may feel as you must, Miss Ewen, but you must also feel right about sending the telegram. I will not force you. This has to be your decision.”

“It is,” she said.

It was clear that Jean found it unkind and perhaps even dishonourable to go behind Parsons's back as we eventually did, and that she felt she might have crushed something in herself in turning on this “kind and helpless man.” I assured her we had no other choice. She knew, finally, what she had to do. The telegram went out that same afternoon, signed by the both of us, requesting that the CAC relieve Parsons of his financial responsibilities. We stayed together a short time after that, walking slowly. I assured her that we had pursued the correct course of action. She seemed needful of assurance, so I told her that when replacement funds were eventually wired to Hong Kong, as surely they would be, every last dime would be used for the purpose intended. In that we could be proud.

What about Parsons, then, now that Jean and I had sent the telegram?

I was careful about reintroducing the money into the coffers of the expedition. It couldn't simply reappear, just like that, without raising suspicion. What I did was this: I accepted the Captain's offer to speak, on the condition that following my address, donations might be made in a discreet manner to a non-political, non-partisan humanitarian effort to benefit victims of the war in China. The Captain was delighted to comply.

When we received a telegram in response to ours two days later—which happened to be the day of my lecture—it officially discharged Parsons of all financial duties and “effected a transfer to Dr. Bethune.” He might not have known before then that I'd actively set about undermining him, but he would know it now, just as I knew surely enough that not much time would pass before he came to take my measure.

During the increasing turbulence of those days I quite miraculously cobbled together some thoughts for the talk I'd promised to give. So it was, after a torturously long dinner on Friday evening, that our Captain rose, tapping his wineglass with a slender silver fork, and called the hall's attention to where I sat at the head table. Billingsley, Parsons, Jean and Gwendolyn, with pretty Alicia, were all seated about the room. The Captain cleared his throat with great force and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we have the honour . . .” and so on, and after his humbling introduction I rose, bowed as graciously as possible, and walked to the podium, which stood at the front of the hall, where a small team of busboys had assembled it as we ate. The first face I saw, of course, was that of my chief adversary.

Parsons smiled at me, and in that moment I was convinced that he'd put the Captain up to this. Invite Bethune, by all means, he would have said, he won't be able to resist. The man's vanity is unsurpassed. I returned his smile. Perhaps for a moment my mind went blank with fear. The diners were silent now. I might have blinked uncontrollably and fidgeted with my hands. Yet I remember thinking, quite clearly, too, that this was what it must feel like to stand before your accuser—your victim, in a sense—while observed by a jury of your peers, your every tic observed, registered, every pause, every garbled word, every drop of pitiable sweat as you made your case. My case, indeed. And so I began:

“Ladies and gentlemen.” My eyes roamed over the audience. I was by then a practised public speaker. I'd taken my film about the mobile unit in Spain to over fifty cities in Canada and the United States, and had lectured in a great many teaching hospitals. I tried to regulate my breathing. “It is an honour to share with you some thoughts I have compiled here on the . . .”

He was waiting. Well, let him wait.

“. . . on the nature of . . . truth.”

Could I be as audacious as this? I hope you will forgive me.

“The entire world,” I continued, “indeed, humanity itself, craves the basic foundation of truth, the bedrock of our existence. Political truth. Moral truth. Social truth. Aesthetic truth.”

My notes, I noticed then, were still folded in my hand. I'd not had the presence of mind to follow what I had prepared.

“Humanity. The man to your left. The woman to your right. We, all of us. Choose whatever avenue you care to look down, and on a clear day you'll see what we all want in this life, no matter where you live or whom you love. And that thing is truth. The fundamental truth of the ages, equality, purity, brotherhood. The most profound question of existence, the question of
why,
can only be answered thus, with an appeal to truth. That each man bears within his soul the dignity and value of a thousand men, and each of that thousand, each within his soul, likewise possesses the dignity and value of that one man. Are we not here, I wonder, on board this ship, on this earth, to seek and to find the truth as it resides within each of us, in whatever form we may carry it? We must all have this basis, this foundation, for the lives we lead, for without it we are lost, loveless and bereft. Life's handiwork—our deeds—shall mark us all, individually, as seekers of truth, and it is by these markers that we know if we succeed or fail in this life.

“None of us is perfect. No science or religion or church can make that claim. But it is the perfection of our dreams that may deliver us through that great searching; and those dreams—of how the world should be, might be one day, shall be one day—fuel our hope and the fire in our breasts that we might leave this place a little better than we found it.

“This evening I stand here before you, at the invitation of our Captain and in so great a room as this, aboard such a proud vessel, to share my thoughts on the essence of
man.
For it is the men of character who enact the necessary changes that lead us, as a society, from one momentous change to the next.

“We are at just such a juncture here, at a moment of change. And it is up to us. We are the privileged generation on whom falls this greatest of responsibilities.”

I sipped from my water glass and waited, but he did not rise.

“We are, most of us, strangers aboard this ship. Yet even still we are a community, a whole society of shared stories, ideals and aspirations. And it is from our experience, our shared history, that we derive these ideals and aspirations. When I think back to my own father, most certainly a wise man, to be sure, but also headstrong, prone to outburst and deeply set in his ways, I can recall mostly conflict, yes, the common conflicts of father and son, but also conflicts of a more profound nature. Yet without his example and the subsequent differences that rose between us, I would have been unable to help change my small corner of the world—and I hope my work shall continue. Why this reflection on my good father? Simply to say that there are conflicts between good men. Honest men. And when injury is sustained, let the weaker man understand that the fight was one of ideals, not personalities. Principle, not spite. My father was such a man, and though our principles clashed, our respect sustained us. Let that be true of all men as we struggle to make our way in the world.”

His head was turned down. He'd picked up a spoon and was cleaning out the last of the Devonshire cream from his strawberry torte.

“I would not at this moment find myself in your midst, sailing to Asia, toward that struggle presently underway in China, without the battle that ensued between myself and my father, this clash of wills that did so much to remind me of my limitations, but also of my potential. I would urge you all to seek out the nobility that each of us holds within and to give forgiveness when it is offered, even silently, and when a man stands exposed before you to rise above your limitations, to find that fundamental truth we all share, that need for purity and justice for the one man and the thousand men. For our life and times rest in the hands of the many millions of individuals like yourselves in this world who will be brave enough to conquer first the injustice within our own hearts, and then the injustice of others.”

The applause from the audience rose before me. I bowed modestly. “Thank you,” I said. I smiled, bowed again, then sat down.

A lovely day, finally,
here in the 1st Sub-District of Yang Chia Chuang. It is early December. We for weeks have been having rotten weather, but yesterday the cold cloud cover broke to reveal a razor-sharp, ice-blue sky. I managed a walk up the hill just north of camp and enjoyed the sound of virgin snow crunching under my boots. It is a youthful sound, and I hope you come to know it. I was able to clear my head, if only for a moment, and inhale the perfect day. Very invigorating. The respite didn't last long, of course. But it was a much-needed reminder that such moments are still possible in this mad rush to kill one another.

Perhaps it's still early enough in this story to admit to you without fear of stating the obvious that the people in my life—those who surround me now, who crowd my past—are and always have been my fuel, my inspiration, my
tabula rasa.
I cut my teeth upon their sores and injuries, illnesses and deaths. This life you hold before you is built upon the broken lives of thousands. In these dark moments I seem no more than an assemblage of their parts. In this I do not condemn myself, but there is a sadness there. Any truthful man of medicine, indeed science, will tell you the same.

But will he truly understand it, how indebted we are to misfortune, upheaval and disaster? That is another question. How, for example, an engineer benefits from the collapse of a bridge spanning the Thames, the Seine, the Ganges. Among the dead sadly bobbing in the waters below he is able to locate the structural flaw triggered by the final, unsupportable sixty-three pounds that was the nine-year-old boy accompanying his mother to school. The final straw in mangled clothes. This is the pursuit of science: the mastery and manipulation of facts revealed to us through tragedy and misfortune. Yes, mastery and manipulation. It is all but carrion for the vultures of progress such as myself. And though the test of Parsons was hardly scientific, that evening's manipulation of words aboard the
Empress
stands as an example of the dedicated scientist's will to survive to see another day.

Though I have successfully approximated the words I spoke that evening, I must confess that at the time I hardly knew what I was saying. For a time Parsons's silence was equally confusing. He said not a word. He had me as good as naked before the crowd and simply smiled. In fact he politely applauded. Of course, it is not unusual that the words of a duplicitous man be honoured. We see it everywhere with our politicians, bishops and bankers. But Parsons turned the other cheek. Could he be as big as that? Was he, with that silence, demonstrating his superiority or intellectual indifference? To these words, a shallow invention of the moment, he turned his cheek.

There's nothing like deprivation to get you thinking about who you are and what you're made of. And when you do, it registers as something of a shock that there is no easy answer. What comes instead of answers is a deep morass of images, doubts and contradictions. They applauded my words! My strength of spirit and selflessness were heralded. Perhaps we all have such shameful episodes.

So it seemed my gamble had paid off. All donations received that day went into the CAC's coffers, with an additional amount in the form of the money I'd rescued. With his reduced responsibilities and total absence of funds, Charles Parsons was silenced. An alcoholic without his comfort is like a bear without claws—at least this one was. What I didn't know was whether he'd chosen silence or it had been chosen for him. During the four days we remained on board, he seemed unable to bear the confines of his own skin. I don't know if he suffered hallucinations, but his withdrawal was a terrible thing to watch. How I admired Miss Ewen then—and strangely envied Parsons. She visited his cabin often and, I imagine, provided him with the moral support of a kind and patient soul. Did they ever talk of me or the conspiracy I'd engineered? I couldn't say. But I'm certain she felt partly responsible for his condition, though of course she hadn't separated him from the treasury that had enabled his good humour and tacit dominance over me. He no longer attended meals but ate, if at all, alone in his cabin.

*

On the nineteenth day of our crossing, the edge of Asia came into view just as a storm appeared on the western horizon. Charles, leaning over the rail, vomited, having just a moment before attempted a bit of porridge at breakfast. It was his first visit to the café since my talk. When I looked up and saw land in a thin, incandescent shimmer of blue light between sea and sky, I said, with great relief, “There it is, Charles. Have you ever seen anything like it? And those storm clouds to whip up the sea in our wake like a dragon snapping at our heels!”

He turned his head up, watched for a moment and was sick again. I left him to his misery, returning to my cabin to prepare the portmanteau in which I carried my most personal possessions, including a number of paints, brushes and small canvases. I then made arrangements with the head porter regarding the field hospital, having determined the day before that this should be sent directly to the proper holding facility once we docked. I found Mrs. Qimei, shook her hand and told her to look for a little something under the third pillow she'd provided me with our first day out. Finally I sought out Miss Ewen to inquire if she could use a hand. Around noon I returned to the forward deck. The storm was behind us, closer still. Mile-high thunderheads cast a shadow over the ship, but we were outside its immediate influence, and Hong Kong was clearly visible ahead, sparkling in bright sunlight. It looked, from the bow, even from the distance of a hundred miles, perhaps, a busy and optimistic town. It was a sign of hope, a beacon pulling us in. We would beat the storm and complete the crossing without seasickness. As I stood admiring the view, the Captain approached.

“The case will stay open, naturally,” he said, after I inquired. “There are still procedures. Lines of inquiry.”

“Could this be a crime with no criminal? Is that possible?”

“We have beaten the weather by only a few hours,” he said. “Our man may think he's gotten away with something too, I suspect.” We shook. “Perhaps we will meet again,” he said.

“I should like that.”

Mid-afternoon, after walking about the ship to bid farewell to passengers, such as the journalist Ansell, with whom I'd shared a drink and conversation, we entered Victoria Harbour. We disembarked with great excitement, and after passing through Customs and collecting our things from the baggage master we entered a waiting throng. Gwendolyn and the girl were greeted by a young woman—Alicia's mother, no doubt—and I decided not to interrupt their happy reunion.

I was just then thinking that our adventure was now truly begun, when Parsons turned to me, quite recovered from his sickness that morning. In fact he was defiant.

“What is it?” I said.

He put his finger in my face. “Bethune, you're a son of a bitch.”

“Let's just get on with it, shall we?” I said. “We've got bigger fish to fry, don't you think?”

His face turned red. He looked as if he were about to explode. “You're a manipulative scheming son of a bitch. And you,” he said, turning to Jean, “you were part of this. But I'll give you some advice. He found you useful. No more than that. How much longer before he sticks a knife in your back? He's not here for the reasons he says. Ask him about Madrid. Go on, ask him.”

“Charles,” she said.

“Jesus Christ, woman!”

The poor girl simply shook her head, flummoxed.

He cursed, turned and pushed through the crowd. When I lost sight of him I said, “Should we follow him?”

“He has every right to detest us for what we've done,” she said.

The rest of that first day in Hong Kong she wouldn't speak to me. For a time that afternoon I believed I'd soon be on my own. Without a word, she cut through the crowd to begin arranging our transportation to the hotel. Rather foolishly, like an imp of a husband suffering the vile moods of a temperamental wife, I meekly soldiered on. But before long, I shook off this constricting fantasy by quickly running through the facts as they stood. If she didn't grasp the basic assumptions of war, sacrifice and adaptability, well, she would have to learn.

Our cabs were rickshaws piloted by coolies, whom we found among a large group of labourers gathered at the port's entrance. Our man loaded our luggage in the small compartment at the back of the contraption, helped Jean up and off we went. We rode in silence but for the quick breaths of the fellow ahead of us, his rapid pedalling and the general buzz of the city. It was a refreshing tour in that it provided much diversion. After the sombre blues and greys of the winter-bleak Pacific, we saw here a wild feast of smells and sounds and colours. Kabob and fruit vendors filled the air with their delicious offerings. Even now, I recall the joyful clatter of the busy streets, the racket the coolies made calling after one another in their flat nasal tongue, the local merchants rubbing elbows with the fashionably dressed Brits shuffling between appointments. It was a land where nationalities and races met, I saw immediately, and nothing like Europe. There was too much to absorb and too much at stake for the petty concerns of a young nurse to interfere. It was already passing as I watched this glorious city unfold before my eyes. I had made it. And if the topic of Madrid happened to surface between us, well, that would be dismissed as the raving of a detoxifying alcoholic.

We were delivered to the Ambassador Hotel, in the Wan Chai district of shops and restaurants, but found no communication waiting from our contact or any indication that he might make himself known. By now it was quite clear that Jean would spend the rest of the afternoon digesting the fact of Parsons's defection. I would use the time to ponder alternative plans. “What do you say we meet down here in the morning?”

She agreed without a word, just a nod, and left me. After unpacking in my room I sat and considered our circumstances. First, she was only sulking. Second, I must compose a note to our contact, which I left at the front desk in a sealed envelope. In it I indicated that we'd arrived and were eager to commence the next leg of our journey to the mainland.

I used the remainder of the afternoon to go over the final edit of my paper for
The Journal of Thoracic Medicine.
I typed out a clean copy and left it at the front desk to be posted. It was by now past six o'clock. I decided a brisk walk to stretch my legs was in order, then asked the concierge for the most recent English-language newspapers. He produced a three-day-old edition of the
South China Morning Post
and a
Manchester Guardian
dated January 8. I thanked the man, tucked the papers under my arm and set out to find a well-lit bar and catch up on what was happening in the world. The evening sky was clear and cold. It was dark now. I wandered through the neighbourhood for close to half an hour before dipping into a small pub named The Goose's Lantern. You might have thought you were in Soho or Piccadilly. I found a quiet corner, ordered a double brandy and flipped through the
Guardian
first. I wasn't merely surprised by what I found, I was overjoyed. After reading the article through twice, I tore it out and put it in my pocket.

MADRID

The rebel military commander at Teruel, Colonel Rey Dancourt, has surrendered with 1,500 men, it is claimed. The Colonel is reported to have said that only a small group of rebels, with whom he had been out of touch, remained in the Convent of Santa Clara. His surrender would seem to indicate that no more than a handful of rebels are now putting up resistance there.

Outside the city, however, the battle still continues with unabated fury. The rebels are daily massing new troops in order to recapture Teruel. These troops are being withdrawn from other fronts.

The Republican Command declares that the rebels today employed the famous Italian ‘Black Arrows' for the first time on this front.

Yesterday, which saw the fiercest fighting since the rebel counter-offensive began, they made repeated attacks from Concud, the village to the northwest. Preceded by intense artillery and aviation bombardments, these attacks were supported by tanks and armoured cars. The Republican infantry, it is claimed, not only maintained their positions but forced the attackers to retire with heavy losses.

In the Muela de Teruel sector the Republicans took the offensive and occupied several positions, which they held under fire, on the Villastar-Teruel road.

The rebel army is considered here a spent and weary force. During the last eight days it has suffered several setbacks and enormous casualties. It is felt that the rebels' determination to recover Teruel is dictated by the knowledge that its presence in the hands of the Government must completely upset plans for any offensive on other fronts.

It was a major victory, as you can see. Delighted, I ordered another drink. After savouring this news a moment longer I turned to the
Post
and found nothing about the war in Spain, only a small article about the situation in Nanking, where Ansell was heading to look for his good Nazi. This wasn't such a joyous bit of news. The story itself concerned not the fall of the city but an article published only a few days before in an Osaka newspaper.
The Mainichi Shinbun
reportage had been about morale-boosting among the troops, and two officers said to have engaged in a “killing competition” on December 24, tallying over a hundred Chinese civilians each; final score, it said, was 106 to 105. These murders had been sanctioned by Japanese command in order to provide inspiration for a patriotic song about their valiant warriors' shining swords of steel. Curiously, the
Post
presented this story without editorial comment, its blasé manner making an odd and terrible story even more disturbing. I'd seen men killed in Belgium, France and Spain. They'd always fallen on the battlefield. This type of systematic, barbaric slaughter had nothing to do with war. It was a new brand of Fascism, a nihilism even more absolute and hideous than what I'd witnessed in Spain.