The Communist's Daughter (28 page)

I tended to his wounds and sat with him in silence. When he was able to walk I delivered him to the hospital, then rode the train back to the Adirondacks and strode firmly, as morning broke across the hills, into my second life.

*

I hope Ho will do me the kindness of never writing a poem about me. He would find only confusion and contradiction. He might even imagine horns sprouting out of my head. I would tell him as much, if I could. But if he chose to look, to really look, what would he discover in a man like me? Ho is an observant fellow, after all, and just might, one day, take after the Chinese poet whose work he has committed to memory. His eyes hang a moment longer than they would otherwise, collecting a last glimpse, a delicate wrinkle. Isn't this the modus operandi of the poet? He is one for details unobserved by others. He notices habits, tics, hidden joys and fears. Who knows? When I am here, watching, he is so deferential as to be almost invisible. He glances at a certain cherished likeness set here, to my right, angled just so to catch the light. It has not moved in weeks, despite the fact that he often takes it up in his hand and looks for my likeness in the soft features. It is a painting. But no, the portrait isn't what it seems, I want to tell him. Despite the likeness. It is not who I would like it to be. Despite the thrill of possibility, despite this deepest wish.

Ho has learned the peculiarities of a stranger. No doubt he thinks this need for pure undeniable order is common to all foreigners, strange incomprehensible devils that we are. But he cannot always be right, perceptive though he is. He will tell his friends that I devote all my writing efforts to medical and administrative matters, offering this as another example of my commitment to this cause. He would not be far off in thinking that. I have devoted a great deal of time of late to the last of my three textbooks, as well as the ongoing struggle to keep up with the monthly medical reports I'm responsible for. The light in my window signals the sleeplessness of a devoted man. But he knows nothing of this secret text, yours and mine. Here you have the re-imagining of a life in all its crepuscular beauty. Perhaps he would, if he knew, revere the efforts of this exploration. But despite his poet's soul these words would make as much sense to him as a Shakespearean sonnet or a Catholic mass. You see, I have been here long enough that he cannot imagine me having a past anywhere else. And can I blame him? As far as he's concerned I have stepped out from the clouds. I'm only as good as his best poem, perfectly internalized and subjective. Not entirely real, in any case, and conjured from the mists. Any life outside these mountainous walls, though richly imagined, can be no more real than the promise of Belgian chocolate or American tobacco.

I see him out in the night, a small dark figure set against the towering rock of the Jui Li San Mountain and hear him talking with the other boys as they smoke their local tobacco. The rancid plumes disappear in a laugh. Quiet talk of the war, girls, food, the things boys like to talk about—but certainly also about the man at the edge of the village hunched obsessively over his trusty Remington. The mad white doctor, they might say, the bloody terror, the saviour, the half-deaf surgeon who fell from the sky. The man who in a rage yells and throws dull scalpels at terrified nurses. What must they think of me? What sort of poem do you shape in the image of a stick of a man who moves like a machine between patients without rest for three and four days at a time? In the absence of sleep I dunk my head in buckets of freezing water. My raging is easily enough explained away. It might even be understandable. In any case, they do not judge, and bless them for that.

*

Another clear evening. I have been studying the moon from my window. Do you know the Shelley poem?

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth.

It is my honour to share Shelley's moon with you tonight.

*

Last night Ho came to strip off the ribbon as he usually does. I lay still, too anxious and distracted to sleep. He worked silently, first rewinding, then releasing the small wheel from its housing. His hunched silhouette at my desk, a young, slight Bethune, I thought. He rose, then slipped out the door.

*

Man's absurdity survives like diamonds in this peasant land, and we are reminded of this with depressing regularity. I recall not too long ago we were lacking blood of a certain type, namely B positive. There was nothing unusual in this, since blood supply is as constantly uncertain as the air is thin up here. Countless times I have used my own veins to demonstrate the donor procedure to these peasants, but an infuriating mystery and fear still surrounds this basic operation. One afternoon, a dying man was admitted to my care. We checked all the patients' charts and found that we had a compatible donor only a few beds down. I called on him and, through an interpreter, informed him of the situation. Perhaps the expression on my face registered my disbelief and disgust when he refused. He shook his head from side to side like a child standing at the edge of a lake, afraid to take his first swimming lesson. He put his hands over his eyes.

I said, “Tell him he is a brave man.”

My interpreter did so.

I said, “Tell him he kills the Fascists to save his comrades-in-arms.”

My interpreter did so.

I said, “Tell him it is strange that he is willing to die for his brothers, yet refuses to give them his blood.”

My interpreter did so.

I said, “Tell him this is a feather tickling your arm compared to a bullet.”

My interpreter did so.

I offered to demonstrate the procedure myself. The man shook his head in terror. I held the cannula for him to see. I said, “This is not a bullet. This is a pinprick.”

He pushed my hand away.

He smelled of the mountains he'd spent the last two years fighting in. Even after several days with us he carried the scent of the soil and horses and the ragged clothes he'd worn for months and of the men he'd killed and seen killed. These smells had soaked into his skin. He was fearful not of the small prick in his arm but of the modern wonder of science. It didn't involve pain or sacrifice or death, only the elementary truths of his world. I might have remembered that, but I didn't care to.

I ordered him restrained, and he whimpered as the cannula entered his arm. I both hated and pitied him. After his blood was introduced to the patient, I stood in the cool sunlight and watched the distant peaks shining in the north, at the edge of Mongolia.

Tonight the lilies in their clay pot outside this window look as though they've turned to charcoal. It is as if my staring at them all week has bled the lustre from their stems and leaves. The failed light has robbed them of their colours. Maybe I likewise have been robbed of my own certainty.

But isn't that the point? A certain man is a lazy man. Here I am, committed as never before, yet robed in doubt. If only my father had known the feeling.

I never looked at that man again. It shames me to say I passed in front of his bed half a dozen times afterwards and didn't once even glance at him.

*

Another month gone. We are with the Third Regiment Sanitary Service at Shin Pei, West Hopei. A warm glorious spring rain spilled over the countryside this afternoon. Now I see moonlight sparkling in the puddles outside my window. The moon insists that we take note, all of us, even those too timid to look up.

I left Madrid in
springtime, gathered my few things together and retreated. I told my associates my work was done, that I was needed elsewhere. They pretended to be sorry. Was there not enough work here? What could be so urgent as to force me to abandon Madrid?

The documentary was finished, I explained, and I would take it to America to raise money for the Republic. I would report stories of our progress here to the outside world. Your mother understood. I told her the night I finished her portrait.

“Go,” she said. “I'll be all right.”

Months later I was sitting at a table at the Bentley Park Hotel in New York struggling with that feeling of unease I was telling you about. The feeling I described to you of thinking Pitcairn was hiding something from me. Do you remember me telling you that?

It was not him hiding the truth. Months ago, when I recalled that conversation for you, I was not strong enough to relive it truthfully. Now, perhaps, I am.

“You're a slippery fish tonight,” I said.

“Nerves, I suppose.”

“Let's have a drink, then,” I said, summoning the waitress.

I remember thinking that he was trying to rediscover the camaraderie we'd shared in Madrid not that long ago, eight or nine months. Certainly not long enough to explain his discomfort. Men generally are changed by too much living, I thought, too much adventure, too much ducking into bomb shelters. I saw it in myself. Perhaps this was why he'd come to America.

Hoping to put him at ease, I said, “Isn't it true that when you're out there, all you want is to come home? You're sitting in some dingy cellar wondering why the hell you're there, wishing it all away. Then, poof—you're suddenly home and safe in your comfortable bed and you still can't help thinking: why am I here?” I said, “People like us, Frank, with the
choice
to come or go, we're the difficult ones, aren't we.”

He didn't say anything.

“War's a bloody beautiful sport,” I said, “until you see what it's done to you. Sometimes I think it's a lot safer not to leave it at all.”

He said, “I'm not even sure you know about it.”

“What would you have me know that I don't know already?” Of course, I took this as a knock against me. I looked him in the eye, ready for a more serious challenge.

I realized then that he wanted to talk about your mother.

Was he going to tell me that she'd gone back to Sweden, or come to America in search of her father's legacy? Or was he going to tell me she was up in Chicago retracing his footsteps, that she'd simply quit the war and wasn't the person I'd thought her to be?

The drinks came, and he took a long swallow.

“Well, why the face?” I said. “You look like you're going to be sick on me.”

“They took her in a second time, right after you left. I don't know if you heard that. Madrid was full of cutthroats and informers. You know how it was. Calebras was a f——ing jingoistic fraud. You know as well as I do.”

“Yes.”

“Kajsa was convinced he'd teamed up with Sorensen and Sise. They wanted to humiliate you. They each had their own reasons. But that didn't matter. Calebras wanted the mobile unit under his name. They wanted the glory to go to the Spanish. The others just wanted to get you out. They thought you were cracking up. Sise thought you had a death wish. He always said you were a reckless son of a bitch. Sorensen didn't like your grandstanding, your chasing after reporters all the time. He said your claim that it was all for the good of the unit was horses——t. Your fundraising, too. It was all about your vanity, he said. You were more important than the wounded, the cause, the war.”

He shook his head. “I met with Kajsa once a couple of months after you left. She said it was Sorensen who'd alerted the authorities about all the foreigners coming around to the clinic. And the maps, the photographs. If he believed it, I don't know. But it worked. He got their attention. You saw how they swooped down. That was the first real strike against you.”

“They drummed me out.” I said. “You think I don't know that? I'm glad I had the film to fall on. Better than a sword.”

“The next step was to bring her into it. She was the perfect humiliation. She worked with the Mujeres Libres, a branch of the anarchist FAI. The anarchists scared the s——t out of the Popular Front alliance. You know how it went in Madrid. If they wanted to take you out of the picture, discredit you completely, the easiest way was to set Kajsa up as an anarchist, even a spy.”

“That's absurd,” I said.

“I know it is.”

“Where is she now?”

“After you left she told me she was worried about getting taken in again. She said you were the only person who could protect her. I told her it was dangerous even talking. I'd never seen her like that. ‘Just get out,' I said. ‘Get up to France.'”

He picked up his glass and swished the liquid, but didn't drink.

“Where is she now?” I said.

*

I was greeted by three men at the entrance to the clinic the morning after meeting your mother at the Retiro Park. I recognized one of them from that encounter my first morning in Madrid the previous November, when I was detained on account of my suit and moustache. I couldn't tell if he recognized me. It was just luck, and bad luck at that, for our paths to cross again. He and his two colleagues were accompanied by four armed guards, two down below in the street, the other two standing beside the lift on the third floor. My assistant, who hurried to the door when I appeared, was told firmly to return to her business. We by then had a staff of no less than twenty-five, and in full view I was led into my office. The door was closed behind us. The leader, whom I'd never seen before, motioned to a man carrying a briefcase to flip it open, and he produced the bottle of perfume and the card I'd given Kajsa the day before. In English he said, “Please sit down.” He paused, as if considering something from a number of different angles. “Yes, you see, this is interesting. Here I see you have written some words about love. You are a man of many talents, Doctor.” He held up the card. “These are your words?”

“What is this?” I asked.

“What is this? You will tell me now.” His English was clear but heavily accented. “I can ask the same. What am I looking at?”

“Perfume,” I said. “A gift. A token.”

“And this?” he said, holding up a series of photographs.

“Where did you get them?”

“Of course you know where,” he said.

“Pictures. Bridges and roads.”

“And tank columns. A doctor interested in tanks?”

“That photograph is incidental.”

“And to whom do you pass these photographs? Only the Swede?”

“They are for our purposes. They are for study. To minimize travel time.”

“Whose travel time?”

“The travel time of this unit.”

“We know this work you do, Doctor. The Spanish people thank you. Yes. But it is something else to distribute these photographs, considering this company the Doctor keeps.” He lifted his eyebrows. “What can we think of this situation?”

He pointed at the perfume and card, which he'd set on the desk. “It's a wonderful thing to be loved. To have a woman. But we do things for women, too often stupid things. We cheat for them, we lie for them, we commit criminal, illegal acts for them. We betray our friends for them. For what? Only to be with the Swede? Two times more. Ten times more.” He repeated this in Spanish for the benefit of his colleagues, and I recognized a vulgar word. “When you have so many nice Spanish girls to go with, you go with the Swede, and then you talk to her about bridges and tanks?”

*

The village is quiet. Nighttime in Shin Pei.

They are shooting dogs up in the high villages and eating them with what little rice and millet the peasants left behind, spilled from pockets and hastily packed bags. At least the enemy is starving too, that is our one consolation. When it is known they are near, the last of the peasants move off into the night toward the next village, some fifteen or twenty miles away. Then, when that village falls a day later, those who looked upon the fleeing souls with pity now scoop up what can be carried and join the exodus, and so grows the wave of refugees washing down from the mountain villages of north China. Soon Wu-t'ai and all of Shensi and Hopei provinces will be empty but for the partisans and remaining dogs and the invading Japanese. The lucky peasants will find the Peiping-Hankou rail line, eighty miles to the east, and travel down along it to wait out the war in the south, in Sian and Louyang.

To the west and east it is no different. It is rumoured that the southern corridor that connects us to the rest of China will close by late summer. The war is all around us. It is a noose. But here, in the quiet of this mud-brick house, I am in an untouched oasis. When I'm not leaning over a casualty in one of our makeshift surgical huts, I can close my eyes and wonder what the air would taste like if unspoiled by the smell of suppurative wounds and camphor and cordite. What would this world be like if I were with you back in Spain or Montreal, or wherever they took you?

*

First, imagine a mountain stream at first light, carrying with it one living man and one dead. The living man is your father; the other, his guide. I hear the stream that we rode down the mountain on only four days ago. Its splashing still echoes in my head. I hear it through the night, in the still air. How impossible the war seems on nights like these. It is as quiet as a conversation with the dead.

We'd been waiting for our guide at an assigned meeting point for less than an hour when he stepped out of the dark like some ragged phantom, a thin wisp of a boy, very near starving. He didn't look relieved to see us, only troubled. We welcomed him and gave him tea and rice. The medical unit consisted of Ho, Mr. Tung, two student surgeons and two armed escorts. We watched the boy eat and drink and waited for the night to deepen. Clouds crossed over a bright moon. It was prudent to travel in this part of the country only after dark. The boy was troubled because he knew well enough that it was much more difficult to lead a troop of seven up into the mountains than it was to come down alone from there. He finished his meal, and when he sat back, one of the student surgeons offered him some tobacco and he rolled a cigarette in his thin fingers and smoked it until the ember died. We waited another twenty minutes until the darkness was almost complete. The boy spoke to Mr. Tung, who then asked me if I was ready, and we set out in single file, the guide and an armed escort first, then me, then Ho and Mr. Tung, then the two student surgeons, each member of my team leading an animal, and finally the second escort. Up we started into the Wu-t'ai Mountains.

We walked at a steady pace for two hours without stopping to rest, pausing only when the boy slipped into the darkness ahead to make certain that the area was clear for us. Ten minutes later he would reappear and indicate the way and off again we would walk, a silent column of men and beasts moving into the deepening darkness of the mountains. The night was warm. There was very little breeze and the air was comfortable and smelled of sage and wild mint. The boy held us up with only a single word to Tung, who would look at me, and the rest of the column would halt as the boy slipped out again and left us waiting there. This occurred seven times. On the eighth, the boy did not return. It was past midnight.

“Mr. Tung?” I whispered.

“I don't know.” he said.

“Ten more minutes. Then you will lead the others back to where we started. I'll wait here for the boy.”

After half an hour I told Tung to go, instructing him to remain at the camp below until daylight and then return to Chin-kang K'u.

“And you?” he said.

“I will find you in the morning.”

I watched their faces as Tung translated my orders. Ho would not show his face to me, as he expected I'd think less of him if I saw terror or tears or both in his eyes. I handed him the reins to my animal and he walked the horse back down the trail.

After they left I sat quietly in the dark and watched the moon move through the high clouds. When they parted there was light enough to see by. The guide would know where to find me if he was still alive and he hadn't abandoned us. It was now past two o'clock. I believed I was the last man fighting this war. The last man in China. So immense was the quiet and solitude that I might as well have been the last man on earth. The enormity of the sky felt larger than the vastness of all oceans and all memory. The stars were infinite, and below them the silence was suddenly broken by a sound that might have been the boy returning from his reconnaissance. I didn't move, just sat looking up into the infinite sky and listened and waited for a sign. I waited ten minutes. My heart raced. The sound did not come again. I waited another half hour and the boy did not appear.

I dozed off and it was nearly morning when I awoke. I stood up and moved about. It felt good to stretch my legs. With my pack I moved slowly outward in the direction the boy had gone. I heard another sound. This time it was closer, and it wasn't the sound of a footfall or a dull thud but the human sound of a sob or groan. I moved toward it, despite telling myself this was a baited trap, remembering the night I'd carried Robert Pearce on my back. But as I moved forward now the sound came again with more clarity, and I stopped in order to place it. I walked another fifty yards into the darkness, low to the ground, and there I found it. I practically stepped on it.

This boy was no older than our guide. His Japanese uniform was in rags. He was sitting up against a rock, his right hand pressed against his neck, eyes bulging with pain and dehydration. The stab wound was just above the collarbone. Blood dripped onto his chest and pooled in his lap. He watched me approach without making a sound. He was unarmed. Then I saw the body of our guide, lying not far from the soldier. The bayonet had pierced his chest, and it seemed incredible that he'd been able to turn and slash the man who'd stabbed him before he died. The rifle and bayonet lay on the ground beside him. I positioned the boy face up, crossed his hands over his chest and rolled his eyes shut, then returned to the Japanese and examined the wound. He did not resist as I pulled open his shirt.