Travels with Myself and Another Page 6

  On his best day, in a country he liked, with plenty to drink, U.C. wasn’t the man to sit still for such waffling speculation. I must have emerged from behind my fixed smile to ask the General about this odd attitude to the Japanese; otherwise I cannot account for my notes: “the General told atrocity stories.” If the General told us atrocity stories, he at least didn’t think the Japanese a big laugh. Mr Ma chipped in with a tale of eight village girls. “Since village girls are very particular about their virginity, they resisted furiously. But they were nuded and very seriously raped.” Dear Mr Ma, he could make anything shine with foolishness.

  And so the Representatives of Righteousness and Peace turned back for the return trip to the river. Mr Ho broke his silence on a cold three-hour ride in mist and rain. I wonder if my notes are translated literally from his alleged French or whether Mr Ma intervened. “Bad territory” (the field of politics). “The civils are taking up all the money from the poor people . . . I did not want to be military either. Look. I kill you. You kill me. At once. Necessary. That is very bad also . . . The world is stupid . . . Perhaps our God is angry.” Mr Ho was a Catholic. He earned 120 Chinese dollars a month, fake money anyhow, but a pair of shoes cost $200. He had a wife and eight children in Macao.

  I have no memory of what U.C. was doing. I rode with my head down like the horse, nodding wearily like the horse. We passed again the rice paddies and the awful straining work of the peasants. “Mr Ma,” I am sure I sounded half crazed. “What fun do people have in China?”

  “Chinese people are very serious. Just work. For pleasure only talk and eat.”

  War isn’t funny after all, not a time to dance in the streets. But there wasn’t any war here, there was an undeclared truce. I was sure this China had always been drowning in hopeless poverty and disease, war only made the normal state somewhat worse.

  We slumped in to Wongshek and the 189th Division, where solemn blue-clad soldiers stood in the rain and U.C. had to make a speech, gagging over the words. School children greeted us with pennants, cheers and a song. Then there was another speech to villagers. We inspected a training camp, a barracks, classrooms. The signs said: “Warm Welcome to American News Reporters.” U.C. was outraged: he didn’t care what they called me but he was not a News Reporter. “Welcome American Friends Directing our Defective Points.” “It is good for closer relations of China and America, honoured visitors coming to see our country.” No other news reporters or foreigners had ever been here, nor had any of the military brass from Chungking. U.C. and I agreed that this was due to their good sense. Unlike us, they must have known about travel conditions in China and also how this war worked. Chiang’s armies served as a defensive rearguard but were nowhere engaged in driving the Japanese out of China. Without air support, there wasn’t much they could do even if the Japanese had been Chiang’s major concern.

  U.C. said, “Cheer up, M. You saw the Chinese army, you can’t be blamed if there’s no action.”

  The Chinese army settled down to live permanently wherever stationed. The soldiers got no home leave; how could they get home to begin with? They built their barracks and schools, they trained, they stayed. They would stay as long as the Japanese stayed. Two years now in the same place for the men we’d seen. Illiterate peasant families could not write to their illiterate soldier sons, and we saw no system for transporting mail and couldn’t imagine one. Nobody bothered with this lost corner of the land. Perhaps U.C. pitied that neglect, and from kindness, in the daily grind of his speeches and toasts, tried to give these forgotten people a sense of importance. I just kept moaning “God help them all” but was hardly able to maintain a polite smile.

  The farewell luncheon was sensational. Generals and colonels clustered around a long table. Dish followed dish; when you lost count, the grandeur was out of sight. Chopsticks had a life of their own in my hands so I had to use a tin fork and spoon which I carried in my pocket. I was stuffing in the welcome food and failed to observe that the party had turned into a booze battle. U.C. alone against fourteen Chinese officers. One of them rose and made a toast to which U.C. replied; then he and U.C. drank bottoms up. The grisly yellow rice wine, Chinese vodka. While one toaster rested another rose, obliging U.C. to spout fancy words and again drink bottoms up. When all fourteen had finished the first round, they returned to the fray. U.C., breathing rather hard, looked like a man who is winning in a brawl against overwhelming odds.

  Slowly officers grew scarlet in the face and slid beneath the table; others went green-white and fell as if shot. U.C. was planted on his feet like Atlas. I mumbled that he would have a seizure, was it worth it, patriotism is not enough, remember Nurse Cavell. But he was gleaming with the pride of combat. No question now about the honour of the United States, his personal honour was at stake, he was ready to drink them down if he died in the process. General Wong became purple and his eyes watered and he had trouble focusing so that when he tottered upright he directed his toast to the wall rather than to U.C. Mr Ma was so drunk that he was unable to translate U.C.’s most beautiful toast to the Generalissimo’s glorious and heroic armies. Half the company lay under the table, most of the remainder rested their heads upon it. U.C. towered above us, swaying but triumphant. General Wong, in whose power lay reprieve, apologized for the disgrace of having no more rice wine to offer his honoured guests.

  U.C. walked with care. “I guess that showed ’em, eh M.?”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Like a man who is never going to make a speech or a toast again.”

  This orgy began at the peculiar lunch hour of ten-thirty in the morning. We were aboard the Chriscraft by one o’clock. We made a ceremonial departure, chugging a hundred yards upriver to anchor and wait for a soldier who had vanished in the village. It was raining. I don’t know why I harp on the rain; there was only one day without rain. The cabin of the Chriscraft seven days before (days like years) had seemed to me unfit for human habitation. It reeked from the toilet, the two short bunks were covered in cloth that was dark and greasy with age-old dirt. I sprinkled Keatings Powder on the bunks and we roosted there like homing pigeons. U.C. had a nap. By three o’clock the missing soldier was found and we moved out into the river. U.C. read.

  I shouted above the clanging of the Chriscraft motor, “The worst is over!”

  U.C. glanced at me and returned to his book.

  “Mr Ma says we’ll be at Shaokwan by noon tomorrow. More or less. Then we’ll catch the train to Kweilin. He says we can get anything we want to eat on the train and we’ll have a first class compartment to ourselves. It ought to be interesting, really, it’s the only train in the whole Republic of China. Don’t you think so?”

  U.C., reading, had begun to wag his head like a pendulum.

  “And the CNAC boys will pick us up in Kweilin and it’s nothing from there to Chungking. I figure we’ll be in Chungking by late afternoon, day after tomorrow.”

  U.C. went on reading and head-wagging.

  “And in Chungking it has to be all right. After all, Whatchumacallit is rich and he’s lived in the U.S. and Europe, he must have a good house. He gave me the impression of a man who liked his comforts.” I was talking about a Chinese potentate, perhaps Chiang’s ambassador in Washington, I’ve forgotten his exact position, who offered me his Chungking house because I had Connections. I accepted with thanks, knowing he thought my Connections would be useful to him, knowing myself that they wouldn’t. My Connections were the Roosevelts. I loved Mrs Roosevelt and since the President could charm the birds off the trees he could easily charm me. In those days, the White House had not become an imperial palace and was also definitely not a Nixon bazaar for buying and selling favours. Loaning his house to me was the Chinese potentate’s miscalculation.

  “Baths and sheets and real beds and dry clean clothes and no more mosquito nets. Dear God, I can hardly wait.”

  U.C. looked at me. “You go on hoping, M. They say hope is a natural human emotion. I’ll read.”


  The night was routine, no way to lie on the short bunks, cramps in the legs, cold: nothing special. By noon we were ready to disembark. By three o’clock we had reached the original embarkation point on the river bank but the road back to Shaokwan was impassable due to rain. It was impassable enough before, now it was flooded out. We got off the boat and strolled through the mud to a village where we bought firecrackers and wine in a stone jug. A runner was sent four kilometres to fetch more gasoline for the Chriscraft, because we had to proceed afloat to Shaokwan.

  We sat on the Chriscraft roof in a light drizzle and set off the anaemic firecrackers, not up to U.C.’s standards, and drank the wine. In the thermos cup, the wine was a menacing pink colour, thickish, slimy; it looked like hair oil and perhaps tasted like hair oil though I cannot say having never tried hair oil not even in China. All I hoped for was alcoholic warmth and numbing. We were still drinking at six o’clock when the runner returned. Holding the stone jug to pour, I heard something scrape inside.

  “What’s in here?” I said, shaking the jug.

  “It’s called spring wine,” U.C. said evasively. “It was all Mr Ma could get. Considered very high class, the Chinese drink it as an aphrodisiac.”

  “What’s in this jug?”

  “M., are you sure you want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, snakes. But dead. M., if you throw up, I swear I’ll hold it against you.”

  While we were in the depths of Kwantung Province, the Chriscraft pilot had improved his property; instead of the thin tow-rope, he now possessed a stout steel cable. At eight o’clock, in midstream in the black night, this cable wrapped around the propeller, all thirty feet of it. The Chinese talked between themselves very loudly and at length. The tiny boy looked miserable. No one wanted to dive into the river and try to file off the cable. U.C. had never uttered a word of complaint, like a Resistance hero who refuses to speak under torture. He simply sank into deeper silences. I complain more than I eat usually, but on this journey did not dare to, being the guilty party, and limited myself to groaning and sighing and calling upon God. The situation was so hopeless now that I too sank into silence, indifferent, numb from despair rather than from snake wine.

  We ate dinner on the sampan, rice and tea. We went back to the Chriscraft. As there were no lights we couldn’t read. We waited. At nine-thirty, we piled on to the sampan which was hitched to a paddle-wheel river steamer. The river steamer was a modern version of nineteenth-century steerage travel, the Chinese packed in like cattle. Mr Ma, Mr Ho, the mute Mr Tong, U.C., and I slept in the small rear section of the sampan on the floor. Forward, the rest of our unlucky world: the baby crying, the adults coughing, hawking, spitting, farting, belching through the long night.

  We must have become almost Chinese by then, capable of brute endurance. Except for one stationary hour when the steamer broke down, we were towed up the North River more slowly than walking while the steamer stopped everywhere to disgorge and engorge passengers. At ten o’clock on the second morning we climbed out of the sampan at Shaokwan. We had been on the river for forty-three hours.

  We thanked the boy soldiers and tipped them which created some happiness for a change. Our officers escorted us to the station where we asked them not to wait; we might be there for hours and were drained dry of compliments. I wanted to kiss Mr Ma, having come to see him as a fool of God, but knew he would be shocked so contented myself with shaking hands and smiling until my face hurt. At last we were alone in our first class compartment, leaning on the window ledge to observe the crowd. Farther up the platform a band of laughing, chatty, light-hearted lepers was waving goodbye to a travelling leper friend.

  I said, “I can’t bear it. I can’t bear another minute or another sight.”

  “So far,” U.C. said, quietly studying the genial group, “we’ve still got our noses.”

  The first class compartment was coated with cinders, the floor a mat of fruit peels and cigarette butts. In a rage I roamed the train until I found the porter, a blank embittered youth in khaki shorts and sandals. Writing to my mother: “I forced the train boy to make some pretence of cleaning our compartment. All cleaning in China is done with a damp rag. The rag is dark grey from dirt and smells so putrid that you have to leave wherever it’s being used. If anything was not already filthy and germ-laden, it would be after the passage of the rag. There was nothing to eat. We bought oranges and hardboiled eggs (both safe) at a station. The country suddenly became beautiful as did the weather. It was very hot in the train. The blue and brown mountains were good to see. Without enough food, no drink except boiled water, with dirty lumpy itchy plush seats, and cinders in our eyes, it was still the most comfortable day we have had. That trip lasted 25 hours and covered not quite 400 miles.”

  I had seen another Caucasian board the train at Shaokwan and made a bet with U.C.

  “Bet you twenty dollars Chinese he comes from St Louis.”

  “Why?”

  “I think it’s a law. When you get to the worst farthest places, the stranger has come from St Louis.”

  “Done.”

  I moved along the unsteady train until I saw the man, reading alone in his cindery compartment. I asked if he was American. Yes. Did he come from St Louis? He looked only slightly surprised and said Yes. I said thank you and left and collected twenty Chinese dollars.

  U.C. thought about that. Hours later he said, “Maybe it’s something you catch from the water. Maybe it’s not your fault.” Since I too come from St Louis.

  In Kweilin, U.C.’s superhuman resignation wore out, he lost his temper. He stamped around the room, kicking what little there was to kick, shouting, “The sons of bitches, the worthless shits, the motherfuckers, the bastards.” Twelfth Army HQ had some means of communication with Kweilin which in turn could signal Hongkong. U.C. had sent a message days before to Kweilin asking them to relay it to Hongkong: a request for CNAC to pick us up in Kweilin. The Kweilin people had not bothered to do anything.

  Kweilin was not on the scheduled CNAC route; it was only a stop to load or unload freight. In Hongkong we had arranged to be called for on a freight flight. The weather changed back to normal, solid rain blowing in a gale. Kweilin nestled among extraordinary mountains, sharp, pointed, pyramidal mountains, furred by trees, unlike any I have seen anywhere else, beautiful and romantic, when you could see them rising through cloud. They were no consolation and hazardous terrain for landing aircraft. We were well and truly stuck in the Palace Hotel, Kweilin.

  And stuck in the most severe squalor to date. Mashed bedbugs on the walls, bedbugs creeping over the board beds, peering from the wood floor. Bedbugs smell apart from their bite. Two bamboo chairs, a small table, a kerosene lamp, a bowl of dirty water without spittoon for emptying it. Down the corridor, a fine modern porcelain toilet in a cement cubicle but not geared to modern plumbing; the bowl overflowed across the floor. The sight was more appalling than the stench though the stench was superlative. I flung Keatings Powder everywhere until our room looked as if it had been hit by a powdered-mustard cyclone. We argued as to whether sleeping on the floor was safer than on the board beds.

  I cannot imagine how we passed those days, clinging to the remnants of sanity. U.C. did say once that if only he had a target pistol he could shoot the bedbugs; they were slow but small and therefore a sporting shot. I think he tried to make a slingshot but must have failed. He beat them down with a shoe. I wrote a long yowling letter to my mother. “China has cured me. I never want to travel again. The hardships (truly beyond belief) would be bearable but the boredom is not . . . Perhaps, before this war, when foreigners lived in luxury on little money in restricted European areas, they had a nice time. But that life as I saw it in Hongkong is as dull as any country club. The real life of the East is agony to watch and horror to share.” My mother knew me well; she had received my cries from the pit over the years; I daresay she read this letter with amusement and sympathy for U.C. who had to endure me as well as the glamoro
us Orient.

  At last the CNAC plane arrived, packed with cargo. The cargo was bales of handsome paper money, millions and millions of dollars, manufactured for the Republic of China in Britain and Hongkong. This money was worth the paper it was printed on. We sat on the bales, yelling with laughter at the pilot’s jokes. The joy to be back among our own kind. I am certain that the barrier between the races—white, black, brown, yellow—is not only due to colour prejudice and the dissimilarity of customs and values. It is largely due to boredom, the real killer in human relations. We do not laugh at the same jokes. We bore each other sick. Later, whenever I saw the Chinese laughing together I said, translate please, quick, quick, to get the joke. On hearing the translation, I hid behind a bewildered smile. What on earth were the chumps laughing at?

  From the riverbed airstrip to the city of Chungking on the high bluff above, you toiled up a precipice of steps. I don’t know how we reached the dreamed-of loaned house. The front door opened into the sitting room. U.C. took one look at that room and one whiff of the air and walked into the bedroom where he laughed so hard he had to lie down. I sat on a chair, turned to stone. The sitting room was furnished with fidgety little varnished tables and Grand Rapids grey plush armchairs and sofas, tricked out in crocheted doilies for head-rests. The doilies were black from greasy dirt, but some were hidden by the lustrous hair of three young Chinese thugs. The thugs lolled on chairs and sofas and did not trouble to rise or speak as we entered. They stared at us through lizard eyes. They wore sharp striped suiting and pointed shoes. They had evidently been using our quarters: beneath the cheap pink satin bedspread, the sheets and pillow cases bore the dark stains of their hair oil. In the bathroom, another fine imported porcelain toilet overflowed on the tile floor.

  U.C. had laughed himself to a standstill. He rose and straightened his clothes. “Well, I guess I’ll go out and see what the boys in the corner saloon are drinking. What’ll you do?”