You don’t know what love is
Until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues
Until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose.
You don’t know what love is.
Yes, I did look at it, again and again, when we were at sea. And I had the sudden desire to run to you and cry out something that I thought was forbidden: ‘I do, Yuki. I really love you.’ Yet that would have been a simple risk to take. It was not even profound. It was true and not true that I loved you from the moment we first met. I know that to be true because here and now, more than fifty years after, I still remember and the memory makes me shiver as if it had happened in the dead of winter instead of in the heat of summer.
I was thinking about all this as Paul Feng guided me through the streets. People nodded to him as if they knew him. They looked me up and down as if I were a piece of offal. I began to feel unhappy, and it showed on my face.
‘Don’t worry, Paul,’ he said in kindly fashion. ‘They are not used to seeing sailors in this part of the city. You are a strange sight to them. Sailors do not have a good reputation. Some of us look at sailors like you as the fist of American imperialism. But don’t forget, this is 1959 and China is in chaos. Please excuse our anger and our despair.’
‘In chaos?’ All I could see around me on the streets of Hong Kong was chaos, Yuki. Noise. Dirt. Rot. Decay. Masses of people foraging for what might help them survive.
‘You should know that the Great Leap Forward, which you have been reading about in China Reconstructs, has failed,’ he said. I couldn’t see his face. It was hidden by shadows. But I could hear the anguish of an idealism crushed. ‘Hundreds of thousands of people are dying in a very cruel famine caused by bad policy. Mainland China is only a few miles away. This crisis is happening all around you, right now. The Chinese government wants to arrest many thousands of young intellectuals, like myself, who were invited to put up posters that frankly aired our dissent. Yes. This really is happening now, at the end of what we Chinese call the “One Hundred Flowers Campaign”. The government encouraged us to speak up and be critical, and then it turned on us like a mad dog. People like me ran away to Hong Kong. This is not my home. But here I am safe. I hate it here. But it is safe.’
‘You mean you took a big risk and now you have to deal with the consequences?’ I asked. ‘You suffered and you learned something?’
‘Yes. Something like that. We are both young men. I believe that young men in every nation share the same fate, even if they do not share the same experiences. We are the most vulnerable. We are the first to know fear. We are the first to die.’ I think you also told me that, Yuki.
18
Friends and Enemies
To fall in love is easy. Even to remain in it is not difficult . . . our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be.
ANNA LOUISE STRONG, AMERICAN JOURNALIST AND FRIEND OF MODERN CHINA
There was a big round Formica table at the back of a restaurant that had unpainted concrete walls, a concrete floor, and a concrete ceiling. It reminded me of the inside of a giant sarcophagus. There were some modest pin-up posters with impossibly innocent Chinese girls clutching pink parasols and ripe peaches. Long industrial neon lights buzzed from above, attracting swarms of insects. The flickering fluorescence made the faces of everyone bent over big steaming bowls of noodles look as if they had been freshly exhumed from their graves. This kind of light exaggerated everyone’s expressions. Some of Paul Feng’s friends gathered around the table looked harshly aghast. Other faces were blank, as if they belonged to someone who had spent months in solitary confinement. Smiles became grimaces. Stares penetrated to the bone. There were eight of his fellow runaways. At least two of them gave me shy waves, and I headed towards those two after Paul Feng made a brief, earnest introduction.
I wondered, Yuki, if this was going to be the type of learning experience you recommended: an experience in which I would either succeed or fail. I sensed there would be no middle ground in a place like this.
‘This is the young sailor I told you about,’ Paul Feng announced in English. ‘Please welcome him. He reads China Reconstructs. I gave him a history of China and the story of Ah-Q. Let’s compare experiences and learn something. We are all human beings, after all.’
Not everyone was happy to see me. One man, with the extraordinarily long fingernails of the classic literati that curved and twisted backwards down to his palms, pushed his bowl forward. He sat back and spat his disgust on the floor. Three or four others were pelting Paul Feng with angry questions, and one man was shaking his fist at me in a gesture I had seen in news film clips that showed hundreds of Chinese, faces emanating an intensely personal rage, denouncing US imperialism.
Paul Feng stood there, quietly, nodding his head slowly as he acknowledged their outbursts. He turned to me with a friendly smile on his face and said, in English again, ‘This, my friends, is what we were told is the enemy. This young man in his white uniform who sits down with us so peacefully . . . This young man is the enemy. Or is it possible he is our friend?’
A homely young woman to my left, who wore round reading glasses and had a small stack of books on the table, leaned towards me and whispered.
‘I am Irene Chen and you are Mr Paul, and you and I are not enemies.’
I nodded. My face turned red. ‘Yes, Irene,’ I said. ‘We are not enemies. Our countries are enemies. Is it possible for you and me to be friends?’
‘I would like that,’ she said, in a very tiny voice. In that unlikely moment, a slow ballad sung by Frank Sinatra drifted out of the semi-darkness at the back of the restaurant where the kitchen was located. An emotion born out of a desire for impossible things gripped my heart and made me gulp. I imagined moving slowly across a dance floor with Irene Chen in my arms and then – in a flash – I recalled you, Yuki-chan, telling me that this was one of your favourite songs. And in that stillborn fantasy I was dancing with you, and you had your arms round my neck, and I bent down to kiss you.
But before that could happen, Miss Chen leaned over again and whispered in a breath made hot with chilli sauce, ‘I really love this song. It’s dreamy.’
When she said that, she was suddenly transformed from plain to beautiful. ‘Dreamy?’ I asked, not having much idea what it means to be a woman.
‘Perchance to dream,’ she said. ‘Shakespeare. Hamlet! “To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream.” Forbidden literature in China. Sinatra too, forbidden . . . So sad. No chance to dream.’
She and I watched the battle of words around the table. Someone in the kitchen put on the recording, Sinatra’s ‘All My Tomorrows’ (lyrics by Sammy Cahn), again.
Today I may not have a thing at all except for just a dream or two,
But I’ve got lots of plans for tomorrow, and all my tomorrows belong to you.
Right now it may not seem like spring at all, we’re drifting and the laughs are few.
But I’ve got rainbows planned for tomorrow, and all my tomorrows belong to you.
Irene Chen slid a book across the table to me. ‘Please read this,’ she said. ‘It was written by a great American journalist, Anna Louise Strong. She is a powerful advocate for my country. It is a book that will tell you about the success of the Chinese Revolution thanks to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. My father took part in our revolution. He was a writer who believed in the possibility of a new China. This book is called The Chinese Conquer China.’ She looked at me quizzically. ‘I think you understand. We took our country back from the imperialists: the Americans, the Japanese, the British, and all those other foreign countries that humiliated us for two hundred years. We seized our country. We defeated the corrupt dictatorship. It was a glorious moment. We were so proud of being Chinese. And then . . . then . . .’ Her voice diminished, and she looked away. ‘Now I am in this British colony and I have lost
all contact with my family. My mother. My father. My sisters. All gone, not knowing. And why? Because I dared to criticize in public a national education policy that I believed did not serve the people.’
Irene, like everyone else at the table, had fallen victim somewhere between 1956 and 1958 to the aftermath of a brief period of liberalization authorized by Chairman Mao. The Chinese leader had declared, ‘The policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science.’ But Mao reversed this brief period of free speech when unexpectedly strong critiques of Communist leadership and policy became commonplace. One million teachers and intellectuals were deported to the countryside to do forced manual labour, and many died of starvation and disease in the Cultural Revolution.
I picked up the small volume Irene Chen pushed towards me. ‘I would be happy to read The Chinese Conquer China,’ I said. ‘But my ship will leave soon and if I take it I can’t return it to you. I am sorry.’
‘Don’t worry about that. This is for you,’ she said loudly, so that the others at the table took notice. ‘Here . . . let me write inside . . . “To my dear American friend from the land of Shangri-La” . . . There! Look everyone! Look at this! I am celebrating a friendship.’ I thought that you would approve of that moment, Yukiko, although you and I had gone beyond friendship into another realm unfamiliar to both of us.
The Chinese Conquer China had been published in December 1949, two months after Mao Tse-tung proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of China from a balcony in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to a joyous multitude. Irene Chen would have been about fifteen at that time. What am I going to do with this book, I wondered? If I bring it back to the Shangri-La I am probably going to be arrested. I knew it would get me into trouble. The chaplain would say the book was forbidden. I looked around the table at the mix of fear, rage, and wonder. How is it possible, I asked myself, for two countries to be such ferocious foes at the same time Irene Chen was doing her best to make me feel welcome? Why had the dreams of millions of Chinese who had welcomed the revolution in 1949 been dishonoured? Why do great notions crumble so easily? Why were the majority of Irene’s companions still criticizing Paul Feng for bringing me to their table? What was it about Paul Feng that caused him to dare to make a friend out of this young foreigner in an American uniform? And why was someone playing that Frank Sinatra recording over and over again?
Paul Feng and Irene Chen escorted me back to the dock where sampans ferried sailors back to their ships. I had never been given a chance to say anything.
‘I am sorry,’ Paul said. ‘It appears that some people – even good people like my friends – need enemies to make sense of their misery.’
‘Yes,’ Irene said. ‘Please do not be discouraged. We will not forget you. Make good use of your youth and get a good education. Remember who gave you that book and make sure you read it, please.’ She gave me a shy smile and shook my hand. She had a very strong grip.
Paul Feng did not speak. He looked as if he was still struggling with the idea that friendship has its limits, even if the offer of friendship is reciprocated. But he had courage, I thought. I envied him and his friends. I was experiencing the world from the comfort of a warship, where everything was planned and predictable. Paul and Irene could become dust, just like that, their lives snuffed out, and even if they lived they had no future.
I scrambled up the steel gangway to the deck of the Shangri-La, half expecting to encounter Oscar and Gunther there, or even Chaplain Peeples, prayer book in hand, full of loaded questions. Drunk and half-drunk sailors were stumbling or helping each other into the hatches leading to their bunks deep inside the ship, where the steel soaked up the heat from the tropical night. The heat was so intense it defeated the ship’s rudimentary air-conditioning system and obliged swabbies, and maybe even officers too, to slumber in their skivvies and wake up feeling like slugs, soaked in the slime of their own sweat.
Waiting for me was a short note from you, Yukiko. I slipped into the hatch and descended to the compartment and to my bunk bed. I stretched out on the thinly padded cotton mattress laid on top of tightly stretched canvas. I slowly and carefully peeled open the envelope’s flap. Inside were two sheets of paper, covered in handwriting and holding just a hint of your perfume.
A STARRY NIGHT
Dear Paul,
Soon you will be leaving me. I will save my words and my thoughts until I see you again, hoping for such a special and beautiful happy goodbye. It will be enough for me if you hold my hand and sit side by side with me at the Mozart Café. I am going to ask Ito-san to play Debussy’s so wonderful Nocturnes . . . his Nuages, his Fetes, his Sirenes . . . and also his La Mer – especially his Dialogue du vent et de la mer – because it is all about the deep ocean blue. You are a man of the ocean. You came to me from across the sea. And now you come back to me like seamen do, for just a few days.
Those days are your little gifts to me. In those days you may see me weeping. You may see me laughing. You may see a certain girl, a so ugly woman, look at you in a special way that you will never forget. No one will ever look at you like that again. When I look at you I want to have that memory of you in my mind forever. You will not forget how I studied your brown eyes, your thin lips, your poet’s nose, and most importantly your smile when you know that I am watching you.
Yes, we can listen to Debussy. There will be no need to say anything. We will share the silence while the music plays. There is a women’s chorus in Sirenes. There are no words. It is just soaring voices . . . those Sirens who made mariners afraid. As a Japanese woman, I believe those Sirens were just lonely, not bad, not dangerous. They were like a certain so sorry girl in Yokosuka who has been WAITING, WAITING, that’s all.
Oh Paul-san, I so want to be able to sleep, remembering the way you looked in our last moments. I want to remember the morning your ship vanished over the horizon that God drew across the ocean so that a woman could say, “There he goes. I see him. I still see him. Oh no! Oh no! Now my love has gone.” I want to remember how the sky looked, and the fog of the morning too, and the breeze stirring the flowers on the Paulownia so that the blue petals are falling.
Please do not be angry at me for this little note I send you. I can’t help it. I have to write it. Maybe one day if you read this again you will have tears in your eyes. Those tears are my little gift to you. And let me tell you, sailor boy, if you have that emotion when you are an old man you will still know what love is.
Yesterday I was reading a very old scroll of poetry with Chinese characters drawn in ink by someone expert with the brush. I think a woman wrote those kanji because when I look closely I see that something, maybe rain drops, maybe tears, is still visible on the rice paper. This is from a collection of waka poems, written by Ariwara no Narihira in the Ninth Century.
This is not the moon,
Nor is it the spring
Of other springs.
But I alone
Am still the same.
Love,
Yukiko
P.S. I had big trouble again. But now my problem is gone. I have room in my heart now so that I can say goodbye.
P.P.S. You remember that I like Franz Kafka? This is from my notebook. Please remember that Kafka wrote, “Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence. And though admittedly such a thing never happened, it is still conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence certainly never.” Yes, when we listen to Debussy, please remember that when we share the silence.
I put the letter back in the envelope and wondered. I laid the envelope on my chest.
After a couple of minutes I realized I had placed it on my heart. I could see the envelope moving slightly with each heartbeat and with each breath. I felt as if I was drifting, effortlessly, in the night breeze for destinations unknown.
I have lived a long time
now, but I have never had that feeling again.
19
Waiting Woman
Life in Japan may be compared to a scented bath which gives you electric shocks at unexpected moments. That metaphor is as good as any. The first phase of sensuous and sensual delight is the tourist’s inevitable reaction to a culture with a surface polish of utterly refined pretty-prettiness, smiling ceremonial, kneeling waitresses, paper-screen houses, dolls, kimonos, and above all, an atmosphere with an erotic flicker like the crisp sparks of a comb drawn through a woman’s hair – a guilt-free eroticism which Europe has not known since antiquity.
ARTHUR KOESTLER, FROM ‘THE LOTUS AND THE ROBOT’, WRITTEN AFTER HE VISITED JAPAN IN 1959
The next morning I wanted to tell someone about my adventures ashore, which were now pursuing each other inside my head in a spitting and hissing blur. It was an exhilarating feeling. It was as if I had an excess of youth. The urge to pile one experience on top of the other and make sense of it all was too strong to resist now that I had completed my final liberty in Hong Kong. I had duty aboard the ship for the next two days as an on-call member of a firefighting team that had never aimed a high-pressure hose and would not know what to do if flaming gasoline poured into the hatches and corridors leading to our berths. My job was to man a simple hand-held chemical fire extinguisher. The sorties into a series of port cities where my senses were overloaded had made me forget fire-drill procedures long ago. In two days we would be challenging our enemies in China again by cruising up and down and round and round just outside Chinese territorial waters, while on the mainland legions of workers, hoes over their shoulders, marched off to conquer the countryside and die in the many, many thousands.
Please Enjoy Your Happiness Page 19