The Lady and the Panda

by Vicki Croke

  The uncertainty would come to a shattering end on one of the last nights in June. That evening there was a mild, misting rain coming down as Harkness left for a dinner party. The affair was pleasant enough, though a fierce storm had begun to kick up as everyone sat socializing. By the time Harkness headed back home, the rain was falling in stinging sheets, which ricocheted up from the dark streets. Here at the outskirts of the great Sichuan plain, thunder cracked, and the black skies were split by a chain of lightning strikes. Despite the tempest, the streets of Chengdu were still crowded with people, and a soaking-wet Harkness pressed her way through them to the gates of Cavaliere's old place. Entering, Harkness felt a chill. In the flashes of searing light, the pavilions and grounds seemed positively ghostly. The thrashing palm trees and bamboos played tricks on the eyes, and darkness obliterated familiar scenes in the garden. “There seemed to be something evil about it,” Harkness wrote.

  She was caught up short then by the frightening vision of a drenched and distraught Quentin Young emerging from the shadows, revolver in hand.

  By the thin beam of flashlight and a flickering candle, Young quickly laid out the nightmare that was unfolding. The big male panda was going berserk, making splinters of both cages that had been built to hold him, lunging and lashing at anything within his reach. Possessing a powerful bite and raking claws that could kill a man, the dangerous animal and the innocent people on the streets outside were separated by nothing but one thin rope and the stone walls, which could easily be scaled. Within minutes, he would be loose. Young insisted on a horrifying solution—the panda had to be shot.

  The torrential rain drowned their candle flame, and by the weak light of the remaining flashlight, they approached the panicked animal. “We made no sacrifice to the gods of the mountains for this panda,” Young said to Harkness, with some bitterness. He raised the pistol.

  The sound of the three shots was lost in the ear-splitting crashes of thunder. In the quick flares of lightning, a young black-and-white bear lay crumpled, his blood seeping into the wet earth. Harkness stood sobbing in the pouring rain.

  If there really were ghosts, an echo of the great crying voice of Caruso must have rung out this night from the sorrowful garden. Such a broken world. “You must not feel too badly,” Young said to her as the rain continued to pummel them. “In this life all these things are fixed.”

  “I shall never forget the look on Quentin's face as he did it,” Harkness wrote home. “As we did it,” she corrected herself. It would be the last, terrible thing they would share. Claiming illness, Quentin Young abruptly left for Hong Kong.

  They would never be together again.

  HARKNESS'S FAVORITE PSYCHIC in New York City, consulted just before her departure, had warned that things would not unfold as expected. Her chances of success on this trip, the clairvoyant warned, were only “60–40.” She also foretold that the answer to the question on this trip would be a question.

  And here it was. If the American explorer solved all the logistical puzzles about how to get a panda out of a war-ravaged country, she would still be left asking this: What was it all for?

  Just days earlier, The Washington Post had written of her exploits, crediting her with “making the world panda conscious.” If that was what it was for—so that people could learn about these incredible animals and care about protecting them—then it was all worthwhile. But it seemed to Harkness that it was becoming a profane circus without concern for the welfare of the animals. She saw pandas pulled from every corner of Wassu-land. And while the Bronx was exultant over its inexpensive panda, it and other zoos were just helping to cheapen the lives of these animals. Pandas were dying in untold numbers—during zealous hunts up-country, in inhumane cages in Chengdu, and even in caring surroundings like that of the Brookfield Zoo.

  Harkness's intent was to bring mated pairs of pandas over to increase their numbers, to ensure their futures. But from what she could see, all the swashbuckling, including her own, was having the opposite effect. The disenchantment wasn't new—she had already begun mulling this over on her last trip—but now there was clarity. Dispirited, she wrote, “Somehow, I think this sort of thing is over for me.”

  There wasn't much she could do to save the world from itself, but she could right her own path.

  While watching over the independent-minded Su-Sen as the animal conquered every tree and hazard in the estate, Harkness recognized a kindred spirit—a tough little wild thing, willing to stand up to anyone but hemmed in by walls and restrictions she didn't understand. The comparison was easy. “She too gets herself in the damndest situations,” Harkness wrote. “She is utterly fearless—nonchalant and doesn't give a damn about anything.”

  The animal, she knew, would never be happy in captivity.

  Word came to Chengdu just then that the Chinese government was clamping down on panda exports, requiring stringent permissions from the Ministry of Education.

  Harkness was not worried. In fact, she felt relieved. First, she hoped that it meant the government was becoming serious about protecting pandas. But more than that, the change was to her a lodestar. A bright, buzzing neon sign that lighted the way toward a direction she had already decided to aim for. This trip wasn't about a reckoning, after all. It was about redemption.

  With deep conviction, Harkness saw that the liberty of this wild animal outweighed any of the morally bankrupt reasons to haul her away. More headlines? Another best-dressed list? That wasn't glory. “Publicity,” Harkness would write, “if people only realized what a very empty thing that is.”

  She was experiencing an epiphany as strong as the one that had led her to bring a baby bottle on her first trip. She had one big campaign left in her. She would go back to the magnificent Qionglai Shan, back to the mountains of the immortals, and return Su-Sen. If people had thought her mad for attempting her very first expedition, this time they would be certain of it.

  Harkness was making one of the most important journeys of her life. She was on her own, doing something that brought no prestige, and— scratched, bitten, and hissed at—not even gratitude from the recipient.

  With bundles of incense and candles and paper money to match the size of her desire, Harkness lighted a bonfire to the mountain gods. Basking in the lighted glow of the flames, breathing in the pungent smoke, she prayed for Su-Sen's protection.

  On the Fourth of July, in preparation for the upcoming journey, Harkness sent Wang out to cash her traveler's checks. There were torrential downpours again that day, and the American sat inside the summer pavilion watching Su-Sen, who refused to leave her high perch in one of the trees. Hours went by. The continuous bursts of fireworks exploding at the neighboring residence kept Harkness on edge.

  Finally, “Wang came wandering thru the dripping bamboo toward dark,” Harkness wrote, “very drunk.” He had spent the day right next door enjoying the fireworks, which were not to celebrate American independence, but to drive away the evil spirits that had infested a local woman. With the liquor, the cook had become tearfully sentimental. He had returned as always, making it clear they would reach the mountains together after all.

  There was little to scrape together in the way of gear. About all that was left of the old supplies in Chengdu was “one lonely tin” of cornedbeef hash.

  Within days, Harkness and Wang set off with their hired porters. Since they were in the thick of the wet season, they should have faced long days of pouring rain and splashing mud. But they had good fortune with the weather, enjoying a few stretches of warm sunshine, followed by cool, dry nights.

  The long, flat road out of Chengdu, the gates of Guanxian, the little towns and villages, were all so familiar. Harkness knew the way, knew how to keep up a good pace, and could march in a rhythm that would propel her for hours. She was well acquainted with the smoky and dirty inns where she settled after sundown, and she enjoyed the simple peasant food that was offered.

  She was an old hand now. On her first expedition she felt cer
tain that she couldn't have managed the porters without Quentin Young. But by this time she knew the ropes and had no trouble at all with the poor coolies. The places, the people, the sensations, were well known to her. But she was on a mission, not stopping to dally with old friends. In no time, Harkness's team had made it to the main trail deep in the Min Valley, where they would await new coolies who could trek into the mountains.

  Summer was the easiest time of year for pandas, the season of plenty when an abundance of juicy bamboo leaves filled them up, granting more time for rest. It would be a perfect time for a young panda's return. The mountains were alive too with birches in leaf, fir, and wild cherry. The expedition made its way up and around rushing streams, waterfalls, and breathtaking ravines. The ascent was beautiful yet punishing.

  Harkness and Wang had to claw their way along the slick, perpendicular slopes. There was, at one point, eight full hours of straight-up climbing on trails that were only a foot wide at best. Harkness found that the native grass sandals were better than boots but still not reliably secure: “One slip and you'd land either in a tree, a waterfall, or at the bottom of a cliff,” she wrote. She was back in the grand-but-deadly terrain that other explorers had written of with awe. She kept going, heaving herself upward, getting tangled in vines, slipping in the mud, and fighting the thick bamboo. By the tenth of July, at an altitude of about nine thousand feet, she had reached the area from which she believed the panda had been captured. She had gone to great lengths to determine the exact spot Su-Sen hailed from, which, given panda notions of home range and dispersal, might make the difference between life and death to a newly released animal.

  Arriving “at the back of beyond,” as Harkness put it, the team threw all the cargo down on a precariously staked-out ten-by-four-foot ledge, the only flat ground to be found in this vertical realm. The campsite was just big enough to set up a small pup tent. With the porters departing, it would be only Harkness and Wang clinging to this little space, shrouded in low-hanging clouds and now awash in the torrents of rain that had been expected all along, until the men returned for them. Right above them was a cave; below, if they dared peer over the edge of their rock balcony, they would see a dizzying drop of hundreds of feet to a waterfall underneath.

  Only with great effort could Wang keep a fire burning around the clock in the pouring rain. Their entire stay would be one long torrential downpour, with streams running off the mountain and through the middle of their tiny camp. Everything stayed soaked. “My one quilt is so wet it could be almost wrung out,” Harkness wrote. “And it is full of fleas— all my clothing is clammy and my feet are never dry.” In addition, Harkness wasn't well. She thought it was due to eating unrefrigerated food in the summer heat of the plains on the way to the mountains. She had lost her sense of smell, and her digestive tract was in an uproar. Some mornings they were reduced to eating fried cucumbers and coagulated chicken blood for breakfast.

  But that of course wasn't her main worry. It was Su-Sen who occupied her mind. Harkness had no idea what would happen when she released the panda. She might stay right in the trees nearby, as she had done for the past month in Cavaliere's old garden. She might not go at all. Inexperienced, she could skitter off a cliff or slip into a deep gorge.

  Nevertheless, Harkness did not delay the big moment. Unable to deprive the panda another second of freedom, she immediately set her loose. Su-Sen didn't hesitate either. The instant she was released, she took her emancipation in galloping strides. This was not the landscaped garden in Chengdu; this was her home. She plunged back into it with abandon, her furry black hindquarters visible for just moments as the green world swayed and closed around her. “She wandered off without a backward glance,” Harkness would recall with a bittersweet pride. As the curtain of vegetation shut tight behind Su-Sen, Harkness hoped that she would become “once more the gay-hearted comrade of all the lusty mountain gods.”

  It was a rare moment—watching such a wild spirit untethered, set free. But the real test wasn't whether Su-Sen would go away, it was whether she would stay away. In the miserable rain, Harkness was determined to sit vigil. “There we lived in a cave for a week,” she would recall, “to see if she would come back for the food to which we had accustomed her.”

  She watched for the beloved Su-Sen constantly, and hoped she would never see her again.

  Each evening, in the dark, cold wetness, she and Wang made their offerings to the gods. Incense and candles were lighted, and piles of sacrificial money burned. The tiny camp would be bathed in the bright warm light of the flames as the stacks of bills ignited. Harkness believed her prayers lifted skyward with the smoke of the paper money and the fragrant incense. She had protected the panda in the dangerous world of man; now she wanted the gods to take over in the natural one.

  She would close her eyes, curled up in her wet quilt, and picture the little animal alone in the forest. She would wake in the still of the night to listen for her. But the sounds of a frightened panda never came.

  Day after day of pouring rain nearly washed them right off the map. In her misery, she sought help from an old friend, one of the few left in the country—booze. Over dinner one night she commandeered Wang's supply of native wine, downing enough of it to make herself sick. She had to rush from their living area to throw up her dinner. Stumbling back into camp, she collapsed into a deep sleep until a torrent of icy water on her face woke her at midnight. The mountainside had shifted, redirecting a fast-running stream that spilled all over the camp ledge, spoiling food, swamping Wang's bed, carrying off loose items, and drowning the fire. There wasn't an inch of space free of the runnel. The two campers, in danger of being carried off too, had to search out footholds in the pitch black, battling their way up the sheer slope against the surprisingly strong current. Harkness thought she'd never make it, but she and Wang—and her quilt—reached the cave just above.

  As they stood shivering in the night, Wang began to curse their miserable condition, “swearing a blue streak in Chinese,” Harkness said. The jolly cook was a man transformed in the storm—screaming, yelling, and jumping up and down, while balancing his little cotton umbrella over his head. Harkness watched his performance and then couldn't help herself. She started to laugh. She was probably near hysteria, but whatever the reason, it infuriated Wang. He ratcheted up his tirade, even cursing Harkness, blaming her for all that had befallen them.

  Stunned, she did something equally uncharacteristic, something she would regret all her life. She slapped him across the face. She hadn't been standing close enough to him, she said, for it to carry much of a wallop, but the disrespect was deep.

  Given the circumstances, she realized it was dangerous too. If he'd been angry enough, he could have simply pitched her over the cliff, she wrote later. Instead, he turned his back on her, seeking out a corner of the cave to silently stew in. Harkness wrapped herself in her sodden quilt and sat on a rock. The two friends spent the miserable remaining hours of the night in silence.

  In the morning, Harkness said, “Wang still had his mad on.” She apologized to him, but it did no good. He was grim anyway over the fact that the team of porters, which included his son, had not shown up when they were due. The rain had made the mountains so treacherous that he worried some disaster had befallen Dze Wha. He was determined to set off in search of his son; Harkness was aghast. She did not want to be left alone waiting on the mountain, not knowing if anyone would return. It took some effort, but she persuaded Wang to sit tight.

  With that settled, she trudged back into the cave, out of the rain, to sit by the fire. Watching the flames, she was lost in thought when she heard a noise outside. Looking up, she saw the upside-down, black-andwhite face of Su-Sen, who was clinging to the bushy slope above the cave's mouth. Harkness thought a thousand things at once—she was happy to see the animal but crushed she had come back. She was also horrified by the sudden prospect of now having to spend months here, acclimating the panda to the wild.

  In the
instant Harkness's mind was reeling, however, so was the panda's. Whatever had driven her here, it wasn't a desire to be comforted. Upon seeing her old captors, the panda, Harkness said, “ran as fast as her short little legs could carry her back to her own safe bamboo jungles.” She kept running too, “as though all the demons of hell were at her heels.” Su-Sen was a wild creature once more.

  Less than an hour later, Wang's son and all the porters fell into camp. With fresh supplies, and plenty of backs to haul gear, they could put the expedition into reverse. And down they all came.

  As tough as the trip up was, the descent was even worse. It was unlike anything Harkness had ever experienced before. The treacherous journey, nearly straight down, brought them over moss, mud, and stones, all slick from the downpour. Since a stumble could launch a skidding, frantic traveler into oblivion, Harkness negotiated much of it on the seat of her pants. With miles to go, she could only inch along. Streams were so swollen that the dreaded old log bridges were submerged or gone and, as it turned out, sorely missed, for she often had to walk through icy rushing water that was thigh-deep. She desperately worked to stay upright through the torrents that could make legs go numb, steadying herself as best she could with a walking stick.

  The long days and nights of driving rain had scrubbed clean all traces of the familiar. Old trails—ghostlike at best before—had now been washed out completely, and with no footsteps to follow in, she would have to forge the path home herself.

  Of course, it was fitting.

  In this, her holiest hour, the circle of yin and yang was closing. Her career as a panda hunter, which had pulled in opposite directions, would end as it had begun. Once again, Ruth Harkness would make her own way. She would choose her own course of action, and she would hew to it. It was not easy, but it was right.

  EPILOGUE

  SONG OF THE SOUL