Although Colonel Okamoto had not again hinted that Jonnie might be released, his brother-in-law’s death gave the prisoner-of-war a respite from coolie labor on the Kobe Docks. The camp commandant offered him condolences, his first full meal in six months, and a week off work “to mourn ‘Randaru Mahtin’ with dignity.” It was not his first respite, for the commandant had been alternately wooing and abusing him for two years. Only the solitary confinement he suffered after each spell of privilege preserved Jonnie’s credit with his fellow prisoners. Their moral support stiffened his resistance to the alternating cycles of threats and promises, the “hot and cold treatment” the Japanese hoped would win his public support of their grand design for Asia.
Jonnie wore the rags of his cotton uniform beneath a coat cobbled from a worn blanket, and his feet were filth-encrusted in sandals cut from a discarded tire. The damp October cold lanced through his skin to chill his bones. His sparse flesh was no obstacle to the icy thrust; the bones of his arms and legs, like his ribs, were molded in bas-relief under skin drawn taut by starvation. The strawberry sores of beri-beri ached on his tongue, his lips, and his testicles. Only handfuls of grain and food tins pilfered from the ships’ cargoes had kept him alive.
To sit in a cushioned chair in the commandant’s warm office was a foretaste of Heaven. Only with difficulty could he remember the comforts and banquets of peacetime; his mind had blanked out such memories of the past in order to preserve its balance. To be louse-ridden, foul-smelling, constantly exhausted, and perpetually hungry had come to appear to him the normal condition of man. He looked around the snug office like a stone-age Papuan contemplating the artifacts of civilization for the first time. The English-speaking commandant’s low-voiced sympathy and his pressing invitations to eat more baked fish were an irrelevant distraction indistinctly heard.
“All we wish is a few words addressed to the people of Hong Kong in your own voice,” the commandant repeated. “No more than that—and I can persuade my superiors to relieve you of all work, transfer you to a hotel. Afterward, who knows? If you assist our righteous cause, anything is possible.…”
“I’m sorry, Major,” Jonnie replied with patient courtesy. “I must apologize. I’m afraid it’s impossible.”
Adequate food, warm clothing, a chance to rest—those were the only goals of his existence at the age of forty-two. Those essential comforts could guarantee his surviving the war, an unlikely prospect otherwise. He had dispassionately calculated his hopes of survival as a hard-driven POW at one in three. But he could no more collaborate than he could take the easy road to oblivion, passive suicide by relinquishing his will to live. It required no conscious choice to reject the Major’s renewed inducements. Jonnie had thought the problem through two years earlier and then dismissed it from his mind.
His motives, he had further concluded, were wholly selfish. He yearned to return to Sarah and their joyful, privileged life in Hong Kong. Since he knew the Allies would win the war, he knew further that he could not return to that life if he should collaborate. It was that simple, though he was troubled by his ignoble motivation.
The Japanese had told him of his cousin Francis Sek’s “profoundly righteous cooperation with the new order.” But he dismissed Francis as a fool who would suffer for his opportunism. Jonnie could not know that Francis was not only to be forgiven his trespasses by a Colony that could forgive wealth anything; he certainly could not imagine that, his sins forgiven, Francis was later to receive successive honors culminating in a knighthood “for philanthropy and services to the community.” Jonnie was convinced that he had taken a wholly practical decision.
“In any event, Captain,” the commandant urged, “you will not refuse a week’s relief from duties and better rations.”
“No, Major, certainly not!” Jonnie replied without hesitation, since even a week’s respite could mean life, rather than death. But he felt impelled to add: “In honesty, I must tell you that it will not affect my attitude.”
The commandant’s amazement was mingled with admiration. He had, he knew, finally met that supernal being of whom he had read so much—the English Gentleman.
“This one has the true samurai spirit,” the Major later told his adjutant over sake. “Give him two weeks off labor.”
“You go talk with the reactionaries today, Ai-kuo,” Chou En-lai instructed his aid. “I’m entertaining the American press.”
“Your special instructions, Comrade?” Major General Shih Ai-kuo, christened James Sekloong, asked.
James knew the comprehensive directive for the Communists’ discussions with the Nationalists almost as well as did Chou En-lai, who had drafted the documents. He was, nonetheless, impelled to confirm his instructions by the awe he still felt for his brilliant superior after a twenty-year association, although Chou En-lai, at forty-six, was only eight years older than James in late November 1944. They had met as teacher and pupil when Chou En-lai was already one of the three chief men in the Communist Party at the age of twenty-four. The distance between them had narrowed as James rose in the hierarchy, but they could never meet as equals. The Communist hierarchy was just as rigidly stratified by rank and seniority as the neo-Confucian Nationalists it fought.
“Nothing new,” Chou laughed. “The same tactics: relate, repeat, reiterate—and agree to nothing. Object to everything and smile. Keep pushing them. They’re flustered.”
“I imagine, Comrade,” James observed dryly, “your efforts with the American press will be more successful than mine with the Nationalists.”
“You’re being polite, Ai-kuo,” Chou chuckled. “But you’re right. Incidentally, stay away from the Americans. Let me handle them.”
“It’s your pleasure, Comrade.” James permitted himself the further wry remark. “I’m glad you don’t need me to interpret today.”
“Now, Ai-kuo, don’t be sour. We’re moving forward on all fronts. The Americans are convinced that we are ‘agrarian reformers,’ whatever that may mean, not real Communists, that we’re dedicated solely to helping the poor farmers. Forget your British prejudices against the Americans. They’re our best weapon. We couldn’t do without them.”
“Useful, Comrade, true.” James reflected that only Chou En-lai would allow himself the minutely barbed reference to his mixed ancestry—and only from Chou En-lai would he accept the jibe. “Useful, but not overly intelligent. I find their naive enthusiasm appalling.”
“That’s their most helpful trait, their juvenile enthusiasm. Even the so-called professionals, the China experts, are delightfully naive! I’ll never forget Comrade Mao’s face when President Roosevelt’s Special Envoy let loose a red Indian war cry.” Chou’s voice was acid. “But the correspondents are the most useful in convincing the world that we are only peaceful democrats. They’d probably lynch anyone who dared suggest that I had ever killed anything larger than a mosquito.”
“Everyone knows your record, Comrade,” James replied. “No one could say you’d ever hung back when the objective situation demanded ruthless action. No one could call you a faint-hearted revolutionary who shrinks from revolutionary violence or necessary blood-letting.”
“I thank you, Ai-kuo, for your expression of confidence,” Chou laughed. “Now, go off and talk with the Nationalists. Talk, talk, talk! The time to fight, fight, fight will come soon enough!”
James’s high spirits lingered while he was driven to the conference building to meet with the Nationalist negotiators for another session of the talks both sides considered essentially a necessary pretence to delude the Americans. His preoccupied superior rarely relaxed to engage in banter. Normally reserved with his staff, Chou En-lai saved his overwhelming charm for susceptible foreigners. James chuckled, recalling his chief’s scathing tone each time he used the term Chung-kuo chuan-men, China experts.
His genial mood evaporated when he entered the gray, tile-roofed building to confront the Nationalist negotiator. Moved by an impulse like Chou En-lai’s, Generalissimo Chiang Kai
-shek had sent his own military aide. Major General Shih Ai-kuo faced Major General Sek Lai-kwok across the teacups and ashtrays on the scarred table. Despite his contempt for sentiment, James Sekloong felt premonitory unease at dealing directly with his own brother, his enemy, Thomas Sekloong.
The brothers nodded, too tense to exchange the empty, cool courtesies that had opened each intermittent Nationalist–Communist discussion since 1937. Having not seen each other since their hasty farewell at Shanghai in 1927, they were finally meeting as the principal spokesmen for their antagonistic chiefs.
A sense of unreality momentarily overcame James Sekloong; he felt like a spectator of the scene in which he was actually a leading player. This meeting as enemies was not the consummation Thomas and he had envisioned when they played at soldiers on the beaches of Peitaiho, drilled on the parade-ground of the Whampoa Academy, and marched out side by side from Canton on the Northern Expedition. Half-carried away by his memories, James forced himself to attend to his brother’s words.
Always more emotional than his younger brother, Thomas resorted to the stylized half-chant of conventional Chinese oratory and a forbiddingly formal manner to mask his own emotions. He was appalled by the direct confrontation with James. When brother faced brother in open enmity, the fabric of society was rent. Like his devout Catholicism, the traditional Confucian ethos required loving solidarity of brothers—and that the younger render respectful obedience to the older. He consciously closed his heart against its own reproaches. He, after all, was the elder brother.
“I have been instructed by the National Military Affairs Commission to inform you that the Third Independent Brigade of the Eighth Route Army has moved out of its assigned area, disrupting our defensive dispositions,” he said stiffly. “I am instructed to require you to communicate to the commander of the Eighth Route Army, General Chu Teh, the orders of the Military Commission that the Brigade return to its tactical area immediately.”
Such a protest was the normal opening gambit of each session. Because the Communists’ Red Army had nominally been the Eighth Route Army of the Central Government force’s since the Nationalist–Communist agreement of September 1937, the Nationalists almost invariably stressed the Communists’ theoretically subordinate position by giving Mao Tse-tung’s representative orders they knew he would not obey.
“I have noted your inquiry,” James replied automatically. “I shall consult my superiors.”
The Communists would acknowledge neither error nor insubordination by responding to the orders of their titular superiors, the Central Government. The Nationalists would, however, not sacrifice face by pushing the issue to an indignant rebuff.
“I have been instructed by the chief-of-staff of the Eighth Route Army to protest.” James did not address his brother by name or title. “The Fifty-ninth Division of the Nationalist forces has encroached upon the Shensi–Kansu Border Area. Innocent farmers have been molested and their food supplies looted. Any repetition will be met with force.”
“I shall make inquiries,” Thomas replied by rote, “as to whether the alleged action ever occurred.”
“I am further instructed,” James said, “to restate the proposal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and elicit your attitude.”
The ballet was proceeding precisely as its choreographers had anticipated. It was necesary to talk—primarily for the benefit of the Americans—while each side recruited its strength for the final battle. It was not, however, necessary to listen. Thomas’s thoughts strayed as his brother restated the terms proposed only two weeks earlier, but already drained of meaning by repetition.
The price for Yenan’s unreserved cooperation with Chungking against the Japanese, James reiterated, was formation of a coalition government made up of the Kuomintang, the Communist Party, and lesser political parties, all guaranteed freedom of action throughout China.
“Your proposal is unacceptable, as you have been informed previously,” Thomas said. “I shall again convey to you the conditions the legitimate Central Government of the Republic of China is prepared to offer.”
James in turn allowed his thoughts to wander. He saw no reason to listen again to the Nationalists’ terms, which offered the Communists token legitimacy, but excluded their essential condition, a coalition National Government. Without a coalition, the Communists would remain subordinate to the Nationalists’ Central Government. Worse, without a coalition government, the Communists would be denied the opportunity they coveted to undermine the Nationalist regime from within.
They won’t accept, Chou En-lai had said. They can’t invite the fox into the chicken coop. No more can we surrender our independence and imperil the future liberation of China by subordinating ourselves to them. But we’ll keep talking.
“I must point out that your counterproposal ignores the essential proposal of the Communist Party: a coalition government.” James’s face flushed. “Your conditions can, therefore, not serve as the basis for further serious negotiations.”
Impelled by his volatile temper, James Sekloong had exceeded Chou En-lai’s instructions and almost rejected the Nationalists’ conditions outright. The meeting should, nonetheless, have ended at that point, as so many previous meetings had ended with coolly polite disagreement. The meeting would have ended thus if Thomas Sekloong had, in turn, not lost control of his temper.
“You will accept no proposals, none.” His voice rose, and red spots flared on his cheekbones. ‘No proposals that do not pave your way to power, will you, Little Brother?”
“We will accept no proposals,” James flared, “that mean the unchallenged perpetuation of your neo-Fascist dictatorship.”
“Because your Russian masters won’t let you,” Thomas jibed.
“You speak of masters, you who dare not shit without consulting your American paymasters. You are running-dogs of American imperialism. You serve one imperialist force, the Americans, in order to destroy their rival imperialists, the Japanese.”
Their attendant officers were shocked into inaction by the bitter exchange. They sat icy-faced, afraid to intervene in the personal quarrel between their superiors. The blue clouds of tobacco smoke that normally pervaded the room became a fog as the staff officers nervously stubbed out cigarettes and lit new ones while the butts still smoldered. The staff officers were mute when the brothers reverted to the vitriolic Cantonese that was their childhood tongue.
“And you pretend you’re fighting the Japanese, when you’re really fighting the Chinese,” Thomas shouted. “Fighting your own flesh and blood for the Russian hairy bastards!”
“You’re trying to strangle us, the way you’ve always tried,” James responded. “Kill Communists, ignore the Japanese, and lick the Americans’ bottoms—that’s your motto.”
“Ass-kissing, bottom-licking!” Thomas exploded. “Who’s kissing ass but you? Who’s playing with the Americans, masturbating them and offering them your asses to screw? Not us, but you.”
“You don’t need to,” James shouted. “The Americans’ve already raped your sisters and mothers a hundred times. You’re selling China and your own mothers to them. You’re the son of a poxed Swatow whore!”
Cantonese invective invariably descended to abusing the antagonist’s mother. James’s temper had swept him over the threshold of decency. The abashed brothers were silent, and their staff officers bustled them out of the room.
“I hear James and Thomas had a dust-up the other day,” Dr. George Chapman Parker remarked, “a real shouting match.”
Guinevere Sekloong Parker looked fondly at her white-haired husband and despaired again of ever bringing him to a respectable level of military smartness. The thoroughly unmartial Brigadier General’s olive-green tunic was as crumpled and shapeless as his hand-tailored civilian suits had been when he was a specialist in tropical medicine in New York. Guinevere had little else to complain about after twenty years of marriage. Despite her mother’s initial misgivings regarding the difference in t
heir ages, George had not only made her happy, but joyful. Trim, red-haired, and unassertive at forty-one, Gwinnie was well content. Her decision to leave the children in order to accompany George on his six-month tour had not been easy, but her husband needed her more than did their independent son and daughter. Fortunately, her sister Charlotte was, to Gwinnie’s surprise, competently and affectionately playing foster mother to George, Jr., and Blanche.
“Thomas and James were always fighting,” she commented abstractedly. “But no one could ever come between them. We used to call them one devil in two bodies.”
“They’re two devils in two bodies now, Gwinnie. They’re so far apart you could march a regiment between them!”
“Oh, George, if only they could come together. If only the two sides …”
“Forget it, my dear,” George advised. “It’s hopeless. You’ve seen enough of this mess in the last four months to know your mother’s right. The Chinese will never cooperate. They’ll fight each other forever.”
“I can’t take it as calmly as you, George.”
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