“Our transport was shot down. We tried to use our chutes, but we were caught on the wing. I was lucky. Just before the crash, I got free. A tree broke my fall. It scratched me up a little, but that’s all.”
“And the others?” She sprinkled a sulfa powder over my wound.
I was tempted to lie to her—perhaps that’s our natural approach to every situation—but it might have made her less willing to help me. “The fuel tank caught fire,” I explained. “They were burned to death. It was a close call for me, too. Before I got out of that tree, the forest around me was burning. It was hot as hell.”
“It was hot, I’m sure, Lieutenant,” she agreed, “but not as hot as the H-bombs you dropped on our cities.” Her innocence, then, had teeth to it. Maybe this wouldn’t be the pushover I expected.
Why had they kept me alive? Why had she tended my wounds? We were enemies. The Americans must have hated us. I felt no hatred for them, of course; pity, perhaps, that a system so attractive had to be destroyed because it was too weak to defend itself.
I count myself a sophisticate—or, rather, I did then. I was nineteen; I had been a university student for more than a year. I knew the difference between truth and party double-talk, but I also knew what I had to do to survive.
The girl motioned to the half-naked blond, whose name was Jerry Bonhill. He put his hands beneath my shoulders and lifted me to my feet. I staggered back against the rocky wall rising above the clearing.
Each of the others spoke to me, except the handsome politician, Dr. Willard Clapper. He mentioned his Cadillac. It was an issue they had been talking about before I stumbled into the clearing. I leaned against the granite, listening. I gathered that the politician’s automobile had overturned. He wanted their help to right it so he could escape. No mention of them; just his own, personal survival. A good party man: yes, that man I understood.
Still it didn’t add up right. This Clapper was the type who knew the angles and the risks. He must have known he was safer right here than anywhere else. The leather-faced old man — Pat Thatcher—put an end to the talk by saying flatly,
“We have another use for your car, Clapper.”
INTERIOR ILLUSTRATION #3
Artist Unknown
“It is my duty as an American —a loyal American, I may add—to offer my services to the government.”
“We’ll be better off at Big Bear; so we’ll use your car to get there.”
“Time is of the essence, Thatcher! Under the best of conditions it’s a three-hour drive to Los Angeles—”
“And just what do you have to do there?”
“I used that—I used it only as a comparative distance.” The politician’s voice shot up into the high registers as the old man clutched his coat and lifted him two inches off the ground.
“Let me have the key, Clapper.”
Dr. Clapper fumbled in his coat pocket and handed over a key ring. I began to envy the way they handled their politicians in America. Maybe if we had done the same thing long ago, we could have called our souls our own now.
Thatcher and Jerry Bonhill went up the road toward the ridge. Clapper followed after them, bleating about loyalty and property rights. When they were gone, Bonhill’s mother brought me some food in partly empty tins. Cheryl Fineberg stood thirty feet away, holding my machine gun and looking for all the world like a partisan guerilla on a party war poster.
I emptied the tins. Jim Riley, the child, asked me if I wanted something else. I said I did. He rummaged through the cartons of food, reading off the labels to me.
“Spaghetti and meatballs.” I stopped him there. “That sounds fine, kid.”
I took a meatball out of the can and offered it to the boy. He stuffed it into his cheek, like a squirrel with a nut.
“You know, you aren’t such a bad guy,” he decided.
The Cadillac came down the highway; it was painted blue on one side, while the bare metal was exposed on the other. Pat Thatcher was driving. Bonhill and Clapper sat beside him, and the politician was still whining about his rights.
“Of course it’s my fault,” Clapper admitted. “I didn’t stop to fill the tank on my way up here. But that isn’t the question. If we drive to Big Bear, I won’t have enough gas left to—”
“It looks as if you aren’t going anywhere, Dr. Clapper,” Jerry said mildly.
“You have no legal right to interfere. This car is mine!”
“And we’re using it.”
These Americans were inexplicable. Without hesitation, they were applying something very close to Communism in seizing the politician’s Cadillac. Maybe the Politburo psychologists were all wrong. Maybe the Americans valued the human being even above personal possessions. If so, that was a major error in our calculations. In a sense, it gave them a secret weapon that could win the war—if they knew how to exploit it properly.
We packed the canned goods in the trunk of the car. After a brief hesitation, Cheryl Fineberg shoved the submachine gun as well as Bonhill’s rifle into the compartment and slammed down the lid. The two women, the boy and I sat in back. Thatcher was forced to drive very slowly along the winding road.
Jim Riley piped up, “We can’t let them see the Lieutenant, not in his uniform. I don’t think they’d understand that he’s O.K.”
“So you’ve made up your mind about him?” the girl asked.
“Yes,” I laughed, “because I eat spaghetti for breakfast.”
“Maybe that isn’t such a bad standard of judgment, until we come up with something better,” she answered seriously. “But Jim is right. Let’s get rid of your coat, Lieutenant. And your rank along with it. From now on in you’re simply Boris Yorovich, a friend we picked up on the road.”
I slid off my coat, inching the scorched cloth over my blistered hands. She decided my woolen undershirt had to go, too. The military dye and the shoddy workmanship were a dead giveaway. Stripped naked to the waist; I made a poor contrast to the blond giant in the front seat. The redhead eyed me abstractly.
“We’ll have to get you out in the sun, Boris. If you’re typical, maybe what you Russians really need is a good, two-week vacation in the mountains—instead of another piece of someone else’s territory.”
With all our endless manpower, with all our planes and bombs, we had one small chance of victory—and only one. I saw that with a terrible clarity. If Willard Clapper were the average American, they would surrender in a week. But if Cheryl Fineberg and Jim Riley and Jerry Bonhill were the enemy—
Cheryl decided that my trousers, charred, dirty and torn, would be unidentifiable, but my boots had to go. She rolled the discards into a bundle and threw them from the open window. Dr. Clapper glanced at me across the front seat; his eyes glowed furiously.
“You know what you’ve done, Lieutenant Yorovich,” he said. “The deliberate removal of a uniform is desertion. On the other hand, if you fall into the hands of responsible Americans—loyal Americans—you will be considered a spy. It isn’t a happy situation, is it? As a human being, I wish I could help you.”
As Clapper turned his head toward the front again, Mrs. Bonhill gave a little scream. “Stop, Mr. Thatcher! There’s a man lying in the road.”
Thatcher jammed on the brakes. The man moved, pushing himself up on his elbows. His face and arms were burned. The skin hung loose in flapping, tattered tendrils.
“A refugee from the desert,” Jerry said.
“Burned by radiation!” Cheryl gasped. “We’ll have to help him. Perhaps in the village we can find some drugs to—”
“You won’t put him in my car!” Clapper yelped. “He might be radioactive.”
With a gesture of disgust, Thatcher opened the door and got out. Jerry Bonhill and Cheryl followed him.
Clapper moved to release the brake, so the car would roll down on the man and solve the problem for him. I reached across the seat and cracked my fist into the politician’s jaw—three times, before the body went limp.
I felt exultant, as
if I were mildly intoxicated. The feeling was very pleasant.
I got out and limped toward the others, to help them carry the groaning Negro to the car.
In that moment my choice was made. Not Clapper, but Cheryl and Bonhill were the spirit of America—the America we would never destroy. I could no longer bury inside my mind the whisper from my childhood; I no longer had a desire to do so.
II. The City—Friday Dr. Stewart Roswell
IN SPITE of General Zergoff’s determination to put what he called our intellectual circus on the air at noon, the broadcast was postponed. Zergoff had a logical rationalization, as the Soviet Man must; the confusion in the United States on the first day of conquest was too widespread for the propaganda to be effective. His real reason was something a Russian General doesn’t report to the Politburo: the spiritual challenge of George Knight, Quaker.
Twice during the night guards carried Knight out of our third-floor prison for long sessions of Communist re-education. When they brought him back the second time, shortly after dawn on Friday, the Quaker was close to death. Zergoff sent doctors to patch up the wounds. It wouldn’t do for Knight to die—not until he admitted defeat.
Later Knight and I were both transferred to the first floor. We were still prisoners, but now we had the silk glove treatment in place of the mailed fist. George Knight, carefully bandaged and reeking of antiseptic, was laid on a leather couch and wrapped in blankets. Maria D’Orlez brought us a splendid breakfast—the only meal, incidentally, which we had that day.
Knight was still unconscious, but started to wake up after she left.
“During my educational indoctrination,” Knight said when he had eaten a bit, “I did a great deal of meditating, Stewart. The world has been thrown into a disastrous war; the destruction is beyond any horror we can imagine; and the worst misery and torment for the homeless millions is still to come. Yet, in spite of all that, we have an opportunity to create something good out of this catastrophe. There will be no victor; there never is in war. But there can be an enormous victory of ideals—to put it in words that mean more to me: a spiritual victory. The fighting will one day end; it must. And a shattered world will have to be remade. Before we dream of cities and parks rising over the bomb craters, we must think—this time—about man himself. We must build a believing world. Belief is a fundamental need of us all.”
“Belief in what, Knight? Belief is an abstract. Civilizations before ours have gone berserk in the name of belief.”
“Let’s say, to start with, belief in man—in the dignity of the human soul. Build on that—it’s what I mean by a believing world—and the isms lose all significance.”
He had made his point so unexpectedly it exploded in my mind like a physical blow. “This mutual respect of each man for the other,” I said. “By its very nature, it would wipe out Communism.”
Knight shrugged his shoulders slightly. “Then, I’m afraid Zergoff believes in a false god. I’m truly sorry for him, Stewart. I say that in complete sincerity. It isn’t easy for any man to have the fundamental nature of his being torn apart—even when it’s built upon falsehood.”
“And they call you Quakers Pacifists!”
“We take arms against no man, Stewart. But we believe all men—including ourselves—have the right to seek the inner voice of God in their own individual ways. I will die for that belief just as readily as Zergoff would die on the battlefield. The General can’t recognize the conflict on my terms, precisely as I refuse to fight on his.”
“But you’re forcing him to fight on yours.”
“Not at all. He’s forcing himself.”
“A man can’t be a conscientious objector in a psychological war.”
“Spiritual, please; why are educated people, so unwilling to use that word? And you’re wrong, Stewart. General Zergoff can refuse to fight—I do wish you wouldn’t call it that!—by having me executed whenever it pleases him.”
“By doing that now—after he’s told the rest of us he’ll break you —it would be admitting defeat. Either way you win.”
“It isn’t a question of winning. It’s the mutual respect we must learn to have for each other as human beings.”
While Knight and I were talking, we could hear voices in the adjoining room, which General Zergoff was using as a staff office. Suddenly the pitch went higher and we were able to make out the words clearly.
“You’ve had ten hours, and all you produce is excuses.” Zergoff paused and when he spoke again each word was spaced like the boom of a cannon. “I want Willard Clapper here by noon. Check the refugee detail. If Clapper’s trying to get back here, he’ll be somewhere on the road.
“Then send a car up for him. He’d wait in the mountains for us to pick him up—I agree with you there. He’d know he couldn’t get through to headquarters today without our help.”
The voices simmered down.
Knight said, “Apparently, Stewart, you were right about Dr. Clapper. That appears to be obvious.”
“If they put Clapper on the air with us—”
“The accuser and his victims, all joining hands in the noble cause of Soviet brotherhood.” The Quaker chuckled. “It has amusing possibilities, as a radio show. I’m afraid it won’t come off. Our intellectuals seem somewhat unwilling to co-operate.”
“Largely as a result of your example.”
“You give me too much credit. Perhaps I helped each of you see more clearly your own spiritual convictions; that’s all.”
Late in the afternoon the General found time for an interview with me. I thought I had been brought downstairs with Knight as a matter of convenience. But I discovered that Zergoff had specific plans for me. I was to be a sort of intellectual Judas, with my own neck at stake.
Zergoff came straight to the point. They had made recordings of my conversations with Knight, and the General believed the Quaker put unusual value upon my opinion. I was, therefore, ordered to persuade Knight to meet Zergoff’s terms.
“You think I can do what you haven’t?” I asked. “Suppose I refuse?”
“You will be shot.” His voice was calm and self-assured. Fear prickled at the roots of my hair; I knew he meant precisely what he said. He added, “If I liquidate you, Dr. Roswell, I lose only one man. Granted, you have some use to us, but you are expendable. You have taken no romantic moral stand in front of the others.”
“But George Knight has.”
“Exactly. He is setting the pace for the rest of you.”
The door of the nook slid open. Zergoff looked up at a saluting subordinate. “Sir, the report on Clapper—”
“You’ve found him?”
“We sent a jeep into the mountains. Three men, commanded by a sergeant; all we could spare at the time. We have had no communication from them in six hours; we presume they’re lost to guerilla action.”
“American guerillas? Don’t be a fool; these bourgeoisie wouldn’t have the backbone—” Zergoff got a grip on his anger. “Send another truck—this time with enough men to do the job.”
The junior officer saluted and departed. Zergoff strode toward the door. He glanced at me and, more or less as an afterthought, he added, “One other point you should understand, Dr. Roswell: I’m giving you a deadline—eight o’clock tonight…”
My only problem was how much I should tell Knight. Although our spoken conversation was monitored, I could have written the facts and passed them over to him while we chatted of inconsequential things. For some fifteen minutes I sat facing him, talking bland nonsense, while I tried to make up my mind. And then even that problem no longer mattered.
We heard the sound of far away explosions in the harbor and a sudden scurrying of booted feet out of the living room.
The explosions were suddenly closer. A plane screamed overhead. The wall burst open, in a blinding chaos of smoke and flying debris. I was flung against the couch. Books rained down on Knight and me, shielding us from the glass that flew out of the narrow windows.
Dazed, I pulled myself to my feet. I saw that the sidewall was gone, open to the alley back of the house. It meant escape. At least a slim chance. Better than staying where we were. I lifted Knight in my arms and stumbled toward the opening.
Fire was licking at the house as I carried George Knight through the torn wall. The alley outside seemed to be clear. But suddenly a Communist soldier—an enormous man—loomed out of the shadows.
“Are you Americans?” he asked.
I swung my fist; he caught it in his huge hand.
“My name is Chen Phiang,” he whispered close to my ear. “I am Chinese. I want to help you. Come, I will show you a place to hide.”
After a moment, I followed him toward the side street. Flak from anti-aircraft shells was falling everywhere. Close by on the boulevard fire blazed against the dusk sky. I saw the broken skeleton of a fallen plane. The Chinese took George Knight in his arms.
“I am Chen Phiang,” he said again. “I have at last remembered the wisdom of my paternal grandparent.”
INTERIOR ILLUSTRATION #4
Artist Unknown
III. The City—Friday at dusk Chen Phiang
I AM ONLY seventeen. I have a poor memory of my paternal grandparent, who was a tea merchant in Hong Kong. He came frequently to visit my father’s shop in Canton. I listened carefully when he spoke, because in those days we honored the wisdom of our elders.
The soldiers of the people’s government took me from my father’s shop when I was very small. I remember my mother’s tears and my father’s terror. My mother held me against her heart. A soldier struck her with his rifle.
My father was a landowner and an enemy of the people. They told me that much later, at a school in Peking, and I believed them, because they were skillful teachers. It was right for my mother and my father to be liquidated; I believed that, too, for I was a conscientious student. The teachers said I would not be a good citizen until I wiped away every memory of my parents and my grandparents.
Empire of Women & One of our Cities is Missing (Armchair Fiction Double Novels Book 25) Page 13