Tom Fool

by David Stacton

  The dinner service off which they had just had a late supper, perhaps?

  Chungking

  A conversation with Chiang, about India, sitting at dusk on the veranda, high above Chungking. Chiang had just been there, to consult with Nehru. India was a great power, he said. Once it had exchrysalated from the British Raj, it would flap enormous wings. It had resources. It had people. But you had only to look at his face to see that it also had something else. Chiang was devout. He read his Bible every day, so they said. He was a product of the best Methodist (or was it Baptist?) training. But his face did not glisten that way at mention of Jerusalem, the latest word from the Missouri Synod, or the thought of a pilgrimage to Geneva.

  In our day you have to ask not what religion a man espouses, but what religion he found inadequate, before he became an agnostic. Agnostic or not, once Moslems are still Moslems, drinking Haig and Haig behind a screen though they may be; Buddhists are Buddhists, even when clutching their Bibles; and Christians are whatever they were before they got tired of it, Manichee, pantheist, transcendental sado-masochists, Catholics, or what have you.

  So, too, with Chiang and India. The man might be a carpetbagger of the first class. But India had been the homeland, no matter what it was now, of almost everything essential to Asia. India had the Himalaya, which are less mountains than a system of metaphysics. Chiang talked on and on, about supplies, equipment, projects for a new power dam, how the Occidental must go, how the British would go, totally unaware that on his wilful, childish, stern, and power-hungry face there was still some last remaining reflection of the Alpenglow.

  Which explained much.

  At ten o’clock Mme Chiang came to say that it was late, she was hungry, and could they not drive down into town for dinner? As he rose, Tom glanced involuntarily at the hills beyond the house.

  That was where the Himalaya were, out there, in back, invisible and enormous, to the west somewhere.

  Less than ever was he grateful to the President for having forbidden him to go there.

  Near Chengtu

  They climbed through a small wood and came at last to a pavilion, well guarded, and beyond that, to a cave, protected by a padlocked fence, but not protected from damp, bad winters, and the elements. A scholarly gentleman came out to meet them.

  In the pavilion and in the cave, stacked in crates, in tubes, or lying in their wrappings, lay the Imperial Palace collections, the oldest art collection, what was left of it, in the world, part of which dated back to the days of the Southern Sung. It was never shown, nor did Chiang ever look at it. To be shown even part of it now, was a great honour. Wherever Chiang went, he took the collections with him, from Pekin to redoubts farther inland, to Chengtu, and next, perhaps, to Formosa. On each remove they were damaged a little more. But at least he had them. That they were mildewed, chipped, and torn made no difference. They were invaluable.

  The scholar, who had a small pronged beard which made him look like a Chinese Fafnir, seemed distressed. The stench of mildew was heavy, and had the smell of that brewers’ yeast we were all fed as children. But here they were, the national treasures (so they would have been called in Japan, where such things are better taken care of), which nobody had looked at at leisure, and few people at all, since European troops had looted the Summer Palace and the Empress Dowager had fled to the interior, disguised as a peasant, which is what she had been to begin with.

  The point was not to look at them, or learn from them, it appeared, the point was not even to have them, but to make sure that nobody else did.

  Tom remembered chiefly, apart from the disorder and the gloom, a landscape, green, gold, and white, of spotted deer stripping the bark off some trees, in winter snow, a work of the late tenth century, according to some scholars, of the early eleventh, according to others. It was the matter of date, was it not, that was important? On that their reputations might well depend. In the shadows there, a thousand years old, flaking, but crisp as tomorrow, it was not something he would soon forget.

  With a little sigh, the scholar rolled it up and returned it to its tube. The silk on which it was mounted was very old, a little frayed, and also beautiful.

  Chungking

  They were furious at the embassy, that he should prefer a Chinese interpreter to someone assigned by the Ambassador. He couldn’t see that it made any difference. He would rather have Chinese translated well, than worry about himself being translated badly. Nor did he quite understand why the Ambassador, who had been in China for ten years, did not speak Chinese at all. In a profession as suspicious as diplomacy, all that ignorance must produce was more protocol and more paranoia.

  Protocol gave Tom the fantods. He was sick to death of hearing about it. It was double-talk. He preferred dialect, though he’d moved around so much in this world, he’d lost his own, and had to piece it out as he came to it. There’s one thing about dialect, it comes direct, it says what it means, or as much of what it means as it is able to say, which means it knows more than it can say, and being full of horse sense, doesn’t exactly cotton to the idea of saying more.

  And that’s what’s wrong with Americans, really. They start out real fine, and then they go and make what’s called a statement, or create music, or some damn fool thing like that, instead of just getting round to what they have to say, which is what you call art, or anyhow, being on the shrewd side. The other’s genteel, but it doesn’t get you far. It’s got from back East. It doesn’t add up. Store-boughten goods never got anybody anywhere. And that’s a big shame.

  There was a time, you know, when we knew better than that, a time when we might be there, talkin’ to you, but we had transparent eyes, and those eyes were always right there, on the horizon where they belonged, instead of down here, right in front of you, with a feared lost look in them. Sorta wistful, but they knew what to do all right, when trouble came. They weren’t afraid of anything, at least they didn’t admit it, which is the important thing. They suspicioned, which is a sounder attitude and didn’t make them quake a bit.

  I am afraid of, I am afraid that, I don’t care to, I am afraid I don’t care to, in my opinion one cannot, were nothing but weasel words, without a word of truth in them, compared to the fine old phrase, I don’t exactly cotton to that. And it is greatly to be doubted, didn’t have a thing to it, beside the fine archaic moral smack of, “You know, I suspicioned he was lyin’.” Lyin’ had a fine high-handed, half-humorous twist to it that simple modern lying never had had and never would.

  Chiang Kai-shek could not possibly be accused of downright lying. But as a liah, he was accomplished. He was also a polecat. And with a real certified 100 per cent polecat you can do much. With a mere wily politician, nothing. There’s an awful lot to be said in this world for us liahs. We get a lot done.

  Chiang Kai-shek was a booby. Madame was the power there, and what red-blooded American is going to call a fine upstanding lady like that a liah?

  In short, he liked them. He knew how to handle them. So he didn’t in the least mind, and wasn’t in the least afraid of being handled right back, on the same principle that no real creative artist minds having something stolen from him, because there’s always plenty more where that came from, and if they need an idea that bad, they aren’t anything much to worry about as far as competition goes.

  Yes, ruthless people are the best fighters in a good cause, and worry about why they’re doing it afterwards. If you can’t lick them then, chances are, you couldn’t have licked them to begin with, either. So relax and enjoy them.

  But you had to be up to the Chiangs, because they were real smart. Which, no doubt, is why we still support Formosa, like a small boy puffing out his cheeks and blowing into a paper bag. Still, the explosion, when it comes, should be nice. Madame got her way. Americans are small boys, but very sturdy, and it is this which gives them their irresistible attraction to lost causes. All you have to do is lose in the right way and you’ve got America right there in the palm of your hand, like a swea
ty aggie. Except that these days, American aggies look a little sweaty, too.

  Near Chungking

  The most popular American in China, just then, despite General Stilwell, was Brigadier-General Chennault, who headed up the Flying Tigers. Tom tried repeatedly to meet him, but somehow the meeting never took place. Stilwell said it was impossible to arrange.

  Tom thought that over for a while, waited until Stilwell was busy somewhere else, got into a plane, and had himself flown to Chennault’s headquarters, where there turned out to be no trouble about meeting him at all.

  Chennault was a lean, weather-bitten man from Louisiana, who moved in a cloud of Texan aides who were absolutely frightening until you got used to their general altitude and manner. The Burma Road had been cut by the Japanese; Chungking was defended by exactly four Nationalist planes, that being all that could still get in the air and stay up once there; and the rest was done by Chennault, with inadequate forces.

  Why hadn’t he asked for more American planes and matériel?

  He had, but his requests had been pigeon-holed. They always would be. The regular army didn’t care for him much, It was one of those self-destructive little jealousies to house which we built the Pentagon, and as a result of which General Marshall, our Chief of Staff, could be publicly denounced as a traitor for his trouble, during the 1952 Presidential campaign, by a couple of irresponsible diehard senators with a career to make.

  Chennault was tall, swarthy, and rangy. He had a natural animal grace, and the weedy do not care for animals. He was doing well enough sticking China together with bits of old string, but he could use help.

  “Could Chennault make a direct report to the President or his representative?” asked Tom.

  “Yes. If I could get to him.”

  “Well then, report to me, I’m the President’s representative,” said Tom.

  Chennault grinned. He liked a man with his own taste for shouldering his way through cobwebs. He got to work on the report. A week later, when they were on the last leg of the trip across Siberia and so home, the report was duly delivered to the plane. And just as duly delivered by Tom, during a stormy session at the White House.

  Chennault got his matériel. None the less, wrote Tom, he had a sense of bafflement at the failure of officials at home to see what to him was so clear. If China fell, our influence in the East fell with it.

  But then, officials don’t look.

  On the Plane

  Tom asked to see the front. The Chinese did not care for that, it meant they had to set one up, but once that was done, they gave in. It was a reasonable enough request.

  He had decided to write a book about his trip. He already had the introduction in his mind: “Today, because of military and of other censorships, America is like a besieged city that lives within walls through which passes only an occasional messenger to tell us what is happening outside. I have been outside, and nothing I have found outside is exactly what it seems to those within. Our outlook in the future must be world-wide.”

  So it must, but it wasn’t going to be. America’s good intentions suffered that shrinkage attendant upon being taken to the cleaners, which is how it suited the Americans to regard their own part in the war.

  “We have a great reservoir of goodwill in the world,” wrote Tom. Maybe we had. But it sure evaporated fast in the bright light of subsequent events, and we did nothing to replenish it, except to meddle incompetently with that common watershed, the world, to which we had no title, and of which we merely upset the ecology by confusing it with our own disparate climate.

  So the reservoir went. There was no one left to praise us. And we did so want to be told, what we longed to hear, that human relations were nothing but those of business‚ and must be conducted as such, with a health plan and retirement benefits for all. We did not want a prophet. It was as though Emerson had rewritten Gracian.

  “In short, be a saint,” says Gracian, though only after you have mastered all the devilry of the world, control of which alone permits one at last to be good. Whereas Emerson would take the keystone for the arch.

  Sian

  It was supposed to be the front. Tom’s party arrived there by plane, at dusk. Sian was on the Yellow River, and proved confusing, since the Chinese are masters of the anomalous. The English lower their heads, paw the ground, and call it muddling through. The Chinese, more circumspect and even more devious, giggle and go sideways. Like the English, never having doubted themselves, they can still laugh heartily at their own vices and absurdities, which makes them easier to deal with, and much, much, harder to defeat. In order to defeat a people you must first occupy the capital. To the reply that the Japanese held Pekin, the Chinese said that wasn’t the capital, the capital was at Lo-yang; and if the Japanese turned up at Lo-yang, the answer was that, dear, dear, that is only the winter capital, the summer capital is at Chungking; or Taipeh, or Winchester, or Edinburgh, or the Falkland Islands, or what have you. And to the final remark, that of course you’re defeated, we’re standing right before you, the answer is, I doubt that, for I don’t see you, you have not gone through the proper forms, and besides, quite clearly you are not Chinese. Or British. Or Scots. Or what have you.

  To the charge of corruption, or dishonesty, the answer is silence. One feels so embarrassed for anyone crass or ill-bred enough to state such a thing in so crude a manner. What can one say? If it is said by a friend, on the other hand, one unbends a bit, and quite agrees. Of course we are.

  General Stilwell was, more or less, a friend, he must have some good in him, for from his letters (which the censors read) he seemed fond of gardening, and from his diary (which the spies had taken a look at, for the Kuomintang swam in a sea of spies, they were its natural element, and so much taken for granted that they no longer bothered to conceal themselves while spying) he did not seem unduly fond of the Generalissimo, which displeased no one, for the Generalissimo, like the Sea Green Incorruptible (though not quite so bad and much better connected) was given to obstructing the calm and even flow of smuggling, currency manipulation, and other petty dishonesties which he must realize were essential to well-being, since his own people practised them.

  When the trip to Sian was discussed at a military banquet, Stilwell told Tom he would see there one of the greatest trading operations of modern China, with Nationalist troops bargaining mightily with the Japanese across the river. General Ho, who spoke English, listened blandly, and did not deny it.

  The trip from Sian to the front was absurd. It commenced in a luxurious private railway coach. Crowds waited patiently in the rain, to honour the honourable guest. They had been waiting three hours, but did not seem to mind. That is what they had been told to do, and not much happens in Sian anyhow. It is always amusing to see a foreigner.

  There was a short parade. The next few miles were traversed by hand-operated rail car, until one of the military experts, who had been thinking things over, after a certain amount of fidgeting, suggested that outlined against the sky that way they made an excellent target, like tin ducks at a shooting gallery (the motion was even the same, jerky but regular), and wouldn’t they be wiser to walk? So they left the rail car and walked.

  The front turned out to be a village on the river. There was no fighting at the moment, though Tom was told that there had been some that morning, and would be some more later, at about six. Looking through binoculars, he could see the gun-sights and trading goods of the Japanese on the opposite bank. The scene was domestic, peaceful, and armed to the teeth.

  The soldiers looked threadbare enough. If they could turn a little money by harmless trading, why not? If we had sent the Japanese nine million tons of scrap iron before Pearl Harbour, he saw no reason why a poor Chinese soldier should not be allowed to do the best he could haggling over a stolen pig.

  Later, back in the private coach, Captain Chiang, the Generalissimo’s son by a previous marriage, came down the aisle with his arms full of cavalry swords and bottles of wine, souvenirs c
aptured from the enemy, as gifts for the party. Trade goods, by the look of them. But perhaps not. Tom accepted a sword, but it was a little warm in the car for wine.

  Chengtu Again

  It was time to leave. Why did one not want to leave?

  Was it because one liked this country so much, or because one did not altogether care for the idea of going home—that going back home gave one the feeling of being poured, against one’s will, through a funnel, out of the bigger bottle into the small?

  Yes, our reservoir of goodwill was drying up. There were leaks, too, everywhere. As soon as the fact that we would not help them liberate themselves came out into the light of day, it would evaporate completely. Then they would hate us, because we were meddlesome, and at the same time, shirked the world even while we could not let it be.

  The favourite song in America at the moment, so he was told, was something called Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition. Between lip service to the one, and a certain sloth about the other, goodness only knew where it would all end. The lesser of two evils, though always preferable, is not, alas, to be confused with something good.

  The plane took off, and for a long, long time he sat huddled at a window behind the wing, looking down, and even twisting round to catch a last glimpse, as the mountains fell behind, the fields fell behind, the Great Wall fell behind, the world fell away, and they were over the Gobi again.

  Why he did that, he didn’t quite know.

  What have they got, that we haven’t got?

  Only a culture they don’t much care for any more.

  Then why do they seem so different?

  I don’t know.