The Communist's Daughter

by Dennis Bock

  It is pleasurable even now to recall the luxuries of first-class passage. Delicious memories for a starved body. O the bounty we take for granted! I slept on a firm mattress smelling of cleanliness and not red clay and manure. My body ached with excess, not starvation. My cabin was a nest of pleasures situated on the upper deck, beneath the second and third funnels. I heard nothing of the ship’s great engines and might as well have been camped on the shores of a remote northern lake. The cabin boasted a cherry-wood sideboard and dresser, two cavernous armchairs, a claw-foot coffee table positioned between them and an oak writing desk and chair of a type you might find in the stateliest manor in England. Unimaginable luxury compared to the cold mud, stone walls and dirt floors of these huts I now call home, with their broken windows and poorly thatched roofs.

  The ship was redolent with delicious flavours. Roast beef on upper deck. Cuban cigars on shelter deck. Perfumes in the ballroom. My cabin was scented by lilies refreshed on a daily basis by a pretty Chinese lady named Mrs. Qimeia. She spoke English quite well, as did most of the Chinese stewards and stewardesses. One morning early in the voyage I introduced myself when she knocked at my door. She was modest, courteous, self-contained and efficient. As she tidied up I offered my gratitude for her fine attention to detail.

  “Does this flower have a name?” I said.

  “They are called stargazers, sir, a species of lily,” she said. “We have a florist on board if you would like to send some.”

  “Perhaps I will.” I said.

  The lady blushed, of course. I asked if she might furnish my bed with a third pillow—a detail I dearly miss here, with not a single pillow—and wished her a good morning, then left the room in her capable hands.

  I spent many hours in the lounge beneath the first and second funnels, reading and making notes on the coming expedition. It was there I tried again to begin this document, but looming demands pulled me away, or so I let myself believe. I worked as well on articles—political commentary, a paper on thoracic medicine, my specialty, another on triage procedures—and wrote letters to friends and associates. Delicate tables and chairs in the French neoclassical style gave the room a wonderful opulence. On clear days the great domed skylight overhead admitted a full warming sun.

  Here I claimed a comfortable sofa facing a wide fireplace and, after a period of writing, started in on one of the books I’d carried on board. Passengers generally gathered in the lounge between eleven o’clock and noon, three and five, and then on into the evening after the dining halls emptied. Outside those hours it was a relaxing place for reading and study. The carpet was a warm russet, like the sofas, the lamp shades and curtains framing the rectangular port-facing windows.

  When the lounge became too busy, I transplanted myself to the writing room, which was always quiet and ideal for study, though not so for those of us who compose on clumsy machines like this. Here I found the studious passengers, the chronic letter-writers, the poets, introverts, insomniacs and melancholies. In this room we hardly made eye contact with one another. We each stared down some far-off face, summoned a disembodied voice—a friend or lover waiting on the other side, perhaps even a daughter. The sea, we seemed convinced, spoke her own language: secret, coded only for the finest ear. Maybe in that room we stood a better chance of making some sense of what was to be found in its silence.

  I spent many hours attempting to begin this story, but when I could bear it no longer I returned to the safety of administrative matters. Again I had failed. I concentrated on the China Aid Council, and on a certain crisis that was developing between myself and Parsons. Early on I was still hopeful—certain, even—that our expedition would reap great rewards. We were dedicated to the cause. But for the sake of complete honesty I must admit that there were signs of trouble only a few days into the voyage. Not unwelcome difficulties, at that. I was pleased to have something to distract me from the story I was struggling and failing to tell.

  Charles Parsons was only slightly older, perhaps in his mid-fifties. At one time an excellent surgeon, he had in recent years been severely reduced by alcohol and by this time was well descended from the height of his powers. I don’t know why he drank, exactly, but I do recall my astonishment at noticing, on our first day at sea, not the slightest pang of conscience or even awareness on his part when he suggested we avail ourselves of the funds we’d been entrusted with to pay for our drinks and plate of sandwiches. Quite surprised, I folded the bills back into his hand and asked the server to put the lunch on my meal chit, telling Parsons it was my pleasure. It was then that I began to harbour some doubt regarding his commitment. If left unchecked, I feared he would make a significant dent in our resources, and I resolved to keep an eye on him, though I had no intention of creeping around the ship like some sort of spy.

  Of my other associate, the Canadian nurse Jean Ewen, I knew very little aside from the fact that her father was a prominent Communist back home, a highly regarded man I’d met on a number of occasions in Montreal and Winnipeg. While I saw quickly that his daughter took after him, she refused to call herself a dyed-in-the-wool Communist. She told me at our first meeting in New York that she’d never put much stock in labels, political, philosophical or otherwise. Perhaps she might call herself a pragmatist, I suggested. She lifted her eyebrows and smiled, indicating that even this might obscure the truth. She was quite young, in her late twenties, I would guess, and still quite collegial, despite her two years in China. That first day out from Vancouver she wore a black Lilly Daché cap and cape and looked set for a Sunday afternoon football game or ride through Central Park. Her dark brown eyes roamed upward to the funnels. “It’s impossible to imagine that civilization can build a ship as glorious as this and still possess the mentality to wage war!” Her dark hair was cut short, just below the ear. She looked every bit the youthful adventurer that she was. Her neck, quite thin, was pale and delicate. I offered her my scarf, which she refused with a smile. She seemed nothing but a slip of a girl to me, pretty, almost dainty. “I see,” I said, “you will stand up to the cold, then?” I couldn’t help but wonder how she would fare under the pressures of war, and thought she might well surprise me.

  I remember strolling above deck early on a splendid morning, three or four days in. I took great pleasure in filling my lungs with cold sea air as I watched the light reach up from below the horizon, as if some magical far-off land of fire and dragons were eager to catch my attention. On one level at least, I had already begun preparing myself mentally for this war on the other side of the world, bracing myself for its terrors, and that lovely thin strip of orange and yellow hovering over the sea brought a sense of calm I knew I couldn’t trust. Out there the war raged; on board a different sort had just begun, and the gloomy thoughts of my leaving still turned in the back of my mind. As I walked and full morning light finally filled the sky, I saw that little girl in blue who had so caught my attention our first morning out. Today she wasn’t feeding the gulls but standing alone at the railing, beside a life raft, watching the sea below. It seemed unsafe to me, a child alone at the precipice. The woman I’d taken to be her mother sat reading on a nearby bench, dressed in a red overcoat and white shawl, and taking no notice. She wore thick, black-framed sunglasses. I stopped and watched nervously as out from under her bonnet the girl’s strawberry-blond hair spilled and danced about the circle of her face. She placed a foot on the bottom rung of the rail and lifted her other foot.

  “Wait there,” I called.

  I suppose my urgent tone startled the girl. She stepped down, as if caught out, and turned with a guilty look on her face. The woman looked up from her book.

  Somewhat embarrassed, I tipped my hat and stepped forward. “I’m sorry,” I said. “She was climbing up. I’m not sure if you were aware of that.”

  “Oh, the dear thing knows no limits,” she said. “I’ve told her a dozen times.”

  “Well, then.”

/>   “I suppose I’m not as fond of looking after children as I am of reading these silly poems.” Vaguely she waved the book between us.

  “What poems are those?”

  “Do you know Wallace Stevens?” she said.

  It turned out the woman was not the child’s mother but her young aunt and as her temporary guardian was returning her to Hong Kong, where the girl’s father held some post in the British Consulate. I presented my card, and we were soon immersed in a conversation about Stevens’s poems. Her name was Gwendolyn Chambers. Two years into her doctoral thesis on eighteenth-century poetics, she’d recently fallen madly in love with the Modern Poets and was now reconsidering her studies. She was young, articulate and, not least of all, wonderfully selfless, I told her, in that she should journey such a long distance to deliver the child to her mother.

  She laughed and said, “I’m not half as selfless as you might think.”

  As we spoke, the girl gravitated back to the life raft to look down at the water, but she did not step up onto the railing again.

  *

  I’ve been thinking about the possibility of my never finding you, an impossible thought that wakes me up at four in the morning. It is as if our bodies are programmed to wake up then so we can take our worries out for a stroll and exercise our darkest fears. We are at our weakest then, as if all we think we know is put aside at that hour and replaced by everything that’s fearsome and terrifying. It is an intolerable thought, a full life without you, and that is why it haunts me. I could not stand that life, I promise you.

  *

  The weather was unchanged six or seven days into the Pacific crossing: cool, constant, predictable. By then I had modelled myself after it to a degree and established a daily ritual designed mostly, I believe, to prolong my self-deception. Mornings began with a brisk stroll up top, followed by a light breakfast at the veranda café. There I took a coffee and eggs with toast, juice and fruit. A fraternal atmosphere among the diners was pleasantly distracting. I sat among families, businessmen and adventurers, people who knew nothing of me or my plans for joining the Communist struggle against Japan. Most mornings I greeted the girl and her aunt, the engaging Miss Chambers, and soon we began breakfasting together. With Gwendolyn I spoke of poetry and art. I had over the years written a few poems myself—of course, none as good as Stevens’s—and so had a number of ideas on the subject. I shared with her my belief that only through art could the truth of a non-shared experience be transmitted.

  “Yes,” she said, “I believe you’re right.”

  “Poetry—good poetry, at least, like Stevens’s—must evolve as the natural product of the subconscious mind. But here, you see, I have a bit of a problem. I believe art must be useful. It must teach us. What I’m asking for is the moral superiority of the artist. Yet if it comes from the unconscious mind, and if it must serve or educate in some positive fashion, well, then I’m asking quite a lot of the poor sod, aren’t I?”

  “Doesn’t beauty count, Doctor?” she said. “What’s to be said for beauty?”

  “Beauty is an attribute of great art, I think, not the driving purpose behind it.”

  Later, after a pause in our weighty conversation, I turned to the niece and spoke of ornithology—she’d been enthralled by those seagulls—as well as doctoring and Vancouver’s Stanley Park, where I’d been told she often played with her little friends. By then I knew the child, Alicia, was as engaging, precocious and bright as her aunt. She spoke with great excitement about seeing her parents in Hong Kong, and asked many questions about what it was like “to make someone better again.” I told her it was a splendid feeling, that there was really nothing quite like it.

  “I should like to become ill while on board, then,” she said, “so you can cure me.”

  Alicia told me her father had once been gravely ill in Hong Kong, and a wonderful doctor had “cut him open” and “removed some things.” I was pleased, naturally, by her regard for the profession.

  *

  It was on a windless morning of making my rounds that my suspicions regarding Parsons were confirmed. I had, the day before, met the ship’s mascot, Baltazar, a blue and gold macaw. He was a constant fixture in the games room on the promenade deck, over which he regally presided, taking great joy in distracting serious gentlemen from their billiards with a well-timed squawk. I believe he was trying to say “bankshot” or “big shot” but “Bangkok” is also a distinct possibility. In any case he was an entertaining and intelligent bird. I watched him scramble various “parrot puzzles” with his claws. His principal keeper, a man named Mr. Wisniowski, administered the games room.

  Baltazar was thirty-four years old and had made the Empress his home for the past fifteen years. He’d been rescued from a house of ill-repute in Manila, so the story went, when the police raided the premises and hauled his caretakers away, leaving the poor bird alone and destitute. There was a whiff of nostalgia about him, and this seemed even more pronounced when he welcomed the occasional female visitor with a nasally triumphant “Bienvenida guapa!” His head was a deep blue with an emerald-green crown. His neck, which Mr. Wisniowski called his “beard.” though it looked nothing like it to me, was black, like his beak, and offered a striking contrast to his saffron-yellow underbelly. His primary feathers were a dark blue, his tail a somewhat softer blue. His rough cheeks looked as though he’d just endured a rather inexpert shave, though I was informed all macaws have only a thin striping of feathers there. His ice-blue eyes I found most penetrating.

  His primary enjoyments seemed to be swinging on his ropes, heckling or complimenting the room’s visitors, gnawing away at wooden chew toys and, of course, working on his puzzles, which Mr. Wisniowski had made, and I was invited to add to or improve if so inclined. He was remarkably agile with his sharp grey claws. He could remove the cork from a re-corked bottle in less than eight seconds, and delicately empty and refill a pack of cigarettes without shredding a single one. As if in encore he stripped a key chain of its owner’s keys while hanging upside-down. He was a talented fellow, that Baltazar. Likely he had learned many of his skills from the working ladies of Manila, and no doubt they miss the old bird now, wherever they are. Despite his raucous ways—he sometimes could be quite loud—he was a treasure to visit on my rounds of the ship, and a very welcome diversion.

  The day after meeting Baltazar I entered the games room only to find Parsons sitting on a bar stool in front of a snifter of brandy. “Will you have one with me, Doctor?” he asked. “Wet your whistle?” I told him it was a little early, though perhaps we could meet for a drink in a few hours’ time? I thought this perfectly reasonable. I wanted to voice my concern indirectly, and thereby keep things civil between us.

  “I’d be happy to invite you,” I said. “Anyway, we could go down to the Steerage Bar. This one’s a bit dear, I think.”

  “Not to worry,” he answered, touching his front pocket. “Courtesy of the CAC.”

  I said, “Of course, you’re aware that’s not your money to spend.”

  “Now, now, one or two won’t hurt, I’m sure.”

  “Doctor, I don’t care what you do on your own time.” I said, “but I’ll tell you this only once: that is not your money to spend.”

  I had met people like Parsons over the years. In Montreal. In Madrid. I knew his sort well enough, the selfish addiction, the lying. He was the wicked and lazy servant in the Parable of the Talents who’d buried his talents in a bottle of rye.

  Later, I found Jean on the promenade deck just outside the veranda café, bundled up and leaning against the railing watching the ocean. When I told her what I’d discovered, she clasped her hands over the railing and seemed justifiably concerned. I spoke in an even, hushed tone. We were shoulder to shoulder, close enough that I noticed the scent of her perfume, light, almost sweet, that came and went with the swirling wind. I suggested we come to an easy agreement as to our c
ourse of action regarding Charles, and to that end I recommended cabling New York with the demand that he be forced to provide an accounting of every last dime spent on board the Empress of Asia. This would definitively cut off his access to the remaining funds he carried.

  Waiting for her consent, I watched the water far below us swirl and lap up against the bow like a live animal. It was deep blue, almost black.

  “No,” she said at last, “I will not join you in this coup.”

  “Please, don’t let’s overdramatize,” I said. “This is merely a pragmatic reassignment of duties.”

  I went on to explain that only a directive from the China Aid Council would knock some sense into his sodden head, as he would never listen to us, certainly not to me. A strong scent of perfume came off her face then, or her neck.