A Choice of Evils

by Meira Chand

  ‘I followed neither my head nor my heart, I followed my body’s needs. It was no good, he preferred men, but I was already out of Russia.’ There was a need to be honest with him.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘I hope you’re not so frank with every gentleman you meet. You might give the wrong impression.’

  ‘I thought I should tell you the truth,’ she said. The moonlight drained the colour from her blue dress, put new shadows in her face.

  He leaned forward to refill her wine, then raised his glass in a toast, as if something was settled between them. He held out his hand and she took it.

  6

  A State of Alert

  July 1937

  To reach Teng Li-sheng’s house Kenjiro Nozaki had to pass through the old districts of Nanking. The narrow streets were crowded with stalls selling roasted singing birds skewered on long sticks. Oil lamps flared. He visited Teng when possible at night. As always, he felt he was followed. If he turned quickly he imagined a figure slipped into a doorway. Or, perhaps, his mind only played strange tricks. He reached Teng’s lane, an alley no wider than a rickshaw, and knocked on the gate. Behind him the road was empty. The old servant came, coughing.

  ‘Is Professor Teng in?’ he asked.

  ‘He will be back soon.’ The man opened the gate.

  Kenjiro followed him across the small courtyard, into the house. The living room was furnished with a table and desk, cane chairs and an armchair poxed with burns from cigarette ash. As Kenjiro sat down, the loose springs of the chair moved beneath him.

  The old man reappeared with jasmine tea. Kenjiro took the blue patterned cup in his hands and leaned back. There was a peace in the room he found nowhere else in Nanking. He liked its battered sparseness and the view of bamboo outside the window. Something here returned him to himself. He had known Teng since their student days together in France. When Kenjiro was posted to Nanking he had been delighted to find Teng still in his job at the university, head of the department of Eastern Religions. Kenjiro sipped the jasmine tea and looked about the room. Books clothed the walls floor to ceiling, mostly on religion, magazines and gramophone records filled the table. As long as Teng had his books and music he needed little else, thought Kenjiro. Already, the anxiety that had stressed him all day began to drop away.

  There were sounds outside and Teng hurried in. ‘I’ve been at the university, everyone is working flat out. Bradley Reed has set a new deadline for the Encyclopaedia. He fears there may be war ahead and wants the work finished quickly. He’s sent his red-headed Russian assistant from Shanghai to breathe down our necks. She’s very pretty, so nobody minds.’

  Kenjiro was about to tell him he had already met Bradley Reed’s Russian assistant but Teng was regarding him with enquiry.

  ‘Has something happened?’ Teng asked, perceptive as always. Then, immediately, he waved aside Kenjiro’s first words of reply. ‘Wait, let us eat first. Bad news is always better on a full stomach.’ Teng ordered the servant to bring food.

  He strode across the room and began searching for a book on the packed shelves. The long blue Chinese gown with its high collar was dusty about the hem. Behind steel-rimmed spectacles his eyes were deep-set in a fleshy face, and framed by unruly grey hair. He sat down at the table, pushing the gramophone records to one side, and poured some Chinese wine into two small glasses. Drinking it down in a single gulp, he refilled their cups immediately. The servant returned to place steaming bowls of food before them. Kenjiro could no longer withhold his news.

  ‘The Embassy is in a state of alert. News started coming through yesterday. There’s been a skirmish outside Peking.’

  ‘What happened?’ Teng asked, spooning vegetables into his bowl. ‘The ginger pickle is good. Please help yourself.’

  ‘A detachment of soldiers was on night manoeuvres at the Marco Polo Bridge. One of our men left his unit and supposedly went missing. Not much provocation is ever needed as you know. There is a Chinese fort at the bridge. It didn’t take long before shelling started.’

  ‘There are continual skirmishes,’ Teng replied. ‘Every week brings news of yet another. Now, take some of this pork, the old man cooks well but has outdone himself today.’

  ‘This time I think it’s serious,’ Kenjiro replied. His anxiety spilt into impatience with Teng. On the wall hung a calendar, its date already two days old: 7th July 1937. Kenjiro stood up and tore off the couple of pages.

  ‘Remember this date. You might soon wish you could forget it.’ He slapped the pieces of paper down on the table, pushing the red number seven before Teng.

  ‘As bad as that?’ Teng asked, looking up briefly over his bowl and chopsticks. ‘Sit down, my friend. You’re overwrought and lonely. You should have married again after Jacqueline. You’re not a man to live alone, like me. I should introduce you to our Russian beauty at the university. She might persuade you there is a lighter side to life,’ Teng chuckled.

  ‘I have met her,’ Kenjiro announced and explained the circumstances. He detected no evidence that Teng had comprehended yet the seriousness of his news. The breeze from the fan lifted the calendar sheets from the table. The red numbers fluttered across the floor.

  Kenjiro leaned forward. ‘Peking will fall quickly,’ he warned. Japan saw the Chinese Army as ludicrously untrained, and the country as an amorphous mass with a government powerless to maintain order. Although he said nothing to Teng, Kenjiro knew hundreds and thousands of troops would be despatched into the area and ordered to attack Peking.

  Teng put down his chopsticks and wiped his mouth on a handkerchief. ‘I hope you’re not right. No doubt General Chiang Kaishek will now move in his best troops, those trained by his German commander. The “critical hour” he’s always talking about may soon be upon us. Or perhaps, as my sources tell me, if there is war he’ll leave the north to its fate and concentrate on defending the south. He will prefer to fight on home ground. Shanghai and Nanking are more easily defended.’ Teng’s voice hardened suddenly. He surveyed the dishes before him and helped himself to some rice.

  ‘Leave Nanking, go inland where it will be safe.’ Kenjiro picked without appetite at the food. His apprehension was not just for the possible approach of war, but the stress of his friendship with Teng. Where would it lead him? The first time they met it had led him to Jacqueline. It had been Teng who convinced him to follow his feelings and ignore his father’s wrath. Meetings with Teng were rarely innocuous in Kenjiro’s experience. And yet, already the difference was clear. They were no longer two radically minded students in France, but adult men involved in critical times.

  ‘I cannot leave here.’ Teng threw up his hands. ‘First the Encyclopaedia must be finished. Do you know how many years and how many people have been working on it? At last now the end is in sight. Let us see what happens with this particular skirmish.’

  ‘I came here to warn you,’ Kenjiro sat back, defeated.

  ‘I thank you, old friend, but I must make my own decisions.’ Teng smiled sadly.

  It was no longer possible to talk as they had in their student past. Words were no longer innocuous things. Now, if war began he would be needed. The United Front had been forced upon Chiang Kaishek. Even though differences between all the political parties had been put aside to fight Japan, Teng could not see it holding. Chiang feared the Reds too much. Instead of fighting the Japanese Imperial Army, he still turned to fight Communists whenever he could. His Gestapo, the Blueshirts, still arrested Communists and exterminated Red troops or villages that supported them. Yenan was as blockaded as before. The Eighth Route Army would need arms, money, whatever could be raised, the peasants whatever help could be given. With or without the Japanese it would be war with Chiang. If the Japanese occupied China, the Communist task was only doubled. If there was war, Teng would be in the thick of it; his support for the Communists was wholehearted. He could never admit the real depth and direction of his political commitment. Such admissions would endanger both himself and his friend. Kenjir
o knew him to be a liberal-minded man; that was enough weight to place on the trust between them.

  Across the table Kenjiro observed Teng’s impassive face. He hoped his liberal views were not propelling him towards danger. Was it possible that Teng was a Communist? He pushed the uncomfortable thought away. In those Paris days it did not matter that they were infatuated with liberal ideals. Communism had the glamour of a new age, all their friends discussed it. Now, it was dangerous to sit on the borderline of such thought. In Nanking, the centre of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist regime, those who supported the Communist underground movement put their lives at risk. But, as always, Teng appeared an extraordinary character releasing Kenjiro from a stifling world of bureaucrats. He could think no further than the need to break out of that rigid world. It was as if some dark substance were cleansed from him when he was with Teng. Afterwards, he was left with a loathing for himself. Contact with Teng only made him aware of how, each day of his life, he betrayed even further his own ideals.

  They seemed to pick up where they left off in Paris, debating with a frankness Kenjiro had forgotten could exist. They still spoke in French and sometimes Japanese, which Teng had studied. It was Jacqueline who had introduced them; Teng was with her at the Sorbonne. To Jacqueline then all Orientals had appeared as one. They had spent much time in those far off days, enlightening her about their ethnic differences. In speaking of such things, the long-held barriers of national distrust were broken down between them. Teng’s wife had remained in China while he studied in France. The marriage was not happy and ended soon after he returned to Nanking. He had never remarried, and had once told Kenjiro he had taken a vow of celibacy. Even in their student days he had the look of a monk about him. Through Teng, like the scent of old perfume released from a long closed cupboard, Kenjiro again touched Jacqueline and that other life he had once lived.

  ‘Why must there be war?’ Teng sighed now across the table. ‘Why can Japan not leave us alone?’ It was inconceivable they could soon face each other as enemies.

  Kenjiro pursed his lips. ‘What are we as a nation before China, before your great history. What does Japan have that is not taken from China, from chopsticks and Buddhism, to rice and city planning? Sometimes I think there is a need in our national subconscious to avenge this debt, to show China we have come of age.’ As he spoke Teng’s expression changed to sudden fury.

  ‘To hell with your national subconscious.’ Teng shouted, thumping his fist upon the table, making Kenjiro start. Then, with an effort, he collected himself. There was much he wished he could say to Kenjiro and dare not. He had a secret life, unknown to the people he met each day at the university. Just that morning he had visited Grandma Chao, a famous old rebel, unlike any other bandit. She was an apparently respectable grandmother, fifty or sixty, totally illiterate. At present she was hiding in Nanking, gathering arms and ammunition to send to her group of guerrillas. She was from Manchuria, and had tasted Japanese rule. She knew of murder and rape and looting. Her family were wiped out by the Japanese army in 1932. Teng had promised to raise two thousand dollars for her, but he could tell none of this to his friend.

  Kenjiro was shocked at the anger in Teng’s voice. Annoyance pulsed through him. He was not without pride in the expansion of Japanese power, the might of a small nation against the giant. He was still a patriot. It was only too clear where he and Teng now parted in the matter of ideals.

  ‘Are we to take sides against one another?’ he asked. Teng ignored the remark. Kenjiro tried again.

  ‘For forty years we have been wresting territory from China: Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria, Jehol, Inner Mongolia. Now it seems we want what is south of the Great Wall. Even though I suspect the United Front is not so united, to Tokyo it makes our policy of leisurely annexation obsolete. There is no place in Japan for sceptics like me. I have this terrible feeling inside me. When I think of the future I see a black cloud. I saw such a cloud once from a burning village our army had sacked in Manchuria. I keep seeing that cloud now again when I think of the future. Marco Polo Bridge is not a passing incident; it is the spark to light a fire.’

  ‘Wait, see what happens, we have had months of these skirmishes,’ Teng repeated. His tone was now one of weariness.

  It was a hot morning. A ceiling fan swept round above Kenjiro’s chair. There was a note from Fukutake already upon his desk. Kenjiro wiped the sweat from his neck with a handkerchief and sipped the clear tea in a glass before him. The desks of four colleagues pressed about him in the office, making the room seem even smaller and hotter. From the window he had a view of Ginling Women’s University, and beyond it the red walls of the Drum Tower upon its raised island of greenery. It was impossible this morning to ignore the buzz in the Embassy. As he had indicated to Teng, the Marco Polo Bridge skirmish was no ordinary clash. No doubt Fukutake wished to see him in relation to the event.

  Fukutake’s office was large as befitted his superior status, with the desks of only two assistants in a corner. Kenjiro was at ease with Fukutake. Although he was older than Kenjiro, they had been at the same school and then at the same university together. Fukutake’s father had worked in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry under Kenjiro’s father. They had been posted together once before in Delhi.

  Across the desk Fukutake shuffled a pile of papers. He gave a cursory greeting and told Kenjiro to sit down. His usual affability was absent. He pulled a document from the pile before him and ordered his assistant to take it to another department. He waited until the man left the room before turning to Kenjiro.

  ‘There is a complaint against you. It has travelled at this point no further than my desk.’ Fukutake stared at him fixedly.

  ‘Complaint?’ Kenjiro frowned, his mind ran over a list of possibilities. ‘You have a Chinese friend, I believe. Although nothing has yet been proved, there are some worrying rumours surrounding his politics. I would advise you not to see him again.’ Fukutake kept his voice low in the empty room.

  Shock flushed through Kenjiro. He remembered the shadows that seemed always behind him. In the Embassy at Nanking, as in all his other postings, Kenjiro was conscious of how he conducted himself, how others saw him. At the beginning of his career it had been difficult

  to swallow down opinions, to agree with views that were not his own. But in time he became adept at lies.

  ‘He is an old friend from my student days in Paris,’ Kenjiro protested. ‘It is not my fault he lives here. Would you have me ignore a friend?’

  ‘I understand,’ Fukutake said. ‘Believe me. I sympathise, but these

  are difficult times. You are no longer a student but a diplomat. We may soon be at war with China. We cannot fraternise too freely with these people. It has been rumoured your friend may have Communist ties. I tell you this for your own good.’ Fukutake spoke with the frankness of old acquaintance.

  ‘How do you know I have met this man?’ Kenjiro controlled a sudden surge of anger.

  ‘Do not ask me that.’ Fukutake held up his hand. ‘I can only say it is none of us here in the Embassy who have imparted this information,’ he added quickly, lowering his voice even further.

  The Kempeitai, the secret police, must be even more active than he had thought, Kenjiro decided. There was no other way Fukutake could have known of his visits to Teng.

  ‘Nozaki, listen. I know you have a past, and these are dangerous times. We must all toe the line. Only the most foolhardy would step out of order,’ Fukutake advised, dropping all formality. He spoke in a quiet, pointed manner, looking directly at Kenjiro.

  ‘Who has been talking to you?’ Kenjiro asked, anger flaring anew in him. How could Fukutake know why he had left Japan? ‘My past is a few student thoughts and a rash article or two.’ Would he never throw off doubt in establishment eyes? Was his name to be listed forever in the thick files of the Kempeitai?

  ‘That may be, but you know as well as I, many are in prison for less.’ Fukutake leaned forward, his voice filled with urgency. ‘T
his is a good posting, do not spoil it for yourself. It means something to be here in China, especially in these times.’

  Kenjiro bowed in reluctant submission. Fukutake was right. He had been surprised at his posting as Cultural Attaché to such a diplomatic hotbed, in the immediate firing line of Japanese ambition. To be sent to Nanking seemed a sign from the powers above that he might soon be rehabilitated; silence and diligence had proved his remorse for earlier misguided ways. It was nearly nine years since he had left Japan. As always his father was at work behind the scenes, doing what he could.

  Returning from Fukutake’s room, he busied himself at his desk, refusing to join his colleagues talk about the incident at Marco Polo Bridge. He had a sudden feeling of isolation. Were any of these men, he wondered, in the pay of the Kempeitai?

  ‘What has happened to you, Nozaki? You appear to me as if shut up in a box,’ Teng had said at their first meeting in Nanking.

  ‘That is exactly how I feel,’ Kenjiro had answered with a laugh. He could think of no one in all the years since Jacqueline’s death with whom he could share not only memories, but such freedom of expression. He felt boxed in more firmly now than ever before.

  At last, in the early evening, he was able to leave the Embassy. He made his way to the hall where the Asia Conference was to be held. A banner, draped across the front of the building, proclaimed in red letters, ‘Asia for Asians’. Kenjiro stood back. Evening darkened the sky but a light had been trained on the words. The Asia Conference had been arranged jointly by the Japanese Embassy and the Free Asia Movement. He had been involved in securing the venue and accommodation for delegates. The conference had created considerable interest. Participants came not only from all over China, but from other Asian countries. The last conference in Dairen several years before had been a success.