A Choice of Evils

by Meira Chand

  Flora watched the shadows lengthen to consume the corridor. She would not be moved, even by Nadya. She kept seeing the clear, jewelled light of those bottles of blood, and imagined it swimming in Lily’s veins. What had they done with the baby? Did it have a shape, a face? Would it have a funeral? Would it be put in the incinerator? Terrible questions filled her. She could ask no one. The words would not form themselves.

  Through a half-open door she saw her mother sitting beside Lily’s bed, her head bowed in her hands. She heard a call for more blood. Nadya sat with Flora on the seat in the corridor. Once, towards evening, they let Flora in to see Lily, but she ran from the room of her own accord. Lily’s face was white as the pillow. There was a pearly, marbled look to her, like a waxwork of the Sleeping Beauty Flora had seen once in Shanghai. Through the night Nadya slept in the bed next to Flora, reaching out when necessary to calm her distress. Her mother, Flora knew, still sat in the room beside Lily. The cold stone in her stomach seemed to have swelled to fill every cell in Flora’s body. There was nothing she could do but pray. The words eventually lulled her to sleep.

  It was Nadya who told her in the morning. There had been no more blood for Lily. Without it her body had faded away, unable to sustain itself.

  ‘There were no choices,’ Nadya whispered.

  Martha appeared physically to shrink, pulled by invisible strings to some deep centre of her being. She shut herself away, incapable of comforting Flora. In the grief-stricken, guilt-stricken house it was Nadya who attempted to console the distraught Flora. Nothing she said seemed to penetrate Martha’s hide of sorrow.

  ‘She needs you,’ Nadya pleaded. Martha could do no more than put an arm weakly around the girl; anything else was beyond her.

  In her room Martha sought shadow, drawing the curtains close during the day. The sun was an aberration. Food came. She was aware of this, but in her mouth it turned to the texture of rubber or paper, and she pushed the plate away. Each morning she reached out and took down from a shelf the great nautilus shell she had found on a beach as a child. She sat with the shell on her lap, as she had so often through her childhood. It had been found upon the sand at Tsingtao. Bradley had been with them that summer. There had been a tussle, as to who should keep the magnificent shell. Eventually, Martha won and carried it home with pride. The pearly, many-chambered interior and twisting shape filled her with its mystery. All her life she had kept it near her. Against her ear it whispered, transporting where she wished. She heard again the spill of waves at Tsingtao, the soughing of wind in the trees, and the voice of her father explaining the construction of the giant shell. It had thirty-six chambers, and in the very last lived the nautilus, withdrawn from the world.

  On her lap now she stroked the smooth shell, and wondered at her connection to it after all these years. Many times she had held it to the light, seeking that inner sanctum where the nautilus once lived, and seen nothing but a labyrinth. In her mind she had tried so often to follow the twisting route to that final chamber but always, before she reached it, the map of knowledge was destroyed.

  Now, she held the shell again to her ear, and let it speak to her. Scenes rolled into her mind and then retreated, like the long-ago waves upon Tsingtao beach. She was without feeling. The shell transported her where it willed.

  She saw again a Jesuit church, visited once in Vienna on a voyage back from America. Its thick Rococo decoration bore down upon her, gold encrusted, layer upon layer. Great twisted pillars of pink marble rose up along the nave. Immediately, they had reminded her of the thick, muscular, bodies of snakes. The weight of the church pressed upon her. In spite of a profusion of gold, there appeared only darkness. A god of wrath and judgement lived here. She knew instinctively then, although her father was no Jesuit, this was the same God he worshipped.

  ‘What are we to do?’ she had cried when Bill did not return.

  ‘Wait. Pray,’ her father replied. Missionaries paid no ransom to kidnapping bandits. It was unbearable.

  ‘Pay, father. Give them what they want.’

  ‘We have no resource to His Will but prayer,’ Dr Keswick stubbornly replied. But later he approached with the old Bible.

  ‘You remember this, child?’ he asked. The Bible was the only possession they had with them when they were hidden in a loft by one of her father’s converts during the Boxer Uprising. It had been snatched up by Dr Keswick as they fled the rebels. Her father read aloud from it through their ordeal.

  Martha remembered again the terror of that loft. Kill them, kill them, the rioters cried, their yells mixed with the sound of blows and screams and falling tiles. All about was the smell of fire.

  ‘Read what is written on the front page,’ Dr Keswick had urged at the time of Bill’s disappearance. She had picked up the dog-eared book.

  Dr Keswick, although born in China, had no early memories of the country. He returned with his parents to America as a baby, when his father’s health collapsed, and did not see China again until an adult. Before leaving China his father had written in the Bible that had carried him through unknowable tribulations: Emmanuel, GOD is with us. Lo, I am with you always. Under this was Dr Keswick’s own writing.

  To my Father 10th July 1900

  We have been three days in the Riot and have been hiding in a loft. Very many miraculous escapes God has given us, but now they know we are here and it seems as if they are making arrangements to burn the building. The mission premises were destroyed and burned yesterday. Our luggage is gone. I have only saved this Bible. Several times they started smashing the roof of the very room in which we are hiding, but God stopped them doing it completely. We are in a ‘tight corner’. How the Lord is going to bring us through, I don’t know. But if He prefers to take us to Himself instead of our work we will rejoice. The Mandarins are not taking any steps to help us. They are afraid of the mob which is manifestly very infuriated.

  I want to bear testimony to the peace God has given us all, even in the midst of the gravest danger and most trying circumstances.

  It is wonderful to think that even by this very evening we may be with Him, and I may see my dear Mother once again. He doeth all things well. Praise Him! May blessing far surpassing aught we have seen result to China from these troublesome times.

  Below this was a further paragraph, also in her father’s handwriting, with a date three years later.

  The blessing is coming. China is being opened up. The last provincial capital has flung wide its gates – the messenger of the Gospel has entered in. Today, any city in China may be entered without let or hindrance. The walls of conservatism are tottering to their fall; the barriers of seclusion are broken down. China yields at last – ‘the Rock’ has opened! Praise the Lord.

  When eventually Bill’s body was found in a faraway place, spliced and hacked to pieces, the coffin was nailed down. Dr Keswick would not let her see the remains. She would allow no one near her, no talk, no comfort. She shut herself in her room. Her tears were few and swelled instead inside her. For a time Dr Keswick left her alone, then slipped a note beneath her door.

  For us in China there is a need of courage and joy. The day is difficult; we see not yet what China will be. We stand amid rocks and rapids. But the day is coming when all over this glorious land songs of praise shall rise from the homes and hearts that own our Saviour King. The day is coming when sorrow and sighing shall flee away. Our share in bringing it seems small; but it is a share, a part of His plan, a help toward the carrying out of His purpose. And you too, my dearest child, have a share as, step by step, you go on with Him.

  She began to scream. They held her down, splashed iced-water on her face, slapped her face, and still she screamed.

  She knew then there was no God. The heathens were right, not they. Her whole life had been a trick, played upon her by her father. He had seeded her here, in this terrible place, where they were unwanted. They were a thorn in the flesh of the massive body of China and could make not even a dent. Over all the decad
es of the mission in China what use were a miserable handful of converts? Did not most return to burning paper money for their dead? And what was so wrong with the heathen version of things? Its hypothesis was as cohesive as Christianity, its people no less aware of psyche and spirit. They did not preach superiority, nor pronounce God in their pocket. Her father had tricked her. He had made her a stranger to herself. He had crammed her early memories with decapitated heads on metal spikes, with the half-chewed corpses of babies, with killing and looting and strife and flight. Before her life had truly begun he had forced her to stare open-eyed at death. He had stolen her childhood away. She hated him. She hated everything to do with China. Her life was a struggle to stay afloat in an alien world. At last now the floating was over.

  Her scream became then a scream of relief. Dr Keswick had approached with a hypodermic. The dark limbo it brought had lasted over a year, until the day Flora found Lily.

  She still had that Bible. She picked it up and once again read her father’s faded writing on the first blank page. The old rage began again in her, creeping up to pulsate in her throat. No one now would approach with a hypodermic needle, pressing dark limbo upon her. The mistake after Bill had been to stop screaming, to allow her father to draw her back into a wooden life. She could scream now for ever, floating free upon the sound.

  She held the nautilus high, to catch the faint light from the curtained window. She closed her eyes and let her mind travel through its numerous pearly chambers, twisting and turning against its sides, smooth as the flesh of a lychee. And at last she saw that dark, secret chamber hidden far from the world. Its beauty echoed about her. It drew her in and enclosed her at last in its silent universe.

  Only Flora knew the truth. It was her fault. Nadya, with her usual spongy sympathy tried to dispel this as illusion. But that other person, buried deep within Flora, to whom she now turned for help, saw to the heart of it all.

  ‘It was you who killed her,’ said this person.

  She saw again Lily’s pale body, naked and thrashing, like a captured fish before the flesh of those men. Day after day without relief, she had to face these pictures now, alone. She had seen what it was they did to Lily in all its terrible detail. She had seen that secret, swollen weapon men held against their bodies. They had forced her to watch, holding her head. She could still feel their fingers gripping her skull. Making her watch. Now Lily was free of it all. Her death poured memories in a fresh deluge upon Flora. Their weight seemed many times multiplied, now that Lily was gone. How would she live with this weight?

  ‘If you had not left her nothing would have happened.’ The voice spoke again inside her.

  When she thought of Martha a great tiredness filled Flora so immense it overflowed the world. Now, forever, there was no escape. In death Lily would press the harder upon her. And Martha in life, but carrying that death, would settle upon her like suffocation. Between them they would press her to a pulp.

  ‘Come’, said the voice. She heard the seductive sounds again, like the singing of those Greek Sirens.

  She remembered again the head in the river, staring at her like a water sprite. She remembered the spiky eyelashes, and hair like waving ferns. The mouth had seemed to smile. He was her guide.

  ‘Come,’ said the voice again. ‘Nothing need be so much pain.’

  She turned back to the room where she had first seen the bottles of blood, like liquid ruby, promising life but deceiving with death. She knew what she sought and found it.

  It was still light. She turned out of the hospital towards the towpath by the river. At last she came to the water’s edge. She found a tuft of weeds near where she had seen the head. The seat was comfortable, a smooth back of grass supported her. Behind rose the ancient walls of Nanking. She thought of the centuries of their existence, the wave upon wave of sorrow they had witnessed.

  Dense clouds were lowering now across the sky. The horizon lay upon the earth like a dark, rent seam. The sky lifted free there, torn away from its root, ascending without end. Wide gaps opened up between the banks of cloud. Through these she could see the stratosphere beyond. A mysterious light seemed to radiate, not touching Nanking, but hanging above it, even as the clouds brought in the night.

  She took the small bottle from her pocket and, opening it, began to swallow the sweet, coated pills. The clouds had now parted upon the luminous sky as if to reveal a door of light. And far beneath lay the darkening earth, closing like a fist upon its own darkness, far from that magic light.

  Flora looked down into the water but could not see the head. She knew he was there somewhere, waiting to guide her. Protecting her. She began to feel sleepy. It was the pleasantest sensation she had had in days. Now, at last, she could sleep undisturbed. She looked up once more to the sky. The door of light stood open still.

  Martha sat without speaking in a chair. On her lap she held the nautilus. On the table beside her was an old Bible. Day after day she sat, silent and unmoving. Nadya led her to bed, helped her undress and wash, dressed her again the next day. Martha stared before her, lost to some far place, captive to its desolate landscape. Each day from the Bible she tore off two pages. These she shredded slowly, hour after hour. Scooping up the ripped bits she threw them at last in to the room like a shower of confetti. Each night she set the nautilus beside her bed, and stared at it anew. Again the next day she tore two pages from the old book, and set about the job of shredding. Slowly Nadya understood. She might never speak again.

  29

  Return to Hsinking

  April 1938

  As soon as Tilik returned to Hsinking, he went straight to Jun Hasegawa. He had thought about the matter of Teng throughout the long journey on military planes back to Manchukuo. There had been weeks of delay, first in Shanghai and then in Peking.

  Hasegawa’s hair was streaked with grey again. He had difficulty in Hsinking obtaining the hair dye he used in Japan. Nature’s reentrenchment gave him an air of new authority. He wore his glasses permanently now, and his lips were thin as string. The responsibility he had been given in Manchukuo sat upon him heavily. Tilik had to wait two days to see him.

  Beneath the customary odour of tobacco, Hasegawa reeked of menthol. ‘I have a permanent cold. This climate does not suit me. Dust and damp, and more dust.’ He sniffed loudly to demonstrate the state of his sinuses. The weak warmth of the Manchurian sun did not penetrate the high stone rooms of the building Hasegawa worked in. He dragged upon a cigarette and gave a hoarse cough. Taking the report Tilik handed him, he pushed it into a drawer. Tilik suppressed his anger.

  ‘Why were you so long? We have need of you here,’ Hasegawa did not hide his irritation.

  ‘They would not let me leave. I had no wish to stay through all that ugly business in Nanking,’ Tilik replied.

  ‘They’re wasting time, energy and manpower down there. Now I hear they want to push on south, to Canton, and also continue their chase after Chiang Kai-shek. Do they not realise we are fighting on two fronts, North and South? With the taking of Nanking the main objective of the China war has been won. The principal Chinese cities and railroads are in our hands. It is time now to turn and face Russia.’

  Hasegawa smashed his fist down on his desk in anger. What would happen, Tilik wondered, if this rage should ever turn upon him? After the incident with Teng in Nanking, he felt he walked a tightrope. What if it were ever discovered that the Communist had escaped because of him? Why had he done it? How had Nozaki persuaded him?

  When they had first met, Tilik remembered, Hasegawa had been a Strike South man, interested only in southern expansion. His term in Hsinking, so close to Russian troops, had changed his views. He was now convinced of the need to Strike North, at the Soviet Union. Hasegawa stood up and began to pace the room.

  ‘The Chinese have dynamited the levees along the Yellow River. It flowed back into its original course, flooding thousands of square miles of farmland. Do you know also how many thousands of our tanks, trucks and field guns ha
ve been lost in all that flood and mud, not to mention men? Tens of thousands of Chinese perished of course, but what does that matter to them? They die like ants anyway. The whole country is retreating before our troops, and as they go they flood and burn, leaving nothing behind for our army to eat.

  ‘Soon we will face defeats. The Chinese are not stupid, and we are overconfident. And these Communist guerrillas are everywhere, worse than damn mosquitoes. If we Strike North now at Russia, Chiang would die a natural death. Instead we’re making a hero of him. He gathers strength by our blundering.’ Hasegawa appeared a man under considerable strain.

  ‘They caught some Communist while I was in Nanking. I thought he seemed to match the description of that man we held here and who escaped. I asked to have a look at him, but he bore no resemblance whatever. I’ve put it all in the report.’ Tilik was anxious to get the facts stated.

  ‘I know all about it. They sent us a cable, wanted to know if we trusted you. Who do they think they are down there? If a man escaped it’s because of their own incompetence. I replied in the appropriate manner. Shouldn’t think they liked it. Those Strike South people don’t want the limelight off them, that’s why they’re holding up a Strike North. They and the Navy! There’ll be trouble soon up here. The men want to fight.’ Hasegawa pulled out a small metal flask from his desk, and took a drink.

  ‘Many of our Generals, you know, want an end to this war in China. It is a bottomless pit. It fritters away Japan’s vital military resources and will prevent us waging a more essential war on the Soviet Union. We must come to an accommodation with Chiang Kai-shek. That is the only way.’ Hasegawa took another mouthful from his flask.

  ‘Why don’t you let me go back to Japan?’ Tilik asked, sitting forward suddenly. His relief at Hasegawa’s reaction to the affair with Teng made him suddenly bold.