by Pablo Neruda
I handed him the letter from his friend Joliot-Curie. He told me he had great respect for the French scientist, and took his time reading the letter. In it Joliot-Curie spoke of me and asked Nehru to assist me in my mission. He finished, put the letter back into its envelope, and looked at me without a word. It suddenly struck me that my presence provoked an involuntary dislike in him. It also crossed my mind that this man with a bilious complexion must be going through a bad physical, political, or emotional experience. There was something high and mighty about him, something stiff, as if he was accustomed to giving orders but lacked the strength of a leader. I recalled that his father, Pandit Motilal, zamindar or landowner of the old breed of feudal lords, had been Gandhi’s grand treasurer and had helped the Congress movement not only with his political wisdom but also with his large fortune. I thought perhaps the silent man before me had in some subtle way reverted to a “zamindar” and was staring at me with the same indifference and contempt he would have shown one of his barefoot peasants.
“What shall I tell Professor Joliot-Curie when I return to Paris?”
“I shall answer his letter,” he said dryly.
I was silent for a few minutes that seemed an eternity. Apparently Nehru did not feel at all like saying anything more to me, yet he didn’t show the slightest sign of restlessness, as if it would have been all right for me to remain there without any reason whatever, squelched by the feeling that I was wasting the time of such an important man.
I felt that I had to say a few words about my mission. The cold war threatened to turn red-hot at any moment now. A new cataclysm could swallow humanity. I mentioned the terrible danger of nuclear weapons. And how important it was for those who want to avoid war to stick together.
He continued buried in his thoughts, as if he hadn’t heard me. After a few moments he said, “As a matter of fact, both sides are pelting each other with arguments about peace.”
“Personally,” I said, “I think all those who talk of peace or want to contribute something to it can belong to the same side, to the same movement. We don’t want to exclude anyone, except those who preach revenge and war.”
There was more silence. I realized that the conversation was over. I rose to my feet and put out my hand to take my leave. He shook my hand silently. As I walked to the door, he asked, with some friendliness, “Can I do anything for you? Is there anything you would like?”
I am very slow to react, and unfortunately for me, I am not malicious. However, for once in my life, I took the offensive: “Oh, yes! I almost forgot. I lived in India once, but I have never had a chance to visit the Taj Mahal, which is so close to New Delhi. This would have been a good time to see that magnificent monument, if the police had not notified me that I can’t leave the city limits and must return to Europe as soon as possible. I am going back tomorrow.”
Pleased with myself at getting in my little thrust, I said goodbye quickly and left the office. The hotel manager was waiting for me at the reception desk. “I have a message for you. They’ve just called from the government offices to tell me that you may visit the Taj Mahal whenever you wish.”
“Get my bill ready,” I said. “I’m sorry I have to pass up that visit. I’m going to the airport right now, I’m taking the first plane to Paris.”
Five years later, in Moscow, I had occasion to sit on the annual Lenin Peace Prize committee, an international assembly of which I was a part. When the moment came to present and vote on the year’s candidates, the Indian delegate proposed Prime Minister Nehru’s name. The shadow of a smile crossed my face, but none of the others on the jury understood it, and I voted affirmatively. The international prize consecrated Nehru as one of the champions of world peace.
MY FIRST VISIT TO CHINA
I visited China twice after the revolution. The first time was in 1951, the year I was one of those commissioned to take the Lenin Peace Prize to Madam Soong Ch’ing-ling, Sun Yat-sen’s widow.
She was receiving the gold medal for which she had been proposed by Kuo Mo-jo, vice premier of China and a writer. Kuo Mo-jo was also vice chairman of the prize committee, together with Aragon. Anna Seghers, the filmmaker Alexandrov, several others I don’t remember, Ehrenburg, and I were also on the jury. There was a secret alliance between Aragon, Ehrenburg, and me which had enabled us to see that the prize was given, in other years, to Picasso, Bertolt Brecht, and Rafael Alberti. It had not been easy, of course.
We left for China on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Getting into that legendary train was like boarding a ship that sailed on land into infinite and mysterious distances. Everything around me was yellow, for leagues and leagues, on either side of the window. It was mid-autumn and all we could see were silver birches with their yellow petals. And then, farther than the eye could see, the prairie, tundra, or taiga. From time to time, the stations of new cities. Ehrenburg and I would get out to stretch our legs. At the stations, peasants crowded in the waiting rooms with their bundles and suitcases, waiting for the train.
We barely had time to walk around a little in those places. They were all the same; each had a statue of Stalin, made of cement. Sometimes it was painted silver, and sometimes gold. Of the dozens we saw, all exactly alike, I don’t know which was uglier, the silver or the gilt. Back on the train, Ehrenburg entertained me for a whole week with his skeptical and witty conversation. He was a deeply patriotic Russian, but he discussed many aspects of life in that era, smiling sardonically.
He had arrived in Berlin with the Red Army. He was undoubtedly the most brilliant war correspondent there has ever been. The Red soldiers loved this eccentric, shy man. Not long before, in Moscow, he had shown me two presents those soldiers had given him, after unearthing them from the German ruins. They were a rifle made by Belgian gunsmiths for Napoleon Bonaparte, and two minuscule volumes of the works of Ronsard, printed in France in 1650. The little volumes were singed, and stained with rain or blood.
Ehrenburg donated Napoleon’s beautiful rifle to the French museums. “What do I want it for?” he said to me, stroking the tooled cannon and the burnished gunstock. But Ronsard’s tiny books he lovingly kept for himself.
Ehrenburg was an ardent Francophile. On the train he recited one of his clandestine poems for me. It was a short love song to France, addressing her as the woman he loved.
I call the poem clandestine because this was the era when accusations of cosmopolitanism were rife in Russia. Newspapers often carried charges of obscurantism; all modern art seemed cosmopolitan to them. Such and such a writer or painter would fall into disgrace and suddenly have his name obliterated, under such a charge. Thus, like a hidden flower, Ehrenburg’s Francophile poem had to keep its tenderness to itself.
Much of what Ehrenburg showed me would soon disappear forever during Stalin’s dark night, disappearances I tended to blame on their dissident and contradictory character.
With his unruly locks, deep wrinkles, nicotine-stained teeth, cold gray eyes, and melancholy smile, Ehrenburg was the old skeptic, the great disillusioned man. I had recently opened my eyes to the great revolution and was blind to sinister details. I found little to quarrel with in the general poor taste of the time or in those statues smeared with gold and silver. Time would prove that I was not right, but I don’t think even Ehrenburg fully realized the immensity of the tragedy. Its magnitude would be revealed to us all by the Twentieth Congress.
* * *
The train seemed to move over the yellow stretches at a snail’s pace, day after day, birch after birch. We had passed the Ural Mountains and were crossing Siberia.
We were having lunch in the dining car one day, when a table occupied by a soldier caught my eye. He was very drunk. He was a smiling young fellow whose cheeks bloomed with health. He kept ordering raw eggs from the waiter which he would break and drop on his plate with glee. Then he would immediately ask for a couple more. Judging by his ecstatic grin and his childish blue eyes, he was feeling mellower all the time. And he must have been at it for
quite some time, because the yolks and whites were beginning to slide dangerously over the side of his plate, falling onto the floor of the car. “Tovarich!” the soldier called out to the waiter with enthusiasm and ordered new eggs to increase his treasure.
My eyes were fastened eagerly on this surrealist scene, so innocent and so unexpected in that Siberian emptiness, an oceanic setting.
The alarmed waiter finally called a military policeman. The guard, who was heavily armed, looked down at the soldier sternly, towering over him. But the soldier took no notice and went on busily breaking more and more eggs. I fully expected the policeman to jolt the wastrel out of his daydream. But I couldn’t believe my eyes. The herculean guard sat down next to the boy, stroked his blond head tenderly, and began talking to him quietly, smiling, convincing him. Then he suddenly lifted him gently from his seat and led him away by the arm, like an older brother, through the car door to the station and into the streets of the town.
I thought bitterly of what would have happened to a poor drunken Indian if he had started breaking eggs on a trans-equatorial train.
* * *
During those trans-Siberian days, Ehrenburg could be heard energetically hammering away, morning and afternoon, at his typewriter keys. There he finished The Ninth Wave, his last novel before The Thaw. For my part, I wrote, only sporadically, some of Los versos del capitán, love poems for Matilde, published anonymously later in Naples.
We left the train in Irkutsk. Before catching the plane for Mongolia, we went down for a stroll by the lake, celebrated Lake Baikal, at the border of Siberia, the door to freedom in the rime of the Tsars. The thoughts and dreams of prisoners and exiles wandered off toward that lake. It was the only possible way of escape. Baikal! Baikal! Low-pitched Russian voices still repeat it now, singing the old ballads.
The Institute for the Study of Lakes invited us to lunch. The scientists let us in on their secrets. No one has ever been able to determine the exact depth of this lake, son and eye of the Ural Mountains. Some unusual fish are taken from two thousand feet down, blind fish pulled out of its night-black depths. My appetite was whetted immediately and I asked the scientists if I could try a couple of those exotic fish at table. I am one of the few persons in the world who has eaten fish from those abysses, washed down with good Siberian vodka.
From there we flew to Mongolia. I have a hazy memory of that lunar landscape whose inhabitants still live in nomad’s tents, while they establish their first printing presses, their first universities. On all sides of Ulan Bator a circular, infinite wasteland opens out, like the Atacama Desert in my country, interrupted only by clusters of camels that make the solitude more archaic. Incidentally, I tasted Mongolian whiskey, in magnificently wrought silver cups. Every people makes its alcoholic beverages from what they can. This one was made of fermented camel’s milk. Shivers still run up and down my spine when I recall its taste. But how wonderful to have been in Ulan Bator! More so for someone like me who lives in all beautiful names. I live in them as in dream mansions intended just for me. And so I have lived, relishing every syllable, in Singapore’s, in Samarkand’s names. When I die, I want to be buried in a name, some especially chosen, beautiful-sounding name, so that its syllables will sing over my bones, near the sea.
* * *
The Chinese are among the people in the world who smile the most. They smile through implacable colonialism, revolutions, famines, massacres, as no other people can. The smile of Chinese children is the most beautiful harvest of rice ever threshed by this immense populace.
But there are two kinds of Chinese smiles. There is a natural one that lights up the wheat-colored faces. This is the smile of the peasants and the vast majority of people. The other is a detachable, false smile that can be pasted on below the nose, and taken off. It’s the smile of the officials.
When Ehrenburg and I landed for the first time at the Peking airport, it was hard for us to tell the two kinds of smiles apart. The real, the best ones, went around with us for many days. These were the smiles of our Chinese fellow writers, novelists and poets who welcomed us with noble hospitality. So we met Ting Ling, novelist, Stalin Prize winner, chairman of the Writers’ Union; Mao Tung, Siao Emi, and charming Ai Ch’ing, old Communist and prince of Chinese poets. They spoke French or English. They were all dragged under by the Cultural Revolution years later. But at the time of our visit they were the flower of Chinese literature.
The next day, after the award-giving ceremony for the Lenin Prize, called the Stalin Prize then, we dined at the Soviet Embassy. In addition to the lady being honored, there was Chou En-lai, old Marshal Chu Teh, and several others. The ambassador had been a hero of Stalingrad, a typical Soviet soldier, who sang and called for one toast after another. I was seated next to Soong Ch’ing-ling, very dignified and still quite beautiful. She was the most respected female personality of the day.
Each of us had a small crystal decanter filled with vodka all to himself. There were frequent calls of “Kanpai,” a Chinese toast that obliges you to drain your glass at one gulp, without leaving a drop. Old Marshal Chu Teh, across from me, never stopped filling his glass and, with his wide peasant’s grin, egged me on to a new toast every few minutes. At the end of the meal, I chose a moment when the old strategist’s attention was diverted to try a drink from his bottle of vodka. My suspicions were confirmed. I discovered that the Marshal had been drinking just water with his meal, while I was gulping down large quantities of liquid fire.
At coffee time, my neighbor at table, Soong Ch’ing-ling, the marvelous woman we had come to honor, drew a cigarette out of her case. Then, with an exquisite smile, she held it out to me. “No, I don’t smoke, thank you,” I said to her. I admired her cigarette case, and she said, “I keep it as a memento of something very important in my life.” It was a stunning object, solid gold, studded with diamonds and rubies. After examining it with great care and praising it once again, I returned it to its owner.
She forgot very quickly that I had given it back to her, because as we rose from the table she turned to me with a piercing look and said, “My cigarette case, please?”
I was positive I had returned it to her, but looked for it, anyway, on the table, then under it, without success. Sun Yat-sen’s widow’s smile had vanished and two black eyes pierced through me like implacable rays of light. The sacred object could not be found anywhere, and I was starting to feel absurdly responsible for its loss. Those two black rays were about to convince me that I was a jewel thief.
Fortunately, when I could bear it no longer, I saw the cigarette case reappear in her hands. She had simply found it in her bag, of course. She recovered her smile, but I did not smile again for ages. Now I have an idea that the Cultural Revolution probably relieved her of the lovely gold cigarette case for good.
* * *
At that time of year the Chinese wore blue, blue mechanics’ coveralls that clothed men and women alike, giving them a unanimous, sky-blue look. No ragged clothing. But no automobiles either. Thick crowds packed every place, flowed in from everywhere.
It was the second year of the revolution. There must have been shortages and difficulties in many places, but these were not noticeable in our tours of Peking. What particularly bothered Ehrenburg and me were small details, small tics in the system. When we wanted to buy a pair of socks and a handkerchief, it turned into a problem of state. Our Chinese comrades discussed it among themselves. After nervous deliberation on their part, we left the hotel in a caravan. Our car was in the lead, with those of the guards, the police, the interpreters bringing up the rear. The flock of cars roared off, opening its way through the crowd, which was always dense. We rolled like an avalanche down the narrow channel opened by the people. When we reached the store, our Chinese friends jumped out, quickly herded all customers out of the store, halted traffic, formed a barrier with their bodies, a human passageway Ehrenburg and I went through with our heads down, to come out fifteen minutes later, our heads down once more, each wi
th a little package in his hands, firmly determined never to buy another pair of socks in China.
These things used to infuriate Ehrenburg. Take the case of a restaurant, which I’m going to relate now. At the hotel they would serve us the awful English food China inherited from its colonial rulers. I am a great admirer of Chinese cooking and I told my young interpreter that I was dying to try Peking’s famous cuisine. He replied that he would check into it.
I don’t know whether he really did, but we had to go on chomping on the hotel’s dull roast beef. I spoke to him about it again. He looked thoughtful and said to me, “Our comrades have met together several times to look into the situation. The problem is about to be solved.”
On the following day an important member of the welcoming committee came to see us. After putting his smile on right, he asked if we really wanted to eat Chinese food. Ehrenburg said yes, definitely. I added that I had been familiar with Cantonese food since boyhood and was eager to taste the truly famous Peking condiments.
“This is somewhat of a problem,” the Chinese comrade said, with a worried air. Silence. A shake of his head. Then he went on: “Almost impossible.”
Ehrenburg smiled his confirmed skeptic’s wry smile. I, on the other hand, was fit to be tied. “Comrade,” I said to him, “please prepare my papers for my return to Paris. If I can’t have Chinese food in China, I’ll have it in the Latin Quarter, where it is not a problem.”
My violent response got results. Four hours later, with our numerous committee leading the way, we arrived at a famous restaurant where they had prepared glazed duck for five hundred years. An exquisite, memorable dish.
Open day and night, the restaurant was a short three hundred meters from our hotel.