My Several Worlds (50 page)

“Professor Kiang Kang-Hu gave his own case away by his ‘ancestral portrait’ illustration. Though painted when the subject is alive, it is completed posthumously and must be treated with a certain technique. The person represented must be shown in a prescribed posture—‘full face with both ears’—and in ceremonial dress. Certain conventions must be followed—even if they prevent a faithful likeness and violate all rules of perspective and light and shade. In the case of a mandarin the ‘official button’ must be visible. Professor Kiang’s criticism of Mrs. Buck’s pictures of Chinese life is that the conventions have not been observed by her: that China has been painted ‘with a half black and half white face,’ and that the official button is missing.

“Mrs. Buck admits that she has not painted the conventional portrait. She used lights and shades in presenting the Chinese individual as she saw him in her life, both among the common people and the intellectuals. As to accuracy of detail, she is able to furnish abundant evidence from the region of China in which she spent many years from childhood up. Local custom varies so widely in China that no one can lay down a sweeping statement. She verified her localized accounts by reading them to her neighboring Chinese friends. Professor Kiang’s criticism is that she depended too much upon Chinese ‘coolies’ and ‘amahs,’ rather than the ‘handful of intellectuals,’ as she characterized those who speak so contemptuously of the common people, from whom they are separated by a portentous gulf that seems to her impassable.

“To Mrs. Buck they who form the great majority of the population of China are rightly representative of the vast, rich, somber, joyous Chinese life, the splendid common people, living their tremendous lusty life against the odds of a calamitous nature, a war-torn government, a small indifferent aristocracy of intellectuals.

“They are China’s strength and glory, bearing with notable fortitude the vicissitudes of their times. One does not have to read old texts, as Professor Kiang deems necessary, in order to understand and interpret the China of today. No conventionalized painting of the life there can persuade the West that the people really look like the ancestral portraits which Professor Kiang would have us accept as truly representative of the Celestial Empire. Mrs. Buck has enabled us to witness and appreciate the patience, frugality, industry and indomitable good humor of a suffering people, whose homes the governing intellectuals would hide from the sight of the world.”

To return to the dinner with the students in New York—it was a delightful occasion, but my intuitive sixth sense, developed through years of living among the Chinese, warned me that it had a deeper purpose than mere courtesy. This purpose would be revealed in the final speech, of course, and so I waited in amused anticipation. In due time the last speaker arose, a handsome earnest young Chinese whose name I have forgotten, and after much flattery and congratulation the pith of the evening was revealed. They did not want the translation of
Shui Hu Chüan,
or
All Men Are Brothers
, to be published for westerners to read. And why? Because, the young man said, there are parts of it which describe a renegade priest eating human flesh, in his desperate hunger.

“The westerners will think we Chinese are uncivilized if they read this book,” the handsome young man said, flushing very red.

It was difficult to refuse their request after so fine a dinner, and I replied as politely as I could, but firmly. I begged them to consider that the book was hundreds of years old, older than Shakespeare. Had the English wished to suppress
Macbeth
, for example, because of the witches, what a loss to literature everywhere in the world! Surely the greatness of China, and so on—

What made me sad was that here gathered about the long table in New York I saw the same young Chinese men who at home were earnestly and unconsciously destroying their own country and its culture. Yet they could not understand what they were doing, for they could not believe it when told. I had already learned that people can be taught only what they are able to learn. It was a lesson I needed to remember years later in my own country. By that time Dr. Kiang had died in a Communist prison in China and Communists were the rulers there.

I returned to China that year by way of Europe, lingering in England and the exquisite Lake Country. A lovely haze hangs over the memory of that prewar England, a succession of scenes and experiences. In quiet towns and old villages the Second World War seemed as impossible as once the First World War had seemed, and the countryside was steeped in beauty.

One day leaps forward to be remembered. The Sidney Webbs had invited me to luncheon and I had accepted. They were already old and living in the country, and though they had given me meticulous driving directions, I lost my way once or twice and was a little late. At last I turned into the probable lane, and there at the far end I saw two figures who surely could never have existed except in England. Upon a wooden bench, immobile and waiting, they sat together, Sidney Webb with his hands crossed upon the gold knob of his walking stick, his beard upthrust as he gazed steadfastly down the lane, and beside him Mrs. Webb very straight and rigid in a full-skirted grey cotton frock and a white mobcap, also gazing down the lane. When they saw my car they rose, side by side, waved vigorously and then walked ahead as guides, Mrs. Webb turning now and then to shake her head to prevent me from stopping the car to descend and then waving again to indicate that I was to follow. In a few minutes we reached a neat lawn and a modest-looking house. I stopped and got out and we shook hands.

“You lost your way,” Mrs. Webb said in an accusing voice.

“I did,” I replied, and apologized.

“Surely the instructions were clear?” she said, still severely.

I explained my habitual stupidity in the matter of directions, which they accepted without contradiction.

Everybody was waiting, two maids, a dog and another guest, an American man, and almost at once we were seated at the table, Mrs. Webb still in the mobcap, whose ruffle hung over her face to the extent of reminding one of the Marchioness and Dick Swiveller. Of that memorable day I actually remember only these, to me amazing, incidents. In the middle of the luncheon conversation which consisted of a duet between the Webbs while the two guests listened, the American, a rather stolid and humorless young man, new to England, startled us all by mishandling the siphon bottle of soda water and accidentally releasing a volume of fizzing water full into Sidney Webb’s face. He was talking at the time, and the American was so aghast at what had happened that he could not instantly remove his finger from the siphon. Streams of water dripped down Sidney Webb’s cheeks, wet his beard and fell into his plate. He gave one subdued gasp and then went straight on as though nothing was happening. Mrs. Webb, too, sternly ignored the incident, her attention to her food resolutely unshaken, while one maid snatched the bottle from the American and the other seized Sidney Webb’s plate. Mrs. Webb then took over the conversation with courage while Sidney Webb wiped his face surreptitiously with his napkin, his interest fixed politely upon what she was saying. The American was speechless and so continued to the end of the meal.

After it was over, Mrs. Webb announced that we would take a walk, for her husband’s health. He looked unwilling although he prepared to obey, and when we went out allowed the Americans to go ahead with his wife while he muttered to me that he did hate these walks. We went on, nevertheless, Mrs. Webb at a tremendous pace and stopping every few minutes to turn and beckon us on. After an hour of this we went back to the house and I prepared to take my leave. Mrs. Webb, however was not quite ready to let me go. Still wearing the mobcap, she shot out her forefinger at me.

“Now why,” she said in her most positive voice and fixing me with a gaze piercingly clear, “why didn’t you put any homosexuality into your
Good Earth
? Because it’s there, you know, among the men!”

I was too startled to reply more than feebly. “I never thought of it.”

“Ah, you should think,” Mrs. Webb said reproachfully.

I gathered myself together. “Really, Mrs. Webb, I have no information on the subject, I’m afraid. And if you ask my opinion, I should say that there is less homosexuality among the Chinese than among any other people.”

“Now, now,” Mrs. Webb said, still with the forefinger outstretched, “You’ve just told me you have no information.”

“No, but just thinking aloud, Mrs. Webb,” I went on, “Chinese families marry their sons so early, you know, and besides, there is never much homosexuality in countries where there is no real militarism, where the young men are not segregated young when their sex impulses are most strong, into camps and so on.”

She capitulated suddenly, her forefinger retreating. “Perhaps you are right,” she said abruptly.

I left, and the American with me, and at the end of the lane we paused to look back. The endearing old couple had walked after us and were sitting on the bench again, side by side, Sidney Webb’s hands crossed on his gold-headed cane, and Mrs. Webb upright, the snowy ruffle of her mobcap fluttering in the breeze.

From English countryside I went once more to London, purposely to discover its Dickensian past, which first I had discovered long ago on the wide southern veranda of our bungalow on the Chinese hill. I remember one day, while wandering about the city, that I came upon The Old Curiosity Shop, exactly as I had imagined it, and I stood gazing at it for many minutes in a dream of pleasure, obstructing the sidewalk where I stood and creating a human eddy so that pedestrians were obliged to part on one side of me and come together again on the other side, which they did with dogged English patience. In the same way Charles Lamb came alive again, too, in the dim and narrow streets of the Inner Temple.

From London I went next to Sweden, and found a country so crisply modern that in many ways it made me think of the United States, except that being a smaller country it was better organized and governed. The advantages of a small country are enormous in times of peace, and even in times of war I suppose that Switzerland, and Sweden, too, have proved the positive possibility of a neutral and prosperous existence, provided that the country is not in the way of conquest. On the other hand, the swift rise of Hitler could never have taken place except in a small, relatively homogeneous country. Nowadays, when I view with frequent unease certain events in my own nation which remind me of Germany before the Second World War, I reassure myself merely by reflecting upon our size and variety. It would take more than a mastermind to shape us into totalitarianism, I still believe. But I was uneasy enough at the end of the war, although Hitler had blown himself to bits, to inquire of an intelligent German woman who had seen the rise of the Nazi drama, to explain to me exactly how the whole brutalizing process had taken place in Germany and I put what she said into a book, which I called
How It Happens.
And the last lines of that book are these:

“A long silence fell between us.

“‘Have we finished our book?’ I asked at last. She lifted her head and I met her grave grey eyes. She said,

“‘I want to tell one story, about an American girl who comes from a small town. I like her very much. She is full of good will, she has become a social worker, and she wants to help. She is so open-minded—that is what I like about Americans, they are so open-minded, even if they don’t understand. This girl’s boy friend was in Germany and on the day when the armistice with Japan was declared, she came to see me and she said, ‘Now it’s all over!’ She was happy and glad, as we all were, that the terrible war was over. But the very next moment she said, ‘Let’s forget about it as quickly as possible!’

“‘Then I said. “No, let’s never forget about it! Let’s remember it forever. Let’s learn how it happened so that it can never happen again!’”

“‘That is what I want to say to all Americans.’”

The Second World War, the rise of Hitler, the continuing evil influence of Fascism were undreamed of in those days, however, at least by me, and Sweden was a holiday. When I left there, I took my first journey by airplane, destination Amsterdam, and discovered that I am irrevocably ill when I am in the air, proving that I am what I have always known myself to be, an earth-bound creature with no heavenly aspirations. I lingered again in Holland, for my mother’s ancestors had come from Utrecht, and then I went to France, through Belgium, and in France I remember again the fields of small white crosses of the American dead, and the mausoleums upon whose walls, as I have said, are engraved the tens of thousands of names of the lost youth of our country, and I reflected even then that if our country could be drawn into a European war at such cost what would be our loss if ever we were drawn into a war with Asia? It was impossible to ignore the portent, for I was now haunted by the similarity of the condition of the Negroes in my own country and that of peoples in colonial Asia. So many of the stories I had heard as I stood that day in New York before the Negro paintings were what I had already known on the other side of the world, and I saw how the minds of the Negroes, revealed in the paintings, were obsessed with the same deep injustices and cruelties that had burned in the minds and hearts even of the Chinese revolutionists. I determined before I returned to my own country to live, if I ever did, that I would travel to India and to Indo-China and Indonesia and see for myself the full measure of the feelings of the peoples there, in order that I might have a world view of the relations between the races of man.

My European journey ended in Italy, for after a stay in Venice I took ship to China again, by way of the Red Sea. Of that journey upon a handsome Italian ship little remains to remember. I spent my time, mostly in solitude, reviewing all that I had learned during the year in my own country, and preparing myself for the year ahead. If, I told myself, I had indeed only one more year in China, how should it be spent? Surely in nothing but learning and writing. And during the long hot days on deck while the ship ploughed its way through a placid sea to the coast of India, I conceived the idea of a series of novels, each of which should reveal some fundamental aspect of Chinese life, even perhaps of Asian life, if I could accumulate that knowledge. But China I knew to the core of heart and the last convolution of my brain, and what was happening in China could and might happen in any country of Asia, unless some unforeseen wisdom in the West could prevent it by understanding in time. Thus I planned my next novel, which I decided to center upon that key figure in Chinese history, the war lord. Surely I knew him, having lived under his rule for decades. This was the beginning of my next novel,
Sons.