My Several Worlds (59 page)

Such news and much more reached me here in my pleasant Pennsylvania home, and in the letters of my Chinese friends I read of so many changes—many, it seemed, for the good—that I began to wonder if indeed it had been necessary to leave my childhood land. Not that I regretted the choice—I was entirely happy in my own country, and was already absorbed in the daily discovery of its life, its people, and its manners. But I remembered what my Chinese friends had said when I left. “Go back to your country and discover your ancestors, for this is good,” they had told me. “But when you are old, you will come back to us.” I had denied this in my heart, for I felt if I left China for the reasons that I had, then I would never return. Yet could I resist? Sometimes I wondered. China was the ideal country for the old, a pleasant place where one achieved honor merely by growing old. How often had I come upon a village, anywhere in China, to find sitting outside the door on a bench at the edge of the threshing floor, a comfortably dressed old man or woman, dozing in the sun, pipe in hand, idle without reproach, loved and cared for and made much of, merely because he or she was old! Old people were treasures and no one was afraid to grow old. When an aged one spoke the others listened, eager for the wisdom of his accumulated years.

It had been a shock to discover how differently the old are treated in my own country, and how pathetically they try to hide the number of their years and pretend themselves still strong and able to do a full day’s work. Worse almost than the injustice to homeless children was it to find white-haired parents and grandparents in old people’s homes and even in mental institutions, often without mental illness beyond the gentle and harmless decay of age. I suppose that the uncertainty of economic life and the insecurity of the individual alone in his struggle to maintain himself, his wife and children, make thoughtful tenderness too rare between young and old in our country. The aging feel their children’s dread and they try to care for themselves and are guilty if they cannot, and so the generations pull apart in a mutual fear which stifles natural love.

I listened not long ago to the conversation of a good elderly man who had for many years been the head of a local bank. He took an interest in an old men’s home in a nearby city, and he told me how the superintendent of this old men’s home would find upon a doorstep in the early morning an old man left there by son or daughter, abandoned and under injunction not to reveal his family’s name. Yes, this happens.

Yet somehow our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members. Thus when Hitler began to destroy the old, I knew that his regime could not last in a civilized world. It was an anachronism, and the laws of human evolution would provide its end—and how quickly did that end come!

To return, however—what might have happened in China had Japan not chosen this hour to enlarge her dream of empire no one can tell. Chiang Kai-shek had not counted upon the speed of Japan’s advance and he had continued his policy of internal pacification, encouraged by its seeming success. One by one the provinces had aligned themselves with his government as he drove the Communists to the northwest corner of the country. True, the Communists had set up a rival government there, independent from the rest of China, small but enough to irritate Chiang Kai-shek, determined as he was to unify the country politically. He decided in December, 1936, to make one last march against them, using as his base the city of Sian in Shensi, and as his army local soldiers and the men under Chang Hsüeh-liang, the son of the old Manchurian war lord, Chang Tso-lin. Chang Hsüeh-liang and his men had been exiled ever since Japan seized Manchuria, and now they were discontented exiles, longing to fight Japan but with no heart to fight against the Communists, who were, after all, Chinese. Chiang Kai-shek had heard of their disaffection, and thither he flew by air with his staff on the seventh day of December, 1936, to unite his forces and lead the attack against the entrenched Communists.

What was his surprise, on the twelfth day of the same month as he was resting at a hot springs resort near the city, to find himself taken prisoner by Chang Hsüeh-liang, his ally! The story need not be retold here, so well known is it, for indeed the whole world was shocked by the incident. Yet perhaps the motives behind it may not be so well understood. Briefly, Chang Hsüeh-liang proposed that the Nationalist government make peace with the Communists and join with them immediately in resisting the Japanese, who were daily taking over more northern territory and obviously planning for the whole of China. It may be assumed that the young Marshal, as he was called, saw in the defeat of Japan his only hope of return to Manchuria, and felt there was no sense in a war with the Chinese Communists while foreign Japanese ate up the country. Chiang Kai-shek, a man of well-known and mighty temper, was too angry to listen to such arguments, and insisted upon defeating the Communists first—that is, he insisted upon his own way. In Nanking not only his family but his government were terrified. It soon became clear that the Nationalist party was splitting upon the issue of the Old Tiger himself. Some members even appeared willing to sacrifice Chiang in order to bring about party unification. Others felt that the whole Nationalist regime would fall if Chiang fell. The family decided to settle the crisis and rescue their hero at all costs, and Madame Chiang then flew to her husband’s side.

Meanwhile Chou En-lai, that suave Communist, had talked with the honorable prisoner, and he had put forth a compromise in the best Chinese tradition, albeit one with a big stick behind it. If their terms were accepted, Chou En-lai said, then the Communists would bow to Chiang Kai-shek as their head and the head of the state. The terms? The “rebels” were to be forgiven, an armistice was to be arranged between Nationalists and Communists, and together they were to fight the Japanese. The big stick? That if Chiang did not agree he would be killed at once. Chiang did agree, very reluctantly, and the terms were fulfilled. He was freed again, he was given apparent honor as the accepted head of a united China, and resistance against Japan was planned.

Yet privately everyone knew that the Communists had won a victory and for the first time the young intellectuals, even those in the Nationalist party, began to be interested in the Communist movement. Were there really Chinese who were willing to sacrifice themselves and their own interests to save their country from a foreign enemy? It was something new, and idealism, so sorely weakened under the years of Nationalist rule, stirred again. People began to talk about “agrarian revolutionists,” and the Communists themselves took up the term. “We are not like the Russian Communists,” they proclaimed. “We are agrarian reformers, and we are Chinese.” It was cleverly done, undoubtedly part of a long-laid plan for future conquest, and no one knows whether Chiang Kai-shek understood its full significance. I think he did, for he always denied the validity of the term from the very first. And he was always uneasy in his enforced alliance.

For Americans, too, it must be understood that this was the first victory of the Communists in China, and yet it was a Chinese victory over Chinese. There is little evidence, indeed none, to show that Soviet Russia had any part in it, unless the withdrawal was deliberate, in order to stimulate local or national Communism. The Russians had seemed to repudiate Mao Tse-tung for his separatism, and during the Second World War they were careful at all times to acknowledge Chiang Kai-shek as the head of the Chinese government. Later, when they saw the inevitable fall of the Nationalists, they came forward to ally themselves with the Chinese Communists and thus consolidated their position in Asia by isolating the Chinese from the Americans. Into this plot, if it was a plot, we Americans threw ourselves wholeheartedly, ignorant of what was happening and in our ignorance doing all that we could to help Russia, whom even then we considered a potential enemy.

But I am ahead of my story. Undoubtedly the Chinese Communists wanted a war with Japan, for while they loudly talked of resistance, actually they resisted very little and the brunt fell, certainly at first, upon Chiang Kai-shek—indeed, this was true until Pearl Harbor when the Americans entered the war. It was the hope of the Chinese Communists, of course, that the Japanese would not only destroy the Nationalists but also the old traditional China, that there would be, in short, such destruction and confusion everywhere that the Communists could then step in and offer the only possible organized leadership out of chaos. This was the strong web they wove, and in it Chiang Kai-shek was helpless from the first. Perhaps he knew it, for certainly his resistance to Japan at the beginning was surprisingly strong and successful. His one hope was success in the war against Japan, for if he emerged victor in the struggle, then the people, grown lukewarm and indifferent, would flock again to his side. Thus by victory against Japan he would defeat not only Japan but also the Communists in the Northwest. Both sides were playing against each other, using Japan as the means to victory. The difference was that the Communists counted on the defeat of Chiang by Japan as their means, and for Chiang it was necessary that Japan be defeated. Therefore Chiang would certainly ally himself with the West, for this time the West would be against Japan, and in a Western victory he too would be victorious. This was the situation in which the Chinese found themselves in the year 1938, in the month of November.

In that same year, at the same time, I was in Sweden, where I went to accept the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The preparation for such a journey had been hurried, not only for myself, but also for our family of children, five of them, the eldest twelve and the four babies less than four years old. Though we had a good nurse and a staunch housekeeper, yet I had never before left the children for more than a night or two at a time, and now it was to be for nearly a month, I was determined not to be away at Christmas, and so by careful calculation we planned that we could get home in time for it, although this gave us only four days in Sweden, since it was necessary to have some days in London, and a stopover in Denmark. Though so notable an occasion lay ahead, it was a wrench to leave home for a whole month, and especially to put the sea between children and parents. We went aboard the
Normandie
one grey November day in New York, my husband, my pretty stepdaughter Betty, then just twenty, and I. I have never been happy on the sea, in spite of enjoying it very much from the shore, and I saw with foreboding that although we had not left port, the chairs and tables and heavy furniture were already roped, as though the crew took bad weather for granted. I found, later, that it was only the
Normandie
they took for granted. She was built so slenderly, her breadth too narrow for her length, that she rolled upon the calmest sea. We sailed, and my comfort was the miracle of hearing the children’s voices by radio telephone that evening, over the already lengthening miles of water. They sounded cheerful and happy and all was well.

Within a very few days after my arrival in London it was obvious that war in Europe was much nearer than we Americans had thought. Ominous news of course I had heard, and I knew it ominous, even when others seemed indifferent, merely because my life had been spent in the atmosphere of revolution and war, and I could smell strife from afar. In London, however, the portent became certainty, although the comfortable hotel was as luxurious as ever in the staid English way. There was no luxury like traditional English luxury before the last war, and newer hotels, in spite of splendor and dash, cannot equal the subdued richness of the really good London hotel. The bathtubs were vast, the plumbing massive, the water boiling hot, the towels as thick as quilts and as big as sheets. I am one of those, too, who likes the traditional English food, and I ate it that November with a pleasure, a melancholy and a nostalgia, almost foreseeing. Someday, I was sure, there would be no more such thick steaks, such roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, nor even the huge cabbages boiled too long, or the legs of mutton and browned potatoes and rich gravy, the trifles and savories and cups of tea as strong as lye.

For it was already clear that Germany was preparing for war, and the Jews who were wise were leaving that country. Yet everywhere in the London streets there were still the signs left over from the last war, the shelter signs, defense against the bombs. The past was still there, and the future was formidable. Someone much worse than the old Kaiser was now in Germany, someone far more evil. Anxiety was stifling in the air, a sober anxiety that would yield to the last inch of honor, if by so much yielding there could be peace. But the last inch would never be yielded. That, too, was clear.

In Denmark it was different. The people there knew their country was small as Belgium had been small in the First World War. They had no hope of standing against the new German war machine, and it was already decided that Denmark would not resist. She would give but she would not break. She would allow the conquerors to come in but she would never accept them. It was the only way that they could escape total destruction, Danish people told me. And all this went on, this thinking and planning, while the beautiful Danish cities and the rich countryside were calm as ever. When I had last been in Denmark, only a few years earlier on my way back to China, I had visited farms, as I like to do, and I remembered their quiet, their age, their fruitfulness. I had come upon a farmer in his barn one sunny afternoon, and he was busy painting, not woodwork or floors, but upon the whitewashed walls scenes of green trees, fields of grain and still waters. Very convincing scenes they were too, and when I asked why he put them on the walls of his barn instead of upon canvases, he replied:

“It is for my cows, Madame—in the long winter they like to look at these walls and think of the summer. It amuses them.”

I could understand why such farmers preferred to yield for the time being rather than to see their homes and barns destroyed.