K, p.17
K, page 17
It was very dark outside. A heat haze hung over the city, and only a cool evening breeze brought some relief. The streets were thronged. Rickshaw men offered their services but Julian preferred to walk on alone.
Anna was a typical White Russian, with her plump breasts, rounded hips and coquettish manner, and she knew how to please a man in bed. But he kept his eyes closed while he was doing it. In his mind he was seeing Lin’s sweet body, and at the moment of ejaculation he almost called her name. Anna’s body was stocky, with abundant hair at her pubis and under her armpits, which smelt faintly sour. Her skin felt coarse to him, and her back was covered in spots. Yet she was no worse than many other Western women. His memory had faded in the last year. They were a little better when young, but past thirty their charm was gone for ever.
He forced himself to stop seeing Lin’s silken skin, her body with its mysterious fragrance. The more he thought, the more pitiful he appeared to himself. He had fallen almost as low as the White Russian woman.
No, he would not give this one an alphabet letter, not even after going to bed with her. After Lin, he could never give any woman a letter again. This time he had paid money to erase the memory.
Now he had an idea of what Lin meant. ‘Not jealous’ meant he should not be jealous. He had, in fact, let Lin turn the tables on him. He had come to China to receive a basic lesson in liberalism!
‘Fuck you!’
He almost howled it. But who was he cursing? Lin? Himself? He was just an abject failure with no job, no prospects and no one to love him.
He stared dully at the opposite bank of the river. Luojia Hill was completely enveloped in a haze so dense it even blotted out the street lights. He suddenly remembered that the yellow handkerchief was tucked in between all the letters from Mother. He laughed, remembering how desperately he had looked for it. How futile it had been to try so hard to find it. It had simply turned up in the course of time.
He discovered that he had reached the door of the Imperial Red House again. It sounded rowdy inside, and he sensed a tension in the air. It was busier than usual. People were talking heatedly and knocking back glasses of brandy. He ordered one himself, and asked the bartender what was going on. News had broken of the Spanish Civil War, with Germany and Italy supporting one side and Russia the other.
His heart gave a thud. Maybe some of his British friends would join up. When he had left Europe, Fascism was already a threat, and war seemed inevitable. What he had not expected was that the war should come so soon, and so close to England.
A group of Englishmen stood near the door. From their loud talk he judged them to be supporters of Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, typical thugs, all loud talk. They were praising Franco for having the balls to lead an army against Communism. The Germans and Italians, they were saying, also understood the nature of Communism. The world would be a better place if there were more Francos around.
‘If Generalissimo Chiang hadn’t done the same against the Reds the Communists would be drinking here now and we’d be on a boat home!’ one of them said loudly.
Julian could not help feeling that it was fortunate that he was in Wuhan. If he were in Europe he would have no choice: the only reasonable course would be to go to Spain and join the battle. However, it was wretched having to sit here listening to the ravings of people like this.
‘The Red Army looted Sichuan, just up the road, during the course of their so-called Long March.’
‘Red bastards. They’re getting nearer. I’d rather see the Japs here than the Communists!’
Other people in the room had different views. The Germans were too arrogant, harder to control than the Communists. Others insisted that Europeans were at least civilized, and Western countries could reach some sort of agreement. Russians were simply beyond the pale, an inferior race who would not abide by any treaty.
Julian was outraged by the racist sentiments he heard around him, and could not help speaking up: ‘It’s about time Hitler was assassinated, long overdue, in fact. Force is the only language Nazis understand, not treaties.’
‘Go to hell! I don’t speak to Reds!’
‘Dirty Fascist. What a pity you didn’t get a beating in London.’ Julian had indeed once joined a demonstration against the Union of Fascists, but before any fighting began the Fascists had seen they were seriously outnumbered and had beaten a retreat.
Before he knew what was happening he was struck violently in the face, on the nose, and fell back. A second blow followed.
He crouched down under the bar and then aimed a heavy right hook to the man’s chin. It hit him square on the jaw and the man fell to the floor, sweeping a row of cups and ashtrays with him. Bits of broken glass sprayed everywhere.
There were alarmed cries from bystanders. Some piled into the fight, others tried to pull them apart.
Julian’s assailant pulled himself back upright and was shouting, ‘One against one! One against one! Let me handle the Red bastard!’
Julian pushed back those surrounding him. He felt calm and ready for whatever might happen. At Cambridge he had joined a boxing club, although he really was not up to it and was constantly being knocked out by his opponents. But today he was spoiling for a scrap and would give as good as he got. This loudmouth was obviously an East End rough, brought up on street fighting, who relished the fear he could incite in Jews in the street.
By now Julian’s nose had started to bleed and the salty taste of blood was in his mouth. He roared and lunged forward but was immediately pulled back. These appeasers infuriated him. After all, the other man had got in the underhand first blow and he was the one who had come off worst.
He shook himself free, but now there were people standing between them. Beside himself with anger, he shouted, ‘We either let the Fascists ruin the world or follow the Communists to save it! Nothing in between.’
The White Russian girl rushed over. She tried to persuade him to lie down to stop the bleeding, and went to clean his face. She wanted to take Julian back to her room for a rest but he pushed her away. He swallowed the remaining blood in his mouth and stormed out of the bar, heading straight back to campus.
On the ferry a fresh river breeze blew on his face and he began to cool down. The Yangtze was wide here, and the boat trip took some time. As the ferry rocked beneath his feet he gazed across to the shore looming darkly ahead, and he remembered how he had first made up his mind to come to China.
When he had applied to the appointments office of Cambridge University for overseas teaching posts, he had put down China without a moment’s hesitation. Before leaving Britain he went to see Aunt Virginia and had a long talk with the Woolfs. Leonard, as a political scientist, thought that he had made the right decision and said once again that China was bound to become the centre of a political storm in the coming decades. What happened there would affect the whole world.
Julian was proud of their approval and his determination grew firmer as his ship drew nearer to China. What could be more inspiring than to take part in a revolution? The anti-Fascist stand of the Chinese revolutionaries might give him the opportunity he wanted. The Fascist contagion was spreading, and the complacent response of British intellectuals and the Labour Party back home seemed to him intolerably hollow. Only revolutionaries had the nerve to confront the Fascists head on, and he would not be content until he had also done so.
He had decided to spend some time in a university first, so as to familiarize himself with the situation before making his move. What he had not expected was to fall desperately in love, and be tormented by it to the point of sickness. During all these months, he had refused to be reminded of his original aim, dismissing it as soon as it flashed through his mind. After all, he had plenty of time and a little delay would not matter too much. He did nothing, cutting himself off from the world around him. Lin had mesmerized him into forgetting that he had come to China in order to alleviate the plight of mankind.
How could he have made sexual pleasure his life’s aim, still less love? Lin was only K, number eleven. Women, whether Oriental or European, were all the same: same flesh, same sexual feelings. He had succumbed to Lin’s charms, just as he had been enchanted by her splendidly coloured silks, and by the glorious scenery around him. But these were only passing sensations, not a place to rest his spirit for ever.
Nothing will get in my way this time, not even Lin, he vowed. Recalling the ups and downs of their relationship he was prepared to admit he had been cold to her at times. But coldness was better than deception: he could not spend the rest of his life with her. The time she had threatened suicide was when he had most wanted to leave her. That was why he could not bring himself to say things like, ‘Please take good care of yourself.’ Such touches of tenderness only led to a more painful protraction of the affair.
He wondered briefly how she would go on living without him, but that was not his problem. The whole world would return to the dark ages if they let the Fascists win.
He did not feel this was a betrayal, nor did he have a guilty conscience. He had never promised to be faithful. He had made no oath, nor any clear statement, even when pressurized.
It stops at K, there will be no L or M. The evil confronting the world would not wait for his romances.
Suddenly he felt grateful to the man who had attacked him in the Red House. He had saved him from the misery of this affair, the clinging sentimentalism of his jealousy. A man had to face up to important issues, and act.
Chapter Twelve
Julian started packing as soon as he reached home. He needed to travel light, but had to take with him a torch, a compass, matches, maps and so on. He would follow the route taken by the Red Army, but until he reached them he should keep quiet about the purpose of his journey.
His Chinese was not good enough for him to embark on such an expedition alone. He needed a guide and interpreter. He thought of Yi, a student in his class who had become a sort of friend.
He had always tried to keep a distance from the students during his affair with Lin. The one exception was Yi, who spoke good English, was intelligent and active in the student movement. But he did not look like an underground Communist – the most publicly visible students generally were not. It did not matter either way. When they arrived at the front line they could separate, there was not much need for language in a war.
While he was packing someone knocked at the bedroom door. It was Vole, reporting that Mrs Dean had called that morning. She said Professor Bell had asked her to have a look at the ceramics and paintings he had bought.
‘When did she come?’
‘A little past eight.’
Julian’s heart skipped a beat. For an instant he felt anguished. She was still in love with him.
But he pulled himself together sternly. He could not let love get in the way of his mission.
He replied that he would send her a note. Vole left after a polite ‘good night’. By now it was very late, but he did not feel like sleeping. He had spent the whole day wandering around the city – and he had missed the most important moment, the time when he should have been waiting one last time for his lover. Perhaps it was fate. They had missed each other, and everything now pointed him in a different direction.
He had told the servants that he was going for a trip around the country. There was no need even to ask the department for leave as the strike was now in full swing and there were no more classes. Anyway, the summer vacation would soon be on them. His desertion would hardly be noticed.
Neither was there any need to say goodbye to Lin. He was not going to change his mind.
He was tired of love, which wasn’t a bad thing. In any case, it seemed now there was no escape from a full-scale world war. He would not, of course, fight for the British Empire; during the Great War all the men of the Bloomsbury set had refused to participate in the war effort, and registered as conscientious objectors. Patriotic fervour was anathema to them. The war that was now imminent would be different, since it would be fought against Fascists. A war that would eliminate war by spawning an anti-war momentum. There was too much liberalism in his blood for him to fight for King and Country. He would fight, and die, if necessary, not for glory but in defence of his own moral beliefs.
At midnight he called on Yi at the students’ dormitory. Yi was of middling height, bespectacled, lively and quick-witted, a typical southern Chinese. He was initially hesitant when he heard Julian’s plan. What persuaded him was when Julian told him that they could go as newspaper reporters; he could get them press credentials from the Hankou Reuters office.
Then they discussed the best route. Yi knew that the Red Army had been active in the border area of Sichuan and Shanxi provinces. There had been fierce battles between the Red Army and Sichuan warlords, involving large movements of troops. But recently they seemed to have moved away. There was hardly any news about their exact location. Their best choice was to go and look for clues at their former base area.
They took a boat up the Yangtze, through the Three Gorges, and alighted at Wan Xian. This was a largish town, and Julian tried for a car from the one car-hire company. The proprietor had only three cars, all of them out at that time, although one might come back towards the evening. In fact, an old jeep came back in late afternoon.
Julian paid the deposit and told the driver what route they wanted to take. They bought some dried food and set out the next morning. The bumpy, unpaved road to the north was in a miserable state and the driver complained vociferously. Finally Julian lost patience, and told him to sit behind and let him drive.
‘We’re lucky there is a road,’ said Yi. ‘We may soon get to an area with no roads at all.’
‘If so, we shall hire horses,’ Julian returned confidently.
‘Money opens all doors,’ Yi said with a smile.
Julian and the driver took turns, stopping only when it was too dark to drive safely and they had to find a place to sleep. The further north they went the more miserable and bug-infested the inns became. Eventually they arrived at the north-eastern part of Sichuan Province, where they were told that the main force of the Communist army, which called itself the Fourth Front Army, had left the area only a few months earlier.
It was much more difficult to drive now, the narrow road twisting and turning through the mountains. A single moment of carelessness could send the car rolling over the precipice. After a couple of near misses, Julian decided to give up and dispatch the driver home with the car. Travelling on horseback was far easier, as they would not have to stick to the road but could get from village to village across the mountain passes.
Julian had seen the poverty of the Chinese countryside on his way from Wuhan to Peking. But now, in the late spring of 1936, he was experiencing it at first hand. They passed through Qu County, locally nicknamed ‘Porridge County’ for the poverty of the people’s diet. The local fare, mainly potatoes and yams, was almost indigestible. Whenever they passed a township with a restaurant, even if it was just a shack, they would stop to fill up on noodles and steamed bread. Often they had to resort to buying a meal in a hovel so dirty that nothing but their acute hunger would have persuaded them to eat there. The pair of them carried on heading north-west.
By now they were beginning to see soldiers – whether of the Government or of the local warlords they could not tell. The troops were apparently withdrawing from the battlefields. They were poorly equipped and in tattered uniforms. Discipline seemed lax, and they had clearly been looting as they went. Julian could not help wondering how this raggle-taggle army could withstand a real battle with the well-equipped and well-trained Japanese army.
The horses were tired. They found some fodder and tethered them to a tree, then sat down in the shade for a rest. They began to talk of the academics and writers they knew in Wuhan, who, although recently active in raising funds to support the anti-Japanese war effort, would panic in the face of military defeat, and had no stomach for battle. Who then in this China could stop the Japanese advance?
Now they had entered the mountainous regions of the border area of Sichuan. This kind of place, Yi said, was usually infested with bandits in peacetime. It looked as though there had been recent fighting here. The population was sparse; the villages had suffered heavy damage. For miles there was not even a house left standing. From time to time they saw corpses, although they could not make out whether they were soldiers or civilians, or on which side. The bodies had become unrecognizable, mere blackened heaps, partially dismembered, possibly by wild animals. The two men rode by, trying not to look too closely.
All of a sudden Julian pulled his horse up short, stifling a cry of horror. There, hanging from a pine tree on the edge of a cliff, was the naked body of a man. Stuck in its chest bone was a chopping knife. The stench of decomposing flesh filled the air. Julian covered his nose with one hand and urged his terrified horse into a gallop.
They rode as fast as they could towards human habitation and away from this evidence of atrocities. Now they heard sporadic gunfire, some quite near. They did not know who was shooting whom, soldiers or bandits, or hunters. After all, with the land untilled what were the surviving local people supposed to live on? The horror of what they had seen lingered in Julian’s mind, and he feared there was worse to come.
To relieve his tension he began to talk to Yi about women. He had never discussed this topic with a Chinese student, and had only a vague notion of their ideas about sex. They were obviously not as sexually active as their Western counterparts. But right now, as they made their way through this unreal landscape, talking about women seemed a good way of distracting themselves.
Being the favoured son of a rich southern family, Yi was comparatively experienced in these matters and seemed willing to talk; he was far from being a prude. Julian thought he might be able to shed some light on the Daoist Art of Love, and asked him if he knew anything of it.
