My Several Worlds (36 page)

Summer came, we took ship again, and returned to China. It was still home.

Green Hills Farm, Pennsylvania

The long Indian summer in which I have been writing has broken overnight. We do not have typhoons here as we used to have in China but we have hurricanes and blizzards and northeasters and the effect is almost the same, and yet not quite. There is still nothing as terrifying as a typhoon, unless it be a Western cyclone, a sight that I have never seen. This is a northeaster. Somewhere out at sea a whirligig of a wind began and enlarged itself to include our region, and so this morning, too early in November for our climate, which is, as someone has said, “the far thin edge of the tropics,” I see a thick soft snow spread over the landscape. In the court beneath my window the little Italian statue of a boy who stands above the pool holding a big shell in his arms bravely bears a burden of snow on his shoulders. Beside him the coonberry bush is stripped of its dying leaves but the bright red berries are redder, than ever against the snow. The usual events of a winter’s day lie ahead. Breakfast is made in a hurry so that skis can be found and shovels brought out for clearing the paths, and at the farm the snowplow is hitched to the tractor.

Breakfast over I cross the court into my workroom and beyond it the flowers in the greenhouses shine through the glass doors like gems in the white twilight of the snow lying on the roofs. Against the exquisite shadow the carnations and roses glow and snapdragons glitter like candles. The chrysanthemums, bronze and red, are embers. The greenhouses are my avocation, and when a story halts and its people refuse to speak, an hour’s work among the plants will often melt the most stubborn material into something alive and responsive.

My life, flung so far around the world, has in a way been unified in my gardens. The scarlet coonberry bush is a remembrance of the red berries of the Indian bamboo which grew thickly about the terrace of the house in Nanking, and they, too, were beautiful under the light snows of those past years. Chinese artists for centuries have loved to paint red berries under snow, and, whatever the government under which they now live, perhaps this ancient love is permanent, with all that it signifies.

Easily today my mind goes back to those other days. The winter after my return to China, the fateful year of 1926–1927, had been a usual one, mild as most of our winters were in the Yangtse Valley, and yet we had enough snow to enhance the green bamboos and leafless branches of the elms and the prickly oranges that made a hedge to hide the compound wall. Yet it was, I recall, a strange uneasy winter. The revolutionary, forces had dug in around The Three Cities, and we waited for the spring when they would march again. Newspapers were cautious and I was reluctant to trust the rumors which came by word of mouth. White people were hopeful or distrustful, depending upon their feeling for the Chinese people. The missionaries were guarded but ready to welcome whatever came if they were allowed to continue their work undisturbed. My sister was married and her little family was in far Hunan, and the Communists had settled across the lake from her home. Nobody knew exactly what the Communists were. Bandits and brigands had joined their ranks, but bandits and brigands were an inevitable part of all war lord regimes. What we heard about the Communists was what we had always heard about the bandits and brigands. Which was which? No one knew.

The spring was slow that year of 1927, and this in spite of the mild winter. The la-mei trees bloomed after the Chinese New Year, and they had never been more fragrant or more beautiful. Those fairy cups of clear and waxlike yellow blooming upon the bare and angular branches were always my delight. There is no perfume equal to theirs, and yet I have never seen them in any other country than in China. They were scarcely gone, I remember, when word came from my sister that she and her family were leaving their home and coming for refuge to my house in Nanking. In a few days they were with us and unharmed, for nothing had actually happened, except that they had heard disquieting stories of the anti-foreign behavior of the revolutionary troops, who were on the march again, and planning to come down the river.

I was glad that we were all together, my father and my sister and I and our families, while the strange waiting went on. The Three Cities were a long way off, and there was still time to watch and try to guess what we should do. My father, always tranquil, refused to believe that the new revolutionists would also be anti-foreign, for by this time he refused to believe anything evil of any Chinese, and had become far more Chinese than American. Yet I remembered. In spite of all my friends, I remembered the refugee days in Shanghai and the sudden look of hate upon the man’s face whose queue I had once pulled when I was a naughty and impatient child, and other such looks, fleeting enough, but which nevertheless had not escaped me. Most of all, I remembered the many reasons why the Chinese should hate the white man and I feared that if hatred were now to flare again none of us could escape. And all this went on underneath the everyday life of coming and going, of pleasant communication between my pupils and me, and between friends and neighbors. Nobody said anything to make us afraid. There was no animosity even on the streets.

The Chinese New Year came in due season and guests filled the house. I served tea and many kinds of cakes and sweets, and our children exchanged gifts. Ah, it was so exactly like every other year that it was hard to believe that the comfortable house was not the safe and pleasant place it had always been! The servants, I remember, were even more considerate and helpful than usual, and my Chinese women friends were tender in their goodness to my children. The festival season passed, and after it the days and weeks until the last of March.

When I remember the fateful morning of March 27, 1927, I see it in a scene, as though I had nothing to do with it. A little group of white people stands, uncertain and alone, on the early green lawn of a grey brick house, three men, two women, three small children. The wind blows damp and chill over the compound wall. The sky is dark with clouds. They hold their coats about them, shivering, and they stare at each other.

“Where can we hide?” This is what they are whispering.

One of those women is me, two of the children are mine. The other woman is my sister. The two younger men are our husbands, and the tall dignified old gentleman is our father. The nightmare of my life has come true. We are in danger of our lives because we are white people in a Chinese city. Though all our lives have been spent in friendly ways, it counts for nothing today. Today we suffer for those we have never known, the aggressors, the imperialists, the white men of Europe and England who fought the wars and seized the booty and claimed the territory, the men who made the Unequal Treaties, the men who insisted upon extraterritorial rights, the empire builders. Oh, I was always afraid of those white men because they were the ones who made us all hated in Asia! The weight of history falls heavy upon us now, upon my kind old father, who has been only good to every Chinese he has ever met, upon our little children, who have known no country except this one where now they stand in danger of death.

“Where shall we hide?” we keep asking, and we cannot answer.

The pleasant house which until now has been our home can shelter us no more. The rooms stand as we left them a few minutes ago, the big stove still burning in the hall and spreading its heartening warmth, the breakfast table set, the food half eaten. I was just pouring the coffee when our neighbor, the faithful tailor, came running in to tell us that the revolutionists, who in the night had captured the city, were now killing the white people. He stood there at the table where we were all sitting, happy that the battle was over, and he wrung his hands and the tears ran down his cheeks while he talked.

“Do not delay, there is no time—Teacher Williams lies dead already in the street outside the gate!”

Dr. Williams? He was the vice-president of the Christian university!

My father had breakfasted early and was gone to his classes at the seminary, but only just gone, so immediately the houseboy runs to bring him back. My sister and I know only too well now that death is possible, and we get up quickly and find the children’s coats and caps and our own coats and we all hasten outside the house that is no longer a shelter, and here we stand in the chill wet winds.

Where can we hide?

The servants gather around us, half fearful for their own sakes. They know that if they are found with us they too may be killed. Nobody knows the ferocity of the revolutionists. We have heard such stories.

“There is no use in hiding in our quarters,” the amah says. “They will find you there.” She falls to her knees and puts her arms around my child and sobs aloud.

Oh, where can we go? There is nowhere. We hear the sound of howling voices in the distant streets and we look at each other and clasp the children’s hands. My old father’s lips move and I know he is praying. But there is nowhere to go.

Suddenly the back gate squeaks on its hinges, the little back gate in the corner of the compound wall, and we all turn our heads. It is Mrs. Lu, who lives in a cluster of little mud houses just over the wall in a pocket of an alley off the street that runs in front of the house. She comes hobbling toward us on her badly bound feet, her loose trousers hanging over her ankles. Her hair is uncombed as usual, rusty brown locks hanging down her cheeks, and her kind stupid face is all concern and alarm and love.

“Wise Mother,” she gasps, “you and your family, come and hide in my little half-room! Nobody will look for you there. Who would harm a woman like me? My good-for-nothing has left me again and I and my son are alone. Come—come—there is no time!”

She pulls at me, she embraces all the children at once, and we follow her blindly, half running, leaving the gate open behind us. There are no houses very near, we have lived in one of the open spaces of the city, and we run across two or three acres of grassland and old graves and between some neat vegetable gardens until on the far side of our wall we reach the handful of mud houses, in one of which Mrs. Lu lives. The people are waiting for us there, the kind poor people, and they receive us, her friends and neighbors, and they hurry us into the dark little half-room which is her home. It is indeed only half a room, barely big enough for the board bed, a small square table and two benches. There is no window, only a hole under the thatched roof. It is almost entirely dark. Into this narrow place we all crowd ourselves and Mrs. Lu closes the door.

“I will come back,” she whispers. “And if the children cry, do not be afraid. We have so many children here, those wild soldiers will not know if it is your child or ours that cries.”

She goes away and we are left in the strange silence. Our children do not cry. No one speaks. We are all trying to realize what is happening. It has been too quick. Then my father looks out of the little hole under the roof. We can see a light, a glow from a reddening sky.

“They are burning the seminary,” my father says. It is where he goes every day to teach and to do his work of translating the New Testament from Greek into Chinese. Nobody answers him. We are quiet again.

This is what I see, this is what I remember.

And yet, strange and unexpected as it was, it was all familiar. Sitting there on the edge of the bed beside my sister, each of us holding a child, I told myself that I had always known it would happen. The wild winds had been sown and the whirlwinds were gathering, and it was only chance that I had been born in the age of whirlwinds, chance alone that I was reaping what I had not sown. Call it chance, too, that I was born of the white race, but I could not escape that, either. I sat in silence, pondering over these things, as I knew each of us in his own way was pondering, my old father with all his years spent now and gone, my young sister and her little boy, and I with my own eternal child, and the little daughter I had adopted and brought from America, the two Americans my sister and I had married. None of us could escape the history of the centuries before any of us had been born, and with which we had nothing to do. We had not, I think, ever committed even a mild unkindness against a Chinese, and certainly we had devoted ourselves to justice for them, we had taken sides against our own race again and again for their sakes, sensitive always to injustices which others had committed and were still committing. But nothing mattered today, neither the kindness nor the cruelty. We were in hiding for our lives because we were white.

I remember thinking on two levels. One was the world and the centuries of history, and I felt nothing but sympathy for the Chinese who knew only the evil of the white man and none of the good. Were I a young Chinese, had I been taught only what the white man had done to my country, I too would have wanted to be rid of him forever. I could not blame them. But on the other level I was thinking of this very moment, and of the children. My father would meet his fate with calm and with peace. I had no fear for him. He had lived his life. The two young men must handle themselves as best they could when the last minutes came. My sister and I were strong enough, too, to bear ourselves proudly and without showing fear. But what of the little children? My helpless child was only seven, my little adopted daughter only three, my sister’s little boy also three. These could not be left. Somehow we two mothers must contrive to see them dead before we ourselves must die.

For by now the mobs had risen and outside the little hut we heard the firing of guns and the howls of the crowd. There is always a crowd in any city, in any country, when order breaks down. There are the thieves and the looters and the fire lovers and the men who are afraid to kill in times of peace but who let their lust for blood blaze out when there is no peace. We began to hear screams and loud laughter, yells and sounds of blows. We heard the heavy front door of our house beaten in and then the shout of greedy joy when the crowd burst into the hall.

I could see it as clearly as though I stood there watching. I saw the rooms as we had left them, the rooms I had made and loved, my home, as warm and pretty a place as I could contrive, the yellow curtains at the windows, the dull blue Chinese rugs on the floors, the Chinese furniture and the few comfortable chairs, the flowers on the tables. I had nursed for weeks the bulbs of the white sacred lilies and they were in full bloom, scenting the house. A coal fire burned in the grate under the mantelpiece in the living room. And upstairs were the bedrooms and the children’s nursery, and in the attic was my own special place, where I did my work. And I remembered that on my desk in that attic room was the finished manuscript of my first novel.