Travels with Myself and Another (3 page)

Two

MR MA’S TIGERS

By the beginning of 1941, the Sino-Japanese war had been going on so long and was so far away that it ranked more as an historic fact than a war. Compared to the survival of Britain, the Far East was stale and trifling. But something new had been added to the old China story; Japan was now joined to the Axis as the third partner in what they named “the New Order”. My boss, the editor of
Collier’s
and one of the nicest men I ever knew, concluded that the Japanese, having already invaded Indochina, did not intend to sit upon their hands and would soon start destroying the East as their partners were destroying the West. He agreed that I should report on the Chinese army in action, and defences against future Japanese attack around the South China Sea.

The Germans had done fearsomely well, Europe was lost and silenced but, like countless millions of others, I didn’t believe at any time that Britain would be defeated, that America would stay neutral and that Hitlerian Germany would conquer and rule and poison life on this planet. After long years we were going to win but it would be the end of the world. End of the world? I felt a driving sense of haste: hurry, hurry, before it’s too late; but don’t remember what I meant. I was determined to see the Orient before I died or the world ended or whatever came next. The Orient: pictures in my mind since childhood, not reality. Reality was in the other direction, across the Atlantic.

All I had to do was get to China. On this super horror journey I wheedled an Unwilling Companion, hereinafter referred to as U.C., into going where he had no wish to go. He had not spent his formative years mooning on streetcar travels and stuffing his imagination with Fu Manchu and Somerset Maugham. He claimed to have had an uncle who was a medical missionary in China and took out his own appendix on horseback. He was also forced to contribute dimes from his allowance to convert the heathen Chinese. These facts seemed to have turned him against the Orient. I went on wheedling until he sighed gloomily and gave in. That was scandalous selfishness on my part, never repeated. Future horror journeys were made on my own. It was all right to plunge oneself neck deep in the soup but not to drag anyone else in too.

Early in February 1941, we set out from San Francisco for Honolulu by boat. We imagined this trip would be like the already distant good old days when one crossed from New York to France, on a French ship, wallowing in delicious food and drink and luxury. U.C. always had the right idea about pleasure, which is grab it while you can. Instead of the hoped-for delights, we were batted about the decks like ping-pong balls, hurled into nailed-down furniture unless unnailed-down furniture hurled itself into us until finally, incapable of standing upright, we retired to our berths where we lay eating and drinking and trying not to be flung from berth to floor.

Trays crashed off our laps, bottles spilled; the ship proceeded with the motion of a dolphin, lovely in a dolphin and vile in a ship. U.C. muttered a lot: why had nobody warned us, if he had known the Pacific was this kind of ocean he would never have set foot on it, a man should stick with the waters he knew, as a matter of fact he knew and respected many lakes and rivers too, and look at it any way you want, M., this is a bad sign. The sea voyage lasted roughly forever. Somewhere, over those detestable grey waves, Honolulu would be a haven of sun, swimming, peace and stationary land. Nobody warned us about the traditional aloha-welcome either.

I made a full airmail report to my mother:

“There were finally eighteen leis on each of our necks. U.C. had a face of black hate. He said to me, ‘I never had no filthy Christed flowers around my neck before and the next son of a bitch who touches me I am going to cool him and what a dung heap we came to and by Christ if anybody else says aloha to me I am going to spit back in his mouth.’ You get the feeling?

“Leis were not the end of it. Among the hordes of greeters who swarm aboard, ready to sling leis on their friends, were photographers. A fat man we never saw before came up to us. He was Irish and drunk. He said to U.C., ‘I’m as big a man as you are and I can drink as much.’ Then he staggered and U.C. caught him. ‘Here,’ he said to a nearby photographer. ‘Take a picture of me too. I’m a fine man where I come from.’ So I said quickly, to forestall worse, ‘You bet you are,’ and this is the picture. Us three. He stumbled away and we never saw him again.”

That photograph is one of the few, the sadly few, which has survived my multiple changes of residence. U.C. is grinning like a wolf with bared fangs above necklaces of flowers; in profile, flower-draped too, I seem to be falling over backwards and look dazed; between us the fat man, flowerless but glass in hand, managed to lean affectionately against us both. Seeing the way people carry cameras, everyone else has always known the value of recording one’s travels on film. I have only now understood what I’ve missed: instead of massive albums I have a single thin folder of photos to make me laugh in my declining years.

The report continues: “Also arrived on board an aunt of U.C.’s, an actual full-blooded aunt, U.C. said; she was the leechiest of all with a fine disregard of anyone’s feelings or fatigue (U.C.’s face was now white and wet with sweat and horror, the ground was coming up to hit me and I couldn’t see from headache, it was like a lecture tour with all the gushing cannot-be-shaken-off people). We got rid of her at the dock and there was Bill looking very nice, clean, solid, reasonable, unexcited and dull; he took us to this hotel where we fell upon liquor to carry us through and had a good talk with him, about the defence stuff, shop talk which interests us and which I at least must know. Then he left but not before he had extracted a promise (Louise sent him to get it) that we would dine with the local American King and Queen of the island that night. This is a place where hospitality is a curse and no one can be alone. We lunched with the aunt and a dreary gathering of people who should have been missionaries but were not even kind, just stupid people with nothing to drink and I was afraid I was going to faint from boredom and you can imagine U.C. At last we got an hour to ourselves on the beach and then people began to call at our hotel; then we went to dinner. Some life, what?

“The dinner was for about fifty people in a vast torch-lit patio with a fountain playing, the most spectacular house outside a movie set I have ever seen, and to me not beautiful, but rich, rich, rich. There is a strike of streetcar workers going on and they all said with vicious hard voices: let them strike till they starve but don’t give in, it will spoil these beautiful islands . . . The stockholders are now getting 80 percent on their investment; they cannot possibly compromise and only get 6 percent. Let them starve, the guests kept saying, over the creamy food and the champagne; let them starve. So that was very delightful and instructive.”

Finding this letter was a lucky surprise, authentic hot news of the day, especially as I remembered nothing about Honolulu except being there, disliking it and touring Pearl Harbor with Bill. The planes stood wing tip to wing tip, the warships nudged each other (“like the Sargasso Sea”, from notes), the Japanese fishing boats were anchored alongside, ideal for Japanese Intelligence. Bill, a soldier, was appalled by the set-up but not a five-star general, thus unable to scare sense into anyone. U.C. said it was the system so popular in the First World War: get everything and everyone packed in one place and get the whole lot wiped out. When Pearl Harbor was indeed wiped out ten months later, with 3,300 American officers and men killed, my countrymen were whipped into fury against “the stab in the back”, but my fury was directed against the U.S. General Staff who provided the world’s richest target for the Japanese.

We retreated to Hawaii, undiscovered by tourists, peaceful and simple. My notes are bright with descriptions of beauty, cane fields and cattle range country, tea gardens, fishing villages, enchanting Japanese children, but all I remember is climbing and scrabbling over volcanic lava in a vain search for the Hawaiian chamois or some such animal. U.C. enjoyed Hawaii more than I did; he was by no means on fire with impatience for the Orient. Then I hear the unchanging voice of my soul (in another letter to my mother): “In half an hour we go to the Clipper. I am very, very excited and pleased and glad to be off. To think that all the names of all the places are real; and I will be there . . . I don’t care where we go; it is all new, I want to see it all.”

Air travel was not always disgusting. Those big PanAm flying boats were marvellous. We flew all day in roomy comfort, eating and drinking like pigs, visiting the Captain, listening to our fellow travellers, dozing, reading, and in the late afternoon the plane landed on the water at an island. The passengers had time for a swim, a shower, dinner, and slept in beds. Since that was air travel at its best, it has naturally disappeared.

On the way to Hongkong, at Guam, we were introduced to spear-fishing by a passenger whom I described to my mother as “a character like Lawrence of Arabia, a marine aviator en route to Egypt”, and that’s all I now know about him, sinful bad memory. I never speared any fish nor tried to. I thought it unwise and improper to dive into depths where I didn’t belong and interfere with activity I didn’t understand. Keeping a respectful distance on the surface, I have watched underwater scenery and fish with joy all these years. Fish must perceive me as a rowboat. It is not that easy in life to find an unfailing source of joy.

U.C. took to Hongkong at once. Hongkong bore no resemblance to the present city as seen on TV, a forest of skyscrapers, a mini New York set against the great triangular mountain. Travellers of the next century, always supposing there are any, will scarcely know whether they are in Buenos Aires or Chicago, skyscrapers all the way, skyscrapers to break the heart. When we saw it, the working city of Hongkong at the base of the Peak looked as if nailed together hurriedly from odd lots of old wood and sounded like a chronic Chinese New Year. It was brilliant with colour in signs and pennants; the narrow streets were jammed by rickshaws, bicycles, people, but not cars; the highest building was an imposing square bank and it wasn’t very high. The gentry lived in gracious homes up the sides of the Peak, social position established by height.

We stayed in an old hotel downtown, perhaps the only hotel there was: big rooms with paddle fans on the ceilings, antique bathrooms, a large public lounge with large beat-up leather chairs; very Maugham to me. U.C., in the twinkling of an eye, collected a mixed jovial entourage, ranging from local cops with whom he went pheasant-shooting to fat wealthy crook-type Chinese businessmen who invited him to Chinese feasts. A bald middle-aged Caucasian of obscure nationality and occupation, self-styled “General,” was a special favourite, and a huge polite thug from Chicago named Cohen whom U.C. believed to be a hit man for some Chinese warlord.

U.C. could not bear party chatter, or discussions of politics or the arts, but never tired of true life stories, the more unlikely the better. He was able to sit with a bunch of men for most of a day or most of a night, or most of both day and night though perhaps with different men, wherever he happened to have started sitting, all of them fortified by a continuous supply of drink, the while he roared with laughter at reminiscences and anecdotes. It was a valid system for him. Aside from being his form of amusement, he learned about a place and people through the eyes and experiences of those who lived there.

Though a hearty talker in my own right and given to laughing loudly at my own jokes, I was a novice drinker and had a separate approach to learning. I wanted to see for myself, not hear. U.C. did not mind what I did as long as he didn’t have to do it too. Much as I like conversation, I like it only in bursts for a few hours, not marathons, and seldom in group formation. I slipped away from the large leather chairs. U.C. used to say, kindly, “M. is going off to take the pulse of the nation.”

Four days after arrival, I left Hongkong alone to fly via Chungking and Kunming to Lashio, the Burma end of the Burma Road, and returned immediately the same way, material for a
Collier’s
article. The airline, called China National Aviation Company (CNAC), consisted of two DC3s and three DC2s, elderly machines and no nonsense about comfort. Compared to passenger planes now, these were flying beetles. The floor sloped steeply, the chairs were canvas on metal frames, the toilet, behind a green curtain, gave a small circular view of the ground below.

DC3s could carry twenty-one passengers, DC2s fourteen passengers, but seats were removed to make space for the freight load. Five thousand kilos of mail and fifty-five million dollars in banknotes (very heavy) were average monthly freight; the same planes also hauled wolfram and tin out of China. Except for the Burma Road, CNAC was the only contact between the outside world and “Free” China, in effect the one third of China not occupied by the Japanese and ruled by the Generalissimo, Chiang Kai-shek. Trucks took fourteen days to reach Chungking from Rangoon on the spectacular corkscrew of the Burma Road, and broke down and rolled off precipices in alarming numbers. The five small tatty planes of CNAC kept “Free” China in business.

There were seven surviving American CNAC pilots, ten Chinese and Chinese-American copilots, same for twelve radio operators, and two stewardesses. The pilot on my round trip jaunt was Roy Leonard who looked and sounded like a nice ordinary Midwesterner. He became my hero within an hour of being airborne. He was thirty-three or four, medium height, brown hair, thin, matter-of-fact, invariably good tempered, and as much at home and at ease in China as if China were Indiana. I never learned why he came to China but he had been flying here for years, for a time as Chiang’s private pilot. I felt I was watching a genius at work, and I watched closely, settling at once into the pilot’s cabin.

The Japanese encircled Hongkong and had shown themselves hostile by fatally attacking two CNAC planes. CNAC simply changed its methods. Now CNAC planes climbed high above Hongkong, at night, in bad weather, before crossing the Japanese lines. Flights were postponed or cancelled if the weather was too good. Passengers were informed of the departure time a few hours in advance. By daylight, the Hongkong airfield looked discouragingly short, with the sea at one end and the cliffside of the Peak at the other. It was less worrying at night when you couldn’t see what was happening.