“Permanent resettlement?” It took its shape in Lin’s mind slowly. “Quite a gesture.”
“China needs to make a gesture. Naturally we hope to get the sympathy of the West against Japan, but that is not the reason. I told you. God wants this done.” Kung’s face was so radiant through the steam that for a moment, Lin was moved to believe.
But then Kung was himself again, practical. “Meanwhile, we can develop these counties easily, bring in engineers, teachers, horticulturists, men, women, children. It will lift the whole region up. Look at Shanghai. Now there are cabarets where the satire is every bit as sharp as in Berlin, there are fine Viennese bakeries, and new musicians in the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra.”
“How many people are you proposing to bring out of Germany?” said Lin.
Kung paddled his hands in the water and looked at him, the light in his eyes shining. “One hundred thousand.”
8
BY THAT MARCH, Song had been in the Communist headquarters in Yan’an almost a year, thanks to Chen Xing’s letter of recommendation, which got her promptly transferred out of the Eighth Route Army Hostel.
Her new world had not been quite as she imagined. The town itself, situated on a bend in the Yan River between corrugated hills of yellow loess, had been bombed to rubble by the Japanese, though its imposingly high city walls had survived intact. The townspeople and Communists abandoned what lay within the walls and moved to a shadow-city of caves hollowed out of the dry canyons, cut long ago by ancient creeks. The Party University was set up nearby, honeycombed through the repeating hills, invisible to Japanese planes even as it housed several thousand students who were learning to organize and use propaganda. Into this hive of political and military activity came foreigners, including missionaries, reporters, doctors, and adventurers, almost all of whom needed the help of Song’s work unit. Most foreign visitors did not stay long, but the hospital rarely seemed to be without an English-speaking doctor from India or Australia or America, keeping the small team of translators busy.
Song liked using her mind, and translating for doctors and visitors was better than digging terraces in Chen Lu Village, yet she still felt sidelined from anything important. She was far from the thinkers and leaders in their separate canyons. She once asked one of her fellow translators, a middle-aged woman who had worked for Shell Oil in Shanghai, about climbing the ranks in the Party, and the woman had clucked sadly, as if it would be better for Song to forget such ideas. “You and I are foreign-trained,” she said. “That’s a bad class background.”
So even though Song was in Yan’an, she floated in a sea of separation. No one knew anything about her thoughts, her beliefs, her past. She shared a kang in one of the women’s caves with two other female recruits, who spoke to each other in Sichuanese and ignored her. She translated for foreigners, who always complimented her on her English before they left, but she had no friends; few Yan’an people even approached her. You could catch sparrows on her doorstep.
She crawled into the kang next to the other two girls every night, thinking of Thomas, and plugged through every day. When it seemed nothing would ever change, her superior Wu Guoyong called her in and handed her an envelope.
“Orders,” he said. “Special treatment, if you ask me.”
She took the envelope, burning, because she knew he meant her English. When he was gone, she slit it open.
She was to escort an American woman writer out of Communist territory and back to the Japanese-held area.
To Shanghai.
She was so excited she ran to the outhouse, closed the stall door, and squatted over the hole without even taking down her pants, just shaking, imagining what she would do when she saw him, what she would say-if he was still there. But he was, she knew it, she felt it. He was there, and she would see him in less than two weeks.
Her feet barely grazed the ground as she hurried that evening to meet the American writer, Joy Homer, in the bombed-out town. Almost no buildings remained standing, and the walled ruins were off-limits during the day, the better to appear abandoned to any Japanese flyovers. At night, though, any roofless space still halfway intact was lit up and turned into a noodle stall, or a shop for the dispensing of necessary goods, or an improvised stage for opera, or a puppet show. People swarmed down from the hills to enjoy themselves.
The meeting place was a snack stall, so when Song saw a plain white woman with a camera over her shoulder walking up the uneven lane of crumbled half walls and foundations, she asked the vendor to go ahead and prepare them a couple of dishes, and walked down to meet her.
“Miss Song!” Miss Homer thrust out her hand.
“Just call me Song,” she answered, and they shook. “Come. Let’s have dinner.” And they pulled two stools up to a box, overturned in the dirt, which served as a table.
“This is some place,” Joy said, looking around. “You’re all quite young, aren’t you? It’s a young group.”
“That’s true, I suppose.” Certainly the leaders were older, but Miss Homer would not have seen them. Song herself rarely did.
“The soldiers at the headquarters of Marshall Yan are all older,” Miss Homer said. “Did you know we just came from there?” The question was posed with a touch of pride, for the armed camp of this warlord and Nationalist commander was famously difficult to visit. “It’s in loess hills, much like your dwellings. Fantastic place! They shaved the canyon sides down into a series of terraces for their caves, all connected by these little zigzag stairways just like a New York fire escape. The cave we slept in was forty feet deep, the kang big enough for twenty people. Do you know,” she said, leaning forward, “every night soldiers came in and spread out their bedrolls beside us. Why, I thought nothing of sleeping with twelve to fifteen gentlemen a night!” She dissolved in laughter, captivated by her own wit as much as by this strange, exotic world. The vendor set two dishes in front of them, and she reared back slightly. “What’s this?”
“Mashed potatoes with wild vegetables, and steamed sweet millet cake.” Song plucked out the best morsels and put them on the American’s plate. “Tell me what brought you to China.”
“Well.” Miss Homer picked at the potato. “I was sent by the Interdenominational Church Committee for China Relief, you see, as a press correspondent. I’m to gather accurate news on what’s going on, and write a series of articles about it, which will help them raise funds for war relief.”
Song nodded, understanding why they wanted this woman leaving with a good impression.
“You know what surprises me most about Yan’an?” Joy said. “No Russians!”
Song looked up, jolted. “Why would there be Russians?” An explosion of laughter rose from the stall next to them. All around, little lights were strung up, and the demolished square had the gaiety of a village market. A man nearby had set up a table from which he sold knitted socks and scarves, another sold flashlights, yet another small cook pots. The rhythmic cries of guess-fingers, the ubiquitous drinking game, sounded nearby. “We broke with the Russians,” Song said. “We go our own path.” Song knew most Americans were ignorant of this; after all, the official press in China constantly dismissed the Communists as bandits and never reported on their real positions or alliances, much less their real power. The Western public knew nothing.