Choice of Evils

Chand Meira

Description

This epic novel is set against the backdrop of the Sino-Japanese war, from the time Japan annexed Manchuria in the early 1930s until the end of the Second World War. During these years, a militaristic Japan pursued an aggressive dream to colonize not only China but also the whole of Southeast Asia and beyond. The brutal sacking of Chiang Kai-shek's new capital, Nanking, which refused to surrender to the Imperial Army, was a graphic example of Japanese retribution in a war of punishment. The story of these tumultuous years is told through the lives of a disparate group of fictional characters: a young Russian woman emigre caught between her complex love affair with a British journalist and a liberal-minded Japanese diplomat, an Indian nationalist working for Japanese intelligence, a Chinese professor with communist sympathies, an American missionary doctor and a Japanese soldier, who are all brought together by the monstrous dislocation of war. Enmeshed in a savage world beyond their control, each character turns to the deepest part of themselves to find a way to survive.

Informations

• Publié par: Marshall Cavendish International
• Date de parution: 21 août 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789814828895
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

1996 Meira Chand
First published in 1996 by Weidenfeld Nicolson
This new edition published by Marshall Cavendish Editions in 2018 An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

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National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Name(s): Chand, Meira. Title: A choice of evils / Meira Chand. Description: Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, [2018] Identifier(s): OCN 1046683204 | eISBN 978 981 4828 89 5 Subject(s): LCSH: Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945--Fiction. | Nanking Massacre, Nanjing, Jiangsu Sheng, China, 1937--Fiction. Classification: DDC 823.914--dc23
Printed in Singapore
Cover design by Lorraine Aw
For Zubin, Aditya and Natasha
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
C. G. Jung
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE Nanking, 1937
PART ONE Beginnings, 1901-1937
1 Sword of Power
2 Tokyo
3 Tokyo
PART TWO East of the Drum Tower, 1937
4 Meetings in Manchuria
5 Unreliable Men
6 A State of Alert
7 War
8 Shanghai
9 Return to Nanking
PART THREE The Rape of Nanking, December 1937
10 Last Chance
11 The Panay Incident
12 The Rape Begins
13 Caught in the Storm
14 Second Thoughts
15 Escape
16 The River Gate
17 A Matter of Policy
18 March of Triumph
19 A Change of Sides
20 Christmas Eve
21 Christmas Day
22 End of the Day
PART FOUR Aftermath, 1938
23 Photographs
24 A Dark Residue
25 Journey to Hankow
26 A Dangerous Course
27 Divisions
28 An Unavoidable Decision
29 Return to Hsinking
30 Front Line
31 Disgrace
PART FIVE The Voice of the Crane, 1940-1945
32 Sword of Power 2
33 A Fiery End
34 The Radio
35 Black Rain
PART SIX A Choice of Evils, 1945-1946
36 Sword of Power 3
37 The Journey Back
38 Full Circle
39 Sugamo
40 The Distance of Time
41 New Worlds
42 A Break with the Past
43 Shadows
Principal Fictional and Historical Characters
Acknowledgements
I have taken some liberties as a novelist that might seem inappropriate to academics. All Chinese spellings are in accordance with the now outmoded Wade-Giles system. Since this was the method of romanised spelling used in the era this book is set in, it seemed fitting to adhere to it rather than use the modern pinyin. I have also continued to call the old capital by the familiar name of Peking, rather than Peiping as it became known after Chiang Kai-shek established his centre of government in Nanking. Since Chiang Kai-shek is recognised in the West only by the placement of his surname first, as is the custom both in China and Japan, I have set out other Chinese names in this way. However, I have set out Japanese names in the Western manner of surname last, to fit in with other characters.
PROLOGUE

Nanking
1937
I have seen her, Mama, Lily announced. She has bright red hair, like a halo of fire. Is she really from Russia? How long is she going to stay with us? She pulled critically at her fringe. She was stuck forever with her dark Chinese hair and eyes black as the pip of a lychee.
She will stay as long as Bradley thinks best, Martha Clayton replied from behind the China Weekly Review . She lowered the newspaper, looking over half-moon glasses at Lily. The child was easily bored, always seeking new diversions. Perhaps their guest, sent to them by Bradley Reed, would stem her restlessness through the school holidays. Martha leaned back in her chair, glad to relax before dinner; it had been one of her operating days at the hospital. She sipped the plum wine she made each year. It had been a particularly difficult day, each operation on her list demanding. It was all so different from her own childhood, when she hasd seen her doctor father struggle not only with local concepts of hygiene, but with the distrust of his Chinese patients in the isolated area where the mission had functioned. He wore Chinese dress, Martha remembered, and his blond hair hung in a pigtail. He also operated in this attire; they all wore Chinese dress in those days to allay suspicion. Her father had been a good doctor and a good preacher; she feared she had failed his high standards.
She stared over the newspaper at her daughters. Lily stretched out on the floor beside her. Flora was lost in a book, curled up on a rattan chaise. Both girls were back for the school holidays from Shanghai.
I told Miss Komosky dinner was at seven. Flora looked up from her book. Lily, her hair just has to be dyed. Nobody has hair that colour. She admonished her sister then turned to her mother. Is she here for the Encyclopaedia?
Martha nodded, taking her glasses from her nose and folding up the newspaper. She is Bradley s chief assistant.
She had met Nadya Komosky on her arrival and been surprised. She would have expected Bradley Reed to employ a different type of woman, someone of a quieter nature, more scholarly in appearance. And older. The girl upstairs must be no more than twenty-eight.
The Encyclopaedia is nearly finished. It is already partly in proof. She needs to stay a while in Nanking, to supervise any last changes, Martha explained.
That book will never be finished. It s been going on for as long as I remember, Lily yawned.
Soon this impetuousness of Lily s would need proper direction, Martha thought. She was already fourteen and seemed always to slip from Martha s grasp by mercurial means. There would be no such anxiety surrounding Flora s future. Martha moved her gaze to her natural daughter and saw safety in her grave face. Flora, with her measured thought, seemed older than eighteen.
Many doubts had beset Martha at the time of Lily s adoption. Her husband, Bill, was no longer alive. He had viewed the adoption of a Chinese child as acceptable only if a couple had no other children. If there were natural children, Bill believed the Oriental child would feel inferior and the Occidental usurped; instead of love, hate would grow between them. Chinese orphans should be cared for in a Christian orphanage. Martha had accepted these views without question, until they found Lily. It was Flora, only four years old at the time, who insisted they adopt her. Martha s father, Dr Keswick, had still been alive, and running the old mission hospital. Martha remembered the dispensary of that hospital, always crowded with patients, each conscious only of their own need, each wanting to see the doctor first. Crying babies with mothers who never followed prescriptions. Patients who refused to divulge symptoms but expected her to take the three pulses of the wrist as did Chinese doctors. Tubercular coughs. Women in protracted labour, smallpox and typhoid cases, one fan to cool a temperature of a hundred degrees. As a child Martha remembered the sight of bandit victims stumbling, minus ears or fingers and sometimes noses, into the dispensary. She had lost her own husband to a bandit uprising. She reached hurriedly for her wine to banish the painful memories.
Martha s worry now was not just for the development of her children but for their very future. On her knee the paper was full of the ominous. War hovered upon the horizon, threatening to engulf them. Even Bradley had the wind up him. He had seen no need in the past to hurry the completion of the Encyclopaedia. Like everyone else Martha had hoped the Japanese, after their occupation of Manchuria and the failure five years before to take Shanghai, would be content with their gains in north China. Bradley s letter had disturbed her more than she wished to admit.
The Japanese are only waiting for an opportunity to push further South , Bradley Reed had written to Martha.

And who will stop them when they re ready? We don t know what s ahead, except trouble. I want the Encyclopaedia finished. I am sending Miss Komosky to sit in Nanking, to breathe down their necks and make them see urgency at the university. I have to be here in Shanghai. Miss Komosky is a pleasant young woman, and an efficient worker. If she could stay with you it would be a great help to us all. You will find her no trouble, you have my assurance .
Martha had known Bradley Reed since childhood. Their families had met aboard a ship while returning to China after home leave in America. After disembarking at Shanghai, they had shared a further ride on a crow