Old Gisors-fully informed this time-was worried. He was too much inclined to see in Marxism a kind of fatality to regard questions of tactics without suspicion. Like Kyo, he was sure that Chiang Kai-shek would attempt to crush the Communists; like Kyo he believed that the murder of the general would have struck the reaction at the point where it was most vulnerable. But he detested the plot-like character of their present activity. The death of Chiang Kai-shek, even the seizure of the Shanghai government, led only to adventure. Together with some of the members of the International, he favored the return to Canton of the Iron Army and the Communist fraction of the Kuomintang: there, backed by a revolutionary city, by an active and well- supplied arsenal, the Reds could entrench themselves and await the moment that would be propitious to a new Northern campaign, which the imminent reaction would prepare from below. The generals of Hankow, eager for lands to conquer, were less eager to venture into the south of China where the Unions, faithful to those who represented the memory of Sun Yat-sen, would have driven them to a constant and rather fruitless guerilla warfare. Instead of having to fight the Northerners, and then Chiang Kai-shek, the Red army would thus be leaving the latter the task of fighting the former. Whichever enemy the Red army would then encounter at Canton would be greatly weakened. “The donkeys are too much fascinated by their carrot,” said Gisors of the generals, “to bite us at this moment if we don’t place ourselves between it and them. ” But the majority of the Chinese Communist Party, and perhaps Moscow, judged this point of view “liquidational.”
Kyo, like his father, thought that the best policy was that of a return to Canton. He would have liked, moreover, to prepare the mass emigration of the workers, by an intensive propaganda, from Shanghai to Canton- they possessed nothing. It would be very difficult, but not impossible: the outlets for the Southern provinces being assured, the working masses would have brought a rapid industrialization to Canton. A dangerous policy for Shanghai: spinning-mill workers are more or less skilled, and to train new workers would mean forming new revolutionaries, unless the wages were raised-“an hypothesis which is excluded,” Ferral would have said, “by reason of the present state of Chinese industries.” To empty Shanghai for Canton’s benefit, like Hong Kong in 192 5. Hong Kong is five hours from Canton, and Shanghai five days: a difficult enterprise, more difficult perhaps than to let themselves be killed, but less stupid.
Since his return from Hankow he was convinced that the reaction was under way; even if Clappique had not warned him, he would have considered the situation, in the case of an attack on the Communists by the army of Chiang Kai-shek, so desperate that any incident, even the assassination of the general (whatever its consequences) would be a favorable one. The Unions, if they were armed, could conceivably attempt to give battle to a disorganized army.
The bell again. Kyo ran to the door: at last, the mail which brought the answer from Hankow. His father and May watched him return, without saying anything.
“Orders to bury the fireanns,” he said.
The message, torn up, had become a ball in the hollow of his hand. He took the pieces of paper, spread them out on the opium table, pieced them together, shrugged his shoulders at his childishness: it was indeed the order to hide or to bury the arms.
“I have to go over there right away.”
“Over there,” was the Central Committee. This meant that he had to leave the concessions. Gisors knew that he could say nothing. Perhaps his son was going to his death; it was not the first time: it was the justification of his life. He had only to suffer and be silent. He took the information given by Clappique very seriously: the latter had saved KOnig’s life-the German who was now directing the police of Chiang Kai-shek-by warning him that the corps of cadets in Peking to which he belonged, was to be massacred. Gisors did not know Shpilevski. As Kyo’s glance met his he tried to smile; Kyo also, and they did not turn their eyes away: both knew they were lying, and that this lie was perhaps their most affectionate communion.
Kyo returned to his room, where he had left his jacket. May was putting on her coat.
“Where are you going?”
“With you, Kyo.”
“What for?”
She did not answer.
“It is easier to recognize us together,” he said.
“I don’t see why. If you’re spotted, it doesn’t matter. ”
“You’ll do no good.”
“What good will I do here, during that time? Men don’t know what it is to wait. ”
He took a few steps, stopped, turned towards her: “Listen, May: when your freedom was in question, I granted it.”
She understood what he alluded to and was afraid: she had forgotten it. Indeed, he added in a duller tone:
“. And you managed to take advantage of it. Now it’s mine that is involved.”
“But, Kyo, what's the connection?”
“To recognize the freedom of another is to acknowledge his right to it, even at the cost of suffering, as I know from experience.”
I ‘another,’ Kyo?”
He was silent once more. Yes, at this moment she was another. Something between them had been changed.
“Then,” she continued, “because. anyway, because of that, we can no longer be in danger together?. Consider, Kyo: it almost looks as though you were taking revenge. ”
“To be able to no longer, and to try when it’s useless amounts to the same thing.”
“But if you held it against me as much as that, all you had to do was to take a mistress. But after all, no! why do I say that? It isn’t true-1 didn’t take a lover, I went to bed with a man. It’s not the same thing, and you know very well you can have anyone you like. ” “You satisfy me,” he answered bitterly.
His look astonished May: it showed a mingling of many emotions. And-most disquieting of all-on his face the fearful expression of a lust which he himself was unaware of.
“At this moment, as well as two weeks ago,” he went on, “I’m not looking for someone to go to bed with. I don’t say you are wrong; I say that I want to go alone. The freedom you allow me is your freedom. The freedom to do what pleases you. Freedom is not an exchange — it is freedom.”
“It’s a desertion.”
Silence.
“Why do people who love each other face death, Kyo, if not to risk it together?”
She guessed that he was going to leave without further discussion, and placed herself in front of the door.
“You should not have given me this freedom,” she said, “if it is going to separate us now.”
“You did not ask for it.”
“You had already recognized it.”
You should not have believed me, he thought. It was true, he had always recognized it. But that she should at this moment be discussing a question of rights separated her from him all the more.
“There are rights that one gives,” she said bitterly, “only so that they shall not be used.”
“If I had given them only in order that you could hang on to them at this moment, it wouldn’t be so bad. ”
This instant separated them more than death: eyelids, mouth, temples, the place of every caress is visible on the face of a dead woman, and those high cheek-bones and those elongated eyelids now belonged to a foreign world. The wounds of the deepest love suffice to create a rather substantial hatred. Was she withdrawing, so near to death, from the threshold of that world of hostility which she was glimpsing? She said:
“I’m hanging on to nothing, Kyo. Let’s say I’m wrong, that I have been wrong, anything you like. But now, at this moment, right away, I want to go with you. I ask it of you.”