When We Were Orphans

Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.

Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it'll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it.

All I know is that I've wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I'd get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don't want it anymore, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become. Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow's sky.

It's all right. I'm not upset. After all, they were just things. When you've lost your mother and your father, you can't care so much about things, can you?

Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won't be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It'll be because people have changed. They'll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy.

The colonel nodded. "Our childhood seems so far away now. All this" - he gestured out of the vehicle - "so much suffering. One of our Japanese poets, a court lady many years ago, wrote how sad this was. She wrote of how our childhood becomes like a foreign land once we have grown." "Well, Colonel, it's hardly a foreign land to me. In many ways, it's where I've continued to live all my life. It's only now I've started to make my journey from it.

Wasn’t really, to tell you the truth. No shock at all.” Then he went on: “I always told her she should go, told her she should go and find love, you know, true love. She deserves it, don’t you think? That’s where she’s gone now. Off to find true love. Perhaps she’ll find it too. Out there, on the South China Sea, who knows? Perhaps she’ll meet a traveller, in a port, in a hotel, who knows? She’s become a romantic, you see? I had to let her go.” There were now tears welling in his eyes.

It has occurred to me that I should try and view in a similar spirit something which, over these three weeks I have been here in Shanghai, has come to be a perennial source of irritation: namely, the way people here seem determined at every opportunity to block one’s view. No sooner has one entered a room or stepped out from a car than someone or other will have smilingly placed himself right within one’s line of vision, preventing the most basic perusal of one’s surroundings. Often as not, the offending person is one’s very host or guide of that moment; but should there be any lapse in this quarter, there is never a shortage of bystanders eager to make good the shortcoming. As far as I can ascertain, all the national groups that make up the community here—English, Chinese, French, American, Japanese, Russian—subscribe to this practice with equal zeal, and the inescapable conclusion is that this custom is one that has grown up uniquely here within Shanghai’s International Settlement, cutting across all barriers of race and class.

She wrote of how our childhood becomes like a foreign land once we have grown.” “Well, Colonel, it’s hardly a foreign land to me. In many ways, it’s where I’ve continued to live all my life. It’s only now I’ve started to make my journey from

I was upset. But I'm not any more. You have to look forward in life.

But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.

Those were splendid days. We didn’t know it then, of course, just how splendid they were. Children never do, I suppose.

So identical were their pitiful whimpers, the way their screams gave way to desperate entreaties then returned to screams, that the notion came to me: this was what each of us would go through on our way to death, that these terrible noises were as universal as the crying of newborn babies.

The war, ghastly as it was, represented no more than “an awkward window in Man’s evolution” when for a few years our technical progress had run ahead of our organisational capacities.

A veces es muy difícil, lo sé. Es como si todo tu mundo se derrumbara a tu alrededor. Pero te diré una cosa, Jenny. Estás llevando a cabo maravillosamente la tarea de ir poniendo de nuevo las piezas en su sitio. Créeme, es cierto. Sé que jamás podrá ser lo mismo, pero sé también que está en tu mano seguir en la brecha y llegar a forjarte un futuro feliz. Y yo siempre estaré aquí para ayudarte. Quiero que lo sepas

I think it would be no bad thing if boys like you all grew up with a bit of everything. We might all treat each other a good deal better then. Be less of these wars for one thing. Oh yes. Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won’t be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It’ll be because people have changed. They’ll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It’s healthy.” “But if I did, everything might . . .” I stopped. “Everything might what, Puffin?” “Like that blind there”—I pointed—“if the twine broke. Everything might scatter.” Uncle Philip stared at the blind I had indicated. Then he rose, went to the window and touched it gently. “Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it’s something we can’t easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it’ll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it.” He sighed, as though I had just defeated him in an argument.

Potser algun dia tots aquests conflictes s'acabaran, i no serà pas gràcies a cap gran estadista o a cap església o a cap institució com aquesta. Serà perquè la gent haurà canviat. Seran com tu, Puffin: una barreja. ¿Per què no ho hem de voler ser, mestissos? És una cosa saludable.