Year

1969

Text

Type

Publication

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Subjects

Chronology Entries (1)

#	Year	Text	Linked Data
1	1969	Graves, Robert. The lost Chinese [ID D31646]. … This was June 1952 – just before Willie Fedora appeared in Muleta and rented a cottage. The United States Government was paying Willie a modes disability grant, in recognition of 'an anxiety neurosis aggravated by war service in Korea'… Apparently towards the end of the Korean War, a senior officer had put Willie in charge of five hundred captured Chinese Communists but, when he later marched them to the pen, a bare three hundred were left. The remainder could neither have been murdered, nor committed suicide, nor escaped; yet they had disappeared. "Disappeared into thin air !" he would repeat tragically, tilting the samovar. Any suggestion that these Chinamen had existed only on paper - a 3 scrawled in the heat of battle, we pointed out, might easily be read as a 5 - enraged Willie. "Goddam it !" he would shout, pounding the table. "I drew rations and blankets for five hundred. Laugh that off !" Before long, we shut our doors against Willie. Let him finish his play, we said, rather than talk about it; and none of us felt responsible for his lost Chinese. Yet every night they haunted his dreams, and often he would catch glimpses of them skulking behind trees or barns even by day. Now, it is an old custom at Muleta to support the Catholic China Missions, and on 'China Day' the school children paint their faces yellow, slant their eyebrows and dress themselves up in the Oriental clothes, of uncertain origin, which the Mother Superior of our Franciscan convent distributes from a long, deep, camphor-scented chest. They drive around in a tilt-cart and collect quite a lot of money; though who ultimately benefits from it remains a mystery, because (as I told the incredulous Mother Superior) no foreign missions have been tolerated in China for some years. Unfortunately, the young Chinese came tapping at Willie's cottage window one after¬noon and scared him out of his wits. Accidently smashing his samovar against a vine barrel as he stumbled into the café, Willie collapsed on the terrace. When he felt better, we recommended a Palma doctor. He groaned at us: "You jump off a cliff 1 I’m through with you all. I'm going native."… Jaume did not question Willie's account of those lost Chinese, but argued that the command of five hundred prisoners must have been too great a burden fo5r so young a soldier as Willie; and that omniscient God had doubltess performed a miracle and cut down their number. 'How would I manage them all single-handed ? One hundred, yes; two hundred, yes; three hundred, perhaps; five hundred would be excessive'… Willie, with streaming eyes, promised to irrigate the lemon grove, plough around the olive trees, plant the beans when the weather broke, and wait patiently for Jaume's return. But two hundred phantom Chinese took advantage of his loneliness to prowl among the trees and tap at the kitchen window… Dom Enrique and his mother carried him [Willie] to the Rectory, where they nursed him until the American Embassy could arrange his transfer to the States. On New Year's Day, 1955, he broke his neck falling out of a window, apparently pursued by Chinese oppressors.	Person: Graves, Robert

Cited by (1)

#	Year	Bibliographical Data	Type / Abbreviation	Linked Data
1	2007-	Worldcat/OCLC	Web / WC