The Lady and the Panda Read online

  Exhausted, Harkness and Young made their way inside, past the flags whose every snap in the wind was believed to transmit a prayer heavenward. The vast fortress became a maze of dark passageways and uneven stone steps. The team lighted lamps, stumbling around until they found sizable rooms fit for encampment. Using just about every blanket and oil sheet she had, Harkness partitioned off a private space for herself, hauling out the well-used little basin to wash up. Cool soapy water washed away the sweat and dirt, especially from her blistered feet. For a fresh outfit, she was a bit stuck. All of the nicer things were by now soiled, so she would have to rely on her knack for making simple things elegant. As temperatures in the mountains descended quickly with the night, she fashioned an ensemble from Bill's long woolen underwear and the sheepskin coat that Su-Lin had given her.

  Bathed and dressed, Harkness and Young made themselves a dinner on the portable stove: thick cornmeal bread and corned beef from a tin. As they sipped wine, Young kept Harkness spellbound with a saga of adventure from mysterious Tibet. He told her of a secret place, a spectacular, uncharted lake that he and his brother believed they had discovered. Harkness and Young vowed to map the lake as their next mission, and in that instant their hopes and their lives were entwined. The pact was impulsive. They laughed at themselves for planning a second venture before the first was finished. Harkness felt deliriously happy.

  At some point, they decided to do a little exploring in the vast labyrinth of the stone castle. It was a sorry old hulk. Soldiers had harvested wood from its ancient walls. For countless years the elements had been punishing, wind and rain penetrating deep inside the ruin. Still, poignantly, there were great touches of life and art left intact. These were possessions of the lamas that had held no interest for the marauding army. The chants written on Tibetan prayer wheels and prayer flags silently endured. Serene Buddhas perched on lotus leaves in bright, colorful paintings kept company with many other gods.

  The two adventurers came upon a hidden compartment. As they entered the chamber, their light brought to life an astonishing carnal scene. It was, to Western eyes, a playground of statues and paintings in which lusty gods romped in erotic abandon. The depictions were so graphic that they had shocked earlier Western visitors who had seen them. The botanist E. H. Wilson had described the “erotomania,” in which “phallic worship holds unblushing sway,” as “hideous and disgustingly obscene.”

  The deities seemed proud of their desires in this sect of Tibetan Buddhism, in which tantric sexual rituals were added to the menu of spiritual practices. Harkness, who loved the “frankness” of the East, was captivated. Something must have stirred in Young too, for in this secluded galaxy of lust, their intimacy became sensual, their bodies slipping into an embrace.

  Taboos never mattered much to Harkness, except maybe to make things more desirable. She was living life to the fullest, with every sense heightened. Closing her eyes that night in a castle at the edge of panda country, she couldn't hope to find in sleep a fantasy any more beautiful than her waking life. “Time turned backward in a dream—or was it that other world of feverish activity that was illusion?” Harkness wrote.

  ON THE FIRST MORNING there, while Harkness still slept, Young tenderly rigged a sheet to keep the sun out of her eyes. But the very next day, he was off early before she awoke. Engaged to one woman in Shanghai and sleeping with another in Sichuan, perhaps he felt the conflict of warring emotions.

  Harkness was serene and sated. Contentedly puffing a classic yardlong Chinese pipe, its thimble-size bowl filled with rich native tobacco, she happily passed the three days of Young's absence. Having run out of cigarettes, her only crisis had been one of nicotine, a problem she found easy to solve with the purchase of a pipe from the villagers.

  The solitude gave her time to reflect on their relationship, which of course was shockingly “mixed” for its time. But the issue had fascinated Harkness since her days on the Tancred when she met a beautiful Dutchman who was one-quarter Javanese. Clearly Chinese and Americans came together sometimes, Emily Hahn and the poet Zao Xinmei being a famous example. But there were other pairings of a less public nature. Harkness wrote home when she reached Shanghai about meeting sophisticated, well-traveled young “halfcaste” Chinese who would turn out to have names like Angus MacPherson. She made friends with an American woman who was married to a Chinese man. Harkness referred to her as “Mrs. Chun Tien Pao,” reporting that she was fascinating but unhappy. There were rooms for ancestor worship in her large house, Harkness noted, “where she kowtows before the tablets with the rest of the family.” Still, both whites and Chinese were horrified by such marriages. “Anglo-Saxons have rendered a signal service to civilisation, not only by maintaining the prestige of the white man all the world over, but by guarding the unmixed purity of their race,” wrote the French poet Abel Bonnard in a book about his travels, In China, published in 1926. A society of “half-breeds” is disgusting, he said, bringing with it a “debasement of the soul and confusion of the mind.”

  Harkness did not agree. Young was handsome and kind. People— native and foreign—respected him. He was capable and honorable and smart. She was a young widow far from the gossip mills of Shanghai, farther still from New York. Her husband had been dead for eight months, and away from her for two years. She had never felt so physically alive, so strong, so sure of herself. Her impulses must have felt as pure and potent as those tantric gods seemed to have ordained.

  ON NOVEMBER 2, despite a cold rainstorm that carried the threat of snow, Quentin Young arrived full of good cheer from his scouting sortie, while luggage and mail were delivered from Wenchuan. Around the fire that night and into the next day, Young and Harkness ate pancakes and read letters. Dan Reib had sent an encouraging note and Harkness was delighted to hear from Cavaliere, who addressed her as “Dear Sweet Tender Lady.” If she received news of the outside world, she didn't mention it, though, as they holed up in the castle, FDR was being reelected to a second term.

  It was time to strategize for the final push. The expedition now counted twenty-three, which included, to Harkness's amusement, Ho, little Ho, and old Ho, as well as three Dzos, and many Wangs, Whangs, and Yangs. The staff was large enough that they could afford to dispatch a member once again to Guanxian, this time for material to make traps. They planned to send runners on a regular basis to Wenchuan for supplies and mail over the long months they expected to be in the field.

  Young and Harkness hashed out their game plan. There would be three camps. Base camp would be one day's travel from the castle into the mountains. Wang, Yang, and Harkness would be stationed there. Camp Two was to be Quentin's, positioned one day from base camp. The third would be managed by Ho, who had been a member of the Sage expedition.

  The travel coming next would sorely test the city girl. Sage had written extensively about the area they were about to enter. “The climbing we had hitherto done was nothing to what now confronted us,” he wrote, “for the trail led up over ledges and crags whose abruptness was fairly staggering.… Up and up we struggled, inching a laborious way over slides and ledges and around precipitous slopes, with often a sheer drop from the narrow trail into the abyss of clouds below.”

  At 8 A.M. on November 4, Ruth Harkness's expedition headed into what she called “the lonely lost world of tumbled mountains.” The morning sunshine in this province noted for its rains, she felt, was auspicious. Overall, the expedition had been experiencing great luck with clear weather. The team climbed and climbed. There were cliffs and bamboo forests, each turn providing a more stunning vista of snow-covered peaks. This “lonely, wild and unutterably beautiful place” made her wonder why anyone would choose to live in civilization. She continued to refer to the mountains as lonely, a complex sensation of many shadings that she and Bill knew well. Here, she embraced solitude, luxuriating in her reflective mood and continually comparing the life she had left behind to this glorious new one.

  When she arrived, Harkness was thrilled. “New Y
ork has nothing like this,” she said. Because Young sped on ahead to prepare the camp, the comforting smell of wood smoke hung in the air, and on one of the few level spots in the whole area stood a cooking lean-to and her lightweight tropical white tent. Her quarters contained a cot, a trunk, and a canvas case. Best of all, it provided privacy, something that had been in short supply throughout the journey.

  Just before dusk, when all the porters were accounted for, Young organized a ceremony in which the American flag was raised in her honor.

  Harkness enjoyed a meal in the warm lean-to with the men. And, later that night, bundled up in her silk sleeping bag on the cot, as rain and wind beat against the canvas of her tent, Harkness closed her eyes, listening to the reassuring murmur of the hunters in conversation nearby.

  The next day, Young was off to settle his own camp, but not before expertly bringing down a goral—a husky and robust goat-antelope. It would provide a great deal of fresh meat, starting right away when they ate the liver for tiffin.

  In Young's absence, Harkness sat in the field kitchen, banging out letters to friends on her portable typewriter and chatting with Wang in pidgin English. He was working his magic. Stripped to the waist in the steaming shed, he busied himself with the fire, making delicious scones for her while recounting his time as assistant to the cook of the French consul in Chongqing.

  The next morning, a dispatch from Young arrived, along with a packet of mail he wanted sent off. The snowline, he said, descending further and farther down the mountain, had reached his camp. It was thirty degrees, foggy, and still snowing as he penned his note. At base camp, while a raw rain fell, Harkness stuck close to the fire, reading letters from Chengdu, Shanghai, and the United States, which arrived by runner just before nightfall. She relished the contact. Dan Reib cheered her on: “Hurry up and get your Panda and be back in Shanghai for Christmas,” he wrote. Harkness laughed at the thought—wouldn't that be something? It was much more likely that she'd be right here for months to come.

  Young strode down to her the next day, announcing his approach with two shots of a gun. He was full of energy and high spirits. And he carried with him a gift—two beautiful tragopan pheasants. All the plans were going forward at tremendous speed. His camp was completely ready for her stay, traps had been set, log bridges constructed. As soon as he checked on the third camp, run by Lao Ho and Lao Tsang, he would be back to base camp to pick her up.

  Before he was off again, he found waiting for him a letter from Diana Chen. Tucked into the envelope was a newspaper clipping—a photograph of her in a recent triumph. She had won events in javelin throwing, shot put, and the broad jump. It was a strange circumstance for Young, reading the letter of his girlfriend in front of his lover. Harkness wrote that he was smiling as he told her that she herself looked like an athlete now too. In Harkness's New York set, a woman who could drive a standard shift might be considered athletic. Young's bar was quite a bit higher, and she was flattered. It was a sweet moment between them, and Harkness assured him that the pheasants would not be cooked until his return the next day.

  Tethered to the small camp, Harkness, for the first time on the entire trip, grew impatient. While the panda hunt was so close, she wanted to be with Young.

  She didn't have to wait long. On the afternoon of November 8, Quentin Young returned to guide her upward into panda country.

  The terrain was as formidable as most adventurers would face in a lifetime. Not only were they climbing steeply at high altitude, but every step held another obstacle: dense stands of head-high bamboo, great dead logs covered in slippery moss, fields of knee-deep sphagnum moss engorged with icy water, and snow slipping off branches onto cheeks and down into coat collars. The constant fog kept everything wet, conspiring with the moss to make the footing as slippery as if it were oiled. They made their way through forest, over tumbled rock, and across icy churning streams. “Picture, if you can, a world of up and down,” Harkness said. “Where the best refuge you may hope to find from icecold rain, chilling ghostly clouds and razor-edged wind is a space hardly bigger than a bridge table in the mountain crags under overhanging rocks.… Where you grope your way through thickly standing spruce, interwoven forests of rhododendrons, walls of bamboo that virtually grow stem to stem, with here and there a sprinkling of moss-covered rocks and clumps of ferns and other vegetation.”

  Harkness continued to struggle along in a reflective mood, particularly when she came upon what looked like nature's confirmation of yin and yang, the entwining of opposites. “A stranger thing I have never seen,” she wrote, “than snow on green bamboo.” It was proof that opposites coexisted, were part of each other, and gave each other life force. Evidence too, according to early philosopher Ko Hung, of the possibility of everlasting life—for bamboo showed that not all plants are bound to wither in winter. Scientists took note of the phenomenon as well. To them, the year-round life of bamboo, which provided a steady if not terribly nutritious food source, represented the twist in the road of giantpanda evolution.

  In this foggy region, there were places where Harkness could see but a few yards ahead. She wrote, “Then suddenly, there would be a rift in the ghostly mass and, often as not, we would find ourselves clinging tooth and nail to a mountain-side with a dead fall of many thousand feet right below us.”

  Harkness and Young were drenched and tired when they reached Camp Two. Like Camp One, it consisted only of a cooking lean-to and a white tent in a cleared area, though this tent was Young's, and the flag flying above it was Chinese. Nonetheless, Harkness spent the night in that tent. Young, she wrote for public consumption in her book, slept with the hunters.

  All along the route, they had seen “Panda signs. Droppings on the ground, claw marks on the trees, and bamboo stalks that had been ripped open and chewed.” Ruth Harkness was finally in the realm of the giant panda.

  THE BIG BEARS had lethal power in bulk and muscle, in their sharp claws and powerful bite. But what they wanted most was to be left alone to live a quiet life. And, strangely, it seemed they had accomplished that.

  The giant panda, or Mo as it was often called, had been mentioned in ancient texts since before the birth of Christ, but not always in recognizable form. The Shan Hai Ching, or Classic of Mountains and Seas, a book on geography, and the Er Ya, or Explanation of Words, China's first dictionary, were just two that spoke of an animal that seemed very much like the giant panda. The Shan Hai Ching described the animal as living in what are now the Qionglai Mountains and having a taste for copper and iron. But the book could be confusing. Full of natural history data, it also delved into mythology and fiction, describing fantastic creatures like a horse with serrated teeth that ate tigers and leopards. In the various ancient references to the panda, it is often described as something like a white leopard.

  Here in the mountains, of course, the local hunters knew of beishung, and they sometimes shot it for its wiry, coarse pelt, which was believed to ward off evil spirits in the night. In general, though, the hunters sought more valuable or useful game, and people in the area might live a lifetime without ever seeing the animal. Giant pandas hearing the approach of humans could disappear into the thick bamboo with amazing agility.

  All around Harkness this chill night were those silent, vanishing pandas. Spread throughout this mountain chain, they were patiently enduring the late fall and facing the oncoming winter. Now, in the cold of November, they would be concentrating their consumption on old stems of arrow bamboo as well as some leaves.

  For a male in the vicinity, this would be the rhythm of life—eating different parts of the bamboo seasonally, sticking to a home range of two to four square miles that overlapped with that of other pandas, posting claims and advertising his presence on trees by urinating and also rubbing secretions from a gland just under his short, broad tail. He would be eating and sleeping mainly, relieved of the mating pressure he would feel in spring. Then his masculinity would rally, his testes enlarging in preparation for the few days a f
emale would be in heat. Precisely who she was and when she would be receptive would have been clear to him from the chemical signs she would be posting for him through her own scent marking.

  On this night, not far from Camp Two, a female panda was nestled down in the hollow of an old tree with her two-month-old baby. He had been born, like most pandas here, in September, blind, nearly naked of fur, and utterly helpless. If he had had a twin, and there was a fifty-fifty chance he had, it was by now dead—an unbending rule of fate in the wild. Next to his mother, who was perhaps nearly two hundred pounds, he was truly tiny at birth, only the weight of a stick of butter. Small, slowgrowing infants were just one of the consequences of the panda's lowenergy diet. She suckled him as many as twelve times a day on her high-fat milk and dotingly licked at his belly and behind to stimulate him to relieve himself. For weeks, she had cradled him in her arms as she sat upright, delicately picking him up in her mouth when she needed to shift position. He would be gaining weight, growing hair, and beginning to show the telltale black-and-white markings of his species. Driven by the need to eat, the mother panda would start leaving the nest without him for increasingly longer periods to feed on bamboo. By this time, his coat was thick enough for him to stay warm during her temporary absences. To leave him in the nest alone for any length of time was to leave him vulnerable—to golden cats, to the big tree-climbing yellow-throated martens, and now, even, to humans.

  That night, as Ruth Harkness drifted off to sleep in these darkened mountains, she couldn't possibly have dreamed just how close to her goal she was.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A GIFT FROM THE SPIRITS

  WHEN HARKNESS FIRST AWOKE AT SIX, the dark and endless bamboo forest was just shrugging off its gloom and giving way to a luminous first light. It was Monday, November 9. The hunters, led by Lao Tsang, had already gathered around the fire in the field kitchen, preparing for another day of searching. Harkness had two luxuries here—the privacy of the tent for dressing, and a trunk full of clean clothes that included tailored riding trousers and sportsmen's wool shirts.