The Lady and the Panda Read online

  It would be impossible to say goodbye to Quentin Young, on this, her last evening alone with him. Even if they had wanted it once they were back in Shanghai or New York, a relationship would be nearly impossible. That she had found “complete happiness” here with him, that this new world had so captivated her—how could she put these feelings into words? Nothing she said could convey things properly. Instead, Harkness pressed a gold ring into Young's hand. It was her own wedding band, the circle representing eternity; the gold, precious love. She said that it was for him to give to Diana Chen. And with it, she wished them great happiness. The gift was its own paradox, at once selfless and self-centered. It was a generous sacrifice, but it would always place her between the two.

  At first light on November 16, they were up, dressed in clean clothes, and headed for Guanxian.

  SHORTLY BEFORE NOON, in the center of Guanxian's marketplace, a missionary from Chicago named Miss Jephson was helping a visiting British aristocrat, Lady Dorothea Hosie, haggle over the price of a pair of blue-and-white straw sandals. Lady Hosie was the daughter of a well-known China expert at Oxford and the widow of Sir Alexander Hosie, part of the diplomatic service in China, and her arrival in China had been much reported on.

  Bumping smack into each other, the adventurer and the blue blood would have just the kind of high-profile meeting Harkness had been hoping to avoid, but as with everything else on this trip, it would turn out to be a stroke of luck. The chance encounter was recorded in a photograph which, when reproduced in the North China Daily News, later would provide evidence for an embattled Harkness.

  The very British Lady Hosie, wearing a woman's fedora, button-down shirt, tie, and cardigan, was bowled over by what a romantic figure Harkness cut, and recounted the momentous meeting in her book, Brave New China:

  The crowd of tribespeople with their wide-open brown eyes and twisted blue turbans were pressing upon us, when a clear American voice called over their heads: “How do you do?”

  Through the crowd came a gallant figure, a young woman in grey flannel trousers, with shirt open at the neck and rolled-up sleeves, looking like a lithe boy. But a gay red scarf about her head proclaimed her sex, as did the lipstick, which, in bravura, she had put on even in those outlandish parts.

  Harkness introduced herself to Lady Hosie, jokingly apologizing for having missed her recent lecture on Chinese art. Lady Hosie reported that the American consul had directed her to “keep a weather eye open” for the bold explorer, so she was glad to see Harkness safe.

  Lady Hosie then noted Young standing behind Harkness in his khaki shorts and open shirt. He too carried a charged aura about him, seeming big and full of cheer. In her book she called him “Wong,” and said incorrectly that he was from Hawaii. In the Western press, he would continue to be a character overlooked or carelessly and inaccurately portrayed, despite Harkness's efforts.

  Young and Harkness asked Lady Hosie if she would like to be the first Englishwoman to see a baby panda. Delighted, Lady Hosie gathered up the missionary and another friend for the visit.

  The women were brought to an inn, where Su-Lin was barricaded with the hunters. “We bent over the white-furred baby lying asleep at the bottom of a bushel-basket lined with Mrs. Harkness's sheepskin coat,” Lady Hosie wrote. “But he had just had a drink of warm milk from a bottle and was disinclined to open his sleepy eyes with their circle of black fur.”

  As soon as the women left, the dashing Cavaliere blew into town with great fanfare. His caravan of two big motorcars, honking furiously, parted the startled crowd. Looking over at him, Harkness was amused to see that he had brought not one but two Chinese generals along for the ride.

  When he came to a stop, Cavaliere took Harkness's hand in his own and kissed it. “Madame,” he addressed her formally, “I know very little about exploration, but enough to know that only a woman would have taken care of that baby Panda as you have done.”

  She had to admit to herself that he might just be right. Perhaps she had succeeded not despite being a woman, but because of it. Once again, everything had gracefully and poetically been turned on its ear.

  Back to her negotiating at the marketplace, Lady Hosie glanced up in time to see “Mrs. Harkness flash by in the postmaster's car. She waved her hand,” the Englishwoman would recall, “and we knew the precious little animal from the wilds was in its basket at her feet.”

  Good luck again was riding with Harkness. Waiting back at Cavaliere's compound was the rangy, sandy-haired American pilot she had met before. He was spending the night and set to return to Shanghai the very next morning. James Ray McCleskey, or “Captain Mac,” of the CNAC said he was eager to have Harkness and Su-Lin join him for the twelvehour flight. There was a prohibition against passengers' bringing animals aboard, but Captain Mac assured Harkness it could be worked out. “Tell you what, I'll carry her as pidgin cargo in the control room,” he said, using the local jargon for contraband.

  Whatever trepidation Harkness had about leaving her mountain refuge was tossed aside that evening as Cavaliere uncorked his finest sparkling burgundy and the gathered crowd offered one toast after another. Ruth Harkness felt it was all predestined—as a character out of a Lin Yutang novel believed, “Men contrive, but the gods decide.”

  The next morning, November 17, Harkness and Su-Lin were aboard a gleaming Douglas fourteen-passenger airplane, riding, she said, swift wings over an ancient land. The panda traveled in the cockpit with the all-American Captain Mac, while Harkness sat in the passenger section, the lone woman and only westerner among all the Chinese men, some in Western suits and others in traditional Chinese robes.

  Because the planes of the CNAC often hugged the ground, snaking their way between the cliffs that box in huge sections of the Yangtze, Harkness was able to see the junks along the river—she could even make out the straining forms of the coolies who at various points pulled the boats from shore. Mile upon mile she watched this great land she had come to love slip by beneath her. The lady explorer was reversing her route by air, gliding over land and water, each inch of which had been hard won on her way out. As much as she hadn't wanted to leave, she now found herself willing the plane to go faster, back to the world she had so joyfully left behind.

  Harkness's restlessness only grew when foul conditions turned them back near Hankou. November marked the start of bad flying weather in China, and after being buffeted by turbulence, they had to put down to wait out the front. She could only sit and ruminate as time ticked by.

  Hours before, everything had been so rushed. Her goodbyes that morning in Chengdu were fleeting, with barely enough time to gulp a cup of coffee in Cavaliere's great dining room and ready the little panda for the journey to Shanghai. Thoughtfully, Quentin Young had prepared all the formula she would need for the long flight. In a flash then, she had found herself at the muddy Chengdu airfield, at the first light of day, waving farewell to Young and wondering when and under what circumstances she would see him again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE BATTLE ROYAL

  THE SOUND OF DRONING ENGINES cut through the nighttime fog and pelting rain that had enveloped Shanghai, and in the skies over the rustic, muddy Lunghwa Airdrome, the lights of the Douglas plane emerged from cloud. Outside the CNAC passenger terminal, three people stood waiting for Ruth Harkness's arrival: Dan Reib, as expected, but also reporter Woo Kyatang, of the China Press, and his photographer.

  When the plane touched down, Reib rushed up to his American friend, warning her of the media's presence. “Is the baby here?” he asked. According to Kyatang's account, Harkness looked at Reib, nodded, then pointed toward a wicker basket. Captain Mac, who had draped a raincoat over Su-Lin, was carrying him out toward Reib's car. Intercepting Harkness as she raced for the waiting room, the vigilant Kyatang asked her if, indeed, she had a giant panda in her possession. Harkness responded, “No. You must have made a mistake. Panda? What is a panda?”

  She had taken such great pains to keep a low profile t
hat she was now perplexed by the presence of the reporter. How could he have been tipped off? What Harkness didn't know was that as she flew eastward from Chengdu to Shanghai, an Associated Press report was being transmitted halfway around the world, tapped out on teletype machines in every newspaper office across the United States:

  CHENGTU, Szechwan Province, China, Nov. 17 (AP) The American woman explorer, Mrs. William H. Harkness Jr. of New York City arrived today from the Tibetan border with a live panda—a rare, bear-like animal.

  The animal is believed to be the first live panda captured in this part of Asia. A Chinese explorer accompanied Mrs. Harkness on her dangerous journey to the Tibetan border.

  The flashed message was, Time magazine would note, “tantalizing to every zoologist in the world.” As Harkness later realized, her friends in America heard the news of her success before those in Shanghai.

  It was odd that the entire press corps of this city hadn't figured things out in time to come here, but still, the two representatives who had shown up were steadfast in their pursuit. Harkness was unsure what her status with the government would be now that she had a giant panda, and the last thing she wanted was publicity. Thinking quickly, she cut a deal with Kyatang. “After considerable persuasion,” he wrote much later, “Mrs. Harkness finally consented to give some information regarding her trip and how she captured the only living panda in captivity.” She would do this only on the night before she sailed back to the United States, and “on the condition that nothing was said in the papers about her arrival until that time.” She wanted to make sure that she was safely plying the waters of the East China Sea when the story appeared.

  Once the reporter agreed, Harkness collapsed into Reib's waiting car. Since the airport, surrounded by cabbage farms, stood at the far outskirts of the city, they had a long trip ahead. But there was much to discuss as Reib, Harkness, and Baby traveled the sodden, rutted paths, which eventually turned into the slick, nighttime streets of Shanghai proper. The return to the Palace Hotel felt like a homecoming. Warmed by the glow of a fire in the grate, Harkness shared supper and drinks with Reib.

  Safe and cozy as she felt, Harkness knew she was in a jam—the fact that she had not applied for or received official scientific permissions for her outing would undermine her now that she intended to leave the country with this treasure. The two dear friends decided that the first priority must be secrecy. But, of course, this was Shanghai, the town in which it seemed every nationality in the world had convened for the purpose of gossip. It would have to be an open secret, with just the right people knowing. Against the odds, they pulled it off.

  Shanghai was ruled by foreigners, particularly those in big business. As one of the heads of Standard Oil Company of New York, Reib had the connections in Shanghai to quietly secure Harkness the proper paperwork.

  That first night back, Harkness and Reib picked up their easy intimacy where they had left off in September. For the rest of her stay in Shanghai, Reib would visit constantly, often settling himself in, drinking whiskey sodas, and cuddling tiny Su-Lin. He never seemed to mind when the baby panda inevitably wet on his expensive trousers. “She has personality, this Baby,” he told Harkness.

  Before he left that first night, Harkness could revel a bit in the fact that she had “broken all the rules” and admit that she was feeling like “a naughty child.” With a glowing fire, a good drink, dinner, and the most adorable baby panda nestled and sleeping nearby, it was a small, closed, happy world.

  But, of course, not for long.

  The outsiders started coming in that very night. And as The New York Times would later point out, “her real troubles… were just beginning.”

  After feeding Su-Lin, Harkness fell into bed a little after eleven. Just after midnight, Baby woke her, whimpering with an urgency Harkness had not heard before. She comforted the agitated animal in her arms for an hour before giving up and frantically dialing Captain Mac's wife, Peggy, asking for a pediatrician. It simply didn't occur to her, she would report later, to call a veterinarian. At first, a puzzled Dr. Francis Nance, or “Frick” as he was known here, asked just what a baby “Pandor” was. Within a half hour, the young physician was at the Palace Hotel, seeing for himself.

  Nance pressed a stethoscope to Baby's chest, listening to his heart, then took his temperature, having no way of knowing what normal should be for this rare species. Nonetheless, after a few gentle thumps of the belly, Nance diagnosed a simple case of colic, treating Su-Lin with a combination of peppermint drops in water and a warm-water enema. It seemed to do the trick. The panda grew stronger every day, with his weight rising shortly to four pounds, eight ounces. Nance went home that night to consult a number of references, dialing Harkness later with a new formula for the baby's feeding, which consisted of powdered milk, corn syrup, and cod liver oil.

  The next day, Harkness sent a one-word telegram to her dear friend Hazel Perkins: “SUCCESS.” She would shortly afterward also begin a cable communication with the Bronx Zoo.

  Reib held a lunch that day for her and Su-Lin. And in the afternoon Peggy McCleskey, along with a gaggle of other friends, dropped in. Peggy, who had a new baby herself, provided some practical mothering advice for Harkness. Reib, of all people, would inadvertently stumble upon some too. At a regular checkup within days of the panda's arrival, Reib's doctor noted a rash on his legs formed in reaction to Su-Lin's urine. The doctor wasn't terribly worried about Reib, but felt that any urine that would cause such inflammation on contact was too acidic, so he recommended that Baby be bottle-fed water as well as formula.

  This is the way it went for the next two weeks. That Harkness managed all the while to stay out of the press and under the radar was nothing short of miraculous. She was the hush-hush toast of the town, traipsing from one party to the next, always lugging the rarest animal in the world with her, causing a stir wherever she went. Decked out in her best clothes, throwing windows open for Baby's comfort as she strode through each room, she made quite a sight. In the mountains, she had worried about keeping Su-Lin warm; in Shanghai, she assumed that this high-elevation animal needed as much cold fresh air as was possible. In the town that lived to hobnob, the panda was invited to lunches, dinners, and even to tea. His popularity skyrocketed. “I don't suppose that any animal ever before had such a social career as Su Lin did in Shanghai,” Harkness wrote.

  Su-Lin's circle would not be wide enough, however, to include Floyd Tangier Smith, who had heard about Harkness's success from mutual friends at the Race Club. He and Elizabeth decided the explorer must be avoiding them, though they weren't sure why.

  AS USUAL, MEN HOVERED around Harkness. Two chums she had made in Shanghai before her expedition, both young businessmen, were by her side constantly. They became Su-Lin's amahs, or nursemaids—Floyd James, or “Jimmy,” an old pal of Bill Harkness's, and Jack Young's friend Fritz Hardenbrooke. Hardenbrooke, a Kodak employee, even abandoned his own Shanghai home for a time, renting a room on Harkness's floor to be closer at hand. He helped with panda-rearing chores and entertained Harkness with stories of his travels in Tibet.

  Su-Lin's two “amahs,” or nursemaids: the Shanghai businessmen Fritz Hardenbrooke and Floyd James. COURTESY MARY LOBISCO

  Given Harkness's inner circle, it wasn't surprising when she observed that Su-Lin was especially partial to men. But some of the males coming by were unwelcome. One by one, starting on her first full day back in Shanghai, reporters from the many English-language newspapers in town, as well as correspondents for papers back home, began to nose around. In each case, Harkness would explain her predicament, asking for an embargo on stories until the day she was leaving. In return, she promised she would grant lengthy interviews and photo sessions on the day before her departure.

  One correspondent, perhaps Hallett Abend of The New York Times, even arranged a meeting for Harkness with “an influential person ranking high in the affairs of China's government” so that she could find her way out of China despite the fact th
at she had no official permits. The powerful adviser who told her to continue with her current strategy of remaining under the radar was never named. But years later, Captain Mac's wife, Peggy, would remember that Ambassador Trusler himself had secretively stepped in to help.

  The earliest liner Harkness could book was the Empress of Russia, set to sail on Saturday morning, November 28, at seven, meaning she would spend Thanksgiving in Shanghai. As the holiday approached, newspapers were filled with ads for turkeys, American potatoes, pork pies and cheeses, celery and “rutabagas from home.”

  For the successful explorer, all was humming along smoothly. But, of course, the worst wrecks occur when everything is in high gear. First, she came down with the flu, which she blamed on all those open windows but which was more likely due to her exhaustion and relentless partying. She was not only sick but desperately in need of sleep, having continuously stayed up round the clock socializing and then tending to Baby, who needed to be fed or comforted at all hours. Harkness was so sapped physically that she uncharacteristically burst into tears on a few occasions. Once, in a dark moment, when she was utterly alone, she revealed, “I had wished many times that the Commander had come on to Shanghai.”

  She also endured pangs of great guilt. She indulged the panda at every whimper. She gave up her time, her clothes, and her freedom for him, all the while worrying that the little innocent animal wanted something she had robbed him of, and that he was “lonesome” for his mother. Long afterward, she would still be consumed by the thought of the mother panda returning to find her baby gone. She became determined to somehow make up for that loss.

  There was something smaller to feel sorry over too. A piece of film had stuck in the shutter of Harkness's Leica, and none of the seven hundred pictures from the mountains could be developed. There would be no photographs of Su-Lin's capture.