The Game in the Past. John Zeugner
140 thousand or 200 thousand folks in less than six seconds. Hiroshima’s Peace Park is a good place to test out whether decimate is too strong a term. But my true Japanese expertise concerns Gin—it’s a bargain here. Nobody drinks it but visiting professors and, of course, Brits in Kobe.”
“We agree to disagree,” Guade said. “I see you have adopted Japanese tactics. Now you can smile and cock your head, indicating that you know I’m an idiot who must, nonetheless, be indulged.”
“Precisely, only my smile indicates you deserve to die,” Moran said.
“Well, anyway, one of them,” Guade motioned to the Japanese who had clustered at two far tables, “actually said something today. I must be making progress. I appreciate you’re coming up with some names.”
“In graduate school I did a paper on Hornbeck and Atcheson. Their world view or some such. I ended up thinking Atcheson was a Communist. So you see we aren’t so far apart politically.”
“Absurd,” Guade countered.
“Our agreement, or my judgment on Atcheson?”
“Both.”
“Have you read Atcheson’s China dispatches?”
“No. But his anti-communism when he came here to Japan on the Commission after the war was well known—even embarrassing.”
“A cover, like my smile.”
“Ridiculous.”
“Well, read the China dispatches and then tell me what you think. Though you’ll have a bitch of a time finding U.S. government documents here. I don’t think Foreign Relations of the U.S. series exists in Kansai.”
“They certainly do at Doshisha,” Guade said.
“Well, they certainly don’t at the national universities.”
“Tell you what. Come to Tokyo next month for the seminar and we can argue about Atcheson,” Guade said paternally.
“What seminar?”
“A kind of reunion—the original proponent of the perimeter theory, including Liv Wells.”
“The Undersecretary for Marshall?”
“Byrnes,” Guade corrected him, smiling.
“Touché.”
“I’ll get you invited. You can even do a colloquium if you like.”
“I don’t like.”
“Well, just a private discussion then.”
“A history lesson?”
“Of course! Atcheson was no traitor,” Guade said, with just enough earnestness to stop the conversation— banter scattered.
2.
Moran actually had the China FRUS volumes with him in Japan. He wanted to write a follow up article on some recent students of the China Foreign Service Officers and there was grant money to air freight the FRUS volumes to Osaka. For the next week he worked over Atcheson’s dispatches, once again, cutting new notecards. He knew Guade would find his own volumes, knew that Guade would be rigorous and thorough and energetic in marshalling his evidence. Moran understood well enough that preconceptions inevitably shaped data, so he tried to make the case for Atcheson’s naiveté or anti-Communism, or simply a failure understand Mao and Chou. But he became certain there was no other way to explain Atcheson’s long dispatches explicating Marxian theory, or his agonized employment of that theory to justify new moves on the part of Stalin or Mao. Why should a counselor or attaché be so obsessed with the theory of Communism?
Guade could, doubtless would, point to changes of tone. Early Atcheson cheered the Communists on, but by 1945 he had begun to call the reforms a veneer for something else, begun to sound the anti-Russian incantation that characterized his post war work in Tokyo. But all ideologues risked disenchantment and all traitors understood the use of cover, didn’t they?
At the opening of the seminar sponsored by the American Center, Guade took Moran aside, to a corridor adjacent to the small lecture hall. “I’ve looked at the dispatches,” he said.
“So have I, again.”
“We should talk.”
“Aha! Is it a certain sense of contrition I hear in your tone?”
“More than that. We need to discuss several things. I’ve been to the states since Kyoto.”
“To the states and back?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve discovered Atcheson was really Alger Hiss?”
“I’ve a series of questions for you and a couple of envelopes. Let’s try to get some yaki tori after the panel. Meet me right here as soon as we’re through, can you?”
During the discussion Moran kept turning over in his mind Guade’s tone and insistence, as if he had taken on a certain respect for Moran, or at least seriousness toward him. Could it be had re-read Moran’s book on Gauss? That seemed unlikely. More probably Guade was hooked on an anti-Communist persuasion and glad to find new candidates for pillory. Moran was convinced of his own accusations against Atcheson, but equally convinced that such information was irrelevant, nothing more than a game one played with the data. But it occurred to him that providing such game data to someone like Guade who took the enterprise with the utmost seriousness was rather like tossing an ember into a pool of gasoline—an image which seemed appropriate to the glowing brazier of the yaki tori place they found. They took two stools at one end of the twenty that formed a semi-circle around the open hearth. Moran ordered beer but Guade refused to drink.
“The dispatches are interesting in that they display a man trying to apply dialectic theory to actual occurrences. It’s not simply a matter of reporting favorably on Mao or the Communists in Yenan.”
“Exactly,” Moran said.
The chef, in a sort of sawed-off, brilliantly-colored robe, dispensed charcoaled delicacies from off a long-handled wooden paddle. The Japanese on the other stools kept up a cascade of laughter and conversation. Already most of them had a red band around their eyes, which signaled intoxication. Moran always felt buoyant in such places. He siphoned off the incomprehensible exhilaration around him, drank furiously, and pointed to whatever he wanted cooked on the grill. He knew enough of the names to get favorites like chicken (tori), shrimp (ebi), and squid (iika). Guade was not interested in the ambiance of the place. He talked incessantly, made references to certain dates, certain dispatches, displaying, as always, total command, total recall, of the material, but Moran ceased to follow the exposition. He was settling over the edge of his stool, dribbling down the sides as Sapporo Ebisu beer worked its wondrous relaxation. Why was Guade talking so?
“With Davies and Service and to a certain extent Vincent, you catch enthusiasm for what seems to be a democratic regime run by Mao, but Atcheson is never interested in that. When Stalin suspends the Comintern Atcheson spends two pages explaining how this can be done under Marxist theory. I mean who was reading such a dispatch? Who could have cared? Alone among the China officers he seems mesmerized with dogma, theory, dialectics. It’s astonishing.”
“Of course. Of course,” Moran answered. “I never thought McCarthy had a shred of evidence against Service or Davies or Vincent, but against Atcheson, I thought there was a case and he never tried it.”
“Atcheson dies in August, 1947. McCarthy didn’t start ranting ‘till early 1950.”
“I know that. I guess you need living enemies. But Atcheson would have been the perfect target. He never even got mentioned.”
“Hurley accused him and all of them in 1945.”
“Hurley doesn’t count. Who cares about one bitter, Indian-bonneted Ambassador for chrissakes?”
“There’s more to Atcheson,” Guade hunched over, as if full