THE JESUIT'S TALE
443
"I wonder how the Japanese could squat on the floor all day
long without cramping their legs. 1 am very happy to have these
chairs here-all of them, together with this house, are gifts from my
dear Chinese friends. The Chinese here are very nice to me, in spite
of my crimes."
"Your crimes?"
"Didn't you read about that in the newspapers? Didn't you
learn that I had been expelled from the Chinese mainland as an
enemy of the Chinese people? Didn't you know that I had been
pointed out as a narcotic trader, a counterfeiter, a usurer...."
"But those are the Communist lies! No one would believe a word
of it-not even the Communists themselves."
"Lies p'erhaps. But I signed the confession."
"The Communists could extort any kind of 'confession' from
anybody. Even a venerable personage of your Church, Cardinal
Mindzenty of Hungary, was loaded down with fantastic charges be–
fore he was finally disposed of. Such people are only victims of
Communist tyranny and cynicism."
"You are very kind, young man. But will your people forgive
me when I go back to the mainland? Shall I have the face to meet
my flock again if they have found out that the priest they trusted,
the beloved Ko Shen-fu, was, upon his own word, nothing but a
fiend, a beast dressed in a cassock, a hypocrite now exposed? Even
if they should forgive me-for I can say the Chinese people are
wonderfully generous-can I forgive myself? And will God forgive
me? However fictitious my other 'crimes' may be, I have committed
one real crime: that is, I have lent my name to the Communist
propaganda. I have become a
chJang J
the ghost of a man who, after
having been eaten by the tiger, is leading the beast to devour his
fellow human beings. By signing that document-I cannot even re–
member how it looked, whether I used a steel pen or a Chinese
brush, I used only whatever stuff they thrust in my hand-I say, by
signing that document, I have lent ammunition to the forces of evil.
They are trying to uproot faith from your people and I have helped
them in their unholYl work. It is perhaps in consideration of the tre–
mendous service I have rendered them that they have spared my
life. But even death would not acquit a sinner."
I had not been prepared for such a display of emotion. I had
