REPARTEE WITH MAO

(6 of 6)

I was never to have another serious talk with Chou. A year later I visited him in what was called a hospital but looked like a guesthouse. We chatted casually; Chou looked unchanged to my amateur eye. But whenever I raised a serious topic, Chou changed the subject. His doctors, he said, had prohibited him from discussing such problems. Why political problems impaired his health more than small talk was never explained. It was a painful session—probably for both of us. Whatever the cause of Chou's decline, his name was never mentioned by any of my Chinese interlocutors after this trip.

At the end of the November 1973 visit, Chou said he thought it was the starting point of a major advance. It was not to be. Both Chou and I were engulfed by our nations' domestic dramas. But if the hopes of the end of 1973 were not to be fulfilled, at least we preserved the essence of a relationship crucial to world peace amid stresses in both countries. Statesmen have often done much worse.