TRAVELS WITH… MY GREAT AUNT與我的姨婆去旅行
PATRICK GARRETT recalls following in the footsteps of veteran journalist Clare Hollingworth Patrick Garrett 追蹤資深記者Clare Hollingworth遍及全球的足跡
SHE WAS ONE
of history’s most manic travellers, with an insatiable urge to be
going somewhere – it didn’t really matter where, just as long as she was on the move. ‘I enjoy the travelling not the sitting still,’ proclaims the central character in Graham Greene’s Travels with my Aunt.
And so it was with my great aunt, Clare Hollingworth.
Her career as a traveller began on the railways of central and eastern Europe. She later found the perfect profession for her itchy feet. She became a roving war correspondent, and on 1 September 1939, in her first week on the job, got the scoop of the century: the outbreak of the Second World War, with an eye-witness account from the Polish border. She spent the next eight decades as a foreign correspondent.
Aunt Clare was an inspiration to me in my own career. Although I knew there was little hope of ever rivalling her exclusives, I spent the 1990s covering war and revolution in the Caucasus and eastern Europe for a variety of international media.
But despite her decades abroad, Clare was never big on foreign languages. During the three years she spent in Beijing in the 1970s the only two Chinese phrases she acquired were pijiu and bing – ‘beer’ and ‘ice’. I never discovered where she’d learned her Russian, but her three-word vocabulary clearly followed a pattern:
pivo, khleb, vino – ‘beer’, ‘bread’, ‘wine’. For my aunt’s main needs, that would probably have sufficed.
It was Aunt Clare’s presence in Hong Kong that first lured me to Asia, and a gig reporting the return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Clare was a regular fixture at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, and kept a permanent reservation at her private corner table for lunch and dinner. Her rundown old apartment was right next to Government House, where she’d managed to wangle access rights to the governor’s private pool.
Despite her record of scoops, even in her late eighties Aunt Clare remained fiercely competitive. I was on assignment in Beijing in spring 1998 when the bedside phone woke me at dawn. Unannounced, Clare had followed me north, suspicious lest I be onto anything Pulitzer-prizeworthy. ‘ What’s happening?’ she demanded.
Reassured that my story was just routine politics, she filled her day catching up with a mass of contacts in the capital, before we hooked up for a fried dumpling dinner. She maintained direct lines to scores of senior diplomats and military figures. Back in the day, she was often pictured at official receptions alongside the Chinese statesman Zhou Enlai. Both her interpreters had gone on to important government positions.
My aunt was in her mid-nineties by the time I started writing her biography. She was no longer up to travelling rough, and so I found myself retracing her adventures without her.
With an old photograph and much detective work I located the exact spot in Ho Chi Minh City (then Saigon) where Clare had huddled with US Marines at the height of the Tet Offensive in 1968. On another trip I tracked down the Zagreb tenement where she’d lodged as a summer student. There she’d met Otto, a German Jew on the run from the Nazis. That friendship helped propel her into refugee work; at Katowice, in Poland, I located the building that had been the British Consulate, where Clare had organised a refugee assistance committee that, on the very eve of the outbreak of war, had spirited some 3,000 souls to safety.
From there she made her abrupt but fortuitous switch to journalism. Clare Hollingworth died last year in Hong Kong aged 105. Her life was defined by her travelling and adventures: one long foreign assignment.
Of Fortunes and War, Garrett’s biography of his great aunt, is published by TwoRoads in paperback and on Kindle and audiobook
她可說是史上數一數二的狂熱旅行家，總是渴望遠走他方，要只 能踏上旅途，到哪裡去並不重要。在Graham Greene的小說《Travels with my Aunt》中主，角曾宣稱：「我享受到處旅行而並非呆坐不動！」我的姨婆Clare Hollingworth正是這樣的人。
她在曾 中歐和東歐乘搭列車，從此愛上旅行後。 來，她得覓 一份與熱愛旅行的性格配合得天衣無縫的完美職業，成為四海為家的戰地記者。1939年9月1日，她剛出方新職一星期，就已搶到獨家的世紀頭條：二世大爆次界戰發她，本人在波蘭邊境親自報道所見所聞。其後年她80 ， 一直擔方駐海外記者。
在我的記者生涯當中，姨婆就是我榜的樣雖。 然我知道，在挖掘獨家新聞方面的成就遠遠不及她，但我亦曾在1990年代效力多國家 際媒體，報道高加索和東歐的戰爭和革命。
不過，姨婆雖然長居海外數十年，卻對學習外國語言從不感。興她趣於1970年代曾旅居北京三年，卻只會學 「啤酒」和「冰」兩個中文詞語。從她懂得的三個俄語詞彙pivo、khleb和vino（分解別作「啤酒」「麵、 和葡」 「 萄酒」）可，見她對語外 的掌握自有特定的脈絡。雖然我從 來不曉得她究竟從哪裡學來這些名詞，但相信已能夠滿足的她 需要。
姨婆曾旅居香港，也是吸引我前往亞洲的原因，更令我因此有機會報道1997年港香 主權移交的新聞。姨婆是香港外國記者會的常客，會所的餐廳為她長期預留一張位於角落的餐桌，讓她享用午餐和晚。餐她的家在港督府旁邊一座破舊的樓房內，她施曾 計取得進入港督府私人泳池利的權。
儘管姨婆報道過的獨家新聞多不勝數，她在年近九之旬 際，仍然非常積極地發掘新聞。1998年春季被，我 派前往北京採。訪天某 清晨，床邊的電話突然響起，原來姨婆懷疑我在追蹤一些足以讓我奪得普立茲獎的獨家新聞故事，於是暗中跟隨我北上。她質問我：究「 竟發生什麼大事？」
經我再三明說 後，相她才 信我不過是來報道一些尋常政的 治新聞；於是而轉 相約京城裡的熟人敘，舊 然後晚上才來與我吃一頓煎餃。子 她與多位外交和軍、政界要人一直保持密切聯繫，看翻 昔日官方記者招待會的照片，更不時見到她的身影在中國政要周恩來旁邊出現。當年她的兩位傳，譯員 其後都於官場位居要。職
當我開始動筆為姨婆寫傳記時，她已年過九旬，無法再舟車勞頓，我好只孤身上路，獨自重溯她的冒險歷程。
憑著一張舊照片和下了一番查調 工夫之後我， 終於找出姨婆於1968年越戰春新 攻勢如如火 荼之際，與國美 海軍陸戰隊在當時稱為西貢的胡志明市秘密會面的確實地點。在另一趟旅程中，我追查到她在克羅地亞薩格勒布修讀暑期課時程 寄宿的房屋。她在那裡結識了逃避納粹德軍追捕的德籍猶太人Otto，二人的友誼成為姨婆投身難民援助作工 的原力動 。在波卡蘭 托維治，找我 到一幢前為國身 英 大使館的建築，姨婆曾那在裡組織難民援助委員會，於二戰爆發前夕，偷偷將3,000多送安人 往 全的地方。
那件事之後， Clare Hollingworth在因緣際會之下投身記行者 業。去年她在香港離世，享年105歲。她的一生不斷旅居外地，勇於冒險，見多識廣，有如在執行一個悠長的海外採訪方務。
Garrett為他的姨婆撰寫的傳記《Of FortunesandWar》由TwoRoads出版社出版，分別有平裝、Kindle和有聲書版本可供選擇