“I see no sign of Hua Fu,” said Chiao, speaking softly, close to his sister’s ear, as he scanned the crowd. “Do you know why he’s missing?”
“He volunteered weeks ago to serve with the headquarters of the First Army Corps.” Mei-ling’s quiet response was matter-of-fact. “There’s no reason for us to meet anymore.”
“Do you happen to know why he summoned the foreign prisoner to his quarters in Kweichow?”
Mei-ling looked sharply at her brother. “He asked him to translate the Tsunyi resolutions — why do you ask that?”
“Commissioner Chou is reviewing the prisoner’s case. I said I would try to find out.”
“Why is his case being reviewed?”
Mei-ling asked the question with an unguarded urgency, her eyes suddenly bright and intent.
“Because Judge Yang, who was in charge of the prisoners, died in the Great Snow Mountains.” Chiao looked hard at his sister. “May I ask why you’re so interested in the foreign prisoner?”
Mei-ling turned away, feeling a sudden warmth flood into her cheeks. “The night he was summoned to our quarters I spoke with him. I discovered then he was the missionary we met on the voyage to Shanghai.”
“So he really is the Englishman who persuaded the frightened passengers to sing hymns in the typhoon?”
Mei-ling nodded but did not look at her brother. “Yes.”
“Then it’s not surprising he’s borne his suffering so bravely,” said Chiao reflectively.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve read the file Judge Yang compiled. Jakob Kellner is a man of considerable courage and stamina. He rescued one of his guards from the Hsiang River — and retrieved the Red Army standard under fire.” Chiao paused, watching his sister’s face. “The record says his wife was executed and his child died in Yunnan but he’s endured many hardships in captivity without complaint —“
“His child didn’t die in Yunnan. . .
Mei-ling spoke in a whisper and Chiao saw tears start in her eyes.
“But Judge Yang’s notes show that the prisoner’s infant daughter was buried in his presence,” persisted Chiao. “How do you explain that?”
“It was my child who died! I’ve been caring for the prisoner’s child ever since.”
Fearing they might be overheard, Chiao glanced anxiously about —but at that moment an expectant buzz of comment ran through the gathering and Chiao saw an impressive array of horsemen emerging from the rain. A big red standard, emblazoned with a black star and a hammer and sickle motif, flapped above them and in their midst on a tall white stallion jogged an upright, broad-shouldered figure holding a drawn sword in an attitude of ceremonial salute. Although the group was still some way off, it was obvious to Chiao that General Chang Kuo-tao was at last arriving, surrounded by a mounted bodyguard of thirty or forty cavalrymen.
“You must have known, Ta ko,” whispered Mei-ling.
“Yes, I suspected as much,” replied Chiao in an undertone. “But I wanted you to tell me yourself. How did you arrange it?”
When Mei-Iing lifted her head, rain was mingling with the tears on her cheeks. “His cook boy came to me secretly. He asked me to feed the child. I gave him my dead son — and took Jakob Kellner’s baby in return.” She blinked away her tears and a fierce expression of pride appeared in her eyes. “I acted on instinct. Among so much killing and suffering I wanted to give life .
Looking up, Chiao saw that the mounted commanders of the Fourth Front Army were drawing near and the closer they trotted, the more daunting their appearance became. All the horses were tall and sleek:
some were brown, some black, and biggest of all was the handsome white mount of the general himself. The metal of their bridles and stirrups gleamed in the dull afternoon light and the leather saddles had a polished look even in the rain. The riders, commanders and bodyguards alike, looked strong and vigorous. They sat straight in their saddles, their eyes flicking disdainfully along the rows of shabbily clad Central Red Army soldiers at the roadsides.
“Please promise that you won’t reveal my secret, Ta ko,” said Mei-ling. “Please say nothing about it.”
Chiao smiled affectionately and nodded. “I shall say nothing.”
“Have you heard how Jakob Kellner is?” Mei-ling asked the question in a tense voice, her eyes fixed on the horses of the Fourth Front leaders, which were slowing to a walk as they approached the shelter where Mao and Chu Teh were waiting.
“While his case is under review, Commissioner Chou has ordered that he be given better treatment. He had become very weak. His guards have instructions to let him ride a horse for part of each day so that he can recover his strength.”
Mei-ling absorbed the information in silence, still watching the horses. Then she moved closer to her brother. “Do you think he will be released soon?”
Instead of replying, Chiao lifted his hand in a warning gesture:
the mounted escort flanking the white stallion had halted and General Chang was walking his horse forward alone toward the tarpaulin shelter. A sudden hush fell and the hiss of the falling rain was the only sound in the muddy street. Chang Kuo-tao reined in his mount and sheathed his sword as the effective leader of China’s Communist Party and the commander in chief of its Central Army stepped out of the shelter side by side.
For a moment the three men stared at one another and the onlookers saw that the contrast between them was startling. Hollow-cheeked, and grimy in their badgeless, threadbare uniforms, Mao and Chu looked more like weary railway workers than soldiers. Mao’s lank hair, dampened by the rain, clung to his head and beside his tall, hunched figure the shorter Chu Teh seemed to have shrunk to something less than his full size.
In comparison, the man gazing down at them from the saddle of the white horse looked patrician and stately. Sitting astride the splendid animal in a new, well-cut uniform, Chang Kuo-tao was a corn- posed, urbane figure. His cheeks were full and ruddy from comfortable living and his body well fleshed. There was also a hint of hauteur in his bearing and Chiao was reminded suddenly of a rich man visiting poor relatives.
Separated by a distance of no more than a dozen yards, the leaders looked at one another without speaking or moving. Mao had stepped slightly ahead of Chu Teh and was standing with his hands hanging empty at his side; his head was thrust forward in a challenging attitude and a furious, quivering pride drew him at last to his full height. Chang Kuo-tao too had unconsciously straightened in the saddle and as their eyes met, Chiao realized instinctively that the two men were equally afraid of one another. But both of them, he could see, .were determined to put on a brave face to deceive their watching soldiers.
The Fourth Front battalions who had marched into the village were drawn up inside the field where the platform had been erected. Like the watching Central Red Army troops, they seemed oblivious to the antagonisms that divided their two leaders and they watched in silence as Chang Kuo-tao swung down from his horse and turned to face Mao.
Neither seemed inclined to take the first step toward the other, and with the seconds ticking away Chiao held his breath: then Mao stepped forward a few jerky paces. Chang advanced immediately in his turn as though in relief, their arms went around one another in a theatrical embrace, and a storm of cheering broke from the throats of all the assembled soldiers. The cheering released the tension in Chiao and he exhaled slowly, aware that he had witnessed a moment of electric confrontation that had been temporarily contained. With their arms about one another’s shoulders the two leaders were moving awkwardly into the field toward the bunting-decked platform, determined despite the rain to make their brief speeches of greeting. Their entourages followed and Chiao and Mei-ling fell into step behind them.
“You didn’t answer my question, Ta ku,” said Mei-ling in a reproachful half-whisper as they walked among the crowd. “Do you think he will be released?”
Chiao had his eyes fixed on the two leaders, who were climbing onto the carts, and at first he thought her q
uestion referred to one of them. Then he remembered their interrupted conversation. “Unless Commissar Mao and General Chang resolve their differences quickly,” he said quietly, “all of us might soon be prisoners — or worse.”
11
The unsteady gait of the aged roan mare carrying Jakob northward beyond Lianghokou gradually jolted him out of a fitful doze into full wakefulness. Released from the pain and exhaustion of ceaseless marching, he had fallen quickly into the habit of sleeping in the saddle, one hand tangled in the horse’s mane, the other grasping the crupper which passed beneath its tail. He awoke whenever the going became rough but although he may have dozed for only a few brief minutes, each time he reopened his eyes he felt refreshed and a little stronger.
Looking around he saw that the rear of the General Headquarters column, to which he had been transferred, was traversing a rolling expanse of rough moorland. His horse was following the faint tracks that had been made by goat and yak herds as they wandered across the high plateau, cropping the short, sour grass, but now not a single goat or yak was to be seen. With every passing hour the region into which the marchers were heading was growing more desolate and deserted. Every farm and village they encountered had been abandoned under the threat of Kuomintang reprisals and all food and livestock had been removed to hiding places in the mountains.
Even the homes of wealthy landlords had been stripped of everything of value and the marchers, growing daily more anxious about food supplies, had begun sending out requisition squads to hunt down straying cattle. Other groups scoured the countryside for wild herbs, edible fungus, and tree bark, which the cooks ground to a fine powder before it was eaten, and whenever they found a field of half-ripened barley or sorghum, the marchers fell to with scythes and later roasted the green, unmilled grain.
Jakob had once or twice been allowed to join the harvesters. After so many painful months marching with his hands tied behind his back, he had found an unexpected pleasure in the slow, rhythmic work of swinging the scythe. Although they offered no explanation as to why he was being shown greater consideration, his guards no longer displayed needless hostility in their dealings with him, and for their neutral expressions and their matter-of-fact instructions he felt an illogical gratitude.
Riding the horse each day had gradually allowed his feet to heal and as his strength returned, he discovered that his capacity to think and feel was also reviving. With the discovery came a sense of astonishment at how completely divorced he had become from his surroundings; jogging along on the back of the roan mare, Jakob felt as though he were awakening slowly from a deep, paralyzing sleep which had lasted for many months. Above all else he was surprised how little he remembered other than the unending physical pain in his legs, his feet, and his back. The limitless forests and the snowcapped mountains had become no more than a blur in his memory against which he had learned first of Barlow’s death, then of the survival in Mei-ling’s care of his infant daughter.
Because his guards were more relaxed in his presence and because his own senses had sharpened, Jakob had become aware of the worsening conflict between the leaders of the First Front and Fourth Front armies. Although an order had been issued adopting a new name, the United Red Army, Jakob had heard guards and soldiers retailing rumors that armed clashes had already occurred between some units of the two forces, It was common knowledge that long meetings of Party and army leaders at Lianghokou had brought antagonisms to a head without resolving them; those guards who discussed the matter in Jakob’s hearing seemed to believe that a compromise decision to march northward in separate columns had been agreed to until further discussions could be held. There was uneasy talk too that Kuomintang armies ‘were slowly but surely regrouping to the north, south, and east to begin another attempted encirclement and it was this fear that lent urgency to the need to gather food and keep moving.
From the same soldiers Jakob also heard the first fearful references to the Ta Ts’ao Ti — the Great Grasslands which lay astride their route to the north. A vast, uninhabited tundra of oozing swamps and head-high grasses, according to those who knew the region, the Great Grasslands had struck terror into the hearts of all who had tried to cross them for centuries. They barred the route into Kansu province, constituting a fearsome natural obstacle, and every Red Army soldier around the missionary was hoping fervently that they would be spared the ordeal of marching across them.
But none of these fears diminished Jakob’s new feelings of hope which had grown out of his clandestine visit to Mei-ling’s shelter on the Great Snow Mountain ridge. As he rode each day, his mind filled with images of the fire-lit yurt: again and again he relived the moment of joy when first he saw his tiny daughter alive and safe in Mei-ling’s arms, and he savored too the memory of her insistent instruction for him to stay by the fire, the lightness of her touch as she wiped the snow from his face, the warmth and softness of her unclothed body pressed against his beneath the animal skins.
The time when they lay clenched in passion burned on in his mind as some of the purest moments of his life. It was then that he had experienced the first fierce sense of renewal — something physical and spiritual in each of them had merged and blended, he was sure, in the gentle explosion of ecstasy they had shared. They had seemed to settle deeply into one another like the snow drifting and banking around the yurt and they had lain for a long time in one another’s arms, quiet and unmoving. Neither of them had felt any need for words; something almost holy in their wordless union on that harsh mountainside had overawed them both, leaving them feeling content and at peace. Much later Mei-ling had helped him dress, touching his naked body wonderingly with her hands as she did so, but they had exchanged no further words before he left to climb back, undiscovered, through the thickening snow to his own shelter.
As the days passed and his strength grew, however, he had once or twice been troubled by the thought that perhaps in his weakened condition he had deceived himself and had merely given in to a lustful temptation. Memories of the sensual dreams of Mei-ling that had afflicted his sleep years before returned, and once he had felt constrained to ask God’s forgiveness for his actions in a prayer. Then almost at once an equally strong conviction welled up in him that by praying for forgiveness he had offended and betrayed his own deepest emotions, and he had quickly pushed all such guilty thoughts from his mind. In keeping with his sense of revival, he tried to pray as he had been accustomed to before he was captured but was surprised to find that the doubts which had begun to undermine his faith in his task earlier in the march still continued to nag somewhere deep inside him. Was the Christian Gospel really relevant to the great suffering mass of China’s people? Weren’t the Communists doing much more than foreign Christians could ever hope to do to help the poor and poverty-stricken? Was it right for European religious missions to follow their imperial flags and try to convert to their own beliefs a foreign nation like China, with its own ancient and separate traditions?
More significant, he had not forgotten that during the most trying and despairing days of the march his agonized mind had begun to turn numbly from the very basis of his beliefs and his trust in God. In his mood of renewed optimism he tried to convince himself that this had been a fleeting lapse under almost intolerable strain, but a part of him knew that the profound certainties that had previously guided his young life had been replaced by a disquieting sense of confusion: on successive days he seemed capable of doubting and believing almost everything on which his faith was based.
The harshness and hostility of the landscape through which they passed also helped shape Jakob’s thoughts as June ended and July began. The bleak moors and dense virgin forests gave way to rushing rivers plunging through rocky beds, which had to be forded with great care. Their route wound up and down the mountain ridges and over ice-bound passes above the snow line. Although it was summer in the valleys, the temperature dropped near to freezing every night and it became increasingly evident that the region was geographically pa
rt of Tibet rather than China — the Han Chinese villages grew fewer, giving way to tribal Tibetan settlements of clay and yak-dung dwellings, flat-roofed stone houses, or thatched huts.
All eerily deserted, these remote settlements displayed a greater concern with religion than Jakob had seen elsewhere in China — white pennants hoisted on tall poles flew outside most of the dwellings and he learned from one of his guards that the tribes people believed these fluttering flags helped their prayers rise more easily to heaven. Luridly painted, life-size figures of wood and stone with fierce gargoyle faces stood guard at the approaches to many of the deserted encampments to ward off evil spirits and whenever the marchers encountered an abandoned lamasery, weird effigies of Buddha were to be seen grimacing in the gloom of the deserted shrines. All these macabre sights in a landscape scoured clean of all its natural human population seemed suddenly in Jakob’s eyes to bear witness to the overwhelming role that superstition and fear played in religious thought. He found himself wondering each day how important disguised superstition had been in forming his own beliefs, and although he continued to pray through force of habit, these reflections strengthened the dark cloud of uncertainty that had settled over his mind. Reluctantly he accepted that his newfound desire to survive along with his baby daughter was at base narrow and selfish; this realization shocked him but he seemed to have lost the will to revive his faith. He found he wanted only to devote himself to the simple, short-term struggle of staying alive on that harsh plateau close to the roof of the world. If he could endure, he told himself, perhaps something could be salvaged later from the horrors of the long, harrowing trek. Perhaps it would be easier to resolve his innermost doubts when he was free of the strain of captivity and the restrictions his marching jailers imposed on him.
Anthony Grey Page 41
