By chance Abigail had uncovered the real story for herself one day shortly after her eleventh birthday and the impact on her had been traumatic. While tidying up the attic during her grandmother’s absence, she had happened upon a forgotten scrapbook of yellowing newspaper clippings. Sitting alone among the jumble of broken chairs, discarded ornaments, and dusty piles of magazines, she had learned with a deep sense of shock that her mother had been cruelly beheaded by the Communists. As she read through the news reports, intense feelings of desolation and sadness had seized her. The details themselves were horrifying enough, but the fact that they had been kept from her deliberately increased a nagging sense of uncertainty about her identity that she had nursed within herself for as long as she could remember. The complete absence of her mother, who had died mysteriously abroad, and the infrequent appearances of her barely remembered father had long before created a void in her young life that the care and affection of her grandparents had not been able to fill. From her earliest days at school she bad always felt different from her playmates, sensing vaguely that she had been abandoned in Moss Side and that she did not really belong there.
While waiting for her grandmother to return to the house that day, Abigail had ached to know more about the tragic events which seemed to hold the key to her unhappiness; but when she found on her return that the old lady knew little more about the terrible adventure than she herself had been able to read in the newspaper clippings, Abigail had burst into tears and sobbed inconsolably. Her father had never shown much inclination to discuss the details of his ordeal, her grandmother had explained apologetically, and this revelation too had somehow deepened the sense of bewilderment which the discovery of the scrapbook had produced in her. As time passed, in her tortured adolescent mind she had begun to wonder whether some fault in herself was the cause of her father’s reluctance to speak out, and this thought had further compounded her misery.
Staring out of the window of the descending airplane, Abigail remembered again the terrible intensity of those feelings of loneliness and abandonment that she had experienced twelve years earlier. For a time she had lived in hope that Jakob might someday help satisfy her curiosity, but after his demobilization from the army he had brushed aside all her questions with a baffling evasiveness and before long had returned alone to the Far East, leaving her to finish her education in England. The illogical suspicion that she had been left behind through some fault of her own had increased; on those few occasions when she had seen him during his rare visits to England, he had shown the same curious disinclination to discuss the past. Once, in response to her persistent questions about how she had survived as a small baby in such terrible circumstances, he had revealed that a Chinese woman had secretly helped his cook boy care for her. But although this had whetted Abigail’s curiosity, whenever she tried to question Jakob further, he had been as reluctant as ever to turn his mind back to the past.
In his absence she had gone on to win a scholarship to Oxford, taking one of the first postwar places granted to candidates from northern grammar schools. She had been eager to read a subject related to Asia and China, hoping that this might help bring her closer to her father, but to her dismay he had gone to great lengths to dissuade her from such a course. Instead, he had guided her toward a modern-languages degree and at Somerville Abigail had read German and French, then stayed an extra year to learn Spanish. But far from diminishing her interest in China and her own early life, the contrasting nature of her studies, centered on Europe, had only served to heighten the feeling of fascination. Also, despite his unwillingness to discuss the past, Jakob had himself paradoxically fostered her underlying interest in China by bringing her Oriental gifts whenever he returned on a visit. She treasured the brocade jackets, the jade jewelry, and lacquered boxes he had given her more than any other possession because she had sensed intuitively that in bringing her such gifts he was attempting to express emotions to which he could not otherwise give voice. In brief notes accompanying the presents he always penned formal declarations of fatherly affection, but outside these intimacies he had still remained curiously remote. If she made any new attempt to break down his reserve, Jakob seemed to draw back further into an invisible shell, and in the end these inexplicable emotional barriers had forced all her past feelings of grievance frustratingly to the surface again, leaving her hurt and angry.
For a time Abigail had even allowed the intensity of this resentment to undermine her normal good judgment. In her first term at Oxford she had drifted almost defiantly into an unwise affair with a married don much older than herself. She had extricated herself in response to urgings by close undergraduate friends but had continued to neglect her studies for the rest of her first year. Careless, passionate involvements with several older students had followed until an eventually unfounded fear that she was pregnant made her realize that she had been in danger of sacrificing her future in a foolish search for a substitute for her father’s love and understanding.
This experience had shocked her deeply and at the same time inspired her to apply herself more devotedly to her studies. But she had not been able to dismiss entirely from her mind the many unanswered questions about her father and his feelings toward her. Instinctively Abigail knew she was more likely to bridge the gulf that separated them if she could obtain some understanding of Jakob’s past at first hand. She also reasoned that her efforts to come to terms with him would have more chance of success if she presented herself to him as an accomplished, well-qualified young woman rather than a pathetic victim of emotional misjudgments. While she applied herself with renewed energy to her degree course, a long-term plan to visit her father in Hong Kong had gradually taken shape in her mind.
Entwined with all these personal uncertainties, her curiosity about the people who had once held the power of life and death over her as a helpless infant had continued to grow. What were the Chinese among whom she had lived so briefly at the beginning of her life really like? Were they so very different from Europeans? Who were the men and women who had comforted and nurtured the baby she had been — and why were they so different from those who had brutally murdered her mother? More important, would understanding them help her in any way to understand her father and the motives which drove him? Questions like these had gnawed at her over several years and once her mind was firmly made up, she had begun to save every penny earned from vacation jobs to pay for this first-ever trip to Hong Kong.
She had told her father in a letter sent only recently that she intended to pay a prolonged holiday visit to the colony and he had acknowledged her note briefly. From the surprised tone of his reply she had not been sure whether he would genuinely welcome her, and several times during her flight she had taken the envelope from her handbag and reread his few lines of handwriting in a vain search for some clue to his real reaction. On hearing the undercarriage rumble out from beneath the Constellation’s wings, Abigail realized that she would find out before very long. The plane banked steeply to the right, turning just when it seemed it must crash into the hills behind Kowloon, and soon the tops of many blocks of flats built close together appeared beneath the aircraft. In some ways, she reflected as she peered down out of the window, her father remained as much a mystery to her as the haze-shrouded land flanking the congested British colony, and the thought daunted her a little.
As the Constellation lost height and its engines quieted, Abigail reached for the small, envelope-style handbag of navy blue leather that matched her high-heeled court shoes. Taking out a powder compact, she freshened the lightly applied makeup on a face that was striking enough to have turned the heads of many of the male Europeans on board during the flight from London. In the little mirror she looked into calm, wide eyes as blue as her father’s; thick yellow hair that caught the afternoon light slanting into the cabin reached to her shoulders, framing a broad, fresh-complexioned face that was given a hint of sensuality by her full, wide mouth. She wore a simple, inexpensive shirtwaist dress of
turquoise green cotton that reached to mid-calf, and around her neck hung a single strand of imitation pearls given to her by her grandmother upon graduation. A white duster coat with large patch pockets, folded neatly in the rack above her head, completed her outfit, and she decided to carry it over her arm when, after landing, she encountered the early June humidity outside the fuselage of the Constellation.
In spite of the long, tiring journey from England she felt a quickening of her pulse as she followed the other passengers into the customs shed. The chief officers were tall, hefty, pink-skinned Britishers dressed in tropical white shirts and shorts, and Abigail was struck immediately by the contrasting appearance of their slighter Chinese subordinates, who outnumbered them. Dark, narrow eyes, watchful in their yellow-brown faces, regarded her on all sides, and the movements of the, smaller men were quick and efficient as they checked each passenger through. The sight of her British passport produced a polite deference; but in the unfamiliar faces of the Chinese there was an implacable reserve, an unspoken declaration, she felt, of the racial no-man’s-land that separated her from them. She noticed in herself a faint tendency to nervousness as she answered their routine questions phrased in sibilant, accented English; her unease was too slight to show but she wondered inwardly whether her subconscious memory might be reacting to her first contact for many years with the kind of faces that must have filled her vision constantly before her first birthday.
Distracted by these reflections, she failed to notice that her father was not among the crowd of Europeans gathered to greet passengers outside the arrivals hall — until a stoop-shouldered, graying Chinese wearing a pale short-sleeved shirt and dark slacks stepped into her path and ducked his head in a little bow of greeting.
“Excuse me, please. You are Miss Abigail Kellner?”
Taken aback, Abigail quickly scanned the group of waiting Europeans beyond the barrier. There was no sign of a familiar face and she experienced an intense disappointment. That her father should fail to meet her after a journey halfway across the world seemed to bode ill for her visit, but she managed to conceal her reaction and smiled at the bowing Chinese. “Yes, I’m Miss Kellner. Did my father send you?”
The Chinese giggled in relief and nodded eagerly. “Yes, Missy. Your father ask me to apologize. He very busy — can’t leave office. You hear about the Hundred Flowers in Red China, I expect. Today many new developments.” The Chinese signaled to the porter carrying Abigail’s cases to follow them. “Come this way, please. I have car waiting.”
The Chinese led the way to a battered Austin saloon, and after stowing her cases in the trunk, he drove Abigail out into the noisy, crowded streets of Kowloon. From the rear seat she stared out at the colonnaded shops emblazoned with torrents of Chinese ideograms painted in red, white, and gold. Vertical and horizontal banners jutted over the narrow lanes through which swarmed dense crowds of Chinese. Women and men alike were dressed in black pajama like cottons, the tunics of the women buttoned high at the throat, those of the men often flapping open over scrawny chests. Wire-wheeled rickshaws drawn by barefoot Chinese wearing ragged shorts and small conical rattan hats weaved among the British automobiles, carrying wealthy-looking Chinese and complacent Europeans.
“The government in Peking getting very tough all of sudden with Hundred Flowers people who criticize it, Miss Kellner,” said the Chinese driver over his shoulder as he steered the car carefully through the milling throng. “Many arrested and sent to do forced labor. Much trouble.”
“I see.”
Abigail acknowledged the information distractedly. With half her mind she was still trying to come to terms with the fact that her father had not troubled to come to the airport himself, but her conscious gaze was riveted on the streams of Chinese flowing past the car. Here and there she spotted slender Chinese girls wearing the long, sheath like cheongsam, a high-collared, side-split dress that occasionally revealed startling glimpses of thigh. Distinguished- looking Chinese men were also moving through the shade of the colonnades, in traditional long-gowns and brimless caps, their faces impassive and unreadable. Although the majority of the working Chinese were clad in black calico, some, she noticed, wore Western- style clothes. Thin, often gaunt, but bristling with vitality, the men hurried eagerly along the packed pavements, giving the impression that urgent business was always about to be transacted nearby.
Never before had Abigail found herself surrounded by such a floodtide of humanity, and she soon began to feel overwhelmed. The rapidly changing kaleidoscope of Asian faces in the narrow streets was producing a dizzying effect after the long flight, and she had to make a conscious effort to tell herself that these were the same kind of people among whom she had lived without injury during the first year of her life. The unease that she had felt over her father’s absence at the airport, however, would not leave her and she began to wonder apprehensively once more whether her meeting with him could possibly turn out well. Suddenly, also, she was unable to dismiss from her mind the thought that it was men with faces like those swarming around her who must have murdered her mother twenty-three years earlier, and she had to fight down an irrational surge of fear. In that moment everything about Hong Kong seemed disturbing and unsettling — yet instinctively she knew that it had been right for her to come. All her senses were excited by the exotic sights unfolding around her and, despite the misgivings, deep within herself she felt glad she had found the courage to make the journey.
2
Jakob Kellner frowned unconsciously as he ran his eye over the top sheet of a new sheaf of radio transmission texts handed to him by a bald, bespectacled Chinese translator. Seated behind a desk in a small, untidy, glass-partitioned office, he wore no tie, his shirtsleeves were rolled halfway up his forearms, and as he read, he occasionally ran a distracted hand through his neatly trimmed fair hair, which was beginning to turn gray above the temples in his forty-sixth year.
“Anything special in this batch, Mr. Wu?” asked Jakob in a tense voice as he continued to scan the English translations. “Any new evidence that a crackdown has begun?”
“Shanghai Radio is using a new term of abuse to condemn critics of the government —yu p’ai fen tzu,” said the translator, blinking owlishly behind his wire-rimmed spectacles. “I’ve shown that as ‘right-wing elements.’ The broadcast also attacks ‘bourgeois rightists’ and accuses them of misusing the Hundred Flowers movement to try to turn back the clock and overthrow the Communist Party, the proletariat, and the socialist cause.”
The translator leaned over the desk and pulled the sheet to which he was referring from the pile. While Jakob studied the Chinese text, the older man continued to wait respectfully beside his chair.
“On the next page the radio quotes some examples of ‘bourgeois rightist’ criticism,” added the translator as Jakob finished reading. “In particular they quote opinions expressed by a Peking university lecturer.”
Jakob turned the page and read again. Then, raising his eyebrows in astonishment, he began quoting aloud from the translation. “‘Every Communist in the country deserves to be hanged or otherwise reduced to impotence for all the harm they have brought upon us! China belongs to all its six hundred million people, not the Communist Party alone. . . . If the Communists do not carry on satisfactorily, the masses may knock them down, kill them and overthrow them ...‘“ Jakob looked up at his chief translator and smiled grimly. “I shouldn’t like to be in the shoes of that particular lecturer right now, Mr. Wu.”
The Chinese, himself a schoolteacher who had fled to I-long Kong from Shanghai in 1949, shook his head sadly. “No, Mr. Kellner.
Further on there are references for the first time to an “anti-rightist rectification campaign’ to reeducate the critics — and at the bottom of the pile there is the transcript of an interview with a refugee who has just arrived from Kwangtung. He says some academics and officials have already begun disappearing from their posts in the province. Local people think they’re being sent to labor
camps.”
Jakob rifled quickly through the pages, shaking his head in dismay as he read; then he glanced out through the glass partition at the clock on the wall of the adjoining room. It stood at a little after five- thirty and half a dozen other Chinese translators were bent busily over their desks, preparing material for the stenciled bulletin that the Kellner Institute produced promptly each evening at six o’clock for distribution by hand in the colony and by airmail abroad.
“Shall I tell the deputy editor you’d like him to write the commentary to go with today’s translations, Mr. Kellner?” asked the translator, motioning politely in the direction of another tiny glass- walled office off the main room where a young Englishman was visible working behind a cluttered desk. “I warned him to stand by after you told me your daughter was arriving today.”
“There was no need for you to do that,” replied Jakob with an unusual brusqueness. ”Finalize the stencils of your own translation texts now — but don’t start running off the rest of the bulletin until I give you my analysis.”
Jakob pulled a portable typewriter across the desk toward him and inserted a blank sheet of paper. For a moment he stared at the retreating back of his senior translator with a perplexed expression on his face. Then he turned his attention to his work and began to type rapidly, referring every now and then to the translated pages on the desk beside him. While he was writing, a Chinese messenger entered with an envelope and placed it on the desk. Jakob thanked him without looking up and continued composing his commentary, but during a pause for reflection, his eye fell on the envelope and he noticed with a start that it bore a special-delivery label as well as a Peking postmark and stamps issued in the People’s Republic of China. Overcome with curiosity, he broke off from his writing to open it and found inside a stiff, embossed card headed in English “The Chinese Committee for World Peace.” Beneath his own name and the address of the Kellner Research institute, the printed text of a formal invitation read: “The Chinese Committee for World Peace cordially invites you to attend the Eighth National Day celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on 1 October 1957.” Below was appended the signature of the chairman of the committee and a request to reply personally if the invitation were to be accepted. Jakob sat staring at the card in astonishment for several seconds — then, remembering the urgency of his task, laid it aside and continued typing.
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