Anthony Grey

by Peking- A Novel of China's Revolution- 1921-1978 (epub)

  “You mustn’t be so harsh, Kao,” said Jakob desperately. “Your mother’s actions were honorable and compassionate. Let us try to make some amends. . .

  Kao’s eyes glittered with an unnatural brightness and Jakob could see that he was taking in little that was being said. “You’re not my father in any way that matters!” he shouted hoarsely. “You’re less than nothing to me. You’ve come illegally to China. Unless you leave the country tonight I’ll give orders for you to be arrested as a spy!”

  “Kao, please Abigail left Mei-ling and laid a hand beseechingly on his arm. “Can’t we talk alone for a moment?”

  “There’s nothing to be said.” Kao ignored her, staring balefully at Jakob and Mei-ling. “I’ve been a terrible fool . .

  “Kao, you’re not to blame,” said Abigail shakily. “Neither of us has been a fool. What we feel for each other isn’t really wrong, don’t you see? All this explains so much —“

  “Leave me alone!” Kao snatched his arm free and took a step toward Jakob. “I’ll remember you only with a feeling of disgust! In my mind the man who died fighting Japan will always be my father!”

  Kao glared furiously at Jakob, then swung around toward Mei-ling. Anguish disfigured his features and when Mei-ling instinctively reached out a hand toward him, a look of loathing entered his eyes. “I’m deeply ashamed,” he said in a trembling voice. “I don’t want you ever again to think of me as your son.”

  Turning on his heel, Kao strode out of the room and down the stairs. The crash of the courtyard gate closing echoed through the silent house like a gunshot, and Mei-ling and Abigail flinched. After a moment Mei-ling began weeping quietly again and she sank onto one of the chairs, bowing her head.

  “Why don’t you come to the ship with me?” said Jakob in a desperate tone, moving to Mei-ling’s side and touching her shoulder. “I’ll find a way of getting you aboard somehow.”

  “No, no!” Mei-ling’s voice was muffled by her hands. “You must go alone.”

  Jakob stared down helplessly at her, feeling a great sense of desolation engulf him. The noise of rain drumming heavily against the window was the only sound in the room and on looking up he found Abigail staring at him with a curious expression in which pain and pity were visibly mingled.

  “I’m sorry, Abigail,” he said chokingly. “I’m truly sorry. Will you come back to Hong Kong, please — where it’s safe?”

  “I don’t think I want to be ‘safe’ according to your lights!” Tears brimmed in Abigail’s eyes but she spoke with a vehemence which shocked Jakob. “I don’t want the kind of safety you can arrange for me. You were an absentee father for most of my young life. You’ve curdled everything by clutching your awful secrets to yourself for so long. You always put me last behind your strange sense of loyalty to others. . . . I don’t see the remotest point in changing things now.”

  “But what will you do?” Jakob gazed at her, dumbfounded. “You can’t stay here.”

  “Can’t I?” Abigail’s tone was openly defiant. “I came here to teach. My life is here. You’ve blundered into Shanghai chasing your own selfish obsessions — but I’m not going to let that ruin everything I’ve been working for. I’ll stay and ride out the storm. . . . Please don’t ever try to interfere in my life again.”

  Abigail turned away and knelt beside Mei-ling’s chair to put an arm around her shoulders once more. Mei-ling was still sobbing quietly and Jakob stood watching his daughter try to comfort her with a growing feeling of despair.

  “I’ll see that she’s all right,” said Abigail in an impersonal tone. “There’s no more damage you can do here — it would be best if you left now.”

  Jakob picked his way reluctantly across the room between the piles of household debris and went down the stairs without looking back. Outside the rain was falling in torrents but he did not bother to take his cap from his jacket pocket. Stepping numbly into the deserted, ill-lit street, he turned his steps toward the waterfront, oblivious to the rain that plastered his hair against his head and soaked his clothes.

  11

  Marshal Lu Chiao closed his eyes with a feeling of revulsion as a scowling Red Guard swung open the creaking steel door of his underground punishment cell in an army barracks outside Peking. The Red Guard was carrying a rusty nineteenth—century torture helmet made of cast iron that had been fixed around Chiao’s head for an hour each morning for the past three days, and the memory of the pain it had caused him made Chiao shudder inwardly. His hands were already handcuffed behind his back and around the ratchets his wrists were cut and painfully swollen. He was seated on a bare concrete bench with his back to the wall and he made no move to resist as the Red Guard lowered the fifty-pound helmet onto his head and began tightening the four screws that jutted through its brim.

  “It’s very appropriate headgear, don’t you think, for a shameless counterrevolutionary servant of the comprador bourgeoisie?” The adult Red Guard who had supervised the night attack on Liang’s home spat out the words with unconcealed venom from the open doorway. “It was used regularly in Peking until — by Chiang Kai-shek’s jailers. His victims were real Communists loyal to Chairman Mao, not renegades and hidden traitors like you and other supporters of China’s Khrushchev.”

  Chiao raised his head wearily on hearing the new voice. In the two weeks since he had been seized and thrown into the punishment cell, he had seen only jeering members of the Red Guard group who had ambushed him inside the camp. He had driven there alone in response to what appeared to be an invitation from the defense minister, Marshal Lin Piao, but realized too late that he had been duped. After dragging him from his car, the Red Guards had put him through a vicious round of “struggle,” screaming meaningless abuse at him while drenching him with black paint which still stained his uniform. Since then he had wondered daily when more detailed accusations of misconduct might be leveled against him and the sound of the unfamiliar voice addressing him from the doorway convinced him that the time had come.

  “I suppose I should have known somebody would arrive sooner or later with a list of trumped-up charges,” said Chiao through gritted teeth. “I’m surprised it’s taken you so long to invent something.”

  “Those are strange words,” sneered the adult Red Guard, “for a counterrevolutionary revisionist who has conducted illicit relations with foreign countries all his life!”

  “I’ve had no illicit contacts with foreign countries,” grunted Chiao. “That’s . . . purest fantasy . . . and you know it.”

  The young Red Guard tightened the screws steadily and Chiao felt the pressure around his skull increasing moment by moment. The agonizing weight of the grotesque iron bonnet was sending pains driving down his neck into his shoulders and Chiao strove to position his body squarely on the bench so that he could support its weight evenly.

  “What about the British missionary who was a prisoner on the Long March?” said the adult Red Guard gloatingly. “Weren’t you responsible for releasing him although he was a convicted spy? And didn’t you later arrange for his former lackey Liang to meet him secretly at the Temple of Heaven in 1957? The traitor Liang admitted that before his death.”

  Chiao opened his eyes to look directly at the newcomer. He could see by the man’s bearing that he was an experienced cadre and it was obvious that he had been deputed to attack him by the Cultural Revolution Group. “Everything you say . . . is twisted,” he gasped. “Premier Chou and the Party leadership . . . approved the prisoner’s release . . . and his return to China in 1957.”

  The cadre motioned peremptorily to the Red Guard to finish adjusting the iron torture clamps. “The helmet of Chiang Kai-shek’s torturers will be removed in two hours’ time — if you decide to make a full confession of all your heinous crimes. If not, it will remain in position for a much longer period.”

  Chiao felt the Red Guard twist the screws once more and at each turn a new flare of pain spread through his temples. The agony threatened to destroy his reason and at once he
closed his eyes, deliberately focusing his mind on a point three or four finger-widths below his navel. Silently inside his head he allowed a phrase to form as he sought to assert the “self-preserved” strength of the ancient Taoists, as his father had first taught him to do in his early teens. “Rigid oaks may fall but supple reeds will brave the storm,” he repeated to himself several times as he slowed his breathing, striving with every nerve to sense the waves of cosmic energy the Taoists called ch’i flowing softly through his limbs and torso. He visualized the pain as dead leaves floating away on the surface of a fast-running river of ch’i, and his body, although held firmly upright, relaxed and softened, absorbing and enduring the fire spreading from the iron bands clamped around his head.

  “Confess that you plotted with the treacherous renegade who became China’s president and your suffering will be at an end,” said the cadre, his voice seeming to come from a long way off. “Admit that you called secret meetings to organize a counterrevolutionary coup d’état against the Party — and the iron helmet will be taken back to the evil museum from which the Red Guards fetched it when they learned of your towering crimes.”

  “I’ll never confess ... to any crime. I’ve never . . . committed any crime. Nor . . . has . . . President Liu.”

  “That treacherous renegade has already made a full confession,” barked the cadre. “He’s admitted pursuing bourgeois revisionist policies since the time of the Great Leap Forward. He’s admitted in writing that he suppressed the masses at the start of the Cultural Revolution. You’ll gain nothing by trying to shield him!”

  “All your accusations ... are based . . . on hysterical lies.” Chiao winced and groaned as the Red Guard made his final adjustment to the screws. “You’re dishonest and contemptible.”

  “You’ve called many sinister meetings of other army leaders, since the Cultural Revolution began, to hatch plots for armed insurrection,” shouted the cadre angrily. “Others have already confessed!”

  “I’ve called meetings . . . to prevent the chaos of the Cultural Revolution . . . from undermining the army’s fighting effectiveness. That’s my duty.” Chiao paused to gather his strength. “My only concern . . . is to maintain the defenses of the motherland . . . against our outside enemies.”

  The cadre glowered at Chiao and motioned for the young Red Guard to leave the cell. When the youth had stepped outside, he moved closer to the marshal and stood over him threateningly.

  “The Cultural Revolution Group of the Central Committee set up by Chairman Mao orders you to confess fully. If you refuse you’ll be handed over to the Red Guards for public trial in the Peking Workers’ Stadium. Then your crimes will become known to all.”

  Chiao’s head was throbbing wildly; the iron clamps pressing the inner band inward seemed to stab needles of fire into his brain and the excruciating weight bearing down on the crown of his head felt as though it would break through the bone of his skull. With a supreme effort he stared straight ahead, bringing the focus of his mind sharply back to the tan t’ien, the Taoists’ center of spiritual force in the lower abdomen. Once he had achieved the necessary sense of detachment, he slowed his breathing, concentrating his entire consciousness in this center, and gradually succeeded in achieving a state of utter calmness despite the pain, if his hands had been free he would have used them to chafe and stimulate the circulation in different areas of his body, but because his wrists were handcuffed behind him he imagined he was stroking, in turn, his face, his forehead, his thighs, and the bare soles of his feet to make the blood and other body fluids flow with increased vitality. The intensity of his imagination re-created the physical sensations which set the cosmic ch’i energy flowing around his body and again he imagined it sweeping away the pain in its gentle rush. Soon he could feel the cii flowing steadily back to the inner reservoir of physical and spiritual force deep within him and a profound and refreshing sense of peace began to settle over his mind, blotting out the agony.

  “I shall never confess to your ... ‘crimes,’ “ said Chiao in a low voice. “No matter what . . . you do . . . to me.”

  “Then the iron helmet will remain on -your head until you’re taken before the Red Guards in the Workers’ Stadium!”

  The cadre studied the seated figure with a baffled expression; sitting with his feet together on the rough concrete bench, his arms wrenched behind him by the handcuffs, Chiao was still managing to hold his head erect. His eyes were open but they seemed to be at ease, focused unblinkingly on nothing as though turned blindly inward. Suddenly there seemed to be a stillness and composure in his body that the cadre found unnerving. Other victims on whom he had seen the device used in recent weeks had often been reduced to moaning wrecks within minutes, slumping sideways on their benches in an effort to escape the helmet’s awful weight and succumbing quickly to the terrible pressure of the inner steel band.

  The cadre waited for a minute or more to see if the marshal was bluffing, but he showed no sign of moving and his eyes did not even blink. Walking to the barred door, the cadre stepped outside and slammed it noisily. Through the grille he was able to see that the marshal had neither moved nor flinched at the sudden sound. He merely continued to sit motionless and erect, his eyes wide open, his head held steady in spite of its nightmarish burden.

  12

  The time has come,” yelled Kao, stepping up to a microphone in the center of the crowded Peking Workers’ Stadium. “We’re here to unmask another leading counterrevolutionary revisionist who supports China’s Khrushchev and opposes Chairman Mao! You’ve already heard many details of his lifelong bourgeois habits — but now you’ll hear how thirty years ago he shamelessly sold out his motherland to British imperialism!”

  A deep howl of anger rose from the throats of eighty thousand Red Guards and adult Revolutionary Rebels packed into the circular sports arena in Peking’s eastern suburbs. The terraces were filled to capacity and the crowd had also been drawn up in dense ranks across the football field to press around the raised wooden platform on which Marshal Lu Chiao had been made to stand, bent double, with his head forced down between his knees. Half a dozen muscular Red Guards under Kao’s supervision were grouped closely around him; one held both his arms straight behind his back, another was pushing down his head, and a third squatted beside him, striking him viciously in the stomach with a clenched fist whenever he showed signs of trying to straighten up. Called “the jet plane” because of the resemblance of the victim’s arms to the upswept wings of a modern jet fighter, the position, Chiao knew, had been universally used by Red Guards since the onset of the Cultural Revolution to humiliate and inflict pain simultaneously on their victims. During the first few minutes his back and his legs had begun to stiffen and ache, as he knew they would, but gradually the discomfort was intensifying and spreading through his upper body.

  “Raising high the red flag of Mao Tse-tung’s thought and with Mao Tse-tung’s thought as our armament, we are presenting to you today a great number of irrefutable facts that lay bare the towering crimes of this contemptible slave of British imperialism,” shouted Kao. “By plucking out this imperialist running dog and showing him to the revolutionary masses, we have won another great victory for Mao Tse-tung’s thought!”

  Kao turned to glare theatrically at Chiao; then, from among another group of helpers gathered on one corner of the stage, he summoned the Red Guard who had been responsible for fitting the torture helmet to Chiao’s head over the past few days.

  “Later you’ll hear details of crimes committed by that feudalistic old swine Chu Teh,” screamed the Red Guard, leaning close to the microphone. “And how ‘Marshal’ Ho Lung consorted with prostitutes and kept, pet monkeys like a capitalist millionaire! But first listen to this catalogue of deceit and shame that has caused a great loss of dignity to the People’s Republic of China and is a crime worthy of the death penalty. . .

  Again the crowd erupted with angry roars and this time the noise subsided into orchestrated chants of “Pluck ou
t the counterrevolutionary slave to foreigners!” Bent double beside the microphone, Chiao tried to straighten up a little to ease the excruciating pain in his back but the Red Guard crouched at his feet immediately struck him a ferocious blow in the abdomen, which doubled him over again and made him retch. Through his haze of pain, Chiao remembered seeing the ashen faces of Chu Teh, the old Central Red Army commander, and Ho Lung, who had courageously led the Second Front Army on its own tortuous Long March. He had caught sight of his two fellow marshals in one of the shadowy corridors beneath the stands of the stadium while being dragged toward the field half an hour earlier; the hands of both had seemed to be bound behind their backs, their uniforms were disheveled, and their strained faces bore silent witness to recent sufferings at the hands of their captors. Marshal Chu in particular had looked haggard and worn out, a pathetic shadow of his former self. He was still a member of the six-mm Politburo Standing Committee, and the discovery that such an exalted and revered figure had also become a victim of the Cultural Revolution had increased Chiao’s feelings of apprehension as he was manhandled into the seething arena to a deafening explosion of jeers and taunts.

  Above the stage, big red banners had been rigged announcing in giant white characters that the rally had been arranged by the “Peking Proletarian Revolutionaries’ Anti-imperialist, Anti-revisionist Liaison Station” and the moment he was dragged up onto the platform a succession of fierce-eyed Red Guard accusers had begun stepping up to the microphone. In indignant, emotional tones they yelled details from long, fabricated lists of his “bourgeois habits and crimes.” Every utterance had been greeted by a new burst of outraged slogan chanting from all around the great bowl of the stadium.

  Unable to discover any real grounds for criticism in his austere personal life, the Red Guards accused him shrilly of “cultivating imperial-style lotus pools as a hobby,” “worshiping the feudalistic sages of Taoism,” “practicing outdated, meditative martial arts,” and “undermining the revolution by trying to preserve the feudal- imperial past.” The “foreign slave” life histories of his father and grandfather were narrated in detail from the time of the nineteenth century Opium Wars as though Chiao himself were directly responsible for their business activities, and he recognized the cynical technique which he knew had now become a Cultural Revolution commonplace. Into the long catalogue of accusations drawn up after the interrogation of colleagues under duress, a core of fact was skillfully interwoven with distortions, exaggerations, misrepresentations, and plain lies. The calculated intention was to produce an emotional climate of hatred and disgust, and the roars of the students and industrial workers filling Chiao’s ears were a fitting testimony to the technique’s effectiveness.