Anthony Grey

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

  She was wearing an ordinary suit of military green cotton, with her hair tucked inside a soft cap, but the tunic and trousers had been neatly tailored to her still-slender figure. From behind her spectacles she was observing him with the sharp, self-conscious eyes of a lifelong actress who had never entirely lost the habit of watching for a reaction to herself.

  “Has the death of your wife affected you very deeply?” she asked in a speculative tone, still watching his face closely. “It can’t have been easy with a small son to care for.”

  Kao rubbed a hand wearily across his face. In the six weeks since the earthquake he had worked at his desk for fifteen to eighteen hours each day, returning only occasionally at night to the half-ruined house in Nan Chihtze. Because the widespread destruction and loss of life had created administrative chaos in many areas, his Parry work was unending and he had more often than not snatched a few hours’ sleep in a nearby dormitory inside Chung Nan Hal. The sharpening tensions among the Party leaders had also produced endless secret meetings which often went on late into the night; signs of strain and weariness were evident in many faces.

  “There hasn’t been much time to think of my son,” said Kao quickly. “An old lady from the neighboring courtyard is acting as his amah.” He hesitated, aware that he was being subjected to close scrutiny. “My first duty is to serve the Party to the best of my ability. That way I serve my son too.”

  “Well spoken, Comrade Kao.” Chiang Ch’ing looked at him appraisingly through narrowed eyes. “I need someone to undertake a special task — in confidence. Your words have convinced me I can entrust you with this duty. Please come with me to my private office.”

  Kao followed her and she locked the door of her office before opening a steel wall safe. From it she withdrew a file of documents and a box of tapes. She motioned for him to be seated, and he was able to see from the tape labels that they were sound recordings of the Party chairman’s conversations with visiting heads of state and other foreign guests. Opening the file of documents, she withdrew two letters addressed to herself which, he noticed, were handwritten in the recognizable calligraphy of Chairman Mao. She held the first one toward him so that he could see it was dated earlier in the year.

  “This is Chairman Mao’s last letter to me,” she said. “It was written while he was still in full possession of his faculties. Since you have sworn your loyalty to Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line, and proved yourself by your deeds over many years, I shall read it to you.” She paused and looked hard at Kao. “You’ve already worked loyally for several years as a junior member of the Party Secretariat, Comrade Kao. If you continue to serve me well, I see no reason why an outstanding young man of your ability should not one day become a contender for the post of general secretary of the Communist Party of China — and establish a reputation as a revolutionary leader throughout the world.”

  Kao considered the significance of the veiled promise in silence as he waited to hear details of the special task and was surprised to find that his reaction to the prospect of attaining high office in the Party was muted. Although he was aware that the grief caused by his wife’s death, the exhaustion of overwork, and the emotional strain of his meeting with Abigail had dulled his senses, he had not realized how deeply he had been affected. He had harbored the ambition to succeed to the commanding heights of the Party since his student days, but he had to remind himself forcibly that coming in sight of his goal at last was the best possible vindication of the uncompromising course he had pursued

  “I’m going to read parts of the letters to you because it’s important to understand one thing very clearly,” said Chiang warningly. “The rewards can be high — but the risks too are great.”

  “I’m not afraid of risks,” said Kao, forcing a note of determination into his voice.

  “Good, then listen carefully. Chairman Mao said in his final letter:

  ‘Human life is limited but revolution knows no bounds. In the struggle of the past ten years I have tried to reach the peak of revolution. But I was not successful. You, however, will have the opportunity to reach the top!’” She stopped reading and looked up at Kao, her eyes glittering. “This, Kao, is the chairman’s last political will and testament, do you understand? It’s a clear expression of his wish that I should lead the Party in his place.” ‘Without waiting for Kao to comment, she lifted the letter again to read from it. “But he also adds this warning: ‘You could reach the top — but if you fail, you could plunge into a fathomless abyss! Your body will shatter! Your bones will break!’

  Moved by the graphic power of Mao’s words, Kao remained silent; the warning seemed ominously overstated and a faint shudder of unease passed through him as he watched Chiang pick up the second sheet of paper.

  “The other letter was written some years ago, and in it Chairman Mao gave explicit instructions on how we should deal with just such a crisis as the present one. He said: ‘If an anti-Communist rightist coup is launched in China, I’m certain it will be short-lived because the revolutionaries represent ninety-five percent of the people. The rightists may prevail for some time by using my words. . . .‘ “ She laid heavy stress on the selected phrase and looked hard at Kao to emphasize what was coming next. “ ‘But the leftists may also organize some of my other words to overthrow the rightists!’ “ She made a sudden, contemptuous noise with her lips. “Hasn’t Hua the Incompetent already fulfilled that prophecy by constantly trumpeting the written message he must have tricked the chairman into making? ‘With you in charge, I am at ease,’ “ she chanted, mimicking a foolish voice.

  “How do you suggest we counteract that?” asked Kao quietly.

  Chiang responded by pushing the box of tapes across the desk. “These are recordings of the chairman discussing his political thought and philosophy with important foreign statesmen during the spring of this year. Listen to them carefully and select statements by the chairman about political matters that are helpful to our cause. Re-record them so that it is impossible to recognize the circumstances in which they were made. Then we can represent them as clear instructions by the chairman regarding the Party leadership after his death.”

  “But that would be misusing the context of the chairman’s remarks,” said Kao uneasily. “Is there no other way?”

  “We would simply be following the chairman’s instructions in this letter,” said Chiang severely and picked up the second sheet she had read from, flourishing it in the air. “To ‘organize some of my other words to overthrow the rightists.’ “A calculating look came into her eyes. “This is not a task that a serious contender for the post of general secretary should refuse, is it?” she asked quietly.

  Kao did not reply but looked back at her uncertainly.

  “I hardly need remind you of the power which the chairman’s written and spoken words can carry. The people of China have been accustomed throughout their history to revere the edicts issued by Peking. Do this work well and you will neutralize the marshals and generals politically. We will counteract them militarily by moving loyal divisions to Peking from the northeast under the command of the chairman’s nephew. They’re already beginning to move toward the capital, ostensibly ‘to help in earthquake relief.’ But we shall also need convincing political evidence to legitimize our actions.” She paused and fixed him with an unwavering stare. “I take it, Comrade Kao, that you won’t jeopardize your personal future by declining to carry out such a vital task?”

  Kao hesitated for a second or two, avoiding her eyes; then he leaned forward to pick up the tapes. “It will be an honor to perform such an important duty,” he said quietly.

  “Stay in here, Comrade Kao, and work at this desk.” Her smile betrayed the satisfaction she felt. “It would be unwise for secret tapes to be used in an insecure area.”

  She re-deposited the file of letters in the safe, then hurried to the door. When she opened it, Kao saw that groups of silent, unsmiling men and women were filing into the conference room on the other side
of the passageway. Every face was tense and among them Kao recognized all the important Politburo members who had grouped themselves around the chairman and his wife during the Cultural Revolution. As the door closed behind Chiang, he heard a key turn, locking him in.

  He listened for a moment to the muffled murmur of voices before turning his attention to the tapes. Written transcripts had already been made and he leafed quickly through the discussions with the prime ministers of New Zealand and Singapore, marking with a pen some of the remarks made by the chairman. Then his eye fell on the transcript labeled “Chairman Mao Tse-tung receives a distinguished former China missionary, Mr. Jakob Kellner.” He picked it up with a frown and, sitting very still in his seat, read right through the verbatim account of the meeting before fixing the corresponding spool of tape on the player. He spun it quickly to different sections in turn, listening carefully to the slurred voice of the chairman making fierce assertions about the importance of class struggle. When the Hunanese accent gave way to the clearer voice of his father speaking Chinese, Kao moved to switch off the machine; but at the last moment he changed his mind and, turning down the volume instead so that it wouldn’t be audible outside the room, he leaned forward and bent his head close to the machine.

  “At dawn today I went to Ching Shan Hill and sat in the pavilion at the top,” Jakob began, and something in his manner of speech compelled Kao to continue listening as he quietly described the feeling “beyond words” he had experienced in the Pavilion of Eternal Spring. With a look of intense concentration on his face Kao followed every syllable. Jakob’s recorded voice was saying, “The last great journey will be a long march inward, into man’s own soul,” when the door suddenly flew open and Kao looked up to see Chiang Ch’ing standing in the doorway.

  There was a strange light in her eyes and in that instant, every insignificant detail in the room seemed to photograph itself on his memory the gleaming black lacquer of the desktop, the neutral colors of the walls, the maker’s name on the slowly spinning tape spool, the little rack of official signature stamps he would also one day possess if he rose to the highest office. His father’s recorded voice was saying ‘Only at the end of that long march will men be able to renew their links with one another,” and Kao reached out quickly to switch off the tape machine.

  “He’s dead,” said Chiang Ch’ing in a low voice. “He died at ten minutes past midnight. Our time has come.”

  19

  A week later, standing on one of the ceremonial mourning platforms that had been erected around the base of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, Kao did his best to hide his growing sense of anxiety. A few feet away, prominent among the crowd of Central Committee members and army leaders, he could see the stocky, determined figure of Marshal Lu Chiao. His uncle had avoided looking at him directly as they took their places, gazing instead at the great sea of human faces that filled the Square of Heavenly Peace. Like the other green-uniformed generals and marshals clustered around him, Chiao was conducting himself with an ominous aloofness that made Kao feel increasingly uneasy.

  Before a bank of microphones on the top plinth of the monument, the rotund Party vice chairman, Hua Kuo-feng, was reading a sonorous eulogy from a typescript, but Kao was listening with only half his mind. His eyes strayed repeatedly to the bulkier, self-possessed figure of Marshal Yeh Chien-ying, the minister of defense, who stood at Hua’s right shoulder. A white-haired, bespectacled veteran of the Long March, Marshal Yeh seemed to Kao to radiate the same quiet air of confidence as his uncle and the other military leaders, and a suspicion began to grow in Kao’s mind that before a crowd of a million mourners, the military leaders might be attempting to make some kind of silent pledge about the future.

  “The whole Party, the whole army, and the people of the whole country are immersed in boundless sorrow at the passing of Chairman Mao Tse-tung,” intoned Hua, pausing to glance out over the vast crowd that had gathered under lowering gray skies. “It was under Chairman Mao’s leadership that the disaster-plagued Chinese nation rose to its feet. That is why the Chinese people love, trust, and esteem Chairman Mao from the bottom of their hearts.

  On Hua’s left, with a dark veil draped over her head and shoulders, the chairman’s widow stood alongside her closest supporters — an austere vice premier, the Party’s chief propagandist, and the youthful Party general secretary. Dwarfed by the lavender granite memorial which reared above them, they bowed their heads in grief, and Kao noticed that all looked more frail physically than the aging soldiers ranged on Hua’s right. Suddenly Kao felt a twinge of panic deep inside himself, and the words uttered by his uncle on the night of the earthquake echoed again through his mind: “You’ve been living on borrowed time for many years. I think perhaps that time’s nearly run out now.”

  Above the square, red flags on all the tall public buildings drooped at half-mast in the gray light, and inside the main auditorium of the Great Hall of the People, the already embalmed corpse of Mao Tse-tung was still lying in state on a flag-draped catafalque. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese had filed past the body during the past week while the Politburo was holding heated meetings about who should succeed him, but each day when the official minutes and records of the discussions were returned to the Secretariat’s offices, Kao found to his growing dismay that no satisfactory agreements about the new Party leadership had been reached. Fierce arguments had raged too about whether the chairman’s body should be cremated or preserved in a public mausoleum, and even on this pressing problem no consensus had yet been achieved.

  The uncertainty among the Party’s leaders was reflected also in the country at large: almost daily, reports of disturbances continued to flow onto Kao’s desk from provincial Party headquarters. The toll of earthquake casualties, which was still mounting, suggested that perhaps a million people had either died or been badly injured in the disaster. Beyond the Square of Heavenly Peace itself, the narrow, crumbling streets of old Peking were still littered with stacks of bricks, heaps of lime, and other building materials. Many homeless families were still camping on the pavements and roadsides beneath tarpaulins, and these makeshift arrangements were spawning more crime and other social disorders. Amid all these new strains, after many demanding months, Kao had begun to feel physically drained and worn out, and he often performed his duties like an automaton, not taking full account of what was going on around him.

  “. . . In honoring his great memory, we must never forget the cause of the proletarian revolution in China which Chairman Mao pioneered,” said Hua, his unremarkable voice reverberating across the densely crowded square through hundreds of loudspeakers. “We must turn grief into strength, unite and not split. We must deepen the struggle to criticize Teng Hsiao-ping and repulse attempts by the right deviationists to reverse correct verdicts. We must always keep in mind Chairman Mao’s warning: The bourgeoisie are still in the Communist Party. They’ll never give up. They’re still on the capitalist road. . .

  Kao’s spirits lightened on hearing the familiar references to themes central to the dead chairman’s political philosophies. Their inclusion seemed to confirm that Vice Chairman Hua had not sold out after all to the confident-looking marshals. His fears, Kao told himself, were being magnified by the unrelenting stress of the past few weeks; the eulogy had suddenly made it quite clear that Comrade Chiang Ch’ing and her powerful supporters would win the battle for control of the Party and the nation.

  When the address ended, the Party and army hierarchy led the multitude of people in an organized act of mass obeisance. Three times they bowed low in the direction of the giant thirty-foot colored portrait of Mao Tse-tung which hung permanently above the central arch in the Gate of Heavenly Peace. Kao joined in and the experience moved him deeply; a strong feeling of hope rose in him again, despite his weariness, and when a massed band of five hundred instruments accompanied the choir of a million voices in an emotional rendering of “The East Is Red,” he added his voice to the mighty musical tide that engulf
ed the square. Singing the familiar words of the majestic anthem, Kao felt an oceanic sense of communion with the rest of the swaying throng all around him: “The East is red! The sun rises. . . . China has brought forth a Mao Tse-tung! . . . He is the people’s great savior . .

  This mystical feeling of communication with every single Chinese in the square persisted even after the ceremony ended, and Kao’s mind remained dazed and distracted as he moved down from the stands toward the long line of gleaming Hung Ch’i limousines drawn up in front of the Great Hall. Feeling a light touch on his elbow, he turned in surprise to find his uncle beckoning him aside; Chiao’s expression cautioned him to silence and with a gesture he indicated that Kao should follow him to his official car and join him in the rear-seat compartment.

  “I wanted to give you one final warning,” said Chiao bluntly, when he had closed the glass partition that isolated them from the army driver. “Soon decisive moves will be made. Force will almost certainly be used. Many people will be arrested. Because of the company you have chosen to keep, your name is among those on our list!”

  The abruptness of Chiao’s words startled Kao; then he gathered himself and summoned a humorless smile. “Perhaps you should be careful yourself, Uncle. Perhaps your name is on our list.”

  “I’m giving you this warning only because of my feelings for my sister,” said the marshal in a hard voice. “Despite all the terrible suffering you allowed others to inflict on your mother, she still cares deeply for you and Ming in her strange, remote way. So heed this final warning.”

  “To do what, flee the country?”

  “Fleeing the country will seem a very pleasant alternative when you discover what lies ahead for you and your friends.”

  “You’re not in any position to threaten us, Uncle,” said Kao coldly. “We’re not entirely defenseless. There are forces whose loyalty we command.”