Anthony Grey

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

  A slower-moving pair of feet approached, hesitated, and finally stopped beside him. A light shone down directly onto his face and he blinked helplessly in its glare. But instead of the expected exclamation of surprise, the light was swung quickly away. The booted feet, however, did not move on; they merely turned so that the stitched heels were close before Kao’s eyes instead of the toe caps. Then the legs in them pushed hard against Kao and he realized their owner was pressing his back against the tunnel wall so that the soldiers could brush past. In doing so, he was shielding Kao effectively from their sight and he stayed there without moving.

  “Come on, comrades,” called Marshal Lu Chiao several times in a fierce whisper. “Keep moving! Keep moving!”

  Kao saw Chiao wave one arm rapidly in a circle to speed up the burly men crowding along the low-roofed tunnel, but he remained stationary himself and continued to cover the niche with his body until the last of them had hurried past. Then, without speaking or turning to look behind him, he hurried after them.

  A moment or two later, Kao heard several rapid bursts of automatic- weapons fire from the head of the tunnel and confused shouts rang out from the garden above. More prolonged firing followed and after listening for a moment or two, Kao pulled himself wearily to his feet and stumbled away in the opposite direction.

  23

  Jakob ran up the stairs of Abigail’s apartment block and knocked breathlessly on her door. No sound of movement came from inside and he glanced quickly at his wristwatch; he had made two previous visits without getting any response and now it was almost one A.M. He knocked again without much hope, gazing around the landing at the temporary steel supports which had been wedged in place to strengthen the damaged staircase. The sight of the ugly structural cracks left by the earthquake only served to heighten his growing sense of anxiety and he knocked pointlessly on the closed door once more.

  “I think Miss Kellner is away,” said a female voice tentatively, and Jakob turned to find that the door of the adjoining apartment had opened. The dark-haired Polish girl whom Abigail had rescued during the earthquake was wearing a dressing gown over her nightclothes and she looked as if she had been wakened by his knocking.

  “Do you know where she’s gone?” asked Jakob in a dismayed voice. “I’m her father. I’ve just arrived in Peking unexpectedly.”

  “She’s gone to Tientsin to give a special course of instruction to Chinese teachers. I think she’ll be away several days. But I’ll give her a message when she returns, if you wish.”

  “Thank you.” Jakob took out his wallet and quickly jotted the name and telephone number of his hotel on a business card. “Please ask her to call me as soon as she returns.”

  Jakob apologized profusely for disturbing the girl, then hurried down the stairs to his waiting taxi and asked the driver to take him again to Nan Chihtze. He had returned to Kao’s address earlier only to find the partly rebuilt house as empty and deserted as on his first visit. He had no real expectation of finding anyone there in the middle of the night, but his anxiety had reached such a pitch that he felt compelled to make another effort, however futile, to locate Kao.

  As the taxi headed eastward Jakob peered uneasily out through its windows, searching for signs of tension. Gray-uniformed militiamen carrying staves were patrolling visibly in pairs in the side streets where some families still slept under open-sided tarpaulin awnings, and an occasional covered army truck drove swiftly along Chang An, carrying apparently unarmed troops. Once or twice he saw military jeeps scurrying across distant intersections, but there was no other outward indication of any unseen struggle taking place and Jakob’s feeling of helplessness became almost suffocating.

  At Nan Chihtze, Kao’s house still stood dark and unattended and there was no reply to his knocking. He wandered irresolutely around the shadowy courtyard for several minutes; then, baffled and at a loss, he returned to the hotel and stretched out fully dressed on his bed. But he could not sleep, and every time he heard a vehicle moving in Chang An, he rose and hurried to the window to look out. At about four A.M. he watched a curtained military car race westward past the hotel at high speed and he stared after it dully, listening to the sound of its engine dying away in the distance. When silence returned to the small room again, the waiting became unbearable and he snatched up his topcoat and strode toward the door, even though he had no idea of what he might do or where he might go. In that instant a tiny shutter seemed to open subliminally in his mind, revealing a fleeting image that was gone before he could fully identify it. He stopped in midstride and stared at the blank wall of the room, certain suddenly of where he must go and astonished that he had not thought of it before.

  Opening his bedroom door quietly, he hurried to the rear stairs and, after descending to the ground floor, made his way silently through the darkness of the hotel grounds to a side street. Walking rapidly, he hurried to Wang Fu Ching, then turned north in the direction of the old Joint Missionary Language School.

  24

  Everything reactionary is the same,” whispered Mei-ling in her soft, faraway voice. “if you don’t hit it, it won’t fall!”

  Although dawn was only just breaking outside the window, she was already fully dressed and seated on her lonely chair in the middle of the room. Her face was tranquil and composed, her hair impeccably dressed in neat twin braids, and in the half-light, with her smooth face turned toward the window as usual, she looked more than ever like a young girl.

  Standing inside the closed door of her room, Kao swayed slightly on his feet as he looked at her. His hair was disheveled and there was a trickle of dried blood on his face where he had struck his head when falling in the tunnel leading down from the villa. His cadre’s tunic was covered in dust and crumpled from the hour or two of sleep he had snatched hidden among the sacks of grain in one of the underground granaries — but his strange appearance had made no noticeable impression on his mother.

  When he let himself quietly into her room she had not even turned her head; he had stood there, dizzy with fatigue, for two or three minutes but she had only murmured occasional meaningless quotations, as she would have done if the room had been empty.

  “Mother, it’s Kao,” he said in a voice that was little more than a croak. “It’s finished for me. It’s all over.”

  Although there was a faint sound in the corridor outside the door, he took no notice, for he no longer cared whether anybody overheard him or not. The sense of release from lifelong pretense, which he had experienced in the tunnel, had left him with a curiously excited, light-headed feeling. On arrival at the front door, the staff had tried to prevent him from entering and he had realized vaguely that they must be alarmed by his appearance; but because of a strange new inner certainty that he no longer needed to worry about the future, he had made open threats about what wrath would fall upon the asylum from the Party headquarters if they denied him entry to see his mother, and the duty doctors had reluctantly allowed him in.

  “Don’t you understand what I said, Mother? It’s all over. My career in the Party is finished! Many people have been arrested in the night. My name was on the list — but Uncle Chiao helped me get away.” He took a tentative step toward her, then stopped when he saw her lips begin to move.

  “Rebellion is justified.” She said it very softly once, and repeated it in a slightly louder voice. “Rebellion is justified!”

  “You don’t need to worry anymore about Ming,” whispered Kao, moving nearer and reaching out a hand toward his mother. “He’ll be all right. Abigail saved him. Do you remember her?” Kao’s face suddenly crumpled and he fell to his knees beside Mei-ling, burying his face in her lap. His shoulders shook with a fit of silent sobbing and he had difficulty controlling his speech. “I-ping was killed — but Ming wasn’t even hurt. You really don’t need to worry about him anymore. . . . I wrote notes an hour ago

  Very slowly Mei-ling lifted one hand and began gently to stroke the head of her weeping son. In his distress he seemed a
t first not to notice; when he did realize what was happening, he straightened up, staring at her in puzzlement. But still her eyes gazed ahead, blank and unseeing, and as he looked at her she began to speak again in the same faint, faraway voice.

  “Bombard the headquarters! Bombard the headquarters! Bombard the headquarters’

  In the growing light he could see her face more clearly and the terrible emptiness of her expression as she repeated the old slogans over and over again became suddenly unbearable to him.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he gasped, seizing her hand and pressing it against his cheek. “I’m sorry for all the terrible suffering I’ve caused you. .

  For a long moment the only sound in the room was his sobbing. Then Mei-ling began murmuring once more.

  “Rebellion is justified’ Rebellion isjustf1ed’

  Kao raised his head slowly to stare at her again and a look of unendurable agony came into his eyes. “I’m going to help you!” he said in a despairing voice, and he fumbled at one of the lower pockets of his tunic. “I didn’t help you before — but now I can help us both!”

  The long-barreled revolver snagged in the lining of his pocket as he tried to tug it free, but Mei-ling took no notice. She continued to repeat the slogan in the same sibilant whisper, seemingly oblivious to his presence. Even when he was holding the revolver out at arm’s length, pointing the muzzle waveringly at her chest, she still gave no sign she was aware of what was happening. Kao was sobbing as he squeezed the trigger, and his arm jerked wildly with the shock of the discharge, but he squirmed quickly into a new position on his knees and pressed the muzzle to his own head to fire a second time.

  Jakob was running frantically along the corridor, followed by two male nurses, when the first shot rang out, and they heard the second as Jakob threw open the door. In the moment of silence that followed the deafening reports of the revolver, the voice of Mei-ling, fainter than before, repeated the simple three-word slogan.

  “Rebellion is justified’ Rebellion is justified!”

  Jakob and the two nurses watched in horror as Kao’s body unfolded to stretch itself full-length on the floor. Mei-ling slipped slowly down from the chair to her knees, and for a moment she seemed to bend solicitously over her son, still whispering the slogan. Then she fell sideways onto him and lay still.

  The two nurses started to push past Jakob but he stretched out an arm to stop them and moved forward a pace or two until he was standing over Kao and Mei-ling. Then, for the first time in many years, he bowed his head and raised his hands in front of him in an attitude of prayer.

  “Almighty God,” he whispered shakily in Chinese, “bless the souls of those who have departed this life here in anguish. . . . Let there now be an end to their suffering, forgive all of us our transgressions, and grant that we may at last find eternal peace through thy grace. . . . Amen.”

  The sound of running footsteps filled the corridor behind him and Jakob let his hands fall to his sides and opened his eyes. He stared down at the tangled bodies for only a moment or two, then turned away and walked blindly from the room.

  25

  As dusk fell a week later Jakob stood sadly at the open window of his hotel room watching long, noisy columns of Chinese demonstrators flowing along Peking’s broad central avenue toward Tien An Men Square. Marching behind dense thickets of giant red flags, they were shouting slogans condemning the “Gang of Four Anti-Party Traitors” and waving adulatory color portraits of Mao Tse-tung above their heads. The familiar pictures of Mao contrasted sharply with the few insulting images the marchers carried of the wife who had survived him; here and there skillfully drawn cartoon placards bobbed above the throng, depicting Chiang Ch’ing and her supporters as poisonous serpents, spiders, and scorpions, and invariably the ugly caricatures were being crushed by the fists and boots of the Chinese masses.

  The sudden appearance of demonstrators in the streets earlier that day had not surprised Jakob. He had first seen small parades of schoolchildren setting out for the city center at around midday while he was walking distractedly in the southern suburbs. During the week he had spent awaiting Abigail’s return to Peking, he had nursed his grief privately in endless walks at the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven, and other quarters of the city. At the few embassy social gatherings he had attended, rumors about a massive purge in the Party leadership had been the sole topic of conversation, but because of the grief he concealed within himself, he had never offered any comment on the rumors; whatever the details, they seemed of little significance compared with his own overwhelming personal sense of loss.

  The first groups of young marchers that he saw that morning had carried placards denouncing four unnamed leaders for “attempting to usurp state and Party power”; then, as the day wore on and the demonstrations had grown in size, new banners had appeared naming the Gang of Four. Now, with hundreds of thousands of people marching and countermarching in the streets, curbside loudspeakers were repeatedly trumpeting and vilifying the names of Chiang Ch’ing, a leading vice premier, the Party’s general secretary, and its propaganda chief. Most of the marching columns passing below the hotel window were accompanied by groups beating drums, cymbals, and gongs in a cacophonous frenzy, and as he watched them, lost in his own forlorn thoughts, Jakob became aware only gradually that his telephone was ringing persistently on the table beside his bed. When he crossed the room to answer it, he had difficulty hearing above the noise of the passing demonstration, but on recognizing Abigail’s voice he hurriedly closed his window.

  “I’m very glad to hear you at last,” he said awkwardly. “I’ve been here a week.”

  “I’ve just come in and seen your note,” said Abigail, sounding equally awkward. “I got back from Tientsin this afternoon — because of the demonstrations it took forever to get to my office and back. . .

  Jakob hesitated, trying to find a way of preparing her for what he was about to reveal; then he realized there was nothing he could say that would soften the blow. “I’m sorry to break it to you like this, Abigail, but I have some bad news.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m afraid Kao and Mei-ling are both dead. . .

  Jakob heard Abigail draw in her breath sharply. “How did it happen?”

  “It’s rather complicated . .

  There was a long silence at the other end of the telephone as Abigail struggled to come to terms with the news. “Has it anything to do with what I can see going on in the streets?” she asked at last.

  “Yes, I’m afraid it has.”

  Another silence followed before Abigail spoke again in a puzzled voice. “Then perhaps that might help explain something else.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Jakob.

  “There was another note waiting for me here when I got back. I don’t know who it’s from. It’s very badly written. It just asks me to go to Kao’s house as soon as I possibly can.” Abigail paused again and her tone became apprehensive. “What do you think it can mean?”

  “I don’t know ...,“ said Jakob. “I’m rather in the dark. I’m waiting for Marshal Lu to respond to a request to see him that I made nearly a week ago. . . . What are you intending to do about the note?”

  “I was thinking of going there straightaway.”

  “And will you?”

  “Yes, I think I shall. . . . “Abigail hesitated. “Will you meet me there, Daddy?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “In half an hour from now?”

  “Yes.”

  When Jakob put down the telephone he found his hand was shaking. He decided to shower and change his clothes, and because the marching throngs were jamming the traffic, on reaching the street he realized he would have to walk to Nan Chihtze. Dense crowds were strolling beneath the trees of An Chang, watching the demonstrations, and as he came in sight of Tien An Men Square, thousands of electric light bulbs outlining the curved golden roofs of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the Great Hall of the People, and other public buildings
suddenly shimmered into life. These decorative skeins of light, he knew, were usually switched on only for National Day and May Day and their unexpected illumination at once gave the political demonstrations a jamboree atmosphere. Jakob noticed too that new groups of demonstrators seemed to be spontaneously joining the marching students and school-age children who had been parading throughout the day; homeward-bound factory workers, truckloads of peasants from the countryside, hospital workers still wearing their white smocks and hats, and even uniformed cadres from government offices were pushing in among the demonstrating columns and swinging along smilingly in a relaxed, celebratory mood.

  When Jakob reached Nan Chihtze, however, the scene changed abruptly — the demonstrators were avoiding the shadowy, dimly lit street because it was still partially blocked with building materials. In the growing darkness ahead of him Jakob saw a pedicab weaving between the heaps of bricks and building lime, coming from the opposite direction. When it stopped outside Kao’s house he saw the unmistakable blond-haired figure of his daughter climb out and pay the driver, and she stood waiting tensely at the pavement edge for him as he approached.

  “Let’s find out what it’s about straightaway,” she said quickly, before he could greet her, and she led the way through the gateway in the newly built courtyard wall. They had to step around piles of rubble which still dotted the courtyard and they noticed in the feeble glow of the streetlights that a large part of the house was still under repair. A section of the roof remained open to the sky, but there was a light behind one curtained window and Jakob knocked gently on the closed door. Almost at once there was a sound of movement and the door swung open to reveal the old, sad-faced Chinese woman with gray hair whom Abigail had seen crouching amid the debris on the night of the earthquake.