The Stone Dragon

by Peter Watt

  John found Robert leaving Sir Claude MacDonald’s offices. The young officer emerged wearing a new uniform with a spit-polished Sam Browne belt across his chest. He turned to hurry along the rubble-strewn street where teams of Chinese coolies were working to clear the debris away as if intent on returning the legation compound to its former state.

  ‘Mr Mumford,’ John said when he had caught up with Robert.

  The British officer’s face crumpled at seeing him.

  ‘Mr Wong,’ Robert said, ‘no doubt you have seen Naomi by now.’

  ‘I have,’ John replied, eyeing the young man’s face and seeing the edginess of guilt in his expression. ‘I was wondering why you have not paid a visit to my daughter?’

  Robert wanted to look away. He shifted his gaze across John’s shoulder. ‘I ah …’ he uttered, as if clearing his throat. ‘I have been rather busy.’

  ‘I take it that you will continue to remain very busy then, Mr Mumford,’ John replied, knowing that everything in the man’s demeanour spelled avoidance.

  Robert glanced down at the ground like a guilty school boy. ‘I think that you must appreciate how the last few weeks have changed everything,’ Robert answered. ‘The damned rebellion and all that.’

  ‘You mean what has happened to my daughter,’ John growled. ‘Not good for the old image, what,’ he added, imitating an English aristocrat. ‘Not good for future prospects of advancement, old chap.’

  Robert glared at John. ‘You do not seem to appreciate that we live in a world that is very judgmental, Mr Wong,’ he said. ‘I do not have to justify my actions to you.’

  ‘Never consider travelling to Queensland,’ John said, turning on his heel. ‘Because I will be there and you won’t want to meet me on my own turf.’

  Robert felt his hands trembling as John strode away. It was not through fear but shame for the confrontation he had been forced to endure. He had fought too hard to get where he was now in this class-ridden society that did not accept mixed relations. No matter how strongly he might feel about Naomi, he was a soldier first and foremost and the sacrifice he made was not taken lightly. But how could he stand tall in the Officers’ Mess with his brother officers if it was known that his wife was a Chinese girl who had been with many men? Especially Chinese men. Robert was not a man to moralise on his choices because that was simply the way things stood in his tight, socially driven class. When at length he was able to bring his hands under control, he turned and continued to march along the street to join an impromptu afternoon tea being thrown for European guests only.

  Liza had been able to obtain nourishing food for Naomi from her American friend, Polly Condit Smith. Dr George Morrison had also made himself known to the daughter of John Wong, and immediately enlisted her assistance with the care of the Chinese survivors at the Fu. Their medical treatment had not been a priority for the European community during the siege, although many had helped build the barricades and carried out vital tasks in the defence.

  Naomi was puzzled that Robert had not attempted to contact her, considering what she had perceived as his strong feelings for her. She understood that facing the man she had once had strong feelings for would be an awkward moment as so much had changed in her life in the last two months. But the work of assisting Dr Morrison took her brooding thoughts off meeting Robert again. She had been acting as Morrison’s interpreter, going among the Christian converts, who were pitifully malnourished and ill. Particularly hard for Naomi was dealing with the mothers of children only hours from death, as in her present state of pregnancy she found herself identifying with them.

  She was feeding a tiny, skeletal-like baby with canned milk dripped from a rag when she looked up to see her father watching her. The sadness in his expression was apparent.

  ‘Hello, Father. What is it?’ she greeted.

  John stepped forward, removing his broad-brimmed hat.

  ‘I don’t know how to tell you this,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think you will be seeing Lieutenant Mumford in the future.’

  ‘Has Robert been injured or killed?’ Naomi asked in a dull voice.

  ‘Neither,’ John answered, looking past his daughter to a line of Chinese men, women and children patiently waiting to receive medical assistance from a doctor who was sitting at an improvised table made from wooden crates. The medical man had been persuaded by Morrison to go to the Fu and assess the physical condition of the Chinese survivors. ‘I spoke to Mr Mumford just after I saw you in the hospital and I think your young man has had a change of mind.’ John stared down at the ground with an abject look of misery for what he had done, expecting a bitter rebuke from his daughter.

  ‘So be it,’ Naomi sighed and returned her attention to feeding the baby.

  ‘You are not angry with me for telling Mumford of your condition?’ John asked, surprised by his daughter’s calm response to the news.

  ‘What else would I expect from a European,’ Naomi snapped, fire blazing in her eyes. ‘I am carrying the bastard child of some Chink. Do you think that an ambitious officer of the Queen would go far in the service hooked to a Chinese girl, let alone one carrying a Chink bastard? I may have had strong feelings for Robert once, but times have changed and I am a different person to who I was two months ago.’

  John was taken aback by his daughter’s outburst. ‘But he was always attempting to find a way to go in search of you,’ John attempted, defending the man he had once liked and respected.

  ‘It was not he who hurried to see me when I was brought in by the patrol,’ Naomi retorted. ‘I have no doubts that Robert may have had my rescue in mind, but that was obviously driven by his sense of being an officer rather than his feelings for me. I am, after all, a British subject, despite also being Chinese. Love can fade with time, but this country around us remains constant in its centuries of suffering under tyrants. But …’ Naomi suddenly ceased her tirade against Robert, remembering something. How could she tell her father about one man she had met who appeared to be as constant as the mighty Yellow River flowing to the sea – a man of courage, wisdom and gentleness.

  ‘But what?’ John gently prompted.

  ‘Nothing,’ Naomi said, shaking her head.

  For a moment Naomi envied her brother for being in the company of Tung Chi and now it was as if her thought had conjured Meili from the throng of Chinese around her in the Fu. She had just passed the baby back to its mother when she saw Meili standing at a distance, staring at her and holding a dirty-coloured bundle in her arms.

  ‘It is Meili!’ Naomi exclaimed, leaping to her feet as her father followed her gaze to the young peasant girl standing at the edge of the crowd. Naomi walked quickly towards Meili but froze when she was only feet away.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Naomi gasped, seeing the stricken expression on Meili’s tired face. ‘Who?’ she asked.

  ‘Your brother,’ Meili answered. ‘These are his instruments of life,’ she said, offering the bundle of surgical tools to Naomi.

  John caught his daughter in a strong embrace as she swooned under the sweltering, mid-morning sun. He had understood every word that had passed between the two women. He may have found his daughter but he had now lost his son.

  September 1900

  Off the East Coast of

  Queensland

  Weeks had passed since John had last seen his daughter and buried his son. The engine of the coastal steamer throbbed beneath his feet as he stood on the deck gazing forward from the stern at the flat outline of Queensland’s northern coast. He was almost home and the fluffy, white clouds billowing into thunderheads over the horizon promised a tropical storm.

  From his pocket John withdrew the letter he had carried with him from the legation at Pekin. It had been written in his daughter’s neat hand and explained that she had chosen to leave with Meili in search of the former Shaolin priest, Tung Chi, taking with her only the medical instruments Andrew had once possessed.

  She had written that China was now her home; it was not that s
he did not love her father but the rebellion had changed her life forever in ways that she could never have envisaged.

  Grief-stricken, John had attempted to find his daughter in the city. The rebellion had taken from him the two most precious things from his life – his children.

  ‘It is as hot as China,’ Liza said, slipping her arm through John’s. ‘But the air smells clean. I feel that you are thinking about Naomi and Andrew,’ she continued softly.

  ‘I was,’ John sighed. ‘They should be with us now. I failed them.’

  ‘No,’ Liza replied. ‘Andrew found his identity and your daughter will do great things in her new land, I just know that. It is a new century and the world is changing. I think Naomi will help that change in China for the good of all the people there.’

  ‘A big task for just one young woman,’ John said.

  ‘Not for the daughter of John Wong,’ Liza answered, squeezing his arm affectionately.

  John held the letter over the blue-green sea that was hissing softly against the hull of the ship as it ploughed south through the tropical waters. It fluttered from his hand to skip over the wash from the boat and bob on the small waves.

  ‘Make China a free nation,’ John whispered. ‘Then one day, come home to me.’

  The wind washed away his words, but not his hope.

  THE DRAGON

  AWAKE

  1967

  Beijing

  ‘Sha! Sha!’

  Comrade Professor Tung Li stood at the window of his cramped office with geological samples strewn in every nook and cranny of the tiny room. The distant chanting chilled him as he gazed down on the crowd of blue-jacketed students milling in the snow-swept university courtyard below. As they stared up at him with glazed expressions of hate, the professor of geology recognised many of those calling for blood as his students. The Great Leader had mobilised China’s youth for his cultural revolution to hold on to power and now the youth of China was tearing down what little the nation had managed to build.

  Professor Tung Li shook his head and walked away from the window. He gazed at the rock on his desk. It had been delivered to him months earlier when a labourer toiling on the old legation site had unearthed the stone, wrapped in a rotting rag. That it was one of the most valuable finds the world had ever known had been confirmed that morning when one half of the puzzle as to the rock’s origin had been confirmed by colleagues from the West. Sadly, his liaison with the geological department in Paris had been another strike against the sixty-six-year-old teacher, whose fine features reflected the blood he had inherited from his mother, Naomi Wong and his father, Tung Chi.

  Soon they would come for him and he knew that he would be berated for his revisionist, counter-revolutionary ideas. At best they might wave their copies of Mao’s thoughts in his face, and force him to confess his sins. At worst, he would be dragged from the office and executed in public. Tung Li had already lost friends in that manner to the insane hysteria that had gripped his country. The Great Leap Forward had failed miserably and scapegoats had to be rooted out and sacrificed. Who better than the intellectuals and scientists of the newly emerged nation free of foreign domination to blame for the Great Leader’s failure? Millions had starved to death and the purge had begun the year before. Tung Li had known that sending a fragment of the rock to a friend he had met years earlier studying geology in France was dangerous. But his whole life’s work as a geologist had centred on the small stone dragon discovered in the old foreign legation ruins and it would be worth it if his theory proved to be correct.

  As a door below crashed open the geologist could hear the heavy clatter of boots on the stairs leading to the floor of his department. Wisely, the rest of the academic staff had already fled but Tung Li knew he must remain to protect the stone dragon.

  Then it was his door that was being smashed down, spilling the young, blue-jacketed former students into his cramped office.

  ‘He is here!’ a girl cried to her comrades as Tung Li felt hands seize him, forcing him to kneel on the cold floor of his office.

  ‘We have the counter-revolutionary criminal,’ the girl called back to the mob, who cheered at her news.

  Tung Li kept his head bowed, hoping that they might deliver little more then some rough handling and berating for his contacts with the Imperialist West, but when he chose to glance up at the girl who led the mob he could see no pity in her eyes. She was probably only seventeen years old and he vaguely remembered her as a student in one of his classes on the chemical composition of igneous rocks. He could not remember her name; she had been but one of many hundreds he had taught over the years at the Beijing University.

  She reached forward and gripped the professor by the hair, wrenching his face up.

  ‘You are Comrade Professor Tung Li,’ she stated, rather than asking.

  ‘I am, but you know that,’ Tung Li answered, seeing the flame of a fanatic in her dark eyes.

  ‘You have been accused of harbouring old ideas and communicating with the enemies of the revolution,’ she spat. ‘It is useless to deny the charges, Comrade Professor.’

  Tung Li felt the numbing fear begin to overwhelm him. It did not feel as if he would be just rough-handled and then let go. He sensed that his contact with the French university’s geological department had become public knowledge, and something as simple as having his results confirmed would be interpreted in political terms as subversion. Logic no longer prevailed in the new revolution unleashed on China. He knew it was better to remain silent and hoped that his dignity might impress some of his old students, now hanging back in the mob crushed into his office.

  ‘You have no need to answer the charges,’ the girl screamed in his face. ‘They are already proven.’

  She let go her grip on his hair and glanced at the table where the stone dragon lay. With a strange smile on her face she picked up a large, metal hammer.

  ‘No!’ Tung Li yelled, realising what the girl was about to do.

  ‘Was this the rock that you used as an excuse to contact the foreign devils?’ she asked.

  Tung Li attempted to rise to his feet but was forced down by the mob. Without waiting for an answer the former student brought the hammer down, pulverising the rock. Again and again the hammer fell until all that remained was a fine powder and a few minuscule chips. The little stone dragon, which had lived safely in his rock case for millions of years, ceased to exist.

  Still brandishing the hammer, the girl called on her comrades to drag the counter-revolutionary criminal down the stairs to the courtyard, where he would be executed in the name of the Great Leader’s revolution.

  The tears that flowed from the old geologist’s eyes were not for himself – but for the death of the stone dragon. ‘You fools,’ he roared above the calls to kill him. ‘You have just destroyed mankind’s greatest find.’

  But his tirade against the insanity of what was happening in his country was lost in the hysteria of a youth out of control. Tung Li fell and was kicked but fought to regain his feet and by the time they had dragged him to the snow-swept courtyard he was on his feet, battered and bruised.

  The girl still held the geological hammer and waved it over her head.

  ‘It is the judgment of the people that you be executed here and now,’ she said, stepping forward. ‘Hold him down,’ she shouted.

  ‘You will not execute him,’ a deep voice roared above the murmuring of the young students ringed around their battered former teacher.

  The students fell silent, turning their angry attention on a high-ranking officer of the People’s Liberation Army, accompanied by a large contingent of armed soldiers holding their bayonet-tipped rifles at the high port across their chests. Many in the mob recognised the feared soldier and fell back to allow the representative of China’s formidable army to stride forward to where the girl stood over Tung Li with her hammer raised.

  ‘This man is my prisoner and you will hand him over to me immediately,’ the officer commanded. />
  Tung Li looked to the girl and saw a fury in her eyes at having been usurped by the senior officer of the PLA.

  ‘Comrade General,’ the girl said angrily, ‘you do not have the authority to interfere in the deliverance of the people’s justice.’

  With blurring speed, the general raised his pistol and fired point blank into the girl’s face. A fine mist of red stained the snowdrifts as the girl toppled, still gripping the hammer.

  ‘This man will come with me,’ the general said, reaching down to assist Tung Li to his feet.

  The shock of the girl being killed still hung in the air and, without any attempt to interfere, the crowd parted to allow the general and Tung Li through, with the general’s escort falling in protectively as they made their way from the university grounds.

  ‘Brother,’ Tung Li said when they were a safe distance from the mob of students, ‘I thought that you were stationed on the Manchurian border.’

  ‘I was,’ Tung Han replied. ‘But the Great Leader requested that I return to Beijing to keep control of his revolutionary guards.’

  Tung Han was a year older than Tung Li, and had chosen the life of a soldier, whereas Tung Li the life of a man of science. Despite their different paths the two men had remained as close as any two half-brothers could. Tung Han had been told of his different blood by his mother on her deathbed. That he was the son of a man who had fought the foreign devils at the turn of the century had helped the young man choose the life of a soldier, and he had wisely chosen to fight with the young Chinese poet who would lead them on the historic Long March, and eventually into nationhood. The Great Leader had purged many of those who previously had been faithful to him but with luck and good judgment Tung Han had survived and was known to many as a close confidant of the Great Leader and a man to be feared.