Jakob moved to her side, his fingers intertwining tightly with hers as they waited for the echo. Then he smiled delightedly into her eyes as the centuries-old wall built by the Ming dynasty emperors sent her sibilant answer back to them. “Yes, Jakob, I will’ Yes, Jakob, I will! . . Yes, Jakob, I will!”
PART TWO
The Long March Begins
1934
Japan’s attempted conquest of mainland China, which began with the occupation of Manchuria in September 1931, had a profound effect on the subsequent course of the Chinese revolution. At the outset it caused Chiang Kai-shek to halt a massive offensive against the Communist Red Army just when he stood on the brink of a decisive victory; then, as time passed, his decision to continue fighting China’s Communists instead of confronting the foreign invader alienated many Chinese and bedeviled his efforts to unite China under Nationalist rule. Japan’s unopposed entry into Manchuria, which came as a galling climax to China’s century of humiliation at the hands of European nations, was also to prove a historic turning point in the wider context of world history. It demonstrated that Japan had become powerful enough to challenge the supremacy of the white colonial powers and foreshadowed the end of their dominance in Asia during the Second World War. As weak as China was when aggressive European colonialists first appeared in Asia, Japan had deliberately turned its back on the traditional past and carried through a radical program of Westernization under its own emperors in the mid- nineteenth century. Within a few short decades the small island nation transformed and modernized itself. Deploying well-armed land and sea forces with great flair, Tokyo quickly built a new Asian empire, seizing Formosa from China, wresting the Manchurian seaport of Port Arthur from Czarist Russia, annexing Korea, and moving onto an equal footing with the European nations in China in 1919 by taking over Germany’s concession areas.
On the day Tokyo moved into Manchuria, Chiang Kai-shek was leading 300,000 Nationalist troops against Communist bases in the south in his third “encirclement and annihilation” campaign. Two previous offensives had failed, but his forces were then on the point of overwhelming 30,000 Red Army troops in the Central Soviet area in mountainous southern Kiangsi. Because of Japan’s action, Chiang decided to postpone his offensive; the Communists were thereby given time to rest and recoup, and they succeeded in repulsing the fourth encirclement campaign, mounted in the winter of 1933. Increasingly frustrated, Chiang marshaled a vast army of seventy divisions — nearly a million troops — for the fifth campaign, which he launched toward the end of 1933. This time he was aided by German military advisers, who constructed ever-narrowing rings of concrete blockhouses linked by motor roads and barbed-wire entanglements to blockade the Kiangsi base area. Heavy casualties were inflicted on the main force of the Red Army as the Nationalists closed in; Communist desertions increased, and in the late summer of 1934 the Communist leaders realized they were trapped.
By coincidence, the Communists were also being guided by a German military adviser. Sent from Moscow by the Comintern on Stalin’s orders, the German Marxist had insisted that the Red Army abandon its previous guerrilla tactics and defend the base area with well-tried positional warfare techniques: trenches and blockhouses. He was supported by two dozen youthful Chinese “Bolsheviks,” who had been educated and trained in Moscow, and the young Chou En-Iai. Among those continuing to advocate flexible guerrilla techniques was the still-unknown Mao Tse-tung, who had not yet gained a dominant position in the movement. But although no clear leader of the Communists had emerged and sharp differences existed among the contenders, on one thing they all ultimately agreed: with the Nationalist noose closing around them, the Kiangsi soviet base would have to be abandoned. A date for the breakout through enemy lines was set — October 16, 1934 — but none of those preparing to march knew then that this ignominious lunge for survival would turn into a historic fighting retreat across six thousand miles of some of the world’s harshest terrain. ln a year’s nonstop marching at the rate of up to fifty miles a day, they would pass over eighteen mountain ranges, cross twenty-six rivers, and struggle finally through the desolate Great Grasslands of Szechuan before finding sanctuary in the northwest. None of the 85,000 soldiers and 15,000 civilians who set out that autumn could have guessed then that the small core of them destined to survive would form the nucleus of a people’s army superior to all other armies in China’s history. Their epic trek through China’s remotest regions would later come to be known as the “Long March” — but while it lasted, it would go unobserved by the outside world. “Enemies” in the shape of landlords, Kuomintang sympathizers, and suspected spies, wherever they were encountered, would be taken prisoner to be dragged along with the baggage. Rough justice would be meted out to some, ransom would be sought for others — and among those prisoners would be a handful of foreigners whom fate placed in the path of the desperate marchers.
1
A flurry of rifle shots echoing across a distant valley caused Jakob to halt in midstride as he picked his way down a natural stairway of sharp rocks on a high mountainside in southern Hunan. Far below he could see a yellow stream rushing through gray stone outcrops, and on a little green plateau halfway down the cliff a small Chinese boy wearing animal skins and a felt skullcap was guarding a herd of scraggy sheep and goats. The boy had been playing a set of bamboo panpipes to which Jakob had been unconsciously listening as he descended but now the music had stopped; the little goatherd was obviously listening too for further sounds of shooting.
After a short interval of silence, more ragged bursts of rifle fire rang out, augmented this time by the faster, rhythmic stutter of automatic weapons. Although the early November afternoon was bright with sun and only a faint haze hung around the distant blue mountain peaks to the east, Jakob could see no sign of the men firing the guns. The narrow trail on which he stood snaked along the shoulders of the mountains high above the foaming stream, descending very gradually into a long, winding valley that spread out ahead of them as far as the eye could see. The lower hillsides were thick with trees, and the mud-walled hamlets that Jakob knew were nestling below remained invisible from the peaks. The sounds of firing, after rising quickly to a crescendo, died away just as abruptly and an enigmatic stillness took possession of the mountains once more.
“Who do you think is fighting down there, Ke Mu-shih?”
The short, wiry Chinese in his early thirties who had been following close on Jakob’s heels breathed the question in an excited whisper. He had the dark, weathered face and permanently narrowed eyes of a mountain dweller and he carried his carefully balanced shoulder pole with its laden wicker baskets seemingly without effort. Behind him, two lowland coolies carrying heavy loads of provisions in shoulder sacks known as paofu halted with their knees calculatedly bent, their faces taut from the continuous effort of carrying.
“I don’t know who it is, Hsiao Liang — but it sounds serious. Somebody is using machine guns as well as rifles.”
“Could it be the Red Bandits, Ke Mu-shih?” A note of eagerness was detectable in Liang’s voice although he was careful to use the respectful form of address: Ke, the Chinese character customarily used to denote the first syllable of Jakob’s family name, followed by Mu-shih, meaning “Pastor.”
“Possibly.” Jakob, who spoke his conversational Chinese now with confidence, smiled and patted his cook boy affectionately on the shoulder. “The government troops wouldn’t need to use machine guns against thieves or ‘spirit soldiers,’ would they?”
Jakob shaded his eyes with his hand to scan the distant crags and gullies. Rumors that Kuomintang forces had dislodged small groups of Communist bandits from mountain strongholds in neighboring Kiangsi had been circulating in the province for two or three weeks. On the narrow flag stoned trails that served as roads, Jakob in that time had encountered more patrols of government and provincial troops than he had ever seen before, but there had been no signs of fighting. In the two and a half years since leaving Peking, Jakob had becom
e accustomed to facing the daily danger of attacks by armed gangs whenever he traveled on the remote tracks that wound across the hills and plains of Hunan, Kwangsi, and Kweichow. On longer journeys, district magistrates often provided small military escorts through areas where robber-bandits were notorious: a year before, when journeying without protection, Jakob had been surprised by a ragged group of sword-wielding brigands who ran yelling down a trailside scree to steal his money belt and all his coolie-borne supplies before lashing him with rope to a tree. He had offered his captors no physical resistance. As they tightened the bonds around him and his frightened coolies, he had urged them to give up their life of banditry and had tried to explain in a calm voice something of Christ’s love for all men. But their wild, begrimed faces had registered nothing of what he said and as soon as they had secured all his belongings, they had raced off up the scree to disappear silently into the hills once more.
“Do you think we should go back the way we came, Ke Mu-shih?” Liang wagged his head back in the direction of the mountain pass over which they had just climbed. “It might be safer.”
“No, we’ll go on.”
Jakob moved briskly away down the rocky path, waving and calling a cheery greeting to the little goatherd; without any hesitation Liang and the two coolies fell into step behind. As they climbed down past him, the goat boy stared curiously at the small group led by the tall man with a haze of strange yellow hair framing his face. But as soon as they had passed, the boy became totally absorbed again in coaxing from his pipes a haunting, plaintive melody that followed Jakob and his companions down the mountain.
From time to time Jakob stopped to peer ahead, straining his eyes for some sign of what they might find in the valley below. He was aware that his decision to continue the journey in the direction of the firing had possibly been hasty and made on impulse. He knew too that the sharp, spectacular peaks etched purple against the bright sky ahead had somehow helped influence him in making it. After more than two years in the field he had few illusions left about the practical difficulties of his calling: attempting to preach the Christian Gospel in wild rural areas among a largely illiterate peasant population nurtured on centuries of superstition and ancestor worship was, in reality, a slow, laborious task.
Often the frustrations had tested his resolve to the full — yet whenever he climbed alone to the high tracks and looked out over the rolling swell of rock peaks and fertile valleys stretching to the horizon, he experienced new feelings of exhilaration. Throughout this vast region of hill, valley, and plain which had changed little in the two millennia since Christ’s birth, unseen millions of souls dwelled in total ignorance of the Gospel’s message. At the thought Jakob rejoiced and gave thanks afresh for the magnitude of the responsibility which he bore. In such moments it was as though these great tracts of southern China and their people were in a way his very own. He felt keenly that God had entrusted them and their salvation to him alone, and the instinctive excitement at the prospect of adventuring in the mountains of China which had first gripped him as a ten-year-old boy again became a throbbing reality.
When first he had come south from Peking, Jakob could not believe that it was just the curiosity value of his “big” nose, blue eyes, and pale skin that drew dense crowds of silent, staring Chinese peasants around him whenever he entered a hamlet to preach in the dusty main street. Despite smiling warnings from senior missionaries at the central station in Changsha, he had continued for several months to harbor the private hope that the special power and fervor of his witness might be dramatically confirmed by a rapid rise in the number of baptized converts in the remote region around Chentai where no foreign missionary work had previously been attempted. But although he handed out hundreds of printed Chinese Scripture tracts during every itineration and diligently compiled long lists of “inquirers,” a full year had passed before Jakob baptized his first convert on the banks of a mountain stream — and he had been an ailing widow of a village herbalist, who had been held spellbound in her suffering by his New Testament accounts of Christ healing the sick.
The elation he had felt at giving his first meticulously memorized sermon in Chinese had gradually given way to the realization that weary months and years of study still lay ahead before he could hope to handle intelligent questions and discussion about the Gospels in Chinese; and reluctantly, at last, he admitted to himself that the fascination of his European face for Chinese who had never seen a foreigner of any kind and even the sound of a phonograph or a small church organ were as responsible for drawing the peasant crowds as anything he was able to say about the power of Christianity.
This growing awareness of the true scale of the missionary’s task in China, however, had not in any way undermined Jakob’s deep sense of commitment. He had spent every spare moment poring over his language books, and after his marriage to Felicity eighteen months earlier, she had helped him improve his spoken Chinese in nightly lessons at home in the new mission they had set up together at Chentai. Getting married had also been inspirational in itself for him. Felicity’s gentle, pious manner, which equipped her naturally to organize the daily routines of the Chentai station and its small Bible school, had served to complement his more forceful, physical brand of evangelism. Her quiet presence had in itself strengthened his conviction that they had somehow been destined to spread the message of the Gospels to every last hamlet in that remote corner of Hunan, and after the wedding he had ventured out on each journey with renewed zeal.
In addition, two years of striding the flag stoned trails had strengthened him physically: his long, lean frame had filled out and he had broadened noticeably in the chest and shoulders. The mountain winds and rain as well as the sun had roughened his features and given them a ruddy, weathered glow. He had fallen into the habit of wearing Chinese garments, marching the summer trails in straw sandals and a light long-gown and reverting in winter to the quilted, fur-lined robe and boots acquired in Peking. As a result, the fresh- faced, neatly barbered youth who had arrived in Shanghai more than three years before was no longer easily recognizable; his place had been taken by a rugged, confident-looking, tousle-haired man who had a ready smile in his blue eyes and who, on the brink of maturity, wore a full beard, thick on his cheeks, that was almost as pale as his blond hair.
Only a month earlier, the quiet contentment of his union with Felicity had acquired a new dimension of joy with the birth of a baby girl. The infant’s imminent arrival had curtailed the number of journeys he had felt able to undertake during the summer months, and the expedition from which he was now returning had been a domestic errand to the nearest river port to collect stores and provisions shipped to them from Shanghai. The route of the two-day journey back to Chentai lay close to the long mountain valley into which they were now descending, and Jakob had decided to make a detour to one of its villages so that he could visit a serious inquirer family of peasant farmers to whom he had first preached nine months earlier.
In particular he had taken away from the village a vivid memory of how the eyes of a thirteen-year-old girl, a daughter of the farmer, had shone in the light of an oil lamp on hearing him read the story of the first Christmas from the New Testament. When he rose to leave, the girl’s simple peasant face still wore a wistful, almost hungry expression, and because he had no Chinese Bibles left for sale, he had on an impulse given her his own. As the grassy slope beneath his feet began to level out and the first mud-walled houses of the village came into sight, Jakob realized that it must have been this dimly remembered image of the girl’s spiritual hunger, left unfed by him for so long, that had ultimately drawn him back down that winding valley despite the disconcerting sounds of gunfire. The feeling that he had been neglectful of his duty nagged suddenly at his mind; the family’s name was Hsiao, he remembered, the girl was called Lan-ko, and quite irrationally he began to quicken his pace, scouring his memory for the exact location of Lan-ko’s home among the rows of straw-thatched houses.
“Wai
t, Ke Mu-shih! Something’s wrong here.”
The shouted warning from Liang stopped Jakob dead in his tracks. He had pulled ahead of the cook boy and the coolies and while he waited for them to catch up, he noticed for the first time that the dusty, unpaved street which ran the length of the straggling village was deserted. The doors of some of the houses stood open or swung slowly back and forth on creaking hinges in the afternoon wind. There was no sign of movement from the dark interiors — not even a dog, a pig, or a mule moved on the empty Street.
“Where is everybody?” Jakob’s voice sounded loud in the eerie silence.
“Maybe they have all run away into the hills — to get away from the fighting.” Liang, panting to regain his breath, gazed up and down the street with watchful eyes.
They had stopped outside a slightly larger mud house that served as an inn for passing coolies where Jakob had spent a night during his first visit to the village. The curiosity of the village children had been so great that they had pressed into his darkened bedroom, surrounding him in ranks four and five deep to watch him eat his evening meal. Their eyes had sparkled with the wonder and excitement of seeing the first non-Chinese face of their young lives and they had giggled uproariously whenever he spoke to them in their own language. Next morning he had preached to a great crowd in the Street outside before visiting several families in their homes. They had all made him welcome, offering him boiled peanuts and hot water to drink; all had listened politely to what he had to say. His recollection of the friendliness he had been shown on that occasion made the stillness of the deserted village suddenly seem all the more ominous, but he tried to set his growing apprehension aside.
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