“I can see that’s a possible explanation.” Jakob nodded uncertainly. “But may I ask why the Chentai militia force has also left the town?”
“They have gone to assist the government forces in the final annihilation of the bandits.” The magistrate rose from his seat, his smile fading from his face. “You can rest assured, Pastor Ke, that we’ve allowed our soldiers to leave the town only because we are quite satisfied that all danger has passed. There is no further need for you to worry.”
“I’m not concerned for myself, Magistrate Yao but my wife was very alarmed when the soldiers commandeered part of our mission for a barracks. We have a very young baby to think of.”
“Unfortunately the soldiers arrived very suddenly. They began taking over billets before consulting me.” The magistrate’s formal smile flickered on and off again. “I hope you weren’t unduly inconvenienced.”
Jakob stood up suddenly, his mind made up. “If there are going to be food shortages and an increase in banditry it would perhaps be better if we traveled back to our central station at Changsha — and stayed there until the situation returns to normal.”
The magistrate placed his hands inside the wide sleeves of his gown and bowed toward the missionary. “As you wish, Pastor Ke.”
“I should like to leave Chentai tomorrow at dawn. Could a military escort be provided?”
Yao bowed low again. “Some men of the Chentai militia who stayed behind to guard the yamen will be put at your disposal. I shall send them to the mission compound at dawn.”
“Thank you, Magistrate Yao! I shall go now to hire chair coolies.”
A dark-robed servant appeared silently from the shadows and Jakob bowed low toward the magistrate in his turn before following the servant to the front gate of the yamen. Outside night had fallen, there was no moon, and the unlit main street was deserted. At the mud-walled inn, where traveling coolies rested, the evening ritual of boiling their meager rations of tea and rice over an open fire on the dirt floor would almost be finished. Soon, Jakob knew from experience, the coolies would be spreading out their bamboo mats around the fire and unpacking the opium pipes and lamps they carried with them, tied on top of their loads. The little thimblefuls of sticky amber fluid, on sale for ten cents, would be distributed by the innkeeper and only when they had settled down to smoke would the coolies begin to forget the pain of the day’s carrying. Once they started smoking they would care even less about finding work for the morning, and remembering this, Jakob set off at a fast run down the middle of the darkened street.
4
Farmer Hsiao’s daughter Lan-ko awoke suddenly from an uneasy sleep just after midnight, imagining somebody was whispering urgently in her ear. More than twenty families and their animals were still pressed close around her in the pitch-blackness of her mountain village home and it was a moment or two before she realized her mistake; what she had taken for a whisper as the sibilant murmur of thousands of straw-sandaled feet marching rapidly through the soft gray dust outside the house. Suddenly frightened, the girl drew a sharp breath and turned to her father, intending to ask him what was happening, but his hand clamped itself tight over her mouth before she could speak.
Gently he guided her toward a crack in the door against which she had been sleeping and she pressed her eye to the opening. Although there was no moon, by the faint light of the stars she was able to make out the shadowy outline of a dense, endless column of men and pack animals passing within fifty yards of their hiding place. In near-silence the troops were marching swiftly up the narrow track heading for the mountain pass that led to the walled town of Chentai.
“The Red Bandits have come, Lan-ko,” her father breathed close to her ear. “For two hours they have been moving through our village — and still there’s no sign of the rear of the column.”
Peering out through the slit in the door again, the girl strained her eyes, trying to see what the much-feared Red Bandits were really like. Although they were marching largely without lights, from time to time an isolated pathfinder passed, holding aloft a torch of burning bracken bound to a long stave, In the orange glare she saw that most of the Communist troops, in addition to their rifles, were carrying shoulder poles hung with boxes of ammunition, baskets of food, and kerosene cans. Mules and donkeys goaded onward by softly cursing muleteers were staggering under the weight of huge panniers bulging with weapons, tools, and machinery. Some of the soldiers wore cartwheel-sized hats made of layered bamboo and oiled paper to protect them from both sun and rain; others had distinctive jockey caps with long peaks pulled low over their eyes. Many carried sheathed swords at- their belts, some were swathed in ammunition bandoliers, and all humped heavy backpacks as well as shoulder poles.
“They look more like a caravan of coolies with rifles than soldiers,” murmured Lan-ko to her father. “And they’re so quiet.”
Whenever a baby whimpered or an animal bleated close to her, the watching girl stiffened with fright. Each time it happened, the offender was immediately hushed by the hidden villagers, but to Lan-ko’s relief the fast-marching troops never showed any interest nor made any move to disturb the village’s mud-and-thatch houses as they passed. Occasionally an officer rode by on a short-legged pony and once or twice she thought she saw among that great host of men an isolated woman or two, either riding on a mule or marching with the soldiers. She also saw several lines of dejected-looking prisoners roped together, their arms lashed behind their backs. They stood out among the brisk-stepping troops because they moved more slowly, stumbling now and then. There were soldiers in tattered Kuomintang uniforms and civilians in begrimed long-gowns but all, without exception, bent their heads in shame as they trudged up the mountain.
For perhaps an hour or more, Lan-ko kept her eye glued to the peephole but not once during that time did the flow of men and animals slacken. Then she began to notice that the column was moving more slowly and that more of the soldiers had wounds. Some had soiled and bloodied bandages wound around their heads; others who limped and hobbled had bandaged arms and legs. More severely injured men began to appear, lying on stretchers or being dragged in litters behind mules and donkeys. Their faces were all clenched and strained with pain and some were moaning softly as they passed.
Suddenly without understanding why she was doing it, Lan-ko began to cry quietly. Would this great silent mass of grim-faced men with their awful guns never stop marching through her village? Would she and her family and the other villagers have to stay hidden in the locked house forever? She didn’t understand where the Red Bandits were going or where they had come from. She had never seen so many men marching together in her life and the sight of them, passing unendingly before the crack in her door, lit only by the orange-red glow of fiery torches, began to seem like a nightmare.
Were they human? Or were they really giant, shadowy demons of the night? The bloodied bandages of the wounded men and their agonized moans had made her feel cold and sad inside; and seeing the men with their arms bound tightly behind their backs had made her think of the friendly Outside Country pastor who had come to the village yesterday with new books for her. Why did they want to kill people like him? Why did the Red Bandits want to kill somebody with kind blue eyes and a happy smile who came to teach the village children songs ‘and bring them books of stories about a white man who helped people? Singing his songs and reading the Yeh-su stories in big Chinese characters had made Lan-ko feel happy, and the thought that the great crowd of Red Bandits passing by outside wanted to kill the gentle Outside Country man suddenly made her break down and sob so loudly that her father had to reach out quickly and cover her mouth with his hand again.
5
By three o’clock in the morning the winding column of one hundred thousand marching men was slithering like a silent black serpent across the darkened rice plain below Chentai. All torches had been extinguished before the mountain pass was crossed so that no warning of their approach would be given to any sentries standing guard on th
e town walls. Orders to observe strict silence had been issued and the vanguard of the column had to pick its way carefully along the paved paths through the flooded rice fields by starlight.
This “caravan of coolies with rifles,” which the frightened daughter of Farmer Hsiao had watched passing through her village, was in reality the First Front Red Army, also known as the Central Red Army, in the midst of a forced night march. Moving in disciplined columns, stepping quickly on soft-shod feet and following close behind one another without talking, the Communist troops were following a pattern that had quickly become a habit. In little more than three weeks since abandoning Juichin, the capital of their Kiangsi soviet, they had covered more than five hundred miles: sometimes they had marched only under cover of darkness to avoid the Kuomintang bombers and reconnaissance aircraft, sometimes they had broken into smaller groups, wheeling and feinting in different directions, and sometimes they had moved on continuously for seventy-two hours at a stretch, interspersing bursts of four hours on the march with four-hour periods of rest. A mobile diversionary force had been left behind in the heart of the Kiangsi soviet to fight a guerrilla rearguard action and confuse the Kuomintang armies. Because of the success of this maneuver and the rapid, undetected forced marches, these main units of the Central Red Army had broken through two lines of Nationalist encirclement after minor battles and skirmishes. Most important of all, ever since embarking on the breakout they had kept their enemies guessing about their intentions and their true whereabouts. The vital need for speed and secrecy if they were to survive had been repeatedly impressed on the troops by their leaders, and it was fear for their own lives that kept the men moving with such determination.
The plain which they were crossing so stealthily was some twenty miles wide and Chentai nestled on its western rim, guarding the lower slopes of another mountain range. By the time the slow-moving medical Units at the end of the column straggled down onto the eastern edge of the plain the vanguard was already beginning to climb again into the western foothills, and a fleet-footed scouting party of two dozen Red Army men arrived before the locked gates of Chentai an hour before dawn. They threw ropes tipped with scaling hooks over the twenty-foot-high mud walls and climbed soundlessly into the town hand over hand. They quickly found and killed the sleeping gatekeeper and used his keys to swing open the creaking wooden gates. Running silently in their rice-straw sandals, they fanned out quickly through the narrow, deserted streets, reconnoitering and identifying the town yamen, the militia barracks, the grain stores, and the telegraph office. By the time the main units arrived at the open gates half an hour later the scouts were ready to lead assault parties to secure all the little town’s key points.
One of the few lamps lit in Chentai at that early hour was burning in a window on the upper floor of the Anglo-Chinese Mission. Beside the crib in the nursery, Felicity, wearing only an open-fronted nightdress, was pressing her baby daughter against her naked breast. In recent days her growing anxiety had made the natural flow of her milk erratic and the infant had been crying intermittently through the night. As the Red Army men ran soundlessly down the Street outside, however, Felicity at last succeeded in soothing the child, and she replaced her gently in the crib before returning to the bedroom, where Jakob lay asleep. She hesitated in the act of getting back into bed, her brow furrowing with worry; then she dressed herself quickly and shook Jakob’s shoulder until he stirred.
“Please, Jakob, it’s almost dawn! Will you go to the inn and try to rouse the chair coolies?”
Recognizing the quaver of fear in his wife’s voice, Jakob rose at once and dressed, although it was still dark outside the window. All the preparations for their departure had been completed the night before. In the central hail below, clothes and food had been baled and stacked against a wail that was covered with a large framed oil painting of the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. After descending to check the bales, Jakob stood for a moment before the painting with his head bowed and murmured a short prayer. Then from the kitchen in the cellar he fetched the heavy bags of soybean-milk mixture that Liang and his wife had prepared for the baby. Because no other milk was available, the Chinese cook boy and his wife had worked late into the night crushing and mixing soybeans with calcium and sugar, which had been shipped to them from Shanghai.
When he had added the bags of soy mixture to the coolie loads, Jacob hurried out into the darkened courtyard, where he had already laid out for Felicity the mission’s most comfortable hwa gan, a mountain chair slung between long, curved poles and covered with a waterproof oil-sheet awning. For extra speed he had hired four carrying coolies so that a free pair of them could run alongside the hwa gan, ready to take it directly onto their shoulders at each changeover without stopping or lowering it to the ground. After adjusting the seat cushions and checking the chair’s ropes and its bamboo awning frame, Jakob unbarred the gate in the outer courtyard wall, intending to run to the inn to awaken the group of coolies he had hired — but before he had opened the gate the shooting began.
Only a few brief volleys were fired and Jakob immediately sensed that they had come from the direction of the town yamen. In themselves the isolated rifle shots did not at first seem alarming — more ominous was the swelling rumble of voices and running feet which followed. The noise grew quickly in volume and seemed to wash through the streets of the town with the speed of a flash flood. Coarse shouts began to ring out close to the mission compound and the crash of doors breaking and splintering reached Jakob’s ears. Faint streaks of gray had begun to lighten the sky, and realizing that he could not risk fetching the coolies for fear of what might happen in his absence, Jakob quickly barred the compound gates once more and raced back into the house.
“It’s too late, isn’t it? The Communists have come.”
Felicity’s voice was hollow with resignation. She was standing like a statue at the top of the stairs, her face gray and stiff. In her arms she clutched their baby, swaddled in a woolen shawl.
“I don’t know who they are — I’m going to the belfry to see what’s happening.”
Jakob raced past her up a short flight of unrailed stairs. A bell hung in a small turret whose sides were made of well-spaced wooden slats, and peering out between them, he was able to look down over the compound wall. In the growing light he could see that the main street was seething with armed soldiers. Using rifle butts and the hilts of their swords, the yelling men were smashing down the doors of the bigger houses and dragging out bewildered occupants in their nightclothes. Food, clothing, jewelry, and ornaments were being looted from, the houses and some of the owners were being kicked and beaten by gangs of jeering troops.
Other groups were climbing walls and stringing white cotton banners across the streets or splashing slogans in fresh paint across the whitewashed walls of houses. From the unpaved square in front of the yamen he heard a great roar, and raising his gaze, Jakob saw a long banner being hoisted above the district magistrate’s office. In giant red Chinese characters it proclaimed “Death to All Landlords and Capitalists!” A similar roar greeted a second banner raised a moment later which read “A Soviet Government Is China’s Only I-lope!”
Nearer at hand, at the entrance to the street leading to the mission, Jakob could see other soldiers daubing slogans on walls and shop fronts in black or red paint: “Refuse to Pay Debts to Rich Landlords!” Capture the Criminal Chiang Kai-shek Alive!”
“Support the Red Army!” A smaller group of soldiers slashing black brush strokes across a whitewashed end wall not far from the mission compound caught Jakob’s eye and he recognized the characters Chi tu chiao, which had been widely adopted to represent “Christianity” or “the Christian religion.” As the Communist soldiers added several more characters, Jakob held his breath, trying to anticipate the degree of hostility the slogan might convey. Although running tails of paint dribbled down the wall from the words, when the slogan was finished there was no mistaking its meaning. It was a paraphrased quotation from
Karl Marx: “The Christian Religion Is the Opiate of the People!”
From the slogan’s position on the wall facing the Anglo-Chinese Mission it seemed certain to Jakob that it had been painted there on specific orders. The location of the mission had obviously been dis covered and it would only be a matter of time before the Communists came to invade the compound. This realization had only just begun to sink in when Jakob noticed that the commotion coming from the yamen was growing louder. Rifle shots rang out and hundreds of voices began chanting slogans in unison. Looking in the direction of the town square, he suddenly saw the reason: the dense, noisy crowd of soldiers was beginning to break up and many of them were surging out of the square toward the mouth of the street leading to the mission.
6
Felicity was still standing motionless at the top of the stairs when Jakob ran down from the belfry. On reaching her side he saw that the baby, lying quiet in her arms, was awake: her blue eyes, innocent of all expression, gazed blankly at him for a moment, then shifted away, as though listening abstractedly to the growing noise in the street outside. Felicity made no attempt to move but stared ahead unseeing, seemingly unable to speak.
“Remember we’re in God’s hands,” said Jakob softly, encircling her shoulder with his arm and moving his face close to hers. “Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.”
He ushered her gently down the stairs to the kitchen and ordered Liang to rouse all the mission servants. When they had dressed and assembled — Liang’s wife, their two sons, aged eleven and thirteen, an elderly wash amah, the gate man, a gardener, and a goat boy — Jakob told them that if the Communist soldiers broke into the compound they were to do whatever they were asked and offer no physical resistance.
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