Anthony Grey

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

  “In truth these two ‘missionaries’ are both spies in disguise,” yelled the political commissar, raising his voice to a higher note of complaint. “They have been sent here as advance guards for the imperialist armies that will surely follow. They want to partition China, to divide our country among the foreign powers. Along with others like them they have come to live deep in the interior of our country so that they can report the movements of the patriotic Red Army to our enemies —“

  A spontaneous outburst of jeering interrupted the speaker and some of the troops in the front ranks of the crowd spat at the two prisoners. .Holding up his hand for silence, the commissar folded his paper and put it away in his tunic. His face contorted into a new expression of loathing and he pointed again at Jakob and Felicity.

  “On the march during the night, the imperialist spies became desperate after we had taken them captive. They made a great noise, trying to attract the help of traitorous Kuomintang troops camped close to our route. They did not succeed because our revolutionary soldiers were vigilant as always! But doesn’t this show that they and their imperialist masters will stop at nothing to gain their evil ends?” The commissar paused for breath. Then, drawing his words out slowly for effect, he roared at the top of his voice: “What must we do now with such evil foreign imperialists and their allies?”

  “Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!”

  The crowd’s baying rose to a crescendo and the front ranks began to surge toward the carts. In the same instant, the squat southerner armed with the curved sword stepped forward and seized Felicity by the arm. He pulled her roughly down the steps to the ground and, preceded by a group of guards, led the way to the nearest town gate. Jakob and the other prisoners were pushed and dragged in her wake; the crowd streamed after them, still shouting and jeering.

  Among the milling throng Jakob caught sight of Liang. The cook- boy was pushing through the onlookers, keeping abreast of him, and every few moments he turned to stare in Jakob’s direction. His expression was pained but he was sensibly taking care not to come too close or reveal that he was associated in any way with the prisoners. Jakob saw with a start that Liang was not carrying his panniers and wondered desperately if that meant that his baby daughter was hidden still in the stable where they had left her. The chanting of the crowd in the courtyard at dawn had not wakened her, and moments before their guards opened the doors to drag them outside, Felicity had concealed the pannier basket behind several bales of rice straw in the stable’s darkest corner. The commissar in charge of the trial had obviously overlooked the baby’s absence but from Liang’s worried expression it was impossible to tell whether he had yet found the child. Jakob longed to call out some instructions for the cook boy to retrieve her and care for her as best he could, but fearing a sign from him might turn the wrath of the mob on Liang himself, he remained silent.

  Carried along by the rush of the crowd, Jakob lost sight of Liang before he could resolve the dilemma. The guards who had led the way through the gate in the city’s yellow mud walls were heading up a grass-covered hillside where tall pines grew in clumps. Felicity stumbled and fell to her knees as she began the climb and Jakob felt his anger rise hotly inside him as the squat Chinese hauled her brutally to her feet. In the bedraggled brown dress and with her hands lashed behind her back, Felicity looked heartrendingly frail: her hair had come loose from the combs in which she had dressed it and was trailing down her back. Her feet and legs were black with the mud of the street and her stumbling gait indicated that her strength, drained from her through fear, was almost at an end.

  Halfway up the hillside there was a grassy knoll where several pines had been felled. The circle of surviving trees was silhouetted against the watery light of the rising sun, the black, angular boughs looking to Jakob as if they had been finger-painted on the brightening sky. The stumps of the felled trees had been left in the ground and in the moment that he realized they were to be their execution blocks, he became acutely aware of the sharp coldness of the dew on his bare feet. The thick grass was still white with moisture and in a remote part of his brain he found the sensation fiercely refreshing.

  Soldiers and townspeople alike began running up the slope to form a ring around the tree stumps, and looking back, Jakob could see why the hillside had been chosen: the crowd that had filled the town square had spilled out onto the lower slopes and was staring expectantly upward. The whole of Paoshan, it was clear, was meant to have a clear view of the exemplary executions. Behind Jakob, the captive landlord was staggering at the end of the rope around his neck, his features contorted by his suffering, but the Nationalist officers held themselves expressionlessly erect, determined to endure their ordeal with as much pride as they could muster.

  When the executioner drew his sword from its scabbard, the long, curved blade shimmered brightly in the light of the rising sun, and as though recognizing that a signal had been flashed to them, the crowd immediately fell silent. With two hands clasped around the sword’s long hilt, the executioner stepped toward the pine stump beside which Felicity had been forced to kneel and positioned himself with his feet astride. Jakob had been halted by his guards some fifteen yards away, and in the moment that the executioner swung the sword aloft, Felicity raised her head and looked directly at him. Her mouth fell slackly open in mute supplication and an unbearable anguish burned in her eyes.

  Jakob strained desperately against the stranglehold of his two guards and almost tore himself free; others, however, crowded around, holding him fast. Stretching his neck frantically to catch sight of her above their heads, he called out hoarsely: “God be with you, Felicity!”

  A moment before the sword descended, her captors pressed her face down against the stump — but she struggled hysterically and the blade failed to strike home. A terrible piercing squeal like that of a pig rang across the pine glade before the blade rose and fell a second time: yet still the executioner missed his mark. Only on the third stroke did he succeed and then an eerie hush returned abruptly to the execution ground.

  Jakob sagged in the arms of his captors, his gaze fixed numbly on the ominous figure of the executioner. With calm detachment the Chinese leaned down and wiped the blade of the sword on his victim’s shabby brown dress; then he looked across the glade in Jakob’s direction. The dark, brutal peasant face with its narrowed eyes remained impassive as he made a beckoning motion with the sword tip — but Jakob’s guards had taken only one pace forward with him when a long, high-pitched bugle blast split the silence of the hillside.

  “The Nationalist forces from Chentai are approaching,” yelled a Red Army officer who had raced up the hill. “Their vanguard is only two miles away. Prepare to march at once!”

  The Communist soldiers immediately started to break away down the slope in disciplined files. The townspeople, panic-stricken at the prospect of being found near the scene of the execution, ran with them in a disorderly scramble. The guards turned and began dragging Jakob and the other prisoners back toward the town, and the executioner quickly sheathed his sword and followed them.

  Halfway down the hill Jakob managed to twist his head and look back despairingly over his shoulder — but all he saw was a crumpled brown shadow lying abandoned in the grass among the black stumps of the pine trees.

  10

  In his mind’s eye Matthew Barlow suddenly saw a vivid image of Jakob’s face, determined and blue-eyed, his features alive with youthful zeal. The young missionary was wearing a bandage around his forehead as he had done during their first conversation on his arrival in Shanghai and despite his injuries, he was attempting a smile. Again, in a calm voice Barlow heard Jakob say: “It’s obvious, sir, that the difficulties you’ve spoken of are serious — but they don’t put me off.”

  Standing ill at ease at Barlow’s elbow, Laurence Franklin saw the director-general’s tired eyes close momentarily and his deeply lined face contract as though in response to a passing pain. Then he lifted a ribboned pince-nez in front of him and
leaned close to an oil lamp to scrutinize for a second time the urgent telegraph letter that Franklin had just brought to his study. His hand shook slightly and he drew his breath in a long, slow sigh before beginning to read the message aloud for Franklin’s benefit. Addressed from Chentai to the Shanghai headquarters of the Anglo-Chinese Mission, it said:

  Dear Brethren —

  At dawn today Communist soldiers of the Red Army launched a surprise attack on Chentai and overran the town. I have been taken captive along with my wife and child. We are accused of acting as foreign spies and they threaten to execute us all. But they say they are prepared to be “lenient” and demand one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for our release. I’ve told them I’m certain no ransom money will be paid for us — now or later. I asked them to release Felicity and our baby so that they might travel back to Shanghai with a letter for you. But they refused. Before the attack came we were preparing to leave. Coolies and mountain chairs had been arranged. But the attack came too quickly. They sacked our house and burned our Bibles. All our food and household stores are in their hands. They have taken all our personal monies and the money sent by you for famine relief work. We are to march along with the Red Army as their prisoners. .

  Barlow’s voice faded away to a whisper and his hand shook more noticeably. Then with an effort he gathered himself again to finish reading the rest of the message.

  They said they would execute us if I refused to send this message and we have no reason to think this is an idle threat. The district magistrate was put to death in our courtyard before our eyes. In this time of trial, however, we’re confident that the Lord will be our shield. We are fortified and strengthened by our faith. We also pray that God may grant you grace and wisdom in guiding your decisions. — Yours rejoicing in His salvation.

  Jakob Kellner.

  Barlow removed his pince-nez and stared into the coal fire-that flickered fitfully in the grate at his feet. A raw November fog drifting in from the Whangpoo River cloaked the streets and alleys of Shanghai outside the mission headquarters and Barlow had flung a woolen shawl about his shoulders for extra warmth. Looking down at the ailing director-general, Franklin felt a stab of compassion. Scattered pages of handwritten Chinese characters on which Barlow had been working when he entered lay all around him on chairs, tables, and the floor. They represented the fruit of several years’ work translating the New Testament and parts of the Old Testament into vernacular Chinese familiar to ordinary people, but even at a glance Franklin could see that Barlow’s calligraphy was becoming ever more spidery and feeble-looking. His face, once weathered by sun and wind, had become pinched and pallid from the years spent hunched over Chinese dictionaries and Scripture reference hooks, and the shock of reading the telegraph message had driven all remaining trace of color from his cheeks.

  “Shall I convene a meeting of the full council to discuss the ransom demand, Mr. Barlow?” Franklin asked the question gently while bending to pick up the telegraph message, which had slipped to the floor among the clutter of translation pages.

  “No — find two volunteers from among our Chinese evangelists who are prepared to travel into the interior to try to help Jakob Kellner and his family.” -

  The curt tone of Barlow’s response startled Franklin and he straightened up, looking curiously at the old man. Like the rest of the headquarters mission staff, Franklin had long since accepted that Barlow’s accelerating decline had gone hand in hand with the growing chaos in China in the past few years. Although nobody spoke of it openly, everyone was aware that the frustration and disappointment of seeing the Anglo-Chinese Mission’s efforts foundering amid the destruction of a bloody civil war had progressively depleted both his strength and a once-legendary faith. Gradually, all the mission staff had become conscious of the fact that he had undertaken the scholarly burden of the long Bible translation in an attempt to compensate for his inner disappointments. As time passed, the task had obviously come to weigh more and more heavily on a nature once better suited to braving the physical rigors of China’s remote regions in search of flesh-and-blood Christian converts, and Franklin and the others had watched helplessly as the forceful man they had previously looked to for leadership had faded to a blurred, ailing shadow. All the mission staff had long since agreed, outside his hearing, that something essential had gone out of Matthew Barlow — but whatever that something was, to Franklin’s surprise a hint of it had reappeared unexpectedly in his voice as he spoke from his seat before the fire.

  “But how can we hope to save Jakob, sir, without meeting their ransom demands?” asked Franklin in a puzzled tone.

  ‘Perhaps I’ll go myself to negotiate with the Communists.”

  “But sir, you’re hardly fit enough to travel in the mountains of the south. In spirit you might be capable of tackling such a journey, but your legs would surely find it impossible.”

  “I feel a personal responsibility for Jakob Kellner.” Although he spoke quietly, Barlow could not conceal the emotion in his voice. “As a boy he heard me talk of China when I was on furlough in England. My account of life in China’s mountains fired a profound ambition in him.” Barlow hesitated and Franklin saw his eyes moisten. “When he arrived here, there was something unusual about him. He seemed to have a deep spiritual certainty about his destiny. Perhaps I recognized something in Jakob that I’d once felt very strongly myself. He made me realize suddenly how much I’d compromised my ideals over the years Barlow’s voice faltered. “For a while, Franklin, I think Jakob rekindled something in me and I went back to my translations with a new heart. But sadly, it didn’t last . . . and in that time I was responsible for sending him to the region where he and his family are now in danger.”

  “But sir, you must have designated dozens of young missionaries to difficult areas over the years. And all were well aware before they set out of the possible dangers they faced.”

  Barlow nodded absently. “Perhaps ... but I think when I considered Jakob’s designation I might have been guilty of trying to correct the failures of my own life through him. Possibly I was trying quite wrongly to renew my own flagging ambitions when I should have been thinking of what was best for Jakob Kellner. He’s had to face up to a China that has changed very greatly since my youth.”

  Barlow’s voice was trembling with the intensity of his regret and he paused to compose himself. For a long time he remained silent, staring into the fire; then he made an effort to sit straighter. “I may not be capable of walking far, Franklin, but I’ve got to try to do something. I’ll go by-steamer and- motorcar as far as-there are rivers and roads to carry me, then I’ll take to a mountain chair. I’m not too senile to sit in a hwa gan for a few days. Just find two good Chinese volunteers to accompany me!”

  “I will, at once.” Franklin hesitated, then his face brightened. “But I’d like to go with you, too, sir.”

  “Thank you, Franklin,” said Barlow with quiet sincerity. “I’d be glad to have your assistance.”

  The prospect of journeying once more into China’s hinterland caused Barlow to fall into a reverie and Franklin had to move around the fireplace to face him. “Sir, may I ask what you think can be negotiated with the Communists? We don’t have sufficient funds to meet even a tenth of their ransom demand.”

  Barlow nodded, still staring into the fire. “That’s quite true. But you must send a reply at once to the Red Army via Chentai. Messengers must carry it from there on foot to Jakob’s captors. Tell them mission representatives will set out immediately for Chentai to seek his release. Ask for a meeting with Communist representatives there . . .“ Barlow lapsed into silence once more, a frown of concentration wrinkling his brow, and when at last he spoke, his voice was firmer. “You must also telegraph instructions to all stations throughout China to begin offering prayers tonight for the safety of Jakob and his family. And send a telegram to headquarters in England. A message must be sent to his parents, in Manchester.”

  “Of course. I’ll do that ri
ght away.” Franklin moved toward the door, then stopped, his face becoming puzzled. ”If we should succeed in tracking down the Red Army units holding Jakob, sir, how will you go about securing his release?”

  The director-general lifted his head and stared distractedly at the younger missionary as though taken unawares by the question. Then, suddenly, his scraggy jaw jutted forward. “I’ll offer myself as a hostage, Franklin, if necessary — in exchange for Jakob’s freedom.”

  11

  As darkness gathered on the third evening after Felicity’s execution, Liang staggered to a halt on a rocky hillside and eased the bamboo carrying pole from his shoulder. The cook boy’s face and clothes were grimed with dust, and lines of exhaustion were etched deep into his face. He nevertheless lowered his two wicker panniers to the ground with infinite care, as though both were packed with thin-shelled eggs. For a moment he stood motionless, staring down at one of the panniers, his head cocked on one side in a listening attitude.

  The lidless basket appeared to be full almost to the brim with unhusked rice, but Liang bent over it and gently lifted out the shallow tray fixed in the top which held only an inch or two of grain. He peered into the cavity beneath, holding his breath: the only sound on the hillside was the excited chatter of his two sons echoing from the mouth of a dark cave which they had run ahead to find on his instructions.

  “Be quiet, both of you,” called Liang in an urgent voice. “Try to find some wild chestnuts for us to eat. And gather sticks for a fire too.’,