Liang dipped into the second basket and pulled out a curved sickle. He hurried to a nearby grove of trees and began cutting sheaves of long grass to spread as makeshift bedding on the cave floor. From time to time as he worked he paused to peer back down the hillside, searching for signs of pursuit, but he saw nothing. When he had cut enough grass to cover the cave floor he carried the baskets inside and rolled boulders in a circle before the cave mouth to screen the fire from any eyes that might be watching from below.
“Now fetch water from the stream!” commanded Liang when his sons returned with armfuls of twigs and brush. At once they ran off with tin basins toward a shallow gorge at the foot of which foamed a narrow white ribbon of river.
Liang built a fire inside a small ring of stones, and when its glow began to relieve the darkness of the cave, he went to the basket he had placed against the rear wall and lifted out a small bundle. Squatting cross-legged on the hard rock floor, he pulled aside the burlap sack in which the bundle was wrapped. To his surprise the eyes of the white-skinned baby inside the sacking were open, and when he unfastened the zipper of the tiny sleeping bag in which she lay, the infant shifted her curious gaze around the flickering shadows on the cave walls, seeming to study each dark shape and pattern in turn with intense concentration.
“Is the Outside Country child awake?”
Liang’s older son, Big Liang, breathed the question in an awed whisper, clutching a dripping basin of water on the edge of the circle of light cast by the fire. Stocky and already physically strong like his father, the thirteen-year-old Chinese boy could scarcely conceal the inner excitement he felt at being caught up in a real-life adventure. From behind him, his eleven-year-old brother, Little Liang, peered at the baby open-mouthed. Slighter and more scrawny than the older boy, Little Liang still had the wondering eyes of a child and he hopped from foot to foot, spilling some of the contents of his basin as he stared at the pale, foreign baby.
“Yes, the baby’s awake. Heat both basins of water. She must be washed and fed at once.”
Liang shaped a nest in the sweet smelling grass, settled the infant comfortably in it, and stood up, watching anxiously to see if she would cry. But although she began to gnaw one tiny fist, she continued to gaze quietly around the fire-lit cave as though giving her latest home a careful inspection. Since leaving Paoshan she had cried very little; the jogging, swaying motion of the pannier at the rear end of Liang’s gently bouncing bamboo pole had seemed to lull her easily to sleep, and after becoming accustomed to this new mode of transport, she had shown few signs of distress. What little fretful crying she had done had come at night in the caves and derelict houses in which the cook boy had chosen to hide. On these occasions Liang had done his best to soothe and comfort her, cradling her inexpertly in his arms and feeding her frequently with the crushed soybean milk.
Liang’s square peasant face clenched with concentration as he grappled with the unfamiliar task of cleaning the baby with water warmed over the fire. As he worked, his two young sons watched in awed silence, obeying instantly their father’s grunted commands to pass him pins or carry away soiled garments for washing in the stream. From time to time the baby whimpered fitfully in complaint but quieted again the moment Liang pinned a clean square of toweling in place and re-dressed her in the close-fitting bonnet and warm woolens which he had brought from Chentai in his carrying baskets.
He zipped her back into the sleeping bag for protection against the growing chill of the mountain night and ordered Big Liang to sit cross- legged by the fire so that he could place her comfortably in his Lap.
While Liang busied himself setting the wild chestnuts to roast and mixing boiled water with the crushed soybean mixture, his younger son sat by, pulling comical faces at the baby in an effort to entertain her. When a tiny field mouse scuttled suddenly across the cave floor, Little Liang chased and cornered it, then carried it back to the fireside in a closed fist. He held up the tiny animal in his cupped hands before the baby’s face, making soft, imitative squeaking noises, and he and his brother beamed delightedly when she grew still in response.
When the soybean milk had cooled, Liang poured it into the glass bottle he had found beside the baby in the Paoshan stable and settled down to feed her. His two sons huddled beside him, close to the fire, chewing hungrily on the wild chestnuts. Although occasionally the howl of a wolf rang in the black silence of the night beyond the cave mouth, the wild animals were obviously far away and Liang felt the tension and anxiety which had gripped him for the past two or three days begin to subside a little.
Despite the danger he might have faced if he had been seen to be connected with the prisoners in the highly charged atmosphere of the execution ground, Liang had courageously followed Jakob and Felicity up the hill outside Paoshan. From an unobtrusive position close to the front of the crowd he had watched the executioner raise his glittering sword, and though sick at heart on seeing his kindly mistress so unjustly struck down, he had retained his presence of mind sufficiently to push his way into the melee surrounding the surviving prisoners when the crowd surged away down the slope on the raising of the alarm.
Using all his strength, he had forced a passage through the panic- stricken townspeople until he found himself stumbling downhill at Jakob’s shoulder. The young missionary’s face was ashen with shock and at first he had not appeared to register Liang’s desperate inquiry muttered in Chinese close to his ear. Only when Liang repeated the question beseechingly in English — “What must I do with baby, Pastor Ke?” — had Jakob turned his head and focused his pained gaze upon the cook boy. For an instant his expression had remained blank, as though he were suffering total loss of memory; then his features contorted with the pain of recollection and he had gasped out an order in an agonized croak: “Bring me the baby, Liang! If you can, bring her to me.”
Jakob’s guards had rushed him away then and the rearguard companies of the Central Red Army had deployed themselves rapidly in and around Paoshan to cover the departing column. Fighting had begun as soon as the pursuing Nationalist battalion came in sight of the town walls, and shooting had gone on intermittently all day. But neither side had wished to turn the battle for the insignificant settlement into a major engagement and only long-range fire was exchanged after the government forces dug themselves in at a safe distance from the town gates.
Liang, however, had not dared to return to the stables where Jakob and Felicity had been held captive with the baby overnight, for the Communist troops had continued to use that house and compound as a command post. With his sons, Liang had taken shelter from the flying bullets beneath the workbenches of a silversmith’s open-fronted shop in sight of the compound entrance. There he had spent the day in an agony of suspense, watching troops dash in and out, waiting for a chance to steal inside to search for the helpless infant.
Not until two hours after nightfall did the Red Army companies begin to slip silently out of the town, the soldiers climbing the western walls one by one in the darkness. As soon as he felt it was safe, Liang had run with his heart in his mouth to the empty courtyard. When he entered the stable it had seemed dark and deserted, but his baskets and carrying pole were still standing in one corner where Felicity had left them, concealed behind bales of rice straw. There was no sound in the stable and Liang feared the worst; only when he shifted the baskets into the center of the floor did a faint whimper come from one of them. He had reached inside and lifted out the trembling infant to press it consolingly against his chest — but just at that point it had begun to wail piteously.
For several minutes in the darkness of the stable Liang had tried to comfort the child without success. Then he heard ominous new sounds of shooting and commotion. The Nationalist soldiers, having discovered they had been tricked, were pouring into the town, looting in their turn as they came. Liang had raced back to the silversmith’s to collect his sons and together they followed the escape route taken by the Red Army rear guard, climbing to the top of the
town’s mud walls and lowering the carrying baskets to the ground outside on ropes before slithering down behind them. They ran on blindly through the darkness for an hour until they reached a derelict village, and there they washed, fed, and consoled the baby as best they could after her fifteen-hour ordeal in the stable.
For fear of encountering both Communist spies and pursuing Nationalist troops, they had continued to hide throughout the next day in the ruined granary where they had slept, emerging to hurry on westward only after darkness had fallen. Liang had found a small purse containing fifty silver Chinese dollars pinned inside the child’s sleeping bag, presumably put there by Felicity before the dawn “trial,” and he sent his Sons to buy eggs and green peppers when they passed peasant farms, taking care to keep himself out of sight with their precious human cargo while they did so. Several times he had been tempted to stop and ask village women to help nurse and care for the child for an hour or two, but fear of discovery had decided him against raking the risk. By the second morning Liang was confident that the baby was sufficiently settled to risk traveling by day, hidden in one of the panniers beneath the artificial layer of Un- husked rice which they had bought. The tracks of the massive marching column were easy enough to follow and they pressed on as fast as they could, covering more than thirty miles before exhaustion forced them to halt for the night at the cave on the rocky hillside.
“How much longer will it be, Papa, before we catch up with the marchers and give the baby back to Pastor Re?” asked Little Liang in a whisper as his father laid aside the feeding bottle and settled the baby back in the nest of grass.
Liang shook his head perplexedly. “I don’t know. The soldiers are moving very quickly. They could be a hundred and fifty li ahead by now.”
“Hao,” said Little Liang, grinning sleepily. “Hen hao!” — “Very good!”
“Why are you so pleased?” asked his father. “Do you like her as a playmate?”
“Yes.” Little Liang nodded happily.
“Why?”
“She likes mice.”
He opened up a crack in his clasped hands and the mouse pushed its head out. Leaning toward the baby he again made soft squeaking noises and held the mouse in front of her face. But the baby didn’t stir. Her eyes were closed, her breathing was even, and she was already fast asleep.
12
Ahead of Jakob the red flag of his Communist captors flapped noisily in a stiff breeze. A big black star emblazoned in the flag’s center contained a white hammer-and-sickle motif, symbolizing Communism’s belief in the supremacy of urban laborers and rural peas ants, and the standard-bearer waved it high above his head to encourage the thousands of tiring marchers strung out along the floor of a narrow valley behind him. Jakob slipped and staggered on the slimy stones of the coolie trail, sometimes slithering helplessly into the waist-deep liquid mud which heavy rains had left on either side of the crude causeway. His wrists were still bound behind him and a rope had been looped around his shoulders in such a way as to leave a length of “rein” dangling down his back; this his guards used to restrain him or drag him back onto the trail whenever he fell.
His boots had not been returned to him after the execution and only shreds of his ts’ao hsieh -— the plaited straw sandals he now wore in common with the soldiers and other prisoners — clung to his blistered, bleeding feet. Fiery pains brought on by ten days of nonstop forced marching burned in his ankles and knees, his head throbbed with a dizzy ache due to lack of food, and the inflamed bites of lice and other parasites infesting his clothes and hair added to his discomfort. The weather was growing colder and he often shivered as he marched. After the execution, to cover his bare chest he had been given a ch’en shan, a rough Chinese shirt with frog fastenings at the front, and over it he wore a long-gown of thin blue cotton that had been looted from a landlord’s house. These garments; now discolored anti stained with mud, gave him little protection against the chill of the mountain heights. A meager bundle of belongings assigned to him — a rolled bamboo sleeping mat, an oil sheet, a thin wadded coverlet, bowl and chopsticks — was carried each day on one of the guard’s pack mules, and at each overnight stop, after his wrists were freed, it was flung down beside him for his use.
On three occasions the column had marched all day, all night, and all the following day as well without resting. Distances of twenty, thirty, and sometimes forty miles were being covered each day and Paoshan now lay more than three hundred miles behind them. Along the way there had been repeated skirmishes with government troops, but because the prisoners were being marched in the middle of a column several miles long, they had only heard the low rumble of artillery and the rattle of distant rifle fire as occasional pails of smoke rose ahead of them. Afterward they had sometimes found the trail littered with dead and wounded troops but the guard commanders always hurried the prisoners past the battle areas at a fast pace. Kuomintang biplanes carrying bombs slung beneath their wood-and- fabric fuselages had flown overhead on some days, and prisoners and guards alike, as well as the troops themselves, had been ordered to wear garlands made of leaves and branches from wayside trees to make themselves invisible to the eyes of the Nationalist aviators. On hearing an aircraft, the officers ordered all marchers to throw themselves flat on the trail, and they remained motionless as one man until the danger passed.
Beneath the mud that spattered every marcher, the varied colors of the Red Army’s tattered clothing also helped camouflage the column. Field gray predominated but Jakob had noticed that new uniforms were constantly being made out of pillaged cloth of any shade. At each stopping place tailors, working with the sewing machines that the pack mules carried, set up workshops in the open as soon as a halt was called and quickly produced standard tunics and trousers. Within a single company he had seen troops wearing crudely made blue, purple, green, black, and even yellow uniforms with long-peaked caps or the broad, cone-shaped hats of layered bamboo which deflected both sun and rain. All wore red arm bands, all wound cloth puttees tightly around their legs, and most of them thrust their chopsticks into these bindings for safekeeping. In addition to a shoulder pole, a rifle, and a home-smelted broadsword thrust in his belt, each soldier carried a pack containing a quilt, a padded winter uniform, a drinking cup, spare straw sandals, and often a rolled umbrella of oiled paper. Rather than marching in the conventional military sense, the Red Army troops all around Jakob moved with the tireless, mincing, bent-kneed gait of the peasant coolie, which allowed them to continue moving forward relentlessly without any change of pace hour after hour.
This desperate feat of endurance which Jakob was being forced to undergo had helped dull the acute mental agony that had seized him at the moment of Felicity’s execution. He had staggered out of Paoshan numb with grief and the first of the thirty-six-hour forced marches had passed in a daze of shock and pain. The flag borne by the Red Army standard-bearer was carried furled whenever the weather was wet and Jakob saw that the large first Christmas canvas cut from the picture frame in the public hail of his Chentai mission house had been fashioned into a waterproof cylinder to protect the banner against the elements. By chance the oil painting, which depicted the Nativity scene, formed the outer case and the silver Christmas star shimmering in the midnight blue heavens above the Bethlehem stable remained clearly visible near the top of the staff.
In Jakob’s tortured mind the star quickly assumed a miraculous significance: as he struggled to come to terms with the horror of Felicity’s death and the possible loss of his infant daughter too, his gaze fastened onto the furled Communist banner bobbing above the heads of the moving throng fifty yards in front of him. For hour after hour he marched with his eyes on the Bethlehem star, feeling a certainty grow within him that he had been given a sign. Although trudging in the wake of the Communist standard, he began to feel with deep conviction that in reality he was following the star of his own faith on a journey as important for him as the pursuit of the original star had been for the three sages of ear
ly Christendom. This feeling helped him pray for strength to endure the ordeal — and he prayed hard too that Abigail might survive his desertion of her in that Paoshan stable. From time to time as he struggled on over rising ground he turned to survey the human wake of marchers flowing along behind him, searching for some sign of Liang. But because of the pain which frequent disappointment caused him, he had learned to restrain himself from looking back too often.
“If your God is all-powerful, why did he let you fall into our hands?”
Jakob heard the jeering question while struggling to extricate himself from a quagmire of mud into which he had slipped at a bend in the trail. Despite his exhaustion, lie recognized the harsh accents of the Hunanese guard commander, and as he started to drag himself upright he felt the rope dangling from his shoulders tauten. His feet lost their hold completely and he was dragged bodily out of the slime onto the flagstones at the guard commander’s feet. Although he was covered in mud from head to toe and the effort of rising left him breathless, Jakob summoned up enough of his failing energy to stand straight before his tormentor.
“Perhaps God brought me amongst you quite deliberately,” gasped Jakob. “To give me the chance to bear witness before you that He is the living God”
The Hunanese stared back expressionlessly at the young missionary — then spun him by the shoulder and pushed him roughly on along the flag stoned track. For another hour Jakob plodded onward, wondering dazedly whether he would be able to carry on through the night again if no halt was called. He had given up trying to anticipate when rest would be taken. Often in the past ten days, shortly after a stop had been made at the end of the day, new orders to resume the march immediately had been issued without warning. On other occasions the whole column had been roused to begin marching in the middle of the night. But sometimes after only a short stage in the early morning, a long rest of half a day had followed on an open plain.
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