Anthony Grey

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

  Scarcely daring to breathe lest he should undo his good fortune, Big Liang broke into a trot behind the boy and followed him down to the village. The mud of the track between the cottages was rutted and frozen hard, and the patter of their feet seemed unnaturally loud in the late afternoon stillness. As they approached the doorway outside which Jakob was resting under the watchful eyes of a sentry, Liang hardly dared look ahead in case the missionary recognized him and called out. He had already decided what he would do, and when the Young Vanguard let a few sticks slip to the ground outside the cottage, Liang deliberately tripped over him, spilling the whole of his own armful of branches at Jakob’s feet. As he scrambled up, Big Liang’s face reddened naturally in his anxiety and he felt his heart race when he saw the missionary rise from his seat to help collect the fallen firewood. The Young Vanguard at his side, red-faced too, called his apologies to the guard, who started toward them, shouting and gesticulating. In the confusion Big Liang moved close to Jakob and tugged from his pocket the slip of paper that he had folded into a small square. In the act of reaching out to take the sticks that Jakob had retrieved, Liang pressed the square of paper surreptitiously into the missionary’s right palm, then mumbled an apology and sped away, followed by the pock-faced boy.

  “You clumsy turtle,” hissed the Young Vanguard, “why didn’t you look where you were going?”

  “I’m sorry — I tripped!” gasped Big Liang, grinning widely in his relief. “But you were right. The nose of the foreign devil is truly enormous.”

  “I told you it was as big as the mountain, didn’t I?” chuckled the Young Vanguard — then he burst out laughing and they ran on together down the frozen street, giggling uproariously.

  Outside the mud-walled cottage Jakob stood clutching the folded scrap of paper in his right hand, watching mystified as the two Young Vanguards scampered away into the growing dusk. He had recognized one of the boys, the one with the pockmarked face. He remembered once trying to explain something of Christianity to him in answer to his questions when he had been working around his quarters. But the other, taller boy, who wore a large cap pulled down over his eyes, was strange to him. He knew he had not seen him around the camp or the marching column before, and yet he had felt some impression of familiarity when the boy came close. Giving up the puzzle, Jakob glanced about him to make sure none of the guards had noticed anything pass between himself and the anonymous boy. Then, turning his back on the sentry guarding him, he opened his palm and unfolded the square of cheap rice paper.

  As soon as his eye fell on the handwritten note, Jakob recognized the clumsy Chinese characters. The hours he had spent trying to teach his illiterate cook boy to write at the Chentai mission had made him very familiar with the limitations of Liang’s hand, and even before he absorbed the meaning of the words, a tremor of excitement ran through him. By the time he had deciphered the poorly made symbols, his pulse was racing.

  “Pastor Ke, your baby daughter is safe,” said the note. “We will wait with her at the top of the hill behind the big rock tonight. Try to escape. We will help you get away. Liang.”

  7

  Lying on the floor of beaten earth in the mud-walled cottage, Jakob could see the granite crest of the hill clearly in the frosty moonlight. It was visible through the open door, looming over the shoulder of the guard who sat silhouetted on a bench in the doorway with a rifle at his side. Since nightfall, Jakob had gazed up at the crag hour after hour with a growing sense of desperation. He strained his eyes and ears constantly for the slightest sign of movement on the hilltop, but he could detect nothing and had to content himself with imagining his cook boy, Liang, crouched among the shadowy rocks, nursing as best he could the tiny baby that Jakob had long ago given up for dead.

  It was already ten o’clock and the elation he had felt on learning that his infant daughter was alive and unharmed had turned into an agonizing ache that she was so near to him but still tantalizingly beyond his reach. Ever since he had read the note, thrust so unexpectedly into his hand just before dusk, he had cudgeled his brain for some way of diverting his guards’ attention so that h might try to escape. But circumstances had been against him: because there was so little cover for the troops in the area, they had crowded into the village cottages. The cold earth floor around Jakob was covered with bedrolls, and a dozen or more Red Army soldiers were sprawled on them, some already asleep and snoring, others murmuring quietly to one another. The door had been removed from its hinges to make a plank bed and two other men had spread their padded quilts on a table in the corner of the simple room.

  Outside the doorway the duty guard sat on the bench, swinging his legs back and forth and turning frequently to stare into the cottage. While feigning sleep himself, Jakob opened his eyes every few minutes to peer hopefully at the guard, but he showed no sign of dozing or leaving his post. While lying prone in the darkness, Jakob had several times prayed hard for help, but as the tense minutes ticked by nothing disturbed the calm order of the night. Then in the distance Jakob heard the faint sound of a bugle being blown. A minute or so later its high, clear tones were repeated from a nearer valley and the soldiers who were still awake stopped talking and sat up straight to listen. When, after a pause, another bugle sounded the same distinctive trill of notes from close by on their own hillside, the soldiers began grumbling and shaking their comrades into wakefulness.

  “Roll up your blankets quickly if you want to take them with you,” yelled the young guard, leaping up from his seat outside the door. “That’s the signal to assemble and march.”

  As Jakob struggled wearily to his feet, his heart sank. The order to begin yet another forced night march seemed to have jeopardized any remaining chance he might have had of escaping. In the darkness and confusion all contact with Liang might be broken and his baby daughter would be lost to him again. As though to fulfill his gloomy expectations, the guard at that moment came into the cottage and seized the rope hanging from Jakob’s shoulders to drag him outside.

  All around the mud-brick houses the troops were hurriedly loading ammunition boxes onto the pack mules of the supply unit that was accompanying the prisoners. Within minutes the section of the column camped in the village had formed up and was marching toward a broad, level field at the foot of the hill. Other units were streaming down through the surrounding valleys to assemble there too, and the tramp of feet and hooves filled the night. Clouds were beginning to obscure the moon and Jakob looked about him desperately, seeking some avenue of escape. His young guard, however, as though reading his thoughts, held his shoulder rope firmly and gave him no opportunity to stray from the file of military and civilian prisoners. The shouted orders of officers echoed and re-echoed across the field as the troops were drawn up in massed ranks facing a mound of rising ground, and when the last companies arrived some ten thousand men stood assembled, ready to march.

  On the rise, a group of mounted military commanders and political commissars had been watching the marshaling of the troops. As soon as the last units were in place, one of them spurred his horse forward a pace or two and stood up in the stirrups. The moon was breaking intermittently through the moving clouds and by its ghostly light Jakob recognized the lean figure of Chu Teh, the commander in chief of the Central Red Army, whom he had first seen striding through the mud and murk above the Hsiang River. His uniform and cap seemed even more faded and rumpled than before but his proud, upright posture in the saddle gave him a distinguished air.

  “Comrades, the alarm to march was sounded thirty-five minutes ago,” he shouted, making his voice carry far ever the silent field. “It has taken you more than half an hour to form up and assemble. The time allowed for an emergency departure is twenty minutes. Tonight’s performance is unworthy of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army of China”

  Chu’s booming voice was fierce with disapproval and Jakob noticed the troops around him shift uncomfortably under the blunt criticism of their performance.

  “At this mom
ent, comrades, security units are searching your bivouacs, temporary barracks, and campsites. If they find so much as a rice bowl or a pair of chopsticks left behind, or a door that has not been rehung in the cottages of the people, the fighter responsible for the lapse will be punished. . .

  As he listened, Jakob felt a new throb of hope pass through his body. From the Red Army commander’s first remarks, it seemed almost certain that the marchers and prisoners were being put through a practice alert. Surprise exercises of this kind had been sprung on the troops during daylight hours in the past month to impress on them the extreme necessity for speed and efficiency in mobilizing the column. Such exercises had almost always ended with a march back to quarters, and Jakob turned his head to peer up at the granite crag where hang had promised to wait with Abigail. Only the vaguest outline of the hilltop was visible in the feeble moonlight and he wondered desperately whether Liang, from his vantage point among the rocks, could see or hear enough of the proceedings at the foot of the hill to make him decide to remain in his hiding place.

  “Since crossing the Chihshui River five days ago, comrades, we’ve encountered the warlord forces of Szechuan in growing strength,” continued Chu Teh in a stern voice. “We know they’re deployed to defend the banks of the Yangtze in large numbers — and we’ve just learned by radio that in northern Szechuan many divisions of the Kuomintang have begun attacking our own Fourth Front Army from across the Shensi border. So our comrades in the Fourth Front are at full stretch defending themselves against rear attacks! That means they will have no time to help us fight the Szechuan warlord armies here in the south. The provincial armies of Hunan, Kweichow, and Kwangsi are also pursuing us from all directions to our rear, and the fascist leadership of the Kuomintang has issued orders saying that the fate of China depends on bottling up the Central Red Army south of the Yangtze . .

  Chu Teh paused, staring around the field. Even in the near- darkness his eyes seemed to search his men’s faces individually and they gazed fixedly back at him, hanging on his every word.

  “But China’s fate, comrades, in reality depends on the Red Army not being bottled up. China’s fate depends on the Central Red Army forcing a crossing of the mighty Yangtze and breaking through to set up a new soviet in the north with the Fourth Front Army! China’s fate in the end, comrades, will depend on the Central Red Army driving through to the north to begin fighting the Japanese invaders — and forcing them out of China!”

  Chu paused to lend emphasis to his words. When he resumed, he spoke with even greater vehemence.

  “And those aims, comrades, will be achieved only if you hurry yourselves — and assemble in twenty minutes when there is an emergency, not half an hour!”

  The Red Army commander swung his horse around abruptly, turning his back on his troops to underline his displeasure. Then slowly he walked the animal in a semicircle to rejoin the group of mounted leaders. The great assembly of soldiers, chastened by his harangue, hung their heads and shuffled their feet.

  Among the group of horsemen, Jakob could see the distinctive, brooding figure of the man he had heard named as Mao Tse-tung when the leaders first passed him above the Hsiang River. Seated in a round-shouldered hunch on the same emaciated brown and white horse, he remained very still in the saddle, and only his head moved as he surveyed the serried ranks of Red Army fighters below him, seemingly calculating their capacity for further action and endurance. The neat, stocky figure of Chou En-lai straddled a bigger mount at his side. Chou’s posture was watchful and wary and he wore a hat with fur earflaps tied across its crown and a neat-fitting overcoat, which even in the wilderness of the Szechuan mountains gave him a dapper air. When Chu Teh rejoined the other leaders, they nodded in approval at his words and continued to watch the soldiers closely as a senior political commissar urged his horse to the edge of the mound and began a fresh speech of exhortation. All the Chinese commanders, Jakob noticed, kept their faces turned away from the bulky European figure of Otto Braun, who sat morose and uncomfortable astride a clumsy, short-legged horse to one side of the group. His fever seemed to have abated, but nobody spoke to him and he offered no comments of his own.

  A succession of commanders and commissars addressed the uneasy throng, emphasizing Chu Teh’s message again and again. Then the gathering was abruptly dismissed to be marched back, company by company, to their camps and quarters. Jakob’s battered wristwatch, which he had been allowed to keep, showed nearly one-thirty A.M. by the time he stretched out on his bedroll in the same mud-walled cottage and covered himself again with his padded quilt. The same crowd of soldiers bedded down around him and were soon snoring, but the guard was changed. At night fresh sentries were posted every four hours and Jakob saw that the youth whom he had saved from the Hsiang had taken over. In the moonlight he was pacing back and forth before the cottage doorway with a rifle slung across his back, but once or twice Jakob heard him yawn loudly.

  The missionary realized then that perhaps the practice mobilization alert had worked in his favor. He had noticed that his individual guards slept in the period before their spell of duty, but the unexpected rousing of the whole column had deprived this young guard of his sleep. On hearing him yawn a third time, Jakob became determined to stay awake, and while pretending to sleep, he watched the guard constantly as he passed and repassed the doorway. During the next two hours the young peasant yawned often, but to Jakob’s great frustration he remained on his feet, pacing relentlessly back and forth to keep himself awake.

  At about four o’clock the guard stopped his pacing and entered the cottage. Stepping around the sleeping soldiers he moved quietly across the earthen floor until he stood beside Jakob. With a wildly beating heart the missionary struggled to imitate the regular breathing of the Chinese troops around him as the guard bent close to check if he too was asleep. After listening for a minute or more the guard went back outside, apparently satisfied, and lowered himself wearily onto the bench before the door.

  For another half an hour he sat on the bench and swung his legs back and forth as the previous sentry had done, still yawning regularly. Then Jakob heard him drag a small table into position in front of him, and when he looked up, he saw the young guard had set his rifle down against the bench and was resting his elbows on the table. Still breathing rhythmically, Jakob continued to watch him through half-closed eyes, but although the guard’s head fell forward once or twice, he shook himself awake each time. Along the row of cottages Jakob heard someone stirring and soon afterward the faint glow of a fire indicated that one of the cooks had risen and was beginning to prepare the early morning meal for the troops. Jakob realized then that dawn must be approaching and he clenched his fists tight at his sides in his frustration. Within minutes the guard would be changed and a newly awakened sentry would take over:

  the chance to escape for which he had watched and waited through the long, sleepless night would be gone!

  It was while these desperate thoughts were flitting through his mind that Jakob heard the first burbling snore from the guard. Satisfied that the one prisoner he was guarding was not awake, he had obviously given in at last to his own intense desire to sleep. His next snore was longer and deeper and Jakob rose without hesitation to slip his feet into the woven cloth sandals he had placed beside his bedroll. He still wore the warm, padded long-gown but he did not pick up any belongings except his conical hat of woven bamboo, which he pulled low over his eyes. Instead he spread the contents of his bundle beneath his wadded quilt and tried to mold it into the approximate shape of his body to allay suspicion for as long as possible, then, stepping gingerly between the snoring Red Army men, he reached the door in four long strides. He held his breath as he squeezed sideways past the end of the bench on which the guard was sleeping; a louder snore jolted the guard’s head and the missionary thought for a moment the youth must wake, but he settled again and his head remained sunk in his hands on the table. Once outside, Jakob turned quickly away from the fire that had been lit ou
tside a cottage fifty yards away and hurried toward the hill, fighting down at every step the urge to run.

  As soon as he could, he left the frozen ruts of the street and struck off up the trackless hillside. The frost on the grass was bitingly cold to his feet and his cloth sandals slipped off almost at once, but he picked them up and carried them in his mouth, leaving his hands free to clutch at bushes and trees on the way up the steep slope. Although the stones and rough ground cut his feet, walking and climbing alone after nearly four months in close captivity felt immediately strange and exhilarating. Every second that he climbed away from the village he expected to hear an outbreak of wild shouting behind him and his pounding heart seemed to swell until it filled his throat. Once or twice he stopped in the cover of trees and scrub to catch his breath and look anxiously backward, but in the darkness there was no sign of life along the village street apart from the red glow of the cook’s fire.

  Although he was tired, the frustration of the long, harrowing wait had fired him with a fierce energy and he pressed on rapidly up the hillside, reaching the crag in less than fifteen minutes. In that time the clouds thickened and obscured the moon completely, making the night darker than it had been at any earlier hour, and among the rocks he could detect no sign of life. Jakob walked around the summit twice, his lungs heaving, but saw nothing; lie was beginning to fear he was too late when a dark shape rose up by his feet.

  “Ke Mu-shih, it’s me, Hsiao Liang.” The voice of the cook boy speaking in Chinese was a barely audible whisper in the darkness and Jakob felt a hand take his in a strong grip.