Turning from the window, he walked back to the red lacquered desk and rummaged among its papers. Again his mood had changed abruptly, and leaning close to the oil lamp, he scanned several documents in silence. Absorbed in his reading, Mao behaved as though he were alone in the room: then he spoke in his soft voice again without lifting his eyes from a sheet of paper he held before him. “In the courtyard you showed pity to the executioner. Is that what your Christian teaching demands?”
“Yes,” said Jakob simply. “It is.”
“If we pity our enemies we shall be lost There’s no room for compassion in a class war.”
“Your doctrine seems right to you now. You make the soldiers marching with you feel they are part of a patriotic crusade. But in the end man will always feel a need to turn to God.” As he spoke Jakob found himself surprised by the conviction he was able to muster. Confronted unexpectedly with the leader of his captors, he had expressed himself with unfamiliar force, as though he had not suffered any of the agonizing doubts of recent weeks and months. He wondered whether anything of his inner turmoil was discernible in his manner and he looked up to find the Chinese watching him intently.
“I have heard you like most of all to take to the mountains and visit villages where no missionary has ever been before, is that correct?”
Jakob nodded. “Yes.”
“I’ve written a poem about the mountains of China. I write on horseback. There’s plenty of time then to test meter and rhymes.”
Mao picked up a sheet of paper on which Jakob could see that several lines of Chinese characters had been fashioned with a writing brush. Holding it before him in the theatrical manner of a Chinese scholar, Mao slowly read the verses aloud in a singsong falsetto, and as he did so, Jakob felt profoundly moved by the depth of passion in the words and the voice of the man reading them.
“Mountains!
Faster I whip my speeding horse, never leaving the saddle; I start as I turn my bead,
For the sky is only three feet above me!
Mountains!
Like surging, heaving seas with your billows rolling,
Like myriad horses,
Roaring and plunging away in the thick of battle.
Mountains!
Piercing the blue of the heavens, your barbs unblunted!
The sky would fall
But for your strength supporting.”
Turning from the lamp, Mao handed the sheet of paper to Jakob. “Take it if you like. When you read it you will remember how you marched fifteen thousand Ii across the mountains of China with the Red Army.” Lost in thought suddenly, Mao wandered over to the window and stood with his back to the missionary, staring down again at the roasting pits in the courtyard below.
“Is it your intention to order my release soon?” asked Jakob after a long interval of silence.
“If the headquarters of your mission agree to Commissioner Chou’s proposal,” replied Mao without turning around, “it might become possible in due course.”
Behind Jakob the door opened softly and Chiao appeared. Taking Jakob by the arm, he led him toward the balcony.
“Meantime, eat plenty of yak meat tonight,” called Mao over his shoulder, still looking down at the roasting animals. “There will be very little food to be found in the marshes of the Great Grasslands — and you will need all the strength you can muster there.”
13
Holding a long bamboo pole crosswise in both hands, Jakob trod gingerly from one thick grass tussock to the next, fighting the feeling of panic that rose in him as each of his feet in turn sank down out of sight into the fetid black swamp water. The moment he stepped onto a new tussock, the one behind, freed of his weight, rose slowly above the surface once more, releasing his mud-blackened foot with a loud squelching noise. With each step the earth beneath him seemed to billow like the sea, threatening to dissolve to nothing; each new tussock seemed less substantial than the last, each step more fraught with danger. The constant fear, hour after hour, day after day, that he might at any moment slip down into the bottomless mire had produced a nightmarish sensation in Jakob’s mind — time and distance had begun to lose their meaning and he moved like an automaton, his limbs tense, his head unnaturally stiff on his shoulders, his eyes wide with apprehension.
All around him rank, shoulder-high grass waved in the wind beneath leaden clouds. As far as the eye could see no trees, hills, or buildings broke the flat skyline above the gray-green desert of grass:
only the heads and shoulders of Red Army men in front and behind were visible as Jakob and his guards trudged deeper into the silent, uninhabited wilderness. Although they had been marching for five days through the Great Grasslands, no landmark ever appeared by which they could measure their progress; after dragging themselves across the terrifying steppe throughout the daylight hours, buffeted by rain, snow, and hailstorms, there was never any way of telling how far they had traveled. The sun, on the rare occasions that it had been seen through the dense clouds, hung mistily in the sky above them, as pale and silver as the moon, and at night dense fogs cloaked the evil-smelling marshes. Jakob’s straw sandals had long since rotted away in the water and his bare feet and ankles, beneath the sticky black mud that coated them, were again swollen and covered in sores. Across his shoulder he carried a long sausage-shaped food bag made of ox hide. Before the marchers entered the grasslands the bag had been filled with grain, pinecones, and edible fungus, but now it was nearly empty.
Coming to a sluggish stream that wound through the grass, Jakob tested the depth with his pole, then waded across, soaking his gown to the waist. On the other side the grass was thick and tangled and he had to feel his way forward a yard or two at a time. In the act of stepping across a mud hole, he stopped suddenly. Beneath the slime, the sole of his bare foot had come into contact with something softer than the spiky grass — it gave mushily beneath his weight, causing Jakob to recoil instinctively. Looking down, he saw he had trodden on the bloated face of a dead Red Army soldier. The lips of the dead man were drawn back from his teeth in the agonized rictus of death and black, foul-smelling swamp water filled his open throat. No other part of his body was visible and as Jakob stared down in horror, the head turned and slipped slowly out of sight again beneath the slime. He called a hoarse warning over his shoulder and one of his guards, edging along twenty yards behind him, automatically nodded his thanks. Stepping over the spot where the dead soldier had sunk from view, Jakob tested the next tussock carefully with both his bamboo staff and his foot before he moved forward again.
Scanning the winding file of marchers that stretched across the green wasteland into the far distance, Jakob wondered desperately how Mei-ling was faring with the baby. There were very few baggage animals to be seen any longer among the marchers: many horses and oxen had been slaughtered before the army entered the grasslands and the meat had at first been carried on the baggage mules. But the men, famished from their exertions each day, had consumed these rations rapidly and soon the missionary noticed that the few remaining baggage animals themselves were gradually being killed and eaten. It seemed likely to Jakob that by this time Mei-ling herself might be trudging on foot through the treacherous swamps, carrying Abigail in her arms, and anxiety mounted ‘within him whenever he tried to imagine how she would be negotiating terrifying bogs and mud-holes with the additional burden of the eleven-month-old infant.
Jakob had not seen Mei-ling since their meeting in the Great Snow Mountains. After leaving Chokechi, the United Red Army had moved north to the larger Tibetan settlement of Maoerhkai, a town of several hundred stone dwellings, standing close to the grasslands. Over a three-week period in Maoerhkai, the army and Party leaders had tried to thrash out their differences at a series of heated meetings while the rank-and-file soldiers rested, sewed sheepskin garments, and plaited sandals of straw and ox hide for themselves. Each man had gathered and roasted about ten pounds of dry rations — green wheat or chingko — to fill his ration bag and Jakob had be
en allowed to join the troops in these preparations for crossing the Great Grasslands. He had been quartered in a stone house on the outer edge of the town and with the exception of a message from Lu Chiao saying that Commissioner Chou En-lai had become too ill to work or attend meetings, he had received no further information.
When news reached Maoerhkai in the third week of August that growing Kuomintang forces were breaking through the southern rear guard in strength, orders had been issued for the entire Communist force to move northward and strike through the grasslands into southern Kansu. Because the deep antagonism between Mao Tse-tung and Chang Kuo-tao remained unresolved, the United Red Army was split into two groups, the Left Column, headed by Chang, and the Right Column, headed by Mao. These groups marched out of Maoerhkai along parallel routes several miles apart with units of the original First Front Army and the Fourth Front Army mixed in each of them. Lin Piao’s First Army Corps and Peng Teh-huai’s Third Army Corps marched as before with Mao, while Chu Teh, appointed commander in chief of the whole army, marched at the head of the Left Column alongside Chang Kuo-tao. Behind him, the Fifth and Ninth corps of the First Front mingled with a majority of Fourth Front Army units. The ailing Chou En-lai was being borne on a stretcher among leaders of the Right Column, and in their wake Jakob marched with a squad of four new guards, youths younger than himself who had been recruited along the route in Kwangsi and Kweichow..
Having toiled up the flanks of the spectacular mountain ranges that formed the high continental between the gigantic of the Yangtze and the Yellow River, the marchers at a height of twelve thousand feet had come suddenly upon an astonishing plain of gently waving grass that stretched endlessly before them into the northern distance. Its fringes were dotted with dazzling clusters of yellow, violet, and blue flowers and many soldiers exclaimed aloud at its beauty. Twisting tracks beaten by local flocks led into the tall grass and Jakob’s guards joked and laughed in relief.
“How lush and welcoming it looks,” shouted a Kwangsi youth of around twenty whose name was Hsu. “There must be people living on this plain.”
“Perhaps rice is grown up here,” grinned one of the Kweichow guards in reply. “It’s not going to be so bad after all.”
They had hurried eagerly onto the trodden tracks, following markers staked out by a vanguard regiment that had hired a knowledgeable old Tibetan hsiang tao to guide them. The Tibetan, who was paid well in silver, had insisted on being carried by half a dozen soldiers on a wooden mountain chair, and in addition to marker stakes planted at intervals, the vanguard soldiers under his directions had laid a coarse rope of goat hair alongside the paths of spongy turf for their comrades to follow. But within two hours the seemingly benign mountain plain had changed to a dark, howling swamp. The warm sunshine that had bathed the plateau at noon was suddenly blotted out by black clouds that appeared from nowhere, and fierce, shrieking winds rose to whip rain, sleet, then a blinding blizzard of snow into the faces of Jakob and the other marchers. After wading across a broad, freezing river that drenched their thin cotton uniforms and left them gasping with cold, they found themselves in semidarkness, stepping for the first time on the fragile crust of tussocks and tangled roots that covered the viscous mire of oozing black quicksand. Within minutes the snow obliterated the goat-hair rope and the tracks, leaving the Red Army columns stumbling by blind instinct along the unknown ways.
Jakob and his guards had lost touch with the unit in front and strayed off the pathway. Almost at once the Kweichow guard who had hoped to find rice growing on the grasslands slipped from the firm ground with a terrible cry. Jakob and Hsu, the Kwangsi youth, who were walking ahead, turned to see him struggling chest-deep in a morass of green and black slime, his face contorted in terror.
They hurriedly retraced their steps but he slipped swiftly downward, clawing at the firm grass in a helpless frenzy, and before they could reach him, the gurgling ooze closed over his head.
Numb with shock, Jakob and the other three guards stared helplessly at the surface of the swamp: then Jakob shouted loudly into the deepening gloom and when he heard answering shouts he led the young guards carefully back toward the main path. On joining op with the marching column they found that other men had begun to disappear abruptly into the quagmire. A few had been pulled out by their comrades but many dragged those who tried to rescue them to their deaths. A tangible sense of fear spread like wildfire through the marching regiments and it increased when darkness fell, leaving the marchers stranded on tiny tussocks of grass.
All soldiers had been issued with bamboo poles and most succeeded in pitching makeshift tents, using their quilted sheets. But the fierce winds blew many of them away and some companies spent their first night on the grasslands kneeling or crouching in the open. Others had to sleep as best they could standing upright, leaning back to back with four or five comrades. Jakob and his three guards were among the fortunate ones — they were able to rig a stable tent on a firm tussock, using poles and wadded quilts, and they knotted long clusters of growing grass above it as additional protection. Huddling with their backs together in this rough shelter, they slept fitfully until dawn.
To ward off the bitter cold the marchers kept fires going beside their shelters all night, although they knew this would quickly exhaust the supply of firewood that each man had been instructed to gather. and carry in a bundle on his back. On the second day the clouds never lifted and freezing rain poured down on them throughout the gray daylight hours. Men fell frequently, covering themselves in mud until they looked more like shambling figures of clay. On the treeless, waterlogged tundra there was no fresh firewood to be found and by the third day, instead of boiling their roasted wheat and chingko, Jakob and his guards, like the rest of the troops, were having to eat them cold. The harshness of the rough grains and the effects of the black, brackish water they were forced to drink unboiled produced dysentery and fierce stomach cramps among many of the soldiers and as the numbers of stragglers increased, the pace slowed. The track itself, a firm pathway when the vanguard and their Tibetan hsiang tao marked it, became, under the tramp of thousands of feet, a flooded trench in which it was easy to take a false step.
As they grew hungrier, the troops marching around Jakob began to search for edible herbs and wild vegetables: they dug up aqueous globes as big as pumpkins and eagerly devoured the white, turnip like flesh. They gave Jakob a slice but he found it bitter and spat it out. Within hours some of those who had eaten the wild vegetable were retching; some stumbled and fell and were unable to get to their feet again. Jakob had eaten his dry rations sparingly after hearing political commissars tell the troops at the outset that the crossing might take a week or more, and on the fifth morning he had begun sharing his reserve with his three remaining guards, who already were carrying empty ration bags. As darkness closed in that night on the grasslands, the wind was freshening, whirling flurries of rain and sleet across the quagmire, and Jakob and the guards hurriedly erected their tent on a bank of dry ground beside the track. Jakob again knotted clusters of shoulder-high grasses in a cone above them and Hsu lit a tiny rapeseed-ail lamp which he placed on the dry rushes the others had spread inside the tent. Crowding inside on their knees, the three guards placed their tin bowls around the lamp and watched with anxious eyes as Jakob reached a fist into his ration bag and dropped a few charred grains of chingko into each bowl in turn. From habit he bent his head in a moment of prayer, and when he opened his eyes again, he found Hsu staring at him in puzzlement.
“Why do you want to share your precious food with men who are holding you captive?” he asked wonderingly.
Jakob looked at the young Kwangsi guard: his previously round face had become strangely bloated and the multiple effects of hunger, fear, and exhaustion had lent a dark, greenish hue to his features. He was shivering and sweating at the same time and although he chewed the hard, blackened barley grains determinedly, Jakob could see he was having difficulty swallowing.
“I’m a Christian,
” replied Jakob slowly. “Our Scriptures teach us to love God and to love our neighbors like brothers, whoever they may be. If men did this everywhere, it would be possible to end all strife.”
“Why do you close your eyes over the food and move your lips?” Hsu’s sweating face was tense as he waited for an answer.
“Every Christian has an unseen friend and helper in Jesus Christ. We pray through Him for strength and guidance. Tonight I was giving thanks to our Heavenly Father for the food we’re eating.”
“Does your ‘praying’ really help you? Is that why you have survived so many dangers?”
Jakob hesitated: the guard’s naive question had reminded him all too forcibly of his turmoil of inner doubts and he was suddenly aware that he was incapable of clarifying his thoughts, even to himself. “If you have enough faith your prayers will always be answered,” he said at last, repeating in a subdued tone the answer he would once have given with great zest.
“If Keng had been a Christian and said prayers, would he be alive now?”
A note of desperation crept into Hsu’s voice as he spoke the name of his Kweichow comrade who had slipped to his death in the swamp and Jakob saw suddenly that his nerve was breaking.
“It’s difficult to say. Perhaps — if he had truly believed.”
The wind slammed against the makeshift shelter, rocking it violently. Not far away the long-drawn-out howling of wolves became audible and Hsu’s eyes widened in fright. “Will you say a prayer for me tonight, please?”
“Of course, if you wish.”
Taken by surprise, Jakob forced a smile and patted Hsu on the shoulder. Then he turned to the other two guards: they too were gaunt and hollow-checked and their jaws moved rhythmically as they chewed their few kernels of roasted grain.
“Would you like me to include you in the prayer too?” he asked in a quiet voice.
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