“I’m afraid I’m almost as much in the dark as you are, Joseph,” said Abigail. “Daddy hasn’t ever told me much about it either. But I haven’t given up all hope of getting at least some of his secrets out of him.”
Jakob looked at his daughter with a strange expression, as if he had almost forgotten her presence. Then he smiled and reached across the table for a moment to pat her hand in an uncertain gesture of affection. Again he seemed to be on the point of saying something further, but instead he reached into an inside pocket of his jacket and turned toward Sherman once more.
“It’s curious, Joseph, that you should bring this subject up,” he said, pulling from his pocket the envelope he had received that afternoon. “I’d always thought of China as a closed book for me personally – then this came today.” He paused and turned to Abigail.
“It’s the first contact of any kind I’ve had with the Communists since 1935.” He drew out the peace committee’s invitation card, held it out briefly for her to read, then pushed it across the table to Sherman.
“Very strange.” The American let out a low whistle. “It looks as though you’re being courted.”
“Will you accept?” asked Abigail.
Jakob hesitated a moment. “I haven’t got over my surprise yet.”
“When you do,” said Sherman slowly, “I think you’ll probably find the siren call of Peking irresistible.”
“My first reaction, Joseph, is to say no.” Jakob studied his friend’s face. “Why do you think I ought to go?”
“I didn’t say you ought to go. I said I thought you would in the end.” Sherman returned the invitation to Jakob and stood up, smiling broadly at his friend. He had already settled the bill, and moving to the rail, he waved a sampan taxi alongside to take them back to the pier head. When all three of them were settled in the wicker chairs beneath the canopy of the wallowing craft, he leaned toward Jakob and patted him gently on the shoulder. “If you do decide to return to Peking, make sure you’re ready to face up to ghosts from the past,” he said gently. “Take it from me, they have a habit of turning up when you make a sentimental journey.”
On the jetty the two men took effusive leave of one another and the American kissed Abigail’s hand extravagantly in wishing her well. But once Jakob was settled at the wheel of the car beside his daughter, he fell silent again, apparently preoccupied with his own inner reflections. Abigail had hoped that she might question him about the hesitant references he had made to the past over dinner, but she felt rebuffed again by his silence. On arrival home Jakob said she looked worn out from her long journey and insisted that she go to bed without delay. In the forbidding, impersonal atmosphere of the flat, the emotional gulf seemed suddenly to yawn wide and unbridgeable between them again. As he turned away toward his own room, Abigail saw an unmistakable expression of relief cross her father’s face, and the moment she got into bed and closed her eyes, this image of him filled her mind, nagging at the old wounds of hurt and resentment that never seemed inclined to heal.
4
When I was growing up I often used to wake in the morning feeling very sad but without really knowing why. Sometimes I dreamed about my mother. It was always the same dream. I was very small and running desperately through a big crowd of unfriendly Chinese. I kept calling out and searching for her but I never found her. In my child’s mind there was a dreadful certainty that something terrible had happened. And I knew I was never going to find her. .
Jakob stared aghast at his daughter but Abigail kept her face turned from him, gazing out through the window of the little tramcar crawling slowly up the flank of Victoria Peak. Below them, the narrow strait that separated Hong Kong Island from Kowloon and the great hinterland of China shimmered like translucent jade in the morning sun; a moment before, Jakob had been pointing out landmarks and places of interest to her but he had not noticed that her manner was abstracted and her sudden vehement outburst nonplussed him.
“I used to be terrified sometimes before I fell asleep,” she continued, still speaking in the same low, fierce voice. “I thought I might actually see her Chinese executioners chopping off her head in my dreams. Luckily it never got as bad as that. But it always came back to the same terrible, hopeless feeling that something awful had happened and I could never hope to find her again
They were seated side by side on a double seat and when Abigail turned from the window to look .at her father, she saw from his expression that her unexpected display of emotion had shocked him. Her face was pale too, she was breathing unevenly, and for a long moment they looked at one another in a strained silence. Then Abigail shook her head in a little gesture of apology.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why it suddenly all came out like that.” She looked away out of the window again. The morning was bright but hazy and as the little funicular tramcar climbed higher, the island and its harbor were spreading out like a patchwork quilt below them. “Perhaps it’s something to do with being here among all these Chinese people for the first time. I’m grateful for you bringing me up here, Daddy, but I can’t pretend to think about sight-seeing with things like this on my mind.”
“Abigail, I’m sorry . . .“ Jakob stumbled over his words. “It’s me that should be doing the apologizing. I had no idea that you had been affected this way. You’ve never told me about your dreams before.”
“You never gave me the chance, Daddy. All these things have been bottled up inside me for so long. You didn’t seem to want to talk about personal things at all when you came home.” Abigail’s voice had lost its explosive edge but deep-buried feelings of grievance were still evident in her tone. “It seemed as if you didn’t want to understand how I felt. That’s why I was never able to say things like this in England.”
The tramcar was almost empty at midmorning and nobody was sitting near enough in the adjoining seats to overhear the conversation. Beyond the windows the hillsides of the Peak were covered in thick, trackless greenery from which banana trees sprouted at curious angles due to the steepness of the slope. To Abigail the vegetation seemed to shudder and dance as the tramcar rumbled up toward the summit and most of the wayside stations at which they stopped were deserted.
“I should have realized,” Jakob’s voice broke a little and he moved closer to his daughter and covered one of her hands hesitantly with his own. “I suppose I always thought the least said, the soonest mended. I never wanted to drag up the past for fear of upsetting you. Unconsciously, perhaps, I was trying to protect you.”
Abigail turned to face him again. She had put on a yellow cotton blouse, a white linen skirt, and low-heeled shoes for the spectacular trip up the Peak. A square of green silk covered her blond hair and in her fresh, unselfconscious beauty Jakob suddenly saw an unmistakable echo of Felicity as she had been when he met her for the first time in Shanghai.
“Is that why you were so determined to keep me away from China studies at Oxford? Was that another attempt to ‘protect’ me?”
Jakob’s expression indicated that he was probably considering his reasons seriously for the first time and he frowned uncertainly. “I don’t really know. It was an instinctive reaction. I suppose I wanted to try to guide you into some area different from my own — that’s all.”
“But you seemed to want to cut me off completely from your life in Asia, Daddy. You’ve hardly ever told me anything about the past. It was as if you wanted to keep me in the dark about it all.” She turned away again and her voice quieted. “When I was younger I could never understand why you didn’t want me with you — why I was always left with my grandparents. I never felt as though I belonged there or anywhere else. It just didn’t seem right. I didn’t understand and sometimes I felt very unhappy.”
“I took you home to my parents in Moss Side as soon as we were released by the Chinese,” said Jakob soothingly. “It was the only thing to do. You needed a good home and I was in poor health for a time after the Long March.”
“Yes, but later you seemed
to care so little about me.”
“That’s not true at all,” protested Jakob. “I’ve always cared very deeply. Perhaps I haven’t been very good at showing it.”
Abigail looked at her father quizzically. “Talking with Joseph Sherman last night, you said your time as a prisoner changed you. But you didn’t really explain how . . . I’d like to try to understand what you meant. I think it might help.’
Jakob took a deep breath. “After we got back from China I worked for the Anglo-Chinese Mission in England for a while. I traveled in Europe and America, giving seminars on field missionary work — but as I said last night, something had changed. Deep down my heart wasn’t really in missionary work anymore.”
“Do you mean you lost your faith in Christianity on the Long March?”
“No, not really.” Jakob hesitated, searching with difficulty for the right words. “But nothing ever seemed as simple as it had before. As a young man I had a burning conviction that I could help bring salvation to chaotic old China by preaching the Gospel. But afterward I found myself questioning everything. I suppose my experience made me feel Christianity was irrelevant for China. Communism obviously commanded a much greater loyalty among the Chinese. It served the oppressed and raised them to sublime acts of sacrifice — but it brutalized them to a horrifying degree as well. None of this was very helpful in sorting out the sense of confusion in my personal beliefs. And that’s never really left me. I didn’t lose my faith entirely — but it was as if a hard inner shell grew around it.”
“I can hardly remember anything about you at that time,” said Abigail distractedly. “Except for that photograph of you in uniform that stood on the shelf beside the wireless set. It was as if you didn’t exist beyond that.”
“You were barely five when the war came, remember, and every able-bodied man had to go off and fight Again Jakob’s tone was gently placatory but he continued to struggle to find words that would comfort her. “In some ways because of the confusion I felt, I was quite glad to volunteer for the infantry. It was uncomplicated, at least, and I was fulfilling a duty which transcended other things. . . . I was whisked off first to Africa, then later to Burma and India. I was as surprised as anybody to finish up as a captain. . . . But that’s why you never saw me again until the war was over.”
“Why didn’t you stay in England when you came back?” asked Abigail, an undertone of reproach audible again in her voice. “That was the time when I’d just found out what had really happened in China. I was desperate to hear more about it from you, but you didn’t have time to talk.”
Jakob shifted uncomfortably on the seat. “This is probably difficult for you to understand, Abigail, but when I came home after the war I felt a bit like an outsider in Moss Side too. It wasn’t that unusual. A lot of men had trouble readjusting. But I thought you seemed so well settled in your school and in your home life with your grandparents. In some ways I felt as if! was intruding and upsetting things by staying — and I was concerned that I’d already caused you enough trouble earlier in your life.”
“But why did you come back to Asia?”
“Being in Burma and India gave me a strong desire to study all the religions of the East, so I decided to come back — just for a short while, originally. I lived a kind of hand-to-mouth existence, doing all kinds of strange jobs. I managed to study in some outlandish spots: at a lamasery in Tibet, with a Tamil community in Ceylon, and in a Moslem seminary in Iran. I traveled to Japan too and these experiences gave me a great respect for all the ancient traditions, whether they were Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Taoist — or Christian. It made me realize they all had an equal validity.”
“What was it that made you settle here in Hong Kong?”
“At the end of all that, perhaps as a reaction, I felt a need to apply myself to something practical — not least to provide for you back home in England.” He leaned toward his daughter, his expression earnest. “That’s always been uppermost in my mind, Abigail. My savings had run out by then, it was and I found myself here. The Communists had just taken over in Peking, the Bamboo Curtain was going up all around the mainland, and I fell into some translation work for foreign journalists that paid well. I realized then I wasn’t cut out to do much else and that’s how the Kellner Research Institute was born. Since then it’s grown and provided us with a good livelihood, so I am still here . . . .”
Jakob’s voice tailed off and for a while they rode in silence in the rocking tramcar, wrapped in their separate thoughts. In the harbor below, toy-sized Chinese junks and seagoing freighters carved creamy wakes across the glistening water and new concrete housing blocks sprouted like identical fingers from the populated areas of Victoria and Kowloon. When the little vehicle finally shuddered to a halt at the Peak terminal, Jakob guided his daughter out into the warm breeze and they walked a few paces in the direction of the Kellner Institute’s radio monitoring station, which he had promised to show her. But the breathtaking bird’s-eye view of one of the world’s great natural harbors spread out below made them stop and they stood side by side admiring the spectacle. Feeling herself moved by the effort her father had been making to explain his past, Abigail stepped closer to him and slipped her arm through his.
“I’ve often wondered, Daddy, why you’ve never married again,” she said gently. “You weren’t much older than I am now when my mother died. You must have been lonely sometimes.”
Jakob scanned the harbor minutely as though searching for something specific and when he spoke his voice was firmly controlled. “I can’t deny I’ve been lonely at times but I’ve got used to it.”
“Have you never wanted to marry anyone else?”
A strong mental picture of Lu Mei-ling, seated astride her mule in the yellow loess valley where he had last seen her, flashed into Jakob’s mind the instant his daughter asked the question. The swirl of long hair about her face and the direct gaze of her dark eyes in the early dawn light returned with a vividness that seemed almost tangible, and he found he dared not look at Abigail in case she sensed something of this powerful internal image.
“I’ve never fallen in love with anyone here,” said Jakob, choosing his words carefully. “I’ve made some good friends. I haven’t always lived a monkish life. But nobody in Hong Kong has ever become that important to me — I suppose that’s the real reason I haven’t married again.”
He felt Abigail’s eyes on him, and fearing that she might become aware of the ambivalence in his reply if she was allowed to dwell on it, he lifted his arm and pointed across the harbor toward the ridge of mountains that rose behind Kowloon.
“Look, the border between the Crown Colony and China lies beyond those mountains. When we go to the New Territories you’ll still be able to see what the rural China of old was like on our side. The farms are small, the villages still have their ancestral temples; some even have their old protective walls and watchtowers. For me, going there is a bit like stepping back into the thirties. Across the Shum Chun River, the communal rice paddies of the People’s Republic are much larger now. You’ll be able to see how abruptly it all changes . .
Shading her eyes with her hand, Abigail stared toward the mountains that hid the Chinese mainland from their sight and at her side Jakob relaxed. But when she turned to look at him again the intensity of her expression surprised him. “Daddy, do you remember a long time ago that you told me a young Chinese woman looked after me during part of the Long March? You never said much about her — what was she like?”
Abigail’s eyes searched his face as she waited for him to answer and Jakob suddenly had an uneasy feeling that something in his manner had revealed his innermost thoughts. Haunted by the possibility that he might inadvertently betray some hint of the passionate feelings he had shared with Mei-ling so soon after Felicity’s tragic death, he looked away.
“Why do you ask about her?” he asked, trying to keep his voice light. “I’d forgotten I’d told you.”
“Perhaps it’s because we’re st
anding here together so close to China. It feels very strange for me to realize that someone’s living up there beyond those mountains who was a mother to me all those years ago — if she’s still alive.” Abigail turned to her father again. “Do you think she’d still be alive?”
“I’m sure she is.”
“How can you be certain? Have you had some contact with her?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then how can you be so sure?”
“I have a file on her in the office.”
Abigail looked startled. “Why do you keep a file on her?”
Jakob took his daughter by the arm and steered her toward a narrow path leading up to the institute’s monitoring station. “She’s become one of Communist China’s best-known writers. Her name is occasionally mentioned in the newspapers and on the radio. The file is a routine part of the institute’s reference library.”
Abigail absorbed the information in silence as they walked. “I’d always assumed she was just somebody anonymous,” she said at last in a puzzled tone. “What’s her name?”
Again Jakob checked himself to guard against any inflection that might betray his feelings. “She’s called Lu Mei-ling.”
Abigail repeated the name slowly to herself, then looked searchingly at her father. “What’s she like? What sort of things does she write?”
“If you’re really interested, perhaps the best thing would be for you to look at the file when we get back to the office,” he said dismissively. “Meanwhile, I’ve brought you up here to see our monitoring station, so let’s go and introduce you to the staff.”
Jakob dropped his hand from her arm, walking quickly ahead along the narrow path toward the cluster of radio masts, and Abigail followed more slowly, dismayed that the fragile mood of confidence that had been growing between them had evaporated so abruptly.
5
Her translated stories have a strange quality,” said Abigail, glancing up from the file of papers and booklets through which she was sitting at the small side desk in Jakob’s office. “They’re hard going a lot of the time because they seem to be obsessively concerned with the sufferings of the poorest peasants — and yet her descriptions of their feelings in the volume called Women of the Revolution are sometimes so poignant they make me want to cry.”
Anthony Grey Page 49