Anthony Grey

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

  “Is everything all right, Mr. Kellner?” asked the elderly translator hesitantly. “Have you had bad news?”

  Jakob realized his feelings must have showed on his face; he was still clutching the letter tightly in both hands and he dropped it on the desk in front of him. “Somebody I know well has come under attack in Shanghai,” he said in a tight voice, rising and moving across the office to stare out of a window.

  “Every Chinese here in the colony has relatives and friends on the mainland they’re worried about,” said Wu softly. “It’s not an unusual feeling for most of us.”

  Jakob stood abstractedly by the window- for half a minute or more without speaking; then he swung around and stared hard at his chief translator. “Mr. Wu, you once told me that one of your daughters had married into the biggest shipping family in Hong Kong, didn’t you?”

  The translator’s expression became puzzled but he nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s right, Mr. Kellner.”

  “Then I need your help,” said Jakob in an urgent undertone, crossing hurriedly to the door and closing it. “I want to travel to Shanghai at once — as a crew member on a freighter. I’ll need papers for . . . say, a first mate or an assistant engineer . . . and some working clothes. I want to leave tonight or tomorrow. Will you help me?”

  “I don’t know if I can, Mr. Kellner.” The old Chinese stared at Jakob in alarm. “Are you sure this is a wise course?”

  “No, it isn’t wise at all,” replied Jakob in a tense voice. “You must say nothing of this to the rest of the staff. I’ll never ask you to do anything like this for me again — but now it’s vital.”

  Wu’s face crinkled into a worried frown. “I’ll try to help you, Mr. Kellner — if you’ve really made up your mind to go.”

  “I have,” said Jakob firmly. “Please go and talk to your relatives straightaway about the arrangements.”

  6

  A small black Public Security Bureau jeep speeding through the darkened streets of Shanghai with its siren blaring bounced and shuddered over the uneven road surfaces. From its rear seat Mei-ling stared apprehensively out at the jostling crowds of Red Guards thronging the pavements, armed with paste pots and long-handled brushes. Although an illuminated clock above them showed it was two-thirty A.M., the Red Guards were yelling and chanting boisterously as they fixed new giant slogans on the walls of offices and public buildings. Written In black characters four feet high, the slogans proclaimed “We Will Burn the Mayor of Shanghai!” “Down with Shanghai’s Black Gang!” “Workers and Red Guards Must Bombard the Stinking Municipal Headquarters Together!”

  Mei-ling’s wrists were handcuffed in front of her and she was wedged between two silent Chinese security policemen dressed in green tunics and navy trousers. They wore soft caps with red badges bearing the symbolic images of the Gate of Heavenly Peace and beneath their peaks the expressions on the policemen’s faces were grim and hostile. They had barged noisily into the Conservatory of Music only minutes before to drag Mei-ling unceremoniously from the bamboo mat on which she lay sleeping alongside a dozen other teachers who, like her, had been condemned as cow demons and confined in a Red Guard cowshed for the past month. Every day they had all been forced to write long self-criticisms of their “bourgeois class backgrounds” and face heated cross-examinations by vociferous Red Guards. All of them had been repeatedly “hatted” and “struggled” and forced to do hours of humiliating physical labor each day, scrubbing floors and cleaning student lavatories. An unbroken month of such treatment had left all the music teachers exhausted and Mei-ling’s sleep-dazed mind had not at first registered any alarm when the security policemen burst in. She had been wakened before in the middle of the night by overzealous Red Guards demanding new self-criticisms or setting fresh tasks, and only when she was handcuffed and led outside to the waiting jeep did she come fully awake. In the first days of the Cultural Revolution she had often seen the ominous black vehicles dashing through the crowded streets, carrying manacled victims to prison, and when the driver switched on the jeep’s siren and set off at a high speed, her heart sank.

  As the jeep nosed through the noisy Red Guard crowds in the center of the city, she scrutinized the new slogans they were pasting up as best she could, searching for some clue that might link her sudden arrest to the activity in the streets. When the vehicle turned onto the Bund she saw crowds of adult workers pasting up wall posters and slogans that demanded “Unite with the Workers and Declare War on the Municipal Party Authorities” and she realized that the movement which had begun by focusing on the nation’s youth was suddenly expanding and spreading. But none of the new slogans seemed to provide any clue to the reason for her arrest and she stared helplessly out of the window of the jeep as it moved along the riverside boulevard beside towering neo-Georgian edifices, which had been built long ago by Shanghai’s foreign colonizers. With a squeal of tires the vehicle swung through an archway beneath one of the pillared facades, and in the cobbled courtyard where it halted, Mei-ling glimpsed a sign announcing that the building was now the Shanghai headquarters of the Military Control Commission. Two armed sentries of the People’s Liberation Army were standing guard in front of a columned doorway, and Mei-Iing’s police escorts hurried her past them after a muttered exchange. Inside she was led along a series of dingy, echoing corridors and up several flights of stairs. At the end of a deserted passageway she was shown into a windowless room that contained only a small wooden table and two chairs; as she stared about herself in dismay, the door closed behind her and she heard a key turn in the lock.

  The bare walls of the room were painted two dull shades of green, the lower half darker than the top, and the floor was covered with fiber matting. No sound came from the passageway outside and for several minutes Mei-ling stood immobile in the center of the room, feeling thoroughly disconcerted, her heart beating fast. The handcuffs were beginning to chafe her wrists, and sinking down onto one of the chairs, she made a conscious effort to relax. Ten or fifteen minutes passed and then she heard the sound of a key turning in the lock; to her astonishment, when the door opened, her son, Kao, stepped quietly into the room. He was alone, and after closing and locking the door carefully behind him, he drew a small key from a pocket in his tunic and hurried to her side to unlock her handcuffs.

  “I’m sorry I had to bring you here like this,” he said quietly as he bent over her. “I had to do it for my own protection — it was the only way we could talk privately.”

  Instead of his usual neatly tailored cadre’s suit, Kao was wearing a Red Guard uniform of faded khaki cotton and a cap of the same color pulled low over his face. A crimson Hung Wei Ping arm band was fixed to his left sleeve, and as she stared at him, Mei-ling saw that his face was smudged with dirt and there were lines of strain and tiredness around his eyes.

  “I didn’t know you were in Shanghai, Kao,” said Mei-ling in a broken whisper, watching him unhook the handcuffs from her wrists. “Why are you here? And why are you dressed like that?”

  “I’ve come from Peking many times recently to do special work,” replied Kao guardedly. He stood up, waiting while his mother massaged her wrists; she was staring at him obsessively, still trying to come to terms with the shock of seeing him, and he became uncomfortable under her gaze. “I haven’t been able to help you before because the situation in Shanghai has been very confused. But you’ll be able to leave the cowshed and go home soon.”

  A large vacuum flask stood on the table beside two glass beakers and Kao quickly filled one of them with hot water from the flask. Handing it to his mother, he seated himself at the opposite side of the table and watched her sip the water.

  “The Cultural Revolution hasn’t gone well up to now in Shanghai,” he said in a low voice. “The Party leaders here have been very clever. They’ve deflected criticism from themselves by directing all the Red Guards to attack the easiest targets — intellectuals and rightists who’ve been publicly criticized in the past. That’s why you and a lot of your col
leagues were thrown into the cowshed at the conservatory.” He drew a deep breath and again an uncomfortable expression appeared in his eyes. “I’m sorry I had to let things take their course. I heard what was happening but you know how careful I have to be. It would be very easy for others to attack my own background if I gave any public cause for suspicion.”

  “There’s no need to apologize, Kao.” Mei-ling spoke almost inaudibly, dropping her gaze to stare into her glass. “Don’t worry about me. Your future is more important than anything else — you’re right to put your career and the Party first.”

  Kao gazed at his mother in consternation, wondering at her resilience. She was wearing dark blue cotton drabs and the stress of the past month showed clearly in the shadows beneath her eyes. But her hair, which was held back from her face with a single metal clip, was still lustrously dark, without any trace of gray, and the great beauty of her youth was visible in her slender figure and an almost unlined face that still remained striking in middle age.

  “Has it been very hard in the cowshed?” asked Kao quietly.

  Mei-ling continued to sip the hot water in silence, and when she replied she did not look at him. “Before the Cultural Revolution I was popular with my students. So I’m luckier than some teachers. But a few Red Guards are frightened of being attacked by their comrades — so they never let up on us.”

  “That will change now,” said Kao in a vehement undertone. “The Party leadership here is the most stubborn black gang in all China. So far they’ve survived by confusing the Red Guards and setting them at one another’s throats. But two million workers are entering the battle now to help overthrow them — they’ll form a great alliance and unify all the Red Guards. They’ll show the rest of China how to win victory in the Cultural Revolution.”

  The hard edge in Kao’s voice made Mei-ling raise her head to look at him. “From the jeep I saw big crowds of workers pasting up new slogans. Did you come here to organize them?”

  “It’s better if you don’t know what I’m doing,” he said softly. “Better for both of us.”

  Kao took off his cap and ran a hand distractedly through his hair. Laying his cap aside, he poured himself a glass of hot water from the flask and sipped it slowly.

  “You look very tired,” said Mei-ling, studying her son intently. “You should try to rest more.”

  “My work’s very important,” replied Kao quickly, looking away. “I don’t have much time to rest.”

  A silence fell between them and Mei-ling continued to look at her son. “I’m sorry we’ve spent so little time together in our lives, Kao,” she said at last, her voice little more than a whisper. “In some ways we’re like strangers. Even when you were small it was difficult. You had to grow up too much alone.”

  “Nonsense.” Kao rose restlessly from his seat and began pacing rapidly back and forth in the small roam. “In Yenan it was much more important for you to go on working for the revolution. It’s nobody’s fault that my father sacrificed his life fighting the Japanese. That’s something to be proud of. There’s nothing you need blame yourself for Kao pulled back the sleeve of his tunic to look impatiently at his watch. “It’s almost time for you to be taken back. I’ve arranged discreetly for your self-criticisms to be accepted now. A decision will be recorded that your attitude toward the Cultural Revolution has become ‘positive.’ You’ll be allowed to leave the cowshed and return to your home in a day or two. I’ll try to visit you soon. I’ll come at night so that my visit attracts no attention.”

  Mei-ling nodded and smiled. wearily. “Thank you for all you’ve done.”

  Kao halted awkwardly before her chair, taking the handcuffs from his pocket. “I’ll have to put these on you again. The same security policemen will come to escort you back to the cowshed in about half an hour’s time. Your ‘arrest for interrogation’ will be listed as an administrative error m sorry it has to be this way.”

  Mei-ling nodded blankly and Kao knelt to fasten the handcuffs onto her wrists once more. He had difficulty with the locking mechanism and when at last he succeeded in securing them, he sat back on his haunches, smiling uneasily. But she did not return his smile; instead she sat looking sadly back at him and suddenly he seized her manacled hands in both his own before rising to his feet and hurrying from the room. Mei-ling heard the door key scrape in the lock; then her son’s footsteps faded swiftly along the corridor. No other sound broke the stillness and she sat patiently on the chair in the silent room, awaiting the return of the men in the black jeep, with tears flowing uncontrollably down her cheeks.

  7

  It’s a pity you decided not to stay last night, Kao,” said Abigail gently in Chinese, looking at him over the rim of a glass of rice wine. “I think you really wanted to, didn’t you?”

  Kao set his own wineglass down on the table without taking his eyes from her face. “I had work to do after I left here last night, Abigail. But even if I hadn’t, it would have been dangerous for me to stay. If anybody found out about my visits here, they would be misunderstood. They would be used to attack me.”

  “You can rely absolutely on my discretion, I’ve told you that many times,” said Abigail with a quiet insistence. “Nothing will ever become known through me.”

  From the darkened Nanking Road outside Abigail’s apartment, the chants of passing Red Guard groups became intermittently audible through the closed and curtained windows, but neither Kao nor Abigail was paying them any attention. The small room in which they sat was comfortably fitted out with modern Chinese furniture and Abigail’s own small collection of blackwood antiques and scroll paintings; it was illuminated by a single beeswax candle set on the table between them and they continued looking intently at one another in its soft glow.

  “I feel at a disadvantage,” said Kao slowly. “You’ve already had a close friendship with a Chinese colleague. I’ve never known anybody from outside my own country.”

  “That friendship wasn’t important to me, I can see that now.” Abigail hesitated and her voice softened. “With you, Kao, I felt a very strong attraction from the moment we shook hands at Pei-Ta, The way you smiled at me stayed in my mind for a long time.” She picked up the flask of rice wine that stood at her elbow to refill his glass and a hint of mischief entered her expression. “Have I shocked you by what I’ve just said?”

  “That’s a pity. I think I’d quite like to shock you just a little sometime. You’re such a master at hiding your real feelings.”

  Kao smiled faintly but the intentness of his gaze provided silent confirmation of his own growing attraction to her. “Perhaps I try to hide my feelings because they are disturbing to me. I can’t stop myself looking at you tonight.”

  Abigail smiled in acknowledging the first direct compliment he had paid her. She had chosen her clothes with care, tying a bandanna of sea green silk around her blond hair to match a high-collared Chinese blouse of the same color embroidered with pink cherry blossom. She also wore soft, low-heeled green slippers and matching velvet trousers bought in England that flattered her long legs, and since Kao had only ever seen her previously in drab workaday denims and cotton shirts, the impact of her appearance on him had been noticeable from the moment he arrived_

  “I’m very glad to hear that, Kao,” she said softly. “When I saw you again in People’s Square I remembered at once the feeling I’d had nine years before at Pei-Ta. I can’t really describe it but it was . a little disturbing.” Abigail smiled and drew a long breath. “I don’t think I believe in fate, but it feels a little uncanny, almost as if our friendship was meant to happen. . .

  She watched him pick up his glass of rice wine and sip it, his eyes still intent upon her. His short-sleeved cream shirt was open at the neck and the navy high-necked tunic of his cadre’s uniform hung on the back of his chair where he had flung it on arrival. He had slipped up a back staircase that led to the apartment from a side street just after midnight and although there were obvious signs of strain and weariness in his
expression, in the candlelight his broad face seemed more compellingly handsome to Abigail than ever before.

  “Kao, I want you to know I believe in following my instincts, not worrying about what lies ahead.” She leaned across the table and brushed the back of one of his hands with her fingertips. “I’m not seeking any bargains for myself right now. In all this turmoil I want you to think of my apartment as an oasis where you can rest and relax — without any strings. Sometimes you need to get away from whatever you’re doing. I’m happy to respect our ‘no questions’ agreement about your work. I can see that’s vital — but I can also see something’s taking a great toll on you. So I want you to come here whenever you like. . . and go whenever you like.” She smiled warmly and her hand tightened on his. “And I hope sometimes you’ll want to stay. . .

  Kao did not move or react but sat looking down at the slender fingers which were tracing invisible patterns across his wrist. “You’re very remarkable, Abigail,” he said in a slightly unsteady voice. “You’re a beautiful woman, you speak excellent Chinese . . .“ He glanced around at the half-dozen empty dishes which had held delicacies of south China that she had prepared for them. “Even your mastery of Chinese cooking is admirable — yet you say you want no bargains for yourself.” His brow crinkled into a frown. “You seem too good to be true.”