Anthony Grey

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

  Left alone with her, Jakob suddenly found the silence and the statue like stillness of Mei-ling unnerving; a feeling of panic seized him but after a few moments he realized that all the agitation was inside himself. In Mei-ling’s eerie, unchanging posture there was a curious peacefulness — her expressionless face possessed a rare serenity, as though she had passed beyond all pain and anguish, and on becoming fully aware of this, Jakob felt at once calmed and soothed himself.

  “Mei-ling, it’s Jakob.” He spoke softly in Chinese, his voice breaking with emotion. “I’m very happy to see you again.”

  She gave no sign of having heard and he glanced quickly around the room. Its walls were painted a dull green and it contained a neatly made bed positioned against one wall, a small table covered with pale cloth, a locker, and a spare chair. On the table stood a large vacuum flask of hot water and a plastic beaker, but otherwise there were no signs of personal possessions.

  Picking up the vacant chair, Jakob moved it to the center of the room and sat down. But Mei-ling did not move or even blink: instead, she continued to look toward the window, her dark eyes fixed steadily ahead as though seeing something that remained invisible to others. Nothing indicated that she was aware of his presence in the room and Jakob stared at her in consternation. Close up, to his astonishment, she looked far younger than her years. Her complexion was unblemished, and there was a curiously youthful light in her unwavering gaze. It was as if in the absence of her reason, her soul had somehow repelled the ravages of time from her body and she radiated a startling and strangely ageless beauty. For several minutes they sat together without speaking — but although no words were uttered, an indefinable sense of communication seemed to Jakob to exist between them. The feeling intensified until it became almost unnerving and he spoke at last just to break the eerie silence.

  “I expect you already know, Mei-ling, that it’s the festival of Ch’ing Ming today,” he said in a quiet voice. “Hundreds of thousands of people are laying wreaths in Tien An Men Square for Premier Chou. It’s peaceful and very moving.” He watched her face intently as he spoke, searching for a flicker of expression in her eyes, but she gave no outward sign of having heard anything. “People are laying wreaths because they want a better future. They’re tired of political struggle. Chairman Mao is very ill. Changes are coming — changes for the better.”

  After another long silence the sudden sound of her voice startled him, although it was little more than a ‘whisper. Her lips scarcely moved and at first he was unable to distinguish what she was saying. Then he realized she was repeating one single phrase very slowly, over and over again.

  “Tsao fan yu Ii! Tsao fan yu Ii! Tsao fan yu Ii!”

  She continued to stare straight ahead and the whispered words seemed to rise automatically from her throat without any conscious act of will. She repeated the unchanging words of the old Cultural Revolution slogan “Rebellion is justified!” — a dozen or more times in the same soft, hoarse whisper; then, abruptly, she fell silent again, still without acknowledging Jakob’s existence.

  At her side, Jakob felt a deep sadness well up in him. Her ethereal beauty seemed to imbue the banal words with some new dimension of cruelty and he felt hot tears of compassion start in his eyes.

  “I saw Kao yesterday,” said Jakob on an impulse, leaning close to her again. “I told him how sorry I was for what happened in Shanghai. I said I’d never wanted to dishonor him. I told him our feelings for one another ran very deep.” Again he watched her face intently but still no trace of response appeared. “I saw your grandson, Ming, too. He seems a fine boy.”

  “P’ao ta si ling pu,” said Mei-ling softly. “P’ao Ia si ling pu! P’ao ta si ling pu!”

  Her words were clearer this time but she spoke in a remote, faraway tone that seemed to echo the intonation of a voice other than her own. “P’ao Ia si ling pu!” — “Bombard the headquarters!” she said again and continued to repeat the quotation until her voice reached a kind of crescendo. But all the time she remained motionless on her chair, her hands lying quietly in her lap, and when at last she fell silent, Jakob reached out and gently took hold of one of them.

  “Mei-ling, I don’t know whether you can understand anything I say. I hope you can.” He gazed beseechingly at her, swept by a feeling of great helplessness and loss. “I want you to know I’ve never forgotten you. I’ve never forgotten the great love I felt for you during those terrible days on the Long March. I told Kao yesterday that I’ve never stopped loving you He couldn’t understand and I don’t blame him. It’s impossible for him. But I know you felt as I did and I know why you had to turn away from me. You’ve been truly brave and constant. You’ve done nothing to deserve your terrible suffering.”

  Jakob felt tears overflow onto his cheeks, yet Mei-ling made no response. Her lips were moving soundlessly but he sensed that she was still attempting to utter only the meaningless slogans of the past. Lifting one of her hands, he pressed his lips despairingly against her fingers; they were cool and smooth and he held her hand against his face for a long time.

  “Mei-ling, perhaps you don’t know ... but this building was once a school. I studied Chinese here when I was only twenty years old Jakob’s voice broke. “Coming back to find you here ... has brought to life something very valuable that’s been dead inside me for years

  Overcome by his anguish and complex feelings he little understood, Jakob detached his hand from hers and rose to his feet. Looking down at her, he felt as though his heart might burst, and he turned and hurried blindly to the door. Before opening it, he glanced around at Mei-ling, and to his astonishment he saw that a quiet, seraphic smile had come to her face. She was still staring toward the window but the blank expression had gone and her features were transfigured by the smile. Then, for the first time since he had entered the room, she moved, turning her head to look in his direction. Lifting the hand he had kissed, she pressed the back of it gently against her cheek, and holding it there, she continued to gaze toward him. Even then he was not sure whether she saw or recognized him, but in the same moment she was both an eerily beautiful and deeply tragic figure and Jakob could not take his eyes from her.

  “May God bless you, Mei.-ling,” he whispered. “May God bless you always.”

  The words sounded strange in his own ears because he had not uttered them for so many years, and how long he stood there looking at her he could not later recall. Eventually the dazzling intensity of her expression became unbearable for him to look on, and with great reluctance he turned and left the room. After closing the door behind him, the Iovely frozen smile remained vividly in his mind’s eye and he carried the memory of it away with him along the shabby passageway, knowing that it would remain etched in his heart for as long as he lived.

  5

  A dense pall of black smoke drifting low across the Square of Heavenly Peace obscured the weak April sun as Jakob ran toward the Monument to the People’s Heroes. Orange flames were leaping from the wreck of an overturned bus on a nearby road and the air was filled by a tumult of shouting. The sudden explosion of the bus’s gas tank sent flames shooting high into the air, setting several ornamental pine trees alight close to the memorial, and in the distance Jakob heard the clamorous bells of approaching fire engines.

  Bewildered-looking factory militiamen wearing red arm bands and carrying long wooden staves were trying to throw a loose cordon around the southern end of the giant square, but they were overwhelmingly outnumbered and clearly lacked the discipline and experience to carry out such a demanding task successfully. As he ran, Jakob saw long columns of People’s Liberation Army troops moving past the Museum of Chinese History at a fast jog-trot; they carried no arms and he guessed they were being moved to positions in adjoining buildings as a precaution. Although the militia forces of the capital were known to be under the direct control of Chiang Ch’ing and her radical supporters, new waves of students and workers converging from all directions were ignoring their shouted orders
to turn back from the square and a crowd already tens of thousands strong was growing rapidly. Tussles were breaking out between the demonstrators and the outnumbered militia, and Jakob saw jeering bands of students tear off the arm bands of several militiamen and trample them derisively underfoot.

  Some groups of demonstrators were chanting “Long live Chou En-lai!” in rhythmic unison as they ran, and others yelled “Long live Yang Kai-hui! Down with the Dowager Empress!” From the tall, grape-cluster streetlights in the square, beribboned portraits of Chou En-lai swung in the stiff wind alongside many streamers that now all carried the same warning: “We swore to protect Chou En-lai and his successors and we’ll fight a bloody battle to the end!” Adulatory wall posters referring to Chou En-lai as “our beloved father” had been pasted on the concrete bases of the lamps, and as he drew nearer to the memorial, Jakob could see that hundreds of Public Security Bureau police in khaki caps and jackets had linked arms around its upper plinth and were trying to hold back the yelling crowd. The central obelisk of the monument, which twenty-four hours earlier had been smothered in commemorative wreaths, was now starkly naked of all adornment, and it was clear that this was the cause of the crowd’s anger.

  Jakob had been taking a late breakfast in the Peking Hotel when he overheard other foreign guests speaking excitedly of demonstrations that were apparently being mounted in protest against the overnight removal of the wreaths by security police. Leaving his food unfinished, he had returned quickly to his room to fetch a camera, then hurried out into Chang An Boulevard. On catching sight of the great cloud of black smoke wafting toward the Forbidden City, he had begun to run with the streams of demonstrators that were moving urgently toward Tien An Men Square. Although the square had been the scene of many spectacular parades and rallies since 1949, political riots were unheard of there, and among the crowds Jakob again noticed groups of foreign diplomats and journalists surreptitiously carrying cameras and tape-recording machines. Because foreigners with cameras had frequently been hounded by Red Guard mobs during the Cultural Revolution, Jakob had taken the precaution of hanging his camera around his neck and buttoning the front of his overcoat over it; some of the diplomats and foreign correspondents were taking similar precautions, he saw, and all of them were behaving with discretion, noting the details of slogan signs and written wall posters without stopping ostentatiously to read them.

  Above the shouts and chants of the milling crowd in the square, the voice of one student leader could be clearly heard. He had climbed to the lower plinth of the memorial and was speaking through a megaphone. His address was being interrupted by frequent bursts of cheering, and when another demonstrator clambered over the cordon of security policemen holding aloft a large colored portrait of Chou En-lai, the cheers turned to roars of approval and applause. To hear better what the youth was saying, Jakob pushed his way through the crowd until he reached the balustrades guarding the steps of the lower plinth, and there he pressed himself against the stonework, listening intently to the speech.

  “Some false Marxists who follow the Dowager Empress have tried to stop us reaching this memorial today, comrades,” he yelled. “They want to stop us because they’re very frightened! They know that we, the people, are determined to defend Premier Chou’s legacy — but they’re conducting an underhanded conspiracy to get rid of Premier Chou’s chosen successor. They’re trying to burn the plans of Comrade Teng Hsiao-ping to turn China into a great industrial nation. . . . But we’re not going to allow them to commit these crimes, arc we, comrades?”

  The crowd roared “No!” and surged forward against the security cordon again. In the melee the megaphone was wrenched away from the student speaker and new scuffles with the police and militia broke out on the steps. Jakob had to struggle to keep his feet and all around him groups of demonstrators began to fight one another, using staves they had torn from the hands of militiamen. Over their heads Jakob saw that other gangs of demonstrators had halted the approaching fire engines and that flames were still leaping from the wrecked bus and the grove of pine trees. A group of European journalists trying to get close-up pictures of the fires were set upon by the mob, and within moments their cameras and tape recorders were ripped from their hands. On the western side of the square a mob of several thousand demonstrators was converging on the tall bronze doors of the Great Hall of the People; troops with bayonets fixed to their rifles were trying to bar their way beneath the twelve massive pillars, but the racing mob swept them aside and ran up the steps to hammer on the doors. In the rush, shiny official limousines standing at the foot of the steps were rolled over onto their roofs and overexcited youths leapt up to dance on the undersides of the vehicles.

  “Chou En-lai opposed Chairman Mao all his life!” yelled a new male voice and Jakob turned back, startled, toward the memorial to find that another student leader had sprung up onto the balustrade. A small group of supporters was steadying his legs as he addressed the crowd through the captured megaphone and others were fighting off hostile demonstrators who were trying to pull him down. “Chou En-lai’s so-called successor is of the same stripe! He wants to take the capitalist road and make us dependent on foreign goods and foreign technology! He wants to turn the Clock back to. the time when China was dependent on foreign imperialism! He wants to split the Central Committee and incite people to demonstrate on the strength of rumors and lies....”

  A fresh howl of rage arose from the crowd and a determined rush broke the line of security police in a dozen places; the student holding the megaphone was seized and dragged bodily onto the upper plinth of the memorial, where furious supporters of Chou En-lai battered him mercilessly about the face and head with captured staves. The Public Security Bureau cordon collapsed under the assault and many of the policemen were trampled underfoot by the mob as it stormed back onto the monument. Jakob was flung against one of the revolutionary bas-reliefs and he clung there as yelling students clambered over him. Looking up, he saw demonstrators rip the shirt from the critic of Chou En-lai and bind his arms tightly behind him with a loop of wire. Others rained blows on him relentlessly until blood flowed down his face and body. Stripped to the waist, he was dragged roughly up and down the steps while other frenzied youths kicked him and struck at him with their bare fists. Some of his supporters had also been bound and stripped half-naked and they were beaten with the same terrible ferocity until they too hung limp and senseless in their captors’ arms.

  A new pall of smoke caught Jakob’s eye and he looked up to find that a building in the southeast corner of the square was on fire. Flames were shooting from its lower windows and demonstrators with improvised battering rams were smashing down doors along its entire frontage. From the same direction Jakob saw a squad of about a hundred militiamen marching fast toward the memorial in a double column, escorting half a dozen civilian cadres in their midst. It was obvious that the officials were being sent to appeal for calm, and as the militia bodyguard forced its way through the turbulent mass of people thronging the monument, Jakob saw Kao. Grim-faced and determined, Kao was marching at the head of the cadres, and the moment they reached the foot of the steps he raised a voice amplifier of his own and shouted in the direction of the melee on the higher plinth. At first the demonstrators on the memorial took no notice, but on hearing his authoritative voice, a large part of the crowd quieted and Kao called out again, more loudly.

  “Cease this struggle!” he commanded in a ringing voice. “You’re being exploited by troublemakers who support those taking the capitalist road! . . .They like to divide the masses and play different groups off against one another! . . . You’re helping them to sabotage production and undermine the revolution. . . . You must resolve your differences by discussion!”

  The leaders of the riot hesitated, staring down uncertainly at Kao. From his unobtrusive position clinging to the side of the monument, Jakob saw a look of satisfaction appear on Kao’s face and for several seconds a near-silence reigned; but then one of the leaders p
ointedly detached a long loop of wire from the wrists of an unconscious prisoner and raised it menacingly above his head. He held the pose for a second or two before yelling a new command at the top of his voice and flinging himself headlong down the steps toward Kao. His supporters followed in a torrent, engulfing the militia guards in a mass of struggling bodies. The militiamen tried to close around Kao and the other officials, but the furious demonstrators easily broke through their ranks. They seized Kao, pinioning his arms, and with a shout of triumph their leader flung the wire noose over his head. Using both hands, he drew the wire right and Jakob saw Kao’s eyes bulge from his head in terror as it bit deep into his neck.

  Kao tried to cry out but only an animalistic choking noise escaped his lips as he was dragged up the steps of the monument. The leader of the rioters strained at the wire noose, tightening it vindictively, and the crowd went quiet, aware suddenly that an important official was being strangled to death before their eyes. Kao’s arms and legs thrashed wildly for a second or two; then he went limp as his captors hauled him onto the topmost plinth and spun him around, holding him up by the wire noose like a human puppet. Noticing that his tongue had begun to protrude from his mouth and his eyes had closed, Jakob shouted out with the full force of his lungs and scrambled up onto one of the balustrades.