Anthony Grey

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

  The daylight was growing and he turned reluctantly away and began walking down the hill toward the Forbidden City. For as long as he could, he kept his gaze fixed on the spellbinding vision of the blossom and the golden palaces spread out below, absorbing their exquisite beauty into his soul. When he entered the shadows beneath the trees the magic, revelational moments slipped gently into the past, but Jakob knew instinctively that the memory of them would remain with him always, a clear, sweet source of certainty and hope amid the painful regrets that had marred his past.

  8

  We have no yak meat to offer you this time — but there is tea!” Mao Tse-tung tried to gesture toward a low table that bore a tea tray but his right arm could only flap ineffectually against his side. For a brief moment a vacuous smile flickered across features that were waxen and pallid but it dissolved abruptly as if it had already cost too much effort.

  “That’s all right — I prefer tea to yak meat anyway.”

  Jakob spoke his Chinese slowly and smiled as two female nurses stepped forward to assist the tottering leader of China to an armchair in the outer study of the single-storied Ming pavilion where he lived. Three official Chinese photographers had already recorded the formal greeting which the chairman of China’s Communist Party had accorded Jakob on his arrival, waiting dutifully until the nurses had helped him up before taking their flash pictures. But Mao’s scrawny hand had felt cold and limp in Jakob’s grasp and when the nurses took him by the arms to help seat him once more, Jakob noticed that he meekly allowed them to position and maneuver him as they wished, without protesting.

  “My modest home is not as spectacular as the great tower of Chokechi . . . but it’s a little more comfortable.” Mao sagged down into the chair with his arms hanging over its sides, looking like a giant puppet whose strings had ben suddenly loosened. His gray tunic, buttoned high at his scraggy throat, hung on him like a tent, and as he mumbled his words, the vacuous smile appeared again. “We no longer need to sleep in hammocks And we won’t make you cross the Great Grasslands again after you leave here.”

  Jakob smiled politely once more in response. Although he had already indicated he was happy to converse in Chinese, two interpreters with notebooks and pencils sat on small stools behind Mao’s chair, bending forward anxiously to catch his soft, badly slurred Hunanese speech. Whenever he said anything, they anxiously jotted notes, then, in case Jakob had not understood, they read them back in slow, clear “national language.” A cadre was discreetly operating a tape recorder on a small table to the rear and after Jakob had been waved to an armchair on Mao’s right hand, another young, anonymous Chinese in a cadre’s tunic entered unobtrusively and sat down on Mao’s left.

  “When we met last, didn’t we discuss the difficulties of your Christian missionary work in China hose days seem long ago...”

  Mao’s head waggled on his wasted neck and his eyelids drooped with fatigue. Looking at him closely, Jakob felt sure he had only recently risen from his sickbed for the meeting. At one moment he mumbled his words toward his chest, at another his head fell weakly backward to rest against the white antimacassar on the chair behind him.

  “I still have the copy of your poem ‘Mountains,’ which you gave me at Chokechi,” said Jakob. “It hangs on my office wall in Hong Kong.”

  Mao looked blearily at him. “Enough time has passed since Chokechi to turn an eager Chinese revolutionary into a tired old man.

  But hasn’t the truth of our conversation at the fortress been proved by the years

  “Perhaps.” Jakob turned in his chair to face the ailing Chinese leader. “But perhaps not. It wouldn’t be .vise to underestimate how long a seed of truth can lie hidden before sprouting.”

  One claw like hand lifted briefly from the arm of the chair in a dismissive gesture. “In 1966 virtually every Bible in China was confiscated and destroyed by the proletarian revolutionaries. Everything else connected with old superstitions was also swept away

  Jakob smiled gently. “Refugees in Hong Kong still tell stories of prayer meetings held secretly in many country villages. Pages torn from the few Bibles that survived are passed round. I’ve heard that baptisms too are still sometimes performed in mountain streams.”

  Mao gave no indication that he had heard or understood Jakob; his clouded eyes were fixed vacantly on one of the long windows of the old Ming dwelling beyond which time waters of Chung Nan Hai — the Central and South lakes — sparkled in the afternoon sunshine. Known originally as the Small Pavilion of the Fragrant Concubine, the house had once been a modest dwelling set aside for a Board of Rites mandarin and its windows afforded a panoramic view of the terraces, marble balustrades, and lookout pavilions that bordered the lakes. The walls of the room itself were hung with a few scroll paintings of mountain scenes but otherwise its furnishings were austere and Jakob had immediately recognized the setting for the formal photographs that had invariably appeared on the front of the People’s Daily whenever Mao granted an audience to an important foreign guest.

  Jakob had been summoned there himself at only a few minutes’ notice when an official limousine was sent to collect him from the Peking Hotel just after lunch. But although from inside the room the setting seemed timeless and peaceful, Jakob knew that at least a battalion of troops in full modern battle order was patrolling among the willows and cypresses outside. The entrance to the Chung Nan E-lai compound west of the Forbidden City had been heavily guarded by troops ostentatiously armed with grenades and submachine guns, and as Jakob’s limousine negotiated the winding drive that led to the house, he had spotted concentrations of soldiers and camouflaged armored personnel carriers deployed among the lakeside trees.

  “I said the last time we met that there can be no Christian ‘brotherly love’ while different classes exist.” Mao returned his distracted gaze from the glittering lake to his visitor, and his blurred eyes lingered briefly on the dressing on Jakob’s forehead and the white bandage around his injured hand. “It was true then and it’s true today. Class struggle is still the key link to future progress — everything else hinges on it.”

  “I believe exactly the opposite to be true,” said Jakob. “All of us need to seek what unites us with our fellow man — not what divides us from him. Fanaticism breeds fanaticism. Virtually every revolution in the world has left behind a legacy of hatred and suffering.” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “In the days when I was a missionary I would have said it more simply: ‘Love Cod and love thy neighbor.’ I’m no longer a missionary and haven’t been for many years. But today I believe more strongly than ever that if those two simple commandments could be implemented, a true revolution of the spirit would sweep the whole world and change it for the better...”

  Mao struggled upright in his chair, his face contorting with the effort. Strangled sounds devoid of any meaning came from his throat and Jakob saw that his nurses and interpreters were watching him with anxious expressions. For a moment he stared at the floor, breathing quickly as though gathering himself; then he leaned toward Jakob, resting an elbow unsteadily on his knee.

  “There is struggle within the Party,” Lie croaked. “The struggle between two lines has never ceased and will never cease. I was always in a minority — but I have always won victory in the end.

  Even when you first marched with the Red Army, I was ignored. When the journey of twenty thousand Ii began, I was a minority of one. But the minority overcame the majority by waging a fierce class struggle He paused, breathing erratically, and his voice sank to a near-whisper. “On the Long March the revolution burst fully into life. You were a witness. After I’m gone the struggle must continue — or all the victories of the revolution will be lost!”

  Jakob stared in dismay at the dying man before him. His jowls were quivering uncontrollably and his rheumy eyes had grown dementedly wide. The crumpled, senile features bore no resemblance to that gaunt, powerful face which in the light of a rapeseed-oil lamp at Chokechi had glowed with the force and
quiet inner strength of a brazen Eastern god. It was not only age, Jakob saw suddenly, that had robbed that face of its essence; the power, the stillness, the balance, had all been sacrificed to the impersonal, loveless creed which had long since become a merciless obsession. All that was left in the sagging, empty shell of a face was a profound, barely suppressed fear — a fear of death and a greater, paralyzing fear that his own life’s certainties would be found wanting and reduced to nothing when he was no longer present to enforce them.

  “It wasn’t class struggle which brought the revolution to life on the Long March,” said Jakob in an even voice. “I believe it was something more elemental. When you led the Red Army through the remote mountain regions of China, you walked back by chance into the ancient past. You reentered the primeval world where man was part of nature and still intensely aware of his creator. You fasted and starved and slept on the bare earth. You warmed your backs against great trees, ate bark and grass and small animals. The rain and the sun nourished you — body, soul, and spirit. You suffered the extreme heat of summer and the cold of winter, sometimes on successive days, and I suffered them with you. But the earth’s physical and spiritual energies always sustained you through all those impossible hardships because in the wilderness you drew closer together with your fellow men than you’d ever done before — or since. Your instincts sensed that all humanity and its creator were one indivisible spirit, along with the earth and everything in it. That’s why you felt exhilarated and were able day after day to live on nothing more substantial than your imagination, your optimism, and a furious hope for the future. The simple peasants of China who’ve never ceased to live instinctive lives followed you because they recognized a rare, inspirational spirit. They sensed the greatness of the soul in you . .

  Mao had flopped back, exhausted, in his chair and was staring goggle-eyed at Jakob. His lower jaw had slackened and his mouth gaped open. The eyes of the interpreters and the young Chinese cadre shifted uneasily from Jakob to Mao and back again, but they made no attempt to intervene.

  “At dawn today I went to Ching Shan Hill and sat in the pavilion at the top,” continued Jakob, speaking slowly and clearly. “The new spring blossom and the beauty of the palaces in the dawn light made me more conscious of the divine nature of all things than I’ve ever been before. The feeling was beyond words, but in those moments, many things fell into place for me. On the Long March you wrote noble poems to the mountains — and kindly gave me a copy of one, which I’ve always retained as a prized possession. Perhaps your poetry was the nearest you came to acknowledging with your conscious mind what your instinctive nature already knew. I’m sure now that the last great journey will be a long march inward, into man’s own soul, to seek out his own true nature and his relationship to God. . . . And only at the end of that long march will men be able to renew their links with one another

  Jakob paused, considering what he was about to say with great care.

  “Unfortunately, many other great leaders have been blinded by the selfish desire for power — but your instincts spoke out many times independently. You’ve talked often of trying to ‘touch the very souls’ of the Chinese people. You’ve tried to change human nature for the better, urging others to make unselfishness and self-sacrifice a way of life, just as it was on the Long March. But for the past forty years you’ve set yourself above those ideals. They were never proclaimed in the name of the profound truths of the Long March. Your exhortations have always been aimed at glorifying the destructiveness of class struggle and the material needs of the revolution.

  You taught conflict, hatred, and cruelty instead of love and understanding. You created a spiritual vacuum in your people — but one day I’m sure it will fill again with an awareness of their own spirituality.” Jakob paused again and drew in his breath slowly. “I believe no lasting changes will be achieved in China or anywhere else in the world until political leaders with some unselfish understanding of the human spirit emerge. People everywhere long for such leaders — in time I’m sure their waiting will be rewarded.”

  A hush fell in the room as Jakob finished speaking. Mao’s mouth still hung loosely open as he hunched in his chair and he gave no sign that he had heard or understood what had been said. Then he made a guttural sound in his throat, but no intelligible words emerged. Making a greater effort, he shook his shoulders and a strange roaring sound came from him. He clutched at the arms of his chair with both hands and seemed to be trying to rise; the roaring noise continued growing louder, and the two nurses who had been standing at the back of the room hurried forward anxiously to bend over him.

  Gradually he quieted arid when the nurses stepped aside, Jakob saw that Mao was gazing blankly toward the windows again. There was a moment or two of uneasy silence; then the young cadre on his left rose from his chair. With a hurried gesture the cadre indicated to Jakob that the audience was at an end and he was ushered outside. On the way to the waiting limousine, Jakob turned to look back. Between them the interpreters and nurses were trying to help Mao from the room — but he was staggering and clutching at them for support, and just before he stepped into the limousine, Jakob heard the unintelligible roaring noise begin again.

  9

  Kao was sweating and an anxious frown furrowed his brow as he closed the courtyard gate behind him and hurried into his house. Inside, his wife, I-ping, was carrying a plate of cold vegetables to the dining table and he greeted her distractedly before entering a small washroom, where he splashed water onto his face. The moist, clammy heat of late July had plastered his short-sleeved shirt damply against his back and he changed it before taking his place at the table. When his son, Ming, appeared from another room and ran to greet him, he patted his head affectionately but continued to eat quickly and mechanically without taking any pleasure in the act.

  “You look worried, Kao.” I-ping sat down opposite him and lifted the boy onto her lap. “What’s wrong?”

  “Things are going from bad to worse.” Kao continued to eat rapidly, speaking between mouthfuls. “Two more banks were robbed in Wuhan today. . . .Textile workers have gone on strike in Kwangtung province. . . . And the Street gangs are fighting again in Tientsin.”

  “Have you got to return to your post straightaway?”

  “Yes.” Kao nodded. “On top of everything else I’ve had some very worrying reports from the Seismology Bureau this afternoon.”

  “The Seismology Bureau?” The tone of I-ping’s voice betrayed her concern. “What do the reports say?”

  Kao looked up at his wife with a worried expression. “It looks as though there might be a serious earthquake soon.”

  “Where, Kao?”

  “Somewhere here in the northeast perhaps — but you must keep this strictly to yourself. In Shantung many villages have suffered plagues of rats and snakes over the past week. In Liaoning and Hopeh the lakes and rivers are full of dead fish. All these things point to the kind of chemical changes and increased temperatures underground which usually precede earthquakes.”

  His wife’s face tightened with alarm. “Is anything being done to warn people?”

  Kao shook his head grimly. “The leadership doesn’t want to cause unnecessary panic. Things are bad enough already because of all the uncertainty.”

  I-ping watched him eat in silence for a while, biting her lip with apprehension. Then she gestured toward a square brown-paper package tied with string on a side table. “That parcel arrived this afternoon. It was brought by a pedicab driver. It’s addressed to you but it’s marked ‘For Ming.’

  Kao nodded absently and continued eating in silence. When he had finished he got up from the table and crossed the room to pick up the parcel. After peering at the label with a puzzled expression, he tore open the outer wrapping and lifted a black and white toy panda and a sealed white envelope from the cardboard box inside. The envelope contained a single sheet of paper covered in hand written Chinese characters, and it read:

  Dear Kao,

&n
bsp; Please accept this toy for Ming with my very best wishes. I saw my father for the first time in ten years when he came to Peking recently. He told me he’d visited you and met Ming briefly and I learned from him where you were living. I’m teaching at the Foreign Languages Institute but I haven’t tried to get in touch before in case it seemed like an intrusion. Seeing my father again and learning that you were married wish a young son made me realize how much time had passed since we last met. Perhaps it will be possible for me to meet little Ming and your wife when time allows. I feel now that I would like that very much. I hope you’re all well.

  Very sincerely,

  Abigail Kellner

  Kao crumpled the letter in his hand as soon as he read it and made to throw it into a nearby wastepaper basket.

  “Who is the package from?” asked his wife from the table.

  Kao checked himself in the act of throwing the letter away and pushed it uneasily into his trouser pocket instead. “It was sent by an Englishwoman who teaches at the Foreign Languages Institute. . . . She and her father were friends of my mother a long time ago. He visited us briefly in April, remember?”

  “How kind of her to send Ming a gift.”

  “The gift is of no consequence,” snapped Kao. “We don’t need such presents from foreigners — it can be thrown away.”