[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.“Come on, comrades,” called Marshal Lu Chiao several times in a fierce whisper.“Keep moving! Keep moving!”Kao saw Chiao wave one arm rapidly in a circle to speed up the burly men crowding along the low-roofed tunnel, but he remained stationary himself and continued to cover the niche with his body until the last of them had hurried past.Then, without speaking or turning to look behind him, he hurried after them.A moment or two later, Kao heard several rapid bursts of automatic- weapons fire from the head of the tunnel and confused shouts rang out from the garden above.More prolonged firing followed and after listening for a moment or two, Kao pulled himself wearily to his feet and stumbled away in the opposite direction.23Jakob ran up the stairs of Abigail’s apartment block and knocked breathlessly on her door.No sound of movement came from inside and he glanced quickly at his wristwatch; he had made two previous visits without getting any response and now it was almost one A.M.He knocked again without much hope, gazing around the landing at the temporary steel supports which had been wedged in place to strengthen the damaged staircase.The sight of the ugly structural cracks left by the earthquake only served to heighten his growing sense of anxiety and he knocked pointlessly on the closed door once more.“I think Miss Kellner is away,” said a female voice tentatively, and Jakob turned to find that the door of the adjoining apartment had opened.The dark-haired Polish girl whom Abigail had rescued during the earthquake was wearing a dressing gown over her nightclothes and she looked as if she had been wakened by his knocking.“Do you know where she’s gone?” asked Jakob in a dismayed voice.“I’m her father.I’ve just arrived in Peking unexpectedly.”“She’s gone to Tientsin to give a special course of instruction to Chinese teachers.I think she’ll be away several days.But I’ll give her a message when she returns, if you wish.”“Thank you.” Jakob took out his wallet and quickly jotted the name and telephone number of his hotel on a business card.“Please ask her to call me as soon as she returns.”Jakob apologized profusely for disturbing the girl, then hurried down the stairs to his waiting taxi and asked the driver to take him again to Nan Chihtze.He had returned to Kao’s address earlier only to find the partly rebuilt house as empty and deserted as on his first visit.He had no real expectation of finding anyone there in the middle of the night, but his anxiety had reached such a pitch that he felt compelled to make another effort, however futile, to locate Kao.As the taxi headed eastward Jakob peered uneasily out through its windows, searching for signs of tension.Gray-uniformed militiamen carrying staves were patrolling visibly in pairs in the side streets where some families still slept under open-sided tarpaulin awnings, and an occasional covered army truck drove swiftly along Chang An, carrying apparently unarmed troops.Once or twice he saw military jeeps scurrying across distant intersections, but there was no other outward indication of any unseen struggle taking place and Jakob’s feeling of helplessness became almost suffocating.At Nan Chihtze, Kao’s house still stood dark and unattended and there was no reply to his knocking.He wandered irresolutely around the shadowy courtyard for several minutes; then, baffled and at a loss, he returned to the hotel and stretched out fully dressed on his bed.But he could not sleep, and every time he heard a vehicle moving in Chang An, he rose and hurried to the window to look out.At about four A.M.he watched a curtained military car race westward past the hotel at high speed and he stared after it dully, listening to the sound of its engine dying away in the distance.When silence returned to the small room again, the waiting became unbearable and he snatched up his topcoat and strode toward the door, even though he had no idea of what he might do or where he might go.In that instant a tiny shutter seemed to open subliminally in his mind, revealing a fleeting image that was gone before he could fully identify it.He stopped in midstride and stared at the blank wall of the room, certain suddenly of where he must go and astonished that he had not thought of it before.Opening his bedroom door quietly, he hurried to the rear stairs and, after descending to the ground floor, made his way silently through the darkness of the hotel grounds to a side street.Walking rapidly, he hurried to Wang Fu Ching, then turned north in the direction of the old Joint Missionary Language School.24Everything reactionary is the same,” whispered Mei-ling in her soft, faraway voice.“if you don’t hit it, it won’t fall!”Although dawn was only just breaking outside the window, she was already fully dressed and seated on her lonely chair in the middle of the room.Her face was tranquil and composed, her hair impeccably dressed in neat twin braids, and in the half-light, with her smooth face turned toward the window as usual, she looked more than ever like a young girl.Standing inside the closed door of her room, Kao swayed slightly on his feet as he looked at her.His hair was disheveled and there was a trickle of dried blood on his face where he had struck his head when falling in the tunnel leading down from the villa.His cadre’s tunic was covered in dust and crumpled from the hour or two of sleep he had snatched hidden among the sacks of grain in one of the underground granaries — but his strange appearance had made no noticeable impression on his mother.When he let himself quietly into her room she had not even turned her head; he had stood there, dizzy with fatigue, for two or three minutes but she had only murmured occasional meaningless quotations, as she would have done if the room had been empty.“Mother, it’s Kao,” he said in a voice that was little more than a croak.“It’s finished for me.It’s all over.”Although there was a faint sound in the corridor outside the door, he took no notice, for he no longer cared whether anybody overheard him or not.The sense of release from lifelong pretense, which he had experienced in the tunnel, had left him with a curiously excited, light-headed feeling.On arrival at the front door, the staff had tried to prevent him from entering and he had realized vaguely that they must be alarmed by his appearance; but because of a strange new inner certainty that he no longer needed to worry about the future, he had made open threats about what wrath would fall upon the asylum from the Party headquarters if they denied him entry to see his mother, and the duty doctors had reluctantly allowed him in.“Don’t you understand what I said, Mother? It’s all over.My career in the Party is finished! Many people have been arrested in the night
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]