Avenue of Eternal Peace (18 page)

Gradually the mountain slope was cast into glitterless shadow, gloomy and cold, and Clarence and Autumn retreated. It was dark when they reached the grove above Prince Chun's tomb where they rested, and Clarence lit a match to peer at his guidebook:

When the heavy shadows close in on this deep walled valley, where the sun rises hours later and sets hours earlier than it does below on the open plains, and dim the burning blue of the wild larkspurs, ghostly shrieks are heard so the peasants say; war cries of the wild Khitans who knew no law but the sword, no home but the saddle, no faith but the ‘Black Magic' of their ‘Shaman' priests.

They squatted in their greatcoats in the grassed-over bunker of the ruined fort. They dared not light a fire. There were some fruit and biscuits left, some cigarettes, and a pocket flask of whisky. Listening for the howling of wolves, they heard no noise but the wind that wailed from on high or rustled with the spirit of Prince Chun. The clear sky lit by moon and stars was the property of a ruler from whom no secrets were hid, and seemed to promise a universe that would run with the unmysterious precision of a jewelled timepiece, if the mortal would only give up trying to understand and simply salute its power; a fascist brightness, to which ordinary people were of no greater significance than rabbits or sheep.

Clarence and Autumn felt ordinary and animal—tired, sun-exhausted, not quite satisfied by their food, light-headed and drowsy from the whisky; and cold. They squeezed closer to each other and were nodding asleep like Tweedledum and Tweedledee when Clarence suggested they should improvise a bed and stretch out.

He pulled off his greatcoat and laid it on the ground, stuffed the panniers with dry grass as pillows, and got Autumn's greatcoat to provide a cover. They lay down side by side on one greatcoat, Clarence cupping Autumn to his shape, and settled the other greatcoat round their shoulders. Their lower legs stuck out. Heat, the heat of the day, flowed from one body to the other. Smelling of sweat, with heavy breath and heartbeat, they nestled close, like two puppies. Clarence's hand found the burning hot skin under Autumn's t-shirt, and followed the smooth hard stomach to the tight knot of his navel. Autumn poked his bum into Clarence's groin. Clarence grunted in surprised, excited assent. The full moon was like bath water glistening on the bare patches of their skin as the greatcoat covering slipped off. Distant, totalitarian, arctic was the sky. They turned their backs to it. Autumn's nose pressed the ground. Clarence's mouth rootled in Autumn's hair. Face downwards, they were hot and animal in their hidden burrow of earth. They stirred again only when the new sun melted into existence across the plain.

6

Wally returned from another fruitless search for the opera company. The magnolia was in blowsy bloom, its scent seeping into his stale quarters. He had suggested to Song that he would like to organise a dinner and include Jin Juan and Zhang, but Song said that it would not be appropriate, and added hastily that Jin Juan had gone to visit her family in the South. Summer was all in the air and he needed a companion. He needed Jin Juan who spoke the language with such sophistication that she could satisfy his questions with answers, he needed her to create a sense of contact, he needed her to give him China. As he went round Beijing he couldn't stop believing he might accidentally come across her. In the evenings he went to the opera. But once again tonight there was no sign of Jin Juan in the audience, nor of Azalea among the screeching beauties on stage. Disgruntled in his armchair, he placed Retta's diary on his lap as the only thing guaranteed to seduce him.

Today great excitement. Patriarch Lu has purchased a cannon. Whisperings have been abroad for months. His son has been writing letters to men in the South—scholars they call them. And then his nephew was sent out to complete the transaction. One knows not whether the nephew is sly or gullible. Certainly he is not to be trusted, but charity attributes his untrustworthiness to weak judgement rather than intentional malice. His face is long, unhappy. From his eyes one might suspect him of weeping in private. Why? The son is a far more wholesome creature. But nephew was entrusted with the arrangements and working through middlemen of doubtful reputation purchased the beauty from a yet more dishonest Yankee. The cannon is a Krupp. Perhaps it came direct from Hong Kong on that rotten little low-bottomed boat that stuck in the mud today as she sidled towards the shore. Much hilarity as coolies drowned like ducks shouldered the inestimable Prussian treasure onto a flat barge to bring her on land. Patriarch Lu sent out the klaxons, drums and gongs, and bangers were set off incessantly to welcome the brute. There is no secret about his new toy, less (W. surmises) because of his boastfulness than to warn the Magistrate. He struts around in a tight silk sheath like a pig who has managed to stand on hind legs. On whose side is the Patriarch? Peg calls him Uncle.

A minor catastrophe. Every day they play with the cannon yet not so much as a pop comes out. Lionel is full of excitement. I climb the wall with him and Baby to look down on the parade ground. Patriarch Lu has a band of youths drilling each morning. They do a special kind of exercise, waving their arms and silver swords through the air in slow motion, that is believed to make them invincible to bullets. Foreign bullets? Just to be on the safe side they also have the cannon. For the first few days the mere presence of the beast was imposing enough. No one knew how it worked, so a great range of capacities could be attributed. Then loss of face set in. A demonstration was required. They must have lost patience too, because this morning when we were at lessons there was a high-pitched crack then a thud. By the time I got to my lookout window all I could see was a crowd around Lu's blackened, cursing Jack-of-all-Trades. Wang reports that a cannon ball was indeed emitted and flew a neat fifty-yard arc before making a crater in the middle of the parade ground. All were greatly impressed. Since one is still uncertain of the Patriarch's allegiances, one knows not whether to commiserate or rejoice in his military feebleness. Wang relates with glee that the Jack-of-all-Trades had his pigtail blown off.

Waldemar hears that in consequence of the singeing of Jack's hair, which was ignited along with the fuse, all the Patriarch's men have been ordered to snip off their pigtails. This is interpreted favourably as a gesture against the Manchus.

How far we are from any centre of news. Our town is hemmed between mountains with roads that are dusty and stony in summer or miry and snow-covered in winter, and bandit-ridden all year round. The variably navigable river issues into the sea at a place with no proper port. As the crow flies—surely no Chinese bird—we are close to Ningpo which boasts splendid modern institutions and even Shanghai to which all the world pays tribute. In reality we are as far from anywhere as if we were in the deepest hinterland. Dr Morrison's despatches from the
Times
reach us by a roundabout route, weeks or months late; a matter of little moment, since we are in blissful ignorance of the dramatic events of which he writes. For this thanks be. Had I known when nursing my firstborn, and I a girl bride fresh from Home, full of faith and confidence in our work, had I known in those days of the slaughter of the innocents in the North, the savagery of the Boxers, the siege of our Legation heroically withstood—the thrilling narrative has at last reached us—I should … but really one knows not at such extremity what one should have done. Is it not wiser to spare one's imagination remote horrors and instead place one's trust in the Lord? At the height of the xenophobic crisis my Wee One was absorbing all my attention. We were as dazed and confused as the Chinese, as one calamity after another rains down on their heads.

I remember how the Boy from the Roman mission came, and later one of the local nuns, and out of much jabbering the message was clear that we should flee. This occasioned much anxiety, since, being our first settled home in China, the place had received our loving attention. W. built the walls with his own hands, and the house was the one example in the district of an edifice built according to modern science. Such was the haste urged on us in our flight that I happily assumed the matter to be temporary. One is willingly deceived. There was our little family of three, and Peg and her mother, and a few of W.'s students whose eyes were rolling with terror. Wang insisted on staying. The rest of us were simply bundled over the back wall and bumped on to the muddy ground in the darkness. I remember passing Wee One to Waldemar while I held out my arms to catch Peg. The Roman Boy then led us through a maze of ‘safe' houses until we arrived at the inner sanctum, which was crowded with Chinese who for reasons unknown had been lumped together with us, the only foreigners except for the porcupine-faced Sardinian priest who kept bustling to the main door to receive word. We waited and waited. I assumed that a fire had broken out in our corner of the town. That was the most rational and most innocuous explanation. But from W.'s agitation as he learned more, and concealed his knowledge, my own fears unwillingly took to smouldering. Then suddenly, before noon on the second day, a piratical-looking soldier was admitted who told us to go back to our homes in peace.

The morning was as pretty and sunny a summer morning as Taichow had ever offered, which fostered trust in our safety. I rocked Wee One and made goo-goo, and so completely my motherly love allowed me to forget the danger that it has never been relived since. How bounteous is His Mercy. We learned that the overlord of the province had thrown his support behind the Boxers as an act of fealty to the Emperor (the Dowager in fact). To carry out his vow of exterminating all foreign influence, he sent one of his captains over the mountains to Taichow. The Magistrate, anxious to preserve both his position, which the overlord allows him, and his power in the locality, which was unchallengeable, embroiled the captain in negotiation; his aim being to obstruct the warlord's intent. Whether he was persuaded to this aim by Patriarch Lu, we never could discover. Posthaste the captain reported Taichow's defiance, and from over the mountains the warlord breathed fire and thunder. That was when the Magistrate had the offending elements rounded up for safekeeping. Special intelligence, argued the magistrate, suggested that the Empress Dowager's support for the Boxers was itself an uncertain quality, and if the Old Buddha was playing a double game it was surely wiser for lesser Buddhas to emulate her. The Magistrate agreed with the overlord beyond the mountains that depending which way the wind blew he would either dutifully massacre all of us gathered in the Catholic sanctuary or allow us a lease of safety. When the Empress herself succumbed to the Great Powers' wrath, following the Siege at Peking, the overlord of Chekiang was beholden to the Magistrate's caution. And the Magistrate became more than ever suspicious of Patriarch Lu, who had, we guess, been wise all along.

Our execution was stayed. Yet not knowing, I could not enjoy the sensation of relief. For which may greater thanks be given. I write for the benefit of my posterity, should they wonder how their mother (or their grandmother!) survived. Yet have I survived entirely? The heathen Dr Morrison writes (old news now) that the throne has been shaken again by a mighty general. The rebels want a constitution. Or that is their pretext. How far away we are. Today a farmer was brought in with thigh gashed by a hoe. I showed Peg how to disinfect and stitch the wound. Twenty-five stitches.

Today I taught Peg to churn butter. Servant's work, but she wanted to learn. Milk still a difficulty. W. is away at the new hospital. I made him leave Lionel this time. He promised to investigate at Heaven's Terrace. Surely the cows there have first-class milk, so lush are the paddies.

He called my name. Retta! I heard his voice but it seemed as if we did not inhabit the same place. I could neither rise from my chair nor turn to greet him. Shame! May I be forgiven! Some power had my mind, my body, or both, in its wilful possession. He said I ignored him. That is not the truth. Every day I watch the river. I sit. Baby Jerry sleeps in his cot without a peep. Lionel plays with amah or Peg. My love for the boys is boundless. I tell myself that I live for my husband and my boys. I pray for strength to do my duty. Pray? That, I tremble to confess, is the problem. I pray to nothing. Emptiness. Then the spirits tease me. They pluck the hair and stick pins into the person that is mine. In broad daylight they present the faces of bad dreams—the men in the marketplace, the ailing children in the hospital and their grief-stricken, accusatory parents, the agony of young women passing in the alley with expressionless masks and bound feet. Their faces become distorted like the demons in their temples. Then I see them tormenting my Wee One. I am sure her grave is unhallowed in this soil. Her spirit has been taken by theirs. When I sit in my corner by the window these imaginings and feelings occupy me. While I am about my tasks they remain sealed up. Only when I settle to rest in the afternoon, gazing at the river while Baby Jerry sleeps, do I join that world behind the brightness of day, where beings dwell who belong to the rotting faces of the corpses floating by in the river. I was unaware until this occasion when W., having returned early home, called to me in vain, that each afternoon as I sit on my chair, I must enter some kind of trance. Has God left me? Waldemar spoke harsh, uncomprehending words. He says I should busy myself. We busy ourselves in vain here. Yet Peg is my comfort.

It is Peg's birthday. W. says I care for her more than for my own children. I love my boys. Amah made noodles for her and I a birthday cake. Before retiring I found her in the courtyard, against a post, staring at her feet. Must they be bound soon? When she is lonely she shows no expression. She was remembering her mother. Does she love me? Or does she detach herself?

I continue to be in awe of my husband's idealism. Let us consider our eight years here. We have built our residence and a small place of worship. We have established a rudimentary school and a clinic. At Heaven's Terrace we have also built a hospital. We have treated hundreds, perhaps thousands, of bodies and souls; taught English, hygiene, religion, to many. We have helped to settle disputes. We have been honoured guests and despised curs, founts of wisdom and spectacles of folly, as circumstances arose. What remains? All this we have done ourselves. Our teaching has been no more than commerce on the river. The people return to their own ways as naturally as their curiosity drew them in the first place. They remain what they are. And our architecture remains, that is all, as long as we do. I do not say the eight years have been wasted. But I must keep my eyes open, which empties my spirit. W. is filled by the spirit. He says it is our duty to be here, that we ought not question His ways, His mysterious ways, and tells the parable of the mustard seed. One knows not what fruit our labours may bear. W.'s faith is unswerving. Yet such a very little knowledge … We are unaware even of the lessons they draw from our teaching … is not this a dangerous thing? W. says that at the very least we are agents of science, and asks if I would deny our people the knowledge of antiseptic medicine. My husband can be remarkably insistent.