The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (12 page)

Sometimes, of course, even a blind chicken will find a grain of corn on the ground, and it was good that Chiang Kai-shek had invited his opponents to the peace negotiations in Chongqing. Because with a little luck, the clown and his soldiers would still be there south of the Yangtze, after the negotiations had broken down, when her troop of bodyguards and Karlsson arrived on the scene. Then Karlsson could blow up bridges with maximum effect! And for a long time to come, the clown would be
confined
to the mountains halfway to Tibet.

‘But if he should happen to be on the wrong side of the river, then we simply regroup. There are five thousand rivers in China, so wherever the parasite goes there will be a river in his path.’

A clown and a parasite, Allan thought, doing battle with a cowardly, incompetent figure who to cap it all had the
intelligence
of a cow, and between them, a serpent drunk on green, banana liquor.

‘It’ll definitely be interesting to see how it all turns out,’ Allan said sincerely. ‘Incidentally and apropos nothing at all, Captain, do you by any chance have a few drops of vodka somewhere, to wash down this green liquor?’

No, unfortunately the captain didn’t. But there were a lot of other flavours if Mr Karlsson wanted some variety for his palate: lemon liquor, cream liquor, mint liquor…

‘Apropos nothing at all again,’ said Allan, ‘when do you think we will reach Shanghai?’

Allan Karlsson and a force of twenty men from Soong
May-ling’s
bodyguard travelled on the Yangtze by riverboat in the direction of Sichuan, as part of their plan to make life more
difficult for the communist upstart Mao Tse-tung. They departed on 12th October 1945, two days after the peace negotiations had, as predicted, broken down.

They proceeded at a leisurely pace since the bodyguards wanted to have fun in every harbour. And there were lots of harbours. First Nanjing, then Wuhu, Anqing, Jiujiang, Wuhan, Yueyang, Yidu, Fengjie, Wanxian, Chongqing and Luzhou. And every stop featured drunkenness, prostitution and a general lack of morals.

Since such a lifestyle uses up funds very quickly, the twenty bodyguards devised a new tax. The peasants who wanted to unload their products onto the ship in the harbour could not do so unless they paid a fee of five yuan. And anyone who complained was shot.

This new tax revenue was immediately spent in the darkest quarters of the city in question, and those quarters were nearly always close to the harbour. Allan thought that if Soong
May-ling
believed it was important to have the people on her side, she might have conveyed that message to her subordinates. But that, thank God, was her problem not Allan’s.

It took two months for Allan and the twenty soldiers to reach Sichuan province, and by then Mao Tse-tung’s forces had long since left for the north. And they didn’t sneak off through the mountains, but went down into the valley and did battle with the Kuomintang regiment that had been left to defend the city of Yibin.

Yibin was soon on the verge of falling into communist hands. Three and a half thousand Kuomintang soldiers were killed in the battle, at least 2,500 of them because they were too drunk to fight. In comparison, three hundred communists died,
presumably
sober.

The battle for Yibin had nevertheless been a success for the Kuomintang, because among the fifty captured communists
there was one jewel. Forty-nine of the prisoners could simply be shot and pushed into a hole in the ground, but the fiftieth! Mmmm! The fiftieth was none other than the beautiful Jiang Qing, the actress who became a Marxist-Leninist and – far more important – Mao Tse-tung’s third wife.

A palaver immediately started up between, on the one side, the Kuomintang’s company command in Yibin and, on the other, Soong May-ling’s bodyguards. The argument was about who would have the responsibility for the star prisoner, Jiang Qing. So far, the company commander had just kept her locked up, waiting for the boat with Soong May-ling’s men to arrive. He hadn’t dared to do otherwise because Soong May-ling could be on board. And you didn’t argue with her.

But it turned out that Soong May-ling was in Taipei, which simplified things considerably as far as the Kuomintang company commander was concerned. Jiang Qing would first be raped in the most brutal manner and then, if she was still alive, she would be shot.

Soong May-ling’s bodyguards did not object to the rape bit. They could even see themselves joining in, but Jiang Qing must definitely not be allowed to die. Instead she should be taken to Soong May-ling or Chiang Kai-shek for them to decide her fate. This was big time politics, the internationally experienced soldiers explained in a superior tone to the provincially schooled company commander in Yibin.

The company commander grudgingly promised that he would hand over his jewel the same afternoon. The meeting broke up and the soldiers decided to celebrate their victory with a drinking spree. They were going to have a lot of fun with the jewel later on the trip home!

The final negotiations had been carried out on the deck of the riverboat that had brought Allan and the soldiers all the way from the sea. Allan was astounded by the fact that he
understood most of what was said. While the soldiers had been amusing themselves in various cities, Allan had been sitting on the stern deck together with the good-natured mess boy Ah Ming, who turned out to have considerable pedagogical talent. In two months, Ah Ming had helped Allan make himself understood pretty well in Chinese (with a special proficiency in expletives and profanity).

As a child, Allan had been taught to be suspicious of people who didn’t have a drink when the opportunity arose. He was no more than six years old when his father laid a hand on his little shoulder and said:

‘You should beware of priests, my son. And people who don’t drink vodka. Worst of all are priests who don’t drink vodka.’

Acting on his own counsel, Allan’s father had certainly not been completely sober when one day he punched an
innocent
traveller in the face, upon which he was immediately fired from the National Railways. This in turn had caused Allan’s mother to give some words of wisdom of her own to her son:

‘Beware of drunks, Allan. That’s what I should have done.’

The little boy grew up and added his own opinions to those he had acquired from his parents. Priests and politicians were equally bad, Allan thought, and it didn’t make the slightest difference if they were communists, fascists, capitalists or any other political persuasion. But he did agree with his father that reliable people didn’t drink fruit juice. And he agreed with his mother that you had to make sure you behaved, even if you had drunk a bit more than was wise.

In practical terms, that meant that during the course of the river journey Allan had lost interest in helping Soong May-ling and her twenty drunken soldiers (in fact there were
only nineteen left since one had fallen overboard and drowned). Nor did he want to be around when the soldiers raped the prisoner who was now locked up below deck, regardless of whether she was a communist or not, and of who her husband was.

So Allan decided to abandon ship and take the prisoner with him. He told his friend, the mess boy, of his decision and humbly asked that Ah Ming provide the future escapees with some food for their journey. Ah Ming promised to do that, but on one condition – that he could come along.

Eighteen of the nineteen soldiers from Soong May-ling’s bodyguard, together with the boat’s cook and the captain, were out enjoying themselves in the pleasure district in Yibin. The nineteenth soldier, the one who had drawn the shortest straw, sat grumpily outside the door to the stairs that led down to Jiang Qing’s prison cell below deck.

Allan sat down with the guard and suggested that they should have a drink together. The guard said that he had been entrusted with responsibility for possibly the most important prisoner in the nation so it would not be right to indulge in rice vodka.

‘I entirely agree,’ said Allan. ‘But one glass can’t hurt can it?’

‘No,’ said the guard, upon reflection. ‘One glass certainly can’t hurt.’

Two hours later, Allan and the guard had each emptied a bottle, while the mess boy Ah Ming had scuttled back and forth and served goodies from the pantry. Allan had become a bit tipsy while on the job, but the guard had fallen asleep right on the open deck.

Allan looked down at the unconscious Chinese soldier at his feet.

‘Never try to out-drink a Swede, unless you happen to be a Finn or at least a Russian.’

The bomb expert, Allan Karlsson, the mess boy, Ah Ming, and the eternally grateful communist leader’s wife, Jiang Qing, slipped away from the riverboat under cover of darkness and were soon in the mountains where Jiang Qing had already spent much time together with her husband’s troops. The Tibetan nomads in the area knew her and the fugitives had no problem in eating their fill even after the supplies carried by Ah Ming had run out. The Tibetans had good reason, or so they thought, for being on friendly terms with the People’s Liberation Army. It was generally assumed that if the communists won the struggle for China, Tibet would immediately gain its independence.

Jiang Qing suggested that she, Allan and Ah Ming should hurry northwards, in a wide circle round Kuomintang-controlled territory. After months of walking in the mountains, they would eventually reach Xi’an in the province of Shaanxi – and Jiang Qing knew that her husband would be there, provided they didn’t take too long.

The mess boy, Ah Ming, was delighted by Jiang Qing’s promise that he would be able to serve Mao himself. The boy had secretly become a communist when he saw how the soldiers behaved, so he was fine with changing sides and advancing his career at the same time.

Allan, however, said that he was certain the communist struggle would manage just fine without
him
. So he assumed it would be okay if he went home. Did Jiang Qing agree?

Yes, she did. But ‘home’ was surely Sweden and that was terribly far away. How was Mr Karlsson going to manage?

Allan replied that boat or aeroplane would have been the most practical method but poor placement of the world’s oceans had ruled out catching a boat from the middle of China, and he hadn’t seen any airports up there in the mountains. And anyway he didn’t have any money to speak of.

‘So I’ll have to walk,’ said Allan.

The head of the village that had so generously received the three fugitives had a brother who had travelled more than anybody else. The brother had been as far afield as Ulan Bator in the north and Kabul in the west. Besides which, he had dipped his toes into the Bay of Bengal on a journey to the East Indies, but now he was home in the village again and the
headman
sent for him and asked him to draw a map of the world for Mr Karlsson so that he could find his way back to Sweden. The brother promised to do that and he had completed the task by the next day.

Even if you’re well bundled up, it is bold to cross the Himalayas with only the help of a homemade map of the world and a compass. In fact, Allan could have walked north of the mountain chain and the Aral and Caspian Seas, but reality and the homemade map didn’t exactly match up. So Allan said goodbye to Jiang Qing and Ah Ming and started upon his perambulation, which was to go through Tibet, over the Himalayas, through British India, Afghanistan, into Iran, on to Turkey and then up through Europe.

After two months on foot, Allan discovered that he must have chosen the wrong side of a mountain range and the best way to deal with that was to turn back and start over. Another four months later (on the right side of the mountain range) Allan realised he was making rather slow progress. At a market in a mountain village he haggled as best he could about the price of a camel, with the help of sign language and the Chinese he knew. Allan and the camel seller finally came to an
agreement
, but not until the seller had been forced to accept that Allan was not going to take in his daughter as part of the purchase.

Allan did consider the part about the daughter. Not for purely physical reasons, because he no longer had any such urges. They had been left behind in a bucket in Professor
Lundborg’s operating theatre. It was rather her companionship that attracted him. Life on the Tibetan highland plateau could sometimes be lonely.

But since the daughter spoke nothing but a
monotonous-sounding
Tibeto-Burmese dialect that Allan didn’t understand, he thought that where intellectual stimulation was concerned he could just as well talk to the camel. Besides, one couldn’t rule out that the daughter might have certain sexual expectations as to the arrangement. Something in the way she looked at him led Allan to believe that to be the case.

So another two months of loneliness ensued, with Allan wobbling across the roof of the world on the back of a camel, before he came across three strangers, also on camels. Allan greeted them in the languages he knew: Chinese, Spanish, English and Swedish. Luckily, English worked.

Allan told his new acquaintances that he was on his way home to Sweden. The men looked at him wide-eyed. Was he going to ride a camel all the way to northern Europe?

‘With a little break for the ship across Öresund,’ said Allan.

The three men didn’t know what Öresund was so Allan told them that it was where the Baltic Sea met the Atlantic Ocean. After they had ascertained that Allan was not a supporter of the British-American lackey, the Shah of Iran, they invited him to accompany them.

The men told him that they had met at university in Tehran where they had studied English. After their studies, they had spent two years in China, breathing the same air as their
communist
hero, Mao Tse-tung, and they were now on their way back home to Iran.

‘We are Marxists,’ one of the men said. ‘We are pursuing our struggle in the name of the international worker; in his name we will carry out a revolution in Iran and the whole world; we will build a society based upon the economic and social equality of
all people: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’