Geling Yan - The Flowers of War

Now he looked at Fabio and asked, ‘With regard to water, have you any constructive suggestions to make?’

‘Zhao Yumo said that when they came here, they passed a pond on the way. I know Nanking pretty well, and I don’t remember one nearby, but she said she saw it. I thought I’d ask Ah Gu to go and look for it before it gets light.’

‘That’s a very good idea of yours. You see, we’ve already found a way around the problem.’ And Father Engelmann rewarded Fabio with a warm smile, very different from his usual polite, cold smiles.

Fabio felt a rush of emotion. After all these years with Father Engelmann, he had now, in the space of ten minutes, been on the receiving end of real anger and a genuine smile from him. Perhaps it signalled that the distance Father Engelmann had been so careful to maintain over all this time just might be breaking down.

‘Tell the children to go to the church,’ said Father Engelmann.

‘But they’ll surely be asleep,’ said Fabio.

‘Go and tell them, please.’

The girls had gone to bed but fumbled for their clothes when they heard Fabio’s shout and came down from the attic. They entered the church to see Fabio seated at the organ and Father Engelmann standing dressed in his funeral cassock. They felt something must be badly amiss and clutched each other’s ice-cold hands for comfort. In an instant all the petty animosities and daily rivalries between them dissolved and they became a collective, a family.

The organist had gone, having left Nanking along with the other teachers, which was why Fabio was now playing. He had studied music for a year in the seminary and so knew the rudiments. It was an upright organ, normally used for teaching the girls to sing, and was now muffled in an old carpet which made the music sound nasal as if it had caught cold.

Someone must have died, thought Shujuan, and the organ had been wrapped up to keep the funeral hymns as quiet as possible. Or perhaps Father Engelmann knew what they had done to Cardamon and was about to make them repent. But Cardamom had deserved it. Surely he would understand that, and take their side.

The entire nave was lit with only three candles and all the windows were covered in blackout curtains, of the kind which covered all the windows of every building in Nanking now that there were air raids.

The organ growled and the girls sang the requiem in whispers. They did not know who the requiem was for, or who they had lost, but perhaps for that very reason they had the confused feeling that they were facing a vast infinity of loss: Nanking and south China; the right to be a free people; and something else besides.

Father Engelmann led them in prayer.

Shujuan looked at Father Engelmann standing in front of the figure of Christ. His shadow fell on the painted statue hanging from its cross, and his living face took on some of its ecstasy.

‘Children, I did not want to alarm you but now I must prepare you for a greatly worsened situation,’ the priest began. Then he quietly outlined for them in simple terms what the wireless broadcasts had said. ‘If these reports, that hundreds and thousands of prisoners of war have been executed, are true then I believe that we must have returned to the Middle Ages. As Chinese, you will know that the Qin dynasty buried four hundred thousand Zhao kingdom prisoners of war alive. We do not seem to have advanced much since then.’ Father Engelmann stopped speaking. His Chinese had become increasingly awkward and his words harder to understand.

That night, Shujuan and Xiaoyu lay side by side. Xiaoyu sobbed and sobbed and, when Shujuan asked her what the matter was, said that her father was a powerful man who could fix anything, yet he had left her to starve in this freezing hellhole.

‘Well, my parents are in America, tucking into bacon and eggs and coffee,’ said Shujuan.

Suddenly Xiaoyu shook her friend’s arm hard and said, ‘When my father comes to get me, I’ll take you with me.’

‘Do you think he’ll come and get you?’

‘Of course he will!’ Xiaoyu seemed offended that Shujuan should be doubting her wealthy, all-powerful father.

‘I hope he comes tomorrow,’ said Shujuan, her eager anticipation of Xiaoyu’s father as great as her friend’s. What a wonderful thing to be Xiaoyu’s best friend now, to bathe in the light which shone from her, to flee blockaded Nanking.

‘Where do you want to go?’ asked Xiaoyu.

‘Wherever you’re going.’

‘Let’s go to Shanghai. They won’t attack the British, French and American concessions. Shanghai would be good, better than Hankou. Hankou would be death. It’s all Chinese there.’

‘Good. Shanghai it is then.’ Shujuan did not dare contradict Xiaoyu. It was slightly degrading to have to depend on Xiaoyu in this way; still, it was only for now. She had all her life ahead of her in which to rebuild her self-esteem.

There was a faint ring of the doorbell. In seconds, all the girls were sitting upright and then clustered around the windows. They saw Ah Gu and Fabio race out of the door beneath their windows. Ah Gu, a lantern in his hand, was there first. Fabio caught up and gestured fiercely at Ah Gu that he should extinguish the light. But it was too late. The light had already filtered through the crack in the door to the outside.

‘Please, sirs, open the door, I’m a gravedigger … This soldier is still alive…’

‘Please go away,’ Fabio said laboriously in awkward Chinese. ‘This is an American church. We don’t get involved in fighting between Chinese and Japanese soldiers.’

‘Please, sir, save me!’ came another voice. It sounded very weak, as if the man was seriously wounded.

‘Please go away. I’m very sorry.’

The gravedigger raised his voice. ‘The Japanese will be back any moment now! Then he’ll be dead and so will I! Please show mercy to us. I’m a Christian too!’

‘Please take him to the Safety Zone,’ said Fabio.

‘The Japs go to the Safety Zone dozens of times every day to pick up Chinese soldiers and the wounded! Please, I beg you!’

‘I’m very sorry. It’s quite impossible. Please don’t force me to compromise the neutrality of this church.’

Gunshots were heard from somewhere nearby.

The gravedigger refused to give up. ‘Merciful priests, I beg you!’ Then his footsteps were heard receding into the distance. He had clearly left the wounded soldier behind.

Fabio did not know what to do. He could not let the Chinese soldier outside bleed to death, but neither could he put the nearly forty souls inside at risk.

At that moment, Father Engelmann suddenly emerged out of the darkness, still wearing his funeral cassock.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked Fabio and Ah Gu.

‘There’s a seriously wounded soldier outside,’ said Fabio. ‘Should we bring him in?’

For the first time since he had met Father Engelmann, Fabio sensed that the priest had no idea what to do.

‘Please, I beg you!’ The wounded man outside spoke through clenched teeth.

‘We have to open up,’ said Fabio in English. ‘If he dies outside our door, we’ll be compromised.’

Engelmann looked at his junior. He knew Fabio was right, but he dared not contemplate the prospect of losing the church’s neutrality, and thus losing their ability to protect the schoolgirls. ‘We can’t,’ he said. ‘But we could get Ah Gu to take him away and leave him in some other place.’

‘That would be sending him to his death!’ exclaimed Ah Gu.