Geling Yan - The Flowers of War

Li kept looking around but could see no one that looked as if they were alive. He held his breath and froze. The voice came again. ‘… Help me…’

He could hear it was a boy. Many young boys had been snatched by press gangs recently. The boy must have thought his wheezing cry was a loud call for help which could be heard for miles around.

When Li found him, Wang Pusheng was buried under a pile of corpses, as he himself had been. He had been bayoneted in the belly but had been partly shielded by a corpse whose lower leg lay across him. Otherwise the wound would have been much bigger. The corners of Wang Pusheng’s mouth pulled at the bandage which covered most of his face. Li could tell that the boy was in terrible pain and wanted to cry but had no tears left. ‘No crying!’ he threatened him. ‘If you cry I won’t take you with me! Just remember how incredibly lucky you are to have survived!’

The boy soldier pressed his lips together. Li held out his bound hands to the boy and told him to undo the rope. The boy set to work feebly. It took more than an hour, during which time both of them gave up several times, but finally Li’s hands were freed. It was now much easier for Li to move three out of his four limbs. He crawled down to the water’s edge. He had to push some of his comrades’ corpses into the water in order to reach it. He drank a bellyful of river water foul with blood, then soaked an army cap and crawled back with it to Wang Pusheng, squeezing the drops out for the boy. The boy gripped the cap as if it were his mother’s breast and pressed it into his open mouth.

When they had drunk enough, they lay side by side and smoked a pipe. Li still had his pipe on him, and went through the pockets of nearby corpses until he found a pipe for Wang Pusheng.

‘We’ve had something to drink and now a smoke, my lad, and that’ll get us going,’ said Li. ‘Now we’re going to make a break for it.’

The boy had never imagined he would smoke his very first pipe in the middle of a pile of corpses. He copied Sergeant Major Li, breathing in the smoke and exhaling. He hoped the sergeant was telling the truth and smoking really would get him going.

‘If someone has no water, they’ll die in three days. With water you can live for a lot longer,’ the sergeant major went on.

It took them a long time to finish their pipes. By that time, Li knew that he could not abandon Wang Pusheng. But he still had no idea how he was going to make his escape carrying a soldier whose guts were spilling out, when one of his own legs was out of action. While he had been smoking, he had considered their options. High ground hemmed in the shore on three sides, and only one slope looked possible to climb. The Japanese had chosen this particular patch of riverbank as an execution ground with great care. It had one more advantage: to dispose of the corpses they only had to push them into the water, and the river would carry them away.

Li found a first-aid kit in the pocket of a dead company commander. He tore it open and extracted bandages and swabs. There was a tube in the bag as well; and Li guessed it must be an antiseptic cream. He covered a swab with it and pushed the swab into the cavity in Wang Pusheng’s abdomen. The boy howled with pain.

‘Look at the sky, our planes are coming!’ said Li.

Wang Pusheng looked up at the night sky through tear-drenched eyes and Li quickly poked back in a piece of intestine which was spilling out.

Wang Pusheng did not make a sound this time. Instead he fainted.

It was lucky Wang Pusheng had not eaten in two or three days and his gut was completely empty, Li thought. That meant there would be less danger of infection. He waited for him to regain consciousness before he carried him away. If by any chance the boy did not come to, then Li would go alone.

Wang Pusheng’s breathing was shallow and ragged. Several times, Li could not feel any warmth on the finger that he held over the boy’s mouth. But he felt his chest carefully and discovered his heart was still beating.

Li knew that the longer they waited, the fewer their chances of escape. The enemy would be back eventually to deal with the corpses, perhaps by daybreak. But the boy soldier would not wake up. Li realised his fists were tightly clenched, not from the pain in his leg but from the anguish of having to wait.

Li may have been in two minds as to whether he should leave this boy behind and make good his own escape. But when he was telling this part of the story to Major Dai, he did not acknowledge it. Instead, he said that he really could not be so immoral as to abandon the seriously wounded boy, because, after all, Wang Pusheng had undone his wrists for him. He watched over Wang Pusheng all night until the sky began to lighten.

At dawn, Wang Pusheng regained consciousness. Bright, dark eyes opened in a face as ashen as a corpse. He looked at Sergeant Major Li lying beside him, both of them sharing a greatcoat which was stiff with blood. ‘We’d better go, my lad,’ said Li.

The boy said something, but so faintly that Li could not hear.

‘What?’

The boy repeated it and Li understood this time: he could not walk and would rather be left here to die. He could not bear any more pain like that.

‘You mean, you’ve made me waste all night waiting for you?!’ said Li.

‘Wait a bit longer till my belly stops hurting,’ Wang begged him, ‘then I’ll go with you.’

Li watched as the sky grew lighter. Then he draped the boy’s arm over his shoulder. He was a well-trained soldier, after all, and could drag himself along on one leg even with someone slung over his shoulder. One good thing was that the boy weighed no more than a shoulder-pole of grain.

The mist rose from the river and would give them some cover. That was another good thing, a very good thing.

They had only moved a few feet when they heard the sound of footsteps. Li’s heart was in his mouth, but they were both still hidden by the mist and he could squeeze them in between two corpses.

The footsteps were coming from the hilltop, but did not sound like army boots. Then came the words: ‘There must be thousands of them here!’

They were speaking Chinese!

‘We haven’t seen them all yet. It’s still misty. Those fuckers, to kill so many Chinese soldiers!’

‘Fucking Jap devils!’

The men were talking Nanking dialect and must have been in their forties or fifties.

‘There are only a few of us. How long is it going to take to get rid of all these corpses?!’

‘Fucking Jap devils!’

Down the slope they came, cursing and complaining.

‘They’ll clog up the river if we throw them in!’

‘Hurry up, otherwise those fuckers’ll be after us!’

The men, ant-like amid this scene of devastation, got to work.

Li reckoned it would be best to show themselves now, without waiting any longer. The Japanese might be here any moment. Even if the Chinese men were willing to help them, they could not do it under the noses of the Japanese.

‘Brothers, please help us!’ he shouted.

In an instant, the men’s chatter stopped and silence fell. It was so quiet that they could hear the loud slapping of waves against the corpses in the water.

‘Help us!…’

One man made his way towards them, planting his feet carefully in the cracks between shoulders, heads, legs and arms.

‘We’re here!’ Li shouted, to guide the man through the mist.

Emboldened, the other men followed, threading their way through the mountains of bodies until they reached Sergeant Major Li and Wang Pusheng. As one, their arms went down and Li and Wang were lifted up and carried up the slope to the top.

‘Don’t make any noise!’ ordered the man carrying Li. ‘We’ll find a place to hide you and then figure out what to do when it gets dark again.’