Geling Yan - The Flowers of War

‘Stinking bitches!’ came the same voice.

The women looked at each other. It was one of the schoolgirls.

‘You wait until the Japs make you into a bitch!’ Hongling shouted back. ‘You think you’re better than us, but when they pull your trousers down, you’re just the same!’

Nani joined in.

‘Don’t you know the Japs love making whores out of nice young girls?’

‘The Japs have searched the Safety Zone and taken dozens of young girls away!’ Hongling gloated cheerfully.

Up above the cellar, as she sat with her shovelful of embers waiting to strike, Shujuan shuddered. Her shoulders were covered with snow but it was the women’s words that caused her to shake. Was it true what that bitch Nani said? It couldn’t be. She was just trying to frighten her.

Shujuan was measuring the length of the shovel, estimating how to aim it to get the most devastating results with the live embers, when she heard a voice behind her.

‘What are you doing?’

Ash and shovel dropped to the ground, and Shujuan turned to find Deacon Adornato looming over her. He looked at the ash with its glowing sparks and repeated his question. ‘What are you doing?’

Shujuan said nothing, just jumped up and pressed herself against the wall. She could not have stood more rigid if she had been put in the corner by her teacher. Fabio was a tall man and could not see the ‘peep show’ going on at the bottom of the shaft.

The cellar grew rowdier; there was clapping and the tempo of the dance quickened.

Telling Shujuan to go back to bed, Fabio went towards the kitchen door. Shujuan leaned over the shaft to watch what would happen.

Yumo had thrown off her high-society airs and graces and was dancing a different dance now, the jitterbug. This was even more seductive. As she undulated, she bumped Major Dai with her shoulder or her crotch. The major was transfixed, leering like an old soldier. Yumo dropped all pretence at coyness and became completely brazen. She knew full well that the schoolgirl was still watching her, and she was aiming to show her that she was not just a ‘bitch’ but acknowledged as ‘top bitch’.

Shujuan saw the women pause for a moment and look up. She knew they must have heard Fabio shout down: ‘Open the trapdoor!’

After a fractional hesitation, Yumo resumed her dance.

Someone must have opened the trapdoor because now Fabio was in the cellar.

Yumo flashed a smile at him.

‘Quiet!’ Fabio commanded in English.

Hongling did not understand. ‘Yangzhou Fabio’s come!’ she said. ‘Dance a dance with me and keep me warm, Yangzhou Fabio!’

Fabio’s tone of voice was different from when he spoke in Chinese. He said again in accented English: ‘Please stop.’ He looked drawn and haggard, and his face was devoid of all emotion. He had assumed an air of lofty spirituality, as if he were looking down from on high on a bunch of maggots.

It had its effect: faced with this silent, expressionless clergyman, the women quieted down. Yumo pulled out a cigarette, somewhat bent from her dancing, lit it from the candle and took a long in-breath. Major Dai went up to her and lit a cigarette for himself from hers.

‘Please remember that this is not a Qin Huai brothel!’ said Fabio.

‘So you know just what our brothels look like, do you, Father?’ Nani continued to tease him impudently.

‘Have you been inside one?’ asked Jade with a lewd cackle.

All the women laughed.

Fabio shot Yumo a glance which said: I always knew your air of refinement was humbug. Now you’ve shown what you’re really made of. Fine, just don’t ever play the grande dame with me again, and don’t try working your charms on me either .

‘I’m sorry, Father. Everyone’s really been feeling the cold and they drank some wine and had a dance to warm up a bit,’ Major Dai explained with dignity.

‘That’s all very well,’ said Fabio, ‘but you women shouldn’t give people an excuse to call you “singing girls heedless that national calamity looms.…” ’

Yumo stared at him with her large dark eyes.

Hongling finished the poem for him: ‘ “… As, on the far bank, they sing the lament Courtyard Blooms .” ’

‘Hongling’s not just a pretty face!’ one of the other prostitutes shouted mockingly. ‘She’s got classical poetry in her belly as well as wheat bran!’

‘It’s the only two lines of poetry I know,’ Hongling smiled. ‘When our clients abuse us, we quote poetry at them. It’s the best way to deal with a scolding.’

‘I can’t,’ said Nani, ‘and nor can Cardamom. I bet if you abuse her, she’ll play the pipa for you!’

‘I’ll pipa you!’ retorted Cardamom.

‘If you could see what Nanking was like now with your own eyes, its population decreasing every second of every day, you wouldn’t behave so disgracefully,’ said Fabio.

Shujuan smiled in triumph as she saw the whore Yumo hang her head.

When Fabio drove to collect water from the pond the next day, Ah Gu’s body emerged from the mud. Fabio’s stomach churned as he tried to imagine how the old servant had died. He pictured him at the pond with two buckets strung from his shoulder-pole. He must have bumped into Japanese soldiers who, no doubt, demanded the buckets. Ah Gu would not have understood what they said and the Japanese probably found it less trouble to shoot at him than to explain. Ah Gu must have panicked and tried to run but ended up in the pond. Perhaps then a second bullet hit him and he sank beneath the water.

Fabio waded knee-deep in the mud and pulled Ah Gu towards the bank. As he heaved and heaved, he sensed he had an audience: behind him stood a dozen Japanese, their guns trained on him. But when Fabio turned round, the guns were lowered one by one. As a white man, he got better treatment than Ah Gu.

Fabio drove back with the body. Ah Gu had been thin and dark-skinned. Now his corpse was bloated and bleached pale from immersion in the pond water. Father Engelmann gave the old servant a simple funeral and he was buried in the graveyard behind the church.

After George had shovelled the last earth into the grave and gone back to the kitchen with Fabio, Father Engelmann stayed in the graveyard. The cypresses stood dense with their second growth. They were mighty good cypresses; good enough to build another Noah’s Ark. It was a windless morning, yet the treetops stirred nervously. He knelt down beside Ah Gu’s grave and his knees crackled like charcoal in a fire. Several days with insufficient food had altered the way he moved, made him slower. He risked feeling faint if he did not give his blood enough time to pump to his head. Recently he had been economising on movements, reducing them to the absolutely necessary minimum, so that no calories should go to waste.

It was eerily quiet. Under the austere tombstones lay missionaries from America from over one hundred years ago. One grave that stood out from the rest belonged to the church’s founder, Father Roesing. It looked elaborate but incomplete. Several months ago, a severe rainstorm had flooded the graveyard, which was lower than the rest of the church compound, and Father Roesing’s grave had collapsed. In the middle of reconstruction, the workers went to join the refugees fleeing the war, leaving the job unfinished. Now, the fallen cross lay on the ground.

Despite the fact that the church compound was more crowded than it had ever been, Father Engelmann felt entirely alone. He couldn’t even talk to Fabio, despite having known him for years. He didn’t know why, but he and Fabio always seemed to get off on the wrong foot; whenever Fabio came to talk to him, he was enjoying a bit of peace and quiet, and when he emerged and longed to talk to Fabio, the younger priest was either half-hearted about engaging in conversation or was simply nowhere to be found. Father Engelmann came to the sad conclusion that most people in the world were like himself and Fabio—unable to leave each other alone, but equally unable to be together. When A wanted B, B would be entirely happy with his own company and would not want to be disturbed. And when B needed the companionship or looked for solace in A’s company, his needs would just be a burden on A. Untimely demands for companionship were an irritating nuisance. In order to guarantee that one would not have to suffer this nuisance, it was necessary to spurn all human companionship. Human beings came together not because they got on well but because they could not do without each other.