The Flowers of War (14 page)

*     *     *

Major Dai watched Father Engelmann kneeling in the graveyard. He wasn’t sure why he had come here, to the place where he had first broken into the church compound. He just knew he couldn’t carry on playing mah-jong with the prostitutes. He had to get away, to start being useful. Spending any amount of time with women drove him mad,
especially women like these, who kicked up such a fuss about the most trivial thing. He felt thoroughly dejected and confused. He would rather have died cleanly in battle than spend his time with these powdered and painted women. Only one woman understood his grief, and that was Zhao Yumo. If only he could find where Father Engelmann had hidden his gun, he could leave this prison.

Father Engelmann looked up and saw him. ‘Good afternoon, Major,’ he said. ‘Are you looking for something?’

Dai said nothing, suppressing his desire to ask for his pistol back.

It was strange: Father Engelmann’s Chinese should have been perfect by now, yet it sounded so foreign. It was as if the Chinese words were giving expression to foreign thought processes and feelings.

Father Engelmann cast a complacent glance around the cemetery. Then he read out the names of the seven priests who lay beneath the tombstones, rather as if he were introducing them at a social gathering. Dai listened patiently, feigning interest.

‘Do you think these Westerners are stupid to travel halfway across the world only to end up buried here?’ Father Engelmann asked.

Dai wasn’t sure how to answer.

Father Engelmann tried another question. ‘Where were you trained in the Soviet Union?’

‘Moscow.’

‘Russia always produces excellent soldiers. Because of their lack of rationality. And Chinese armies fight lousy battles, also for lack of rationality.’

Father Engelmann smiled to himself. He was talking with this Chinese army officer in this manner because his own rationality was wearing thin. Only he himself knew how sensitive and emotional he really was. Usually, if he ever felt this way, he would go and find some friends in the Western community to talk to over a cup of tea. Now they were somewhere in the US or other countries, reading the news about this hell, thanking God they had fled it.

‘I have been thinking about this lack of rationality in the East. It gives birth to the most exquisite literature and arts in Russia, Japan and China, yet also the most unthinkable cruelty –’

‘Father,’ Dai interrupted, ‘I want to leave here. I have to … I have to go away. I have to leave the other men here with you.’

‘To go where?’

‘Please return my weapon to me.’

‘You won’t get far. The Japanese are everywhere. They have three hundred thousand soldiers in Nanking. If you’re armed, it’ll be even harder to get away.’

‘I can’t stay here any more,’ said Dai. What he had wanted to say, but did not, was that he felt as if he would rot if he had to stay in that cellar any longer.

‘Where’s your home?’ asked the priest.

Dai gave him a strange look. ‘Hebei Province,’ he replied. His father was an old soldier who bore dozens of scars on his body to prove it. He was almost illiterate, so the only route to promotion for him had been fearlessness in the face of death. Dai and his elder brother had both been to army school, and his sisters had married soldiers. His entire family had dedicated themselves to the service of their country. But he kept his response to the priest to its simplest.

It was as if Father Engelmann could see through him, to the heroism which was in his blood, because his next words were: ‘There are so many soldiers whom I despise, the ones whose only thought is to get promotion, make money and grab as many women as they can. But I can see you’re different from them.’

‘Can you give me my weapon back?’

‘Let’s talk about that in a minute, shall we?’ said Father Engelmann. ‘First, tell me, are you married?’

‘Uh-huh.’ This answer was even briefer than the last.

‘Children?’

‘One son.’ Dai felt a pang as he said this. His son was only five. The journey to adulthood was a long one. Would the boy have his father by his side as he grew up?

‘I was only ten when my mother died,’ said the priest.

His tone of voice was so poignant that it caught Dai’s attention.

‘And my father died when I was sixteen.’

‘Did you convert to Catholicism after your father died?’ asked Dai politely.

‘No, my parents were both Roman Catholics,’ said Engelmann. ‘But I only started studying theology at the age of twenty. At that time I was suffering from a severe bout of depression.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. It just happened.’

Actually this was not true. His depression had been triggered by unrequited love. Since childhood he had been secretly in love with a girl and thought that she felt the same way. However, he finally found out that his feelings were not returned.

‘Anyway, I was almost at the point of ending it all when I met an old tramp who was dying from diphtheria. I was living with my brother at the time, and I hid the tramp in the cattle shed behind a heap of fodder. I was in charge of the cattle so no one ever went in there except me. I got medicine for him and took food to him every day. Slowly I nursed him back to health. I got great satisfaction from every small improvement in his condition, more satisfaction than I’d ever had from anything before. It took a whole winter. When he was finally better he thanked me for saving his life. But actually he saved me rather than the reverse. Through saving him, I saved myself. That winter my depression left me. Helping others in need can make one very happy.’

As Dai listened to the story, told in Chinese but expressing an American way of thinking, he could not help wondering why the priest had chosen to tell it to him. Surely he could not be implying that he had come to China thirty years ago because there was so much misery in China. That, like the seven who lay beneath the gravestones, China held an inexhaustible supply of pitiable, needy Chinese, and coming to their aid could make the priests happy. Or was he saying that Dai ought to follow his example, that if he stayed to
help the wounded soldiers in the cellar, he too would feel good?

‘All I’m telling you is that that old tramp was sent by God.’ Father Engelmann saw a frown had appeared between Dai’s eyebrows, but he went on nonetheless. ‘God used him to give me inspiration. He wanted me to save myself by saving others. God wants people to help each other especially when they are injured or weak. I hope you will trust in God. It is God you should trust, not weapons, when you are powerless to control your fate, as you are now.’

I must be the smallest congregation the priest has ever had for one of his sermons, Dai thought. But nevertheless something in what Father Engelmann had said touched him. Perhaps he would stay for a day or two more.

That night there was a ring on the doorbell of the side entrance. Father Engelmann was in the library, wrapped in his goose-down coat. He pulled aside the blackout curtain and saw Fabio hurry to the door and hold a conversation with whoever it was outside.

‘Can you tell me what the matter is? … This is an American church! … We have no food or fuel! …’ But with every sentence, all Fabio got in reply was another ring on the doorbell, the rings becoming increasingly angry and impatient, frequently interrupting him before he had finished as if engaging him in an argument.

Father Engelmann rushed to the door of the workshop
building and made sure it was firmly locked. Then it occurred to him that it was actually more of a risk to keep the door locked because the intruders would realise there was something inside worth locking up, and might break in, thus putting the girls hidden in the attic in greater danger. He took the bunch of keys which hung from his belt and, with trembling hands, tried one after another until the door finally opened. He fumbled his way through the darkness and called up to the trapdoor in the ceiling: ‘Listen, girls! Whatever happens, you are not to make a sound or to come down!’

He knew they had heard him, so he turned and made for the kitchen.

‘The Japanese are here,’ he called down to the women and soldiers. ‘You’re not to make a sound. Fabio and I will deal with everything!’

One of the women began to ask something, but then fell silent. Someone must have clamped their hand over her mouth or quietly ordered her to shut up.

Father Engelmann pulled a barrel over the trapdoor to the cellar and prepared himself to meet the newcomers. About five paces from the side door he stopped and took a deep breath. Then he ordered Fabio, who was still shouting futile questions, to open up.

Fabio turned to look at Father Engelmann, and was reassured by the older priest’s unruffled bearing and words. It was almost as if the priest had been waiting for this moment, as if he was challenging any spirit or human being not to be quelled and retreat in the face of the divinity which inspired him.

As a result, when the door opened, the Japanese were met by a sage old greybeard who appeared ready to bestow forgiveness to all his flock, of whatever colour and character, guilty and innocent alike. The anger which had accumulated in the Japanese soldiers as they rang the doorbell seemed to evaporate at Father Engelmann’s all-embracing smile.

‘We’re hungry!’ said the junior officer who was in command, in comical English.

‘So are we,’ said Father Engelmann. And he added, with an air of extending compassion to all hungry beings, ‘we’re out of water too.’

‘We want to come in,’ said the officer.

‘I’m sorry, this is an American church. You should treat it as if it were American territory, sir,’ said Father Engelmann, still with a smile on his face.

‘We’ve been into the American embassy.’

Father Engelmann had heard that the Japanese had broken
into the embassy, the safest place in the Safety Zone, shooting and plundering everything they could lay their hands on. The cars belonging to the ambassador and to expatriate Americans had all been taken too. It seemed his old church, far away from the city centre, was indeed safer than the Safety Zone.

‘We’re coming in to look for food!’ the officer yelled at him.

The seven or eight soldiers standing behind him seemed to take this as a signal to charge and pressed through the doorway into the courtyard.

‘Now the door’s open, we’re finished!’ whispered Fabio.

‘The city walls of Nanking couldn’t stop them,’ said Father Engelmann. ‘Besides, even the women managed to climb over our walls and get in.’

The two clergymen followed on the heels of the Japanese as they entered the church. It was pitch dark and more bitterly cold even than outside. The soldiers hesitated on the threshold. The beam of the officer’s torch illuminated the figure of Christ hanging from the cross above the altar then shifted to the unfathomable depths under the roof. Then he drew back, as if afraid of an ambush.

Father Engelmann said in low tones to Fabio, ‘As soon as
they start to search the workshop, we must create a diversion and draw them off.’

‘What kind of a diversion?’

Father Engelmann pondered. Something less important would have to be sacrificed to protect the most important.

‘Go and tell George to start the car.’

Fabio understood instantly. If the Japanese soldiers could loot a car, they would be rewarded by their seniors and could barter the car with Chinese collaborators for food and valuables that were easier than a car to carry away, such as gold, silver and jewellery. They had been in occupation only a few days and already a thriving black market had grown up.

As soon as the soldiers opened the door to the workshop, a car engine was heard reverberating loudly through the courtyard. It purred smoothly and was clearly an engine of quality. The soldiers flashed their torches around the courtyard to see where the car was and spotted the garage. They also spotted the figure of George, lying underneath, apparently engaged in some repairs.

One soldier gave George a kick in the head. ‘Who’s that?’ he shouted in English.

George’s muffled voice came from beneath the car. ‘I’m
fixing it!’ His English was even harder to understand than the officer’s.