The Flowers of War (16 page)

When the women in the cellar woke up in the morning, Cardamom’s bed was empty. George said that, when he got up at daybreak to heat water, he had seen her staggering drunkenly around the courtyard. He had tried to persuade her to go to bed, but she had ordered him to go to her house to get three new
pipa
strings. She said the
pipa
sounded awful, because it only had one string left. How could he go? George said. He didn’t know where she lived. She had replied that everyone knew how to get to the Qin Huai River. The house she belonged to was right on the riverbank, and her
pipa
strings were kept in the drawer of her dresser; he couldn’t possibly miss them. George tried to pacify her by
saying he would go once it got light, but she said she could not wait. Wang Pusheng would be dead by then. She wanted to be able to play to him properly.

George had gone about his chores thinking she was back down in the cellar sleeping off her drunkenness. He was sure that, when morning came, she would have forgotten her mad idea.

Cardamom’s absence affected everyone in the compound. They were all on edge. When, at nightfall, she still hadn’t returned, Father Engelmann and Fabio went up to the attic to talk to the girls. The two clegymen had to stoop uncomfortably in the confined space, as if they were praying.

Fabio spoke first. He told the girls there was no news of Cardamom.

Father Engelmann interrupted him. ‘It’s no good trying to screen you girls. We have to assume the worst. That Cardamom has been taken by the Japanese and subjected to who knows what tortures …’

As the girls listened, the blood drained from their faces. Now that violence might have been inflicted on someone they knew, it suddenly became very real. They had hated Cardamom. They had fought with her. Now they thought of her as a young girl with a most unjust fate. She had been
sold from brothel to brothel like a little dog. Would she have been willing to do what she did had she had a choice? Possibly not. People always said whores had no heart, and yet Cardamom risked her life to get
pipa
strings just so she could play a better tune for Wang Pusheng. As they sat dull-faced listening to Father Engelmann, they asked in their minds: Why Cardamom? She was too young. Gradually, tears welled up in their eyes. They’d rather God had swapped any of those prostitutes in the cellar for Cardamom.

‘I want you to get your things together and move down to the cellar straight away,’ said Father Engelmann. ‘Fabio and I and some other teachers hid from the fighting down there during the 1927 Nanking Incident. We were safe even though both armies ransacked the church compound several times. The cellar is much safer than the attic.’

‘Is that really appropriate?’ asked Fabio doubtfully. ‘Those women are completely intemperate in everything they say and do –’

‘There’s nothing more important than safety,’ said Father Engelmann firmly. ‘Off you go, children.’

By dinner time, the girls had moved to their new home and the soldiers were ensconced in the workshop. If they were discovered by the Japanese, the priest would just have
to do his best to explain that they were wounded civilians. Whether or not he would be believed was in God’s hands. It was Dai who suggested the move; it was clear that he felt the men had no choice in the matter. They must protect the women and girls.

*     *     *

A curtain still divided the cellar in two, but the side that had belonged to the soldiers was now where the schoolgirls arranged their bedding. That night they ate their meagre supper in the cellar rather than the refectory.

Their meal was interrupted by Fabio calling down from the kitchen.

‘Xu Xiaoyu, come upstairs please.’

The girls looked at each other. Had the impossible happened? Had Xiaoyu’s father actually managed to come and rescue her?

They crowded round one of the ventilation shafts and, peering upwards, saw Xiaoyu’s pretty feet come to a halt before a gleaming pair of men’s leather shoes. Then they heard a choked cry: ‘Dad!’

Shujuan learned later that in order to rescue his daughter,
Xiaoyu’s father had sold one of his stores in Macau. Then he had returned to Nanking, but discovered that money was worth nothing; the Japanese did not need money to get what they wanted. He was a good businessman so he went into business with the Japanese, putting antiques, jewellery and paintings their way, selling his integrity and his conscience. Finally he got the laissez-passer he needed and could get his daughter out. Getting into Nanking was as hard as getting to heaven, but leaving it was as difficult as getting to the universe beyond.

Xiaoyu crouched down and called through the shaft to the watching faces below: ‘My dad’s come to get me!’ She sounded as if she were saying: ‘An angel’s come to get me!’

No one said anything. Even Anna, whom Xiaoyu had promised to take with her, was glum-faced and silent. It was wishful thinking to imagine that someone this lucky would remember her promises.

Xiaoyu got to her feet and the girls heard her say: ‘I want to take two classmates with me, Dad!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said her father roughly.

‘I do!’

Her father hesitated. The girls held their breath. Finally he said: ‘All right. Who do you want to take?’

Xiaoyu went through the kitchen and climbed down the ladder. Fifteen girls stood there, not daring to make a sound. Xiaoyu had the power of life and death over them. The women on the other side of the curtain were just as silent, as if the choice of who were going to be the lucky ones mattered enormously to them too.

Xiaoyu looked first at one, then at another. Most of them knew they had no prospect of being chosen, even though they would gladly have jumped at the chance of being a servant in the Xu family household.

‘Anna,’ said Xiaoyu.

Anna, flushed with the honour of being chosen, slowly stood up and went to stand beside her friend.

Xiaoyu looked at the remaining faces, which were increasingly anxious and despondent. Shujuan was full of regret that she had not made it up with Xiaoyu, but it was too late now. She could only feign indifference as to whether she lived or died.

‘Xiaoyu, you said you’d take me with you!’ Sophie whined.

Shujuan was aghast at Sophie’s self-abasement. She turned to look at her – and met Xiaoyu’s eyes instead. Xiaoyu’s gaze was kindly, she discovered, but in a superior
way. Shujuan just had to open her mouth and call her name, it seemed to say, and Xiaoyu would be content to forget all about the past. Shujuan could be best friends again with her old companion, Xiaoyu, the girl who had always got the same marks as her through all their school years.

Shujuan felt frantic. She could not open her mouth to speak, though her eyes were still fixed on Xiaoyu. Only she knew how degraded, how hopeless, she felt at that moment.

But then Xiaoyu turned her gaze away. She had toyed with Shujuan’s feelings again. And she was still toying with her classmates.

‘Let’s draw lots,’ said Xiaoyu.

She pulled a page from her notebook and tore it into fourteen pieces. On one of these pieces, she drew a flower.

‘I don’t want to. Draw lots among the rest of you,’ said Shujuan, turning her back valiantly.

‘Come on,’ said Xiaoyu. ‘My dad can’t take all of you …’ She seemed almost to be begging Shujuan.

Shujuan shook her head.

The winner was one of the girls who had hardly even exchanged a word with Xiaoyu, and she was duly taken away by Xiaoyu’s father. The remaining thirteen girls were left sharing a bar of chocolate which he had brought with
him. To be precise, twelve of them shared it. Shujuan volunteered to give up her portion to the rest. If Xiaoyu thought she could buy off the ones she had abandoned with sweets, she had another think coming. Shujuan would not give her the satisfaction.

On the other side of the curtain, Nani was heard muttering: ‘That girl’s dad must have money … he must be very, very rich. If you have money, you can make anything happen.’

‘Didn’t your Wu have a bit of money? The one who butchered ducks for a living?’

‘Nani let him get away. She didn’t squeeze him tight enough with her legs!’ said Hongling.

‘Keep your filthy mouths shut!’ said Yumo.

‘Last year, he said he wanted to pay back the bond on me and make me his second wife,’ said Nani.

‘You’re a complete idiot! You fancied yourself as a duchess but you ended up as a duck!’

‘Even people’s ducks have been killed by the Japs! If a Jap saw a stupid duck like Nani, wouldn’t he like a bit of her?’

‘Just let him try it on, I’d give him one in the balls!’ Nani said angrily.

‘Will you keep your mouth shut, Nani?!’ Yumo intervened once more.

A few moments later, Nani began to cry. ‘I’m not that stupid! Being with Wu was better than being in this hellhole! The way we’re stuck down here now, we might all end up like Cardamom!’

On the other side of the curtain, the girls huddled close to each other.

Suddenly Nani’s crying stopped. It sounded like someone had put a quilt over her head.

The girls squeezed up together and slept. Later that night, they did not know what time it was, there was a commotion from the women on the other side of the curtain. The doorbell was ringing.

As soon as Father Engelmann heard the doorbell he went to the kitchen and whispered down to the women and girls through the ventilation shaft. ‘Don’t worry. Fabio and I will deal with them. Don’t let me hear a single sound out of any of you.’

Then he went to the workshop and gently pushed open the door. He was startled to find Major Dai standing inside, looking grimly ready to fight to the death. Behind him, the tables had been pushed together to make a bed for Wang Pusheng, who was drifting feverishly in and out of consciousness.

‘You’re not to come out unless it’s absolutely necessary.
Fabio and I will get rid of them,’ said the priest, patting Dai on the shoulder and smiling slightly.

Then he went to the side entrance, where the bell was ringing … and ringing … and ringing. It was foolish to open up to night visitors, but even more foolish to refuse. Father Engelmann’s thoughts were in a whirl. Finally Fabio emerged, his breath sour from the rice wine he had drunk.

Father Engelmann opened the small spyhole in the door, and moved his head to the left, out of range of any bayonet which might be thrust through from the outside. A bayonet did indeed come through so it was lucky his eyes were not in the way. The headlights of the vehicle outside streamed under the door.

‘Would you mind telling me what it is you want?’ asked Father Engelmann with the utmost courtesy, in English.

‘Open up!’ came a voice in Chinese. It was said that Japanese soldiers and junior officers had all learned a few words of Chinese during their week of occupation: ‘Open up!’ ‘Get out!’ ‘Food!’ ‘Petrol!’ ‘Sing-song girls!’

‘And how may I help you?’ Father Engelmann’s monotone Chinese was designed to pacify the most aggressive of intruders.

He was answered by the butts of their guns. They pounded on the door so hard that a crack opened up between the two panels. Light from the car headlamps outside streamed through the gap.

‘This is an American church and we bought this land decades ago. Letting you in is like letting you onto American soil,’ Fabio expostulated in his thick Yangzhou accent. If the Japanese were not swayed by Engelmann’s genteel English, perhaps they would take notice of something a bit tougher.

A Chinese voice answered.

‘The Imperial Japanese Army has accurate reports that you are harbouring Chinese soldiers –’

‘Nonsense!’ Fabio cut the man short. ‘The Japanese troops have been using that excuse to loot all across Nanking. Do you think we’re still taken in by nonsense like that?’

There was a moment’s silence outside the door as the collaborator-interpreter translated.

‘Father,’ he began again, ‘these people have guns. Please don’t try their patience!’

Father Engelmann heard a movement behind him and looked round to see shadowy figures toting guns emerging from behind the church. The Japanese must have discovered they could save their breath by just getting in over the wall.