The Flowers of War (2 page)

Some of the bolder pupils opened a window. Now they could take it in turns to stick their heads out and see better. Sitting on top of the wall, above the side door, were two young women. One was wearing a bright pink satin dressing gown which made her look like a newly wedded wife who had just jumped out of bed. The other wore a fox-fur stole over a tight cheongsam.

Fascinated by the drama, the girls climbed, one by one, down the ladder, walked through the workshop and went to huddle together in the doorway. By the time Shujuan arrived, there were another four women on top of the wall. Despite Father Engelmann’s attempts to keep them out, the first two had succeeded in jumping down. By this time Ah Gu and George Chen had joined the fray.

Father Engelmann noticed the chattering girls and yelled fiercely, ‘Ah Gu! Take those girls away. They mustn’t see these women!’

He looked tired. He hadn’t been able to shave since the water had been cut off, and the growth of stubble on his face made him look older than his sixty years.

‘They’re from the brothels!’ exclaimed some of the more sophisticated girls.

‘What brothels?’

‘The Qin Huai River brothels!’

Deacon Fabio Adornato came hurrying out of the church building, shouting at the women: ‘Get out! We’re not taking in refugees!’ There was a momentary lull in the weeping and wailing as the women stared in astonishment at the big-nosed foreigner who spoke in authentic, unadulterated Yangzhou dialect, the kind spoken by cooks and barbers. But it didn’t last for long.

‘We ran away from the river but our cart overturned and the horse bolted,’ cried one of the women. ‘The city’s full of Jap soldiers and we can’t get into the Safety Zone!’

‘There’s no room to swing a cat in the Safety Zone, it’s crammed!’ chimed in a younger girl.

‘I know someone in the US embassy,’ shouted another, her words tumbling over each other. ‘He offered to hide us there, but last night he went back on his word. He just turned us away! All that fun we gave him – all for nothing!’

‘Fucker!’ said someone else casually. ‘When they come looking for pleasure, it’s all “Sweetheart this” and “Sweetheart that”, but then …!’

Shujuan was flabbergasted at their language. She had never heard anything like it. Ah Gu tried to pull her away but she resisted. George, the cook, under orders to use a
stout stick on the women to keep them out, was flailing to left and right of him, begging them: ‘Please, girls, go! You’ll only die of hunger or thirst if you come in here! The students only get two bowls of gruel a day and there’s no running water. That’s enough now, off you go!’ Shujuan noticed that he was half-hearted in the way he brandished his stick. It hit the brick walls, the ground, but never the women. In fact, the only person who got hurt was himself as the blows jarred his fingers and wrists.

Suddenly one of the women knelt down in front of Father Engelmann and bowed her head. All Shujuan could see was her back, but it was an unforgettable back, as lithe and expressive as a face might be. Father Engelmann was trying to argue with the woman in the Chinese that he had learned so painstakingly over the last thirty years. He was reiterating what George had said: there was no food, no water, and no room. Hiding more people endangered everyone. When it was clear he was not getting his message across, he said in frustration, ‘Fabio, translate for me!’

Deacon Fabio Adornato was born to Italian-American parents but brought up in a village in Yangzhou. He spoke in such perfect Yangzhou dialect that people called him ‘Yangzhou Fabio’.

The woman knelt as if she had taken root, but her shoulders and back were alive with meaning.

‘Our lives are worthless,’ she said, ‘not worth rescuing. All we’re asking for is a good death. Even the lowliest of beasts, pigs and dogs, deserve a clean, merciful death.’

There was no denying her elegance and dignity. As she spoke, her chignon suddenly came undone and hair cascaded down over her shoulders. It was beautiful hair.

Father Englemann explained in his broken Chinese that among the pupils in his care there were some from the highest echelons of society, whose parents were long-standing members of his congregation. In the last few days they had cabled asking him to keep their daughters from harm. He had answered each cable swearing that he would guard them with his life.

Fabio lost patience. ‘You’re wasting your breath talking like this to them. There’s only one sort of language they understand: George, start being a proper Monkey King and give them a real beating!’

Ah Gu had given up trying to take Shujuan indoors and now rushed out and made a grab for George’s stick. Then one of the women suddenly fainted. As she fell into Ah Gu’s arms, her mangy mink coat slid open to reveal a white, naked
body. Ah Gu let out a cry. The women on the wall took advantage of the diversion to hop nimbly down into the courtyard. A stout, dark-skinned woman stayed on top of the wall to hoist up an assortment of others, all of whom were unmistakably prostitutes.

Fabio was in despair. ‘That’s enough!’ he shouted. ‘We’ve got every single whore from the Qin Huai brothels here!’ Meanwhile Ah Gu was trying to extricate himself from the embrace of the woman who had fainted but she hung on like a limpet, and the more he struggled, the more she tightened her hold.

Father Engelmann, unable to stop this gaudy tidal wave of females, was looking crestfallen. ‘Open the door,’ he finally ordered Ah Gu.

Shujuan watched in horror as a colourful assortment of women swept in, cluttering the neatly swept, stone-flagged courtyard with their belongings: baskets, bundles and satin bed quilts from which tumbled hair ribbons, silk stockings and other intimate articles. How could her parents have left her to witness such a vile scene? It could only be because they were selfish and loved her less than her sister. It had been a niggling doubt, but now she was sure of it. Her little sister was their favourite. Her father had been awarded a
scholarship to pursue his studies in America, and immediately declared that only her sister would go since she had not yet started school. Shujuan could not have her schooling interrupted by a trip overseas. Her mother backed her father. A year would fly by, they comforted Shujuan, and the whole family would soon be together again. Shujuan seethed with resentment against her parents as she watched George struggling with the woman in his arms. By now the front of the mink coat was wide open revealing an expanse of flesh the colour of sour milk. Shujuan shrank back into the doorway, her face aflame. Then she turned and fled back up to the attic, to which the other girls had already retreated to watch events from the windows.

There was pandemonium in the courtyard as the women ran around in search of food, water and a place to relieve themselves. One told another to hold up an expensive-looking bottle-green velvet cape in front of her, saying apologetically to the ‘foreign monks’ that they had been on the run all night. She could not wait any longer, she said, and disappeared behind the cape as if taking a curtain call.

‘Animals!’ yelled Fabio in English.

‘Please control yourself, Fabio,’ Father Engelmann said quietly. Then he turned to the prostitutes, including the one
who had emerged cheerfully from behind the velvet cape and stood holding up her trousers by their cord. ‘Since you have come to stay here –’ he chose his words carefully – ‘I beg you, as the priest of this church, to behave yourselves with decency.’

‘Father, listen …!’ expostulated Fabio.

‘You listen to me! Let them come in,’ said Father Engelmann. ‘At least for today. Once the Japanese have completed their occupation, they’ll have responsibility for keeping the peace in the city. Then we can ask these women to leave. The Japanese people are well known to be law-abiding. I’m sure their troops will soon impose order on this chaos.’

‘They won’t be able to impose order in a day!’

‘Well then, two days. In the meantime, they can camp in the cellar.’

Father Engelmann turned and walked back towards his house. He had announced his decision and there was no room for further discussion.

‘Father, I don’t agree!’ Fabio shouted after him.

Father Engelmann stopped and turned round. As invincibly refined as ever, he said quietly: ‘I know you don’t agree, Fabio.’ Then he continued on his way. What he had not said was even clearer:
Your disagreement is not of the
slightest importance to me
. His refinement conferred unchallengeable superiority. Although Fabio’s American parents had died when he was young and he had been cared for by a Chinese woman in the countryside of Yangzhou, he looked down on lower-class Chinese in the same way that the local dignitaries or militia did. But if they were several rungs below him in the social scale, then so was he to Father Engelmann who regarded him as inferior because of his rural upbringing.

At that moment, a young prostitute made for the door of the building that housed the workshop. She had seen the girls’ heads at the attic windows and felt sure that it would be a good place to go. At least it would be warmer and more comfortable than outside. Fabio grabbed her from behind but she slipped out of his grasp like an eel. Fabio made another attempt, and this time got hold of the bundle she carried on her back. It was of coarse cloth, less slippery than her satin dressing gown, and he managed to get a purchase and pull her away from the doorway. But the bundle came undone and a sudden hailstorm of small bone mah-jong pieces rained down on the ground. They were fine-quality pieces – you could tell that from the clear, clinking noise they made as they fell.

The stout, dark-skinned woman shouted: ‘If you lose one piece, Cardamom, I’ll skin your arse alive!’

‘There’s nothing wrong with my arse, Jade!’ Cardamom shouted back. ‘I bet he’d like a bit of it too!’

The schoolgirls exchanged amazed glances. Fancy a woman as dark-skinned as that having a name like Jade! As for the girl called Cardamom, she seemed barely older than they were.

Fabio had let go of Cardamom but her words, together with the threat that she might be around to say more things like this, goaded him into grabbing her again and pushing her towards the exit.

‘Out! Get out! Ah Gu! Open the door for her!’ His winter-pale face shone, as if he might break out in a sweat at any moment.

‘Ai-ya! Master, you’re my fellow countryman!’ cried Cardamom. She stumbled and her voice became shrill. ‘I beg you, please don’t! I won’t do it again!’

She had the face of a child, but her body was well developed and she simply bounced back every time he pushed her. ‘Please, master! Teach me good manners, I promise I’ll be good. I’m only fifteen years old! Sister Yumo! Put in a good word for me!’

The woman with the beautiful back put her bags and valuables in a neat pile and walked over to Fabio and Cardamom who were still struggling. Suddenly Shujuan could see her face. She realised the woman had not a slack bone in her entire body. Every part of her could smile or complain, and was capable of a subtle sign language.

‘How many times have I told you to wash your mouth out, Cardamom?’ Yumo said with a smile. She placed herself between the two of them, and pushed Cardamom back towards Jade.

Meanwhile, Ah Gu was cheerfully leading the women down into the cellar under the kitchen. The prostitutes, wide-eyed with curiosity, commented on everything as they pranced along behind him.

Pressed up against the attic window Shujuan watched the women go, her hands massaging her belly to ease the pain.

During prayers that morning, there was the sound of gunfire as if fighting had broken out again somewhere in the city, the salvos coming fast and furious. It lasted for about half an hour. Despite this, Fabio insisted on going to the Safety Zone to find out whether it might still be possible to take the ferry. He came back at midday bringing only bad news. The girls listened wide-eyed as he told Father Engelmann how the streets were lined with corpses, mostly civilians and including children and old people. According to the members of the International Commission in the Safety Zone, the Japanese were shooting anyone who did not understand commands bawled in Japanese, or who ran when they saw
guns. They were using the bodies to fill in the holes gouged in the road surface by explosives. When Fabio had finished speaking, he forced a smile at the girls and then glanced back at Father Engelmann. The implication was that the Father had misjudged things. When there was carnage on this scale, how could order be restored within just a couple of days?