by Geling Yan
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.’
Li found out that the little group all dressed in black waistcoats had been commandeered by the Japanese as labourers. Their task was to dispose of the Chinese prisoners who had been secretly executed.
Nine
When, three hours after Fabio had sent Ah Gu to look for the pond, he still wasn’t back, Fabio could stand it no more. He went down to the cellar and asked Yumo whether she had given Ah Gu clear directions to the pond. Yes she had, she said, and in fact Ah Gu said he knew it: it was in the grounds of a clan memorial hall, and the family used it in summer to grow lotuses.
‘He’s been gone more than three hours!’ exclaimed Fabio.
He changed into the newer of his two cassocks and gave his face a wipe with a towel. If he was to rescue Ah Gu from the Japanese, he needed to have an air of authority about him. He had to find Ah Gu. Without him, there was no one to carry water. George Chen could not go—the Japanese would definitely round up a young man like him.
Fabio headed north along the narrow street which passed their entrance, according to Yumo’s instructions. When he reached the second alleyway, he turned into it and walked right down to the end. It all looked different from the last time he had come this way: the walls were blackened and some buildings had disappeared. Half a dozen dogs scrabbled out of his way as he passed. The dogs had grown fat in the last few days and their coats gleamed. Fabio averted his gaze whenever he saw a pack of curs gathered around something.
He was carrying a tin bucket in his right hand and was prepared to hurl it at the dogs to fend them off if necessary. Once they had gorged on human flesh, they might switch to eating the living too. As he emerged from the alley, he saw an old wall of hard-fired, grey bricks in front of him. Through a gap where it had collapsed, he could see a pond glittering in the morning light. There was no sign of Ah Gu. Fabio realised he would have to give up his search.
The surface of the pond was covered in lotus leaves. It was the most peaceful scene Fabio had seen in a long time. He drew a bucketful of water from the pond and took the same way back to the church. It was a piffling amount now that they had so many people to look after. Father Engelmann’s beloved old Ford would have to be pressed into use to fetch more.
Back at the church, Fabio pulled out the Ford’s back seats and loaded it up with every bucket, bowl and pot the church possessed. Then he and George drove off to the pond. When they arrived back after the first trip, George used the water to make a pot of rice porridge. Everyone got a bowlful, and a little dish of pickled vegetables which smelled like old rags and tasted foul, although they all said they were delicious.
Fabio looked on as the women and girls washed themselves. None of them had washed in days. Today they each got a cup of water and, clustered around the gutter under the eaves, they dipped their handkerchiefs into it and wiped their faces. Then they used what remained to rinse their mouths and clean their teeth.
Yumo wet her hair ribbon and carefully rubbed behind her ears and around the back of her neck. Her handkerchief would use up too much of the precious water. Then she undid her top buttons, wrung out the green ribbon and reached in to wipe the upper part of her chest. She looked up, to see Fabio standing staring at her. He looked away in shame but he couldn’t deny that he had feelings growing for her which seemed to reach blindly towards the light like a vine twisting out from under a stone.
* * *
It was even colder that night. As the gunshots outside the compound went on incessantly, powdery snow fell in the windless dark. It was as if the snow were shaken out of the atmosphere by the gunshots. The air was damp. It was the kind of snow that would make everything dirty the next day.
As the schoolgirls were filing back to the attic after evening prayers, they heard the faint sound of singing coming from the cellar. Up in the attic Shujuan longed to ask Xiaoyu to sneak down with her to see what was going on, but they were no longer speaking to each other. Since Xiaoyu had betrayed her,
Shujuan had not tried to make it up with her, and made a point of turning her back to her in bed. Xiaoyu was never short of close friends, however, and Anna had immediately taken Shujuan’s place.
Shujuan waited until the girls were snoring and then crept downstairs. Outside, the cold air was biting. She huddled in the snow and peered down into the cellar. At first all she could see was the back of a broad-shouldered, slender-waisted man. In spite of the long, baggy woollen garment he wore, he looked every inch the soldier, the sort who would turn any garment into a military uniform. Shujuan knew that this was the officer who had almost succeeded in pushing the Japanese Army right into the Huangpu River. He had told Father Engelmann all about it. Major Dai was livid about the retreat from Shanghai and the abandonment of Nanking. He could not understand it. If the great retreat ordered by the Nationalist military command had been intended to save lives and to conserve military strength, then why had Chiang Kai-shek turned down a three-day truce between the Japanese and the Chinese which had been negotiated by the International Safety Committee, and would have permitted an orderly retreat from Nanking and a peaceful handover of the city to the Japanese?
The prostitutes had dressed the young soldier Wang Pusheng in Hongling’s mink coat. They did not have enough bandages and were using patterned silk scarves instead. Wang was a delicate boy to start with; now he almost looked like a girl. He sat up in a makeshift bed, with Cardamom next to him. They had playing cards in their hands and a sheet of newspaper between them served as a card table.
Shujuan had a restricted view down through the ventilation grille, and could only see whoever happened to come into the frame. Now it was Zhao Yumo; Shujuan could see her talking to the major in low tones, too low for Shujuan to catch what they were saying, no matter how hard she strained to hear. The major appeared to be getting amorous with this Yumo.
Shujuan felt a surge of hatred for these prostitutes. If they had not forced their way in, the water in the cistern would have been enough for the sixteen girls. The women had used up all the water washing their clothes, their faces and their bums, and made the schoolgirls drink from a filthy pond. In fact, if they had not run out of water, Ah Gu would not have needed to leave the compound, and would not now be missing. Even the heroic Major Dai was letting them have their way with him, right now, before her very eyes. He had let down his defences. He had become dissolute.
Driven by her fury, Shujuan went to the ash pit behind the kitchen and collected a shovelful of coal dust in which a few embers still glowed. She went back to the ventilation shaft and weighed the shovel speculatively in her hand: if she could get half of it down the shaft and a couple of sparks fell on the faces of those sluts who fed off men’s weaknesses, how happy she would be! How good it would make her and her classmates feel!
* * *
Down in the cellar, Zhao Yumo sat to one side on an overturned wine barrel and smoked a cigarette while the other women played poker and mah-jong. Major Dai sat beside her.
‘The first time I set eyes on you here, you looked familiar,’ he said.
Yumo smiled. ‘Surely not! I mean, you’re not from Nanking.’
‘Nor are you! Have you lived in Shanghai?’
‘Yes. I was born in Suzhou and I spent seven or eight years in Shanghai.’
‘Have you been to Shanghai recently?’
‘Several times.’
‘Who with? With a soldier? This July?’
‘The end of July. Just when it was at its hottest.’
‘You must have gone to the Air Fleet Club. I often go there myself.’
‘How would I remember?’ said Yumo, although her smile seemed to indicate that she remembered perfectly well; she just did not want to admit it because she guarded the discretion of all her clients.
A yell from Hongling interrupted their conversation.
‘But I can’t dance! we’re all country bumpkins! Yumo’s the only one who’s been to all the clubs in Shanghai. She dances really well.’
Sergeant Major Li had been asking Hongling to dance for him, and this was her response.
All the women agreed with Hongling.
‘Yumo can charm statues of the Bodhisattva into life when she dances!’ one chimed in.
‘Miss Zhao, your soldier brothers risk their lives constantly … if we ask you to dance for us, should you not do us the honour?’ said Major Dai.
‘Right!’ agreed Hongling. ‘Live for the day! The Japanese might be here tonight, then there’ll be no tomorrow for us!’
Sergeant Major Li seemed to feel his rank was too humble for him to address Yumo directly and muttered something to Hongling. Then he grinned broadly as Hongling cajoled her leader on his behalf.
‘Who’s not heard of the fairy-tale palace in Nanking where Zhao Yumo hides out? It’s always full of fine men feasting their eyes on her!’
‘Well, I suppose, when we get old and long in the tooth, we won’t be able to wriggle our hips any more!’ said Yumo, getting to her feet.
Yumo’s neat, rounded buttocks undulated in a rumba. She fixed her gaze on Major Dai, and a response appeared in his eyes. But he could not keep it up for long and, with a young man’s shyness, he dropped his eyes and conceded defeat. But Yumo, the seductress, kept enticing him back to her. She wore a purple velvet cheongsam, against which her face, untouched by the sun, gleamed palely. She had certainly earned her place at the top of her profession: she carried herself easily, like a cultured, elegant, society lady. It was only these flashing looks that gave men a taste of the coquette under the surface.
There was a strict hierarchy in the Nanking brothels, and each grade was awarded a different salary. The Qin Huai women wore insignia on their clothes when they were at work, indicating their status. That way the clients could weigh out the family silver in advance, and work out who they could afford to enjoy that day. The people of Nanking had never been overly concerned about the morality of prostitution; in fact, generations of literati had sung the praises of prostitutes—from the Eight Beauties of Qin Huai to Sai Jinhua who rose to become wife of a diplomat—and had given them positive roles in their writings.
Yumo, who at work wore a five-star insignia, was standing in front of Sergeant Major Li now. He was a simple sort of a fellow and found it agonising to have this woman right in front of him without being able to get his hands on her. All he could do was smile foolishly. Even Wang Pusheng, just a slip of a boy, was enthralled by Yumo’s dancing. Only Cardamom was still absorbed in her poker game.
‘Your go!’ Cardamom turned to look at the boy. His small face swathed in multicoloured bandages, he was staring goggle-eyed at Yumo’s torso and belly, and she gave him a slap.
The evening the gravedigger brought Sergeant Major Li and Wang Pusheng to the church, Cardamom had given up her bed to Wang Pusheng. She first cleaned and dressed the wound in his abdomen and found the gaping hole, an inch and a half wide, in the paper-thin skin. It pouted like a pair of lips drooling red saliva and something grey and soft poked out of it. Sergeant Major Li told the women that when he poked back the intestines, he had tried to get it all back in, but a bit got left on the outside. However, there was nothing to be done until Fabio Adornato or Father Engelmann could get a doctor from the Safety Zone to come. Cardamom promptly became Wang Pusheng’s nurse, doing everything for him, from giving him food and water to washing him.
Cardamom’s slap brought Wang Pusheng to his senses, and he smiled at her. Cardamom was smitten. They were about the same age and both separated from their families. She knew nothing about hers, not even her own surname. She had been kidnapped by an itinerant busker from north of the Huai River and sold into the brothel.
Cardamom was then an exquisitely pretty but lazy, peevish and unambitious seven-year-old who could not even be bothered with learning to do her hair properly. She complained she had been cheated if she lost at cards, and insisted on the winnings if she won. A year passed, and her clients were mainly foot-runners, cooks and common soldiers. After fiv
e years of beatings, she managed to learn how to play the pipa but she still dressed in the other girls’ hand-me-downs, all patched and ill-fitting. The brothel madam used to say to her: ‘Cardamom, all you can do is eat!’ Cardamom took the comment in good part, and agreed: ‘Yes, that’s right!’ The only thing she had going for her was that if a man took a liking to her, she would put heart and soul into attending on him.
With someone she was keen on, she would exclaim: ‘You’re a fellow countryman!’ so the world was full of Cardamom’s fellow countrymen. If she wanted to cadge a gift from a client or the other women, she would say: ‘Ai-ya! I’d completely forgotten, today’s my birthday!’
Now she asked Wang Pusheng: ‘Why d’you keep watching her?’
‘I don’t,’ said the boy.
‘When you’re better, I’ll take you to a really big dance hall,’ said Cardamom.
‘But I might die tomorrow,’ objected Wang Pusheng.
Cardamom clapped her hand over his mouth, spat, and scuffed the spit into the floor with her foot. ‘Less of that nonsense! If you die then I’m going with you!’
She was overheard by Hongling, who shouted over: ‘Amazing! Listen to those two lovebirds!’
Wang Pusheng flushed scarlet and his mouth opened so wide the corners disappeared into the enveloping bandages.
‘Leave him alone,’ said Cardamom. ‘He’s only a boy!’
The women laughed. They thought it very funny when Cardamom played ‘big sister’.
‘And how do you know he’s a boy, Cardamom?’ teased Sergeant Major Li.
Only Yumo, still carried away with her dancing, paid no attention; she was so wildly flushed that her cheeks looked as though they were painted. Although, to the others, it seemed that she thought only of the movements of her body, her mind was far away. She was remembering a man she met in a dance hall. A man who had filled her with hopes, which he then shattered.