The Flowers of War

by Geling Yan

  ‘Your home must be in that direction,’ said Major Dai, thinking she was using the binoculars to find the Qin Huai River and the brothel.

  ‘I wasn’t looking for that,’ she said with a desolate smile. ‘It’s not my home.’

  After a few moments, he asked what she was thinking about. She was actually thinking that she should ask him where his home was, if he had children and how old his wife was. But these were the kind of questions people asked when they planned to spend a lot of time together.

  So she said, ‘I was thinking … I’d like a cigarette.’

  Dai smiled. ‘Just what I was thinking,’ he said.

  They exchanged complicit glances then turned to look out at the streets and alleyways of the ruined city. If they could hear the cries of the cigarette hawkers down there, it would prove that the city was coming back to life and they could leave, Yumo thought. The cigarette hawkers were a prelude, and would soon be followed by the shouts of the noodle sellers. They could find somewhere nice for an evening meal, and then go and dance the night away in a dance hall.

  No doubt Dai was thinking along the same lines because he heaved a sigh and said, ‘It must be fate that brought us together. Otherwise, a junior regimental officer like me could never have aspired to a date with you, Miss Yumo.’

  ‘You haven’t asked me for a date, so how do you know?’

  ‘Didn’t I invite you to come and enjoy the view from up here?’ He smiled, and nodded to the destruction around them and the dismal scene beyond.

  ‘Does this count as a date?’

  ‘Of course it does!’

  He stood awkwardly, no doubt because his wound hurt him, and shifted so that he stood in front of her. She looked at him in the pale moonlight. She knew just how fatally attractive she was when she looked like that.

  ‘Of course it doesn’t,’ she said.

  ‘All right, it doesn’t count then,’ he said. ‘We’ll wait till the war’s over, then I’ll take you out to dinner and we’ll go dancing.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ she said slowly. ‘If you don’t keep your word and come and make a date with me, then I’ll…’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘What’ll you do?’

  ‘I’ll come and ask you out.’

  He laughed. ‘A woman asking a man out?’

  ‘It would be the first time in my life I’d asked a man on a date, so you’d better watch out.’

  She reached over and gently brushed his cheek with her fingers. It was the touch of a whore. She did not want him to marry her. He must be fed up with women like that. What she wanted him to remember was that she owed him a good time, the kind of top-quality good time that only a whore could give him. And, for her to keep her word and for him to enjoy this sensual feast, he would have to go on living and not engage in senseless, bloody fighting.

  ‘I’ll remember.’

  ‘What will you remember? Tell me.’

  ‘I’ll remember that the famous beauty of Nanking, Zhao Yumo, is going to invite me out and for that reason I can’t die.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Yumo with a flirtatious smile. ‘But tell me, Major Dai. You were planning to leave us, weren’t you? I saw it in your eyes. You were going to abandon us to our fate.’

  ‘I was,’ said Dai with a wry smile. ‘But then I realised something was keeping me here.’

  Yumo remembered that wry smile now.

  ‘Stop crying, Hongling,’ she whispered sharply. ‘You might be heard.’

  Hongling saw that Yumo was clutching something. It was a small pair of sewing scissors, no bigger than the palm of her hand but very sharp. She had seen Yumo use them to snip the ends of threads or make paper-cut window decorations. When Hongling was younger, Yumo had used them to trim Hongling’s eyelashes. If you did that a few times, it made them grow back thick and up-sweeping, she said. Yumo always kept them with her, together with her few pieces of jewellery.

  Yumo had never told any of the other women the story of her scissors. They were her most prized possession. She loved them more now than the diamond ring which her faithless lover had given her. She had had the scissors since she was thirteen years old. The brothel madam had lost her needlework scissors and had beaten her for stealing them. Then when she found them again, she had given them to Yumo by way of an apology. That was the moment when Yumo had made up her mind that she was going to haul herself up to the top of her profession so she could no longer be humiliated over a pair of scissors.

  Above them, the soldiers were still turning the kitchen upside down and muttering unintelligibly among themselves. At every noise from above, a sob would be heard from one of the schoolgirls.

  ‘Give me one half of your scissors, Yumo,’ said Nani in a low voice.

  Yumo took no notice. No doubt they could be pulled apart but who had the energy for that now? Besides, it would make a noise, it would be asking for trouble. Everyone envied Yumo her scissors. They might only give a nip like that of a dying rabbit, but they were better than nothing.

  ‘No need for scissors, just knee them,’ said Jade. ‘With a bit of luck and if you’re fierce enough, you can do a lot of damage to their privates so long as your knees are not tied.’

  Yumo shushed them but Jade continued to whisper advice. Her pimp was a hired thug and he had taught her a few kicks and punches. It was best if your hands were free, she said, then you could grab their balls and give a twist, the way you got a kernel out of a walnut. A good sharp twist and they would not be fathering any more little Jap animals. Yumo thumped her hard, because the kitchen above had gone quiet.

  They stood, or crouched, or sat, completely motionless, their slender fists filled with a fierce energy. Twist as if you’re getting the kernel out of a walnut, that’s what Jade said, as hard as you can, concentrate all your strength into your palm and fingers, crack, crack …

  Yumo found the scissors she was holding were slippery with sweat. There was a sob from one of the schoolgirls and Yumo pulled the dividing curtain back, hissing: ‘What are you crying about? You’ve got us for scapegoats, haven’t you?’ Then she went back to the other side of the curtain and peered up the ventilation shaft. She could see the Japanese soldiers dragging Wang Pusheng’s bandage-swathed body towards the entrance.

  The boy moaned in pain. ‘He won’t last more than a couple of days, why are you bothering to –’ shouted Dai.

  Dai’s words were cut short by a loud chopping sound. The night before, Yumo had enticed him to live with a promise of sensual pleasure, and he said he would remember that. Now the head which held that memory dropped to the ground.

  There was a sudden croak from the dying boy. ‘Fuck you and all your ancestors!’

  The interpreter did not translate this country boy’s curse.

  Wang Pusheng carried on. ‘Fuck all your Jap sisters too!’

  The interpreter was forced to supply a translation. The Japanese officer then used the sword soaked in Dai’s blood to administer a final, gratuitous stab into the festering wound in the boy’s abdomen.

  Yumo pressed her hands over her ears. The boy’s last cry was too distressing.

  The torches were switched off and there was a clatter of army boots in the direction of the side door. The truck engine started into life, its roar a final blustering farewell. As it faded into the distance, the women and girls saw the feet of Father Engelmann and Fabio move effortfully, in trepidation. They were shifting the dead bodies.

  Yumo burst into tears. She stepped back from the ventilation shaft, one hand still gripping her scissors, the other wiping the tears from her face, smearing it with dust in the process. She had loved Major Dai. And not only him; she was promiscuous in her love, and had given her heart to each of the three soldiers.

  Fifteen

  At six o’clock the next morning, Father Engelmann led the thirteen girls in a farewell to the three dead soldiers and the cook, George Chen. The girls sang the requiem Mass in low voices. Shujuan was standing at the front. After the Ja
panese had left, they had occupied themselves in making dozens of white camellias in fine white paper. Now each of the four corpses had a simple wreath of flowers. The girls had carried the wreaths into the nave where the women waited. The women, led by Yumo, had spent the intervening hours washing and dressing the bodies, and shaving their faces. They had put Major Dai’s head back with his body and Yumo had wrapped a fine woollen scarf of her own around his neck at the join. As the girls walked in, they were greeted by searching looks from the women.

  Shujuan noticed that the prostitutes were all plainly dressed and their pale faces showed no traces of make-up. They had decorated their chignons with white flowers which they had made by tearing up a fragment of cloth. Yumo wore a black velvet cheongsam as if she were a widow. In fact, she wore full mourning garb. As Yumo’s eyes met Shujuan’s, Shujuan looked away. She didn’t feel that hot hatred towards Yumo any more. The whore wasn’t worth her hatred. Instead what she felt deep down inside her was an echoing wonder. If creatures like Yumo could go on living, then why not noble men such as Major Dai and Sergeant Major Li?

  Father Engelmann wore his grandest cassock and surplice, full of moth holes since he rarely brought it out. He had combed his silver hair back and wore a priest’s hat on his head. Holding a heavy crook, he walked to the pulpit.

  At seven o’clock, they buried the bodies in the churchyard. It was a cold but clear day. The cemetery had the sharp, fresh smell of cypress. Fabio had worked since before dawn to dig four graves. There was nothing to put between the bodies and the earth but silk lent by the women—scarves, dresses, wraps.

  Shujuan stood on the edge of Dai’s grave. As the earth started falling on his body wrapped in ridiculously colourful clothing, tears rolled down her face. It seemed so unjust for a hero to receive a funeral like this. After the burial, she let everyone else leave and watched Father Engelmann as he stood by the graves with his head bowed.

  Eventually he looked up and noticed her.

  ‘It’s so unfair,’ she said.

  The priest looked her in the eye. ‘My child?’

  ‘That I should see all this. So unfair.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘My parents have been spared all of it.’

  ‘They have. Do you want to say something to me, child?’

  Shujuan felt the urge to tell him everything: her misery at the changes in her body, her fury at her parents, her hatred of the Qin Huai women, how she had nearly poured hot ash over them. But there was something in Father Engelmann’s knowing eyes that stopped her—as if they were telling to her to reconsider her unhappiness.

  * * *

  Later, Father Engelmann put on shoes with rubber soles more suitable for walking and went to the Safety Zone to report on what had happened. He would enquire, while he was there, whether there was any transport which could smuggle the girls out of Nanking. In the meantime, perhaps they could be taken to John Rabe’s house, or could be squeezed in at Dr Robinson’s. After what had happened, Father Engelmann felt that the church was now unsafe. He even wondered in trepidation whether the soldiers had smelled the girls. He seemed to remember a girl screaming last night. If only it had been his overwrought nerves which dreamed up that scream.

  When Fabio went into the churchyard to tidy the graves, he found Yumo standing beside the mound where Major Dai was buried.

  Fabio adjusted the bandage on his arm and turned to look at her. ‘Let’s go in. It looks like it might snow.’

  Yumo flicked the back of her hand over her face. She did not want Fabio to see that she was wiping away tears.

  Fabio did not move. He sensed Yumo wanted to stay and said to her: ‘Go on in, quick, it’s not safe outside.’

  She turned towards him. The weeping had turned her big eyes and her nose into small reddened blotches in her wan face. She was no longer beautiful, in fact she was ugly. But, looking at her, Fabio found himself immensely moved. This twenty-five-year-old woman could so easily have been a teacher, a secretary, an ordinary wife. He imagined another scenario, one in which as a young man returned from America, he came across a girl of about ten years old whose master was about to sell her and spent all his savings on buying her. Her name, she would tell him, was Yumo. But it was too late for something like that to happen now—to either of them.

  ‘Do you have any family left?’ he asked her now.

  ‘Probably,’ she said distractedly. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘If by any chance something should happen … I’m sure it won’t, but if it did … and you lost touch with them, then I could contact them for you.’

  ‘You mean if by any chance I die?’ She smiled bitterly. ‘As far as my family go, it makes no difference whether I’m alive or dead.’

  Fabio said nothing. His shoulder wound was throbbing painfully.

  ‘All they care about is their opium. Me and my sisters were all sold to buy opium for them.’

  ‘How many sisters do you have?’

  ‘I’m the eldest. I have two younger sisters and a little brother. Before my mother became an addict, I was just like those schoolgirls. I went to a good school. I was at a missionary school for a year.’

  She told him briefly how she had been pawned to a distant relative as a child, and how that relative’s wife had finally sold her on to the Nanking brothel. She spoke in a flat, dull monotone as if what she was saying was quite ordinary. She told him about the humiliation of being unjustly accused of stealing the scissors, and how the incident had made her determined to get to the top, even of this degrading profession.

  She and Fabio had moved into the nave of the church. The smell of incense and candlewax from the requiem Mass still hung in the air.

  Yumo sat in the front pew. She casually picked up one of the Bibles placed there for the congregation, then smiled wryly at herself for doing so.

  Fabio stood in front of her, one side braced stiffly against the pain from his wound. He was a little discomfited: he was not her father confessor, and she was not one of his flock. As a man used to being self-sufficient, knowing too much about other people felt like a burden and made him uncomfortable.

  Suddenly she changed the subject and turned to him. ‘And what about you, Father?’

  She had confided in him; now she wanted him to do the same.

  Somehow, Fabio found himself telling her about how he had stayed in China when his parents died and how he had been brought up by Chinese adoptive parents. It struck him that no one had ever wanted to listen to his story before. As she sat there, he was overcome with the desire to tell her absolutely everything. He went back to the beginning and filled in, in vivid detail, everything he had skated over. She listened in rapt attention. When he told her how anxious and apprehensive he had felt when he first met his American relatives, she smiled compassionately. This really was a woman of great empathy and understanding.

  It occurred to Fabio that he might stop drinking if he had someone to tell his troubles to. A listening face like hers was intoxicating enough.

  ‘I never thought I’d ever end up talking to a priest,’ said Yumo.

  And Fabio had never imagined that he would confide the story of his life to a prostitute.

  ‘Will you stay on here at the church?’

  Fabio looked blank. He had always assumed that he would pass the rest of his days here and, when the end came, be buried next to Father Engelmann in the churchyard. But now that Yumo had put the question, he suddenly began to have doubts. They were nebulous, ill-defined doubts but they coexisted with his former certainty. God’s existence was nebulous too; especially last night, when the Creator had seemed so completely powerless, as easily cowed as human beings. He looked at the woman who had inspired these doubts in him. He heard himself telling her the story of how he met Father Engelmann. Meanwhile, another part of his mind was elaborating on his daydream: how, at eleven or twelve, the child Yumo might have met a Western youth who spoke in Yangzhou dialect, and that youth might have sent her to the Mary Magdalene Missionary
School for Girls, all the while waiting for her to grow up. When she had finished secondary education and had become a superbly beautiful young woman, Fabio would have gone to her and declared his feelings.

  He looked at her now—at that mouth which had been kissed by so many men, and at her beautifully defined chin. Her black cheongsam clung tightly to her figure. She had the body of a woman in a Chinese watercolour painting; a Westerner needed an understanding of Chinese culture to dream of its soft, subtle curves.

  And Fabio did dream. He dreamed that her clothes peeled off to reveal her pearly white skin underneath, skin which was bleached pale because of the late hours she kept. He was filled with confusion. If she were to love him, really and truly, then he would be finished, wouldn’t he? Surely he should be grateful that she was only playing with him?

  ‘I’ll be off now,’ she said, getting up. Her eyes were slightly less red and swollen.

  She had shed so many tears for Major Dai, who was no longer on this earth. Fabio was filled with jealousy. If he died, how would she react? She might have a pang of grief, and then she would think: ‘Well, he’s gone, that man who was neither Chinese nor Westerner. It makes no difference whether he’s here or not.’ In fact, it made no difference to anyone.

  ‘Have you got all of that, Father?’

  Fabio looked at her, puzzled. She tilted her head to one side as if she was going to laugh. Fabio realised she was asking if he remembered everything she had told him about herself. She felt she was someone who, when she had gone, would leave no trace in this world. If Fabio remembered anything at all about her, she wanted it to be that her life had had some meaning.

  He felt a pang of pain the like of which he had never felt before.

  Sixteen

  It was after two in the afternoon when Father Engelmann returned from the Safety Zone. He had managed to bring back five or six pounds of rice tucked away in his cassock. Fabio made rice porridge and called the women and girls into the refectory. Father Engelmann told them that, just the day before, the Japanese Army had openly seized scores of women in the Safety Zone and taken them away. They had been very devious: first, they had staged the arrest of some Chinese soldiers; this brought the authorities in the Safety Zone to the front entrance of the Jin Ling Girls’ Academy, allowing the Japanese to round up the women, take them out of a side door, and load them onto a lorry concealed nearby. Conditions in the Safety Zone were worse than at the church, he went on. There was raw sewage everywhere, contagious diseases were rife, and the refugees were fighting over basic necessities. The authorities did not think that a dozen or so thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls would be any safer there. So Father Engelmann had agreed with Miss Vautrin, the head of the Jin Ling Girls’ Academy who was one of the organisers of the Safety Zone, that an ambulance would come to the church that night and take the girls to Dr Robinson’s house.