Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  ‘Father – why do you deny you’ve heard these rumours, talked to people in the village about them…?’

  ‘Who I talk to and what I talk about is my business.’

  Spider Girl looked directly at him. Wei looked downwards. Hanging his head. ‘I cannot leave. I am head of the family. If we leave we could lose all our lands.’

  ‘If we do not leave we will lose all our lives. After the war we can return.’

  ‘But our neighbours may have taken our land.’

  ‘If they do not leave now, none of them will survive.’

  ‘But who will tend the land, produce the food?’

  ‘The Japanese will seize the land and farm it. They will fertilize it with our dead. Our kind will be known no longer.’

  ‘They will need someone to till the land, gather the crops.’

  ‘They and their great machines will do that.’

  Wei still stood there with his head hanging. Spider Girl looked at him. She loved him so much.

  ‘Father,’ she said, pointing to the north, pointing to the long black cloud hanging and billowing on the horizon, ‘what is that? You must have seen it.’

  He still stared at the ground. He shuffled his feet.

  Just at that moment another strange boom rang across the landscape.

  ‘What is that sound, child?’ he asked softly.

  ‘The sound of the Japanese guns. The great big ones they possess which can kill ten, twenty people with one bullet. And they possess many of them. Look at the horizon, Father. That cloud is the smoke, the dust the Japanese soldiers throw up into the air as they burn and pillage all the buildings and kill all the people in their way. Those devils will be here in this village, in our farmhouse, by this evening, murdering and raping us.’

  ‘But where will we go?’

  ‘In the newspaper they say people should go south. They are gathering at a place called Wuhan.’

  Still he looked downwards. Almost stamped the ground as he fought desperately to keep it under his feet. All the land he had toiled unendingly on since childhood to keep immaculate and fruitful to feed his family. It was slipping away.

  ‘When you spoke to them just now, Father, how were our ancestors? Were they calm?’

  A look of sheer agony split his face. His whole body fought convulsively for its next breath. Finally it came. ‘If we desert them now, if we cease to worship and pray for them, they will cut themselves off from us for all eternity. We will be like lost ghosts.’

  ‘And what did the spirit of your elder sister have to say? Because I know you love her more than all the others.’

  He paused. ‘She waved me farewell.’

  He reflected a moment, then looked up at Spider Girl. He spoke to her quite calmly and with affection.

  ‘Why do you insist we leave, daughter? You must know that if we flee a great distance, your legs will not be able to carry you and neither will we. We will have to abandon you. Just as our family abandoned my elder sister.’

  ‘I know that, Father. I say it because I love you and my family above all else. I want you to survive.’ Then she smiled. ‘Besides, I have no intention of dying.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Firstly,’ stated her father, ‘I have some family matters I must deal with in our farmhouse. I’ll want you to keep away from there but work out in your head what we shall need for our journey, and who in the family should gather what. I will also think about such matters as I talk.’

  He turned towards the farmhouse and ‘family matters’. The first ‘family matter’ he’d have to deal with was the fact that his wife was about to give birth to their seventh child.

  2

  Wei walked through the flimsy canvas ghost gate, hung in front of the courtyard’s main gate to confuse and keep out all evil spirits and ghosts. He walked through the main wooden gate itself and, stepping to the left, aligned himself on the exact north–south axis which precisely bisected his courtyard and farmhouse into eastern and western halves. He walked determinedly north towards his farmhouse.

  Beneath his feet it was as though the whole earth was in revolt. It felt as though it was buckling and shaking, as though some great northern dragon was writhing and convulsing and jerking the lines which run southwards all across the earth. What was happening up there in the Heavenly North where all the gods abide? What chaos and dissension was breaking out among them to cause this upset? None of it stopped him, though. He kept doggedly to his course.

  He passed the sheds and stable where the farm implements and livestock were kept, where the firewood was stored and the straw stacked. They would not take firewood with them on their journey – they could gather that on the way. The same with water. At the dead centre of the courtyard he passed the shrine to his ancestors on which their names were inscribed on tablets. They ignored him. He continued on his straight north course, passing the room on the left where his father still lived, the room on the right reserved for his eldest son when he came of age and started a family – the room he himself and his wife had first lived in when they were married. All the time he was running through in his head precisely what would be needed for their journey, who in the family he would choose to carry out each separate responsibility of gathering and packing all the many things they would need.

  He came to the main entrance to the farmhouse. A double door opened into the large space of the kitchen. There was a smell of cooking so Cherry Blossom, his second daughter, was preparing food. Something nourishing for his wife. He could hear his eldest and second sons sawing planks in a nearby shed. His father, now elderly and not very strong, was sitting by the fire and telling Wei’s two youngest children a story about the legendary courage of Zhuge Liang and the wickedness of Cao Cao. Their two tiny mouths hung open in wonderment.

  Wei turned to the right. Before him the double doors to his and his wife’s bedroom. He opened them. Cherry Blossom was gently feeding her mother some gruel from a bowl with a duck spoon, leaning over her as she lay on the bed. Seeing him she put the bowl and spoon down and hurried from the room, shutting the doors. Wei stared at his wife as she lay on the bed he himself had been born in. Beneath it lay his birth caul, buried by his father to celebrate his birth. Beside it the caul of his eldest son, buried by himself, and the cauls of his father, grandfather and all the Wei family’s firstborn ancestors back til…

  Wei shook himself and looked at his wife. She was on her back, her legs moving slowly back and forth to relieve the pains in her back. Very pregnant, she was staring directly at him. He saw she knew something was about to happen. She was already marshalling her arguments.

  ‘Good morning, wife. How are you?’

  ‘I am not too bad. As always my back has started aching. What are those strange sounds from the north?’

  ‘Wife, you and I must talk. Now. On grave matters. The sounds you hear are explosions from the guns of the Japanese Army that is marching directly towards our village.’

  ‘I see you’ve been listening to our eldest daughter with her mindless gossip.’

  ‘I can see the dust clouds of their army on the northern horizon. See the flashes and explosions of their guns. My dear wife, with a heavy, heavy heart, I have decided – awful as the time is, especially for you – that for our safety we, the whole family, must leave immediately.’

  She sat straight up, her arms behind her, supporting her.

  ‘What? Leave this land? Our land? Which your family has farmed for a thousand years?’

  ‘Yes. There are many terrible and true stories of these devils’ savagery towards our people. I have heard this not only from our eldest daughter and her newspapers but from people in the village.’

  ‘They always speak nonsense when armies approach us. They said the same when the warlord came twenty years ago. According to my great grandmother there was the same talk when the mad Taipings invaded us seventy years ago. A few men killed, some women raped, we shall endure them. People only spread these rumours because they hope
gullible people will desert their lands and they can take them over.’

  ‘I have been thinking about all this for several days. Yesterday I spoke secretly to my cousin over the hill.’

  ‘Has he decided to leave?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Has anyone else in the village decided to leave?’

  ‘No – but that is unimportant. This is my decision. As I was saying, I spoke to my cousin and he said that if we left – I had not decided then – he would tend and protect my land, and if we had not returned after twelve months he would take our land as his own.’

  ‘Your land! The land you love! The land you put every second of your life into caring for and nurturing. You are the most revered farmer in this village. Every year at our festival the village honours your merit by giving you senior duties in its rituals and dances and speeches. It is said you have a wise heart. Villagers come to you to settle their disputes. You are deserting what you, your ancestors have built up over a thousand years? What will be their judgement on your desertion of their sacred, living land? Who will kneel at their graves and tell them the latest news? Have you told them of your decision yet?’

  Wei didn’t know how to answer this. But suddenly there were two of those loud, ominous explosions from the north. A silence fell between them.

  Wei sympathized with his wife. He understood why she argued this way. At the moment she had no standing among his family’s ancestors. They viewed her as an outsider, some sort of interloper, and largely ignored her. It was only when her and Wei’s eldest son inherited and farmed the land that they would recognize her and hold her in esteem as his mother, that she would become seen by the family, both living and dead, as honoured mother and grandmother of the ensuing generations of Weis. If they left now and never came back, the door of the ancestors would be shut for ever on her; she would be doomed to become just another abandoned soul, hovering pitifully outside the ghost gate of the farmhouse. Just as his eldest sister would have been had he not secretly buried her remains.

  His wife’s face twisted in fury.

  ‘It’s that she-witch our eldest daughter who’s been poisoning your mind isn’t it, with all her lies about newspaper stories? She does it because she hates me.’

  ‘She does not hate you, and she is not lying. She read to me from the pages of newspapers.’

  ‘She could be saying anything she wanted, just making it up, because you can’t read, can you? She is a witch. It all goes back to your mistake during the famine when she was an infant. You should not have fed her. You should have left her to die. A woman has no value and is easily replaced.’

  ‘Enough!’ Wei shouted. ‘I have made my decision. You will obey.’

  For a second she looked at him, then bowed her head in wifely submission.

  In a gentle voice he said, backing slowly out of the room, ‘Stay in your bed and rest, dear wife. We will carry you out when we are ready to leave and you will, of course, have the place of honour in the cart.’

  *

  Spider Girl was lurking in the courtyard behind the door waiting for him to finish. He joined her. They spoke quietly so his wife would not hear them.

  ‘We must get the cart up here at once to start loading,’ he said.

  ‘You’re going to risk its rotten spokes?’

  ‘I’ll do the best job I can repairing them. We’re lost without the cart.’

  His eldest son was passing with a whetstone to sharpen his saw.

  ‘Eldest Son, you and Second Son get the cart up here immediately.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘I’ll clean the cart all through,’ continued Spider Girl, ‘then I, with Cherry Blossom, will start cooking enough food – buns and dumplings – to keep us going for the first few days. I’ve already got her stoking the fire and filling the cauldron to the top with water.’

  ‘Good. How long do you think your food will last – before we have to start using dried food?’

  ‘About five days or so. But I’ll go into the pantry, sort out what grain and beans and seasoning and dried food we’ll need.’

  With that, Spider Girl went off into the kitchen to start preparing the dough for steaming.

  Eldest and Second sons were pushing the cart up the courtyard, shouting and competing with each other about who could push hardest. Wei did not reprimand them for endangering the wheel. Now was not the time. And besides, they had not damaged it.

  He thanked them, then drew them away from the house and down towards where the ancestors’ shrine was. Rather than further upset his wife or have his father overhear what was about to happen it would have to be his ancestors who received the shock. Spider Girl had gone into the kitchen to start preparing the dough for steaming.

  In a quiet authoritative voice Wei told his sons what was to happen. Eldest Son stared ahead, not fully comprehending what Wei was saying, trying to work it out in his head. Second Son stared at his father white-faced.

  ‘We are going to leave the farm, Father?’ asked his eldest.

  ‘Yes. Immediately. These soldiers are going to kill us.’

  ‘Leave our home?’

  ‘Yes. It is vital, so that we can live, that you must now do exactly what I tell you.’

  Second Son was horror-struck too, but already behind his staring eyes Wei could discern flickers and frowns of thought.

  ‘I need you to go down to the stable, groom the donkey and water and feed him and the goat well with their best feed – I’ll want you to do that again before we leave… And press all the goat’s cheese so we can take it with us.’

  ‘Feed them twice in a day?’

  ‘Yes, and put the rest of their best feed into small sacks. Then get the old canvas from out of the small shed, brush it, then with the poles that slot into the cart for the roof and the ridgepole, bring them and the feed sacks up here. After that I’ll want you to go out into the fields to gather fresh fodder.’

  His two sons still stared at him.

  ‘Do you understand me?’ asked Wei gently.

  ‘Yes, Father,’ replied his second son, leading away his still puzzled elder brother and explaining things to him as they went.

  Wei rejoined Spider Girl outside the kitchen doorway.

  ‘After I’ve cleaned the cart, Father, I’ll line the floor with cloth, then get two cushions for mother, one for Grandfather, and one for the two tots.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are we going to do about Grandfather and the tots? He’ll catch on pretty soon that something is up, and when we have to tell him we are going to leave his home…’

  ‘I know. I’ll ask him and the children that while they are playing to kindly go down to the walnut trees and gather the fallen fruit…’

  ‘I’ll give them the noodles we didn’t eat last night.’

  ‘…and then gather some fresh spinach and sorghum leaves in the fields. I don’t want to tell him what we’re doing until the last minute. It will be a terrible shock.’

  ‘And ask him while he’s down there to say some prayers for us to the ancestors,’ added Spider Girl. ‘We’ll need his intercession for us with them.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  They both turned together into the kitchen, Spider Girl to start kneading the dough with Cherry Blossom, Wei to gently persuade his father to take the children out to the walnut trees.

  Three more heavy crumps came from outside, the third so heavy that they felt the ground lift beneath their feet.

  Suddenly the doors to Wei’s bedroom flew open with a crash. From them – back straight as a ramrod, arms akimbo – issued Wei’s wife, looking imperiously from side to side, her pregnancy seemingly miraculously swallowed back into her body. Gone was her weakness, her sickness, her unwieldy bulk.

  Lying on her bed and hearing the whispered conversations outside her window, the arrival of her two sons with the cart, the sounds and smells of extensive cooking from the kitchen had told her that her household was starting to run in an unusual way. The
shaking of the ground from a shell landing some ten miles away had propelled her from her bed. If the family was in crisis, if this crazy plan of her husband’s to leave (instigated by the malignancy of her eldest daughter) was actually happening, then she – head of the household, who alone knew where everything was stored and how all things interlaced – must arise and organize such a complex task or everything would go widdershins. So she arose from her bed and advanced. The jolt of adrenalin within her body was so strong that all the normal operations of giving birth seemed to be put on hold.

  At the sight of her Wei flinched, momentarily, but almost as soon managed a smile of welcome while simultaneously signalling her not to start making a scene in front of his father and the two tots. She was aware enough to read his signal and gestured the three of them should move outside.

  ‘Dear wife,’ said Wei, once they stood by the cart, ‘I did not expect you to get up from your bed. You are looking remarkably well.’

  His wife stared beadily at Spider Girl.

  ‘I know exactly what game that evil daughter of ours has been playing,’ she said, pointing at her daughter. ‘Scheming to take over my role in the family. Running my household for you. Send her away now.’

  Spider Girl knew immediately that she must withdraw, show her humility. Her mother ran the household. Had she been in her mother’s place she would have acted in exactly the same way. She and her father could still quietly liaise with each other to ensure that things were running effectively.

  ‘I apologize to you,’ Spider Girl said, bowing obediently to her parents, and then waddled off to the shed where the fabrics were stored, so she could brush the cloth she was to line the cart with and comb out all its lice eggs. While she was there she would stuff some dried hops into Grandpa’s cushion so he would sleep better.

  ‘What are you doing, husband?’ his wife asked bluntly.

  As quickly as he could without irritating her, Wei explained most of the plans the family was carrying out, emphasizing again and again that the Japanese could be expected to arrive within a few hours and they must hurry. To his relief she agreed with most of their arrangements, only drawing the line when it came to Spider Girl’s role. She would take over control of the kitchen and the cooking, Spider Girl would be demoted. After she’d finished cleaning the cart and furnishing it, Spider Girl could prepare the dried food in the pantry and bring in herbs and condiments to her whenever she ordered them.