Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  Cherry Blossom and Second Son were sent out onto the grasslands to gather fresh salad leaves – dandelion and sorrel and shepherd’s purse. Second Son found some field mushrooms, shaved the soil off their stems with his knife, and placed them carefully in his bag with the leaves.

  About noon they came to a stream, the track crossing the stream at a ford. Before they’d arrived Wei decided they would stop at the ford for a brief rest, while the donkey and the goat were watered and the water in the buckets below the cart replenished. But as he approached he saw something, more than one thing down on the banks of the stream. He stopped the cart, gave the tot he was carrying to Spider Girl, and walked forwards alone armed with his shovel.

  In the gully in which the stream flowed, to the left of the ford, he saw bodies. Ten or fifteen. A family. Men, women, children, grandparents. Cut down mercilessly. Signalling back for his family not to follow him he went down among them. They’d been stripped of all their valuables, gold teeth too. Quite a lot of their clothing and family belongings had gone. Their bodies lay at grotesque angles, frozen in the agonies of rape and death. The bandits! He made a quick decision. Having checked all the bodies for valuable or useful things – there were none, the bandits had done a thorough job – he walked back to the cart, again checking the horizons.

  The stream flowed from right to left across the track. If he ordered his family to look only to the right at the ford, they could do the watering quickly in the stream and move on to rest and feed later. Wei especially did not want his young ones or his father seeing the slaughter. They moved forwards, Wei telling Cherry Blossom if she looked to the left he’d have her mother whip her. The donkey and the goat lowered their heads to the water and drank. Wei emptied what remained of the water in the buckets beneath the cart and refilled them. A thirsty family ladled water into their mouths with cupped hands. As they started to move again Second Son caught sight of some watercress upstream to the right of the track. He asked his father if he could gather it. Wei said yes, but told him not to return to the ford but cut across the grassland to rejoin the family.

  Second Son ran up the stream bank and started to pick the fat leaves and stems of water cress. Suddenly he saw something. Among the rich banks of watercress the body of a young boy, a young boy about the same age as him. He lay face down in the watercress, his body twisted, his throat cut. Back at the ford, while father was watering the donkey, he’d already snatched a peek at what they were forbidden to look at. He also noted Spider Girl doing the same. This young boy had obviously made a run for it from his family and got to here before the killers ran him down. The boy lay there, his throat still bleeding. At the ford, he realized, as they drank, the whole family had been drinking the boy’s blood. He shook himself. Even quicker he started gathering the watercress, ripping out the green stalks and white roots til he had an armful. Holding all he had gathered he leant down and washed it quickly in the stream above where the boy was bleeding, then hared off across the meadows to catch the receding cart.

  *

  A mile further along the track the family halted for their delayed meal. Wei had one last gaze around from the top of the cart and saw nothing dangerous. The animals were given nosebags. Wei’s wife was eased down from the cart and allotted to everyone their portion of dumplings, salad leaves, bean curd and pickled turnips. Second Son did not drink any of the fresh water out of the buckets because he did not want to drink blood. But he did not tell anyone else of what he had seen.

  The family ate hard with a lot of ‘aahs’ and sighs and appreciative burps, and then, for a few precious minutes, lapsed into semi-drowses. The sun beat down, flies buzzed, kites and buzzards circled high in the upper airs, stillness everywhere. It was Cherry Blossom who heard it first.

  ‘What’s that funny noise?’ she asked.

  They all listened. Yes, a strange droning sound. A sort of giant mosquito. It was Second Son who spotted it. High in the sky, this black thing, flying slowly, in a straight line, towards them. What was it? No bird ever flew that far in a straight line. Some great black insect would fly faster.

  A tot asked, ‘Is it a dragon, Grandpa?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Staring fearfully at it, they all clambered to their feet. That strange, unchanging, grinding drone.

  It was Spider Girl who realized what it was.

  ‘It’s an aeroplane.’

  ‘An aeroplane? What’s an aeroplane?’

  ‘A machine that flies. I’ve seen photographs of them in a newspaper.’

  ‘Someone who came to the village was talking about them,’ added her father.

  No one had ever seen an aeroplane before. It flew steadily towards them from the north, a light single-engined Japanese reconnaissance aircraft.

  ‘They can fire guns and drop bombs on people below them,’ whispered Spider Girl.

  They all stared. For a few seconds it dipped towards them, but then, disinterested in such slim pickings, turned and set off on another of its straight lines towards the south-west.

  ‘It’s flying towards the large road we’re heading for,’ observed Wei.

  The plane disappeared. They all felt very grateful that it had not fired its guns or dropped its bombs. Each one of them silently thanked whichever god they thought appropriate for their deliverance. Suddenly everyone was reloading the cart and getting underway again.

  *

  In late afternoon they joined the large road going south. There were a few carts like theirs, some families on foot, the occasional wealthier passenger in a rickshaw or bathchair, the coolies sweating away. In the opposite direction came the occasional lorry, soldiers sitting blank-faced in the back, staring stoically into nothingness as they were driven towards the front. One sipped water from his upturned helmet. Agricultural traffic also passed them heading north – dung putts, large four-wheeled carts groaning with grain or potatoes, hay and straw wagons. The occasional herdsmen drove livestock for grazing or slaughter.

  Wei tried to speak to a goatherd they passed with his flock. They hardly understood what he was saying, so thick was his accent. Occasionally in the far distance behind them they heard distant thumps and explosions.

  Wei decided they would stop for the night. He calculated they were at least thirty miles south of the Japanese. Everyone desperately needed some rest. To tire everyone out at the very start of what could be a long and arduous journey was not wise.

  They drove off the road a hundred yards. Hills were starting on either side of them, funnelling the road into a shallow valley, but there was abundant grass on the slopes and signs of some firewood. The animals were tethered a few yards from the cart. First Eldest and Second Sons returned with enough firewood for a fire. Wei’s wife decided she had sufficient prepared food that they did not need a fire and could store the wood in the cart. She cut up and handed out a boiled chicken and some boiled potatoes. They could enjoy the fresh salad with some salt and gnaw on raw carrots. By this time Second Son was so tired and so thirsty he did not care whether he drank the poor dead boy’s blood or not and had three ladles of it from the bucket. Cherry Blossom complained that she had to share her food with the hedgehog but a look from her mother shut her up.

  They finished eating quickly and everyone pissed or shat into a hole Wei had dug in the earth a few yards downwind. After everyone had finished he filled it in. He expected other farmers to respect his land, so he would respect theirs. The family all settled down on the ground to sleep. The cart was to be given a night’s rest. Wei would take the first watch til two o’clock. At two o’clock – or after the Plough was almost under the horizon – he woke Eldest Son to take over the watch from him and immediately fell into a deep sleep.

  Eldest Son managed to stay awake for half an hour before himself falling back into a deep sleep.

  It was a very dark and a very silent night.

  It started about twenty minutes after Eldest Son had fallen asleep. A low, distant thrum which gradually turned into a soft
, distant roar, like water or wind on the move. All the family stayed deep in their different dream worlds. Then, from the bottom of the valley, the whisper of a quiet voice, as if in prayer, then more, a quiet babble of voices flowing through the valley, the creak of wheels, the clop of footsteps and hooves, the thunder of many footsteps spreading from the valley bottom up its two sides, shouts and screams and the bellowing of animals…

  Wei sat bolt upright. What on earth was happening? A carriage drawn by two great black horses was driving straight at him, looming out of the darkness, the driver swearing at him to get out of the way, swerving only at the last moment. Already Wei was scooping up his other family members, screaming at them to reach the shelter of their cart. Blurred figures were rushing past on either side, donkeys trotting past with their riders frenziedly whipping them to go faster. Wei kicked Eldest Son to wake up and fetch their donkey, harness him to the wagon, Second Son to get the goat and tether him behind the cart. Meanwhile Wei’s wife and Spider Girl were ladling Grandfather and Cherry Blossom and one of the tots into the cart and at the last moment Mrs Wei, seeing her other tot, Baby Girl Wei, about to be devoured by the wheels of an ox cart shuddering past, snatched her from death’s jaws at the very last second.

  And all the time from the roadway below arose a pandemonium of sound – people screaming, cattle bellowing, terrified horses neighing, wheels creaking and wagons colliding. It was as though a mighty dam had burst and its pent-up waters were roaring chaotically and manically through the valley.

  Wei and Eldest Son were trying to back the donkey into the shafts, frantic as they fumbled to fit his harness and thread its traces, Wei cursing Eldest Son for falling asleep. Mother was arranging Grandfather and the two tots in the back of the wagon and trying to calm them while Spider Girl and Second Son were dodging running figures and animals in the nightmare darkness as they gathered their sleeping rolls and belongings from the ground and threw them higgledy-piggledy into the cart.

  The donkey was finally harnessed. Wei apologized to Eldest Son for shouting at him, and started for the rear of the cart, explaining they needed to move at once or they would be run down, and that Eldest Son should lead off the donkey the second he heard him shout from behind. Suddenly alone, Eldest Son burst into tears.

  Wei briefly checked everything was in place at the back, lifted his wife onto the cart, avoided a bolting steer, roared to Eldest Son to start, and he, Second Son and Spider Girl all put their shoulders to the cart to get it underway. Their tiny rickety cart jolted off into the night. Not daring to look at the wheel with rotten spokes and wincing at the shrieking of the ungreased axle, Wei joined his son at the front, skinning his eyes for obstacles, wielding his spade in his hand in case there was trouble. At the back Mrs Wei wriggled off the rear of the cart, wielding her cleaver, and with Spider Girl and her knife guarded the back of the cart.

  The Wei family was a tiny leaf being sucked down an enormous drain.

  *

  Gradually the dawn broke. All around them they started to see a vast aggregation of people and animals and vehicles – running, riding, walking. stumbling – each one making their terrified way southward. Wei steered around families lying exhausted on the ground, loose cattle, people crouching to shit, dead bodies lying unexplained and abandoned on the ground, horses with broken legs screaming in pain.

  The valley through which they had travelled was widening out into a plain. With more space people started to spread out and move at their own pace. Farmers perching pots, sacks of grain and household goods on their backs. Old women carrying sacks, baskets on their heads. Blind people being hurried bewildered along by a held hand. A single woman dragging along three infants, all clinging hysterically to different parts of her. Ancient grandmothers with sticks hobbling along on bound feet tiny and delicate as pigs’ trotters. Women wearing black and striped trousers and faded green or blue jackets and women decked out in long gowns. Old women with buns, young women with braids or short bobbed hair. One brave young lady with a suitcase sported a permanent wave hairdo, just like a Shanghai film star, but was walking barefoot because she’d had to abandon her high heels. Coarse dirty country girls cursing and laughing to each other in unfathomable accents, happily shouting obscenities at young men who darted swiftly through the toiling crowds.

  Blue-coated farmers with wheelbarrows, sturdy barefoot wives carrying on either end of shoulder poles great round baskets, their children obediently lined behind them like ducklings. Monks. A fat man sat astride a tiny donkey, whipping it furiously to get more speed from it. An old man carried a birdcage on his outstretched arm, trying to persuade his beloved bird to sing. Madmen and lunatics on the loose wandering about. Long lines of neatly dressed schoolchildren in their uniforms chattering and following their teacher. Blind beggars roped together by their owners, still singing their chants and rattling their bowls. Fortune tellers and pipe and glove and glass makers and electrical technicians. Stump-legged pedlars. Thousands of handcarts and wheelbarrows stuffed with goods and keepsakes and food and people. An enormous and luxurious roadster – a Studebaker – its roof rolled back so its passengers – a clique of Tientsin bankers – could all continue wearing their top hats. Their chauffeur with his palm jammed permanently on the horn. An astrologer with all his charts and books and astrolabes stuck in a handcart. Dung carriers. Craftsmen of all sorts with their tools. All classes jammed together, fleeing from the Japanese. People who’d never even acknowledge, let alone speak to each other, jammed elbow to elbow. All shifting with the same urgency, the same fear drawn on their faces, knotted brows, panting mouths.

  And as the horde spread out across the plain, three or four miles in width, all still travelling exactly south, they toiled and trampled across agricultural lands, driving the crops into the ground, turning the dried yellow earth into dust which started to swirl up into the air, setting them coughing and spluttering, drying their throats and inflaming their eyes. Through the clouds, amid the people, travelled herds of pigs and sheep and cattle. On all lips there was one word. ‘Wuhan.’ All were hurrying south to a place no one knew called Wuhan, where there would be food and water and shelter and, reportedly, life.

  As always in times of calamity, some quick-witted folk were making killings. The animals, driven by young girls and boys, were being slaughtered one by one on the hoof, their blood being boiled for black pudding, their bodies hoisted onto large carts where they were butchered and then their remains lowered into portable cauldrons and their sweet tasty meats and soups sold to a ravenous public.

  By the sides of the march local farmers had set up stalls where, smiles on their faces, they were selling their farm produce, raw or cooked, to anyone with money. After their carts were emptied of produce they loaded them up with their household possessions and families and, with full purses, joined everyone else in their flight.

  Another group of relatively poor individuals doing well from this calamity were coolies. Normally coolies only found work hauling rubble or bricks or dung, but suddenly everyone was demanding their services. Their spot hire price shot up. Coolies were everywhere carrying every sort of furniture and utensil and machine on their bare backs. One even carried a potted plant on his head. Often only in loincloths – they were not the wealthiest of men – in two panniers slung from a bamboo pole over their shoulders they carried grain, babies, pets or family heirlooms. Some coolies worked in unison, a long pole, each end on their granite-hard shoulders, from which was suspended a hammock containing old people, fat people, pregnant people, books, or, again, just family valuables. They were in a good mood as they trudged through the dust and traffic, slowly intoning their universal work chant, ‘Hey yah, Hai-yah,’ and proudly boasting to each other exactly what rates they were on. Some coolies, suddenly realizing what low rates they’d agreed on, stopped dead and would not budge an inch before their patrons paid the new rate.

  But the greatest commodity of all, the one that commanded the highest price and was most scarce and de
sperately sought for, was water. The streams they passed over were all trampled into mud and mire and piss and shit by the thousands who had passed already. There were no rivers across that unending plain. Entrepreneurs vending water were always accompanied by large sour-faced guards.

  The rich travelled by and large with each other. Moderately prosperous people were in sedan chairs and rickshaws. They could afford to buy water, but when they bought it, if they wished to progress further, they were forced to buy it for their coolies too. Which they did with ill grace.

  A once beautiful but now ageing woman, obviously lost, wandered in a confused state through the crowds in a long and beautiful silk gown, smoking an ebony pipe of orchid-scented opium, her wilting hair elaborately structured and glossy with elephant-dung lacquer, but slowly collapsing around her ears. She was knifed that night by a desperate father who found no money but stole and traded her gown, her pipe and her opium.

  In all this swirling and confusion the wealthiest of them all was an ageing prince from Beijing. He had hired troops from a friendly warlord to protect him and his family on his journey. The soldiers marched aggressively on either side of his column. He himself travelled first, alone in an open carriage with a servant holding a parasol over his head to protect him from the rays of the sun. His perfume was so exquisite it easily kept at bay anything so vulgar as sweat. His plump little hands were like flowers of softness, their nails growing at least six inches beyond his fingers. Unbefitting as it was, he held a silk cloth to his nose and mouth to keep out the dust.