*
After dark Wei told his latest commanding officer – junior officers had an even higher death rate than non-commissioned soldiers – that he needed some sleep if he was going to perform effectively as a sniper. Since keeping Japanese troops awake and scared through the night was not the most skilled of tasks, his CO told him he could have two hours off.
For an hour Wei slept, then, taking an empty ammunition box, he disappeared into the night. Returned to his sniper eyrie. Got out his knife. Gently approached the swarm clinging to its post. It was contentedly humming to itself. The post stood at a considerable angle to the ground. If he was soft with his knife, brushed them gently with the side of the blade, he should be able to let them to quietly drop, transfer themselves into the wooden box. A nice, snug new home. Slowly, humming to them, he swept the drowsy bees into the box and closed its lid.
Now for the interesting part. Where was the nest from which they came? He’d had his eyes on a few mainly wrecked houses a couple of hundred yards behind the front line. He started to clamber from ruined building to ruined building. Suddenly in front of him, beneath him, lay a large black hole – some ten yards by ten yards. What was it? The moon came out from behind a cloud. He could not believe his eyes. Before him as laid out a tiny, immaculate courtyard, with potted herbs and tomato and aubergine plants in pots all round its walls, completely undamaged. In the midst of all this desolation and destruction it had survived. And beside it was a tiny shack with wisps of smoke emerging from a hole in its thatch. In the middle of the courtyard sat an old man on a stool. He was humming to himself and whittling a piece of wood.
‘Old man,’ said Wei softly, ‘old man.’
Without fear the old man looked up.
‘Yes?’ he asked.
‘Have you lost some bees?’
‘I have,’ said the old man. ‘I was quite worried about them. In the midst of all this…’
He gestured around him.
‘I found them,’ said Wei. ‘I have brought them back to you in this box.’
‘You are a kind man indeed,’ said the old man. ‘I will get you a ladder so you can come down into my courtyard.’
He did, and Wei clambered down.
Wei handed the box to the old man and looked about. The courtyard was unharmed and immaculately maintained. By some miracle it had been spared the devastation all around.
‘Come inside,’ said the man, ‘I will make you some tea.’
‘Thank you,’ said Wei.
They walked inside. It was dark. The man lit a candle. Wei looked around. He saw where the bees lived. Long combs blackened by the smoke hung down from the ceiling – six, seven feet in length, stopping just a few inches above their heads. The bees drowsed quietly and contentedly to themselves. The smoke from the fire kept them relaxed. There was a small hole in the wall just above the door through which the bees would fly out during the day. Bees and humans living together in perfect harmony.
They sat down at the table and drank their tea. They talked about bees – their habits, their idiosyncrasies, their generosity.
‘Where do the bees get their pollen and nectar from around here, with all this destruction?’ asked Wei.
‘They must fly a long distance,’ replied the man. ‘To the south-west of the city there are many fruit trees growing. They are in blossom now.’
‘Ah, yes,’ responded Wei, remembering the orchards they had marched through.
‘Bees are very knowledgeable creatures,’ said the old man.
As Wei was leaving to return to the world of the dying, the old man insisted that he take with him two small jars of orange blossom honey.
‘It will be good for you. It will give you strength and power. The bees are thanking you for rescuing them and returning them home. I will build a separate hive for those you brought back.’
Wei thanked the old man, took them, left, and returned to his duty of scaring the heebie-jeebies out of the increasingly disorientated and sleepless Japanese.
*
By 5 April, the situation within Taierzhuang had become desperate. The Japanese held nearly 80 per cent of the city. Conditions were particularly dangerous within the south-east of the city where the Japanese had pushed the Chinese almost back to the city’s southern wall. Beyond the wall lay only the waters of the Grand Canal. One wooden pontoon bridge over the canal was the only contact those inside the city had with those outside. Across it came all their vital supplies.
General Sun Lianzhong, commander of the 31st Division – the unit holding Taierzhuang – phoned his commanding officer, General Li Zongren.
He pleaded that his men – those still surviving – be allowed to temporarily retreat across the canal for a short period of rest and regrouping. Li replied by saying that Chinese attacks on the Japanese supply lines to the north of the city had succeeded and the Japanese within the city were now cut off. Troops would shortly be available to reinforce General Sun. They would arrive by noon tomorrow.
‘Don’t retreat,’ Li ordered him. ‘As I told you when I first briefed you, this battle will be lost or won in its last five minutes. Possibly by the last five men. We know that General Rensuke Isogai is desperate. He intends to throw every last man of his into an attack tomorrow afternoon. It is his last throw of the dice. You will pre-empt that attack with an attack of your own. It is our last throw of the dice. First you will send in suicide squads to break up his troops, then you’ll order a full general attack. Draft in porters, cooks, children, anyone who can fight. I am confident this will break the Japanese.’
One last time General Sun asked to be able to withdraw his shattered troops across the canal for temporary respite.
General Li Zongren replied:
‘When your men have fought to the last man, go yourself to the front. When you have gone to the front, I will go there too to join you. Anyone who retreats across the canal commits an unpardonable sin and will be executed.’
He put down the phone.
*
Wei’s company of men were stood down from the fighting on the western side of the city. Fighting there had become sporadic and it was obvious that the Japanese were withdrawing most of their men to concentrate on their big push on the eastern side of the city to storm the southern wall and then cross the Grand Canal.
General Rensuke Isogai, his forces in Taierzhuang now completely cut off from the outside world, desperate to somehow save his military reputation and win glory in the eyes of his beloved emperor, determined to grind these Chinese untermenschen and cockroaches finally into the dust, was gambling all on this one last attack. He was Japanese. He was superior. He would win.
Wei’s company had been ordered to hand over their lines to some ghosts and relics of troops spirited up from somewhere. They marched down the western side of the walls, crossed over the bridge of a single plank. They walked to the east along the southern bank of the canal. As they did they passed the naked bodies of Chinese soldiers executed for desertion. Their pink bodies lay in rows on the ground, like radishes pulled fresh from the earth.
They reached the pontoon bridge and marched across it. They were the last troops into Taierzhuang. As soon as they had crossed, on the orders of General Sun Lianzhong, to show that from now on there would be no retreat whatsoever, the bridge was dynamited.
Wei’s company entered the city by its south-eastern gate. It had greatly changed since Wei had last left it. No civilians. Very few buildings. The streets and houses reduced to rubble. The sound of gunfire and mayhem very close.
An armourer awaited them. Not the friendly armourer Wei had dealt with before. This one scowled at Wei’s Lee Enfield and took it.
Wei tried to argue that as a sniper he needed his rifle.
‘Only standard rifles to be issued,’ replied the armourer. ‘That’s orders.’
Wei, though upset, could see the cold logic behind it. When he died, the soldier who inherited his Lee Enfield would have no idea how to operate it.
&nbs
p; They marched on. Wei had not entirely abandoned his Lee Enfield. In his pocket he carried its sniper scope.
18
I look very closely into her face. Someone has quite deliberately drawn a razor blade straight across it and left a great gaping scar. Someone brutally and deliberately blinded the little girl in both eyes so the voids of two empty sockets stare back at me. She smiles sweetly in my general direction. ‘Please sir. Alms, sweet sir.’ Above her a notice reads This awful atrocity to this beautiful Chinese child has been done by the murderous Japanese devils!
I know this is a lie.
Beside her, against the wall, sit other warped, mutilated, mangled children. Their owner walks up and down before them, threatening those who do not cry out for alms piteously enough with a whip. They cry out enthusiastically. Some have been raised in tiny cages so their limbs are bent, their spines crooked, their shoulder blades stick out like delicate twigs.
Until now I have avoided this wall of child beggars – gravely wounded so they might attract the greatest sympathy and generosity from passing people. The blinded girl with the torn and ploughed face upsets me particularly. So normally, when I am on the Bund, except for the occasion when Tian Boqi made his brave stand against them, I avoid it. Those children could be mine!
But today, as I set off on my sordid quest to enslave young Yu Liqun, buy her as a sex slave to sell to the awful Guo Morou, I find my self-loathing and self-disgust reflected exactly in this child’s ripped and ruptured face. I pay a particularly large sum into her bowl in the hope that her owner will treat her better – at least for a while. As I leave he starts to beat her. The more she suffers the more money she attracts!
I continue my journey. I locate the place on the Bund where Miss Yu and her idealistic young dancers are presenting a patriotic dance-and-speech spectacular entitled ‘Sign Up for the Military!’ A group of striking young ladies, attired in smart and alluring military uniforms, march and strut up and down before a stage, vigorously striking militaristic poses, saluting each other crisply, twirling their wooden rifles. They chant and sing patriotic slogans and songs. Miss Yu is by far the most gifted and eye-catching performer. Nobody juts her chin out like her, struts up and down like a clockwork doll like her. Meanwhile on the stage an earnest young East Coast male, with a striking Han accent, urges all and sundry to rush off and sign up for the military immediately.
The young ladies by themselves attract quite a large crowd, but as soon as the young man with the posh accent starts addressing them alone, the audience disappears.
The performance over the stage is quickly dismantled and the various participants go their separate ways. Feeling dirty and soiled I follow Miss Yu.
She enters a shabby apartment building.
I ring her doorbell.
It opens.
I look at her. She looks at me.
‘Hello. My name is Lao She.’
‘Yes?’
‘I am a writer.’
‘Oh,’ replies the eighteen-year-old. ‘I think I have heard your name.’
‘I saw your military display just now. I thought it was very good.’
The ageing, slope-shouldered male stands before the spick-and-span young woman.
An edge enters her voice.
‘What do you want?’
‘I wondered if I could speak with you.’
‘I do not sleep with men. All you middle-aged men – you come round here after I’ve finished performing, asking to sleep with me.’
‘I’m not…’ I stutter.
‘I am dedicated to one thing,’ she continues, ‘one thing alone in this world. The revolution.’
Oh dear, I think, whatever I say, she will rightly refuse me.
I look at her.
‘Excuse me. I’ve not come here to ask you to sleep with me, I’ve come to ask you to do something infinitely worse. I feel terrible coming to ask you this, but I too serve the revolution you serve, and believe me, it can demand you do things which are awful.’
‘The revolution would never ask you to do something that is immoral. Revolution is the ultimate morality.’
I look down at the ground.
‘Believe me, I come here in the name of the revolution to ask you to do something that is utterly immoral.’
‘What do you do?’
‘I am a propagandist for the revolution.’
‘You’d better come in,’ she says. ‘No hands. I have to go out in five minutes for rehearsals at the theatre.’
We enter her small apartment, hung with revolutionary posters and half-read books. I sit on a chair. I ask her which theatre company she works for.
‘The Anti-Japanese Drama Troupe. We are putting on a new play full of revolutionary zeal called We Have Beaten Back the Enemy.’
‘Oh yes,’ I say, ‘I know the writer.’
She is now sitting opposite me. Waiting for me to speak. Enough flannelling, I get to the nub.
‘I come from the very highest levels of the revolutionary party.’
‘Yes? How high?’
‘The highest.’
‘What, from…?’
‘The one just below him?’
She now looks straight at me.
‘And what does he have to say?’
I look at her. She sits so straight-backed. The infinite confidence of the upper classes! The shield of their education, their breeding! Which is why they get me to do their dirty work for them. Because, a mere lower class Manchu, I’m used to grovelling and worming for a living. Get on with it!
I look directly at her.
‘Revolutionary comrades are not always so – revolutionary – as you might think. Sometimes revolutionary machines need dirt, grit in their gears and wheels to make them bite, to make them turn.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Our leaders are not always paragons of virtue. They demand prices. They cheat. They lie.’
‘That is a lie. You are a liar.’
‘Miss Yu, as I said, I’ve been sent by the highest of leaders in the party. Believe me, they would not request from you what I am about to request from you if they were not absolutely desperate, unable to resolve things in any other ways. The leaders of the party are of course highly moral people,’ I lie.
By her expression I can see she is starting to become interested in what I am saying.
‘But what do they want me to do?’ she asks. ‘Do they want me to die? I would die for the revolution, without a second thought!’
‘No, they do not want you to die for the revolution. I am afraid what they want is far more ignoble, far more degrading, than that.’
There is a pause. I continue.
‘There is a man vital to the success of the revolution. If he were to be freed so that he could stand up, speak out, write about our revolution, the struggle against the Japanese barbarians, he would speak in a voice which would encourage, inspire so many people, he would utter phrases which would stop people in their tracks, arouse them to perform heroic acts, to redouble their efforts to win this war. He is a man of the greatest integrity, already a hero of the people, and all he requires is…’
‘Me?’
I can see how my words are starting to arouse her. Her eighteen-year-old imagination is beginning to catch alight with all sorts of girlish imaginings and simplicities. From my description, my lying description of ‘him’, she is doubtless imagining some dashing young star of the silver screen, some Shelleyan poet desperate to fall into her arms.
‘I suppose this would involve…?’
‘Yes, it would involve…’
She understands the undertaking. She thinks.
‘Well, I suppose I am an actress.’
‘Yes.’
‘It is my job to imitate others, enter into their lives and emotions as if they were my own. And it would only be for a while…’
I do not correct her there.
‘…and in my heart of hearts I would never betray my one pure love �
� the revolution. After all, I am a modern woman, a liberated woman, a feminist. To be intimate with a man one does not have to marry him.’
I swallow hard.
‘Who is this man?’
Aye, there’s the rub!
‘As I said, he is a man of great integrity, a vital part of the revolution.’
‘What is his name?’
‘I’m afraid he might not be quite as young as you are imagining.’
‘An older man? Does he possess some great secret or something, vital to the party, that I must somehow, like a spy, wheedle out of him? I would be good at that! Or must I carry secret messages to him?’
‘No, it is nothing like that. The thing is, he wants to marry you. For you to carry his children. He is much older than you. He is vital to the success of the revolution.’
‘Who is he?’
‘You already know him.’
She looks at me, baffled.
‘I am speaking of Guo Morou.’
Her mouth falls open. She slumps back onto the sofa. Oh you murderer, I think, you murderer! But I continue with my knife-wielding duties.
‘He is vital to the success, the survival of the Chinese people. He is our greatest speech maker, our greatest polemicist, our greatest writer. If he were to speak publicly here in Wuhan it would unite the people, fire them, inspire them as no other speaker could.’
‘But what does this have to do with me? Why must I marry him? The creepy little man. I despise him.’
‘He says that he is paralyzed, he is devastated, he is unable to think or even move, such is the desolation he feels being unable to be united, as one with you. The leaders of the party have sent me here to plead with you, beg with you. They desperately need him to become the Guo Morou he once was, to unify the masses, to unite them against the barbarians, to send them forth to battle. They ask you to do your duty.’
Her face has become a great cavern of desolation. Suddenly she is no longer a sharp, confident young lady, she is a teenage child loose and abandoned in the world. Without home, without family, without love. I continue in my hollow way.
‘He is a great man. When you see his greatness, you will come to love him. You will be proud to be the mother of his…’
Wuhan Page 46