Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  ‘Donald Hankey is not a magician.’

  ‘Of course he is not. He is trying to save people’s lives. And he needs great strength to do that. Which is why he wears his bow tie.’

  Hu could see this conversation was going nowhere and so shut up. They pressed on through the Bund.

  The Bund is an aggregation, a concretion, a huge amassal of created things. Vegetables, fruit, bowls, salt, spices, flowers, musical instruments, shoes, hats, chairs, barbers, mattresses, coffins, small machines (sometimes large machines), clothing, dead meat, live meat, entertainments, witches who could curse anyone you wanted them to curse, astrologers who could foretell the future, bedding and chamber pots and inkpots. All in their different ways created, made.

  But it was also a mass assemblage of unmade things. Things dismantled, torn apart, disaggregated back into their constituent parts and pieces. These too could provide money and income by being traded with people who did not want the whole object but only one part of it. On sale in this area of the Bund were machine parts, clock parts, typewriter bits, wagon and rickshaw and motor car and cinema projector and electrical bits, wooden legs and arms and fingers and teeth. It was also an area which sold lots of worn-out tat and clothing and holey shoes and well-into-rottenness fruit and vegetables and meats. There is money to be made as much in de-creation and decomposition as in creation and aggregation.

  It was into this graveyard of once complete aggregations that Spider Girl and Hu pushed in search of Donald Hankey’s requested bicycle segments. Neither of them had ever visited this bit of the Bund before. All sorts of parts and offcuts and remnants were on sale.

  ‘There!’

  Quick-eyed Spider Girl had spotted it. A necropolis of dead, disincorporated bicycles. Once noble cycles split apart, butchered up, rendered into their meanest, tiniest parts. All lying in piles and mounds.

  ‘And there’s the parts he wants,’ said Hu.

  A bucket full of them stood like a quiver full of porcupine quills.

  Hundreds of them.

  Spider Girl looked at the proprietor, who returned her gaze. He was dirty, dodgy and devious. She licked her lips.

  ‘How many does he want?’

  ‘Fifty at least. But for what God alone knows.’

  I do this for you, noble surgeon, thought Spider Girl. She eased into her haggle.

  *

  Donald nervously fiddled with his bow tie and set his large shopping basket down on the operating floor.

  Hu had accompanied him to the hospital, partly to ensure he did not get lost, but also because she was becoming more and more fascinated by the work being done there. The deftness and expertise of the surgeons, the lives they saved, their dedication and sheer indefatigability. She also tarried there, of course, because she was fascinated by what Donald was actually going to do with the bits of bicycle she and Spider Girl had purchased.

  Bob McClure was in conference with Ahsan Bhattacharyya and Maninda Atwal. Dick Brown had disappeared for food. Donald waited til the conference was over and then approached Bob.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Howdy, Donald,’ said Bob, ‘what can I do you for?’

  ‘Just wondering, and I don’t want to be a pain, but if, later, we should happen to have a lull in the number of patients…?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, I was wondering if I could try out a few tests on a broken-femur patient – if one should present and nothing else was going on. I swear it will be nothing in any way hazardous.’

  Bob looked at him with a squint.

  ‘Is this more of your saving limbs crusade, Donald?’

  ‘Sort of. I think I have a solution. I’ve thought of something we could use as a splint which won’t infect the patients. Do you have any traction equipment?’

  ‘We have one set. It happens to be unused at the moment. The patient left last night.’

  ‘And plaster?’

  ‘We have plaster.’

  Bob’s squint was getting ever more gimlet.

  ‘Then, if we have the time, and it should only take a few minutes, and if we have a suitable patient, I would like to attempt an operation to save their leg without infecting the wound.’

  Bob thought.

  ‘Well, if we have the time – and that’s a big if – but if we have the time, yes, you can do it. We’d be very interested. And we can always have the leg off if it doesn’t work.’

  Donald sighed with relief. His newly washed and ironed bow tie positively glowed.

  *

  Late that afternoon a lull did occur. Donald’s operation was possible. There were no more patients and they’d held back one, a young soldier, with a broken femur.

  As he was being lifted onto the table Donald approached Hu, who was standing in a corner of the room to watch.

  ‘I say, Hu, couldn’t help me out in this operation, could you?’

  ‘I don’t have any skills, Donald.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. I’ll just need you to hand me some things while its going on.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘First, go into the next-door room, roll up your sleeves and wash your hands and arms thoroughly.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then, by the sterilizing equipment you’ll find a tray covered with a clean cloth. Just bring it in here to the operating table. You will stand by me during the operation and, when I ask you, just lift up the cloth and pass me one of the splints. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  Hu went into the room next door, carefully picked up the tray, and brought it back into the operating theatre. The patient lay on a wooden board on top of the operating table. He had been quietened with brandy. Two strong orderlies pinned him by his shoulders, another held his unwounded leg. Hu stood beside Donald with her tray. The other surgeons stood behind her and on the other side of the patient.

  Donald did two swift incisions to the soldier’s upper leg – one above the break in the femur, the other below. He then delicately cut away the broken flesh between the two cuts, revealing the broken bone. He took a small surgical drill and drilled two small holes into the bone, one a few inches above the break, the other the same distance below. The patient tried to squirm. A strong nurse stopped him doing this by pinioning down his hips.

  Donald moved away and carefully washed his hands in a bowl. He stepped back.

  ‘A splint please, Hu.’

  Hu lifted the cloth. Beneath it lay a whole array of bicycle spokes. She handed one to Donald.

  ‘Bicycle spokes!’ exclaimed Bob.

  ‘Bicycle spokes?’ asked Dick. ‘They’re made of steel. They’ll rust and infect the patient just like any other splint.’

  ‘They’re not made from ordinary steel, Dick,’ said Donald. ‘In China, for some reason or other, they make bicycle spokes out of stainless steel.’

  ‘Stainless steel?’ said Bob.

  ‘Stainless steel doesn’t rust,’ said Maninda.

  ‘I noticed it,’ said Donald, ‘when I was taking a snap of a bike someone had parked on the Bund. It’s always jolly important to observe things at close quarters,’ he added, giving his bow tie a quick preen.

  ‘Get on with the operation, Donald,’ said Bob.

  Donald held the spoke against the bone, measuring the distance between the two drill holes and, having calculated a slightly shorter length for when the bone had been reset, cut off the requisite length with some sterilized pliers which Hu handed him from the tray. Then, having bent back the two ends of the spoke with the pliers, he placed the crimp of one end of the spoke into the drilled hole above the break – it fitted perfectly – then gently manoeuvred the lower leg so that the two ends of the broken leg reformed and then popped the second crimp into the second hole. The two ends held. The bone was now aligned correctly, pinioned securely, and ready to start the slow process of re-forming.

  Donald quickly swabbed the wound with a chloride solution and then sewed up the flesh he’d cut through, except he left a small ho
le over the break where the bone could be inspected and disinfected. He closed the hole with a swab dipped in chloride solution. Donald nodded and the patient was carried out for plastering and traction.

  Bob looked at Donald for a long time. Then he spoke.

  ‘Okelly-dokelly. The procedure works. We’ve got enough plaster and chloride solution and we got splints by the million. But – how do we get hold of sufficient traction units? There’s the problem.’

  Everyone turned and gazed at the bike Bob had ridden in on. He’d left it leaning against a wall in the operating theatre. All had suddenly become seized by a sudden faith in the humble bicycle’s ability to solve all their surgical problems. What other miraculous singularities might it be imbued with?

  ‘When I was very young,’ said Ahsan, ‘we used to go and visit our uncle in the countryside. I remember there was a man who came quite regularly on his bicycle. He was a knife grinder. When he got to the village all the wives would bring their kitchen knives out for him to sharpen. He would turn his bicycle upside down so it rested on its saddle and handlebars, then he unhooked its chain, detached its rear wheel, and then in its place put a circular grindstone. He reattached the chain and then, turning the pedal so that the grindstone spun round, he sharpened their knives on the whirling grindstone.’

  Everyone approached Bob’s unfortunate bike and turned it upside down. They then all stared at it. They studied it from various angles. Every so often someone would turn the pedals. They all reached a unanimous decision.

  ‘Wowzer!’ said Dick.

  ‘But you’re not using my bike,’ stated Bob.

  *

  Spider Girl never had any doubt that Donald’s operation would succeed. Not that she had any idea what an operation was. But Donald, she knew, was a man who would always succeed in life. And she admired him for that.

  So that morning on the Bund, after she’d found and purchased Donald’s bicycle spokes and Hu had left for her work, Spider Girl set off for the area of the market where the vegetables were sold. She was after one particular one. She was going to cook Donald a very special meal to celebrate his success. She searched out the vegetable very carefully – spring chives. She found four stalls selling them. She touched the spiked green stems very gently. Then she asked each stall holder the same question.

  ‘When were these chives last rained on?’

  The first three said something like ‘last week’ or ‘I don’t know’. Only the fourth one answered correctly. ‘Last night.’ She took a large handful.

  Her mother had always told her that chives which had been rained on the night before tasted the most sweet and the most succulent. She also purchased some expensive rice and various special spices – all from her own savings.

  She got home and started to prepare the meal for Donald all by herself and then cook it. The Drab for once had no work to do so sat down. To pass the time she started crooning. She was a very bad crooner. Every so often Spider Girl had to cuff her to shut her up.

  It took a lot of slow cooking and delicate stirring and gradual commingling of the various spices and condiments and culminated finally with the stirring in of the chives.

  It had to be eaten right now. Spider Girl had timed it for nine o’clock exactly because by then everyone had usually returned from their work. But no one had turned up. The dish had to be eaten within ten minutes of it having been cooked. Spider Girl’s mother had always been adamant about this: if you don’t eat it in ten minutes it loses all its flavour and succulence. Her family always did this and it was always followed by much smacking of lips and heartfelt burpings.

  Ten minutes passed. Half an hour. The Drab started crooning and stopped abruptly. Eventually, two hours later, Hu came in. She looked at Spider Girl.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘I cooked this meal. This lovely meal for Donald. To celebrate his successful operation. It had chives in it which had been rained on last night…’

  ‘Ah, my mother always said they tasted best.’

  ‘…and no one turned up. The meal’s ruined.’

  ‘I dropped in on them. They’re all busy arguing about bicycles.’ Hu got out a piece of paper with a list on it. ‘And they want you to buy a whole lot more bicycle parts at the market tomorrow.’

  Spider Girl looked upset.

  ‘Come on, Spider Girl,’ said Hu. ‘I’d really like to eat it. I’m sure it’s wonderful. I used to love it when my mother cooked it for me when I was back home.’

  So they all sat down at the table – including for the first time The Drab – and silently ate Spider Girl’s excellent celebration meal.

  4

  It was mid-August. The heat was awesome. It pounded down from the skies. It thundered up from the earth, and sideways off the buildings. Human beings tried to survive betwixt and between.

  Wuhan needed a new aerodrome – partly as a place to base fighter planes to defend the city from the almost continuous Japanese bombing, but it was also to be used as a civilian airport, a place where vital spare parts and machinery and weaponry could be flown in, and a place from which important civilian and military officials could be flown out. The fact that it would be in Japanese hands in three months was neither here nor there. It had to be done now!

  American military contractors estimated that, employing all their heavy earth-moving machinery, it would take them one month to complete. The Chinese needed it in a week.

  The aerodrome was to be built on ground raised above the paddy fields to the east of Hankou. Paddy fields filled with thousands of naked peasants harvesting and planting their rice.

  The Chinese brought in 40,000 coolies.

  They drained the chosen area. They shovelled and slopped out the worst of the silt and mud into panniers and baskets which were hoisted onto the backs and shoulders of black-clad Hakka women who set off in their crownless straw hats across the plains like busy columns of ants to dump the mud and fill their baskets with stony and flinty clay (dug out by more coolies) and then procession in black lines back to the aerodrome where the original coolies first dammed up the outer perimeter of the excavation with the clay to prevent the mud and water from morassing back in and then pounded it into the floor of the vast hole so that the water could not ooze back up. Horses, mules, camels and yaks were also used in this enormous operation, filling in the hole with the clay until it rested three yards above the surrounding rice paddies.

  Then began the levelling, the pounding down. With thousands of trampling feet to begin with – including the hooves and pads of camels and horses and yaks and mules – and then with wooden hand paddles and bamboo tampers with flat stones lashed to their base. In the dust clouds row after row of coolies and black-clad Hakka women stamped and thumped and chanted. Finally a great grass roller, purloined from the English Cricket Club (whites only, with the occasional Pathan thrown in to float unfathomable googlies!), was brought in and dragged endlessly back and forth. All the time levelling out was being carried on, new loads of soil were being judiciously added and then in turn pounded down until at last it stood alone and, while far from perfect, presented a sufficiently flat and firm surface for even the heaviest approaching aircraft to land on. Which they started to do, amid clouds of swirling dust, immediately.

  The whole operation had taken only ten days (and nights) to complete. So much for American know-how and heavy machinery! The Chinese calculated that it would survive two or three months of heavy usage, but that the rains of late autumn and winter would destroy it, rendering it unusable for the Japanese.

  Within hours two squadrons of brand-new Soviet I-16 fighter aircraft were smartly lined up on the apron ready to scramble. They were manned by Chinese pilots and Russian ‘volunteers’. American Vultee transports and passenger planes were coming in and taking off with Chinese and American pilots.

  Among the first passenger planes to land was the daily flight from Hong Kong. Passengers on Imperial Airways could now fly from London, by way of Penang
, to Hong Kong, and then take the short local flight on to Wuhan. The whole journey took only eight days.

  The de Havilland DH-86 Dorado landed and taxied towards the awaiting officials, friends, rickshaw drivers and a small ambulance (a gift from the Chinese Laundryman’s Association of New York and commandeered to carry Very Important Persons directly into the city). No airport buildings had yet been built – nor indeed ever would be. There was a tent for the aircrews. The de Havilland’s four engines arrived, churning up thick clouds of dust which immediately engulfed both plane and those awaiting it.

  Freda Utley, an English reporter working for the News Chronicle, emerged with a handkerchief clamped to her face. The dust was not only thick but filled with dried particles of yak, camel and human excrement. It stank. Bewildered and disorientated, with her glasses too dirty to see through, Freda stumbled into the maelstrom.

  Freda was a woman in conflict. She did not know where she was going. She did not know who she was. Her life had been and was disastrous. She’d only come to Wuhan because Agnes had assured her that it was a fascinating place, that all sorts of interesting things were going on there, and that uniquely in the world the country was standing up to fascism.

  Agnes appeared out of the dust.

  ‘Freda, hi.’

  ‘Agnes,’ Freda spluttered, ‘oh my goodness.’

  ‘Have a good flight?’ asked Agnes.

  ‘It was a nightmare. I haven’t slept for eight days. I really need a bath.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ said Agnes, leading Freda towards a rickshaw she’d booked. Agnes did not believe in pandering to the complaints of soft Westerners. China was China.

  *

  Spider Girl was having quite a difficult day. Not only did she have to buy and cook food for an ever-increasing colony of people who’d set up home in Agnes’s apartment, but following Donald’s request for more bicycle parts – not only more stainless steel spokes but now whole bicycle frames and chains and pedals and even brake cables to be used in constructing the traction frames – she had to haggle at even greater length with the scrapyard merchant and then organize the transport of all the various bicycle parts to the hospital.