Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  As Freda entered a brief silence fell. Good looking Western women, even if they were wearing glasses, were a rarity in Wuhan. Freda had taken some trouble with her appearance and make-up. She looked nervously around the room. Her eyes came to rest of the urbane and polished figure of Vernon Bartlett. His eyes fell on her.

  9

  I lie in a cell. Curled up. I have just been heavily beaten by a man with a bamboo stick. My limbs and body ache and shoot with pain, my face is covered in blood which pours from my nose and mouth. I think I have lost two teeth. The man is now in the cell next to mine dishing out the same treatment to someone in there. From a distance come the screeches and yowls of something I’d rather not think about.

  I start to weep. I stop weeping.

  I lie in the darkness.

  I must be in a cell of the State Security Force. I spoke with the man while he beat me. I tried to persuade him that they had got the wrong man, I was friends with Chiang Kai-shek himself, I was writing a play for him, that I was employed by his government. But I do not think he was the sort of man who even knew who Chiang Kai-shek was.

  I assume this has happened because of the letter I wrote in support of my friend and fellow writer Tian Boqi. Tian is probably in here as well. Perhaps that is him being beaten in the next cell.

  I stare into the stony darkness. What is my primary duty in life? To protect my family. I have not protected them. Firstly I deserted them, abandoned them to the invading Japanese. I was a coward. Secondly, by writing that letter to defend Tian Boqi I have put them at even greater risk. Say two of my children do survive, turn up here in Wuhan looking for me? I, their father, will not be there, to protect, to shelter, to comfort them. They shall be homeless. They shall be orphans. They will… I refuse to think of that poor scarred girl on the Bund.

  Should I have written that letter to Tian Boqi? I know my wife holds very strong views on this, but even my wife is wrong – on occasions.

  What can I do?

  Wait til I am ‘interrogated’ by someone who actually knows who Chiang Kai-shek is? Even more importantly, who his wife is? But then I think that if the people who arrested me knew anything about my connections with Chiang, then they wouldn’t have arrested me in the first place. Our security forces are notorious for their incoherence, their overstaffing, their corruption. No one knows, or worse, cares, what anyone else is doing within them. But then the main purpose of any security service is not to arrest and stop plotters, spies, mad bombers – it’s to terrify, intimidate the people themselves. The more incompetent, the more random they become, the better they’re doing their job!

  I must hope that somehow I meet an official that believes my story about my knowing the Generalissimo.

  I mean, this is not the first time our security services and I have met face to face. A light beating here, some quite powerful interrogations there. But, unlike several of my fellow writers, I am still alive.

  I pray. I remember that others are in far worse situations than me. I think of the thousands of our soldiers giving their lives that we might live. I think of Our Lord Jesus Christ standing before Herod and Pilate, then hanging on his cross deserted by all the world, by his own father.

  The door opens.

  The man returns for my next beating.

  *

  Peter Fleming’s family had originally made its fortune in Dundee. It owned several large jute mills there.

  Pretty soon they owned their own jute plantations and warehouses around Calcutta in British India.

  These widespread interests involved large-scale movements of capital, so pretty soon they founded a family bank, Robert Fleming & Co., which quickly became even more profitable than the jute business.

  The bank specialized in Indian and Far Eastern trading.

  Thus, when Fleming arrived at Croydon Airport – eight days out from Wuhan – the bank’s Rolls-Royce met him and whisked him off to its headquarters in the City where he was bathed, his hair trimmed, and while a valet dressed him, he caught up on the latest news from Europe flicking through a copy of today’s Times. Hitler had not been amused by President Beneš’ antics. He’d moved his army to the Czech border. Either Czechoslovakia yielded the Sudetenland or it was war.

  Fleming sighed.

  The valet made a final adjustment to his buttonhole.

  The Rolls whisked him down to Printing House Square, from where The Times was published.

  The doorman saluted him and he walked up the stately carpeted stairs to the editor’s office on the first floor, where he was greeted by the editor’s secretary, Mr Greaves.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Fleming,’ said Greaves.

  ‘Greaves.’

  ‘Mr Dawson will see you straight away. Just go in.’

  Fleming placed his hat and umbrella on the hat stand and walked through.

  Dawson, the editor of The Times, sat behind his desk, squinting at an early blatt of tomorrow’s leader page. As Fleming entered he removed his glasses.

  ‘Ah, Peter,’ he said with affection.

  ‘Geoffrey!’

  Ever since he was a little boy Peter, when meeting famous people, had invariably addressed them by their first name. Such familiarity would normally be frowned on – especially as Peter frequently met very pompous famous people – but somehow – perhaps it was that magic Etonian mixture of cheek and charm – no one was ever offended. To everyone else at The Times Mr Dawson was Mr Dawson. To Peter he’d always been Geoffrey.

  ‘You’ve come over to see “our friends”, I take it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Suppose you’re seeing them tonight?’

  ‘Tomorrow night, actually.’

  ‘Well, that is good news.’

  ‘Good news?’

  ‘Peter, I’m having a bit of trouble composing tonight’s editorial. It needs precise, yet elliptical diction, reassuring ambiguity…’ Dawson searched for the right words.

  ‘Honest duplicity?’

  ‘No, Peter,’ said Dawson somewhat sternly, ‘that’s not what I mean. I have to express what our prime minister is actually thinking. It must be authoritative. Trustworthy. But also suggest novel, perhaps even startling thoughts and possibilities. He is being flexible, as a statesman should, but not inconsistent.’

  Dawson paused. Fleming knew what was coming next.

  ‘Thing is, Peter, no one can write editorials like you. Both solid and fluid. Only got two hours before we go to press.’

  ‘You want me to write it?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Then you’d better tell me precisely what the thinking is in Downing Street.’

  Dawson looked at Fleming.

  ‘Might take some time. Do you have any other appointments tonight?’

  ‘I was due to meet my wife at the Savoy for dinner after her performance at the St James.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Geoffrey, ‘what an actress! The best Elizabeth Bennet I have ever seen. Such understatement, such intelligence.’

  ‘Celia’s a good girl,’ said Peter.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Geoffrey, ‘sit down.’ Fleming sat down on the sofa.

  Geoffrey instructed Greaves to ring the St James Theatre and convey the message to Miss Johnson. He then came and sat beside Peter.

  ‘Thing is, Peter, Neville’s really in a pickle. Completely undecided. Just take the economy. At the moment its nicely under control. Unemployment holding down wages. But what happens if there’s a sudden war scare? We’ll have to declare full-scale rearmament. Heavy industry, armaments factories will boom. Workers, their unions demand huge wage rises – which we’ll be forced to concede. The City and the bankers will panic, the pound will plummet, the empire will…’

  ‘Not pleasant.’

  ‘No. And foreign policy… This is Neville’s difficulty – he can’t allow himself to look weak in front of the dictators. But simultaneously we can’t afford another European war. And while he finds himself in this terrible bind we must simply back him up.’

 
; ‘Never desert your friends on a battlefield.’

  ‘Exactly. But it’s precisely at this moment that many in the press – normally his most loyal supporters – have used the excuse of Beneš’s outrageous behaviour to criticize the prime minister. Whinge about “poor little Czechoslovakia!”’

  Peter grimaced.

  ‘Where to start?’ said Geoffrey, opening his hands. ‘The prime minister needs to inform President Beneš that he is on his own, France and Britain will do nothing to aid him, while simultaneously signalling to the British public and all our other friends in Europe upset by Henlein’s – and, as they see it, Mr Hitler’s – threats…’

  ‘Supposed threats.’

  ‘Indeed… that we will not allow the dictators to triumph.’

  ‘Is the prime minister considering any ways of extricating us?’

  ‘I’ve spoken to both Neville and Halifax at the Foreign Office. There’s talk of Neville, in the name of peace – and we should never forget how strong the wish for peace is among the British people, despite all this leftist agitation – of Neville perhaps calling a big meeting or conference for peace, possibly in Central Europe – with all the leaders of the area discussing and then reaching a decision on what is to happen.’

  ‘I presume that Beneš will not be invited?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Good. Yappy hounds need the whip.’

  ‘But all this is in the future. They’re still planning, feeling it all out. In the meantime…’

  ‘We need reassurance. A smoothing of the ways. Make the alarming look harmless.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  *

  Two men watch me.

  At first they just peer at me through the spyhole in my cell door. Draw back the latch, peer in – one face followed by the other – then slam it shut.

  They do this for several days.

  Then one day the two men do not just stare at me through the spyhole, they actually open the door. Stand in the corridor staring at me.

  ‘See you soon,’ they say. They saunter off down the corridor. A warder slams the door shut in my face. Soon afterwards terrible cries come from a room further down the corridor.

  This goes on for three more days.

  I wonder to myself if anyone out there even knows I’m in prison? If there’s anyone who will enquire after me? Tell other people, dare to kick up a fuss? What can I do myself? I’ve tried shouting out: ‘I am a friend of General Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, and they have commissioned me to write a play which I should be writing.’ They ignore this. Probably half the prisoners in here spend their time exhaustively explaining they have powerful, influential friends outside who will be really angry when they hear about this. I try to think of any other influential people I know. There’s really only General Feng Yuxiang, but he’s out of favour with the government, and besides he’s presently up in Chungking.

  The door opens. The two men stare at me.

  ‘Hello,’ they say. And guffaw. They wear cheap grey suits. Both have their hair slicked back. One has glasses. ‘Today you’re coming with us. Down the corridor. Follow us.’

  Shaking, I walk to my doorway. No one else is in the corridor.

  They look back.

  ‘Follow us,’ they state. They walk down the corridor.

  I follow them, trying to stop my shaking.

  They get to another door. I stop. They open the door.

  ‘Come on in,’ they say.

  I cannot move.

  ‘Come on in,’ they say. ‘We’re not going to harm you. Just walk in.’

  They make way so I can walk between them through the door.

  I don’t want to go into that room.

  ‘Please,’ they say. And smile.

  Well, I conclude, I can go in by myself, or someone will roughly push me in. Then follow me in and be a whole lot rougher.

  I walk between them. Into the room. I expected blood and gore and bits of hair and skin to be decorating its walls and floor. Instead there’s a table. A single chair on one side of the table, with its back to the door. On the other side of the table two chairs. There is a single file on the table.

  ‘Sit down,’ they say, indicating the single chair. I do so. They sit on the two chairs opposite me. The door behind me stays open.

  I hear footsteps. Boots. They march down the corridor, stop at our door, enter, and come to a halt just behind me. I do not look around.

  The one with the glasses opens the file, takes out its papers, places them neatly on the table. He looks at the papers. For a whole he reads them. Then he looks at me.

  ‘You are Mr Lao She? An author?’

  I cannot answer him.

  He repeats the questions.

  I am acutely aware of the man behind me.

  ‘Yes,’ I croak.

  He starts reading again. I cannot bear this.

  ‘Look,’ I say. ‘I think there must have been some mistake. You’re confusing me with another Mr Lao She? I am a friend of General Chiang Kai-shek. And his wife Madame Chiang. He asked me to write a play for them…’

  The other man speaks.

  ‘Shut up,’ he says. ‘We’re not interested in your made-up tales. You speak out of turn once more and you will be hurt.’

  I shut up.

  The man with glasses continues his leisurely read. He stops.

  ‘On the third of June, 1938, in a corridor of a building on the campus of the University of Wuchang you were seen to have an altercation with a Professor Liang…’

  ‘Did I? I don’t remember…’

  Professor Liang? Professor Liang? Then I remember him. I thought we were quite good friends.

  ‘I don’t remember any disagreement with him?’

  ‘That’s strange. Several reliable people noticed you arguing and reported it. Professor Liang is a firm patriot and strong supporter of our government.’

  ‘Well, so am I.’

  ‘Then why were you arguing in such a violent way with him?’

  ‘I wasn’t. I don’t remember.’

  I wrack my brains to recall the incident. My brain doesn’t work that fast in such circumstances. Then I remember.

  ‘I remember,’ I say. ‘I remember. Professor Liang and I were discussing a poem by the poet Du Fu. A favourite of us both. The poem is in the form of an argument. We were each reciting the opposite side of the argument. So we probably sounded as though we were arguing.’

  ‘The people who observed you said you were arguing. And you were not reciting poetry.’

  Suddenly I remember that in this encounter, after the poem recital, we had had some disagreement about a certain line in the poem. Not unfriendly or anything.

  I explain this.

  ‘So you admit you were arguing.’

  ‘We were disagreeing. He thought this way about a line, I the other.’

  ‘You were arguing.’

  ‘That’s what academics do. We have disagreements with each other. It’s how we earn our living.’

  Without waiting a moment he continues smoothly.

  ‘On the fourteenth of July, 1938, you were observed upon the Bund in the company of the known Marxist agitator Mr Tian Boqi at the Happy Sunshine Tea House. Your conversation with him was overheard by several patriotic citizens who immediately considered it their duty to report what they had heard to the authorities.’

  Now we are arriving at the difficult part. The part I knew was coming.

  ‘Mr Tian Boqi is my pupil. I was employed by the government to teach him how to write propaganda plays to encourage the country people and working people of China to fight more diligently against the Japanese invaders, to defend our country. I did not choose him as my pupil. He was selected by others and sent to me for me to instruct. He and I never spoke a single disloyal word to each other in all the time we worked together.’

  The man facing me without glasses flickers his eyes and I feel a horrendous pain in my back. I scream. For a moment my eyes blur. I bite my tongue s
avagely to stop my scream. My eyes refocus. I cower forwards in my chair. There is blood in my mouth.

  This, I tell myself, is what comes from helping your friends. Then feel immediately guilty.

  The man with glasses continues in his monotonous voice.

  ‘Your whole conversation was overheard by several people. So dismayed were they at the disloyalty and treachery that you were expressing that they wrote down what you were saying, word for word.’

  ‘Neither of us said anything disloyal or treacherous about the government. We are both patriots…’

  Again, I am hit heavily in the back.

  ‘Please,’ I say, ‘please do not hit me again.’

  ‘Did you not speak positively of the communist terrorists as they forced the local peasantry to pay them money and give them their sons as recruits?’

  This told me that they had indeed overheard our foolish conversation. Missing the subtlety of it as we were criticizing the communist guerrillas in the field and praising the behaviour of the peasants, but damning none the less.

  I was an idiot!

  ‘Do you want to be hit again?’

  ‘No. No. Please.’

  ‘Then you will tell us precisely what Mr Tian Boqi told you about his travels and who he met in the countryside and what they discussed.’

  Two things. Firstly, they obviously want to break Tian Boqi – he is their main target. Maybe they want to turn him. That happened to several of my writer friends in the early thirties. My ‘confession’ could do that. And secondly, they obviously didn’t record our entire conversation, or they wouldn’t be asking who his contacts in the countryside are. A subject we had not discussed.

  I swallow some blood.

  ‘Tian Boqi and I did not discuss who he met in the countryside.’

  A crack in my back.

  ‘Tell us!’ shouted the man without glasses.

  ‘I can’t,’ I say, ‘we didn’t discuss it.’

  I flinch just before the man behind me hits me. His blow sends me sprawling across the table. It knocks my glasses flying. I am near sighted. I can focus on things close to my eyes but not on anything any further away. As I sprawl on the table my head comes into contact with the file and, right next to my eyes, I see the list of people who have requested and presumably read my file. Two names jump out. The men behind the table have obviously not bothered to read it themselves. Perhaps they just assumed they were other low-grade civil servants, torturers like themselves. But on this list, through my short-sighted eyes, I clearly see the initials SML and CKS. Soong Meiling and Chiang Kai-shek. The most powerful man in China and his even more powerful wife. I raise my head slightly. Stare directly into the face of the man with glasses. Admittedly I can’t see him that well, because I’ve lost my own glasses.