Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  The blackness came again. Spider Girl fought it off.

  Spider Girl fed her father some of the goat’s milk. She spilled drops on his mouth and his feeble lips licked them. She spilled more. He licked them again. He drank a little and this seemed to revive him.

  Spider Girl thought desperately for a cheering subject. She thought of one.

  ‘Father, do you remember how once you and I were sitting in the courtyard under the verandah eaves?’

  Wei answered haltingly, with a croak, but as the conversation proceeded he spoke more fluently.

  ‘You and I used to sit under the verandah eaves often in the evenings, after I’d finished work in the fields.’

  ‘Indeed, and once we’d settled down and you’d sung some songs, we’d talk and we’d talk. But on one particular evening it was growing dark and the bats were flying low…’

  ‘They always flew low, flittering in to catch the insects and moths around the lamps.’

  ‘…and suddenly an old thrush flew into the courtyard with a snail in its beak.’

  ‘That old thrush was always flying in with a snail.’

  ‘Yes. And it started banging the snail on a flagstone to separate the meat from the shell. And it went on and on because that night it was a really stubborn snail…’

  ‘Bang, bang, bang.’

  ‘Yes. Bang, bang, bang. Then you, Father, you turned to me and said, “Just look at that old thrush. He’s doing exactly what we do.”

  “And what’s that, Father?” I ask.

  “Why, he’s doing his winnowing,” you replied.

  And I laughed and I laughed. I thought that was the funniest thing I ever heard.’

  And the two of them, father and daughter, looked at each other and laughed. Out loud. Just as they’d laughed that night back on the farm.

  And for a while the darkness in her lifted.

  All around them streamed and turmoiled the busy life of the highway, an artery of the country. The road, with all the associated pathways and tracks which accompanied and threaded in and out of it as it crossed the land, hummed with life. People and lorries and carts and buses and bathchairs all progressed steadily but at different speeds westward. A line of sick soldiers judged fit to walk the 300 miles to Chungking stepped slowly and carefully along a trackway, some helping each other, others singing, others arguing. Teams of sturdy mules carried packs of fitted metal boxes with 4,000 rounds of ammunition in them. Unending columns of refugees. Lines of coolies, chanting their work shanties and songs, paid at one cent per mile, swinging along with fifty-pound loads hanging from each end of long wooden poles or on their backs. They portered their 100-pound loads twenty-five miles a day and dreamt of the sweet bodies and cooking of their young wives back home in Chungking. A white-uniformed army officer wearing slippers sat neatly on his mule, his wife with her permanent-waved hairdo perched on a donkey behind.

  But this was not at all like the death marches which had crossed China only one year previously. Now every five miles a government way station had been set up to feed all travellers and their livestock, irrespective of class or age or race, with fresh water for drinking and washing. The travellers were offered canvas shelters and fresh bedding to sleep on – night and day. Doctors checked their temperatures and breathing and health and nurses cured little infants’ sore throats with cough syrup and rubbed coolies’ aching limbs and joints with liniment.

  The great road went on and on and on.

  And if some huge lorry or a very important general officer’s staff car or a millionaire’s Rolls-Royce or some gangster’s gaudy roadster broke down right in the very middle of it, blocking everything, with great patience and resource the lines of coolies and refugees and soldiers and mules and asses and donkeys and carts simply wove their way around it, smooth as silk, along the side paths and trackways, flowing ever onwards, a great unstoppable flood. And the staff officers, millionaires or gangsters simply had to get out and walk like everyone else.

  Wei suddenly became ill at ease, agitated, waving his arms to and fro. He raised his head and stared about him at the countryside. Spider Girl had been treating him with the medicine Donald had given her and drops of wild pear juice. Donald had warned her that his medicine would revive Wei only for a short while. Perhaps that time was now over?

  ‘Father, are you all right?’

  He looked at her. Straight in her eyes. He even worked his way up onto one elbow. A frenzy seemed to seize him.

  ‘There is no good in killing people, Wild Pear Blossom,’ he stated vehemently and with effort. ‘You kill something which will never be on this earth again. It is not a good thing. That person will never be on the earth again and you have killed him. Just as I killed Baby Girl Wei…’

  ‘You did not kill her.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You killed her that we might live. That Eldest Son might live.’

  A silence. Her father thought about this. Then he looked at her.

  ‘You live, Spider Girl,’ he said with pain.

  ‘Thanks to you, Father, you gave me life.’

  ‘I cast you out.’

  ‘And in return I gave you life.’

  He considered the wonder of this. Then with an effort he said:

  ‘You cannot stop life, can you?’

  You can, thought Spider Girl bitterly, you can.

  Wei must have had the same thought, because he thought and spoke again.

  ‘Well, for a while you can’t.’

  Spider Girl looked softly at him.

  He continued to her, painfully animated.

  ‘Children will be running round your feet before you know it, Spider Girl. Can’t stop life. By the time you die there will be grandchildren, too.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Will you have children, Wild Pear Blossom?’

  ‘Well…’

  Spider Girl was suddenly overwhelmed by visions of her and Donald Hankey surrounded by swarms of tiny bow-legged bow-tied children running round and round them. For a second there was light all around her.

  ‘…That depends.’

  ‘Do,’ said Wei emphatically, ‘do. Because without children life is nothing.’

  A pause. He spoke quietly.

  ‘You know you are now head of the family, Spider Girl?’

  ‘I cannot be head of a family, Father, I am a woman.’

  ‘You can be. You should be in charge of everything. You will be as great a head of our family as the very first Wei who carved our land out of woodland and dug it and planted the first crops.’

  For a second he reflected. Then he started to wilt and slumped backwards onto his back. Spider Girl moved to help him but he pushed her away and struggled back up by himself.

  ‘Father, you should rest.’

  He ignored this.

  ‘Never forget, Spider Girl. Now you are head of our family, Spider Girl, never forget – as I did – how fast, how treacherously the world can change. One moment on the farm everything was certain, everything never-changed, season followed season, year year, then suddenly, in a second, in the twinkling of an eye, everything was in change, continual and terrifying turmoil. The whole world turned itself upside down. Everything that had been was no more, everything that could never have been was. What was right became wrong, what was wise became stupid, what seemed eternal was now dead and in ruins before us. That is life. Never forget. People who have been your sweetest friends all your life have become bitter enemies. Family members who have loved you turn into monsters that kill you. Life!’

  His voice weakened. It became more loving.

  ‘But you understand that, Spider Girl. You have lived through it and by your guile and intelligence and goodness you have survived it. You help others to survive it, even though you know they might do you harm. You can fight life and you can win.’

  ‘You fought it too, Father.’

  Suddenly the spirit went out of Wei. He slumped backwards into his coffin.

  The darknes
s returned to Spider Girl. She grabbed his hand. She stroked it, she tickled his cheek, she tried to revive him. Caressed his arm, spoke of times past – when Cherry Blossom fell into a barrel of teazels and had a tantrum, when she, Spider Girl, tried to juggle two hedgehogs, when Grandpa had fallen into the latrine pit.

  Ancient stories of legendary family events. Hallowed by repetition down the ages. Causes of laughter and tears around the kitchen table. Now, Spider Girl realized, being rehearsed within the family for the very last time.

  But no response from her father. One of his hands slowly rubbed the side of the wild pear tree coffin, gaining comfort from its knotted strength. Spider Girl clung to his other hand. All her love, all her support, all her strength flowed from her hand into his hand, from her flesh into his flesh, just as he, when she had been a tiny child, had held her hand and supported and guided her as she hobbled along.

  She gently stroked his arm. She sang him family songs and ditties, softly beating out their tunes and rhythms on his forearm as his own mother had once sung and soothed him when he himself had been a child. And as Spider Girl stroked and touched his hand and forearm it became as though their two spirits – father and daughter – dissolved and their flesh swam and washed gently into each other so they became one.

  This love between Spider Girl and her father is not a commodity, not something you can break up, slice or dice, divvy up into chunks of wealth and money or fine clothes or exotic mansions. It has no value in this world. No recognition. It is not listed on any stock exchange. But as it unfurls itself in life, it is the only thing which lives on after death, is immortal, eternal, without end. At death its light becomes quite delicate – things dance in a haze rather than are, golds and silvers transcend mere greens and blues and blacks – what was intangible becomes touchable, explorable – what was tangible melts away and becomes nothingness.

  Her father’s hand died. One moment it was everything. The next nothing.

  She let out a great cry.

  ‘He is gone! He is gone!’

  It echoed off the hills, up into the mountains. People stared. The Drab stopped the cart in terror. Spider Girl nearly fell over with the jolt. This sudden movement recalled her to her duties. She must not allow the great black figure of Despair standing at her shoulder to take her over. She shrugged it away. She had proper and pious funeral duties to perform as a dutiful daughter for the spirit of her father.

  She smiled at The Drab to show her she was not upset by her sudden stop of the cart. She looked at Hu. She picked up the lid of the coffin, looked at her father one last time, placed the rough wood over his face and body and closed it.

  At this time in China long seven-day traditional funerals had become rare, one hundred-day ones even rarer. In a world of continual movement and turmoil and change, people did not have the time or means for such things.

  Spider Girl got down from the cart.

  Hu, sensing she should help her stricken friend, removed Spider Girl’s red scarf from her head and replaced it with one of her own white ones. She removed her own red jacket. The Drab was not wearing any red so she left her alone.

  Spider Girl hired a passing coolie to dig the grave with the spade she had purchased on the Bund. He dug it swiftly and efficiently as he had another job further down the valley. In an hour he had removed the ton of earth and piled it neatly to one side. He and Hu, helped by Spider Girl, then carefully lowered the coffin down into the grave. The Drab looked on in bewilderment.

  The fake bank notes were passed to any passing travellers, who burnt them and wished his spirit well. Some food and bottles of Freda Utley’s bath water were passed around and drunk.

  All this time Hu saw and sensed the tensions and furies and blackness growing within her friend.

  Joss paper and incense was burnt. A squad of soldiers passing by, on learning Wei had been a soldier, gave him a rousing huzzah to cheer his spirit on its way.

  Then Spider Girl, with the help of Hu and the coolie, was lowered down into the grave and stood upon the coffin. She knelt on it and prayed. She prayed with bitterness to the gods who Wei had worshipped and given offerings to in life. Who were meant to protect him. She prayed fervently that her father would find rest and enrichment in the afterlife, that he would not become a restless wandering ghost. She swore that after her death she would seek him out and become his companion – as she had been in life. She removed the small stone bottle from her smock, wet her lips with a few remaining drops of the wild pear juice within it, and then, standing with her two legs on either side of the coffin, lifted its lid and placed the bottle with its final few drops by his hand for his refreshment. She closed the lid and Hu and the coolie lifted her from the grave. Spider Girl looked at the coolie. The coolie swiftly and expertly refilled the grave, was paid in full by her and hurried off.

  Stood by his grave Spider Girl gave a brief and angrily ironic funeral oration. She praised her father’s lack of wisdom, his foolishness, which had been such a great gift to the family as he carried them on his broad shoulders for so many years. She spoke of how unwise he had been in loving his elder sister and his eldest daughter – her – and how his foolishness had ensured her survival, and thus the survival of the family. And she spoke of his foolishness in becoming a soldier and fighting the Japanese and being killed. But in being killed he had given her and so many other Chinese the gift of life. Finally her irony, her bitterness softened, her voice became gentle and loving, she thanked her father for his modesty and self-effacement, which had given her so much to be proud of.

  Then the three of them restarted their journey into the high mountains – The Drab leading the donkey, Hu following the cart, Spider Girl sitting alone and upright in the cart.

  And the tide of blackness and despair now took over Spider Girl completely.

  *

  Hu looked on in distress. She’d never seen her dear friend like this. Gone was her liveliness and humour, her insights and intelligence. Her inexhaustible ability to adapt and improvise in even the most extreme circumstances. She sat crushed in the cart.

  Bitterness had not just eaten part of Spider Girl’s soul. It had devoured it all. Hu touched Spider Girl’s arm. Spider Girl pulled it away.

  When The Drab reached a parting in the road and stopped because she did not know which way to go, this time it was Hu who indicated which way to go.

  All around them the mountains grew taller and steeper. People lived in their heights. Colourful temples and monasteries clung to cliffsides and vertiginous slopes like fabulous jewelled insects. Villages likewise precariously clutched the mountainsides, each house or shack built on the roof and walls of the house beneath it. Lean out of your window too far and you could tumble a thousand feet. And from these villages snaked out, like necklaces around the mountain’s sides, sinuous terraces cradling precious soil and growing green vegetables and crops, with farmers and their wives far above garnering in the last of the summer wheat or ploughing the soil ready for early sowing and next year’s rich crops. Every so often the wind carried their chants and singing and laughter down on the heads of those far below.

  As the road wound higher and higher the surrounding villages and cultivated terraces slowly disappeared, their places taken by slopes of dark, foreboding pine and conifer. Eagles and buzzards screamed from the heights. Their road became ever more precarious, so the donkey laboured and Hu helped it by pushing the cart. Spider Girl sat unmoved in the cart.

  They passed up through layer after layer of cloud. As they entered the clouds all around them became dark and claustrophobic. Hu noted that Spider Girl seemed to welcome this, sucking their darkness into her lungs to make her even more angry and furious.

  What could Hu do? How could she help her friend? How could she break through to her?

  Their track at last reached a small plateau. Upon it rested various empty carts and wagons. In its midst there was a hut – an official government hut.

  Here they were confronted by one of China
’s most ancient forms of transport. Already we have met them in Book 1 – the sailed wheelbarrow. After the fall of the Han Dynasty around AD 200, China’s superb highway system fell into desuetude (like the similar Roman one) and Zhuge Liang was faced with the problem of maintaining trade and communications across this vast country. He invented the sailed wheel-barrow with its wheel in the middle so, balanced and steered, it could reach high speeds and carry heavy loads. But the trackways they operated on had poor and uneven surfaces. Then someone else – whose name we do not know – thought of building narrow stone pathways, eighteen inches wide and engineered with mild gradients – so travelling along them the wheelbarrows could reach high speeds.24

  These ancient trade arteries were still in use. As the even more ancient footpath up over the mountains – involving thousands and thousands of vertiginous steps – was too steep for the freight and the luggage the refugees were carrying, travellers were selling their carts to the government – the man in the hut – and then walking the laddered steps up over the mountain (a shorter route) while the eighteen-inch wheelbarrow trackway, precariously carved into the side of the mountains, was sailed by skilled coolies who carried their luggage on their wind-powered wheelbarrows. When the two routes met again on a similar plateau on the other side of the mountain, the travellers would reclaim their baggage, the carts from travellers going in the other direction would be bought back from the government at a reasonable price, and they would continue their journey.

  Our three travellers now stood on one of these plateaus.

  Above them, stretching into the clouds, stood a ladder of sheer stone steps – a thousand of them. Above which stood another thousand steps, then another, then another.

  Spider Girl, the natural haggler, was too preoccupied and self-absorbed, so the far-from-ideal Hu had to sell the cart and consequently got a poor price.