The Flowers of War Page 6

  ‘Pardon me, Father,’ said the soldier still pointing his gun.

  ‘Are you trying to force me at gunpoint to take you all in?’

  ‘People only listen when you’ve got a gun in your hand.’

  ‘Why didn’t you use your gun to make the Japanese listen to you?’

  The soldier was silent.

  ‘You see, Officer, I don’t talk to people who are armed. Please put your gun down.’

  The officer lowered his gun.

  ‘Would you mind telling me who you are and how you got in?’ Fabio asked him.

  ‘It was easy. I’ve been here for days,’ answered the soldier. ‘I’m Major Dai Tao, second in command, Second Regiment, 73rd Division.’

  At that point, a slight sound reached their ears.

  Shujuan peered out and saw half a dozen women emerging from the kitchen with Hongling at their head. They certainly could not complain that they were ‘bored to death’ any more: before their eyes a blood-soaked bundle lay in a wheelbarrow. They stopped and began to whisper among themselves. They appeared to realise for the first time that the peace of this compound was a mirage, as false as their constant chatter and laughter. The reality was that the rivers of blood in the city outside had finally reached the church walls.

  ‘How many did the Japanese kill?’ asked Major Dai, looking at the soldier lying wounded in the wheelbarrow and then over to the sergeant major supporting himself on a makeshift crutch

  ‘Five or six thousand,’ said the sergeant major with the crutch in tones of angry humiliation. ‘They hoodwinked us! Those fucking Japs said they were taking us to clear land for crops on an island in the river, but when we got to the riverbank, we couldn’t see a single boat –’

  ‘Are you from the 154th Division?’ Dai interrupted sharply.

  ‘Yes. How did you know?’ asked the sergeant major.

  Major Dai did not answer. The dialect the sergeant major spoke had told him all he needed to know. ‘Find a warm place, and dress his wounds,’ he said, in tones that indicated he had taken over the compound and was now in charge.

  The sergeant major was about to obey when Father Engelmann said, ‘Wait a moment. Major, I saved you all just now, but I can’t do it again. There are sixteen teenage girls taking refuge here, and if I let soldiers stay, that’ll be an excuse for the Japanese to break in too.’ His laboured pronunciation in Chinese was certainly hard to understand.

  ‘If they leave here, then they’ll be shot again,’ said the major.

  Suddenly Hongling chipped in. ‘Those murderous Japanese! … Officer, let them squeeze into our cellar!’

  ‘No!’ Father Engelmann roared.

  ‘Father, can we dress their wounds first and then assess the situation?’ Fabio said.

  ‘No,’ said Father Engelmann again. ‘This is getting out of hand. We’ve run out of water and food, and now three extra people … please consider our schoolgirls, the oldest only fourteen. What would you do in my position? I think you’d do what I’m doing and refuse to let soldiers in here. Soldiers will encourage the Japanese to come here. Is that fair to the girls?’ He enunciated the words with almost painful precision in an effort to make himself understood.

  ‘But won’t the Japanese come even if we’re not here?’ objected the sergeant major. ‘There’s nowhere they won’t go!’

  Father Engelmann hesitated. The sergeant major had a point. From what he had seen it was clear that, to these crazed invaders, nowhere was taboo, nothing was sacred.

  He turned to Dai. ‘Please understand my situation, Major, and take them away. May God protect you until you get to the Safety Zone, and God speed.’

  ‘Push the wheelbarrow over there,’ Dai said, pointing the gravedigger in the direction of the kitchen, as if he had not taken in a word of Father Engelmann’s Chinese. ‘Give them a little water and then let me take a look at their wounds.’

  ‘Stay right where you are,’ said Father Engelmann, blocking the way, his outstretched arms in the black cassock looking like two black wings.

  Dai raised his gun again.

  ‘Are you going to shoot? If so, the church will be yours and you can put the wounded wherever you want. Go on, shoot,’ said the priest.

  Dai pulled back the safety catch on the pistol.

  Fabio’s jaw dropped open but he stood stock-still. He was afraid that any movement might set the bullets flying.

  The wounded man in the wheelbarrow moaned in agony. It was the high-pitched moan of a boy of fourteen or fifteen with a just-broken voice, one who sounded close to death. None of this wrangling about neutrality seemed to matter, even life and death itself seemed trivial, when right there in front of them there was a boy soldier suffering such pain.

  ‘All right. Deal with the wounds and then we’ll see,’ Father Engelmann finally said.

  ‘The hot water’s ready!’ said George, who had been waiting quietly while the arguments went on around him. He had said nothing but he had taken sides, and had begun preparing to help the wounded. Now the very last of the remaining water from the cistern was heating on the stove.

  The women had all emerged from the cellar by this time. They stood staring mutely at the dying boy soldier and the wounded sergeant in either distaste or fear, it was hard to tell. They could have been a phalanx of funeral mourners, or greeters at a party.

  Major Dai was about to follow them when Father Engelmann stopped him.

  ‘Give me your gun, Major.’

  The officer frowned. His expression said: What does this foreigner think he’s doing? The Japanese haven’t managed to disarm me yet!

  ‘If you want the church’s protection, then you must give up your weapon. The strength of this church lies in its neutrality, and we’ll lose that the minute we take in people who are armed. So give me your gun.’

  Major Dai looked into the priest’s pale, foreigner’s eyes and said, ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’m not letting you stay.’

  ‘I won’t be staying, at least no more than a day or two.’

  ‘If you want to stay here for another minute, then it has to be as an ordinary citizen. If the Japanese discover you here with a weapon, I can’t defend you and I can’t defend the neutrality of the church either.’

  ‘If the Japanese really get in, and I haven’t got a weapon, then we’ll be like lambs to the slaughter.’

  ‘I can only give you refuge here as an ordinary citizen if you give up your weapon. Otherwise you must leave now.’

  Major Dai hesitated, then he said: ‘I’ll just stay one night, long enough to debrief these two about the massacre of the prisoners of war. Then I’ll go.’

  ‘I told you. Not another minute.’

  ‘Do as the Father says, Major,’ put in Fabio. ‘You’re seriously wounded yourself. If you leave here, you’ll be without food and water, and the Japanese are everywhere. How far will you get? At least get your wound treated and give yourself a bit of a rest and then go.’ His Yangzhou accent had a persuasive force to it. He sounded as if he was trying to make two squabbling village boys see the error of their ways.

  Slowly, Major Dai clicked on the pistol’s safety catch. Then he turned the muzzle towards himself and gave the pistol, butt-end first, to Father Engelmann.

  Eight

  To maintain propriety, the cellar was divided in two with the aid of an old curtain from the library. The three men had one side, the women the other. As Fabio came down the ladder to inspect the arrangements, his nostrils were assaulted by an extraordinary medley of smells: foodstuffs stored for long years, pickles, cheese, wine … their substance may have disappeared but their essence remained. It was as if the smells had continued to ripen until they filled the air with a pungent, almost tangible odour. Fabio felt faint as he got to the bottom of the ladder. New smells had been added to the mixture since this had become a makeshift living space: the body odour of fourteen women and three men, the contents of two toilet buckets, as well as perfume, face cream, hair oil, talcum powder a
nd tobacco …

  The sergeant major’s name was Li Quanyou and the boy soldier was Wang Pusheng. Fabio learned that the boy had only been conscripted a month before, having been dragged from the sweet-potato patch in front of his house and handed a uniform. The day he put it on, he was given a rifle and a munitions belt and taken off to the village threshing circle to learn how to use his bayonet and take aim, before being sent to Nanking. He had not even had one chance to shoot his gun because his superior said bullets were worth their weight in gold and had to be kept until they got to the battlefield. Once there, he had fired only a few shots when he was wounded.

  Sergeant Major Li’s left leg was badly injured. He had been stabbed four times and the tendons behind the knee had been severed so that the limb looked dead as he dragged it uselessly behind him.

  It took some probing for Major Dai to extract the story of what had happened to them. At first when he asked, Li just said: ‘Don’t want to talk about it. They’re motherfuckers, I’ve never been in such a hellish situation!’ Or: ‘I just don’t remember!’ It was only after he’d had some wine that he started to tell the story. The wine, of course, belonged to the church and had been smuggled to the soldiers by the women. By that time, adversity had drawn the soldiers and the prostitutes into a close alliance.

  Major Dai told the story to Fabio, who relayed it to Father Engelmann.

  The day after Li Quanyou and Wang Pusheng’s unit had sworn that they would defend the city to the last man, they had lost contact with their GHQ. As a result, their officers had no idea where to go or how to fight. They also did not know which direction the enemy was attacking from. It was only when the Japanese breached their lines and marched into Nanking that Li and his men realised they were defeated pawns in a chess game.

  It was getting dark and Chinese and enemy troops became hopelessly mixed up. During the night, they were sold out by their own senior officers who, from the rank of captain upwards, simply ran away under cover of darkness. At dawn, a Chinese collaborator armed with a loud-hailer, speaking from a Japanese helicopter, announced: ‘Chinese soldiers! The great Japanese Imperial Army treats its prisoners of war well! You only have to put down your arms, and rice, hot tea and Japanese Army tinned rations await you!’ None of the Chinese soldiers had had so much as a sniff of rice for a very long time. As the Japanese helicopter circled around the mountains, the soldiers sheltering on its wooded slopes craned their necks to watch. When the helicopter returned, the collaborator had turned into a Japanese girl, singing a Chinese song in a Japanese accent. The helicopter circled again and the sky filled with white, yellow and pink leaflets fluttering to the ground. A soldier who could read a bit said: ‘These are from the Japanese! They want us to surrender.’ Others who were more literate read the rest of the text: ‘It says there’ll be no violence, and it guarantees us food and shelter. And it says any resistance will meet with total annihilation. All the Chinese troops inside Nanking have surrendered and are being treated well!’ There was another leaflet whose wording was less polite: ‘The patience of the Imperial Army is not inexhaustible. If you have not surrendered by dawn tomorrow, it will be too late.’

  During the night the soldiers discussed their options. Sergeant Major Li suggested to one of his platoon commanders that they break ranks and escape under cover of darkness. They might be lucky and get away. But the platoon commander said: ‘If you’ve thought of that idea, then the Japanese will have too.’ Another sergeant said: ‘If we take these leaflets with us, then if the Japanese don’t keep their word, we can argue with them, because it’s all down here in black and white! It’s even got their senior officer’s name written here. Would he dare go back on his word?’

  The terms of surrender were printed on other leaflets: 1) they were to collect all their weapons into a pile; 2) they were to form up in their squads, platoons and companies and the head of each was to raise a white flag—a white sheet or a white shirt would do; 3) every officer and every man was to raise their hands above their heads and come out into the open. The Japanese Army wanted orderly behaviour. Any disorderly behaviour would be severely punished.

  Li had no food on him at all but he did have tobacco. He filled pipe after pipe, trying to weigh up the odds and make up his mind: to surrender with the rest of the troops or attempt to sneak quietly away on his own. If he had a mouthful of food there was no way he would surrender. His comrades all got out their remaining tobacco and pooled it. The damp, cold night air seeped from the dense stands of pine and oak and chilled the many thousands of hungry Chinese soldiers to the bone. Only their tobacco brought them a little comfort.

  At this very moment, although they did not know it, Japanese troops were watching the mass of dots of light from countless pipes in some trepidation. The Chinese looked like a mighty force and the Japanese were only a fraction of their number. If the leaflets ploy should fail, it would be hard for the Japanese to do battle with the Chinese.

  Li finally abandoned the idea of fleeing and going into hiding. If he surrendered, at least he had a vague idea what would happen from the Japanese leaflets. If he made a run for it, he had no way of knowing what awaited him. Besides, when it came to trusting to fate, Li like most of his comrades preferred to stick with the others. Their courage was multiplied when they were together and a deadly threat was much easier to face together than alone.

  At five o’clock in the morning, the first white flag—a bed sheet held aloft by a bugler—was raised on the Chinese side. The sheet had been left behind by a regimental commander. They tore it into four and shared it between four regiments. It was only when the mist lifted and the surrendering troops got to the Japanese lines that they realised just how heavily they outnumbered the enemy. If only they had known, they could have broken through and got away the night before, but the lack of any wireless equipment left them in complete ignorance, a situation which the Japanese were quick to take advantage of.

  A group of walking wounded was approaching along another track. One of them was a youth with his head wrapped in a bandage. Li’s company was ordered to halt at the fork in the track. The Japanese seemed to be very considerate of their prisoners of war, allowing the wounded to get to food and shelter first. Sergeant Major Li and Wang Pusheng had not met at that stage.

  Led by a forest of white flags, the Chinese troops silently walked along the road. They were escorted at ten-metre intervals by a Japanese soldier toting a rifle. Occasionally Chinese interpreters would appear, to shout: ‘Hurry up! Quick as you can!’ Every now and then they would be asked by the surrendering soldiers: ‘Where are the Japanese taking us?’

  The answer was always ‘Don’t know’. The expressions of the collaborators were as bland as those of the Japanese soldiers escorting them.

  ‘Will there be food and water?’ came another question.

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘They won’t kill us or beat us?’

  ‘No! Get a move on now!’

  There really were some soldiers who had carefully kept a leaflet on them. Every time they saw a collaborator, they would take it out and show it to him. These words were the evidence. Now they wanted these Japanese to honour their promises.

  When one of the soldiers exchanged a few words with a collaborator, he was quickly surrounded by his comrades. ‘They’re really not going to kill us?’ ‘That’s what he said…’ ‘They’re going to feed us?’ ‘That’s what he said…’

  The rumours were embellished with much repeating. ‘Down the road there’s food! we’re nearly there! The Japanese never kill their prisoners!’

  They walked on and on but food and shelter still did not materialise. The prisoners’ firmness of spirit began to waver. ‘Who did you hear say there was food?’ ‘It was you!’ ‘Did I? I said probably there was…’ ‘Then let’s find another interpreter to ask!’

  It was after ten in the morning and the mist was dispersing when they came to a burned-out factory. A Japanese officer exchanged a few words with the inte
rpreter who took a loud-hailer and bellowed at the prisoners: ‘Officers and men! Take a rest here for a bit while we wait for our orders.’

  One of the Chinese, bolder than the rest, shouted back: ‘Is this where we’re going to eat?’

  The Japanese officer bent his steely gaze on him and the Chinese soldiers felt a chill of fear. There was obviously no food and shelter to be had here.

  The place was completely uninhabited. It was a ghost town.

  Under instruction from the Japanese officer, the interpreter addressed the prisoners again. ‘There’ll be food when you get to the river. Then you’ll be put in boats and taken to an island in midstream to clear the land for planting. The Japanese Army needs food and you’re going to supply it…’

  The men were reassured when this message was relayed to them. It sounded believable. They could see the prospects in front of them. They might have been starving but they cheered up. The interpreter went on. ‘During this rest period, we’re asking everyone to show restraint and cooperate with the Japanese. Allow them to tie your hands –’

  The loud-hailer was still rapping out its message when there were confused shouts of: ‘Why? What do they want to tie our hands for?’

  ‘They’ve got guns and we’re weaponless. What’s the point in tying us up?’

  ‘I won’t let them!’

  The officer shouted an order and all the Japanese soldiers stood with bayonets at the ready.

  The Chinese quieted down and huddled closer together.

  The loud-hailer transmitted the Japanese officer’s explanation. ‘Tying your hands is to keep you in order. If we lose control and disorder breaks out when you’re crossing the river, then it could be very dangerous. The Imperial Army is only concerned with your safety.’

  The collaborator shouted himself hoarse through the loud-hailer but the soldiers were sceptical.

  One shouted back: ‘If they tie our hands, then how will we eat when we get to the river?’

  The collaborator had no answer to that. But the question alerted the other soldiers: Hadn’t the Japanese said they would be fed when they got to the river? So why were they saying now that tying their hands was to maintain order on the boats? How could they hold a bowl and pick up a steamed bun with their hands tied? And there were only a few Japanese—were there enough to get food to all the Chinese? Which bit were they to believe?