The Flowers of War (7 page)

His grandmother sorted out her daughter and son-in-law’s
possessions, and sold off their furniture and clothing. Then she waited in vain for Fabio to come back. Finally, she could not bear village food, houses, toilets and mosquitoes any more and gave up the idea of taking her grandson home with her. She asked the clan head in the village to tell the Chinese teacher in the local town that as soon as Fabio was found he should write to her in English and she would come back and collect him. But Fabio’s grandmother never received any further news of her grandson from the village.

When Fabio grew up, he came secretly to regret his youthful intransigence but that was after he had been taken in as a seminarist by Father Engelmann. When his American grandmother left, his Chinese granny had thrown herself and Fabio on the mercy of one of her distant relatives. The man was a friend of Fabio’s parents and had introduced his granny to them so she could help around the house and with the boy. Now he took in Fabio’s granny to do the laundry and cleaning and brought the boy up with his own children. When Fabio, at seventeen, graduated from the missionary middle school, Father Engelmann happened to be there lecturing. The priest was intrigued by this young man, who talked and behaved like a Chinese but had the body of a Westerner, and made a point of talking to him. When he
left Yangzhou to return to Nanking, it was Fabio Adornato who carried his baggage for him because, from the moment Father Engelmann had stepped down from the pulpit and come towards him with a smile on his face, Fabio knew that the reason why he had been so lonely all his young life was that he would never be Chinese. It was as much Father Engelmann’s air of refinement and calm as his eloquence and the depth of his knowledge which, within a very short time, tamed Fabio and brought him to the realisation that he did not even want to be Chinese. He also understood that Father Engelmann was drawn to him because he was a Westerner. His new mentor hinted to him that it was beneath Fabio’s dignity to continue to mix with Chinese people as a Chinese man. Father Engelmann and Fabio stood out from the crowd like a pair of camels who had met by chance in a herd of horses. It was if they had known each other for years.

When Fabio graduated from the Nanking Seminary, Father Engelmann, who did some teaching there, applied for a scholarship for his protégé so that he could continue his studies in America for a further three years. In America Fabio managed to trace his entire American family, young and old. But being with them made him so anxious, he began
to itch and scratch his head frantically. He realised that he could not be an American either. The friendly chit-chat with his American relatives was just a front. The real Fabio retreated into the recesses of his heart and counted the seconds until this momentous reunion with his blood relatives could come to an end.

Fabio walked across the lawn to the rectory. When he reached Father Engelmann’s door, he knocked lightly.

‘Come in.’

Father Engelmann and Fabio were on good terms, the same good terms that they had been on since they first met, neither more intimate nor more distant. That was the kind of person Father Engelmann was. If he was your neighbour, he would greet you genially the first time with a ‘How good to meet you!’ And when you had been neighbours for decades, he would still greet you with the same ‘How good to meet you!’ He was able to freeze-frame familiarity so that it neither matured nor died.

‘Is something the matter, Fabio?’ he said now. He did not ask Fabio to sit down with his usual civility.

The priest was hunched over his short-wave radio listening to overseas broadcasts on the situation in Nanking. He glanced round at Fabio, then turned back to his radio.
Fabio was silent and listened with him to the crackly broadcast. He realised it was not the moment to talk to the priest about something as trivial as women fighting over food.

He glanced at the pale rectangular and oval marks of varying sizes on the faded walls where framed pictures had once hung. When the air raids first started, Father Engelmann had made Ah Gu take the pictures down and store them in the cellar, in case the glass shattered during a raid. Fabio remembered each of the pictures even in their absence, because Father Engelmann had not changed or moved them around in decades. The vertical oval outline, the largest, was a portrait photo of his mother, taken from a tiny photo on the back of a pocket watch his father had left him, and enlarged and touched up to such an extent that it was as much a product of science as of art. Below it on the left, the rectangular shape marked where a full-length graduation photo had hung, the only evidence of Father Engelmann ever having been young. On the bottom right, the horizontal oval was where the picture of Father Engelmann with His Holiness Pope Pius XI used to hang.

‘It seems it’s true,’ Father Engelmann muttered. ‘They’ve secretly executed Chinese soldiers. The shots I heard came
from the execution ground by the river. Even the Japanese reporters and the Germans were shocked.’

The gunfire had made Father Engelmann wonder whether Chinese troops were still resisting. He had been told by officials in the Safety Zone that any troops who had not had time to retreat had been taken prisoner. But the gunfire he had heard and the news from the wireless seemed to contradict this.

‘Are the Japanese really flouting international rules on the treatment of prisoners of war?’ he said to Fabio. ‘That’s an affront to all civilised, humane values. Can you believe it? Are these really the same Japanese people I know?’

‘We need to find a way to get food and water. Otherwise, by tomorrow there won’t be any drinking water,’ said Fabio.

Father Engelmann understood what Fabio was getting at: there was absolutely no sign that, within the hoped-for few days, the invading forces would stop the butchery, take control of the vanquished city and impose law and order. Moreover, the killing had become a habit, and the prospect of it stopping seemed remote. There was something else Fabio was getting at: very soon, they would all suffer the consequences of Father Engelmann’s generosity in taking
in the prostitutes and allowing them to deprive the schoolgirls of their food.

‘I’ll go to the Safety Zone tomorrow and get hold of some food – potatoes, yams or whatever. If that can keep us going for another two days, at least the children won’t starve,’ Engelmann said.

‘And what about after that?’ asked Fabio. ‘And what about water?’

‘We have to take it hour by hour now! Getting through another hour is another hour of life!’

Fabio felt furious. Father Engelmann repeatedly criticised him for passive aggression, telling him that disagreements should be thrashed out openly and confrontation should be direct. That was the way almost all Americans behaved. Fabio’s passive aggression was a Chinese trait, one which he, Father Engelmann, deplored.

Now he looked at Fabio and asked, ‘With regard to water, have you any constructive suggestions to make?’

‘Zhao Yumo said that when they came here, they passed a pond on the way. I know Nanking pretty well, and I don’t remember one nearby, but she said she saw it. I thought I’d ask Ah Gu to go and look for it before it gets light.’

‘That’s a very good idea of yours. You see, we’ve already
found a way around the problem.’ And Father Engelmann rewarded Fabio with a warm smile, very different from his usual polite, cold smiles.

Fabio felt a rush of emotion. After all these years with Father Engelmann, he had now, in the space of ten minutes, been on the receiving end of real anger and a genuine smile from him. Perhaps it signalled that the distance Father Engelmann had been so careful to maintain over all this time just might be breaking down.

‘Tell the children to go to the church,’ said Father Engelmann.

‘But they’ll surely be asleep,’ said Fabio.

‘Go and tell them, please.’

The girls had gone to bed but fumbled for their clothes when they heard Fabio’s shout and came down from the attic. They entered the church to see Fabio seated at the organ and Father Engelmann standing dressed in his funeral cassock. They felt something must be badly amiss and clutched each other’s ice-cold hands for comfort. In an instant all the petty animosities and daily rivalries between them dissolved and they became a collective, a family.

The organist had gone, having left Nanking along with the other teachers, which was why Fabio was now playing. He had studied music for a year in the seminary and so
knew the rudiments. It was an upright organ, normally used for teaching the girls to sing, and was now muffled in an old carpet which made the music sound nasal as if it had caught cold.

Someone must have died, thought Shujuan, and the organ had been wrapped up to keep the funeral hymns as quiet as possible. Or perhaps Father Engelmann knew what they had done to Cardamon and was about to make them repent. But Cardamom had deserved it. Surely he would understand that, and take their side.

The entire nave was lit with only three candles and all the windows were covered in blackout curtains, of the kind which covered all the windows of every building in Nanking now that there were air raids.

The organ growled and the girls sang the requiem in whispers. They did not know who the requiem was for, or who they had lost, but perhaps for that very reason they had the confused feeling that they were facing a vast infinity of loss: Nanking and south China; the right to be a free people; and something else besides.

Father Engelmann led them in prayer.

Shujuan looked at Father Engelmann standing in front of the figure of Christ. His shadow fell on the painted statue
hanging from its cross, and his living face took on some of its ecstasy.

‘Children, I did not want to alarm you but now I must prepare you for a greatly worsened situation,’ the priest began. Then he quietly outlined for them in simple terms what the wireless broadcasts had said. ‘If these reports, that hundreds and thousands of prisoners of war have been executed, are true then I believe that we must have returned to the Middle Ages. As Chinese, you will know that the Qin dynasty buried four hundred thousand Zhao kingdom prisoners of war alive. We do not seem to have advanced much since then.’ Father Engelmann stopped speaking. His Chinese had become increasingly awkward and his words harder to understand.

*     *     *

That night, Shujuan and Xiaoyu lay side by side. Xiaoyu sobbed and sobbed and, when Shujuan asked her what the matter was, said that her father was a powerful man who could fix anything, yet he had left her to starve in this freezing hellhole.

‘Well, my parents are in America, tucking into bacon and eggs and coffee,’ said Shujuan.

Suddenly Xiaoyu shook her friend’s arm hard and said, ‘When my father comes to get me, I’ll take you with me.’

‘Do you think he’ll come and get you?’

‘Of course he will!’ Xiaoyu seemed offended that Shujuan should be doubting her wealthy, all-powerful father.

‘I hope he comes tomorrow,’ said Shujuan, her eager anticipation of Xiaoyu’s father as great as her friend’s. What a wonderful thing to be Xiaoyu’s best friend now, to bathe in the light which shone from her, to flee blockaded Nanking.

‘Where do you want to go?’ asked Xiaoyu.

‘Wherever you’re going.’

‘Let’s go to Shanghai. They won’t attack the British, French and American concessions. Shanghai would be good, better than Hankou. Hankou would be death. It’s all Chinese there.’

‘Good. Shanghai it is then.’ Shujuan did not dare contradict Xiaoyu. It was slightly degrading to have to depend on Xiaoyu in this way; still, it was only for now. She had all her life ahead of her in which to rebuild her self-esteem.

There was a faint ring of the doorbell. In seconds, all the girls were sitting upright and then clustered around the windows. They saw Ah Gu and Fabio race out of the door beneath their windows. Ah Gu, a lantern in his hand, was
there first. Fabio caught up and gestured fiercely at Ah Gu that he should extinguish the light. But it was too late. The light had already filtered through the crack in the door to the outside.

‘Please, sirs, open the door, I’m a gravedigger … This soldier is still alive …’