The Flowers of War (8 page)

‘Please go away,’ Fabio said laboriously in awkward Chinese. ‘This is an American church. We don’t get involved in fighting between Chinese and Japanese soldiers.’

‘Please, sir, save me!’ came another voice. It sounded very weak, as if the man was seriously wounded.

‘Please go away. I’m very sorry.’

The gravedigger raised his voice. ‘The Japanese will be back any moment now! Then he’ll be dead and so will I! Please show mercy to us. I’m a Christian too!’

‘Please take him to the Safety Zone,’ said Fabio.

‘The Japs go to the Safety Zone dozens of times every day to pick up Chinese soldiers and the wounded! Please, I beg you!’

‘I’m very sorry. It’s quite impossible. Please don’t force me to compromise the neutrality of this church.’

Gunshots were heard from somewhere nearby.

The gravedigger refused to give up. ‘Merciful priests,
I beg you!’ Then his footsteps were heard receding into the distance. He had clearly left the wounded soldier behind.

Fabio did not know what to do. He could not let the Chinese soldier outside bleed to death, but neither could he put the nearly forty souls inside at risk.

At that moment, Father Engelmann suddenly emerged out of the darkness, still wearing his funeral cassock.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked Fabio and Ah Gu.

‘There’s a seriously wounded soldier outside,’ said Fabio. ‘Should we bring him in?’

For the first time since he had met Father Engelmann, Fabio sensed that the priest had no idea what to do.

‘Please, I beg you!’ The wounded man outside spoke through clenched teeth.

‘We have to open up,’ said Fabio in English. ‘If he dies outside our door, we’ll be compromised.’

Engelmann looked at his junior. He knew Fabio was right, but he dared not contemplate the prospect of losing the church’s neutrality, and thus losing their ability to protect the schoolgirls. ‘We can’t,’ he said. ‘But we could get Ah Gu to take him away and leave him in some other place.’

‘That would be sending him to his death!’ exclaimed Ah Gu.

Outside the door, the wounded man gave a groan which sounded scarcely human.

From where Shujuan stood at the window the two clergymen in their black robes and Ah Gu looked like three figures on a chessboard. She watched Father Engelmann take the key from Ah Gu and undo the sturdy German-made lock. He pushed the bolts to one side and pulled the chain free. The door opened heavily and the girls gave a sigh of relief.

But then, even faster and more firmly than he had opened it, Father Engelmann shut the door again before anyone outside could get in. He attempted to lock up again, but his movements were clumsy. Fabio asked him what was going on. Engelmann said nothing and concentrated instead on locking and bolting the door.

‘There’s not one but two outside. Two wounded Chinese soldiers!’ he said in aggrieved tones.

There was another shout from the gravedigger. ‘The Japs are coming! On horses!’

It was clear that he had only pretended to go away. He had correctly gambled on the assumption that the foreign monks would not leave a lone wounded man to bleed to death. Father Engelmann had fallen into the trap, and opened the door. The gravedigger had said there was only one
casualty because he feared that the church would not take in more than one.

‘I really can hear horses!’ said Ah Gu.

Even Shujuan knew that if a Japanese soldier on horseback were to turn into the alleyway outside the church, then that would be the end of them all, both inside and outside.

‘Why did you lie to me? There’s clearly more than one casualty!’ shouted Father Engelmann. ‘You Chinese do nothing but tell lies, even at a time like this!’

‘Father, we’re saving lives. What does it matter if it’s one or one hundred?’ said Fabio. This was the first time he had directly confronted his mentor.

‘You shut up,’ said Father Engelmann.

The men outside did not understand the foreigners’ conversation but they knew it had to do with whether they lived or died. The gravedigger became frantic and shouted, ‘The horses are coming this way!’

Father Engelmann walked back the way he had come, the key in his hand. He had only gone half a dozen paces when a dark figure swiftly blocked his way. It appeared to be that of a soldier.

Sophie, who was standing next to Shujuan, gave a yelp
like a puppy. The war had arrived here and their compound was going to be a battlefield.

The intruder closed in on Father Engelmann. ‘Open up!’ he ordered. The conflagration from a distant building seemed to have set the sky on fire, and the light from it flickered across the courtyard. The girls could see that the soldier was holding a pistol to Father Engelmann’s chest, no doubt making the priest’s heart thump under his black cassock. If the soldier were even a little sensitive, Shujuan thought, he must surely be aware of that thudding heart.

Fabio took the key from Father Engelmann’s hand and opened the door. In came a little group of people, one of whom lay covered in blood in a wheelbarrow. The one who had been talking through the door was using a roughly cut tree branch as a crutch. The wheelbarrow was being pushed by a middle-aged man wearing a black waistcoat.

Not long after the door was shut again, some Japanese cavalry rode down the street, laughing and singing cheerfully.

Everyone inside stood motionless as statues until the Japanese had passed. The soldier in uniform still held the pistol in both hands, the bullets ready to fly if the door should be opened again. Not until the echoes of the horses’ hooves had faded into the distance did they relax.

‘Let’s go down and have a look,’ Shujuan whispered to Xiaoyu.

‘You can’t!’ exclaimed Xiaoyu.

‘Come on, it’s easy.’

Xiaoyu’s face suddenly became hard. ‘You go alone, Shujuan. And don’t count on me to save your skin.’

Shujuan opened the trapdoor, the ladder extended beneath her and she set off on her own.

‘Look at Shujuan!’ she heard Xiaoyu say to the other girls. ‘She’s always looking for trouble!’

Shujuan was furious with Xiaoyu. She had intended to sneak away with her friend behind the backs of the others, and now Xiaoyu had betrayed her to them.

She crept down to the entrance to the workshop building and pushed open the door a crack so that she could see what was happening outside. She was not a girl who liked the wool pulled over her eyes. She knew it was just a way of protecting her but she did not appreciate it at all.

Through the crack in the door, she could see that the struggle in the courtyard was still unresolved. The wheelbarrow had taken on the role of the tank, creaking over the ground as the soldier wielding the pistol led their advance. Shujuan could see that the man wearing the strange black
waistcoat had white cloth circles stuck to the front and back; she supposed this was the normal garb for gravediggers.

‘Ah Gu, go and get the first-aid box,’ ordered Father Engelmann. ‘Give them a supply of swabs and dressings and get rid of them.’ He was making it very clear he would not receive guests like this at the church.

The pistol-wielding soldier did not strike an aggressive posture but he still pointed the pistol at the priest as he said: ‘Where do you want them to go to?’

‘Please put your weapon down when you talk to me, Major,’ Father Engelmann responded with dignity.

He had seen the man’s rank. He had also seen that his jacket had a dark patch at the hem on the left-hand side where the blood had soaked through.

‘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.