by Max Hennessy
The city was notorious for its climate which produced fog and rain for months, and as the year progressed epidemics began to breed in the alleyways that ran down the slopes, twisting and tumbling over steps polished smooth by centuries of straw-sandalled feet. Sewage and rubbish lay in the same stream from which drinking water was taken and when people became ill they went to herb doctors who organised cures from musk and children’s urine. Even when the summer came and the heat poured down, moisture remained in the air, and everybody started rashes of prickly heat, and there were swarms of insects swimming on the drinking water or clinging to the walls. Then the mosquitoes came.
‘The bastards work in threes,’ Foote claimed. ‘Two lift the mosquito net and the third zooms in for the kill.’
Meat spoiled and there was still never enough water for washing. Dysentery spread and the city was full of drifting odours.
It was known now that the Americans, pressing in the Pacific, were beginning to cause the Japanese to look over their shoulders, while in Burma the British were preparing for an offensive to reopen the Burma road. In addition, an excellent airfield had been constructed at Kweilin where the remains of the American Volunteer Group under Chennault had regrouped. Ever since 1941 this grab-bag bunch of young volunteers had been tearing at the Japanese bombers, and when the Burma retreat had ended and the RAF had retired to India, the Americans had retreated to China. They had searched Calcutta, Cairo and the States for new machines, spare parts, fuel and ammunition, and with a few ancient Russian Tupolev bombers, which the Chinese were using, had even talked of bombing Tokyo until Jimmy Doolittle had got there first.
But there was little sign of gratitude from the Chinese government, even to a large extent obstruction, as if the wish were to stop them finding out what happened to the goods that were lifted over the Hump with such heavy losses in men and machines.
‘Makes you wonder what the hell we’re doin’ here,’ Foote complained.
Because the electricity was off, the lift wasn’t working so they trudged slowly up the stairs to their rooms, puffing a little by the time they got to the top.
‘Shows our age,’ Foote grinned.
As Dicken opened his door, he noticed the light was on and wondered if some government spy had been searching his room. Then, sitting bolt upright in a straight-backed chair, he saw a great bear of a figure in the shadows. As he entered it rose quickly.
‘Dicken, me boy, do you not recognise me?’
‘Sure I do,’ Dicken said. ‘The only thing as big as you on two legs is King Kong. Father O’Buhilly, by all that’s holy! What are you doing here?’
‘Still hoping to make you a believer, my son.’
Dicken laughed. ‘Father, in all my flying time I’ve never encountered a single angel.’
‘Ah, the pity of it! Doubtless they were lurking behind a cloud!’
For a moment they hugged each other delightedly. As they drew apart, Dicken grinned.
‘It’s wonderful to see you, Father,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘The same as always, me boy. Spreadin’ the word of the Lord and the Holy Catholic Church. There are always too many Presbyterians and Baptists pushin’ their version.’
Remembering the old priest’s tastes, Dicken gestured. ‘There’s no Irish whiskey here, Father. But there is a little American rye.’
‘A barbarian drink to be sure. But for once I won’t turn me nose up at it.’
Sloshing a good helping into a glass, Dicken handed it over. The priest smacked his lips.
‘I have cigarettes, too, Father. Do you still smoke?’
Father O’Buhilly fished out a blackened old pipe, its stem bound with twine. ‘A pipe these days, me boy. Mind,’ he added, ‘I smoke cigarettes when I can get ’em. Especially other people’s.’
As Dicken offered his case, the priest drew the smoke down with a dreamy look on his face. ‘Do you remember, boy, how we shared them in prison, you and I? A puff each alternately to make ’em last.’
They were silent for a moment, remembering the shabby little cell in the village where they’d been held prisoner.
‘’Twas only the absence of somethin’ to smoke that drove me to escape,’ O’Buhilly went on. ‘But for that you’d never have got me into that contraption you called an aeroplane.’ He paused again. ‘He’s still around, y’know.’
‘I’ve met him.’
‘When the Japanese came he contemplated going over to them, but in the end he changed his mind and he’s now one of Chiang’s most trusted men. Which goes to show how bad Chiang is at pickin’ his subordinates. He’s Methodist like Chiang, o’ course – if he’d been a Catholic I might have made something of him. His army’s north of Changjao, where I’ve come from, but, sure, ’tis a skeleton army padded with the names of dead men whose wages and rations he continues to draw. It’s dyin’ on its feet, boy, sufferin’ from dysentery, malaria and starvation. The Americans offered quinine tablets – I distributed ’em meself – but he sells ’em to the Japanese. Half of ’em have scabies and the rest have the itch. On their hands, legs, bodies, everywhere. They wear the same uniforms day and night all year round, and there’s no bathin’ because there’s no soap. There’s beriberi – you can push your thumb into the leg of a Chinese soldier and the mark’s there ten minutes later – leg ulcers, tuberculosis, typhus, influenza and worms. The only thing that’s missing is venereal disease and that’s because their morals are good and they can’t afford a prostitute, anyway. Sure, this place’s nothing but a cess pool. I pray, of course, but in China you have to shout to be heard. But that’s no reason why we should give up. There are still souls who need help, and the strength of me religion isn’t in the way it’s preached or the way it’s offered in books. It lies in the way we apply it.’
The priest seemed low in spirits and Dicken guessed he hadn’t arrived merely to renew an old acquaintance. ‘Why are you here, Father?’ he asked.
The old man shed his gloom with an effort. ‘The Japanese are comin’,’ he said. ‘Everybody in Changjao knows they’re comin’. Lee knows they’re comin’. Chiang knows they’re comin’. But nothin’s bein’ done except by the people themselves. There are textile factories up there, which came up here from the coast, and now they’ve got to move them again. You should come and see ’em, me boy. ’Twill teach you a lot about China.’
‘How did you know I was here–’
‘The miracle of modern invention, me boy. You’ll remember that meetin’ you had with Chiang. They took photographs. Not for the Chinese papers. Most Chinese can’t afford a paper anyway. No, my boy, it was for Western consumption. New York Times. Washington Post. London Times. Aid to China. Look you at the Generalissimo, surrounded by American and British aides. When I called on one of his ministers, he had them on his desk and I saw your face. Y’haven’t changed, boy. Have you been pittin’ yourself against those monsters in Germany?’
‘Once or twice, Father.’
‘God be praised for brave men. The things they’ve done to their fellow human bein’s. I carry no special torch for the Jews. Nor, for that matter, for Anglicans, Presbyterians or Baptists or anyone else who doesn’t belong to the true faith. But human beings are human beings. Have you shot many, boy?’
Dicken laughed. ‘One or two,’ he said. ‘But mostly we leave it to the twenty-year-olds. When the Germans shoot back, they’re better at dodging. What about you?’
‘I wait for an end to the killin’. That’s all. ’Twill come eventually and then China will be different. The Communists have ideas for after the war because most of the intellectuals left Chiang long since and joined them. There’ll be a great sweepin’ away of privilege.’
‘Can they do it?’
O’Buhilly shrugged. ‘They will, boy. Believe me, they’ll throw out old Dogleg and his corrupt hangers-on so fast they
won’t know what hit ’em.’
‘Are you a Communist, Father?’
‘And believe in God?’ The priest looked indignant. ‘But I believe in human dignity, boy, as did Jesus Christ in His infinite mercy, and I don’t believe in one law for the rich and another for the poor. We know about that in Changjao, y’see. The Japanese are close and there are air raids and the only people who can leave are Lee’s people. When you get up you look at the sky. If it’s clear you have everything handy for a quick dash to the shelter. If it’s cloudy, the Japs probably won’t come so you do the longer journeys.’
The priest paused, his eyes filled with sadness. ‘Sure, ’tis like withstanding a whirlwind, because the buildings are tinder-dry, the fire fightin’ equipment’s ancient and the water pressure’s never enough. The only thing we have in our favour is the will of the people and that’s wearin’ thin. When will you be comin’, boy? There’s someone there I think you’ll be wantin’ to see.’
Dicken frowned. ‘In Changjao? I don’t know anybody in Changjao, Father.’
‘You know this one, my son. ’Tis Marie-Gabrielle Aubrey, and when I left she was talkin’ of leavin’ for Yuking. The harvest’s goin’ to fail and there’ll be a famine, and that’s where everybody will go.’
Three
They travelled north by railway, on a wide loop that ran westwards away from the front.
The train was a vast amorphous mass of sleeping soldiers and civilians in and on a mixture of flat cars, box cars and old coaches. The carriages were stuffed with people propped on hard wooden benches and the roofs were black with more of them, bracing themselves against the vibration and the curves. Every now and then they saw smashed bodies lying in the roadbed, but nobody looked twice at them because dead human beings were nothing new in China. At every station more tried to climb on while those already there tried to beat them off.
As the train stopped at a small shabby station, peasants appeared, offering scraggy boiled chickens, sausage-shaped waffles of bean flour, vermicelli, sugar cane and hard-boiled eggs. One had a cart pulled by a bright green horse which he explained was really white but had been painted green as camouflage for when the Japanese bombers came over. As they waited, an armoured train used by Chiang came through, its carriages filled with officials.
The station forecourt was filled with soldiers wearing scraps of Japanese uniform, still complete with Japanese insignia. They seemed to be mere boys and they were performing curious exercises which seemed to consist of balancing on one leg staring at each other, with the other stretched out behind like ballet dancers.
‘New recruits,’ Johnson pointed out. ‘They’ll never be any good because after the last war old Dogleg hired Prussian officers and rootless Russians to train them. They only know how to goose-step and the tactics of the old Russian Imperial army, and they have to unlearn everything when they get to the front.
His mind busy with memories, Dicken turned to Father O’Buhilly. ‘What’s she like, Father?’
‘’Tis the third time you’ve asked me, boy. She’s the same as she was in Rezhanistan. A beautiful woman still. After Rezhanistan, she studied nursing in South Africa then came out to China because her brother was here.’ Father O’Buhilly crossed himself. ‘But he died of typhoid, God rest his soul, while she was on her way, so she came to me and we started a hospital. Just a wee one, y’understand, but it’s there when people need it.’
The priest looked sideways at Dicken. ‘But she’s in the wrong place, boy,’ he went on. ‘She needs to be the mother of children.’
‘She won’t find a husband in some out-of-the-way province in China, Father.’
‘She’s doing God’s work, boy. Where it’s most needed.’
The guard was moving along the platform pushing people back into the train now. As he climbed after the priest to their compartment, Dicken tried a final question.
‘Did she ever talk of me, Father?’ he asked.
‘Sure, that she did. Often. You did her no favour, boy, when you lost her after Rezhanistan.’
‘I tried to find her, Father.’
‘Pity you didn’t succeed, boy. Mebbe now it’s too late.’
They detrained at a place called Yu-Tsien, a grubby noisy dusty little town where the hotel was like a rat’s nest, and the proprietor wore a long padded kimono.
Their rooms were lit by candles and it was impossible to sleep because someone was singing all night long like a mating cat, and a sudden storm slammed the doors and set the children yelling, while the mosquitoes homed in like dive bombers. Breakfast was a meal of chicken and warm beer and, as they were eating, a young Chinese appeared, looking for Father O’Buhilly. He drove them in an old Packard through villages that were mere clusters of huts, where the peasants lived with their stored grain and their animals and the ancestral shrines they venerated. Farmers were ladling stored night soil from a pit into huge stinking buckets.
‘’Twill go on to their vegetables and plants, Father O’Buhilly said. ‘They eat the fruit of the soil then return to it what their bodies reject. ’Tis no wonder disease is rife.’
More villages came up, full of the country noises of pigs, babies, hens, gossiping women, yelling men. They were near the river and they could hear the sing-song chant of the coolies carrying cargoes from the boats from the coast of Chungking. A salesman whacked out a rhythmic beat on a block of wood as he walked, a notions dealer cried his wares loudly. The night-soil collector had a different chant, as did the man carrying brassware, his cats’ bells, knives, toothpicks and ear-cleaners all dangling from a long pole.
Lee Tse-liu was still in Chungking and they were met by his chief of staff, Colonel Kok Yi-jeng, a tall well-dressed man with a cropped head and a horsehair fly-whisk.
‘Trained at Whampoa academy like so many who’re close to Chiang,’ Johnson said.
It was clear the Chinese officers were passing to Chungking only what Chiang Kai-shek wanted to hear. Towns were being reported captured when they were not, and enemy casualties were clearly being grossly exaggerated. They were celebrating the fact that one of their units had caught a group of Japanese drinking at a stream and killed them all.
Colonel Kok led them in his car towards the battle area, but eventually they had to take to shaggy ponies before heading east to an area where the Japanese had made a foraging expedition across the Yellow Plains, their aircraft strafing the roads, their men sacking and looting. Without guns or aircraft, all the Chinese could do was feed men into the slaughter and where the Japanese has passed there was a black scar of devastation. In their attempts to stop them, the Chinese had cut up the roads so that even the ponies had to be led.
The stories of rape and murder were horrifying. In one area where the Japanese transport system had broken down they had lashed peasants to their carts and used them as beasts of burden and, since they had always beaten their horses and mules to death, they didn’t hesitate to do the same to the peasants. In another village, the Chinese had a Japanese straggler who had been found hiding in a wood. He was tied up like a parcel and, expecting to be killed at once, had fastened a notice to his chest begging not to be beheaded.
With a Japanese attack expected any time, troops were moving up in scorching heat under a cloudless sky, snaking along every ditch and bank in long strings of sweating humanity. It was an infantry army and there wasn’t a single vehicle and almost no pack animals, so that everything was carried by men, the weapons by the soldiers, the supplies by blue-clad coolies with straw hats. There wasn’t a single piece of artillery and the rifles were old, and the yellow-and-brown uniforms threadbare.
‘What is it,’ Dicken asked. ‘A brigade?’
‘This,’ Kok said, ‘is the 30th Division of the 12th Route Army.’
‘There can’t be more than 2,000 men,’ Foote said. ‘How many do your divisions have?’
�
�Ten thousand. We are waiting for reinforcements.’
‘More likely,’ Johnson murmured, ‘the remaining eight thousand are dead and Lee’s still drawing the money for their rations.’
The trudging soldiers clearly expected nothing but disaster. They were wiry, brown and thin and wore what looked like old German helmets. They all carried two grenades attached to their belts and around their necks long cloth bags full of dry rice kernels, their field rations. Above the straw sandals, their feet were swollen and broken and as they trudged past the sweat rolled down the expressionless faces, while the dust rose as the heat gripped the entire countryside in glistening waves that lifted from the paddy fields.
The mission followed the column into a village only to find the villagers had already left and the soldiers were engaged in tearing down doors to make their fires and seizing what pigs, chickens and vegetables had been left behind. The regimental officers were earnest men whom Colonel Kok treated as if they were servants.
They spent the night in what was claimed to be a hotel, but the walls were papered with sheets from American tabloids of a decade back, still proclaiming in deep black headlines the latest New York and Chicago sensations. Among them were slogans written on red paper calling for resistance, which had been pasted up by government employees. When Foote demanded to see the Chinese hospitals, Kok blinked, startled.
‘Hospitals are the same the whole world over,’ he said.
‘Nevertheless, I guess we’ll see them.’
