Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  There was only one other matter his wife insisted on. That, before they left, all the family should go down to their ancestors’ graves and Wei should explain to them why they were leaving. Wei had been in two minds about whether they had time to do this. She was quite emphatic. She wanted to be certain the ancestors knew the decision to leave had nothing to do with her. Wei was glad she had made the decision for him.

  She marched into the kitchen then into the pantry, shut the door, looked at all the family’s food laid out so immaculately, ordered in strict rows and stacks of which should be eaten at once, which would keep three months, six months, a year. All her own work. Now to be torn apart, plundered, destroyed in a moment of madness. For thirty seconds she wept. Then, with a grim, mean look in her eye, she marched out into the kitchen, sharply ordered Cherry Blossom to bring fresh herbs from the courtyard, and started using her strong forearms to knead the dough.

  As Wei went to get his tools to patch up the cartwheel, he reflected that in fact it was better if his wife was in control there. Spider Girl had plenty of other things to do, and if little Cherry Blossom started to play up his wife would solve it with a swift smack round the head. Spider Girl could never run fast enough to catch her.

  *

  In the stable at the southern end of the courtyard Eldest Son slowly brushed the donkey’s hide. He loved this donkey – his gentleness, his patience. The donkey and the goat stood chewing their fodder, the donkey his dried sorghum, the goat her hay. Second Son was using a scoop to fill small sacks with the special feeds for the donkey and goat. The donkey’s feed was a mixture of leaves, herbs, some bark and a handful of thistles and blackberry leaves; the goat liked dried hay and clover, with a handful of hawthorn leaves. Second Son deftly looped and knotted the necks of the sacks with cord and stacked them by the doorway.

  ‘We must be quicker, elder brother, we’ll be leaving soon.’

  Second Son was still trying to explain to his elder brother exactly why they were leaving and why the Japanese were so terrible. Neither of them had any idea who the Japanese were, but Second Son, always keeping an ear out for what his elders were saying, had worked out that they were evil and bloodthirsty murderers. He had heard the fear in their voices. As he worked he explained this patiently to his brother.

  ‘But,’ said his brother, ‘if an evil man kills another man, an executioner comes around and chops his head off with an axe or a sword. I saw it once in the village. There was a lot of blood. Why doesn’t an executioner do that to the Japanese?’

  Younger brother wasn’t certain how to answer that at first – he was mainly wishing he had seen all that blood – but thinking about it he said that he thought that the Japanese were too strong and evil to allow any executioner to behead them.

  Elder brother wasn’t listening. He stood lost in a dream, a shaft of sunlight streaming down from a hole in the thatch on to his head. Who knew where his brains were?

  Younger brother watched him, then reached up and lifted down a tray of goat’s cheese maturing in the rafters. He started patting them into shape and wrapping them in basil leaves. The family would take them all.

  Looking at his elder brother he suddenly thought that perhaps, with all this happening, this might be the last time the two of them would ever stand together in this stable, their favourite place, and do their tasks with their beloved animals. Perhaps they were all going to be murdered. He shivered.

  ‘Come on, elder brother, we’ve got to get the canvas and poles ready for the cart.’

  *

  When Spider Girl had finished cleaning the cart and lining it and the two boys had started spreading its canvas hood over it, Spider Girl went into the pantry to supply her mother with what she needed in the kitchen and start packing dried foods for their journey – soya (last year’s, because this year’s was still in the fields), green beans, lentils and peas. Jars of bean curd and pickled turnip. She took down the three dried and salted hens – they could hang from the side of the wagon along with the dried sorghum and spinach and strings of onions and cabbages. They’d need two bags of freshly picked potatoes and three earthenware jars of wheat. They would add to the weight of the cart she worried, especially with the jar of water.

  While she was doing this – and hurrying back and forth keeping her impatient mother supplied with salt and pepper and herbs – her mother was kneading out dumplings of dough and then thumping them to stick on the inner rim of the cauldron so they would steam. Those that were ready she piled on a sideboard. They’d probably have enough, she calculated, to trade some on the road.

  She looked around her kitchen as a general inspects his troops deployed for battle. They would be able to pick dandelion and sorrel leaves on the road for their salads. She’d chopped the heads off five chickens and, with a few deft slices from a large knife, skinned, gutted and de-feathered them. They were now boiling happily in the water strung from a wooden pole. She shouted at Spider Girl to bring in potatoes to boil – and pack some senna pods to help Grandfather with his constipation.

  With Mother and Spider Girl so intensely preoccupied, Cherry Blossom chose this moment to slip off unnoticed and visit and enjoy her great secret. A secret known only to herself. No one else in the entire world knew anything about it. She slipped out of the back door of the pantry and ran down the narrow passage between the courtyard wall and the farmhouse. She’d hidden it under a pile of half-rotted timbers. She lifted them up and there beneath was, in an old wooden birdcage, her beautiful, her magical baby hedgehog. It was always pleased to see her, especially the piece of dumpling dough she held out on her finger, and the tiny bowl of goat’s milk she’d smuggled out.

  For a moment she gazed raptly at it, then she heard Spider Girl call her. She carefully put the cage back in the woodpile, replaced the timbers. This was Cherry Blossom’s secret – no one else would ever know about it.

  She went back through the pantry where Spider Girl was packing roast melon and pumpkin seeds.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Spider Girl.

  ‘Out for a shit,’ replied Cherry Blossom.

  *

  The boys had finished stretching the tarpaulin roof over the cart and had set off with a hand-drawn wooden raft to gather fresh sorghum from the fields for the donkey and fresh spinach, potatoes, carrots and cabbages for the family. The sorghum and spinach should be bundled for easier carrying, the carrots and potatoes washed and put in a sack with the cabbages.

  ‘And hurry,’ Wei said, ‘we have little time.’

  Spider Girl was passing and he told her to kill the bees but keep the honey in the combs. ‘We can drain the honey on the road and trade the wax with a pedlar.’

  He got himself under the cart and started to work on the two rotten spokes. No time to take apart the wheels and insert new spokes. Reassembling such a complex thing as a wooden wheel was the work of an expert and could take hours. He took four iron splints to act as braces on each spoke, and then tightly bound each splint where the wood was sound with strong wire, finally stapling the splint at one end into the axle and at the other into the wooden felloe of the outer wheel. He pushed the cart back and forth a couple of times. It seemed to hold, but he mustn’t allow the cart to be overloaded.

  He hung a pot of pig lard under the wagon to keep the axle greased and a spare brace for the wheel. He went into the side shed and looked at all his tools and implements. Which must they take? Something for digging – a large trowel for shitting? But what if he had to dig a larger hole for…? He didn’t allow his mind to go there. So they’d need a spade – with a sharpened end which would be good if they met any bandits on the road. A short sharp dig with a sharpened spade would take their guts out. What had Eldest Son done with that whetstone? He fetched it from the sawing shed and slotted both it and the spade into a leather collar on the side of the wagon, then he hurried into the kitchen to see how his wife wanted the food packed in the cart.

  *

  Singing her song to soothe he
r bees, Spider Girl lifted the first skip gently and looked inside. With a drowsy hum, the bees slowly and surely went about their business around the combs. They liked Spider Girl and trusted her. Yet she was to kill them. She did not want to. All she had to do was hold the skip over a sharp fire, swiftly sear and kill the bees with the flames, then cut out the combs.

  The family needed the honey for the strength its sweetness would give them and for its medicinal and antiseptic qualities, but she would not do it. Bees were not only good and fruitful, they were also powerful in the spiritual world. If they were killed outright – especially the Emperor Bee at the heart of the hive – bees would take their revenge on the family, they would bring bad luck on them. To avoid this would mean being stung quite badly, but if she just cut out some of the combs and replaced the skips, they could resume their lives and still feel generous to her family.

  She stopped crooning her lullaby for them and instead gently hummed it – so that no angry bees could fly into her mouth. Then she started cutting the combs and it hurt a lot, but in a short while she had wrapped the dripping combs in wax paper and was gone.

  The bees resumed their unending toil. She prayed for their future prosperity and happiness. They prayed for hers.

  *

  Three large jars filled with wheat and one with drinking water had already been placed in the front of the cart. Wei intended to have two buckets of water slung beneath the cart. They would be dirty from the dust and dirt thrown up, but good enough for the donkey and goat. Besides, Wei was expecting to be able to get plenty of fresh water on the road.

  Between the heavy jars he tightly packed the bags of dried beans and peas, corn and flour that Spider Girl had prepared, together with a small sack of roast melon and pumpkin and fennel seeds. Also one of last year’s hazel and sweet chestnuts and walnuts. On top he piled their bedding and spare clothing, and the knives and chopsticks and bowls and small iron cauldron they would need for their cooking and eating. The fresh food that the boys would be bringing in from the fields and his wife cooking would be stored at the back of the cart amid the family. The cart groaned a bit. He looked sharply at the spokes – they were holding tight.

  His wife shouted from the kitchen to get the garlic and fennel leaves off the roof. He shouted to Cherry Blossom so he could pass the food down to her and she could plait the garlic and tie the fennel leaves in bundles.

  She came out and he climbed onto the roof to collect the food. He saw Grandfather and the two tots returning to the farmhouse and almost at its gates. He started to hand down the garlic when he saw something else, something to the north. The dark cloud that had turned into a dust cloud, made by the Japanese troops, was not only huge but now no more than three miles from their village. Apart from the crump of artillery shells, now he could hear the snap and crack of rifle fire and a strange high-pitched chatter of guns firing he had never heard before. The worst thing he saw, though, was at the very centre of the black cloud. As though glowering from the belly of some vast dragon, he caught glimpses of strange flashes and glints of bayonet and fire issuing from the fighting. He knew they must move very soon. As he threw down the remaining garlic and fennel to Cherry Blossom, he screamed at his two eldest sons – who were some distance off – to bring back the food they had gathered and lead the donkey and goat up immediately from the lower courtyard.

  He vaulted down from the roof and ran into the farmhouse. There was something strange and very important he had to do.

  *

  Their bedroom door was bolted behind them. His wife, not pleased with what they were doing, angrily worked to loosen a brick from the wall above their bed with a hammer and chisel. He was using a crowbar to lift a flagstone.

  Farmers had little wealth, but what they did have they tended to hide in their own buildings and lands, rather than risk entrusting it to the hands of slippery merchants or, even worse, banks. But it did make them vulnerable to bandits – soulless, evil men who could come at night and torture farmers and families to try and extract from them where they hid their money. Wei knew farmers who had suffered this. Some had given away their secret places, some had died refusing. Fortunately it had never happened to him.

  Wei could feel his wife’s anger. Indeed, it had been growing all day.

  He took a bag of coins from under the flagstone as she pulled some cheap silver jewellery and a gold brooch from behind the brick. They were keepsakes given to her by her own family on the day she had been sent far away to marry Wei. She had never seen her own family again. He took them, stuffed them in with the coins and fixed the bag firmly inside his smock. He turned to go.

  ‘Husband – we must replace the brick with plaster – re-lay the flagstone,’ his wife said with contempt in her voice. ‘Anyone who comes into our house after we’ve left will know our hiding places? Can rob us easily in the future?’

  ‘We don’t have time,’ he said, reopening the doors. ‘If we return we’ll have to find new places.’

  His wife would just have to swallow her anger. The situation was too dangerous.

  *

  He came out into the sunlight as Grandfather and the two infants came up the courtyard. His father was looking upset and disorientated. Wei knew that very soon he would have to tell his father – and those family members who did not know, including their ancestors – that the family was leaving.

  ‘Son, son,’ cried his father, coming up to him, the two toddlers rushing into the kitchen for food. ‘I have just seen a strange thing. It scared me.’

  ‘What was it, honoured father?’ replied his son.

  ‘This strange man. He passed us on the track while we were by the walnut trees. His hair was all awry and he stared ahead of him with this awful, stricken look. His clothing was torn and burnt. I asked him if he was all right, if he needed help? If he wanted he could come into our home and eat and rest? He ignored me. He brushed past me and walked on southward, as though I was not there. Then came two families I had never seen before, one with a cart and one all on foot, all carrying heavy loads, all hurrying past me with terrified looks, ignoring me. What is going on?’

  Wei knew that the time had come. Now he must explain to his father, his ancestors, all the members of his family who did not yet know – the shocking thing that was about to happen to them.

  ‘Come and listen to me,’ he told his father and toddlers and Cherry Blossom.

  As they gathered round him he stood himself deliberately in the very centre of his house, his farm, his world. Where the precise north–south axis of his farm and courtyard bisected the precise west/east axis on which his farmhouse had been built, 2,000 years ago. The most sacred spot in the farmhouse – where the coffins of the dead always rested before burial – where the head of the family stood to pass judgement and speak on the most important of occasions. He knew it would give what he had to say immediate authority. And as he stood he could feel the unrest running through his feet up from the south – from the shrine of his ancestors – and down from the north – from whence the Japanese came, and beyond them, from the abode of the gods themselves. There pandemonium and tumult reigned. It filled him with more dread than anything else. At such a time as this? All the gods fighting each other in Heaven. Abandoning all responsibility for their people.

  Without letting his voice break, but firmly, he explained they were leaving. His mind was made up. His father howled. His ancestors howled. His infants howled til they remembered their food and recommenced chewing on it. Cherry Blossom turned sheet-white, stopped plaiting her garlic cloves, and rushed through the pantry.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Spider Girl.

  ‘Got to shit,’ said Cherry Blossom, disappearing into the back alley.

  Now rural families, of necessity, because they all shat together haunch by haunch on a plank hung precariously above a communal dung pit, tended to be well acquainted with the vicissitudes of each others’ bowels. Cherry Blossom, Spider Girl reflected, had shown no unusual signs of any r
ecent looseness, but this was the second time she’d been out to shit in half an hour. She followed Cherry Blossom into the back alley.

  Meanwhile in the courtyard Grandfather was invoking their ancestors. The beauty of the farm. The untold centuries and ages that all the generations of their family had poured into their soil, its fruitfulness, its beauty. How he himself had taught Wei step by step to run their farm. His description was so beautiful, so heartfelt, it made Wei weep, but not change his mind.

  ‘We are leaving,’ his said simply, wiping his tears away, and lifted his father into the cart. ‘See, we have put down a cushion for you.’

  ‘But what of your wife, she is about to give birth?’

  ‘We have two cushions for her.’

  In the distance the sounds of rifle fire and explosions were increasing. Eldest and Second sons were hurrying up the courtyard, Eldest Son drawing the goat and the harnessed donkey, Second pulling the wooden raft carrying the vegetables they’d picked.

  ‘Eldest Son, hitch up the donkey at once,’ shouted Wei, ‘then tether the goat to the rear of the cart. Water them both from the well. Everyone drink as much water as you can. Second Son – put those vegetables into the back of the cart without washing them. We do not have time. And tie those bundles of sorghum and hay onto the shafts. Eldest Son – make sure you harness the donkey tightly enough so he can’t bend his neck and eat it.’

  He checked his wife had packed the fresh food, then suddenly a most bloodcurdling scream cut through the whole courtyard. Cherry Blossom’s scream. Followed by some very strong language from an older voice – Spider Girl’s. Both coming from the pantry. Wei hurried towards it. Cherry Blossom’s scream was nothing – she was always screaming. But Spider Girl speaking in a voice that was angry? That rarely happened.