Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  He burst in on them. The two were standing in the middle of the floor, each tugging on the two ends of an old wooden birdcage.

  ‘I’m taking it,’ screamed Cherry Blossom.

  ‘You can’t,’ shouted back Spider Girl. ‘Give it to me, you little bitch. We don’t have enough room to carry it..’

  ‘What is this,’ demanded Wei, ‘what is going on?’ He looked in the old birdcage. To his amazement he saw a small hedgehog nonchalantly chewing on a melon seed.

  ‘He’s mine,’ shrieked Cherry Blossom, ‘he’s the most precious thing I have in the whole world, I am not leaving him to die.’ She started to wail. Wei did not have time for her dramatics.

  ‘I told her it was too heavy and too big to put in the cart,’ said Spider Girl.

  Wei was about to intervene just as his wife marched in, a look of cold fury on her face. Wei had been expecting her frustration to boil over all day – but now!!! She marched straight up to her hated eldest daughter Spider Girl.

  ‘You ugly cripple,’ she spat, ‘you fat, lazy waddling bitch. What are you doing to my poor little Cherry Blossom?’

  ‘I was doing what my father ordered me to do. Keep down the weight of the cart.’

  The tiny hedgehog continued chewing its melon seed, indifferent to all this human blethering around it.

  ‘It’s all your fault,’ shrieked Wei’s wife. ‘Your devil lies and schemes which fooled your father and got us to undertake this crazy journey. Cherry Blossom’s taking her pet!’

  ‘Silence!’ Wei thundered.

  Silence fell immediately.

  Wei breathed in to give his judgement, which was that the hedgehog was to be freed to face the invading Japanese as best it could. Meanwhile, they all had to get in the cart and on the road NOW – but he suddenly became aware his wife was looking at him, moving her eyes meaningfully. He sighed and ordered the two girls out of the room, Cherry Blossom looking triumphantly at Spider Girl because she was still carrying the cage.

  His wife spoke gently. ‘If she takes it, it will force her to behave well. No hysterics. Otherwise she loses it. When we run out of fresh food I can kill it, we can eat it, and I’ll tell her it ran off.’

  Wei almost smiled. ‘We must leave,’ he said curtly, marching towards the door.

  Cherry Blossom’s hedgehog was coming with them.

  *

  Outside the cart was ready to go. The sound of explosions and rifle fire was crowding in on them. The first shades of evening were starting to fall.

  Eldest Son stood by the donkey ready to lead it on. Second Son was tying leather straps to either side of the cart so members of the family could help pull it. The cage of the hedgehog was hung under the cart between rattling pots and pans and ladles and buckets of water. The two young ones were already in the cart playing a game. His wife was coming out of the kitchen with a last bag of boiled potatoes. But his father, sitting on the back of the cart, his legs hanging down, was looking at him. He was not looking in his usual random, unfocused way, he was staring right at him with authority in his eyes.

  ‘Father?’ he said.

  ‘So we are going away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have been speaking to our ancestors. Especially to one ancestor, one held in great esteem, my grandfather, your great grandfather.’

  ‘My great grandfather was a very wise man.’

  ‘When he was young the family then was forced to go on a similar journey when there was a terrible plague. And many, many other families and villages had to do the same. And he said that what everyone lacked on the march, everyone cried out for, was not food, it was water. Because the streams and ponds all ran dry and were muddied and befouled by the travellers and many people died of thirst. I have been looking. You need more water. And there is something else he told me, but I can’t remember now. I’ll try to remember it.’

  Wei looked at him. Suddenly he remembered he too had once heard this story of the water. And his father was right. The water would only last a few short days.

  ‘Three large jars of water are needed at least, two of wheat…’

  ‘But…’

  Despite the extra weight, Wei knew he was right.

  ‘But we only have four large jars. Three for water only leaves one for wheat.’

  ‘I know what to do,’ said his wife, easing off the cart. ‘Cherry Blossom, Spider Girl,’ she shrieked, ‘get in the cloth hut. Spider Girl, fetch a big straw mat, Cherry Blossom, my biggest needle and strongest sewing twine.’ They vanished inside. She turned to the men. ‘You empty one of the jars, put it in the cart, and fill it with water. Leave a jar-sized space between the jars in the cart.’

  She scurried into the hut. Spider Girl was holding the large mat, Cherry Blossom the threaded needle and twine.

  ‘It’s a question of twisting it correctly,’ she said, taking hold of two corners of the mat so Spider Girl held the other two. ‘Twist hard,’ she said, twisting her own end and signalling Spider Girl should twist in the opposite direction. Both ends crossed each other and came to rest against the opposite middles. ‘Grab it there,’ she shouted at Spider Girl, grasping her own crossed middle firmly in her hand. ‘Hand me the needle,’ she ordered Cherry Blossom. ‘Now hold where I’m holding,’ she told Cherry Blossom, who did so. She went to the bottom where one end overlapped the other and started sewing with fast, powerful stabs. Cherry Blossom was having difficulty holding on. Spider Girl held her own ends together in one hand while with the other she held Cherry Blossom’s ends while Cherry Blossom rearranged her grip.

  Outside Wei and Eldest and Second Sons had lifted the canvas and manhandled one of the jars firmly on to the flagstones. Second Son took the wooden lid off. Inside lay the golden wheat. All of them looked at each other. All their wealth. All their security.

  A voice came from the back of the cart. Grandfather’s. ‘Throw it over. Throw it away. It has no value.’ So they did. Their wealth spilled golden over the courtyard. The chickens went crazy.

  They lifted the jar back into the cart, and, forming a line from the well, as fast as possible started filling it with buckets.

  Inside Wei’s wife had already sewn up the bottom half of the sides so that it swelled out like a jar. As the two sides crossed over she started to stitch again, which drew the shape narrower, also like a jar. Only Spider Girl was needed now to hold the top open, so Cherry Blossom was sent out to help with the water.

  In the courtyard Wei was increasingly worried by the weight being put on the cart, not only by the extra jar, but by the weight of him and the boys loading it. He constructed a crude platform of a plank on two stools which ran beneath the shafts, finishing just as his wife issued proudly from the cloth shed carrying her finished mat jar. Everyone applauded. It was placed in the cart and Wei and Eldest Son, their weight on the plank, picked up one of the two wheat jars and started, guided by Second Son on the cart, pouring it into the mat jar. Jammed between two stone jars it held. The empty jar was placed where it had been and immediately started being filled with water. The whole family taking part it took only a few seconds. As they retook their positions around the cart, feet crunching over the abandoned grain, Wei touched his wife’s arm to express his gratitude.

  They stood. Wei did not want to look around. He wanted no one else to look around. ‘Push.’ he commanded, and the family pushed the cart. It creaked, it groaned, and then it started to move, wood straining, pots and pans clanking, canvas waving above, like some stately old junk setting sail onto a vast ocean. Soon, as it started to roll down the slope of the courtyard, they had to hold it back rather than push it on. Wei, worried about the wheel, positioned himself behind it to watch it. They came to the courtyard gate, creaked through it, Second Son drawing aside the canvas of the ghost gate so they could pass under it. Now any ghost that wished could enter and roam the deserted buildings.

  The cart stopped and the family started to hurry towards the graves. Wei’s wife was handing out paper money to burn on
the graves so their ancestors could have money to spend in the afterlife and paper flags to assure them there would always be descendants there to serve them. Not that there probably would. She had freshly cooked food for their table. She wanted to be certain she would carry no blame for their departure.

  Wei noticed Spider Girl remained by the cart.

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘Father, I do not wish to be a burden to the family. If I walk to the graves and back and then follow the cart, my slowness will slow down the family. I will set off now along the track and you can catch me up. Please remember me to my ancestors.’

  With that she set off stolidly on the trackway south. He hurried to catch the rest of the family. He didn’t want this ceremony to last any longer than it had to.

  *

  Beneath the skeleton branches of the wild pear tree, the money had been ritually burnt, incense lit, the flags planted, a prayer been said, and Wei was about to (briefly) inform his ancestors on why they were to be abandoned, when it happened. There were three sudden sharp cracks followed by explosions from their village about half a mile to the north. Over the low hill to the north of the village suddenly poured ranks of khaki-clad Japanese soldiers, bayonets and helmets gleaming in the last rays of sunlight. The family could see it all quite clearly. Chanting and shouting the Japanese charged into the defenceless village. Confused cries, rifle shots, the screams of women and children and men as they were butchered.

  For a second the entire family stood frozen. Then Wei grabbed up his father, Eldest Son grabbed the tots, and the whole family hared towards the cart. They piled Grandfather and the two toddlers into the cart, Eldest Son applied the whip to the donkey and everyone else pushed. Wei didn’t even look at his wheel. Cherry Blossom thought nothing of her hedgehog. They just wanted desperately to get the cart over the brow of the nearby hill and out of the sight of the Japanese devils they had at last seen so close.

  Only one person looked back as the cart tumbled over the horizon and out of the sight of their Japanese pursuers. Grandfather – face desolate and vacant, hair awry, mouth mumbling – stared back at what had been his home, his farm, his village for all his life. His soul ate bitterness.

  One other member of the family was thinking of what they had left behind them. Wei remembered as he ran from the graveyard carrying his father, as he passed the wild pear tree he had glanced at his elder sister’s grave amid its roots and there he had seen her standing. Unsmiling, sombre, but with ineffable love shining from her eyes.

  He remembered one other thing. That during the madness of their departure he had not forgotten to secrete two small stone bottles of the tree’s wild pear juice. The sweetest, most nourishing, most life-giving juice he knew. One he stored in the cart, one he hid in his clothing.

  Tumbling down the south-facing slope in their cart, darkness swallowed the family.

  3

  Spider Girl walked in the dark. If she rolled enough from side to side as she walked it lessened some of the weight on her hip joints and upper legs so it did not hurt so much. She was glad she’d had the foresight, a week earlier, to buy some ointment from the village apothecary. A mixture of horny goat weed, teasel root and scurf pea fruit, it strengthened her bones and lessened their inflammation. She had it hidden among her clothing.

  She did not think the Japanese would pursue them tonight. They’d be too busy eating, drinking, torturing and sleeping in the village. She looked back. She could see a garish light on the northern horizon where, presumably, they were burning the village. She shivered. She wondered what had happened to Old Chen, the many others she knew.

  She forced herself to think of positive things. She was glad that the whole family had managed to escape, just in time. She was glad that her mother had helped her father in dealing with Cherry Blossom and the hedgehog and, despite her condition, had made up her mat jar so swiftly and expertly. Her father had been so moved by her skill and coolness he had touched her arm. Their parents united could bring good fortune to the family. But their journey would have to be swift or the Japanese would catch them.

  She waddled on. Then she heard something behind. Voices. She slowed. They spoke in Chinese but as they approached they were not the voices of her family. Harsh and masculine. Crude in their language and foul in their jokes. She quietly, carefully felt her way off the side of the trackway, ending up crouching in a dry drainage ditch.

  The voices came closer. Then they stopped. Just by Spider Girl. She silently drew her knife from her clothing.

  ‘Where are all these fucking families you told me would be on this road – with all their fucking belongings and wealth ripe for stealing? Soft-breasted fucking women and girls?’

  ‘Fat Wang told me he’d seen lots of them coming south, fleeing the Japanese devils.’

  Other members of the gang tried to enter the argument but were abruptly shut up by the two protagonists.

  ‘You fucking twat, Chao. Fat Wang must have been talking about the main road heading south, not this back track. That’s where the fat ones will be. We’ve lost a whole night’s loot.’

  ‘Don’t hit me, Zhong,’ pleaded Chao. But Zhong hit him. Spider Girl could almost feel the blow. ‘Where’s that wine?’

  Boss Zhong drank the wine an underling passed him. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s head for the main road.’

  They marched on briskly down the track, Zhong cussing out each of his gang members in turn.

  Spider Girl emerged from the ditch. She started to follow them down the road. Not fast enough to catch them up, but fast enough to keep ahead of her family.

  *

  The family caught up with her about two hours before dawn. She told her father about the men she’d heard last night. She thought they were either bandits or deserters from the army. He immediately stopped the cart. Went forwards a hundred yards or so, listened intently but could hear nothing. He returned to the family.

  Grandfather and the two infants were still sleeping in the cart. Cherry Blossom sat on the back of it playing with her hedgehog, who’d become quite active in the night. The rest of the family gathered round Wei. Wei’s wife handed out dumplings.

  ‘We must all keep quiet. No noise, no chattering.’ Wei looked especially at Cherry Blossom when he said this. ‘I need someone to walk three or four hundred yards ahead of the cart. Very quietly. All the time listening and watching ahead of them and to each side of them. If they hear or see anything, they are to quietly run back at once and tell me.’

  Eldest Son volunteered immediately.

  ‘No, Eldest Son, and thank you for volunteering, but we need you by the cart. We need our strongest people by the cart, to defend it, because if we lose our cart we lose everything.’

  ‘I want to do it,’ said Second Son.

  Wei looked at him. Five years old – but so quick, so alert. So able to think for himself. He felt a deep emotion. He felt so ashamed of giving so young and dear a child such a dangerous task, but he was obviously the best person to do it.

  He touched his son. ‘Thank you, son, for doing this.’ Second Son hurried forwards into the dark, quickly disappearing.

  ‘Father,’ asked Spider Girl, ‘do you think the Japanese are following us?’

  ‘They will. But I do not think they will follow us tonight.’ He indicated the glow in the sky behind them. ‘They will tomorrow morning. We must press on.’

  ‘What if they do follow us tonight? Just a few? There should be someone behind us, to warn us.’

  Wei pondered this.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said his wife, who’d been clutching a cleaver ever since Spider Girl had told them of the bandits.

  ‘You will not,’ said Wei, ‘not in your condition. You stay with the cart.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Spider Girl.

  ‘And how will you keep up?’

  ‘I will. I will walk faster. If I hear them and cannot catch you up I will shout and scream and lead them off the track. If they follow me I will fig
ht them with my knife. I just have to wound one of them to slow them down.’

  Once again Wei felt deeply moved. He did not have any alternative but to accept her offer. Spider Girl sat down to rest as the cart lurched forwards into the darkness. Once they had gone she started to rub ointment into her hips and thighs.

  Eldest Son led the donkey with his right hand and carried an axe in his left. Wei walked on the right-hand side of the donkey with his sharpened spade in his right hand. He kept a sharp ear out for the wheel behind him. Behind the cart walked Wei’s wife with her cleaver in her hand. Beside her Cherry Blossom carrying her hedgehog in its cage. There would be no free rides for her or her hedgehog.

  *

  Next morning the sun rose on a wide grass plain. There was no sign of any bandits or renegade soldiers. In the distance stock was being grazed – flocks of sheep with their shepherds, goose girls with white rings of geese feeding around them.

  Second Son rejoined them, after great effort Spider Girl did too. Speed picked up. Every ten minutes Wei would climb on the front of the cart and survey the ocean of grass around them like a sailor in his crow’s nest. From his sightings of the Japanese from morning to evening yesterday he calculated they marched about twenty miles a day. He thought the family had already covered about fifteen miles during the night but wanted to press on. The cartwheel seemed strong.

  Grandfather and the two tots were woken. They got down, each given a bun and water, and Grandfather led them along, telling them the heroic story of how during the wars of the Three Kingdoms, Liu Bei, himself in retreat from the evil Cao Cao, had refused to abandon the defenceless civilians fleeing with him, even putting his own soldiers at risk to defend them. ‘He was a good father to the people,’ said Grandfather. Wei’s wife was lifted up on to the cart to rest. Spider Girl was amazed when she invited her to join her. Both fell asleep instantly. When Grandfather tired of leading the young ones and telling them stories, Wei carried one and Eldest Son the other. Grandpa himself continued ambling along happily enough, singing some songs to soothe and amuse the children, himself, and the rest of the family. After about an hour Grandfather started to wander about and become confused so he replaced Spider Girl on the cart.