Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  I swallow.

  ‘My name is Lao She. I am a writer,’ I tell him. ‘It is quite important. I have to catch a train at seven o’clock.’

  He is standing behind a trestle table, a bit like a customs officer.

  ‘Put your stuff on the table, sunshine,’ he tells me, ‘and no funny business.’

  At this the other policemen suddenly become interested in me and give a hard stare.

  ‘My stuff?’ I query.

  ‘What you’re carrying. We’ll body search you later.’

  Staring at him I place my manuscript and case upon the table.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asks, picking up my valuable manuscript.

  ‘That’s my new novel. It is very patriotic and anti-Japanese and I’m taking it to my publisher.’

  ‘The fire’s getting a bit low,’ the inspector says to one of his officers, handing the manuscript to him.

  The officer takes the manuscript and drops it into the brazier. I stare at it. It flares up in flames. My manuscript. My beautiful manuscript! Which I have laboured so many painstaking hours over, trying to get it precisely right! It was a bit wooden, admittedly, clunky even, propaganda’s not exactly my…

  I look at the official.

  ‘That was my manuscript you have just burnt. I am a quite well-known author, and…’

  ‘And we’re getting cold,’ says the inspector matter-of-factly, rubbing his hands over the flames. ‘Now let’s see what we’ve got in here?’

  He opens my suitcase. I groan.

  ‘Something the matter, sir?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s just personal things.’

  ‘Personal things, eh? Well, let’s have a look.’

  He flicks through the contents.

  ‘Very nice,’ he says, ‘yes, very nice,’ re-clicking the lid and placing it on the ground well behind the table.

  I can’t believe this is happening to me. In the middle of my own city. Just across the road is the bank I use to cash the occasional cheques I get from my publisher.

  A shell lands quite close to us.

  ‘That’s my case,’ I shout at him, ‘containing objects of deep personal value. You’ve stolen it!’

  ‘Stolen it? I am merely impounding articles I believe to have been stolen by you. We’ve got a troublemaker here, lads. Grab him.’

  I am grabbed. Pinioned flat on my face on the table. They are frisking me. They find the silver dollars my wife sewed into my turn-ups. I calculate feverishly. Can I survive without money? Yes, I conclude, the soldier who came to me from General Feng said he was booking me a place on the seven o’clock train – if I manage to ever catch it. The ticket will cover my restaurant car expenses. I can survive til I get to Wuhan. The policeman hands over the silver dollars to the inspector.

  ‘Right,’ says the inspector, coming round the table on which I am spreadeagled, ‘let’s see what else he’s got.’

  Suddenly I feel my trousers being ripped off, then my pants.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I cry.

  ‘Think you can fool us? We know where all you rich fuckers hide your really valuable loot.’

  And with that he sticks a rough, blunt finger straight up my bum.

  I see white light. I scream. I am filled with scalding, inescapable pain. It ricochets up and down my spine. I don’t think I can bear this… I can’t bear… But then I think, yes, I can bear it. Only a mile away, possibly at this very moment – if they’ve survived our own Chinese troops – my own dearest wife and beloved children and mother may be huddled up in a corner screaming not as some corrupt police officer’s finger jams its way up their back passages – but as a cold steel Japanese bayonet knifes into their sweet, frail, defenceless bodies. If this, as my wife said, is war – then she’s got the worst of it. I stop screaming.

  He finishes, wipes his finger on a cloth. I stand up, pull on my pants and trousers.

  ‘Looks like you ain’t some rich fucker after all,’ he says.

  ‘Then would you mind if I had my belongings back?’ I respond.

  ‘Hold on there, hold on. It’s not that simple. You said your name was Mr Lao She, the author?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Matter of fact I’ve read your book – Rickshaw Boy. Quite enjoyed it. But that’s beside the point. The point is you are an author. When the Japanese come you can skip off somewhere else and start a new life without a second’s thought.’

  ‘Well, that’s not…’

  ‘The point is,’ he says, grinding over the top of me, ‘We policemen can’t just run away. This is our livelihood here. Where we earn our wages and keep our families fed. And now we’ve got the Japanese arriving. They might just run us straight through with their long steel bayonets – like they do the soldiers and civilians. But maybe they won’t. After all, you need policemen to keep order, lock up thieves, listen in on troublemakers. And while they’re making their minds up – stab or spare – a nice little tinkle of money can often push them towards “spare”. So we, I’m afraid, need your money much more than you do.’

  I am prepared to let them keep everything they’ve taken – I can survive without it – except one thing. The Indian silk scarf my wife gave me. I explain this to him. How I have just had to leave her and my children and I don’t know whether I shall ever see them again. He looks at me. Then he goes round the table, picks up the case and opens it on the table. Looks at the scarf.

  ‘Bloody awful pattern,’ he opines.

  ‘It’s Indian.’

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ he says, and passes it over to me.

  I stuff it down my shirt and hobble off down the street. Writing and dignity so rarely coincide.

  *

  There seems to be a lull in the fighting. Less artillery, bombing raids, small arms fire. Every shop and house door is closed and there are only a few coolies carrying goods and produce. There are fewer bandits and ‘soldiers’ on the streets and quite a few civilians hurrying like me towards the station.

  Jinan is the capital of Shandong Province and until the First World War was run as a German concession. In its central square it thus boasts a vast German-Victorian Gothic railway station of crushing ugliness, constructed to celebrate the glories of Kaiser Bill and the German Imperium. One glance at it is enough to drive any true German aesthete to a Goethe-esque suicide. Mercifully it has only partly been destroyed by Japanese bombs.

  There is a difficulty about entering the railway station. The large cobbled square in front of it is packed with would-be passengers who are being held back by a line of General Han Fuju’s valiant lads who demand a large contribution from every passenger who wishes to enter the railway station. It is all pretty anarchic, with crowds of near hysterical people milling about.

  Across the square from the station stands an equally imposing German monolith, the immaculate Stein Hotel, run with Teutonic efficiency by its proprietor, Herr Stein. General Feng’s young adjutant told me he’d leave my ticket at the Stein’s front desk, so I enter the crowded vestibule in order to collect it. Almost immediately I am seen by Herr Stein.

  ‘Herr Lao. You look terrible. What has happened to you?’ His voice is concerned. ‘Do you want a bath?’

  For two years now I have been teaching his son Fritz to speak and write Chinese and we have become friends.

  ‘That is very kind of you, Herr Stein, but I am afraid that on the way here I was robbed and have no money. I’ve come here to pick up my train ticket from your front desk.’

  ‘You were robbed? That is terrible. What is this country coming to? If this province had stayed under Kaiser Wilhelm’s rule we’d never have had any of this nonsense – troops out of control, being invaded by these yellow dwarves.’

  Herr Stein is an old-fashioned German who looks back nostalgically on the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II as a golden age. He has no time for Herr Hitler, who he considers as vulgar, but this has not stopped him from painting a large swastika on the roof of his hotel to try and dissuade Japane
se bombers – Japan and Germany being warm friends – from bombing his hotel.

  ‘Of course you shall have a bath, Herr Lao, and I’ll get your clothes valeted.’

  ‘That is most kind of you, Herr Stein, but I do have a train to catch.’

  ‘Your train will not leave for several hours. I have that on the personal authority of the station master, who is a good friend of mine.’

  ‘Oh, well, that is most generous of you. I could really do with a nice clean bath.’

  ‘These are difficult times, Herr Lao, and men of civilization must stick together.’

  He summons a boy to show me to my room. I ask if I could have some soothing ointment without specifying why I want it.

  ‘Of course, dear Lao, and oh,’ he adds, just as I am departing, ‘I forgot, there’s a telegram for you.’

  ‘A telegram?’

  That is a surprise.

  ‘Yes. Arrived about an hour ago. I’ll have the boy bring it up to you when you’re in the bath.’

  I climb the hotel stairs painfully. The boy runs my bath and helps undress me. He takes away my clothes – except for the persimmon and my wife’s scarf, I wish it to retain her smell – to have them cleaned.

  With great delicacy I apply some of the cream to my anus. It is terribly painful. Then I start to lower myself into the bath. Despite being Chinese, while I lived in London I developed a real taste for Western baths. The tight, intimate embrace of the hot water. My body, my mind are just starting to relax from their shocks when the boy comes in and hands me the telegram. It is from Zhang Jiluan, the editor of Dagong Bao, our most prestigious newspaper, publisher of such great journalists as Fan Changjiang, Hu Yuzhi and Du Zhongyuan. He wishes me to write an article about my experiences in Jinan – a city under siege – with especial reference to and celebration of the heroism of the Chinese soldier. In far-off Wuhan General Feng has obviously already been at work.

  My relaxation in the hot waters of the bath cease abruptly. My body and mind tense. He wants me to write a paean to the thugs and psychopaths of the Chinese Army who have just been running away in the face of the enemy and holding to ransom and murdering every honest citizen of China they can lay hands on? NO, I will NOT write such a lie. ‘When falsehood stands for truth, truth becomes a lie.’ In addition, will my writing such an article in Dagong Bao not immediately make my wife and family special targets of the Japanese, if the Japanese have not already murdered them?

  But then these thoughts of outrage melt away as I sink into the darkness of thinking of my wife and children and mother, maybe at this very moment being bayoneted, crushed beneath falling walls, consumed in the flames of our burning home. I am a louse of a man! It is perhaps only an hour since I last saw my living wife, and here I am in a luxuriant bath, sticking exotic unguents up my bum, and refusing to sully my pristine conscience by writing anything so crude and gross as propaganda. For what reason is it my wife is offering her and my children’s and my mother’s lives in sacrifice for but that I might help save my country by writing ruthless and brilliant propaganda? And if my writing that propaganda adds to their danger then, as my wife so sternly said, so be it! I sit upright, in a patriotic way, in my bath. The Chinese Army consists of the finest, most moral, most heroic fighting men in the entire world bar none!

  I leap from the bath – or rather lever myself out of it – stick some more unguent up my anus for luck, wash my hands, and start constructing a viable article. Dagong Bao are not employing me to produce crude propaganda but subtle propaganda. The sort of propaganda which is read in foreign capitals and might persuade the mighty of this world that China is still in with a chance. I must emphasize the heroism and stoicism of our average Chinese soldier, but underline the fact that natural heroism and a willingness for self-sacrifice means little when the enemy so clearly has better arms. Were foreign governments, understandably worried by the advance of Japan, perhaps to consider arming us with similarly advanced weapons and the training necessary to put them into use, then maybe Japan could become much less fearsome in the eyes of the said foreign governments… I need a pen and paper.

  As I go over to the desk in my room, which has a pen and paper, the boy comes in with my clothes and another thought strikes me. At the best of times Chinese trains are not renowned for their punctuality. Trains can leave far ahead of their scheduled time or equally hours after it. I need to be on the train in case it suddenly decides to leave. I can write the article while waiting on the train and give a finished copy to a messenger boy who can get it sent from the telegraph office in the hotel.

  Down in the lobby I tell Herr Stein what I intend to do, and tell him I will add a footnote to my article asking Dagong Bao to reimburse the hotel for my bath, valeting, stationary (which I have purloined), and the cost of my telegram. Herr Stein bluntly tells me he will accept no payment and hands me a bag of clothes, soap, toothbrushes etc. which he has gathered from his lost property room and some food from his kitchens. In addition, due to the unpleasantnesses, not to say daylight robberies, which are now taking place in the square between the hotel and station, he has told his young son Fritz to accompany me and make sure I make it safely to the station.

  I thank him. He thanks me. We wish each other luck.

  10

  Fritz Stein is six feet tall, has hair so blond it is white, and piercing blue eyes. Every inch of him screams Perfect Aryan. Indeed Fritz has little time for his old man’s nostalgia for Kaiser Bill and his Gothic architecture and is an open admirer of Herr Hitler. He is carrying a sub-machine gun.

  Normally, I admit, I have few sympathies for fascism and its overdressed mummeries. But, in a situation like this, walking in lock-step with a budding young Obersturmbannführer has its advantages. We cross the square and the crowds open like the Red Sea for Moses. We approach the line of Chinese soldiers. It is inbred into all Chinese, especially Chinese soldiers, that in no or any way does one ever harm a foreigner. Let alone kill one. Do that and the foreigners are apt to send military expeditions or gunboats to punish you. So the soldiers simply stand aside and we sweep through. Two quick-witted civilians pretend they are with us and get through as well.

  Fritz accompanies me to the top of the station steps, clicks his heel in reply to my thanks, and marches straight back across the square. I check my bag and see that Herr Stein has most generously left me some money in the bottom.

  I walk into the station. It is a chaotic. Thousands of people are fighting to get on to the one train – my train. Tickets seem of little relevance. People with or without tickets – mainly without – are entering through the doors, they are entering through the windows, children and old people are being passed through the windows by their families, baggage and belongings are being stuffed into it, the roofs of the carriages are packed with people, people are starting to hang to the side of the carriages where there are rails, where there are no rails with just their fingertips. Underneath the carriages brave – or desperate – people are lashing themselves with ropes to the bracing rods hanging beneath the carriages, only inches above the rails. And outside the train is besieged by a sea of thousands of desperate humans. The whole roofed station is filled with a dull roar of despair and rage and animal fear.

  I do not stand a chance of getting on the last train.

  General Feng’s adjutant, being a very smart young man, has attached to my ticket a military document commanding any relevant railway or military official to ensure I take my seat on the train. It has lots of stamps on it. I push my way towards the station master’s office but it is besieged like a medieval fortress. I look round the concourse and see a quite senior military officer standing and staring disinterestedly at the civilian horde. I approach him with my document. He waves me away to some junior officer. The junior officer unfolds and peruses my document. General Feng’s adjutant obviously has some pull. The junior officer commands two immaculately uniformed privates with polished boots and gleaming bayonets to accompany us and we saunter down the plat
form towards my carriage. We get to my window. (I couldn’t possibly hope to get through the jam-packed door). The junior officer, with a lazy drawl, orders the crowds in front of my window to make way. His request is accompanied by his privates snapping to attention and brandishing their rifles. A path once more opens. (The power of the written word.) Now all I have to do is climb in through the window. The two privates rest their rifles against the side of the carriages. They seize my bag and throw it through the window. They seize my person and throw it through the window.

  I sprawl on the carriage floor. Except I don’t sprawl on the carriage floor. The carriage has no floor. It is submerged beneath a sea of belongings and luggage and children almost as high as the seats on which many passengers are crammed. I land on someone’s Pekinese but fortunately I am not fatal. Instead it gives me a swift, vicious bite and jumps into its mistress’s arms. I pick up my bag.

  Passengers without seats sprawl higgledy-piggledy across the mountains of boxes and clothing and bedding and all the other odds and ends terrified people snatch up in the last seconds of leaving home. Bawling babies hang in swaddling clothes from hooks. Pets, birds in cages, some of them even singing. Grannies. People who have been able to wedge themselves between the packages and suitcases on the luggage racks snoring contentedly, at any moment likely to plunge down on the heads of those beneath them. Everyone is sweating, everyone is stinking.

  I ask the officer who is still waiting outside if he could arrange for a messenger boy to wait close to my window as I will have a letter for the Stein Hotel before the train leaves. He nods and walks off.

  I smile vaguely at my fellow passengers, who are all staring at me, and decide I must get writing as the train could leave any minute. I crouch on the ground, take paper and a pencil from my bag and rest the paper uncomfortably on my knee. I look around. The passengers are still staring at me. I’m used to usually writing in a small room without any company. I ignore them. But what I can’t get out of my head is the lunatic concatenation of events I’ve passed through in the last two or three hours. I must remain calm. Think of my wife. DON’T think of my wife. I shift uncomfortably upon my buttocks, try to unravel what my thoughts were in the hotel room, but all that high-flown international diplomacy cleverness doesn’t seem appropriate just now. Dagong Bao has its own diplomatic correspondent. The train gives a sudden lurch.