Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  She walked to the object that was lying close to the grave. A spade. Its shaft was new because the wood was still white. This filled her with dread. She looked closely at the handle. On it was etched with a knife a small square with two lines below it, the sign in the village, if a dispute arose, that this spade belonged to her family. The Wei family. A member of her family was buried in that grave. She started to feel dizzy. She fought for and regained control. The grave was large. It could be Grandpa, her mother, Eldest Son or, worst, her father. She did not want to go close to the grave, to disturb it. Like a dog will not go near the grave of its master, she could not bring herself to approach it for fear of sensing the spirit of the loved one who lay there, who she had let down.

  She turned away, searching on the ground among the different wheelmarks for the wheelmarks of her family cart. If they’d stopped here, there would be a sunken dent in the track. There’d be footprints in the ground where the family had climbed down and walked around. The few tracks where carts had passed were continuous and showed no signs of stopping. Did the family still have the cart? Had they lost it? Then she caught sight of another object further off, waddled fast towards it, leant over, picked it up. She was overcome with emotion. The small stone bottle in which her father carried his precious, precious wild pear juice. Empty. The juice that linked the whole family back to their ancestors, that linked her father directly to his beloved eldest sister. What had happened? Her father would never have used up all the juice and then just thrown its bottle away. Neither would her mother – that juice was her one route back to the family’s ancestors. Neither would anyone else in the family. And yet here it lay. Empty. Thank the gods she had preserved some of it. She felt the bottle beneath her clothing. She thought for a moment that this could be the work of bandits, cut-throats. But why would they bury the body of their victim? Surely they’d just leave it to the wild animals.

  Somewhere ahead of her, she knew, there were members or a member of her family. They pressed on.

  Spider Girl was a person of great self-reliance, self-belief, yet as they trudged on and on – she searching ever more desperately to the left and the right – even she started to doubt herself. Condemn herself. She had known long before anyone else in the family they must flee their farmhouse. But she had failed to get them, her father, to move until the very last moment. Had she only used her skills of persuasion properly they could have been on the road before all this chaos and carnage. Could have made their way south in relative safety and calm. It had been her duty to persuade them – she was the only person to understand the true situation – and she had failed to do so. Perhaps her mother had been right. Perhaps the Japanese just killed people in the cities they wanted to live in. In the countryside they would allow Chinese people to stay because they needed them to work the land. Even slavery would be preferable to what she had forced her family to endure.

  As they dragged on, yard after yard, mile after mile, it haunted her that it could be that every single member of her family was dead. That she with her cart full of water and food alone was alive. That to be alive without your family was to be dead. A person by themself is not alive. Only in the warm, constant fractiousness and love and service and certainty of a family can one live. All else is death. She felt the bottle holding the family’s wild pear juice against her body. It brought her no comfort. Still alive, she had already become the desolate spirit stranded outside the ghost gate to the family courtyard, hated, rightly excluded by her ancestors. But all the time this went through her mind she never for one second stopped looking for her family.

  She saw something. Only a glimpse. A body lying on the ground. But something familiar about it. Lying on its side, face in the soil, unmoving. Probably dead. But something about the way it lay, the curve of the arm, the straightness of the leg? She told The Ox to stop, wriggled down off the cart, started with effort to waddle and heave herself towards the apparent corpse, lying just as her father would.

  ‘Father,’ she cried, ‘Father.’

  It did not move.

  She sobbed. It seemed her father was dead. But she kept approaching.

  ‘Father,’ she cried. ‘Is that you? Is that you?

  The body stirred. The body stirred!

  The face started to turn, looked up at her, eyes half closed. The face of her father.

  From within her clothing she took the bottle of wild pear juice, cradled his head and pressed it to his lips. ‘Oh Father,’ she said, ‘dear Father.’

  16

  Spider Girl cradled her father’s head in her arm. She fed him a few more sips of wild pear juice but not more in case he vomited. But by the grunts and rasps coming from his mouth and throat, she could tell it was making its way – moistening his mouth, loosening his throat – down into his body.

  She looked up. Called for The Ox to bring the cart over to her. He did so and stopped so it would be easy to raise her father onto the back.

  ‘Help me lift him,’ she said. The Ox, gentle as a lamb, slid his arms softly under her father’s shoulders and hips. Spider Girl held his head. Some of the whores helped also. They lifted him up and placed him softly on the back of the cart. And all the whores went ‘Ooh’ and ‘Aah’, just as though he had been a newborn baby. Which in a way he was.

  Spider Girl wriggled up beside him and reached back for a gourd, feeding him some of its sweet water. He coughed and spluttered quite a bit. Good! It was making its way into his dried-up body. She passed the gourd on to all the rest of them. They could drink as much as they wanted. All the time she stroked his face, his hair, made cooing noises, smelling him. His familiar loving smell.

  ‘Eldest Daughter,’ he managed, ‘Eldest Daughter.’

  He croaked a few more indistinguishable words. She fed him a bit more water. She was totally focused on him except for one worry. One thing she had to know. Were there any other members of the family out there still alive? If so they would have to move immediately to find them.

  She looked straight at him. His face was now responding to hers. She needed to know.

  ‘Father,’ she asked, ‘are there any other members of the family out there still to be found?’

  He gave her one look and she knew she would never ask that question again. Except for her and him, every single one of her family was dead. One tiny drop came to his eye – his body couldn’t afford any more – then his face fell away in chaos and despair.

  For a few seconds she mourned her family. She’d already realized, when she found him alone, that the chances of anyone else being alive were tiny. He might have been forced into abandoning the younger ones, but he’d never have deserted his wife or Eldest Son.

  She must be practical. She must get on with things. She instructed The Ox to start the cart again but to proceed as gently as possible. He did. The whores followed along, quiet as mice. She thanked her lucky gods she’d killed Tiger Eyes and White Devil when she had. If they were here now there would be absolute bedlam.

  Her father continued to lie on his side and stare down at the floor, unmoving, locked in his own private despair. Every so often she raised his head to feed him water but he would not look at her. She knew precisely why. His shame. He, the head of the family, the man who carried all responsibility for them all on his lonely shoulders, had been the one so foolishly to listen to her counsel to flee the farm, and in their flight had allowed all of his family except her to die. He would not blame her for her counsel, he would blame himself for having followed it. He simply wanted to die. But his eldest daughter, yet again, had turned up and dragged him back into hell.

  Spider Girl stared bleakly ahead. She had been right to argue they left. She knew this, but now she had no way of proving it. But it was not all failure. She had saved her father from death. Just as he had once saved her. Each had given the other the chance of life. She was going to nurse him back to health – whether he wanted it or not.

  As she thought she chewed on a raw potato, grinding it with her teeth dow
n to a soft mush in her mouth. With her fingers she picked it from her mouth and delicately dropped it into her father’s mouth, stroking his cheeks and throat to make him swallow it, cawing gently all the time like a mother crow feeding her chicks.

  As they walked on something strange happened. By now everyone on this vast exodus had become used to the drone of Japanese reconnaissance aircraft flying far overhead, of being strafed or machine gunned by Japanese fighters or bombers. And with so many of the travellers now staring death from dehydration and starvation in the face, few had time to worry about such a rare and random form of death. But suddenly in the sky above flew, or rather wobbled, an ancient, blue-coloured aircraft with the roundels of a yellow sun on its wings and a blue and white striped flag painted on its tail. Japanese aircraft were always painted in dark green camouflage. And even stranger, the aircraft was not dropping bombs or firing guns, but instead falling from it were thousands upon thousands of sheets of paper, floating down. One or two people in the distance were shouting something, gesticulating. People were waving. Some people close to them were trying to cheer, with cracked and wheezy voices. What was going on?

  A piece of paper fluttered down and landed on their cart. They didn’t know what to do. Until now everything that had dropped from the skies had been deadly. Perhaps this paper contained some sort of poison or gas to kill anyone who touched it. But then a man walking close by told them that the plane was a Chinese one, not a Japanese one, and it was dropping a message for them all to read. It was safe.

  Spider Girl picked it up. Everyone gathered round. She started reading it

  ‘A proclamation from the Supreme Council of the Government of the Republic of China,’ she announced.

  ‘What’s that?’ everyone asked.

  ‘It is a message from their supreme leader, General Chiang Kai-shek…’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘…It is addressed to all the citizens, residents, peoples and subjects of China.’

  ‘Who are they…?’

  Due to the jargon-ridden nature of the text, Spider Girl decided to paraphrase it.

  ‘You are not to worry… Help is on the way… Supplies of water and food are being brought forward to cure everyone’s thirst and hunger. Our valiant army is even now starting a counter-attack to drive the yellow dwarves forever out of our beloved land. You are now approaching the great and ancient city of Wuhan where all will be welcomed. Show good behaviour and consideration towards all other citizens when you meet them, as disorder will not be tolerated.’

  Everyone looked at each other. Should they trust these fine words? Or not? Around them a lot of people were cheering. They decided to trust them and started cheering too – whatever the message meant.

  Once again they set off.

  And as they travelled, for the first time, traffic started to come towards them from the south, travelling north from the direction of Wuhan. Soldiers, at first only sections and platoons of them, but then whole ranks and ranks marching, rifles slung over shoulders, shod in straw sandals, carrying parasols to keep off sun and rain. Then lorries, large army lorries, bearing supplies for the soldiers, towing large guns to fight the enemy with. There were more civilian cars scurrying about, honking their horns officiously, rickshaws bearing senior army staff officers. But still no sign of water, of food, of relief.

  By this time Spider Girl’s father, his strength gradually returning as his daughter fed and nurtured him, had managed to raise himself on one elbow, then lever himself so he sat with his back to the side of the cart. But he said nothing. He met no one’s eye. All the time he stared into the far distance.

  Then a wonderful thing came into view. A large pavilion or tent, standing to one side of the march, with red flags and streamers flying from it, and a large banner reading ‘World Red Swastika Society (Buddhist) Chinese Society of Morality and Charity’. People were queueing up before tables which had been set up before the pavilion, and small amounts of water and food were being handed out, the people assuring those that were asking for more that more would be available just a short way further along the road to Wuhan. If they gave them more now they would be ill and there would be no more food and water for those following them.

  By and large the people receiving the vital food and water were very grateful, some even falling on their knees in profuse thanks. Some demanded more and there could have been violence but the other travellers all pleaded with them not to hurt those who had brought them such gifts.

  And as they travelled, other pavilions and large tents did appear, each dispensing food and water and even medical help. The Red Cross, the Buddhist Way of Pervasive Unity, a Daoist charity, a Moslem charity, the Roman Catholic Mission, the Emergency Relief Committee of Chinese Churches, the Young Men’s Christian Association and the Young Women’s Christian Association.

  Spider Girl’s cart did not stop because they had sufficient water and food, but their spirits rose. The whores started singing, some of them quite saucy songs which got Spider Girl and close-by travellers smiling broadly. But all the time her father remained in his silent grave. With his strength returning he had managed to work his way off the cart and was slowly hobbling beside it. He had insisted two of the girls took his place but said nothing else.

  Spider Girl and her father might walk quite close to each other – she slipping him food and water now and then – but between them remained infinite distance. They were like two separate islands in a sea of ghosts, two houses standing apart where once there’d been an entire village between.

  In a family, it is said, when one person stops talking, another starts. There is never silence. But now, when Spider Girl stopped speaking, no one answered. Silence. Their dead family surrounded them, isolated them.

  Spider Girl watched her father very closely. Stuck, frozen. What do I do? She wondered. How do I free him from this? He responds to nothing. But I must have patience. He will turn. My father will turn.

  And then Spider Girl saw something. It came like an electric jolt to her. She saw a familiar face, a face from her village. The man was standing in a queue at a small booth waiting to be handed some food. Her mouth fell open. A survivor from their village! A whole set of contradictory emotions washed through her. Should she feel elated that it appeared the whole village had not been massacred, or should she feel guilt that her false prophecy had driven her family to its death? There was only one way to find out. She ordered The Ox to stop the cart, told him to keep an eye on her father, and waddled quickly over to the man.

  ‘Xu,’ she said, ‘Xu – is that you?’

  Xu looked at her. ‘Spider Girl,’ he said, ‘it is you.’

  Spider Girl stared at him. Xu and his family farmed a strip of land on the other side of the village. They and the Wei family hardly knew each other but they spoke when they met.

  ‘Are there other villagers here? Did the village survive?’

  He looked at her, then sighed.

  ‘Ah, dear Spider Girl, I have a story I must tell you.’

  And he told it to her.

  After he had finished she asked him if he would come over to the cart to tell her father his story. She said they had food and water for him to drink but he said he would not want to eat food or drink water while he was telling his story. Spider Girl led him over to her father.

  ‘Ah, Wei,’ said Xu, ‘You are still alive. I am so glad.’

  Her father just stared back at him.

  ‘Your eldest daughter has asked me to tell you the story of what happened in our village. I will. The Japanese killed everyone. You were wise to leave, Wei. Wise to leave.’

  Her father did not respond.

  ‘First they entered different houses at random, just killing people.’

  ‘What happened to Old Man Chen?’ asked Spider Girl.

  ‘He ran at a soldier with a rock and wounded him before they bayoneted him.’

  ‘And Fang the Builder?’

  ‘They shot him dead. Against one of his wal
ls.’

  ‘After they had done these random killings they gathered all the remaining villagers in the village square, dividing them into their different families – your two cousins were in one group. They shot or bayoneted or beheaded every family in the village except ours, the Xu. We they left. By now they had broken into the innkeeper’s stores and were drinking his wine and setting light to buildings and laughing and shouting. They forced our family to march to our farm. They gave me a spade and told me to start digging this great hole in the ground. My family stood to one side. When it was finished they congratulated me. Slapped me on the back. There was one soldier, an officer, who spoke bad Chinese. Then they ordered all my family into the hole except me. The hole was five feet deep. My whole family stood in the hole. My parents, my wife, my children. Only I stood outside it, above it. Then they told me to start filling in the hole. Jabbed me with a bayonet so I obeyed. I started to do it. When I had filled in enough so it covered up their feet and it started to come up their legs all my family started singing. The anthem we sing each year at our village festival. This annoyed the Japanese so they all seized spades and started filling it in, my children crying, swallowing earth, their heads disappearing below the surface, so that at the end there were only the heads of the adults still above the surface, still singing our anthem. But gradually my wife, my parents, my eldest son stopped, fell silent, then started choking, seizing as the earth gripped them and squeezed them until they could not breathe. Their eyes started popping out, popping out large as hens’ eggs and blood pouring out of their seven organs and out from their mouths and noses and eye sockets. All the time the Japanese screaming and dancing and mocking them.’