Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  Spider Girl watched her father very carefully all the time Xu spoke. Every so often his face flickered.

  ‘Then, when they were all dead,’ Xu continued, ‘the Japanese used their spades to beat my family’s heads into the ground. “‘Let the dogs eat them,”’ said the officer who spoke Chinese. Then they all turned and looked at me, pointed their guns at me. I fell to the ground. They all laughed at me. The one who spoke Chinese said they always spared one in a village, so they could run off and tell everyone they met what the Japanese had done to their village. So everyone flees from their villages before the Japanese even come. So many people flee that they choke up all the roads so that our army cannot get through to face and fight the Japanese Army and there are so many civilians that there is no water nor food so they all die of thirst and hunger and the Japanese do not have to bother doing the work of killing us themselves. So I fled. But I did not tell one single person what I had seen until I met you and you asked me.’

  ‘When you ran away, when you passed our farm,’ Wei asked in a voice that sounded as if his mouth was already full of the earth of his grave, ‘did you see if they had destroyed our farmhouse?’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said Xu, ‘they had burnt it to the ground.’

  Wei’s face contorted.

  ‘But you were right to flee, Wei,’ continued Xu, trying to cheer him, ‘yours is the only family in the village to survive. Someday you can return. At the moment the land lies fallow. There is no one to tend it. Only wild grass and hawthorns will grow. But you can return with your family and again start farming your land.’ He paused. ‘And lots of other peoples’ land,’ he added.

  Wei looked at him.

  ‘Xu, I will never return. There is no one there for me. No one. Every single member of my family, except for myself and dear Spider Girl, lie dead at the roadside, many without proper burial, without me to pray for their souls, pour their libations, burn their paper money, burn their incense, lead the prayers as head of the family at their funerals. I could not look after them in this world, I cannot even look after them in the next.’

  ‘You could marry again, Wei, a new young girl, still have many children, a family to farm your lands, speak once more to your ancestors.’

  ‘I am not going back there again ever,’ said Wei.

  There was a pause. ‘No,’ said Xu, ‘and no more will I.’

  Just as they spoke a most miraculous thing occurred. A couple of miles further back on their route, though they had been too engrossed in their own conversations to notice, two silver lines had swooped in from the west and had run parallel with them, about two hundred yards off. And suddenly – glistening black in appearance, gently hissing steam and flame, pistons and wheels and rods silkily easing in and out of each other – slid like a vast vision this enormous locomotive. Came clanking to a halt. Sat there, simmering, shimmering, silent.

  Spider Girl, Wei, Xu, The Ox, the whores all just stared. They had never seen anything like it before in their lives. What was it?

  Wei had no doubts. He spoke in awe. ‘It is the Dark Dragon, the Mysterious Dragon, the Black Dragon God of the North and of Winter.’ He fell on his knees.

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Xu, ‘Heaven’s Highest Deity,’ following him on his knees.

  As did The Ox and the whores, whispering nervously among themselves. Spider Girl was momentarily uncertain but decided to kowtow too.

  Thousands of years ago, when the Shang Dynasty fell and the Demon King ravaged the world, Yuanshi Tianzun, Primordial Lord of Heaven, ordered the Jade Emperor to put Heishen the Dark Dragon in command of the Twelve Heavenly Legions to wipe out the evil invader. Heishen did so, and ever afterwards was worshipped as Mysterious Heaven’s Highest Deity. And in all the temples thereafter dedicated to him, his statue stood with one foot above a tortoise and one above a serpent, signifying that good shall always prevail over evil.

  The black engine gave a whistle and then, with a stentorian blast from its smokestack which made them all flinch, the vision smoothly glided off southwards and disappeared.

  ‘It was the Dark Dragon of the North,’ said Wei.

  ‘Heishen,’ Xu agreed.

  ‘I know what I am going to do now,’ said Wei.

  ‘I do too,’ said Xu.

  They said their farewells and Xu returned to his place in the queue. Wei and Spider Girl resumed their journey with their wagon.

  Spider Girl had been racking her brains about that strange apparition. What was it? Then she remembered this photo she had seen in one of Old Man Chen’s newspapers.

  ‘Father,’ she said, ‘I do not think we saw a dragon. I once saw a picture of a thing just like that. They call it a fire wagon. It is a machine that can carry thousands of people for thousands of miles.’

  Wei burst into sudden, wonderful laughter. ‘Daughter,’ he cried, ‘daughter, you do amuse me. You and your newspapers.’ And he touched her lightly on her arm.

  ‘But father,’ she said, ‘it is a machine. It is made by the British and Americans to transport goods.’

  Again her father roared with laughter. ‘Eldest Daughter,’ he said, ‘Eldest Daughter, who cares what form a god appears in – but that whatever you call it, that fire wagon, that power, that grace, that beauty could have belonged to no one else except Heishen, our Great Battle Dragon of the North.’

  Spider Girl momentarily felt miffed as her knowledge was so lightly dismissed, but this irritation was immediately swept away by the joy of hearing her father laugh, of seeing the return of the twinkle in his eye and the animation in his face as he talked to her.

  ‘Father,’ she said.

  ‘Eldest Daughter,’ he said.

  They walked for a while in friendly silence. Then her father turned to her. He had reverted to his sombre mood.

  ‘Eldest Daughter, terrible things have happened to our family. We know now, thanks to Xu, that your advice to leave the village was correct. But such terrible things happened on the… I was responsible…’

  ‘Father,’ Spider Girl interrupted him, ‘The Japanese barbarians were and are responsible for everything that…’

  ‘I,’ said Wei emphatically, ‘I am the father. I am responsible for everything that happens in my family. And I failed to prevent death after death.’ There was a pause. ‘I want to tell you everything that happened in our family after you – disappeared.’

  And slowly, with great pain, he did. Slowing even more when he came to the terrible event of the bombing and the slaughter of his father, his second son and his youngest son. Spider Girl’s brain flickeringly recognized the tragic ironies and accidents of that bomb – so Tiger Eyes had been telling the truth – but immediately returned to listening to and supporting her father in his agony. As they approached the death of Baby Girl Wei his telling and walking became ever slower so she had to stop the cart and just let him mutter and talk to her.

  ‘This was the thing. The terrible thing. What I should have done – if I had any mercy or compassion – was simply smash out her brains with my shovel. Like that. In a moment. But I couldn’t. My feelings, my selfish feelings, kept stopping me – so with my spade I just kept pushing her away, pushing her away, as her terror grew and her tiny voice – my baby’s voice, my flesh’s voice – got shriller and more terrified.’

  Spider Girl listened to him. Her poor father. She hated to hear of lovely Baby Girl Wei’s suffering but she hated to listen to her father’s suffering even more. Of course the practical side of her agreed with her mother – that girls and women are expendable, and after that grandparents and younger sons. The survival of the eldest son means the survival of the family. But then it is the role of a woman to be practical and the role of a man to be just and merciful. Which was why she loved her father so much.

  He finished describing the death of Baby Girl Wei and again the cart started moving. He described the heroic death of her mother and the awful mistakes which led to the death of Eldest Son.

  ‘It was not your fault you fell a
sleep, Father. You were exhausted.’

  ‘It was my fault! It will always be my fault!’

  Then he told her of his own final journey, when he despaired and wished only for death.

  ‘But I was wrong to wish for death,’ said Wei. ‘I am ashamed of it now. Because you, Eldest Daughter, are still here.’

  She smiled. It was a beautiful compliment.

  ‘Besides,’ he continued, ‘I have yet to hear the story of how you survived, how you suddenly turn up with a giant, a whole pack of whores, and a wagon stuffed with food and water. And I want the truth,’ he said, with a twinkle in his eye.

  Well, it was easy enough to tell her story when it came to pretending to be a witch, of riding around the crowds perched on a giant’s shoulders, of how they inherited the whores with the cart – they both roared with laughter about that. But when it came to the parts which involved murdering bandits, killing a thug or shooting a pistol at a pimp, she glossed all this over, and every time she did so she saw Wei’s eyes glisten and his mouth smile, but he was far too wise and loving to demand his eldest daughter told him the truth. Which was why she loved him.

  They continued on their journey.

  One thing still caused Spider Girl grief. When her father had said to Xu, at the end of their meeting, that he knew now what he was going to do, and Xu had said he too knew what he was going to do, she wasn’t certain what they meant, but now she was pretty sure she knew. And it filled her with dread – and great pride.

  And so they came to Wuhan.

  17

  Wuhan, a dark, dirty, industrialized city, lay at the heart of China, situated at the junction of the Yangtze and Han rivers.

  It was in fact a tri-city. Three cities. The mile-wide Yangtze flowed from west to east and the Han flowed in from the north. On the southern bank of the Yangtze was the city of Wuchang, seat of government for Hubei Province and now the capital of the whole Chinese nation. There was a large university and a large barracks in Wuchang. In 1911 the Chinese Revolution had started there with a mutiny in the barracks. To the south of Wuchang, on the slopes of the Serpent Mount, rested the great Changchun Daoist Temple.

  The city of Hanyang lay between the north bank of the Yangtze River and the west bank of the Han River. It was the heart of China’s heavy industry – steel mills, weapons arsenals, aluminium smelters, and large manufacturing factories. The shanty towns and the hovels of the workers clustered all around them. River freighters and junks and railway trains constantly delivered its coal and iron ore and raw materials and took away its steel and weapons and finished products. It was a constant hive of activity.

  Between the east bank of the Han River and the north bank of the Yangtze River lay the city of Hankou, the tri-city’s financial and trading centre. Like Hong Kong and Shanghai it was a treaty port, with a line of foreign warships anchored in the river to defend their governments’ interests. Along its riverfront ran a long promenade, the Bund. The Europeans and Americans lived and worked at the eastern end of the Bund, the Chinese at the western end. Hankou boasted two separate racetracks – one for the Chinese, one for the Europeans.

  Wuhan was the collective name for the three cities. They were bound fast to each other by a frenzied web of fast-moving ferries, junks and high-speed motorboats. Wuhan was the Chicago of China. It was the centre of China’s heavy industry and manufacturing. To and from it ran most of China’s internal rivers, roads, railways and airways. And into it were pouring millions of destitute, homeless refugees. On whose heels were the ravenous Japanese.

  Wei and Spider Girl and their fellow travellers entered the city from the north, down the eastern bank of the Han River. On the opposite side of the Han were the steel mills and arsenals and manufacturing mills of Hanyang, a thousand chimneys belching smoke, factory sirens wailing, tugs and freighters’ hooters piping. Wei and Spider Girl had never even been to a town before, let alone a city. Let alone a modern, industrialized city. This city just went on and on. People just went on and on. Not just themselves, the refugees, not just the wounded and dying and dead soldiers lying all over the place, but amid them, dipping and swerving and carrying all manner of goods, were coolies, shopkeepers, children, rickshaw men, sailors, carters, porters, pickpockets. All shouting and screaming and cursing them to get out of the way. Wei and Spider Girl had been brought up in a place where they knew everyone – those peoples’ parents and grandparents, those peoples’ children and grandchildren. Here they knew no one. No one knew anyone.

  Wuhan was growing cold in the first clutches of winter. Extra clothing was one of the first things the refugees had abandoned.

  The whores disappeared almost immediately – off to find the warmth and security and predictability of a brothel. Wei and Spider Girl and The Ox continued south along the eastern bank of the Han. Gradually the frenzy of the markets and slums and the maze of back alleys and open sewers they passed through gave way to a broader promenade. They passed amid shops of all descriptions – haberdashers, fishmongers, butchers, magicians, geomancers, candle makers, shoe makers, incense makers, shops that specialized in selling certain sorts of ducks and chickens and eggs, displays of medicines in huge jars of oil containing dead snakes, dead animals, herbs and scrolls of paper, stationers. These in turn gave way to large, impressive buildings – three, even four storeys high. They stared at them. Spider Girl read their names – the Wing On and Sincere department stores, the Big World Amusement Park, the Good Fortune Roller Skating Dance Hall, and the All Star and Beneficial Cinema House, covered in garish posters of foreigners who might be called – Spider Girl had difficulty in pronouncing their names – Fred and Ginger. Why would a woman want to be called Ginger?

  Everywhere around lay the exhausted, the dying, the dead. Despite the cold the flies still gorged. Crows and kites and buzzards that had pursued the refugees for hundreds of miles, feasting on their dead, had followed them here. The skies above Wuhan were now shadowed by these great birds gliding and floating and crying out in the black clouds.

  Wei and Spider Girl and The Ox came out onto the Chinese Bund. They saw the Yangtze. A mile wide, a violent, turbulent force of water. Amid a chaos of people the three just stood and stared at the river. A mile of water. All around them markets and stalls and tables were being set up and hauled down, the surviving refugees spontaneously selling anything they still possessed and buying with that money food and water, and, if they could afford it, warm clothing. Wei decided he’d sell the cart as they had no more use for it. There was a glut of carts for sale and they received little for it. The remaining surplus food in the cart they got even more for, and were surprised by the price they could sell the water in the gourds for. Sweet-tasting water was rare in Wuhan.

  Wei looked at Spider Girl. He handed her the money which he’d made at the market. He said he had to go away for a short while. They should stay here and await his return. Spider Girl knew that what was about to happen but she did not let her feelings show.

  ‘Be safe, Father,’ she wished him, ‘and return soon.’

  Wei went. Spider Girl decided that something had to be done about The Ox, who was standing patiently beside her. She looked around. She noticed that the happiest-looking people in this bedlam were the coolies. Even the ones bent double under the heaviest loads had broad grins on their faces. Why? Then she realized. Everyone who had something to sell at the markets employed a coolie to carry it there. Anyone who bought something employed a coolie to take it away. On the pontoons which floated out from the Bund steamers were constantly coming in, dropping their passengers, picking up new passengers, sailing away. Passengers and families who were arriving or leaving needed coolies to carry all their baggage and belongings and household goods from or to the docks. And further down the Bund freighters were continually steaming and sailing in, bringing all sorts of cargoes and loads that had to be transported away, especially food. Wuhan was surrounded by some of the finest, most fertile earth in China. So the huge increase in its population broug
ht no difficulties for the local farmers, just increased profits. And more, much more, work for the coolies. Their rates were astronomical.

  Spider Girl walked up to an older, friendly-looking coolie eating at a food kitchen.

  ‘You look happy with your work.’

  ‘Never been better.’

  ‘Your rates are high?’

  ‘Look at my food. I’m eating meat! When was the last time that happened? All you people coming in just create more and more work. And you know what the best is?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘The army coming in. Suddenly they’re wanting stuff carried everywhere. All over the country. And they’re desperate, so they’ll pay anything. That’s what’s sent the rates so high. Our bosses can charge what they want.’

  Spider Girl explained that she was hoping to fix up The Ox, still standing placidly beside her, with a good boss, an honest boss, who’d keep an eye out for him. Wouldn’t cheat him.

  ‘You want to go down to the dockside and ask my boss. I’ve been with him ten years now and he’s never cheated me. With all this work around there’s a whole lot of fly-by-night men who’ve just appeared who will cheat and gyp you. You try my boss. He’s down by the dockside under the green and white pennant.’

  Spider Girl thanked the man and she and The Ox walked down to the dockside, she patiently explaining to him what she was going to do, what was going to happen to him. He was quite upset by this but she said she would look at the boss first, speak to him, and only let The Ox work for him if she thought him honest. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘with a man of your strength, he is sure to look after you because you will be able to do so much work for him. And other bosses will be constantly asking you to work for them, so he will have to pay you more.’

  They walked up to the boss. Spider Girl looked shrewdly at him, he looked shrewdly at her. A deal was struck. Spider Girl and The Ox said a sad farewell to each other, but The Ox wasn’t that sad, because he’d just caught sight of the large wooden antique chest the boss wanted him to carry and he was working out how to carry it.