Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  Hu had to leave for her committee. She said farewell, washed her hands and hurried off along the Bund. As she was passing through the food markets she suddenly saw someone she hadn’t seen since the march from Shanghai to Wuhan. The Intelligent Whore! They stopped and joyfully greeted each other. Intelligent Whore suggested they have a tea and catch up with each other. Hu sighed and excused herself, explaining that she didn’t have time because she was sitting on this government committee and she was late. Intelligent Whore roared with laughter.

  ‘You – on a government committee?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hu, feeling ashamed, ‘really.’

  A thought suddenly struck Intelligent Whore.

  ‘There’s something you really must see.’

  ‘But I have to get to work,’ said Hu. ‘I’m already late.’

  ‘This is connected with your work. It will only take a minute. You simply must see it.’

  So Hu went with her friend and saw what her friend wanted her to see. It was quite extraordinary. She knew immediately that Madame Chiang must see it too.

  *

  Madame Chiang sent an aide telling Hu she’d meet her by a certain fish stall in the market at three tomorrow afternoon. Hu said that if Madame Chiang met her at such a place she would attract a lot of attention and this would make it very difficult for her to see what Hu wanted her to see. The aide informed her that Madame Chiang would be absolutely discreet and Hu was to meet her at the fish stall at three o’clock precisely. Not a minute early. Not a minute late. He left.

  The next day at precisely three o’clock, among the crowds and the women stall holders in their high sopranos singing the excellence of their fish and fruit and vegetables, in the midst of coolies labouring and sweating past with huge sacks of flour and boxes full of delicate duck eggs and baskets heaving with live threshing fish, amid mothers beating their children, Madame Chiang arrived at the fish stall. Totally discreetly. Hu stared at her. If there was one thing that Hu considered impossible it was that Madame Chiang could appear un-chic. But there she stood before her, totally un-chic. Hu’s eyes searched her body, her clothing, her hair, and found not one single scintilla of chic. Madame Chiang looked boringly ordinary. Slightly drab even. Just like any other person you never notice.

  ‘I often do this,’ said Madame Chiang. ‘Dress this way, walk about, listen to what the people are saying, see what they are doing, what they’re feeling. Just the sort of information you need in government but can never get. And it keeps me sane.’

  A swarm of students swept past, shouting and chanting. One was dressed up as Hitler. They were demanding that Hitler keep out of Czechoslovakia and that the Chinese people show complete solidarity with the Czech people.

  ‘Now,’ said Madame Chiang, moving off in a businesslike fashion, ‘where is this thing which you wish me to see?’

  ‘There are two things, actually,’ said Hu. ‘The first is about housing, which you asked me to keep you up to date with.’

  ‘Good,’ said Madame Chiang.

  Hu led her to the part of the Bund where the city of tiny sampans had so suddenly sprung up. She explained briefly how practical these boats were for housing large numbers of refugees, how convenient they were for labourers working in the docks, how they kept families together.

  Madame Chiang got her point.

  Hu explained how there was space for mooring plenty more but that the price of the sampans had shot up since they’d become so popular. The owners of the sampans were reluctant to import more because that would lower their rents. Hu thought the government should intervene. There were thousands of cheap sampans upstream in the many little river ports and lakes to the west and south of Wuhan. The government should buy them and flotillas of them could be towed down the Yangtze by tugs for newly arrived families to use. Meanwhile, on the tugs’ return voyage, they could tow established communities of sampans upstream to ports like Changsha and Chungking where, with all the new traffic and industries, there was a great demand for labourers.

  ‘This is essentially what General Feng and Li Dequan are doing with their land-based refugees,’ observed Madame Chiang, ‘establishing communities and then taking them upstream to populate the new cities and farmlands.’

  ‘It is,’ agreed Hu.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Madame Chiang. ‘I’ll talk to my sister Soong Ailing, she can arrange the finances.’

  As they were talking Hu became aware of a rather unpleasant smell. They were standing at the edge of the dock as slowly before them paraded a string of barges exuding a foul stench. Known locally as ‘the honey barges’, their job was to carry Wuhan’s raw sewage from the city to be spread on the fields where most of Wuhan’s fresh vegetables were grown. They made several trips a day.

  Hu felt embarrassed about this. She suggested that perhaps they should move on to the second thing she wished Madame to see. Madame sniffed the air vigorously.

  ‘Ah,’ she announced, ‘the honey barges of Wuhan. I was talking to a French sanitary engineer only the other day and he told me that there are two grades of excrement they carry – Chinese and European. The European excrement fetches twice the price of the Chinese because Europeans have such rich diets. In fact this Frenchman went on boast to me that the French have the finest excrement in the world because they eat the finest food.’

  Hu looked at Madame Chiang. Madame Chiang turned away.

  ‘Now,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘let’s see your second secret. This is about health, isn’t it, not housing?’

  ‘It is. It’s not far away.’

  Hu was sure that Madame Chiang would not have come on this expedition without some security, but repeated furtive glances over her shoulder failed to reveal anyone following them.

  Hu was leading Madame Chiang to a tea house.

  ‘Tea houses’ can mean many varying things in China. They can be houses where tea is served and drunk. Where old friends meet up. Where gossip is exchanged, pipes smoked, opium discreetly or indiscreetly taken, mahjong played, newspapers read, wine drunk. They can be labour exchanges, money exchanges, places where secret societies congregate, where crimes are planned, where learned societies meet. This tea house was richly furnished with carved blackwood from the south and filled with square wooden tables and chairs packed with customers. Music was being played quietly in a corner.

  But this tea house was not quite how it seemed. From the centre of the room a large, ornately decorated staircase lead up to the first floor. Had Hu and Madame Chiang arrived here a few hours later the scene would have been very different. Raucous music would be playing, the customers would be drunk, everyone would be shouting at each other as down the stairway, into the brilliantly lit room would trail a procession of young girls. All very pretty and very youthful. Sheathed in silk or satin, adorned with jewellery, their faces heavy with paint and powder, they would wend their way between the tables around the floor as their Madam stopped at each table and drew the patrons’ attention to the particular appeals and attractions of each girl. One by one the girls would be chosen and walk up the stairs, to the cheers of the crowd, with their clients.

  Madam Chiang stopped as soon as she walked through the door. A woman of the world, she knew exactly where Hu had brought her. A brothel. Suddenly, miraculously, behind her materialized her til now invisible security detail. Two of them. Still very discreet.

  ‘This is a brothel,’ Madame Chiang quietly told Hu. ‘If word got out that I have visited a brothel my reputation, more importantly my husband’s reputation, would be ruined. Why have you brought me here, Hu Lan-shih?’

  ‘Because I think it very important that you see what I am going to show you.’

  Madame Chiang looked full into Hu’s face. Took a step back.

  ‘I trust you, Hu Lan-shih. Show me what you want me to see.’

  ‘I apologize, Madame Chiang, but it is upstairs.’

  ‘Then let us go up there,’ said Madame Chiang.

  Hu led the way up, followed by Ma
dame Chiang and, at a discreet distance, the two bodyguards.

  They passed through a door and stepped into a plushly decorated, dimly lit corridor. Some doors were open and the sounds of noisy springs and lusty intercourse were coming from almost every room. Hu thought she would die of embarrassment. Madame Chiang had a fixed expression on her face, and the two bodyguards exchanged unbelieving looks. In one room a naked girl sat on a large colourful bedspread and wept.

  At last they reached the end of the corridor and two corridors led off it left and right. From the left-hand corridor Hu suddenly saw a naked man approaching them with an enormous erection followed by two fat naked ladies. She immediately turned Madame Chiang to the right – a short corridor with a door at the end. She hurried Madame Chiang through the door and her two bodyguards followed. She shut the door. This was a completely different corridor. It was quiet. Almost silent. It was painted white. Hu indicated Madame Chiang should follow her. At the first door they looked in. There was a man in a bed there. A small bed with very white sheets. There were several other small beds in the room, all with white-faced men beneath white sheets. Many of the men were heavily bandaged, some with white bandages round their heads, some over their arms or chests, some entirely covered in bandages.

  Hu and Madame Chiang and her two guards continued down the corridor. In each room it was the same. Bandaged men in beds, some being attended by nurses.

  ‘It is a hospital,’ said an awed Madame Chiang.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hu, ‘at last a proper hospital has been found for some of our poor soldiers.’

  ‘But it’s in a brothel,’ said a still gobsmacked First Lady.

  ‘There’s someone I want you to meet,’ Hu said, and led Madame Chiang down the corridor to a small room set aside for visitors. It was empty. Hu ushered them in. ‘I’ll just fetch her,’ she explained, shutting the door on them.

  Madame Chiang paced up and down the room. She was quite upset by it. It had somehow moved her deeply, but she didn’t understand why. She was chain smoking.

  Into the room came Hu, followed by Intelligent Whore. Intelligent Whore was dressed in the colourful uniform of the brothel – which meant she wasn’t wearing much – and perched on her hip she had a young boy of some three years. The boy stared boldly at everyone in the room. She let him down and he stood beside her, still inspecting these strangers.

  ‘Mummy,’ said the boy, ‘I want to draw some pictures.’

  ‘That’s a good idea, little Aigou, I’ve brought some paper and crayons with me.’

  She laid down the papers and the crayons on the ground before him.

  ‘Mummy, what should I draw?’

  ‘How about some dragons?’

  Aigou thought for a second. ‘I think I’ll draw some dragons,’ he said, and immediately became absorbed in his work.

  Intelligent Whore looked at Madame Chiang. ‘I apologize for bringing my child with me, Madame Chiang,’ she said without an ounce of regret in her voice, ‘but, with my whoring and my work with the soldiers, I only have an hour a day together with him and I do not wish to waste it.’

  ‘Of course,’ said the still partially gobsmacked Madame Chiang. ‘Do you mind if I smoke in front of him?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Intelligent Whore. ‘We’re in a brothel. I smoke all the time.’

  ‘Do you want one of mine?’ asked Madame Chiang, proffering her a Wills’s Gold Flake.

  ‘Thank you, no,’ said Intelligent Whore, ‘I’ll smoke my own.’

  She lit a Chinese cigarette, inhaled it heavily.

  ‘The reason I asked you to come here, Madame Chiang – you’ve seen the soldiers we’ve got…?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Madame Chiang.

  ‘…is because we are having some problems at the moment—’

  Madame Chiang interrupted her.

  ‘First,’ she said, ‘I want to hear some of the background to this. How do wounded soldiers end up being treated – very well, from what I saw – in a brothel?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Intelligent Whore, ‘but I thought Hu would have explained this to you beforehand.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Hu, ‘because I thought if I said this was being done in a brothel Madame would not have come.’ She blushed.

  ‘All right,’ said Intelligent Whore, ‘some background…’

  ‘Mummy,’ said Little Aigou, ‘what do you think of this dragon’s eyes? I’ve painted them purple.’

  Intelligent Whore looked down at her son’s drawing. ‘They look very nice. And I like those red claws.’ Little Aigou became re-absorbed.

  Madame Chiang took no offence at this interruption. She recognized another practical, business-like woman when she saw one.

  ‘The background,’ repeated Intelligent Whore. ‘A group of us women – whores, taxi girls, mill workers – got very close in Shanghai and decided we would support the soldiers.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Madame Chiang, ‘I’ve already read a report on your march with the soldiers to Wuhan. I understand that. But why are soldiers being treated in a brothel?’

  ‘Well,’ said Intelligent Whore, ‘when we got here we all went our separate ways. Most of us whores returned to our work because we needed to feed ourselves and our children. But we kept in touch and found we were all worried about the wounded soldiers being left to die on the Bund. We thought that was terrible. So we thought – how can we help them? And then we whores all thought – well, we all work in warm, waterproof rooms with lots of beds, why not take over parts of the brothels for the wounded soldiers?’

  ‘This is happening in other brothels?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how do you persuade your bosses, the owners, to allow this? They are not, I would imagine, the kindest of men.’

  Intelligent Whore smiled at her. She then leant down and put another sheet of paper before her son.

  ‘Paint a boat on the river, little Aigou,’ she said.

  ‘I like ships,’ said little Aigou. ‘Especially the ones with guns.’

  ‘Our pimps are often brutal men, yes. But they are also vulnerable. When we went to present our proposals we took with us newspaper reporters, photographers, suggested that if the soldiers did not get their beds, their nursing, then the newspapers would report this, name names, publicize addresses. We felt sure that patriotic, freedom-loving Chinese brothel owners would want to help our good boys who were nobly sacrificing themselves to save us all from the brutalities and mass murders of the Japanese. Would they want hordes of drunken murderous Japanese soldiers as their clients every night? We even hinted that perhaps the names of some of their more famous customers might appear in the newspapers.’

  Little Aigou had got bored with drawing his ship and had embraced his mother’s leg. He hugged her tight. She gently and reassuringly started to stroke his hair and he relaxed against her.

  Intelligent Whore was about to continue when the door suddenly flew open and into the room stormed the naked man with the enormous erection last seen with the two fat whores in the corridor outside. He still had his enormous erection and he was furious. He stalked straight up to Intelligent Whore.

  ‘There you are, you cunt. I fucking found you.’

  Hu noticed that Intelligent Whore immediately started to massage deeply not only little Aigou’s hair but also his neck, his shoulders, to reassure, to soothe him. She also moved so that Madame Chiang was behind him and that if she was hit by the lout she would not fall on her son. Simultaneously the two bodyguards moved to cover Madame Chiang, not only to stop any possible assault on her but to prevent the animal from recognizing her. Hu moved herself forwards, so that the man might have someone else to attack rather than Intelligent Whore.

  The man grabbed Intelligent Whore behind her neck and pulled her forwards so their two faces jammed together.

  ‘I asked for you and they sent me two ugly fat whores with the clap. I punched them both. Bruised them so their pimp won’t be able to work them any time soon. I to
ld him I want my prick up your cunt. Only you know how to squeeze and grind and tickle and suck it so I do not know who I am anymore and float off into heaven. So you come with me right now,’ he hissed.

  ‘I won’t,’ she said, quite calmly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I am busy. This is what you will do. You will go to room number twenty-one. There Little Flower Petal will frot and floss and tug you so your prick gets even huger, so that when I come to you you can stuff it right up my cunt and we shall both go to heaven.’

  ‘I can do that for you, get you to heaven, can’t I?’ he said eagerly.

  Intelligent Whore ignored this. ‘I will be with you in twenty minutes exactly. No sooner. No later,’ she said.

  The creature stepped back from her. His face collapsed. His fat body started to shake, losing all shape.

  ‘You are so wonderful to me,’ he said.

  ‘Go,’ she said.

  He hurried from the room.

  Intelligent Whore detached her son from her leg and sat him down on the ground. For a full ten minutes she gently coached and enticed him back into the world of drawing ships and clouds and gentle dragons. Then she stood up, brushed back her hair, and turned to Madame Chiang. One of Madame Chiang’s bodyguards had meanwhile gone outside to prevent any further irruptions.

  ‘Do you want to know anymore about how we got the soldiers into the brothels?’ Intelligent Whore asked Madame Chiang.

  ‘No,’ replied Madame Chiang – likewise a woman of iron nerves. ‘What is it you want from me?’

  ‘Three things. Firstly, we need more medical supplies, and if possible trained medical staff.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Secondly, we’d be grateful if you could help us with a problem. Our pimps and brothel owners are beginning to get a bit fed up with giving over their rooms to us. They are starting to threaten us. I wonder if you might intervene on this?’

  ‘My husband and the Nationalist Party of China have no connections whatsoever with organized crime. Nevertheless, I will see what I can do.’