Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  ‘How do you do.’

  Ahsan and Maninda had every right to be reserved before this large and imposing Englishman. They were dark-skinned natives, members in India of the semi-banned Indian National Congress which was demanding independence from Britain. The chairman of the Congress, Jawaharlal Nehru, had sent these two, as a gesture of solidarity, to help out the Chinese, their fellow victims of imperialism. Following the Japanese invasion, the INC had immediately banned all its members from purchasing or dealing in any Japanese goods. This had seriously affected Britain’s trade with Japan.

  The English, as their colonial masters, were deeply suspicious of any INC members, especially if they were travelling abroad. So Bhattacharyya and Atwal had already experienced rough treatment and hostile interrogations from large red-faced English officials all the way from Bombay to Hong Kong.

  The two quickly returned to their paperwork and resumed their argument. Almost immediately an ambulance bell rang outside.

  ‘Customers,’ shouted Bob.

  ‘Bring on the bodies,’ echoed Dick.

  ‘Here we go!’

  In seconds the room was transformed. A porter ran in and splashed a bucket of disinfectant all across the table and started vigorously scrubbing it. Two more attendants ran in with mops and brooms and started cleaning the floor. A series of nursing staff from the rooms nearby crowded in with sterilized needles and bone saws and scalpels and clamps and other operating paraphernalia.

  ‘Better get your skates on, Donald,’ advised Bob.

  Donald hesitated a second, slightly flummoxed.

  ‘Hand me your jacket, Donald,’ ordered Hu, taking it and helping him roll up his sleeves. ‘Shall I take your bow tie off?’

  ‘No,’ said Donald firmly. ‘Helps me think.’

  Five soldiers were stretchered in. Three had been shot in their legs, one in his arm. The fifth’s left lung had been punctured by a bullet. He was set to one side, not expected to live.

  Dick swiftly examined them.

  ‘Four amputations,’ he announced.

  ‘Aren’t those limbs saveable?’ Donald asked Bob.

  Ahsan started amputating the first leg – without anaesthetic – as two orderlies held the man down.

  ‘’Fraid not,’ replied Bob. ‘These guys are three or four days from the front. Some are already gangrenous, the others will get infected as soon as we open them up to try and set the splints across the bones.’

  ‘But your instruments, splints are disinfected?’

  ‘Yeah – though we’ll be running out of disinfectant real soon. We’re already clean out of formaldehyde. Had to resort to good old-fashioned brandy. Our biggest trouble is we can’t get any proper sterilized splints. Amputations are their best chance.’

  Bob and Dick’s faces were drawn, their eyes starting to glaze. They’d been at the operating table for almost thirty hours. Most surgeons in such circumstances use amphetamines or booze to keep them going. Bob and Dick, being pious Methodists who had taken the pledge, relied on the power of prayer and vicious bouts of ping pong to keep going.

  The limb was off, the table swiftly swilled with disinfectant and the next patient landed on its boards. Hu decided to leave, not because of the butchery – she’d had to treat wounded soldiers in even worse conditions on the Bund – but because she was by now very, very late for her work sifting the refugees as they arrived at the refugee camp.

  The two trainees, Ahsan and Maninda conducted the remaining three amputations, with occasional quiet prompts from Bob, their surgical tutor. Dick, meanwhile, slept on a stretcher in the room next door.

  The last patient, the one with the punctured lung, was hauled onto the table only for the doctors to discover he was already dead. He was about to be removed when Bob had an idea.

  ‘Donald,’ he said, ‘how about a quick leg amputation? Have a looksee at your Barts skills.’

  ‘Well,’ said the ever-reticent Donald, ‘I suppose I could.’ He stepped nervously forwards and stood over his patient, briefly examined the leg, then with a few deft, decisive cuts severed the leg from the torso and neatly tied the arteries.

  ‘Wow,’ whistled Bob. ‘Golly gee willikers!’

  ‘Very good indeed,’ murmured Ahsan Bhattacharyya.

  ‘Most excellent,’ echoed Maninda Atwal.

  Bob clapped Donald on the back.

  ‘Just to show that wasn’t just limey luck, hows about his other peg?’

  ‘If you insist,’ said Donald.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I’d rather be operating on live patients…’

  ‘Don’t worry. There are plenty more of them on the way.’

  Donald went round the table to its other side, raised his arms, and excised the leg with the same sweet, effortless strokes.

  ‘Praise the Lord!’ said Bob.

  A roar of diesel engines arrived outside, followed by a hubbub of noise. Three large lorries stuffed with wounded had just arrived and the patients, alive and screaming, were being carted into the theatre.

  ‘OK, guys, skates on,’ shouted Bob. ‘And can someone get all these amputated limbs out the door. They’re starting to stink the place out.’

  The turnover rate on the table became intense. Bodies were hoicked up and then carried out, limbs again piling up on the floor. Screams, shouts, curses, swiftly swallowed bowls of tea, hurried instructions to nurses and orderlies, an occasional nutritious dumpling – hands having been washed before consumption. Puncture wounds, smashed femurs, broken limbs, head wounds, feet shot off. A complete charnel house. The floor was slippery with blood and had to be continually mopped. Two attendants were employed specially to swat the flies away. To begin with Bob led, with Maninda and Donald seconding him while Ahsan slept, but pretty soon Bob handed over the amputations to Donald – quick, deft slices and severances, neat tying of the arteries and veins lessening the pain – with Maninda and a reawoken Ahsan backing him up. Bob still led on wounds to the body and head.

  Several times private patients, civilians, were slipped quickly in between the heavy traffic of wounded soldiers.

  ‘A urovaginal fistula?’ declared Donald enthusiastically. ‘I love urovaginal fistulas! Can I do this one?’

  ‘No,’ said Dick. ‘Go and sit down next door and take a few minutes’ rest. You got another twenty hours ahead of you.’

  The hours passed.

  Several times as Donald swiftly examined the broken arms or legs of his patients before operating and amputating, he winced and hesitated. Finally Bob spoke to him.

  ‘Donald, we’re here to save lives, not limbs. If we had an afternoon, a half hour even, and the wound was clean and uninfected, then maybe you could do a proper splint insertion and we’d set the limb in casts and put them in traction. And even then most of the patients would die because our make-do splints are made of wood or steel and therefore infect the wound through either rotting or rusting and the limbs would still have to come off.’

  ‘I know,’ burst out Donald, ‘but couldn’t we get some proper stainless-steel splints?’

  ‘Donald, the Orthopedic Frame Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan, which has a monopoly of such splints and sells them worldwide, charges two dollars a pop. We can’t afford it – and besides, an order would take months to arrive. This is China. Lives before limbs.’

  They returned to their work. More lorries arrived. Other casualties turned up in rickshaws or carried on people’s backs. The frenzy was continuous. After a while Dick arose from his stretcher and Bob took his place. Ahsan and Maninda continued seconding Donald, since they’d only been working twenty-five hours so far.

  But every time Donald came across a wound or a bone smashed in a limb which he knew he could have operated on and saved if he’d had proper equipment and conditions, he sighed. It caused him deep grief. As he worked amid the gore and the pain and the screams, he thought and he thought. He subconsciously tugged at his bow tie, getting it bloody.

  Suddenly he had an idea. He looked tow
ards the large shopping bag he’d brought with him. The large shopping bag filled with bicycle parts. Still carrying his scalpel, he hurried across and rummaged through it. Unfortunately it did not contain the parts he wanted.

  I’ll ask Spider Girl, he thought. Maybe she can pick some up down on the Bund.

  3

  I have a meeting to go to. A meeting I am really looking forward to. It is across the river from the university, at a tea house on the Bund.

  On the way to the ferry I walk through my university campus. It is extraordinary how it has transformed. When you think of a university you think of hallowed groves of learning – silent libraries, scholars walking solemnly in long traditional robes down long corridors whispering erudite words to each other, paper scrolls of ancient learning tucked under their arm. Dust everywhere.

  Now things are rather different. Loud, raucous, frenetic. Corridors crowded, jostling, people shouting out to each other, students running to their next class, discussions in crammed lecture halls breaking out into arguments, even fisticuffs in the passageways. Everyone has a point of view, everyone is desperate to find new truths, new knowledge, everyone must talk to everyone else.

  All the time individuals and groups pour out from our campus. Expeditions set forth, one after another. Geography students are armed with theodolites, clinometers and compasses so they can accurately map out distant provinces where fighting might break out – and so our armies, using these highly accurate maps, can calculate the shortest and quickest routes our troops can march along to engage the enemy; so the roads our enemy use can be minutely studied for the best place to ambush them; so that our artillery can accurately bombard the enemy on the other side of a mountain without even seeing him.

  Meanwhile groups of geology students are being despatched to those regions in the south-west we are most likely to hold on to so they can discover deposits of valuable metals, minerals, building materials. Coal, iron ore, limestone for steel, bauxite for aluminium, stone for constructing roads and railways and buildings.

  Doctors and nurses, along with all available supplies and equipment, are being hurriedly despatched, trained or only partially trained, to the many fronts our troops are fighting on.

  Engineers are being taught and deployed to build defences, bridges, weaponry, factories, hospitals, steel mills and airfields.

  In the midst of death, everyone is very much alive.

  Even our literature and drama department is crash coursing whole regiments of sensitive young poets and dramatists, turning them into blaring and totally unscrupulous brainwashing machines. They too march forth into the field.

  *

  Unscrupulous brainwashing machine I might be, but even I baulk at certain abominations. Such as the all-singing, all-marching, all-patriotic pileup entitled Defend Wuhan! which I am being forced to write for the delectation of General Chiang Kai-shek and his lovely lady wife. I ponder all this as my ferry chugs across the Yangtze towards Hankow.

  Two weeks and I haven’t had a single idea. A single tweak in my imagination. Popular culture? Popular culture! Popular culture?!? Why can’t I write some unpopular culture? Something gentle, loving, about my wife and children and mother…

  I step off the ferry and walk along the Bund towards my meeting. Only a few months ago this whole area was a towering necropolis of empty coffins and bodies being prepared for burial. All is changed. Money has changed hands, concepts explored. All the coffins serve the living before they serve the dead. A whole community has sprung up amid them. Coffins are used as ironing boards, cupboards, pantries. The big formal ones made of blackwood or camphor wood are used as temporary desks in temporary offices for lawyers and accountants and will writers, or as tables and chairs in cafes which serve passengers awaiting boats or rickshaw men and coolies taking a break. Whole families sleep in them, rolling them over on top of them as protection from the rain as they sleep. They are hired out during the day to anyone who needs a sleep, even to fornicators and worse. Mini-hotels. Apothecary shops have laid out counters of blue and white jars containing medicinal roots and herbs and seaweed and chalk and glass jars with snakes preserved in alcohol inside them or dried alligator skins. Dead ladybirds are considered efficacious for liver complaints; the alcohol drained from the dead snakes does wonders for your potency.

  With deaths among the general population of Wuhan in decline, there is only one time when this now large community reverts to its roots. When there is an air raid. A bombing is immediately followed by a frenzied deconstruction of the community as coffins are sought en masse to be rushed to the stricken area. We Chinese like to be in the comfort of our coffins as soon as possible after our deaths.

  As I emerge from the extraordinary integration and disintegration, I notice a cinema to my left. It’s running an old James Cagney musical – Footlight Parade. I’m not too fond of Cagney. Too wild haired, wild eyed for me. I prefer the softness and subtlety of Fred and Ginger. There’s something so unassuming, so gentle about Fred, with Ginger effervescing away backwards before him, heels clacking, blond hair bobbing. And I love their emotional numbers, like ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’. Its loneliness, its dark desperation. With Europe in such danger, the Nazis marching, the two of them face the music – and dance!

  Please excuse me – I’m being far too self-indulgent. I look again at the Cagney posters. Fred wouldn’t be at all appropriate as my hero in Defend Wuhan! I need a fireball like Cagney, punching out haughty dames, rich tycoon types and the Japanese. A hero with swagger! A Chinese Cagney! Yangtze Doodle Dandy? Shanghai Li?

  And of course we’d need some big Busby Berkeley-like numbers. Like that thundering finale to 42nd Street with Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell tap dancing into the blackness of infinity. The Yanks might be lousy at fighting fascism but they’re great at putting on shows!

  But then I start to doubt again. This is China. What I propose would be great in America, but who would understand it here? What Chinese person would like the aggressive dancing, the loud music, all the mugging and grimacing?

  I am passing a puppet play with a crowd gathered tightly round it. What are they doing? What drama causes such ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs?’ I worm my way in. It’s that old favourite, Mulan Joins the Army. What a shrewd choice by the manager! All about a young girl whose family is threatened by raiding nomads. Since there are no boys in the family she dresses as a soldier and volunteers. On the battlefield she is a brilliant warrior. All her comrades love her. None suspects she is a young girl. Together they drive out the Japanese – sorry, nomads – and then she returns to her farm as a pious daughter to serve her mother. What story could more deeply move the Chinese at this time? At this time of war? The play is at least two thousand years old!

  It is so confusing being in Wuhan at the moment. Everything is a blur. All is changing. The people of Wuhan and I myself love the old, the familiar, the reassuring, but at the same moment we’re starting to be seduced by, lured into the modern. Its movement, its endless restlessness – let’s face it – its frenzy! Everyone loves the new for no other reason than that it’s new. There’s nothing more exciting than something new! A lamp stand, a cigarette holder, a light bulb, chewing gum. It’s new! It’s new! The second it’s old everyone loses interest. Which do I choose – new or old? Which would my audience want to stir them and inspire them into fighting back against Japan? What is Wuhan? What is China?

  I am almost at the tea house where I am due to meet my friend. I order my brain to remember in detail everything I’ve just been thinking – about Cagney, Busby Berkeley, Mulan Joins the Army – ancient vs modern – but like all writers I’m well aware of the holes which can suddenly appear in your brain the second you try to remember what you wanted to remember. OK, so I’ll write it down with pencil and paper. Then I remember I’ve forgotten my pencil and paper. A writer must always remember to bring pencil and paper to write down what he wants to remember in case he forgets it. But in this case I’ve forgotten them.

 
; I look around. A woman is selling onions on a stall beside me.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say, ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but could you briefly lend me some pencil and paper?’

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘My boss has some.’

  She picks them up off a back shelf and hands them to me, quite trusting I will return them. Ordinary people are so naturally helpful. She sees I need them, I’m not a thief, so she just hands them to me and lets me get on with the strange mysteries and rituals of writing on a piece of paper. She herself is clearly illiterate.

  I finish my writing and pass her back the pencil, thanking her profusely. I feel immensely guilty that she has given me something for nothing and I cannot give anything in return. I buy a large bag of onions.

  *

  Jack Belden the American and Rewi Alley the New Zealander took the ferry across the Yangtze from the Bund to Wuchang on the south shore.

  The tiny ferry steamed past the Western gunboats anchored in a line off the Bund, guns all pointed at the teaming onshore hordes.

  Jack looked at the gunboats.

  ‘What I can’t figure,’ he said, ‘is the point of these fucking gunboats? Here they are, in Chinese waters, guns all pointing at the Chinese but never firing at them, and then a few hundred miles downstream in Shanghai there’s an identical line of British and American and French gunboats, in Japanese waters, all pointing their guns at the Japanese but not firing at them. Pretty soon the Japs will take Wuhan and then they’ll all be pointing their guns at the Japanese and not firing them. What’s the fucking point of it?’

  ‘Bloody obvious,’ responded Rewi, pointing along the Bund. ‘What’s those bloody great buildings all along the waterfront?’

  ‘Banks.’

  ‘Banks. Western banks. That’s what they’re here to defend. All our governments care about is keeping our banks open. The Japanese have killed, what, twenty million Chinese, but if the Japanese request a loan from one of these banks so they can slaughter even more – “Great! How much do you want?”’