Spider Girl was completely unmoved by this.
Instead she stood staring ahead as the black, gaunt figure of Despair, of Fate, stood at her shoulder. She was equally indifferent to him. Instead she thought fiercely, concentrated solely on one single thought. She thought of Second Son. Her younger five-year-old brother who had been decapitated by the unexploded Japanese bomb. She remembered his courage, his quick-witted intelligence, his resilience. Only five years old, he had immediately volunteered to walk ahead of the cart in the darkness when they thought bandits might waylay them. Second Son had fearlessly run out into the refugee crowds to search for her when she had disappeared from the family. What courage! What a brave, caring child!
A fury was building inside her.
During the family’s long, catastrophic march, a bit of Spider Girl was monitoring Second Son – his problems, his state of mind – as she monitored everyone in the family. From almost the beginning he had had problems. When they’d taken water from that stream and father had ordered them all to look in the opposite direction so they would not see the butchered family, as she had peeked behind her to see them, she’d seen Second Son peeking as well. What an awful effect that would have had on him. Why hadn’t she quietly counselled, comforted him? When he led the donkey through the carnage and the bodies on the march, what fear must have entered his tiny soul. But she had done nothing. She was too busy dealing with her mother and her aching limbs and looking for an escape route for herself!
And now she turned and stared blackly into Fate’s very face. But still she thought of Second Son.
From almost his earliest days in the family it had become obvious that sometime in the future there would be big problems between Second Son – fiery, shrewd, intelligent, all excellent qualities for a farmer – and Eldest Son – dreamy, gentle, passive, which would have made him a useless farmer. There would be endless rows between the two, with Second Son constantly challenging Eldest Son’s authority and judgement. Her father, she realized, was already aware of this problem and would act to reconcile them, to subtly steer decisions in Second Son’s favour without upsetting Eldest Son’s self-esteem. And when Father died the responsibility for handling that problem, resolving it with endless subtle diplomacy, would have been hers. And she could have achieved it, worked it through. That is what family is. Service. Patience. Foresight. Reconciliation.
A family is an extraordinary, rare thing. Fast and changing as a chameleon, vivid, vital, eternal, centipeding relentlessly through generations – endless in its quicksilver variety. Each one is unique unto itself. The family is the root, the foundation on which we build all things, on which we flower and flourish. And what lies at its very heart, its very core? Wisdom. Patience. Understanding. And above all service. Duty.
Had that not been her family? And yet…
Her father – dead! Her grandfather – dead! Her mother – dead! Eldest Son – dead! Cherry Blossom – dead! Second Son – dead! Baby Girl Wei – dead! Baby Boy Wei – dead! That baby born under the cart – dead!
Spider Girl studied the black figure of Fate as he stood before her. His callous eyes, his greedy mouth, his shocking ugliness. And her fury boiled over. She strode straight at him, into him, through him as though he was not there and out the other side. Which is not the sort of action a god appreciates!
Hu was still handing over their baggage to the wheelbarrow coolie as suddenly Spider Girl set off up the ancient stone steps at a ferocious pace. Despite her ricket-ridden legs, which were only partially helped by Donald’s bicycle harness, using her anger and despair as an engine, she shot up the steps. Her pain must have been agonizing.
‘Spider Girl,’ shouted out Hu, ‘Spider Girl!’
But Spider Girl took no notice, storming up the steps.
Hu grabbed the donkey and a bag of food and, shouting to The Drab, who was very scared, started to hare up the steep steps, with precipitous drops to either side of them.
‘Spider Girl,’ shouted Hu, ‘Spider Girl!’
Spider Girl was not going as fast as she had been, but she was still holding her own over the other two and the donkey.
‘Stop,’ panted Hu, ‘stop.’
Finally Spider Girl did stop. She had reached a small resting place before the next towering ladder of a thousand ancient hollowed-out steps. Panting and bewildered and exhausted Hu and The Drab and the donkey finally caught up.
‘What is the meaning of this, Spider Girl? What is the point of this?’
But Spider Girl was ignoring them. She was concentrating, tensing herself for the next climb. And she set off on it.
‘What is it, Hu?’ asked a bewildered Drab, ‘What is Spider Girl doing?’
‘I don’t know,’ panted Hu, ‘I don’t know. But we must follow her. Make sure she comes to no harm.’
So they did. Up the next ladder. Through a layer of cloud. Up the next. Through another layer of cloud, with only their laboured and desperate breathing for company. Finally the final ladder. How Spider Girl was finding the strength, the fury to do this, Hu did not know, but find it she did.
Eventually, almost at the top, Spider Girl did slow. In fact she almost fell over. But clawed herself back upright, tried to continue but couldn’t, and sat down.
The Drab was weeping with incomprehension and fear at these events. Hu kept her and the donkey going and finally they drew parallel with Spider Girl, who had sat down on a patch of grass beside the steps. A mountain stream brawled past her feet and above her stood this ancient pine, arthritic and twisted with age. Spider Girl sat, staring straight ahead, full of rage and anger.
‘What is this, Spider Girl? Do not do this. You are frightening us all. Stop it!’
Spider Girl took no notice of them.
And then it happened.
The valley between them and the next mountain – heavily veiled by layers of cloud – as so often in mountains suddenly cleared. An ominous roll of thunder, the welkin roared, and there, hanging above them, loomed an immense hammerhead thundercloud like some huge fire-scarred anvil black in the sky, descending on them, threatening to engulf them like some ancient man-of-war, broadsides of thunder and lightning shooting out from either flank, sheet lightning flickering and boiling within its black belly, bolts of pure darkness stabbing, daggering straight at them.
The three of them stood tiny, defenceless.
Hu’s hair stood on end. She dived for the ground. The Drab and the donkey, scared out of their wits, sank on the grass attempting to clutch each other.
Spider Girl alone glared straight back into the blackness, anger and contempt firing from her eyes, standing there defiant as it swallowed them. She licked her lips in anticipation.
‘Lie down, Spider Girl, lie down,’ shrieked Hu. ‘The lightning will strike you!’
Spider Girl remained where she was, her face boiling and twisting black with fury.
‘Spider Girl—’ screamed Hu, but could not finish, because suddenly an almighty crash of thunder and a huge, brilliant sword of lightning plunged down towards them, and in her terror Hu, glimpsing Spider Girl still defiant, hid her eyes.
Oh, Spider Girl. Dear Spider Girl, she thought, she mourned.
The lightning crashed. Hu hid her eyes and hid her eyes and then finally opened them. Spider Girl still stood there defiant. And then above them, a hundred feet further up the mountain, there was a creaking and a groaning. Hu looked up and saw the huge and ancient pine above, struck by the lightning, split its base so that the great and gnarled trunk trembled and then slowly pitched forwards and plunged down straight towards them. It struck the mountainside only yards above them and then somersaulted over their cowering faces and bodies – Spider Girl still standing – and then hammered and crashed on down the sheer mountainside, bouncing and vaulting and cracking over the cliffs and slopes, booming at each strike, til finally it was swallowed into the clouded depths deep below them. Still they could hear its screams and groans as it ricocheted and cannonaded down into the very
belly of the valley and the river that ran through it.
There was silence. A long, long silence.
Then Spider Girl turned and looked at the staring Hu. Saw her horror, her concern, her love. And she started to understand things. Saw that as she, Spider Girl, had served others, so now Hu was serving her. She could have got on that aeroplane to Chungking, but instead she had stayed at Spider Girl’s side to support and protect her. Always in the past Spider Girl had supported, sustained others – her father, her mother, Donald – but now, she realized, someone was doing it for her – nursing, comforting her in her weakness, her frailty, her fear. And this understanding entered her body as a mother’s gentle milk enters and warms a baby’s. From that day on she formed a deep bond with Hu, such as she had only ever formed before with her father and with Donald.
She looked at the terror-stricken Drab and her donkey and realized that she, Spider Girl, in her rage, in her foolishness, had left the poor witless woman unprotected. She who should have been serving The Drab had deserted her and had served only herself. She had even deserted the donkey, which seemed to have somehow wound itself into their fellowship.
And she knew that this was not now the end – of her, of her family. In the afterlife she would seek out her father. And then she would take him back to his family and she would give their ears such a banging and a battering they would be forced to accept him back into their ranks – and grant him a place of honour, what’s more! She knew there would be no place for her – the ugly, meddling cripple. Her mother would never allow it (quite rightly!). But she could found her own family (with Donald, even!), get a nice, responsible, honourable husband. And she would make certain their family did not lack. A whole new family. She might even take back the family farm. That would set up a din among her ancestors!
She looked at Hu.
Hu approached her and gently touched her arm.
‘Spider Girl, are you all right?’
‘I am sorry I did that. Acted so badly.’
‘You did not act badly. You acted in grief.’
‘Spider Girl,’ asked The Drab, seeing both the storms had passed, ‘are you all right?’
‘Yes, I am,’ said Spider Girl.
‘You scared me so much,’ said The Drab. ‘You were running away. I thought I should lose you.’
‘I will never leave you again. I swear it.’
Even the donkey seemed a bit cheered by this.
Hu suggested they sit on the grass and have some food and drink the cold, clear water from the mountain stream. And they did.
There is no liquid on earth more invigorating, more uplifting, more exalting than the water from a high mountain stream.
And as they sat there, eating and reflecting, a miracle occurred.
The clouds disappeared. Every single cloud in high heaven, in all the heavens, simply vanished before their eyes, revealing row after row of majestic mountain tops in serried ranks and regiments, marching away into infinity.
And these were the colours of these eternal mountains – jacinth and topaz and sapphire and ruby and coral and onyx and pearl and emerald and jasper and chrysolite and beryl and amethyst and cinnabar and gold and silver.
And then they gazed up into the very highest peaks around them, into the thinnest, most rarified airs, where earth finally meets heaven, matter meets spirit, where tiny wisps and slivers of cloud tangle and dance and dream about and between the highest peaks, where you can no longer discern where earth stops and heaven begins, and there Hu witnessed Jacob’s Ladder, with its unending traffic of humans and angels passing up and down between earth and heaven, and Spider Girl witnessed the heights where ancient emperors once made love with the angels and created man.
Hu saw a Christian heaven and Spider Girl saw a pagan heaven and both saw the same heaven.
Piety, peace, justice, compassion, equality.
An end to war, an end to the suffering of children, an end to poverty, disease, starvation and ignorance (including their own)…
They sat for a while upon the grass, contemplating this.
The storm over, the stream of refugees threading their way over the mountain had restarted. Spider Girl, Hu and The Drab stood up. Because she had exhausted herself on the way up, Hu and The Drab helped Spider Girl onto the back of the donkey, and then the three of them set off, carefully picking their way step by step down the other side of the mountain on the road to Chungking.
Hu with her Bible, Spider Girl packing her pistol and The Drab leading her donkey.
1 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus
2 it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing.
The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the Lord,
the majesty of our God.
3 Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees.
4 Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, fear not!
Behold, your God will come with vengeance,
with the recompense of God.
He will come and save you.’
5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
6 then shall the lame man leap like a hart and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert;
10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion
with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Isaiah 35:1–6, 10
*
I finished this book – its second draft – on the very day that Wuhan declared itself free of coronavirus and the lights came on again in a spectacular light show.
Wuhan lives!
Let’s hope we all do!
Hallelujah!
HISTORY OF THE NON-FICTIONAL CHARACTERS AFTER 1938
General Feng Yuxiang
Feng became increasingly estranged from Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government, with its corruption and repression. Although he was a socialist and remained one, he grew closer to the communists.
At the end of the Second World War he openly split with the Nationalists and travelled to America, where he became an impassioned opponent of that country’s increasing support for Chiang and hostility to the Chinese Communist Party.
In 1946, he lobbied his old friend General Joseph Stilwell to help stop President Truman’s increasing Cold War belligerence towards China. Stillwell died before Feng arrived.
A few days after her husband’s death, Mrs Stilwell was upstairs at her home in Carmel, California when a visitor was announced with some confusion as ‘the Christian’. Mystified, she went down to find in the hall the huge figure and cannonball head of Feng Yuxiang, who said, ‘I have come to mourn with you for Shih Ti-wei, my friend.25
In 1948 Feng was travelling to the Soviet Union. While crossing the Black Sea by steamer with one of his daughters the cabin they were travelling in caught fire and they both died. There were rumours that it was foul play and that the cabin’s door was locked from the outside. He had certainly become close to the communists and as a relatively well-known and popular figure in America since the 1920s, the CIA or MI6 might have thought him a suitable figure for elimination. With the usual Cold War distortions surrounding the event, it is not really possible at the moment to know the truth.
He was an honourable man and a patriot. In 1953 his remains were returned to China and he was buried with honours on the slopes of the sacred Mount Tai, where his wife Li Dequan had founded fifteen schools for the poor in the early 1930s and where they and their friends –Lao She and his family – used to take picnics.
General Li Zongren
General Chiang Kai-shek continued to keep Li Zongren in
a very junior position throughout the Second World War and for the ensuing Chinese Civil War. Following several decisive victories by the Communists over the Nationalists in late 1948 and 1949 Chiang Kai-shek was removed from office and Li took his place. A four-month truce followed. Horrified by Li’s moves towards peace Chiang again resumed power and Li resigned and went to America. Chiang was defeated and withdrew to Taiwan.
In 1965, with Chou En-lai’s support, Li returned to China, where he was greeted and treated as a national hero. He stayed and died in 1969. He is buried in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, Beijing’s main resting place for the highest-ranking revolutionary heroes.
In the 1920s Li and Bai Chongxi had been mainly fascist in their politics. They led Chiang Kai-Shek’s butchery of communists in his suppression of the Wuhan Uprising in 1927. It is rumoured that Chou En-lai was spared by them on the intercession of the Soong sisters.
His favourite book was Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Donald Hankey
Donald Hankey did not serve in Wuhan at this time – he worked in Zhengzhou (north of Wuhan) with the Canadian missionary doctors McClure and Brown. All of them visited Wuhan, however, and McClure held an important government medical position there. The two Indian doctors are fictional, but the Indian National Congress did send doctors to China at this time.
I relocated them because all three of them were extraordinary characters who lived amazing lives. The Canadian playwright Munroe Scott has written an excellent play celebrating their work – McClure – and McClure’s biography: McClure: The China Years. McClure served in the Red Cross in China throughout the Second World War and then was head of the United Nations medical relief team for Palestinian refugees. He was also on the staff of the Church Missionary Society Hospital at Gaza.
A formidable man.
After 1938 Donald Hankey falls off the radar, though he remained working in China through the war, until his reappearance in 1944 in the extreme south-west of China, in Yunnan Province. He was working with the British Red Cross but was seconded to the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, a Quaker outfit.
Wuhan Page 75
