by Geling Yan
After the woman called Chieko had killed her baby, she hurled herself at her little daughter on Tatsuru’s back. Tatsuru shouted through her tears: Kill her tomorrow, let her live another day.Tatsuru was young and strong, and this murderess who had just slain her own flesh and blood could not catch up with her. Chieko’s elder son ran up behind her, and lashed out at her with a wooden cudgel, catching her right on the head. She dodged him, shielding her head with both hands, then gradually she let her hands fall away, allowing her son of barely ten to beat her bloody.
And so the slaughter of infants began. From that moment on, women in the group began to strangle babies who were sick or too young. If on setting out children were found to be missing from a family group, nobody would make any enquiries. As mothers, they had to consider what they stood to lose or gain; they had to keep the children they could save. Even the mothers of wild animals have this special power, bestowed on them by the Creator: when they scent a predator approaching and know they are powerless to save their young, they are willing to kill their offspring with their own teeth first. The women’s faces were dull and lifeless, their eyes full of a kind of hysterical mourning. Tatsuru never let Chieko come anywhere near her, she even tied the girl to her breast with her sash when she was sleeping. The morning after the attack, the girl who had escaped death at her mother’s hands had actually recovered from her illness. Tatsuru had popped a pellet of wild chestnut paste into the girl’s mouth, and told her that they had one more day’s journey ahead of them, then they would be there. The little girl then asked Tatsuru what had happened to her face. She told her that this was not her original face, it was black mud from the river, smeared on for a mask. Why? Because they were going to pass through a town, and they couldn’t let the Chinese men or Soviet soldiers see her real face. The girl told Tatsuru that she was called Sato Kumi, her family came from the Ueno district of Tokyo. Her mother had made her memorise this brief account of her origins on the road, so that the children would be able to trace their bloodline if anything happened to her.
That was the only conversation the two girls had before the final calamity.
They struck camp late at night. Kumi’s mother did not wake. They cut off a lock of Chieko’s hair, tied it to Kumi’s body, and then set off.
The darkness faded away; another day came around. It was a perfect late-autumn day, and everyone was in unusually high spirits: they were almost there. The waist-deep wormwood bushes all around them were frosted a brilliant white as far as the eye could see. Everyone was exhausted, falling fast asleep before they were even lying down properly. They slept like the dead – a hundred stampeding horses would not have woken them.
Not even the sound of the guns woke Tatsuru straight away. But when she did wake up, she was no longer surrounded by the familiar faces of neighbours from nearby villages, but by unrecognisable corpses.
1
A DOZEN OR so sacks had been laid out on a raised platform; it was impossible to tell from their shape whether there were people or animals inside. The man calling out his wares said he was selling them by the kilo, a jiaofn1 would buy half a kilo of Jap woman, cheaper than pork. The price had been fixed in advance, and the heaviest of the sacks was no more than thirty kilos. The county Security Corps had sent a squad of men in black uniforms to maintain order and ensure fair trading. The playground of the primary school was crowded with locals; quite a few bachelors were keen on the idea but couldn’t afford to buy. Thirty kilos of Japanese woman would set you back seven silver dollars, but a single man with seven dollars could get himself a proper Chinese wife: why would he want to bring home a female Jap devil?
It had snowed early that morning, but the roads and paths to Anping town were already black with footprints. People were still arriving, young men in groups of three or five, showing off for the crowd with bad-taste jokes, shouting loudly: ‘If we buy one and she doesn’t suit, is there a guarantee? Can we bring her back and swap her for another?’ The reply was always the same: ‘No exchange!’ ‘What if we end up with the wrong one after spending all that money?’ A voice in the crowd would call out, ‘What’s all this right and wrong? They’re all the same once you put the light out!’ or, ‘The wrong one? Women are like dogskin socks, the same whichever foot you put them on!’
The people laughed; a loud, frightening sound. The sack nearest the edge of the platform twitched a few times, and shrunk in on itself.
The man said that two days ago the Security Corps had exchanged fire with a group of bandits. They had killed several of them and the rest had fled, leaving a dozen or so pretty young Jap virgins behind, whom the bandits hadn’t had time to do anything with. A bandit they had captured who had been wounded in the leg confessed that on this occasion they had committed no outrages, but they had shot about a thousand Japanese refugees – hadn’t the students said all those years ago ‘In resisting Japan there is no division between first and last’? This victory had netted the bandit leader half a pocket of gold jewellery, all taken from Japanese corpses. After that the bullets had run out, and they had let the remaining Japs go. The Security Corps did not know what to do with these teenage Jap girls, they were all starved to skeletons. The Security Corps had no spare money or rations to keep them, and yesterday they had notified all the village heads, so they could get the locals to buy them and take them home – if the worst came to the worst they could always use them to do the hard work about the place, turning mill wheels and the like. A donkey cost more than seven silver dollars.
The man from the Security Corps shouted impatiently: ‘Don’t leave it too late, or they’ll freeze to death before you get ’em home.’
The crowd at the school gates shifted to admit three people: an old couple and a younger man. Those who knew them said to their neighbours: ‘Here’s Stationmaster Zhang and his wife! And their Erhai with them!’ Stationmaster Zhang was in charge of the railway station. The station for Anping town was a stop on a small branch line from Boli to Mudanjiang, where trains halted for one minute. It boasted a grand total of one employee, who was staff, guard and stationmaster, all in one. Stationmaster Zhang in his green uniform was very conspicuous in the crowd of heavy black jackets. It was well known that Stationmaster Zhang ran profitable sidelines of his own from the station: the one minute the train stopped at the station was used for both loading and unloading, and sometimes he would push a group of people with no tickets aboard. His family had accumulated a fair amount of property in this way, so even the heaviest of the Jap women would be well within his means. Stationmaster Zhang’s tiny, thin wife followed in his wake, pausing from time to time to stamp her bound feet at Erhai, who was trailing five paces behind. Stationmaster Zhang always called this son Erhai, or second child, but nobody could remember seeing the Zhang family’s eldest child.
Stationmaster Zhang and Erhai’s mother walked up to the platform, looked at the dozen or so sacks, and asked the squad leader of the Security Corps to give them a hand. They pointed to a sack in the middle, saying: ‘Hold that one upright, let’s have a look.’
The squad leader said: ‘We can’t get them upright, can’t you see the sack’s not big enough?’ He knew that Erhai’s mother was going to start haranguing him, so he said: ‘Don’t try to be clever, you want to see how tall she is, don’t you? I’ll tell you the truth, she’s tall enough to reach the top of your kitchen range and wash the dishes! All Japs are dwarfs – that’s because their mothers were she-dawarfs!’ The crowd laughed again.
Flakes of snow started to drift down from the sky. They saw Erhai’s mother say something to him. Erhai turned his face away. Some of the young men in the crowd knew Erhai, and now they started shouting: ‘Haven’t you got a wife, Erhai? Leave some for the rest of us!’
Erhai did not bat an eyelid at any of this. He was an extremely stoical man, and if he did not want to hear something he simply let it wash over him, but when something did rile him, he could be stubborn as a mule. Erhai had a pair of camel’s eyes, always half
closed, and when he spoke (which was rarely) his lips would barely open. Just then he was pushing his way through the crowd with his broad shoulders. He said through motionless lips: ‘Pick one with a good sack, then when we get back home we can use it to keep grain in too.’
Stationmaster Zhang had decided on the sack from the middle. The Security Corps squad leader warned them repeatedly not to open the sack in front of everyone: if they wanted to inspect the goods they should do so in private. Once they’d got a look at the Jap woman inside, it would make it harder to do business with the others, whether she was pretty or ugly. As the squad leader said while counting Stationmaster Zhang’s cash, at seven silver dollars, if she wasn’t lame or blind she’d do just fine.
The people opened a wide lane, watching Erhai and his father sling the sack on a pole and stroll confidently out, carrying the pole between them.
Stationmaster Zhang had got things off to a good start. Before they had the sack stowed on the cart, two more sacks had already been carried away, and by the time Stationmaster Zhang’s cart had reached home, the rest of the Japanese women had been sold. There was no more joshing and joking: after all, nobody in Stationmaster Zhang’s family had made any jokes, they were there to do business, pure and simple.
Stationmaster Zhang’s mule cart was waiting at the staging post opposite the primary school, and the mule was fed and watered and ready to go. They laid the sack out flat in the back. There was no doubt that there was something alive inside; they could sense it although it did not move an inch. Erhai did not want to tire the mule, so he had his mother and father sit with the sack on the cart, while he walked beside them. The snowflakes became thicker; each flake had its own weight, as if drawn by an invisible force from the sky to the ground. It was over a kilometre from the school to the station, and much of the farmland they passed along the way belonged to the Zhang family.
The bald, flat, empty fields soon turned to white beneath the thick, dense flakes, as man and cart made their way through the heavy snow of November 1945. People would recall this snow in years to come, saying that it came late that year, but it had been a fine snowfall for all that, heavy and fierce. Their memories of that year were very clear: everything became a symbol, for this was the year the Jap devils had surrendered, and the male Japs ran off, leaving all those orphaned, helpless Jap women and children behind. Even the Zhang family could sense that they were travelling on a path that was full of symbolism. In fact the snow had helped the women inside the sacks: nobody had the heart to watch them be buried in heavy snow, so they hurriedly made their purchases and took them home. The Japanese girl in Stationmaster Zhang’s sack could also sense the violence of this snowfall and the hardships of the road. However, she did not yet know that the forefathers of the people who lived in this part of the world had come here too by the Shanhaiguan Pass that led to the rest of China, with nothing but a cart and an animal to draw it. In those days, people who could not make a living would head for the north. It had been just the same for the parents of the girl in the sack: those Japanese who could no longer make ends meet would go west, crossing national boundaries, making their way to this great wasteland, taking it by force from the people whose fathers had first tilled it. And so this place that some called Kwantung and others Manchuria had become the fatal narrowing in the road that forced them to travel cheek by jowl with their enemies.
Erhai’s mother cast an anxious look at the unmoving sack, and asked Erhai whether he was wearing a jacket under his coat. Erhai said no. His mother had thought to make Erhai take off his coat to cover the person in the sack, but as he had nothing warm on underneath, she could not bear to see her son freeze. Erhai flicked his whip, the mule broke into a trot, and he started to jog alongside; he could tell what his mother meant.
Stationmaster Zhang’s station was part of his house. The waiting room and ticket office together occupied the same area as six card tables, with a side door that led to the Zhangs’ kitchen. When the heating was on, it warmed both his workplace and his home. Next to the kitchen was the stable, where they also stacked coal and firewood. When they unloaded the cart, Erhai carried the sack to the centre of the courtyard. The snow was falling hard, and he screwed up his face against it, his camel’s eyes squeezed shut, long eyelashes already white with snow.
His mother called out: ‘Come along, you’re supposed to carry the sack straight inside – why’ve you dropped it in the snow in the middle of the yard?’
Erhai hurriedly picked up the sack, and walked with it towards the main room. He estimated the weight of this sack at under twenty-five kilos. Typical good-for-nothing Security Corps, cheating them out of nearly two silver dollars. As soon as he entered the room he noticed that something was wrong. He put down the sack and ran back into the yard, then to the west room. There was nobody inside. Xiaohuan was gone. Erhai knew without even opening the chests that Xiaohuan had snatched up a bundle of winter clothing and run home to her mother. Erhai thought she was right to run away: that would show his mother and father what a rotten idea they’d thought up. It was hardly Xiaohuan’s fault that she could not have children, but his father and mother were determined to buy a Japanese woman to have children for the Zhang family in Xiaohuan’s place.
At that moment Erhai’s mother called from the main room: ‘Erhai! Erhai!’
He sat down on the heated brick bed that northern Chinese call a kang, and smoked his way through the best part of a pipe of tobacco. His mother pressed her face against the glass, rapping with her fingers.
‘Come here, both of you!’ She, at least, was beaming with joy.
Erhai simply did not hear her, and his mother pushed open the door. She was used to her son not speaking when he was spoken to, but one glance at his room was enough to show her that there was trouble. She and her husband had already spoken more than once to Xiaohuan about what they had in mind: they just wanted to buy a Japanese woman to have children, that was all, and once she’d had them they would send her packing.
His mother promised to go with her son to collect his wife that day or the day after; they’d be able to persuade her to come back. But right now Erhai should open the bag and let the woman out.
Erhai half closed his eyes, glanced briefly under his lids at his mother, and rose slowly to his feet, muttering: ‘What are you doing? Can’t you open a bag?’
His mother merely said: ‘It’s not me and your father who’ll be having children with her.’ Erhai’s mother knew her son: Erhai was very biddable in his actions, for all that he was not particularly filial in speech, and he was already getting to his feet to follow his mother. He had argued repeatedly with his parents over the purchase of a Japanese woman to continue the Zhang family line, but in his actions he had been respectful, and submissive.
Erhai and his mother passed through the yard, now piled high with snow, and entered the main room. Stationmaster Zhang had gone out to the platform; a goods train was coming through at two, though not stopping, and he had to give the signal.
The room was very warm – his mother had been next door to add more coal to the furnace and let more hot air into the flue leading to the kang. The shape in the sack shrunk into a ball, not moving a muscle. Erhai understood that when his mother told him to open the bag, there was at least something of the notion of ‘lifting the bridal veil’ about it. Besides, his mother did not dare do the deed herself. The Japs had surrendered now, but she was still a bit fearful of them. Never mind that they had been an occupying army of murdering, burning devils, any strange foreigner would have been frightening enough. Erhai could feel his heart banging away like a big drum.
When Erhai and his mother saw someone very small sitting there hugging her knees, they were both struck dumb. The waif’s hair had been cut off an inch from her head, and by the hair alone she and Erhai might have been brothers. Erhai could have spanned her skinny neck with one hand, and her face was scabbed over with mud. Erhai’s mother noticed that the little woman was wearing cut-off trouser
s that barely reached her knees, and that her legs were stained with recently dried blood. The waif looked at her, and one glance was enough to tell her that something was not right. Appalled, she said to Erhai: ‘Go on then, tell her to get up!’
Erhai stood there speechless. His eyes were fully open now.
‘Erhai, tell her to get up, quick!’
Erhai said to the waif sitting shrunk into herself on the floor: ‘Get up.’ He said resentfully to his mother: ‘See what my father’s gone and done! Who’s to say if she’ll even live?’
This was exactly what was worrying Erhai’s mother. If the worst happened and a Jap died in their house, who knew what would come of it? Quite apart from the expense, explaining themselves to the authorities would be troublesome enough.
Erhai’s mother held out both her hands, less than certain what she was doing, but she steeled herself to grasp the waif by the arms. She had told herself beforehand that this creature was seven parts devil to three parts human, but when her hands closed around those arms, she still experienced a moment of pure horror: this was nothing but a bag of bones. She dragged the waif to her feet, and as soon as she relaxed her grip, the young girl fell back down again. The men from the Security Corps had given a guarantee that all the women would be complete in every particular – how could they have sold them a cripple? She must have been shot in the leg, or damaged when her fetters were struck off, leaving her unable to stand upright.
