every day, you wouldn’t behave so disgracefully,’ said Fabio.
Shujuan smiled in triumph as she saw the whore Yumo hang her head.
Ten
When Fabio drove to collect water from the pond the next day, Ah Gu’s body emerged from the mud. Fabio’s stomach churned as he tried to imagine how the old servant had died. He pictured him at the pond with two buckets strung from his shoulder-pole. He must have bumped into Japanese soldiers who, no doubt, demanded the buckets. Ah Gu would not have understood what they said and the Japanese probably found it less trouble to shoot at him than to explain. Ah Gu must have panicked and tried to run but ended up in the pond. Perhaps then a second bullet hit him and he sank beneath the water.
Fabio waded knee-deep in the mud and pulled Ah Gu towards the bank. As he heaved and heaved, he sensed he had an audience: behind him stood a dozen Japanese, their guns trained on him. But when Fabio turned round, the guns were lowered one by one. As a white man, he got better treatment than Ah Gu.
Fabio drove back with the body. Ah Gu had been thin and dark-skinned. Now his corpse was bloated and bleached pale from immersion in the pond water. Father Engelmann gave the old servant a simple funeral and he was buried in the graveyard behind the church.
After George had shovelled the last earth into the grave and gone back to the kitchen with Fabio, Father Engelmann stayed in the graveyard. The cypresses stood dense with their second growth. They were mighty good cypresses; good enough to build another Noah’s Ark. It was a windless morning, yet the treetops stirred nervously. He knelt down beside Ah Gu’s grave and his knees crackled like charcoal in a fire. Several days with insufficient food had altered the way he moved, made him slower. He risked feeling faint if he did not give his blood enough time to pump to his head. Recently he had been economising on movements, reducing them to the absolutely necessary minimum, so that no calories should go to waste.
It was eerily quiet. Under the austere tombstones lay missionaries from America from over one hundred years ago. One grave that stood out from the rest belonged to the church’s founder, Father Roesing. It looked elaborate but incomplete. Several months ago, a severe rainstorm had flooded the graveyard, which was lower than the rest of the church compound, and Father Roesing’s grave had collapsed. In the middle of reconstruction, the workers went to join the refugees fleeing the war, leaving the job unfinished. Now, the fallen cross lay on the ground.
Despite the fact that the church compound was more crowded than it had ever been, Father Engelmann felt entirely alone. He couldn’t even talk to Fabio, despite having known him for years. He didn’t know why, but he and Fabio always seemed to get off on the wrong foot; whenever Fabio came to talk to him, he was enjoying a bit of peace and quiet, and when he emerged and longed to talk to Fabio, the younger priest was either half-hearted about engaging in conversation or was simply nowhere to be found. Father Engelmann came to the sad conclusion that most people in the world were like himself and Fabio—unable to leave each other alone, but equally unable to be together. When A wanted B, B would be entirely happy with his own company and would not want to be disturbed. And when B needed the companionship or looked for solace in A’s company, his needs would just be a burden on A. Untimely demands for companionship were an irritating nuisance. In order to guarantee that one would not have to suffer this nuisance, it was necessary to spurn all human companionship. Human beings came together not because they got on well but because they could not do without each other.
Just now he was having to put up with the companionship of the women and soldiers in the cellar, and it was a nuisance, pure and simple. What was more, it was hugely dangerous.
The day after the gravedigger had left the wounded soldiers at the church, Father Engelmann had made a trip to the Safety Zone. He discovered that the Japanese Army were searching it several times a day, and taking away any fit young men they could find on the pretext that they must be Chinese soldiers in hiding. The authorities rushed madly hither and thither in a futile attempt to get them back. If any young men were so foolish as to offer resistance, they would be shot on the spot. When Father Engelmann heard this, he swallowed back the request he had been about to make—that his colleagues in the Safety Zone take in the wounded soldiers. He did, however, have a quiet word with Dr Robinson, who was treating an endless stream of injuries; could he spare an hour to come to the church to perform an operation? What kind of operation? asked the doctor. A wound in the abdomen. He had no sooner said these words when Dr Robinson asked him anxiously if this was a Chinese prisoner of war. If so, Engelmann should get rid of him as soon as possible. Some scumbag on the burial team had betrayed the gravediggers who had tried to save the Chinese prisoners, the doctor told him. As a result, early the next morning, the Japanese had buried a number of gravediggers alive. From now on, labourers disposing of the corpses would be under close surveillance. Everyone was under close surveillance. Dr Robinson warned Father Engelmann that the church was by no means safe.
Major Dai watched Father Engelmann kneeling in the graveyard. He wasn’t sure why he had come here, to the place where he had first broken into the church compound. He just knew he couldn’t carry on playing mah-jong with the prostitutes. He had to get away, to start being useful. Spending any amount of time with women drove him mad, especially women like these, who kicked up such a fuss about the most trivial thing. He felt thoroughly dejected and confused. He would rather have died cleanly in battle than spend his time with these powdered and painted women. Only one woman understood his grief, and that was Zhao Yumo. If only he could find where Father Engelmann had hidden his gun, he could leave this prison.
Father Engelmann looked up and saw him. ‘Good afternoon, Major,’ he said. ‘Are you looking for something?’
Dai said nothing, suppressing his desire to ask for his pistol back.
It was strange: Father Engelmann’s Chinese should have been perfect by now, yet it sounded so foreign. It was as if the Chinese words were giving expression to foreign thought processes and feelings.
Father Engelmann cast a complacent glance around the cemetery. Then he read out the names of the seven priests who lay beneath the tombstones, rather as if he were introducing them at a social gathering. Dai listened patiently, feigning interest.
‘Do you think these Westerners are stupid to travel halfway across the world only to end up buried here?’ Father Engelmann asked.
Dai wasn’t sure how to answer.
Father Engelmann tried another question. ‘Where were you trained in the Soviet Union?’
‘Moscow.’
‘Russia always produces excellent soldiers. Because of their lack of rationality. And Chinese armies fight lousy battles, also for lack of rationality.’
Father Engelmann smiled to himself. He was talking with this Chinese army officer in this manner because his own rationality was wearing thin. Only he himself knew how sensitive and emotional he really was. Usually, if he ever felt this way, he would go and find some friends in the Western community to talk to over a cup of tea. Now they were somewhere in the US or other countries, reading the news about this hell, thanking God they had fled it.
‘I have been thinking about this lack of rationality in the East. It gives birth to the most exquisite literature and arts in Russia, Japan and China, yet also the most unthinkable cruelty –’
‘Father,’ Dai interrupted, ‘I want to leave here. I have to … I have to go away. I have to leave the other men here with you.’
‘To go where?’
‘Please return my weapon to me.’
‘You won’t get far. The Japanese are everywhere. They have three hundred thousand soldiers in Nanking. If you’re armed, it’ll be even harder to get away.’
‘I can’t stay here any more,’ said Dai. What he had wanted to say, but did not, was that he felt as if he would rot if he had to stay in that cellar any longer.
