‘I remember it.’ Another knowing smile. All men liked hanging around her, especially a lonely man like this one. The moment she set eyes on him, she had seen just how lonely Fabio was. No one accepted him as one of their own. He was alien both to the race into which he had been born and to the one in which he had grown up.
Fabio nodded, looking at her.
Yumo took a few steps, then stopped and turned round. ‘Last night, we took a bet,’ she said, ‘about which side you’d be on if the Chinese and foreigners had a fight.’
‘Which do you think?’ asked Fabio.
She looked at him, smiling, then turned to go.
That night, an icy sleet made the temperature plunge. Father Engelmann was reading in his study but felt chilled to the marrow in spite of the fire that burned in the fireplace in the library next door. The damage to the church tower meant that the first-floor rooms were extremely draughty. George made frequent trips to add wood to the fire but it seemed to make no difference. The next time George came up, Father Engelmann said, ‘We’d better go easy on the wood. There isn’t enough to go round, and many old people in the Safety Zone have frozen to death.’
Around midnight, unable to sleep, he returned to the library to find something else to read. When he got to the foot of the stairs, he heard women’s voices. These women are like a virus, he thought. If you weren’t careful, they spread everywhere. When he got to the door, he saw Yumo, Nani and Hongling huddled around the embers which glowed in the fireplace, holding out a garish assortment of underwear to dry in the warmth and giggling in low voices.
Here! In this place full of sacred books and holy pictures!
Father Engelmann’s jaw muscles went into spasm. Convinced that these women would pay no attention when he rebuked them, he called Fabio from his bedroom.
‘Fabio! What are these creatures doing here?’
Fabio, who had been drinking heavily, had just nodded off. The alcohol fuelled his fury. ‘Blasphemers! How dare you come in here? Do you know what this place is?’ he yelled.
‘We’re so cold down there, we’ve got chilblains. Look!’ And Hongling pulled her bare feet with their painted toenails from her shoes and held them up before the two clergymen. Seeing Fabio jerk backwards as if she was contagious, Nani chortled in glee. Yumo elbowed her sharply; she knew they were in trouble now. This was the first time the distinguished old priest had really lost his composure.
‘Let’s go,’ she said, hiding away the brassiere she was holding. Her face was burning hot, her back icy cold.
‘I’m not going!’ said Hongling. ‘There’s a fire in here. Why go back and freeze to death?’
She turned her back on the clergymen and stretched her bare feet towards the fireplace. She wriggled her toes as if her feet were talking in sign language.
‘If you don’t get out of here this instant, I’ll make you all leave the church immediately!’ said Fabio.
‘And how will you make us do that?’ asked Hongling, her big toe managing to be both mischievous and provocative.
Yumo grabbed her arm. ‘Just stop that! Come on!’
‘You want us to leave? It’s easy! Give us a big brazier.’
‘George!’ Father Engelmann could see a shadow wavering at the bend of the staircase. George Chen had come over to see what was happening but, deciding it was best to stay out of trouble, was sneaking off down the stairs.
‘I saw you! George, come here!’
George came in reluctantly and took in the scene at a glance. ‘Father, have you not gone to bed yet?’ he asked innocently.
‘I asked you to put the fire out. Did you not understand?’ Father Engelmann said, pointing at the fireplace.
‘I was just about to,’ said George.
‘You’ve obviously added more wood!’ said Father Engelmann.
‘But George can’t bear to see a nice woman like me freeze,’ said Hongling with a twinkle in her eye.
Five
Outside, in the dark and the cold, a Chinese soldier pulled his greatcoat tightly around him and tried, in vain, to sleep. For the past two days he had been hiding in the church’s graveyard, surviving on strips of dried yam that he had found hanging under the eaves of a bombed building, and on water from the cistern.
The soldier was twenty-nine-year-old Major Dai, of the Second Regiment of the 73rd Division of the Nationalist Army. On the night of December 12, while everyone in the compound slept, exhausted by their failed attempt to board the ferry, Dai had climbed over the wall into the church grounds in a desperate search for safety.
Major Dai’s unit was part of a crack division which Chiang Kai-shek had used against the Japanese in Shanghai. Chiang Kai-shek had three regiments of the calibre of the Seventy-Third, and they were the jewels in his crown. The military instructor for all three divisions was General von Falkenhausen, a German aristocrat with a German temperament to match. The troops that had almost succeeded in driving the Japanese Army into the Huangpu River in the space of a week were Major Dai’s.
On the evening of the twelfth, Major Dai was prepared to take half a battalion and defend Nanking’s Central Road to the death. As it got dark, they came across large numbers of soldiers running in the direction of the river. The soldiers spoke an almost incomprehensible dialect but Dai gathered that, according to them, his commanding officer, General Tang, had called a meeting of senior officers that afternoon and decided on a general retreat to the river. They said the order to retreat had been given an hour ago.
This could not be true, Dai thought. There had been no order to retreat received from his runner. If Major Dai’s crack troops had not received such orders, then what had made this rabble decide to throw away their weapons, bury their munitions and retreat?
Those in favour and those against retreat then got involved in discussions that became so acrimonious shots were fired. One of Dai’s company captains was pushed to the ground by a retreating soldier and, when he got to his feet, he shot the man. At that, those under orders to defend the city split into two. Most were swept along by the retreating forces. Twenty or thirty soldiers were left and, taking advantage of the fact that they were still armed and the retreating forces had laid down their weapons, launched an attack on them. After about five minutes of being fired on, the retreating officers and men took refuge in tanks and lorries. Major Dai and his men blockaded the vehicles. In those few moments of pandemonium, it dawned upon Major Dai with terrible clarity what the word ‘rout’ meant. For a military man such as he was, doomsday could not have been more tragic than this. He gave the order to cease fire.
By the time he and his junior officers arrived at the river, it was a desperate scene: bloodied bodies crammed the banks, hands emerged from the water to cling to the gunwales of every boat. Dai’s officers escorted him up and down, proclaiming his rank and number, but no one heeded them and they could not get near the few remaining boats which could take them to safety. By one o’clock in the morning, those wanting to board outnumbered those on the boats by a hundred to one. Innumerable hands still clung to the gunwales, and even the decks, with inhuman persistence, until the captain threatened to hack them off.
Dai decided this was futile. The river was now filled not just with motor boats and rowing boats, but wooden bathtubs, camphorwood chests and scrubbing boards. People, out of their minds with desperation, were prepared to
