The Flowers of War by Geling Yan Page A

down with her to see what was going on, but they were no longer speaking to each other. Since Xiaoyu had betrayed her, Shujuan had not tried to make it up with her, and made a point of turning her back to her in bed. Xiaoyu was never short of close friends, however, and Anna had immediately taken Shujuan’s place.
    Shujuan waited until the girls were snoring and then crept downstairs. Outside, the cold air was biting. She huddled in the snow and peered down into the cellar. At first all she could see was the back of a broad-shouldered,slender-waisted man. In spite of the long, baggy woollen garment he wore, he looked every inch the soldier, the sort who would turn any garment into a military uniform. Shujuan knew that this was the officer who had almost succeeded in pushing the Japanese Army right into the Huangpu River. He had told Father Engelmann all about it. Major Dai was livid about the retreat from Shanghai and the abandonment of Nanking. He could not understand it. If the great retreat ordered by the Nationalist military command had been intended to save lives and to conserve military strength, then why had Chiang Kai-shek turned down a three-day truce between the Japanese and the Chinese which had been negotiated by the International Safety Committee, and would have permitted an orderly retreat from Nanking and a peaceful handover of the city to the Japanese?
    The prostitutes had dressed the young soldier Wang Pusheng in Hongling’s mink coat. They did not have enough bandages and were using patterned silk scarves instead. Wang was a delicate boy to start with; now he almost looked like a girl. He sat up in a makeshift bed, with Cardamom next to him. They had playing cards in their hands and a sheet of newspaper between them served as a card table.
    Shujuan had a restricted view down through the ventilation grille, and could only see whoever happened to come into the frame. Now it was Zhao Yumo; Shujuan could see her talking to the major in low tones, too low for Shujuan to catch what they were saying, no matter how hard she strained to hear. The major appeared to be getting amorous with this Yumo.
    Shujuan felt a surge of hatred for these prostitutes. If they had not forced their way in, the water in the cistern would have been enough for the sixteen girls. The women had used up all the water washing their clothes, their faces and their bums, and made the schoolgirls drink from a filthy pond. In fact, if they had not run out of water, Ah Gu would not have needed to leave the compound, and would not now be missing. Even the heroic Major Dai was letting them have their way with him, right now, before her very eyes. He had let down his defences. He had become dissolute.
    Driven by her fury, Shujuan went to the ash pit behind the kitchen and collected a shovelful of coal dust in which a few embers still glowed. She went back to the ventilation shaft and weighed the shovel speculatively in her hand: if she could get half of it down the shaft and a couple of sparksfell on the faces of those sluts who fed off men’s weaknesses, how happy she would be! How good it would make her and her classmates feel!
    *     *     *
    Down in the cellar, Zhao Yumo sat to one side on an overturned wine barrel and smoked a cigarette while the other women played poker and mah-jong. Major Dai sat beside her.
    ‘The first time I set eyes on you here, you looked familiar,’ he said.
    Yumo smiled. ‘Surely not! I mean, you’re not from Nanking.’
    ‘Nor are you! Have you lived in Shanghai?’
    ‘Yes. I was born in Suzhou and I spent seven or eight years in Shanghai.’
    ‘Have you been to Shanghai recently?’
    ‘Several times.’
    ‘Who with? With a soldier? This July?’
    ‘The end of July. Just when it was at its hottest.’
    ‘You must have gone to the Air Fleet Club. I often go there myself.’
    ‘How would I remember?’ said Yumo, although her smile seemed to indicate that she remembered perfectly well; she just