The Flowers of War Read Free

resentment against her parents as she watched George struggling with the woman in his arms. By now the front of the mink coat was wide open revealing an expanse of flesh the colour of sour milk. Shujuan shrank back into the doorway, her face aflame. Then she turned and fled back up to the attic, to which the other girls had already retreated to watch events from the windows.
    There was pandemonium in the courtyard as the women ran around in search of food, water and a place to relieve themselves. One told another to hold up an expensive-looking bottle-green velvet cape in front of her, saying apologetically to the ‘foreign monks’ that they had been on the run all night. She could not wait any longer, she said, and disappeared behind the cape as if taking a curtain call.
    ‘Animals!’ yelled Fabio in English.
    ‘Please control yourself, Fabio,’ Father Engelmann said quietly. Then he turned to the prostitutes, including the onewho had emerged cheerfully from behind the velvet cape and stood holding up her trousers by their cord. ‘Since you have come to stay here –’ he chose his words carefully – ‘I beg you, as the priest of this church, to behave yourselves with decency.’
    ‘Father, listen …!’ expostulated Fabio.
    ‘You listen to me! Let them come in,’ said Father Engelmann. ‘At least for today. Once the Japanese have completed their occupation, they’ll have responsibility for keeping the peace in the city. Then we can ask these women to leave. The Japanese people are well known to be law-abiding. I’m sure their troops will soon impose order on this chaos.’
    ‘They won’t be able to impose order in a day!’
    ‘Well then, two days. In the meantime, they can camp in the cellar.’
    Father Engelmann turned and walked back towards his house. He had announced his decision and there was no room for further discussion.
    ‘Father, I don’t agree!’ Fabio shouted after him.
    Father Engelmann stopped and turned round. As invincibly refined as ever, he said quietly: ‘I know you don’t agree, Fabio.’ Then he continued on his way. What he had not said was even clearer:
Your disagreement is not of the
slightest importance to me
. His refinement conferred unchallengeable superiority. Although Fabio’s American parents had died when he was young and he had been cared for by a Chinese woman in the countryside of Yangzhou, he looked down on lower-class Chinese in the same way that the local dignitaries or militia did. But if they were several rungs below him in the social scale, then so was he to Father Engelmann who regarded him as inferior because of his rural upbringing.
    At that moment, a young prostitute made for the door of the building that housed the workshop. She had seen the girls’ heads at the attic windows and felt sure that it would be a good place to go. At least it would be warmer and more comfortable than outside. Fabio grabbed her from behind but she slipped out of his grasp like an eel. Fabio made another attempt, and this time got hold of the bundle she carried on her back. It was of coarse cloth, less slippery than her satin dressing gown, and he managed to get a purchase and pull her away from the doorway. But the bundle came undone and a sudden hailstorm of small bone mah-jong pieces rained down on the ground. They were fine-quality pieces – you could tell that from the clear, clinking noise they made as they fell.
    The stout, dark-skinned woman shouted: ‘If you lose one piece, Cardamom, I’ll skin your arse alive!’
    ‘There’s nothing wrong with my arse, Jade!’ Cardamom shouted back. ‘I bet he’d like a bit of it too!’
    The schoolgirls exchanged amazed glances. Fancy a woman as dark-skinned as that having a name like Jade! As for the girl called Cardamom, she seemed barely older than they were.
    Fabio had let go of Cardamom but her words, together with the threat that she might be around to say more things like this, goaded him into grabbing her again and