The Flowers of War Read Free Page A

pushing her towards the exit.
    ‘Out! Get out! Ah Gu! Open the door for her!’ His winter-pale face shone, as if he might break out in a sweat at any moment.
    ‘Ai-ya! Master, you’re my fellow countryman!’ cried Cardamom. She stumbled and her voice became shrill. ‘I beg you, please don’t! I won’t do it again!’
    She had the face of a child, but her body was well developed and she simply bounced back every time he pushed her. ‘Please, master! Teach me good manners, I promise I’ll be good. I’m only fifteen years old! Sister Yumo! Put in a good word for me!’
    The woman with the beautiful back put her bags and valuables in a neat pile and walked over to Fabio and Cardamom who were still struggling. Suddenly Shujuan could see her face. She realised the woman had not a slack bone in her entire body. Every part of her could smile or complain, and was capable of a subtle sign language.
    ‘How many times have I told you to wash your mouth out, Cardamom?’ Yumo said with a smile. She placed herself between the two of them, and pushed Cardamom back towards Jade.
    Meanwhile, Ah Gu was cheerfully leading the women down into the cellar under the kitchen. The prostitutes, wide-eyed with curiosity, commented on everything as they pranced along behind him.
    Pressed up against the attic window Shujuan watched the women go, her hands massaging her belly to ease the pain.

Two

    During prayers that morning, there was the sound of gunfire as if fighting had broken out again somewhere in the city, the salvos coming fast and furious. It lasted for about half an hour. Despite this, Fabio insisted on going to the Safety Zone to find out whether it might still be possible to take the ferry. He came back at midday bringing only bad news. The girls listened wide-eyed as he told Father Engelmann how the streets were lined with corpses, mostly civilians and including children and old people. According to the members of the International Commission in the Safety Zone, the Japanese were shooting anyone who did not understand commands bawled in Japanese, or who ran when they sawguns. They were using the bodies to fill in the holes gouged in the road surface by explosives. When Fabio had finished speaking, he forced a smile at the girls and then glanced back at Father Engelmann. The implication was that the Father had misjudged things. When there was carnage on this scale, how could order be restored within just a couple of days?
    This was at lunch. The sixteen girls sat squeezed down both sides of the refectory table normally used by the clergymen. Since their arrival at the church, Father Engelmann had ordered George to serve him his twice-daily meals of porridge or noodle soup in his room. He was a firm believer that dignity was preserved by maintaining one’s distance. He therefore put at least the patch of grass between himself and the schoolgirls. But as soon as he heard that Fabio was back from the Safety Zone, he had put down his bowl of porridge and hurried over.
    ‘So food and water are critical, now that we’ve just taken in another fourteen women,’ Fabio finished.
    ‘How much food have we got left, George?’ Father Engelmann asked.
    ‘Two buckets of flour, fifty kilos or so,’ said George, ‘but only a peck of rice. There’s no water but what’s in the cistern … oh, and two barrels of wine.’
    Fabio shot George a look. ‘We can’t possibly use wine to wash our faces or our clothes! You can’t make tea with wine or cook food with it. Don’t talk such rubbish!’
    George did not like being patronised.
When the water gets low, you can drink wine instead, Deacon Adornato, since you drink it like water anyway!
he thought to himself.
    ‘It’s better than I imagined,’ was Father Englemann’s unexpected reaction.
    ‘Fifty kilos of flour for so many people? We’ll be living on air in a couple of days!’ Fabio snapped at George. The cook was the only person he could vent his feelings on since he obviously