The Flowers of War Read Free Page B

had to speak civilly to Father Engelmann. George Chen, a twenty-year-old orphan with no family to protect him, was the frequent butt of other people’s bad temper. George was a beggar Father Engelmann had rescued from the streets as a child and sent to cookery school. After a few months, he had come back to the church as a cook, and had changed his name to the English ‘George’.
    George ignored him and addressed Father Engelmann. ‘There’s a bit of rancid butter as well. You told me to throw it away, Father, but I hung on to it. And there’s a jar of pickled vegetables. It’s gone a bit mouldy and it doesn’t smell so good, but it’s fine to eat!’ he announced triumphantly.
    Father Engelmann seemed cheered by George’s words. ‘In a couple of days, things are bound to have settled down, believe me,’ he said. ‘I’ve been to Japan many times and they’re the most courteous and friendly people in the world. The Japanese never permit a leaf out of place in a garden.’
    The girls missed much of the substance of what Father Engelmann said, which they often did even though they had had English classes since they were small. But they were carried away by his infectious optimism and the exact words did not seem to matter.
    Just after the priest had left, there was the sound of a commotion in the kitchen.
    ‘What on earth …?’ exclaimed George and rushed off to investigate.
    A moment later, a woman’s voice asked: ‘Has all the food gone?’
    ‘There are still a few biscuits left,’ Shujuan heard George say.
    Instantly, the girls were on their feet and running in the direction of the voices. Shujuan got there first. George had betrayed them; he was selling off their meagre food supplies. They needed the biscuits to eat with their soup, which wasso watery these days that on its own it did nothing to allay their hunger.
    Three or four of the prostitutes were already tucking into the biscuits. Shujuan recognised their ringleader as Hongling, a curvaceous young woman whose volatile temper was easily aroused. When that happened, her slender eyebrows drew together to form two straight lines, indicating that it would be dangerous to cross her.
    ‘George, how could you give away our biscuits to those women?’ protested Shujuan, pronouncing the words ‘those women’ as if they were a term of abuse.
    ‘But they came and took them!’
    ‘They asked you and you handed them over!’ Sophie exclaimed. Sophie was an orphan; her foreign name had been given to her by the mission schoolteachers.
    ‘Ai-ya! Hoarding food, are we?’ the dark-skinned prostitute called Jade said mockingly.
    ‘Let us borrow just a bit, then tomorrow when the wonton sellers are out in the streets, we’ll buy you dumplings in return, OK?’ said Hongling.
    ‘George, are you deaf?’ yelled Shujuan, suddenly goaded to fury. First her parents had abandoned her like a stray dog to starve in this tumbledown church, nowshe was being betrayed by the cook and bullied by a whore …
    ‘It was nothing to do with him. We found the biscuits ourselves,’ said Hongling, her slender eyebrows arched like crescent moons.
    ‘Was I talking to you?’ Shujuan said, raising a hand threateningly at her smiling adversary.
    Even her classmates were embarrassed at this. ‘Leave her alone!’ they muttered.
    Hongling frowned. ‘You little bitch! What you need is a good f—’ But just at that moment a hand came round from behind her and stopped her mouth.
    The hand belonged to Zhao Yumo. The row in the kitchen could clearly be heard in the cellar, and she had rushed up the ladder to put a stop to Hongling’s foul language. It was evident to the girls that this prostitute was the leader of the pack.
    *     *     *
    Long after the prostitutes had gone back to their lair and her classmates to their attic, Shujuan sat despondently in the kitchen. Her outburst had left her drained, but her head stillwhirled with the exquisitely wounding insults she