He knew they had heard him, so he turned and made for the kitchen.
‘The Japanese are here,’ he called down to the women and soldiers. ‘You’re not to make a sound. Fabio and I will deal with everything!’
One of the women began to ask something, but then fell silent. Someone must have clamped their hand over her mouth or quietly ordered her to shut up.
Father Engelmann pulled a barrel over the trapdoor to the cellar and prepared himself to meet the newcomers. About five paces from the side door he stopped and took a deep breath. Then he ordered Fabio, who was still shouting futile questions, to open up.
Fabio turned to look at Father Engelmann, and was reassured by the older priest’s unruffled bearing and words. It was almost as if the priest had been waiting for this moment, as if he was challenging any spirit or human being not to be quelled and retreat in the face of the divinity which inspired him.
As a result, when the door opened, the Japanese were met by a sage old greybeard who appeared ready to bestow forgiveness to all his flock, of whatever colour and character, guilty and innocent alike. The anger which had accumulated in the Japanese soldiers as they rang the doorbell seemed to evaporate at Father Engelmann’s all-embracing smile.
‘We’re hungry!’ said the junior officer who was in command, in comical English.
‘So are we,’ said Father Engelmann. And he added, with an air of extending compassion to all hungry beings, ‘we’re out of water too.’
‘We want to come in,’ said the officer.
‘I’m sorry, this is an American church. You should treat it as if it were American territory, sir,’ said Father Engelmann, still with a smile on his face.
‘We’ve been into the American embassy.’
Father Engelmann had heard that the Japanese had broken into the embassy, the safest place in the Safety Zone, shooting and plundering everything they could lay their hands on. The cars belonging to the ambassador and to expatriate Americans had all been taken too. It seemed his old church, far away from the city centre, was indeed safer than the Safety Zone.
‘We’re coming in to look for food!’ the officer yelled at him.
The seven or eight soldiers standing behind him seemed to take this as a signal to charge and pressed through the doorway into the courtyard.
‘Now the door’s open, we’re finished!’ whispered Fabio.
‘The city walls of Nanking couldn’t stop them,’ said Father Engelmann. ‘Besides, even the women managed to climb over our walls and get in.’
The two clergymen followed on the heels of the Japanese as they entered the church. It was pitch dark and more bitterly cold even than outside. The soldiers hesitated on the threshold. The beam of the officer’s torch illuminated the figure of Christ hanging from the cross above the altar then shifted to the unfathomable depths under the roof. Then he drew back, as if afraid of an ambush.
Father Engelmann said in low tones to Fabio, ‘As soon as they start to search the workshop, we must create a diversion and draw them off.’
‘What kind of a diversion?’
Father Engelmann pondered. Something less important would have to be sacrificed to protect the most important.
‘Go and tell George to start the car.’
Fabio understood instantly. If the Japanese soldiers could loot a car, they would be rewarded by their seniors and could barter the car with Chinese collaborators for food and valuables that were easier than a car to carry away, such as gold, silver and jewellery. They had been in occupation only a few days and already a thriving black market had grown up.
As soon as the soldiers opened the door to the workshop, a car engine was heard reverberating loudly through the courtyard. It purred smoothly and was clearly an engine of quality. The soldiers flashed their torches around the courtyard to see where the car was and spotted the garage. They also spotted the figure of George, lying underneath, apparently engaged in some repairs.
One soldier gave George a kick in the head. ‘Who’s that?’ he shouted in English.
George’s muffled voice came from beneath the car. ‘I’m fixing it!’ His English was even harder to understand than the officer’s.
‘Come out, George,’ Father Engelmann said.
Fabio had told George to stick to English and had rehearsed what he was to say. But when George slowly crawled out from under the old Ford, he had completely forgotten his lines. His oil-streaked face was filled with panic.
‘Who are you?’ asked the Japanese officer.
‘He’s the cook and handyman,’ said Father Engelmann, placing himself between George and the officer.
The officer turned to Father Engelmann. ‘We need to borrow the car.’
‘This is not my private property,’ the priest answered. ‘It’s not mine to lend you. It belongs to the mission.’ He was well aware that there was no point arguing: the car was lost. But he thought that if he prevaricated, he could persuade the Japanese that the church held nothing else of value. ‘So perhaps you could ask your commanding officer for a receipt for the loan which I can pass to the finance department of the church mission.’
The officer looked at him as if to say, And are you living on the moon? Don’t you know anything about war? But instead he said in English: ‘We’ll get you a receipt as soon as we get to the occupying forces HQ.’
As Father Engelmann and Fabio continued to protest that the car was not theirs to lend, the soldiers ignored them and pushed the Ford out of its garage. The officer sat in the driver’s seat and pumped the throttle a few times, pondered a moment, then started the engine. His men whooped with joy at having landed such valuable booty. Hollering like tribesmen, they ran after it out of the church compound.
Fabio and Father Engelmann breathed audible sighs of relief. George stared after them. He hardly dared believe that the war had really come to the church, brushed past him and left.
‘They think they’ve taken our most valuable possession,’ said Father Engelmann. ‘We should be safer now.’
Twelve
Shujuan and the other girls had no idea what had been going on. After the priest had shouted, ‘You’re not to make a sound or to come down,’ they had not let out a whisper. They had not even crowded around the windows as they had done on previous days. Where the blackout curtains joined, they could see torches flicking back and forth like small searchlights. But they lay motionless on their beds.
It was only when they heard the Ford start up that some of the bolder girls crept to the window and peered through the gaps in the curtains. They could not see much but they could hear a chorus of shouts. In Japanese.
Then there were cheers.
The Japanese Army had finally arrived, and then had driven away with the Ford which Father Engelmann had had for ten years. These were the only two facts that were clear to them.
The girls sat up, wrapped in their quilts, and debated what would happen next time the Japanese came, who they would shoot and what else they would do. Shujuan remembered what she had overheard when she was standing above the cellar holding the shovel, embers glinting in the hot ash.
‘They say that when the Japanese soldiers march into the Safety Zone, what they’re looking for are young girls,’ she said.