St. Freda

A story...

Photo by Artur Kornakov on Unsplash

"Of the five of them, Su-mei said, Wei was the youngest. I confess, I never did get the chance to know him as well as I could have—or should have. But at fourteen, Su-mei said, it was the first time he'd even been permitted to leave the mission and make the trip down to the village. Lin said Wei was excited about sleeping out overnight—just like any other boy would be, I suppose—but he was also quick to say the boy didn't handle it well. He kept them all up for most of the night, Lin said, frightened at every sound he heard. He was homesick, Su-mei was quick to point out—even though the mission was just over the top of the trees. Lin said Wei was worried about his younger brothers. He said Su-mei went to him and held him in her arms, rocking him, until he fell asleep. She was like that, he said, like a mother hen protecting her brood. You see, Lin and Su-mei were born at the mission—or came to it when they were still young—but he said Wei and his brothers had only been there three or four years. I suppose it was hard for him to share the sounds of the night with the dreams he had as well.

"Lin said Wei was hysterical when they entered the mission compound. He began sorting through the dead, pulling at them in a desperate search for his brothers; he was unconcerned about the blood covering his body, and detached from everything he saw, or touched. Alex was just as bad. Lin said of the five of them, only he and Su-mei were able to look beyond the tragedy and think about what had to be done. Lin was sure it was bandits—who else could it be except a rival of the Warlord's? It was a deliberate declaration of war thrown into the face of Feng-shih, Su-mei added. He said they both understood they'd have to make the trip out to the Warlord; it was the only way they'd be able to avenge the massacre, Lin said, dealing from strength. He told Alex as much. Being the oldest, Alex was supposed to be responsible. He was nineteen, Lin said; Freda was seventeen, and both he and Su-mei were sixteen. But Alex was in no condition to do anything. He was looking for his brother's body as eagerly as Wei. There were forty-seven bodies to look through; forty-seven individual lives they'd all shared a part of theirs with—but Alex and Wei wanted the only common connections they had to themselves, and wouldn't rest until they found them. Lin said Alex kept quoting scriptures to himself, but the tears were running down his face so fast, and the emotion was draining out of him with so much intensity, that he'd have to sit among the dead bodies trying to collect himself.

"Su-mei went to help Wei, while Lin went with Alex, and together the four of them found the bodies. Lin said Freda was on her knees the entire time—even when they began to dig the mass grave—praying. Before they fell asleep, Su-mei told him to go out and get her. He said she hadn't even bothered to wipe the blood off her face. It had dried in her hair and down the length of her face and neck. Su-mei cleaned her up the best she could, and then she lay down with Wei and they went to sleep.

"I need another drink," Rudi said at last, and I agreed.

I called the waiter over and ordered another round, trying to imagine the grizzly find and how I would have reacted to it. They were young—too young perhaps—but tragedy doesn't seem to take age into consideration, does it? I wasn't too far removed as far as my own age was concerned, that I couldn't imagine how they would have felt. But trying to understand one person's loss is difficult if you haven't suffered the loss of a close friend, or parent yourself; I hadn't. I was an innocent as far as that went, and it’d be years before I could fully comprehend what the old man was telling me. At the time, it was just a story; something that grew from a simple magazine article about Rudi, the seventy year old addict, into part of a novel I'd never complete. I'd carry it around with me for thirty years before I felt I could do it any justice.

The waiter came back with our beers and put them on the table, saying something to Rudi that I didn't understand. The old man nodded slowly and thanked the man before standing up. He told me he'd be right back, and picked up the small canvas bag he had beside his chair and went out to the back room. I could hear him talking to someone—it sounded more like arguing—their voices getting louder, and then a door slammed and everything was quiet. I was uncomfortable. I suspected the old man was probably trying to buy heroin to keep himself functioning for one more day, and I didn't know how I was supposed to react to that. I decided the best thing for me to do would be to ignore it. I could hear a radio somewhere in the distance of the kitchen, sounding tinny and not quite on the station, and the whir of a fan with a broken blade somewhere just as far off, scratching with a monotony of repetition as I watched a fly bumping up against a dirty window pane.

Rudi came back fifteen minutes later. His thick white hair was brushed back just as though he'd run his hands under the tap and dried them on his hair. He seemed to be standing straighter, like he found something that made him feel younger, and look younger—and I suppose in his own mind he had—though he still looked like the same pathetic junkie to me. There was a distinctive odour about him however, sickly-sweet, like rose water, and it seemed to ooze out of his pores as he sat down and placed his bag on the floor, kicking it under the chair. I looked at his arm as he leaned over and saw the unmistakable redness of his latest puncture wound.

"It's disgusting, isn't it?" he asked me when he sat down and took a short sip of his beer. I thought it might be better for me if I didn't say anything, and he went on. "I need it to make it through the day. Every day," he added. "I used to use it to hide from my life, now I need it just so I can live my life," he said with a slow shake of his head. "It's strange how life can do that to you," he added as he fished for a cigarette.

"I'm not here to judge you," I said slowly.

"Judge me?" he said with a smile as he scratched at what I thought must be a permanent itch on his cheek. He pulled a cigarette out of the broken package with a precision I never would have expected from him half an hour earlier. "Do you think a man willingly does this to himself?" he asked me. "Do you think I woke up one morning and said to myself: 'I think I'll become a heroin addict?' It's all part of the story of how I got here, and it goes back to that time in Manchuria."

"You mean with Lin?" I asked.

"Freda," he corrected me. "This story's about her. She's the only one that matters," he added as he took another sip of his beer and closed his eyes slowly, putting the cigarette between his lips as he searched the table for a match.

"Then tell me what happened," I said, sitting back in my chair.

Rudi smiled, looking at me through half-closed lids as he spoke to me slowly, precisely—as if he was sitting somewhere else, and his body was the vessel he used to take him there. He lit the cigarette slowly, deliberately, and sat back, scratching at his cheek slowly.

*

"They made their way across the valley and into the hills, keeping off the main roads and sticking to the trails the peasants had been using in those same parts for centuries. They didn't want to come across the bandits, Lin said, and it was a quiet trek. No one was talking. Alex led the way once he finally agreed that going to the Warlord was their only chance. He didn't know the way any better than anyone else, but it helped him to keep his mind off of everything that'd happened in the last twenty-four hours. Lin followed behind at a distance; he didn't want to have to face Alex anymore than he had to, and he certainly didn't want to have to look at Wei. Su-mei and Freda were talking with Wei, trying to console him. Alex walked alone. Lin said Freda was herself again. She had no recollection of the day before; nothing at all. She only remembered a part of the morning, she said, hearing the guns—the thunder she called it—and seeing the smoke; but after that...nothing. I suppose it was all for the best.

"They had little or no food, Lin said, and as the day wore on they were getting hungry, but he says he tried to be stoical about it, and not complain. Freda kept saying that God would provide for them, and he did in his own little ways. They came across wild berries and fruit—and then they stumbled on an orchard in the middle of the trail, with a stream of fresh water that broke across the rocks, coming out of the mountains somewhere to the north. It was strikingly beautiful, Su-mei said, with rich, verdant patches of grass and willows swaying in the gentle breeze. There was the gentle hum of insects and a full chorus of unseen birds—an idyllic setting resplendent in the natural beauty of God's sylvan handiwork, she said—or something like that. Maybe it’s just that I've always imagined it like that; like a painting you've seen, but can't remember the name of—like a tree-lined path paved with apple blossoms in the Spring.

"It was short lived however. The orchard belonged to a small village they found on the other side of a clearing. It'd been destroyed. The bodies were laying in front of the huts, some of them naked, others burned; all of them dead. Lin said it was as if the world had come to a sudden end, and they were the only survivors. They did what they could for the dead, and cleaned out one of the huts where they spent the night. Lin said that night Freda walked through the village alone, and he found her some hours later in a small hut after Su-mei told him to go out and look for her. She was kneeling in front of a broken crucifix, her hands covered in blood, and her face too. He thought the blood was from moving the bodies; she said she didn't know where it came from. He thought nothing of it, and told her that it might be safer if she came back to the hut and slept there for the night. She let out a sigh and stood up. She seemed different, he said; he noticed there was something about her that had changed in the course of the last twenty-four hours, but he dismissed it as quickly as the thought came to him, because he assumed they'd all changed in one way or another. He only had to look at Alex for confirmation of that, I suppose. They found what little food there was left, and packed whatever they could onto a cart they pulled the rest of the way: Lin pulling, with Wei, Su-mei, and Freda pushing. Alex was still walking in front.

"They set out for the Warlord's palace, Lin said; I have to smile at the idea of that modest compound being considered a palace. It was large enough, but with all the refugees who'd been coming in over the course of the last week, it was looking smaller—crowded, cluttered, and in total disarray—with a cloud of blue smoke that hung in the air constantly—choking in its thickness, and stifling too—all from the cooking fires that were burning daily. There was a babble of voices that kept up a constant harangue as neighbour fought with neighbour; the closeness and cramped quarters too much for some of them to accept; that and the fact that they'd either lost everything, having been forced to leave it all behind—all of them. There were over three hundred families that showed up seeking protection. They were let in reluctantly, and because there were so many people now, food was becoming the single most important issue to all of us. Lin said the fact that they had their own food was the only reason they were let in at all—but I all ready said that.

"As I said before, I saw them when they arrived, but I didn't pay any attention to them. I knew I'd see them soon enough; the Warlord insisted on seeing at least one person who represented the new arrivals, hoping to collect whatever information he could from them. Most of what we learned was of little use; the news was usually two or three days old. From what we'd gathered so far, we knew it was a small company of soldiers—no more than three hundred men—but they had at least two, possibly three cannons, as well as armoured vehicles and trucks to pull them. We knew it was only a matter of time before they found us.

"Do you know anything about China? The China of twenty or twenty-five years ago?" Rudi asked me casually, reaching up to scratch his cheek again.