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the renowned Rockefeller-built Union Hospital.
    A brief visitation to Martha’s hospital ward, and a bundle of Peking peonies as long-stemmed as she, was the last I saw of her. Later reportage from the legatine confirmed her slowrecovery and eventual marriage to a jealous and, might I add, vindictive Harvard man, thusly freeing her, at least temporarily, from the urge to prey on future guests of the meager accommodations that offered little accommodating comfort except her own cold frame.

12
    For all that I had nightly contributed to her unsplintering, Martha fulfilled my petty wish, lending me the key to a file merely labeled as “Rape of H’s Daughter.” (Oh the fire of anger was aflame already!)
    The legal memorandum to the office of the ambassador drafted by Bernard Buchanan, Esq. (Columbia, LLB), to find legal ground to initiate the act of war, outlined the barebones known facts: innocent A abducted and raped by a thugly village lord named Wang Dan, who was a scion of a tea trade fortune who forfeited the chosen path of his forefathers to take up the sword and form a hedonist sect with its members numbering in the tens of thousands and who had anointed himself the son of God.
    Our buccaneering Bernie went on to paint with valiant strokes the sparring feuds, predating A’s rape, between Reverend H and the self-made messiah over provisions, parishioners, and properties.
    H (Phillips Andover, Yale) was no cowardly man of the cloth. Impinging on the principles he held steadfast, guns were secretively requisitioned from a British supplier, Dunhill, Moore & Bro. of London, via the stinking port named Fragrant Island. His flocks of Rice Christians were immobilized, and skirmishes were had with Wang Dan’s hoodedswordsmen and robed arsonists, making the regions southeast to Peking into a present-day crusaders’ Holy Land. Bloodshed, not quite, but battles galore. A series of diplomatic and governmental interference—Americans asking the Manchurian Court to calm its subjects down, which was duly regarded as an insulting and inciting gesture—only heightened the stakes and worsened the hostility. H’s unbending commitment to his daughter’s honor made him a hero, making the Hua Cun Congregational Church of northern China a strong hold of sorts among other foreign fanatics deadly bent on saving Manchurian souls.
    The lone Brit merchant of war supplies no longer sufficed. In war, all churches and chapels were brothers. An arsenal of Italian bullets, German rifles, American grenades, and Russian sabres was stacked behind the towering H.
    On the opposition, Wang Dan, H’s crusty counterpart, a prior anti-Confucius atheist in the eyes of his countrymen, now stood an icon of patriotism. More hooded swordsmen swore their legions, and robed arsonists aided Wang’s ascension. It was war or nothing, fingers on the trigger, swords unsheathed. But on the day of the planned confrontation, upon the testy abutting ground that would soon be soaked with blood, in walked my pubescent blonde, my Annabelle, a Bible in one hand, a basket of freshly picked wild flowers in the other, singing hymnal songs in Mandarin. She wore white that day, a token beseeching peace and a symbol of hymenal purity. The shouts of men at war poured forth from opposite camps, H’s command being most audible, but undaunted was my angel of faith and dove of goodwill. Buchanan’s narration understandably faltered under the weighty import of such amoment forthwith, but the scribe rose up to the occasion as a good sergeant would do, albeit on paper, and penned with gut-wrenching acute vividness the following thematic passage, which I must quote verbatim in order not to undo the gallantry of the scene to follow:
    Imminently guns were lowered on H’s camp; swords and daggers were sheathed on the other. In the golden wheat field the battle cries suddenly quieted into a silence of disbelief. When Miss A reached the vast middle ground field, the Christians, at least