The Devil of Nanking (20 page)

‘Yes.’

‘Is that what you meant by . . . embellish?’

‘Yes. It’s one of Ogawa’s crime scenes.’ Calmly he put his finger on the photo and pulled it across the table. ‘One of the crimes attributed to the Beast of Saitama. The rumour is that on first glance at the body, the police could see no clear way that the – the
internals
had been removed. It is a source of amazement to me, really it is, the level of ingenuity that mankind, or womankind, can reach when dealing in cruelty.’ He pushed the photo back and began tying the portfolio with the battered black ribbon. ‘Oh, and by the way,’ he said, ‘I shouldn’t waste time looking at Shen Nong’s classifications if I were you.’

I looked up, blinking at him, my face numb. ‘I’m – I’m sorry?’

‘I said don’t waste time with Shen Nong’s classifications. It’s not a plant you’re looking for.’

I had stopped sleeping. The photograph in Shi Chongming’s portfolio kept waking me, infecting my thoughts, making me wonder how far I was prepared to go to please him. And when it wasn’t the Nurse’s ‘embellishments’, it was Jason who agonized me and kept my skin electric and uncomfortable against the sheets at night. Sometimes, on the occasions when he appeared where I least expected him, in the corridor outside my room, or at the bar when I got up to find a clean glass, watching me in silence with his calm eyes, I told myself he was teasing me – performing an elaborate
pas de deux
for his own amusement, dancing round me in shadowy places in the house, a harlequin slithering down the corridor in the night. But sometimes, particularly when he watched me as we all walked home from the club at night, I had the sense he was trying to look deeper – trying to see under my clothes. Then I’d get the usual horrible sensation in my stomach, and I’d have to belt my coat tighter, turn up the collar, cross my arms and walk faster, so that he fell away behind me, and all I had to think about were the caustic comments coming from the twins.

The house seemed to get lonelier and lonelier. One morning, a few days after I’d visited Shi Chongming, I woke early and lay on my futon listening to the silence, acutely conscious of the rooms stretching away from me in every direction, the clicking floorboards and unswept corners, full of secrets and maybe unexpected deaths. Locked-off rooms that no one alive had ever been inside. The others were still asleep, and suddenly I couldn’t bear the silence any longer. I got up, had breakfast of Chinese duck-pears and strong coffee, then put on a linen dress, gathered up my notepads, my
kanji
books, and carried everything down into the garden.

It was an unusually warm, motionless day – almost like summer. One of those mid-autumn mornings when the sky was so clear you almost feared to let go of belongings for the chance that they could be whisked straight up into the blue, disappearing for ever. I’d never imagined Japanese skies to be so clear. The steamer chairs were still there, surrounded by soggy mounds of cigarette ends where the Russians had sat gossiping in the summer. I put all my stuff down on one and turned to look round. Next to the old pond I could see the remains of a path – ornamental stepping-stones winding away into the undergrowth towards the closed-off rooms. I took a few steps along it, my arms out as if I was balancing. I followed it round the pond, past the lantern and the stone bench, into the area that Shi Chongming had found so fascinating. I got to the edge of the undergrowth and stopped, looking down at my feet.

The path continued into the trees, but in the centre of the stepping-stone I’d stopped at was a single white stone, fist-sized and tied like a gift in rotting bamboo. In a Japanese garden everything is coded and arcane – a stone placed on a stepping-stone was a clear signal to guests:
Do not go any further
.
This is private
. I stood for a while staring at it, wondering what it was hiding. The sun went behind a cloud and I rubbed my arms, suddenly cold. What happens when you break the rules in a place where you don’t belong? I took a breath and stepped over the stone.

I paused, expecting something to happen. A small bird with long trailing wings lifted off the ground and settled in one of the trees above, but otherwise the garden was silent. The bird sat there, seeming to watch me, and for a while I stared back at it. Then, conscious of its gaze on me, I turned and continued through the roots and shadows to the closed-off wing until I found myself at the wall where I could look along the length of the house at all the firmly barricaded windows twined with creepers. I stepped over a fallen branch and stood close to one of the security grilles, the baked metal making my skin warm. I put my nose up to it and I could smell the dust and mould of the closed-off rooms. The basement was supposed to be flooded and dangerous. Jason had been in there once, months ago, he had told us. There were piles of rubbish and things that he didn’t want to look at too closely. Pipes had cracked in earthquakes and some of the rooms were like underground lakes.

I turned back to the garden, thinking of Shi Chongming’s words:
Its future is waiting to be uncovered. Its future is waiting to be uncovered
. I had the oddest feeling. The feeling that the future of this garden was focused specifically on the area I was standing in: the area around the stone lantern.

The truth is emerging on the radio. It is not good. Yesterday, after the explosion of Zhongshan gate, it seems the IJA poured through two openings in the city wall. I was lucky to escape in time. During the afternoon they moved into the city, bringing their tanks, their flame-throwers, their howitzers. By nightfall the Japanese had captured every government building in Nanking.

When we heard this Shujin and I hung our heads. We didn’t speak for a long time. Eventually I got to my feet, switched off the radio and put my hands on her shoulders.

‘Don’t worry. It will all be over before our b—’ I hesitated, looking down at her head, at the thick dark hair, the vulnerable stripe of white skin along the parting. ‘It will be over before little moon arrives. We’ve enough food and water for more than two weeks. And besides,’ I took a breath and tried to sound reassuring and calm, ‘the Japanese are civilized. It won’t be very long before we are told it is safe to return to the streets.’

‘Our future is our past and our past is our future,’ she whispered. ‘We already know what will happen . . .’

We already know what will happen?

Maybe she is right. Maybe all truths are in us at birth. Maybe for years all we do is swim away from what we already know, and maybe only old age and death allow us to swim back, back to something that is pure, something unchanged by the act of surviving. What if she is right? What if everything is there already – our fate, and our loves, and our children to be? What if they are all in us from the day we are born? If that is so then I already know what is going to happen in Nanking. I just need to reach for that answer . . .

Ha! Look at us now. Just one short day later and all my confidence is exhausted. Shujin, my clairvoyant, did not foresee this! The food is gone. At about one o’clock this morning we heard a sound in the front courtyard. When I crept to the shutters to look I saw two boys in shabby clothes dragging the sorghum sack and the strings of meat over the wall. They had thrown down a rope and were clambering up it. I shouted and ran down the stairs, grabbing up the iron bar and bellowing at them in rage, but by the time I had unbolted the door and raced out into the street, clattering among livestock braces and overturning old water barrels, they had disappeared.

‘What is it?’ Shujin appeared in the doorway, wearing a long nightgown. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and she was holding an oil lamp. ‘Chongming? What’s happened?’

‘Ssssh. Hand me my coat, then go back inside and lock the doors. Don’t open them until I return.’

I slipped between the abandoned houses and scrubland until I reached the Lius’ street. His was the only inhabited house in his alley, and as I turned the corner I saw the three of them outside the house, milling around in the watery moonlight. Liu’s wife was crying, and his son was standing at the head of the alley, facing out into the street, iron-legged, trembling with fury. He was holding a wooden cart shaft straight in front of him as if ready to strike someone. I knew even before I approached that the family had suffered the same fate as us.

They took me into the house. Liu and I lit a pipe and sat near the coal-burning stove to keep warm, with the door to the alley standing open because his son insisted on staying a few feet from it, in the street-squat position the young find so natural, with his knees near his shoulders like bony wings. The shaft lay at his feet, ready to be snatched up. His eyes were intent, as fierce as a tiger’s, fixed on the street at the top of the alley.

‘We should have left the city a long time ago,’ Liu’s wife said bitterly, turning away from us. ‘We’re all going to die here.’

We watched her retreat, and soon we could hear muffled weeping from a room at the back. I shot an embarrassed look at Liu, but he sat, expressionless, looking through the doorway over the roofs to where, in the distance, a grey pall of smoke blotted out the stars. It was only the flickering pulse in his neck that gave away his feelings.

‘What do you think?’ he said eventually, not turning to look at me. ‘We have food for two days, then we’ll starve. Do you think we should go out to look?’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said quietly, watching the flicker of red illuminate the underside of the billowing smoke. ‘The city has fallen. It won’t be long before it’s safe to leave our houses. Maybe two days, maybe less. Soon they’ll tell us that it’s safe to go out again.’

‘We should wait until then?’

‘Yes. I believe we should wait. It won’t be long.’

We haven’t eaten for two days. I worry about how long Shujin can go on like this. It can’t be much longer before peace is restored. There are radio reports of attempts to set up a Self-governing Committee for the city – they say it won’t be long before we can walk around openly and the Red Cross will be giving out free rice rations on the Shanghai road. But as yet there has been no announcement. We swept up the rice that had been spilled during the theft and mixed it with the remainder of the pickled vegetables that Shujin happened to have stored in the kitchen, and that lasted us for two meals; and because Liu’s wife is concerned about Shujin they distributed what little they had left. But now there is nothing. This is life laid bare to the bone. Shujin doesn’t complain, but I wonder about the baby. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I have an odd sensation that something in Shujin, something intangible, like an essence or a spirit, is stretching, and I can’t help imagining it’s our moon soul reaching out in hunger.

I leave the chores until after dark – taking out our soil pot and bringing in wood for the fire. I guard jealously the little oil I have for my lamp. It is bitterly cold and even in the daytime we wrap ourselves in quilts and coats. I am beginning to forget that there are good things in this world – books and beliefs, and mist above the Yangtze. This morning I found six boiled eggs that had been wrapped in a
qipao
and tucked into a chest at the foot of the bed. They were dyed red.