The Devil of Nanking (23 page)

We passed a ripped and stained Japanese flag hung in a lighted frame, a ceremonial ashes box carved from wisteria, painted white and displayed in a glass cabinet. No locks, I noticed. I allowed myself to drop to the back of the group. We passed a military uniform, battle-worn and mounted so that it appeared to have flesh and substance. I bent a little as I passed the glass cabinet, keeping my eyes on the group ahead, and trailed my hand up inside the open base of the case, brushing the hem of the uniform.

‘What’re you up to?’ asked one of the hostesses, as I caught up with the group.

‘Nothing,’ I murmured, but my heart was picking up speed. No alarms. I hadn’t dared hope that there would be no alarms.

We passed a flight of stairs that led down into darkness. I hesitated, staring down into the gloom, resisting the urge to break from the group and slip down the steps. The apartment was arranged over two floors. What sort of rooms would be down there? I wondered, suddenly and inexplicably picturing cages.
It is not a plant that you’re looking for
 . . .

Just then the group stopped up ahead and were depositing their bags and jackets in a small cloakroom. I had to leave the staircase and catch up with them, pausing to leave my coat too. Soon we could hear low music, the gentle clink of ice in glasses, and presently came into a smoky, low-ceilinged room, full of carefully lit alcoves and display cabinets. I stood for a moment, my eyes getting used to the light. The hostesses from the earlier cars were already seated in large oxblood chesterfields, balancing glasses and talking in low murmurs. Jason was in an armchair, comfortably reclined, one bare ankle resting lightly on the other knee, a cigarette burning in his fingers – just as if he was relaxing at home after a long day’s work. Fuyuki was at the far end of the room in a wheelchair. He was dressed in a loose
yukata
, his legs bare, and he was backing and shunting the wheelchair along the edges of the room, leading Bison around. They were looking at erotic woodcut prints on the walls, long-bodied courtesans with skeletal white legs, embroidered kimonos swirling apart to reveal oversized genitals.

I couldn’t help it. I was immediately mesmerized by those prints. I could sense Jason a few feet away, watching my reaction with amusement, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. This one showed a woman so aroused that something was dripping from between her legs. At last, when I couldn’t stop myself, I turned. Jason raised his eyebrows and smiled, that long, slow smile that showed just the corner of his chipped tooth, the smile he’d given me in the corridor in Takadanobaba. The blood rushed to my face. I put my fingers on my cheeks and turned away.

‘This one,’ Bison said in Japanese, tilting his cigar at a print. ‘The one with the red kimono?’

‘By Shuncho,’ Fuyuki said, in his cracked whisper. He planted the cane on the floor and rested his chin on it, looking ruminatively up at the print. ‘Eighteenth century. Insured for four million yen. Beautiful, isn’t it? Had a little
chimpira
from Saitama liberate it for me from a house in Waikiki.’

The ponytailed man coughed discreetly and Bison turned. Fuyuki rotated the motorized wheelchair to look at us.

‘Come with me,’ he whispered, to the assembled girls. ‘This way.’

We went through an archway to a room where, under two
samurai
swords suspended from the ceiling on invisible wires, a group of men in Aloha shirts sat drinking Scotch from crystal tumblers. They half stood, bowing as Fuyuki glided past them in his chair. Sliding glass doors stood open to reveal a central courtyard lined entirely with gleaming black marble, the night sky reflected in it like a mirror. In the centre, black as jet, as if hollowed from the same block, was a spotlighted swimming-pool, a faint chlorine steam hanging above its surface. Several gas-powered heaters, tall, like lamp-posts, were dotted around, and six large dining-tables were arranged beside the pool, each set with black enamel place mats, silver chopsticks and heavy glass goblets, napkins stirring in the breeze.

Several of the places had already been taken. Large men with cropped hair sat smoking cigars and talking to young women in backless evening dresses. There were so many girls. Fuyuki must know a lot of hostess clubs, I thought.

‘Mr Fuyuki,’ I said, coming up behind him as we crossed to the tables. He brought the wheelchair to a stop and turned to look at me in surprise. None of the girls had dared to speak to him yet. My legs were wobbly and the heat from the burners made the side of my face red. ‘I – I want to sit next to you.’

He narrowed his eyes at me. Maybe he was intrigued by my rudeness. I stepped closer, standing in front of him, near enough for him to be aware of my breasts and my hips, taut inside the dress. On an impulse, the vampire in me stirring, I took his hands and placed them on my hips. ‘I want to sit next to you.’

Fuyuki looked at his hands, pressed into the folds of my dress. Maybe he could feel the French knickers beneath it, the slither of silk on silk, the elastic stretch under his fingers. Maybe he just thought I was crazy and clumsy, because after a moment or two he laughed hoarsely. ‘Come, then,’ he whispered. ‘Sit next to me, if you want.’

He propelled his wheelchair into a place under the table and I sat down shakily, pulling my chair up next to him. Bison was already settled a few seats away, picking up a napkin, flicking it out and tucking it into his collar. A waiter in black jeans and T-shirt hovered around us with chilled vodka cocktails in cloudy white glasses, vaporous trails coming from them like dry ice. I sipped, surreptitiously surveying the courtyard. Somewhere, I thought, looking at the windows, some lit, others in darkness, somewhere in this apartment is the thing that keeps Shi Chongming awake at night.
Not a plant. If not a plant, then what?
There was a red light set high up on the wall. I wondered if it was an alarm.

Food arrived at the table: slabs of tuna piled like dominoes on beds of nettle; bowls of walnut tofu sprinkled with seaweed; grated radish, crunchy as salt. Bison sat immobilized, staring down at a plate of
yakitori
chicken, as if it posed a huge problem, his face pale and sweaty, as if he might be sick. I watched him in silence, thinking of how he’d been last time at the club, his expression of amazement, the way he’d been transfixed by the residue on the sides of Fuyuki’s glass. Just like Strawberry, I thought. He doesn’t want to eat the meat. He’s heard the same stories she has . . .

I licked my dry lips and leaned over to Fuyuki. ‘We’ve met before tonight,’ I murmured in Japanese. ‘Do you remember?’

‘Have we?’ He didn’t look at me.

‘Yes. In the summer. I was hoping to see you again.’

He paused for a moment, then said, ‘Is that so? Is that so?’ When he spoke, his eyes and his odd little nose didn’t move, but the skin on his upper lip adhered to his teeth and lifted to reveal strange pointed canines in the top corners of his mouth, just like a cat’s. I stared at those teeth. ‘I’d like to see your apartment,’ I said quietly.

‘You can see it from here.’ He felt in his pocket and pulled out a cigar, which he unwrapped, clipped with a discreet silver tool taken from his breast pocket, and inspected, turning it this way and that, picking flakes of tobacco off it.

‘I’d like to look around. I’d like to . . .’ I hesitated. I gestured to the room where the prints were hung and said, in a low voice, ‘To see the prints. I’ve read about
shunga
. The ones you’ve got are very rare.’

He lit the cigar and yawned. ‘They were bringed to Japan by me,’ he said, switching to clumsy English. ‘Back to homeland. My hobby is to –
Eigo deha nanto iu no desuka? Kaimodosu kotowa – Nihon no bijutsuhinwo Kaimodosu no desuyo
.’

‘Repatriate,’ I said. ‘Repatriate Japanese art.’

‘
So, so
. Yes. Re-pa-tri-ate Japan art.’

‘Would you like to show them to me?’

‘No.’ He let his eyes close slowly, like a very old reptile at leisure, vaguely resting his hand across them, as if that was enough conversation for now. ‘Thank you, not now.’

‘Are you sure?’

He opened one eye and regarded me suspiciously. I started to speak, but something in his look made me think better of it. I dropped my hands into my lap.
He must never know
, Shi Chongming had said.
Never suspect
.

‘Yes.’ I cleared my throat and fiddled with the napkin. ‘Of course. Now is the wrong time. Quite the wrong time.’ I lit a cigarette and smoked, turning the lighter over and over in my hands, as if it was utterly fascinating. Fuyuki watched me for a few more seconds. Then, seeming satisfied, he closed his eyes again.

After that I didn’t speak to him much. He dozed for a few minutes, and when he woke up the Japanese girl on his right took over from me, telling him a long story about an American girl who went out jogging braless, which made him laugh and shake his head enthusiastically. I sat in silence, smoking cigarette after cigarette, thinking,
What next, what next, what next?
I had the distinct idea I was getting near, that I was circling something closely. I drank two glasses of champagne very quickly, stubbed out my cigarette, and took a deep breath, leaning towards him. ‘Fuyuki-san?’ I murmured. ‘I need the bathroom.’

‘
Hi hi
,’ he said distractedly. The hostess on his right was demonstrating a trick with a book of matches. He waved a hand vaguely behind him to a double glass door. ‘Through there.’

I stared at him. I’d expected more. Some resistance. I pushed back my chair and stood, looking down at his small brown skull, expecting him to move. But he didn’t. No one at the table even glanced up, they were all too absorbed in their conversations. I crossed the patio, got through the glass doors, and closed them quickly, standing for a moment, my hands flat on the glass, looking back. No one had noticed me leave. At a table near the far end of the pool I could see the back of Jason’s head between two hostesses and nearer me was Fuyuki, exactly as I’d left him, the back of his thin shoulders moving as he laughed. The hostess had set light to the match book and was standing, holding it above the table like a beacon, waving it to a round of applause from the other guests.

I turned away from the door. I was standing in a panelled corridor, the mirror image of the one we’d entered earlier, full of more lighted glass cabinets – I could see a Noh actor’s costume,
samurai
armour glinting in the low lights. Countless doors stretched into the distance. I took a deep breath and started to walk.

The carpet muffled my footfalls; the noise of the air-conditioning made me think of the enclosed, capsular atmosphere of an aeroplane. I sniffed – what was I expecting to smell?
Don’t eat the meat
 . . . There should be more stairs on this side of the apartment. I passed doorway after doorway, but no staircase. At the end of the corridor I turned smartly at right angles into another corridor, and my pulse quickened. There it was, up on the right: the staircase, heavy double doors standing open, hooked back to the wall.

I was about ten yards away from it when a long way up ahead, at the next corner, a shadow appeared at the foot of the wall.

I froze. The Nurse. It could only be her, approaching from the next corridor. She must have been walking quickly because the shadow was getting bigger, climbing rapidly up the wall until it almost met the ceiling. I stood, paralysed, my heart thumping furiously. Any minute now she’d reach the corner and see me. Now I could hear her shoe leather squeaking efficiently. I groped blindly at the nearest door. It opened. Inside a light came on automatically and, just as the shadow dropped to the floor and shot sideways along the wall towards me, I stepped in, closing the door behind me with a discreet click.

It was a bathroom, a windowless room all in a fabulous blood red marble, veined like fat in beef with a hot tub surrounded by mirrors and a stack of immaculate starched towels on a ledge. I stood for a few moments, shaking uncontrollably, my ear pressed against the door, listening to the corridor. If she had seen me I would say what I’d said to Fuyuki: I was looking for the bathroom. I breathed cautiously, trying to pick up a sound from outside. But minutes passed and I could hear nothing. Maybe she had gone into a different room. I clicked the lock, and then, because my legs were weak, sank on to the toilet lid. This was impossible, impossible. How did Shi Chongming expect me to deal with this? What did he think I was?

After several minutes, when nothing had happened, no sound, no breath, I pulled a cigarette from my bag and lit it. I smoked silently, biting my nails and staring at the door. I checked my watch, wondering how long I’d been in there, whether she’d still be out there. Slowly, slowly, the trembling subsided. I finished the cigarette, dropped it into the toilet and lit another, smoking it slowly. Then I stood and ran my fingers up and down the edge of the mirrors, wondering if there was room behind them to hide a surveillance camera. I opened drawers and rummaged through stacks of soap and little complimentary toiletry sets embossed with JAL and Singapore Airlines logos. When an age seemed to have passed, I flushed the toilet, took a deep breath, clicked the door open and put my head out. The corridor was empty. The Nurse was gone and the double doors to the staircase had been closed. When I crept across the passage and tried the handle, I found they’d been locked.

Outside the sky was clear, just a shred of cloud lit pink from beneath by city lights moved silently over the stars, like a giant’s breath on a cold day. While I’d been in the corridor the guests had left their places and were perched on striped recliners, starting mah-jongg games on foldaway tables. The waiters cleared away the plates. Nobody noticed me come back and sit, still jittery, on a seat near the pool.

Fuyuki had been moved to a far corner of the courtyard and the Nurse was with him, bent over, busily tucking a fur throw over his legs. She was dressed in a very tight skirt, a high-collared jacket and her usual high heels. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, revealing her white, oddly pitted cheek. She’d painted her lips in a deep red – on her tight mouth it looked almost bluish. The men nearby sat with their backs turned pointedly to her, concentrating on their conversations, pretending not to be aware of her presence.