The effect was astonishing. It was as if we were watching a single living entity, water maybe, or something more viscid, moving as a single organism. A wave started. The force of bodies held the injured and dying erect, while in the centre of the crowd a pucker appeared, a protrusion where the bodies pressing forward were causing some in the crowd to clamber on to each other. More shots rang out. Even above the shouts I could hear the metallic shunt of the rifles being reloaded, and the small raised bud in the centre began to grow and grow, people climbing over each other to escape, until in front of my eyes it evolved into a terrible human column, slowly, slowly stretching skywards like a tremulous finger.
The screams came to us and, next to me, Liu dropped his face into his hands, beginning to shudder. I didn’t put out a hand to him, I was so horribly riveted by that wavering finger. The human spirit is so strong, I thought distantly, maybe it can climb all the way to the sky without anything to hold on to. Maybe it can climb on air. But after a few minutes, when the column seemed impossibly high – maybe twenty feet – something in its structure collapsed, and it dissolved, tumbling outwards, crushing everyone beneath it. Within seconds the tower was re-forming in a different part of the crowd, the little liquid beginnings of a finger pointing inquisitively out of a lake, then rising and rising until, before long, it was pointing rigidly at the sky, screaming out with accusation, ‘Will you allow this to happen?’
Just then a flurry of activity erupted close to the house where we were sheltering – someone had broken loose from the crowd and was racing towards us, pursued by another figure. I grabbed Liu’s arm. ‘Look.’
He dropped his hands and raised fearful eyes to the gap. As the men drew near we saw a young Japanese soldier, bareheaded, his face grim and determined, chased by three older men, senior officers, I guessed, from their uniforms. Swords bounced at their sides, hampering their progress, but they were strong and tall and they closed quickly on the fleeing man, one lunging forward and catching his sleeve, sending him whirling round, his free arm flying out.
Liu and I pressed ourselves even lower into the crumbling roof. The men were only a few yards away. We could have leaned over and spat on them.
The fugitive stumbled on for a few steps, moving in a circle, windmilling his arm, only just managing to regain his balance. He came to a halt, his hands on his knees, breathing hard. The officer released him and took a step back. ‘Stand up,’ he barked. ‘Stand up, you pig.’
Reluctantly the man straightened. He pulled back his shoulders and faced the men, his chest rising and falling. His uniform was torn and pulled out of shape, and I was so close that I could see white ringworm circles on his cropped scalp.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ one of the officers demanded. ‘You broke ranks.’
The soldier started to say something, but he was trembling so hard that he couldn’t speak. He turned mutely and looked back at the scene from hell, at the human column, men being dropped like crows from the sky. When he turned back to the officers he wore an expression of such pain that I felt a moment of pity for him. There were tears on his cheeks and this seemed to infuriate the officers. They gathered round him, their faces rigid. One was moving his jaw, as if grinding his teeth. Without a word he unbuckled his sword. The young soldier took a step back.
‘Change your mind,’ ordered the officer, advancing on him. ‘Go back.’
The soldier took another step backwards.
‘Change your mind and go back.’
‘What are they saying?’ hissed Liu at my side.
‘He doesn’t want to shoot the prisoners.’
‘Go back now!’
The soldier shook his head. This angered the officer even more. He grabbed the soldier by both ears and swung him round, twisting him bodily, dropping him on to the ground. ‘Change your mind.’ He pressed the sole of his hobnailed marching boot against the soft side of the soldier’s face and put some weight behind it. The other officers gathered even closer. ‘Pig.’ He put more pressure on the boot and the skin on the junior’s face pulled forward until a big soft part of his cheek was hanging across his mouth and he couldn’t stop his own saliva spilling out. His flesh would tear soon, I thought. ‘One more chance – CHANGE YOUR MIND.’
‘No,’ he stammered. ‘No.’
The officer took a step back, raised the sword above his head. The soldier half raised his hand and tried to say something, but the officer had his momentum now and stepped forward. The sword slammed down, the shadow whipping across the ground, the blade glinting and whistling in the morning sun. It made contact and the soldier jolted once, then rolled forward, his hands over his face, his eyes closed.
‘No. Heavens, no,’ Liu whispered, covering his eyes. ‘Tell me, what do you see? He’s dead?’
‘No.’
The soldier was rolling and squirming on the ground. The officer had only slapped him with the side of the blade, but it had almost destroyed him. As he tried to get to his feet he lost his footing, his legs treadmilling in the snow. He collapsed to his knees and one of the other officers took the opportunity to swipe at him with his gloved fist, sending him backwards, blood spurting from his mouth. I clenched my teeth. I would have liked to leap over the wall and grab that officer.
At last the soldier made a concerted effort and got himself upright. He was in a pitiful state, twitching and staggering, blood covering his chin. He muttered something under his breath, held up a hand to the captain, and stumbled back in the direction of the massacre. He stopped to pick up his rifle, lifted it to his shoulder and continued on in zigzags as if he were drunk, aiming haphazardly into the crowd, letting loose a volley of shots. One or two of the junior soldiers at the edge of the crowd looked at him, but on seeing the three officers standing silent and stony-faced, they hurriedly turned their eyes back to the panicking prisoners.
The officers watched this retreat, absolutely motionless, only their shadows diminishing as the sun crested the top of the house. None of them moved a muscle, not one spoke or even looked at his colleagues. It was only when the soldier showed no signs of running again that they moved. One swiped a hand across his brow, one wiped his sword and returned it to the sheath, and the third spat in the snow, pulling violently at his mouth as if he couldn’t bear the taste a moment longer. Then, one after another, they straightened their caps, and walked back to the massacre, large spaces between them, their arms loose and drooping, their swords and shadows dragging wearily along the ground next to them.
32
‘You seem very different.’ Shi Chongming was studying me from where he sat on the steamer chair. His coat was wrapped tightly round him, his white hair had been brushed and maybe oiled so that it lay long and straight over his ears, and the pink skin was showing through, like the skin of an albino rat. ‘You’re shivering.’
I looked down at my hands. He was right. They were shaking. That was from a lack of food. Yesterday morning, as the sun was coming up, Jason and I had made breakfast from the convenience-store snacks. And that was the last thing I could remember eating in almost thirty hours.
‘I think you’ve changed.’
‘Yes,’ I said. I had allowed a day and a half to go by, and it was only when he’d called me that I mentioned I’d been at Fuyuki’s. Shi Chongming had wanted to come over straight away – he was ‘astonished’, ‘disappointed’ that I hadn’t called earlier. I couldn’t explain it. I couldn’t describe what he couldn’t see – that in just one day something hard and sweet and old had spread out under my ribs, like a kiss, and that somehow things that had once seemed urgent didn’t sting any more. ‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘I suppose I have.’
He waited as if he expected me to say something else. Then, when he saw I wasn’t going to, he sighed. He opened his hands and looked round the garden. ‘It’s beautiful here,’ he said. ‘Niwa, they call the garden, the pure place. Not like your corruptible Edens in the West. To the Japanese a garden is the place where harmony reigns. A perfect
beauty.’
I looked at the garden. It had changed since I was last out here. The subtle varnish of autumn was on it: the maple was a deep butterscotch colour and the ginkgo had dropped some of its leaves. The tangled undergrowth was bare, like a collection of dried bird bones. But I could see what he meant. There was something beautiful about it. Maybe, I thought, you have to work to experience beauty. ‘I suppose it is rather.’
‘You suppose it is rather what? Rather beautiful?’
I looked carefully at the long line of white Hansel-and-Gretel stones leading past the do-not-go-here stone and into the undergrowth. ‘Yes. That is what I mean. It’s very beautiful.’
He tapped his fingers on the chair arm and smiled thoughtfully at me. ‘You can see a beauty in this country that you’re living in? At last?’
‘Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?’ I said. ‘Aren’t you supposed to adjust?’
Shi Chongming made a small sound of amusement in his throat. ‘Ah, yes. I see you are suddenly very, very wise.’
I adjusted the coat across my legs, moving subtly on the chair. I hadn’t bathed, and the smallest movement released the trapped smell of Jason. Under my coat I wore a black camisole I’d bought weeks ago in Omotesando. Tight-fitting and ribbed with tiny silk flowers stitched on the neckline, it stretched all the way down over my stomach, clinging tightly to my hips. I still hadn’t had the courage to show Jason my wounds, and he hadn’t pushed me. He was so confident that one day I’d reveal everything. He said I should realize that for every person on the planet there was another who would understand them perfectly. It was like being two pieces in a huge metaphysical jigsaw puzzle.
‘Why didn’t you call me?’ Shi Chongming said.
‘What?’
‘Why didn’t you call me?’
I fumbled out a cigarette and lit it, blowing the smoke up into the cloudless sky. ‘I – I don’t know. I’m not sure.’
‘When you were at Fuyuki’s did you see anything?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
He sat forward and lowered his voice. ‘You did? You saw something?’
‘Only a glimpse.’
‘A glimpse of what?’
‘I’m not certain – a sort of glass box.’
‘A tank, you mean?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it.’ I blew a lungful of smoke into the thin air. The clouds, I noticed, were reflected in the windows of the gallery. Jason was asleep in my room, lying on his back on the futon. I could see the layout of his body in my head, I could hold all the details of it – the way his arm would be curled across his chest, the sound his breath would make coming in and out of his nose.
‘What about at a zoo?’
I looked sideways at him. ‘A zoo?’
‘Yes,’ Shi Chongming said. ‘Have you seen anything like it at a zoo? I mean, the sort of tank that could be climate-controlled, maybe.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Were there gauges? The sort that would monitor the air inside? Or thermometers, humidity monitors?’
‘I don’t know. It was . . .’
‘Yes?’ Shi Chongming was sitting forward in his seat, looking at me intently. ‘It was what? You said you saw something in the tank.’
I blinked at him. He was wrong. I hadn’t said that.
‘Maybe something . . .’ he held out his hands to represent something the size of a small cat ‘. . . about this big.’
‘No. I didn’t see anything.’
Shi Chongming closed his mouth tightly and looked at me for a long time, his face perfectly still. I could see sweat breaking out on his forehead. Then he pulled a handkerchief from his coat and quickly mopped his face. ‘Yes,’ he said, returning the handkerchief and sitting back in his seat with a long exhalation. ‘I see you’ve changed your mind. Haven’t you?’
I tapped the ash from my cigarette and frowned at him.
‘I have invested an enormous amount of time in you and now you’ve changed your mind.’
He left by the big gates, and when he’d gone I went upstairs. The Russians were wandering around the house, cooking and squabbling, and while I’d been in the garden Jason had been to the One Stop Best Friend Bento Bar and brought back rice, fish and pickled daikon. He’d put it all on the dresser with a bottle of plum liquor and two beautiful pale-violet glasses, and was lying on the futon when I came in. I locked the door behind me and walked straight past the food to the futon, pulling off my coat as I went.
‘So? Who was the old guy?’
I knelt astride Jason, facing him. I wasn’t wearing knickers, just the camisole. He pushed my knees further apart and ran his hands up my legs. We both looked down at the long expanse of cool flesh he was unpeeling. It seemed to me dense, very un-modern flesh. I still found it amazing that Jason liked it so much.
‘Who was the guy in the garden?’
‘Something to do with my university.’
‘He was looking at you like you were saying the most incredible thing in the world.’
‘Not really,’ I murmured. ‘We were talking about his research. You wouldn’t call it incredible at all.’
‘Good. I don’t like you saying incredible things to anyone else. You spend too much time with him.’
‘Too much time?’
‘Yes.’ He flipped out his palm, holding it up to me. ‘See?’
‘See what?’
The dim light glinted on his broken nails as he dabbled his fingertips in his palm, slowly at first: tiny, tiny movements. I stared at his fingers, transfixed. They lifted from his palm, flew up swiftly into the air, coming to rest at eye-level, flapping slowly like a bird’s wings, yawing and dipping on an air current. It was Shi Chongming’s magic crane. The crane of the past.
‘You were watching us,’ I said, my eyes fixed on his hand. ‘Last time.’
He smiled and made the bird do a slow, graceful dive. It twisted elegantly, swooped back up again, dived. He dipped and rolled his hand, humming under his breath. Suddenly it turned and came at me, his fingers flying forward, the bird-hand flapping crazily at my face. I flinched away, half up to my feet, breathing fast.
‘Don’t do that!’ I said. ‘Don’t.’
He was laughing. He sat up and grabbed my wrists, pulling me back towards him. ‘Did you like that?’
‘You’re teasing me.’
‘Teasing you? No. Not teasing you. I wouldn’t tease you. I know what it’s like to be searching.’
‘No.’ I resisted his pull. ‘I don’t understand you.’
He laughed. ‘You won’t get anywhere.’ He pulled me gently backwards, dropping his head back on to the futon, putting my hands to his mouth: licking my palm, chewing gently at my flesh. ‘You won’t get anywhere pretending to me.’
I watched his teeth, clean and white, fascinated by the healthy glint of dentine and red membrane. ‘I’m not pretending,’ I murmured vaguely.
‘You almost forgot, didn’t you?’ He slid his hands between my thighs, tangling his fingers in my pubic hair, his eyes on my face. I let my fingers stay on his lips as he spoke. ‘You almost forgot that I only have to look at you and I know everything, everything that goes on inside your head.’
33
Nanking, 19 December 1937, night (the seventeenth day of the eleventh month)
Many centuries ago, when the great bronze azimuth was moved from Linfen to the Purple Mountain, it suddenly, inexplicably, became crucially misaligned. No matter what engineers did, it had made up its mind not to function. A few moments ago I peeped out of the shutters at that great chronicler of the heavens and wondered whether maybe, when it settled on the cold mountainside, it had looked up into the cold stars and seen what Shujin had seen. The future of Nanking. It had seen the city’s future and had given up caring.
Enough. I must stop thinking like this – of spirits and soothsayers and clairvoyants. I know it is a kind of insanity and yet even here, safe in my study, I cannot help a shiver when I think
how Shujin foresaw all of this in her dream. The radio says that last night, while Liu and I were on the roof, several buildings near the refugee centre caught fire. The Nanking city health centre was one of those burned, so where will the injured and the sick go? Our baby would have been born at the health centre. Now there is nowhere for us.
Liu and I still haven’t discussed these doubts, even after what we saw this morning. We still haven’t said the words, ‘Maybe we were wrong.’ When we got out of the house in the late afternoon, when the troops had gone and the streets had been quiet for some time, we didn’t speak. We ran, crouched, bolting from door to door, terrified. I ran faster than I have ever run before, and all the time I was thinking, Civilians, civilians, civilians. They are killing civilians. Everything I have imagined, everything I have promised myself, all that I have forced Shujin to believe, it has all been wrong. The Japanese are not civilized. They are slaughtering civilians. There were no women in that crowd, true, but even that is a poor relief. No women. I repeated the words over and again as we flew back to our houses: No women.
When I burst through the door, panting and wild-eyed, my clothes covered in sweat, Shujin jumped up in shock, spilling her cup of tea on the table. ‘Oh!’ She had been crying. Her cheeks were stained. ‘I thought you were dead,’ she said, taking a few steps towards me. Then she saw my expression and stopped in her tracks. She put her hand up to my face. ‘Chongming? What is it?’