In winter, darkness comes early to us in the east of China, and before long the sun had gone and we were picking our way through the streets using just the light from the fires to guide us. We were exhausted. We seemed to have walked several li – I felt as if I had walked all the way to Pagoda Bridge Road – yet we still hadn’t passed through the city wall. The only other living creature we had seen was a lean and hungry-looking dog, wild and covered with such terrible sores that part of its backbone was exposed. It followed us for a while, and although it was horribly diseased we tried half-heartedly to entice it to us: it was big enough to feed both our families. But it was nervous and barked loudly when we got near it, the sound echoing dangerously through the silent streets. Eventually we abandoned the pursuit.
‘It’s late,’ I said, stopping somewhere near the gate. The smell of cooking had been replaced by something else, the stench of polluted drains. Our spirits were failing. I looked at the rickety buildings lining the street. ‘I’m not so hungry any more, old man. I’m not.’
‘You’re tired. Only tired.’
I was about to answer when something over Liu’s shoulder caught my eye. ‘Be quite still,’ I hissed, gripping his arm. ‘Don’t speak.’
He whipped round. At the end of the road, in the distance, his face lit from underneath by a small lantern placed on a water barrel, a Japanese soldier had appeared, his rifle hooked on his shoulder. Only five minutes ago we had been standing exactly where he stood now.
We darted quickly into the nearest doorway, breathing hard, pressing ourselves back and shooting looks at each other.
‘He wasn’t there a minute ago,’ Liu hissed. ‘Did you see him?’
‘No.’
‘How in heaven’s name are we going to get home now?’
We stood there for a long time, our eyes locked, our hearts thudding in our chests, both hoping the other would decide what to do. I knew this road ran in a straight line with no gaps in the houses for a long way – we would have to cover a lot of ground in full view of the soldier before we found a side road to disappear into. I took a deep breath, pulled my cap down low on my brow, and risked putting my head out into the street, just for a second, just long enough to see the soldier. I shot back, flat against the wall, breathing hard.
‘What?’ hissed Liu. ‘What can you see?’
‘He’s waiting for something.’
‘Waiting? Waiting for-’
But before he could complete the question the answer came to us: a familiar sound rolling menacingly out of the distance, a low, dreadful rumbling that made the houses around us shudder. We both knew what that sound was. Tanks.
Instinctively we pushed away from the street, inwards, throwing our weight at the wooden door, trusting that the noise of the tanks would drown our efforts. We were ready to climb the side of the house barehanded if necessary, but the door crumpled with an appalling splintering, just as the noise of the tanks grew louder behind us – they must have turned a corner into the street. The door fell inwards with a sudden rush of stale air, and we tumbled inside, a mess of sweat and fear and heavy clothing, tripping and stumbling into the darkness.
It was pitch black, only a faint wash of moonlight creeping in from a hole in the roof.
‘Liu?’ My voice sounded hushed and small. ‘Old man, are you there?’
‘Yes. Yes. Here I am.’
Together we pushed the remains of the door closed as best we could, then shrank to the walls, inching our way round the room, heading for the hole in the ceiling. It is astonishing the rural habits that people import to a city: livestock had been living in this house, maybe to keep the residents warm at night, and Liu and I were wading through warmish animal bedding and manure. The roar of the tanks was getting louder in the street, rattling the little house, threatening to make it collapse.
‘This way,’ Liu whispered. He had stopped, and now I saw he was holding the rungs of a ladder that led up through the hole in the roof. I followed him to the foot and looked up. Above us the night sky was bright, the distant stars cold and polished. ‘Let’s go.’
He scampered up the ladder more agilely than I could have imagined for a man of his age and stopped at the top, turning to hold out a hand to me. I took it and climbed hurriedly, letting him haul me through the gap. At the top of the ladder I straightened and looked around. We stood in the open air: the building was a ruin, the roof had long since been destroyed, leaving only a scattering of rotting millet stalks and lime mortar.
I beckoned to Liu and we crept to the edge, peering cautiously over the broken wall. We had made it just in time. Below us a barrage of tanks proceeded slowly down the street. The noise was deafening. It funnelled along the street and rose, like a heatwave, powerful enough, it seemed, to reach up and shake the moon. Lamps swayed on the tank turrets, sending strange shadows shooting up the outsides of the houses. Soldiers carrying swords and glittering carbines walked erectly on either side of the tanks, their faces expressionless. It must have been a mass movement to different quarters because behind the tanks came other vehicles: scout cars, a water-purifying truck, two pontoon bridges towed by a truck.
As we watched I noticed a dog, maybe the same one we’d been pursuing earlier, appear as if from nowhere and get itself hopelessly tangled among the soldiers’ legs. Yelping and whimpering it allowed itself to be kicked so ferociously by the men that within a very short time it was edged into the path of the tank tracks, where it rapidly disappeared from view. Two soldiers in the tank turret noticed this and bent over the side to watch, laughing and curious, as the wretched beast reappeared, mangled in the tread, one hind leg, the only part not crushed, protruding sideways from the track, still twitching convulsively. I am no lover of dogs, yet the pleasure in the soldiers’ laughter turned my heart to stone.
‘Look,’ I murmured. ‘Look at this, old Liu.’ It was dawning on me how foolish I had been to imagine the Japanese to be somehow a little like us, to imagine we might even be safe with them. These men were not like us. I sank down behind the small parapet and put my head in my hands. ‘What a mistake we’ve made. What a terrible mistake.’
Liu moved to sit next to me, his big hand gently on my back. I am glad he didn’t speak to me. I am glad, because if I had opened my mouth to reply I might have said these words: Maybe not now, maybe not tonight, but soon the end will come. Trust me, old Liu, our wives have been right all along. Soon we are going to die.
30
In the taxi on the way home Jason and I sat in silence, not speaking. Irina and Svetlana giggled and smoked and lapsed in and out of Russian, but I didn’t hear a word. I was conscious of every inch of my skin, itchy like an animal whose fur has been stroked against the grain. I kept shuffling and moving my bottom around on the seat until Irina got irritated and nudged me. ‘Stop it. Stop fuckink wiggling like a worm. You gone crazy?’ On the other side of her, next to the window, sitting in profile, Jason shook his head in secret amusement. He lowered his face and put a finger to the tip of his nose and nodded, as if someone invisible had just whispered a question in his ear.
Back at the house the Russians went straight to bed and I pulled off my coat, hung it next to Jason’s holdall on the peg at the top of the stairs and walked, without a word, down the corridor to my room. He followed me. When he stepped inside he could see I was jittery. ‘I know you’re scared.’