The funny thing was that I was happy in spite of the way things had become between me and Shi Chongming. Something had shifted – it was as if the dry, frantic neediness I’d brought with me to Tokyo had somehow edged out of me and infected him instead.
On the Monday following Fuyuki’s party, I’d tried to get Strawberry to tell me more about the stories she’d heard. I’d sat down in front of her and said, ‘I ate some meat when I was at the party. Something about it tasted odd.’ When she didn’t answer I leaned towards her and spoke in a low voice, ‘And then I remembered – you’d told me not to eat anything.’
She fixed me with an intense look. For a short time it seemed as if she was going to say something, but instead she jumped up and nodded at her reflection in the plate-glass window. ‘Look,’ she said conversationally, as if I’d said nothing. ‘Look. This dress nice dress from movie Bus Stop.’ It was a mothy green coat-dress she was wearing, with attached black net and a fur collar, worn unbuttoned to show her daringly engineered bosom. She smoothed it over her hips. ‘Dress suit Strawberry figure, ne? Suit Strawberry more good than suit Marilyn.’
‘I said, I think I’ve eaten something bad.’
She turned to me, her face serious, her head unsteady from the champagne. I could see her jaw working in tiny movements under the skin. She put her hands on the desk and leaned forward so that her face was close to mine. ‘You must forget this,’ she whispered. ‘Japanese Mafia very complicated. You cannot easily understand it.’
‘It didn’t taste like anything I recognized. And I’m not the only one who noticed. Mr Bai. He thought there was something strange, too.’
‘Mr Bai?’ She made a contemptuous clicking sound in her throat. ‘You listen to Mr Bai? Mr Bai like Fuyuki’s pet. Like dog with collar. He famous singer once, but maybe now not so famous. All fine now, until…’ She held up her hand warningly. ‘ Until he make mistake! ’ She drew her hand across her throat. ‘Nobody too important to make a mistake. Understand?’
I swallowed and said, very slowly, ‘Why did you tell me not to eat anything?’
‘All rumours. All gossip.’ She grabbed the champagne bottle, filled her glass and drained it in one, using the glass to point at me. ‘And, Grey-san, you never repeat what I have told you. Understand?’ She shook the glass, and I could see how serious she was. ‘You want happy life? You want happy life working in high-class club? In Some Like It Hot?’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It mean your mouth. Keep shut your mouth. Okay?’
Which meant, of course, that when Shi Chongming telephoned, unusually early the following day, I had nothing more to tell him. He didn’t take it welclass="underline" ‘I find this attitude most odd, yes, most odd. I understood you were “desperate” to see my film.’
‘I am.’
‘Then explain to me, an old man with a poor grasp of the vicissitudes of youth, please do me the honour of explaining this sudden unwillingness to talk.’
‘I’m not unwilling. I just don’t know what you want me to say. I can’t make things up. I’ve got nothing new to tell you.’
‘Yes.’ His voice was tremulous with anger. ‘It is as I suspected. You’ve changed your mind. Am I wrong?’
‘Yes, you’re-’
‘I find this quite unacceptable. You have happily allowed me to make a monumental effort,’ I could tell he was trying not to shout, ‘and now such casualness! Such casualness when you tell me that you are no longer involved.’
‘I haven’t said that-’
‘I think you have.’ He coughed and made an odd sound, as if exhaling through his nostrils in little staccato bursts. ‘Yes, yes, I believe that, where you are concerned, I will trust my instincts. I will say goodbye.’ And he put the phone down.
I sat in the chilly living room staring at the dead receiver in my hand, my face blazing with colour. No, I thought. No. Shi Chongming, you’re wrong. I pictured the Nurse’s shadow, climbing up the corridor wall, I remembered standing inside the bathroom door, my heart leaping out of my chest, memories of the crime-scene photo playing in my head. I put my fingers over my closed eyes, pushing gently at them. I’d done so much, gone so far, and it wasn’t that I’d changed my mind – it was just that the picture had got hazy, like seeing something familiar through a steamed window. Wasn’t it? I dropped my hands and looked up at the door, at the long corridor, stretching away, a few rays of sunshine illuminating the dusty floor. Jason was asleep in my room. We’d been up together until five o’clock that morning, drinking beer he’d got from the machine in the street. Something odd was dawning on me. Something I could never have predicted. What if, I thought, shivering in the cold morning air, what if there was more than one route to peace of mind? Now, wouldn’t that be something?
35
In the end it didn’t matter what Shi Chongming said because Fuyuki didn’t come to the club for days. And then it was weeks. And then, suddenly, I realized that I’d stopped jumping every time the lift bell rang. Something was sliding away from me, and for a long time I did nothing, only watched apathetically, lighting a cigarette and shrugging and thinking instead about Jason, about the muscles in his arms, for example, and how they trembled slightly with the effort of supporting his body above mine.
I couldn’t concentrate on my work at the club. Quite often I’d hear my name and come out of a trance to find a customer staring at me oddly, or Mama Strawberry frowning at me, and I’d know a whole conversation had passed and all anyone had got from me was a blank because I was off somewhere else with Jason. Sometimes he would watch me when I was working. If I caught him looking he’d run his tongue across his teeth. It amused him to see the way goosebumps jumped out on my arms. The Russians kept reminding me about his strange pictures, putting their fingers warningly to their lips and whispering the titles of the autopsy videos. ‘A woman cut in half by a truck – imagine that!’ But I’d stopped listening to them. At night, if I happened to wake and hear the sound of another human being breathing near me, the sound of Jason rubbing his face in his sleep, or muttering and turning over, I’d get a lovely tight feeling in my chest, and I’d wonder if this was how it was supposed to feel. I’d wonder if maybe I was in love, and the thought made me feel panicky and short of breath. Was that possible? Could people like me fall in love? I wasn’t sure. Sometimes I’d lie awake for hours worrying about it, taking deep breaths, trying to keep calm.
The way it was going you’d think I would never, ever get round to showing him the scars. I kept finding excuses. I had ten camisoles now, all lined up in the wardrobe, and I wore them all the time, even when I was asleep, my back to him, crunched over my stomach like a foetus. I didn’t know where to start. What would the right words be? Jason, some people, a long time ago, thought I was crazy. I made a mistake… What if he was horrified? He kept saying that he wouldn’t be, but how do you explain that understanding, or even the illusion of it, would be the most wonderful feeling imaginable, almost as wonderful as knowing for sure that you hadn’t imagined the orange book, and that if you were to take the chance and tell someone, and if it were to go wrong… well, it would be like – like dying. Like falling into a dark hole, over and over again.
I started dreaming about my skin a lot. In the dreams it would be loosening and lifting up from me, unsticking from my body, unpoppering along seams down my spine and under my arms. Then it would drift upwards in one piece, like a ghost on an air current, ready to sail off. But there’d always be a jolt. Something would shudder and I’d look down and see that the beautiful shimmery parachute was tethered and bloodied, tacked in a puckered criss-cross to my stomach. Then I’d start to cry and rub frantically at the skin to loosen it. I’d tug and scratch at myself until I was bloodied and shaking and-