43
It took me a long time to fall asleep, the duvet wrapped round me like a shroud, and when I did I dreamed that everything in the room was laid out just as it was in real life. I was on the futon, exactly as I was in reality, in my pyjamas, lying on my side, one hand under the pillow, one on top, my knees drawn up. The only thing that differed was that in the dream my eyes were open – I was wide awake and listening. A steady rhythmic noise came from the corridor, muffled, like someone having a whispered conversation. From the other side, the window, there was the sound of something gnawing at the mosquito screen.
My dream self’s first thought was that the gnawing was a cat, until with a wrench and a grinding of steel wire the screen gave, and some heavy thing like a bowling ball rolled into my room. When I squinted down I saw that it was a baby. It lay on the floor on its back, crying, its arms and legs agitating, going up and down like pistons. For a brilliant, exhilarating moment I thought it must be my baby girl, having made it at last across the continents to see me, but just as I was about to reach for her, the baby rolled on to its side and reached blindly for me. I felt hot breath and a little tongue licking the sole of my foot. Then, with horribly vicious speed, she snapped her gummy teeth round my toes.
I bolted from the bed, shaking her and batting at her, grabbing her by the head and trying to prise open her jaws, but she clung on, snarling and snapping and turning furious somersaults in the air, saliva coming from her mouth. At last I gave a final kick and the baby flew against the wall, screeching, and dissolved into a shadow that slid to the floor and flowed out of the window. Shi Chongming’s voice seemed to come out of her as she disappeared: What will a man do to live for ever? What won’t he eat?
I woke with a start, the duvet tangled round me, my hair sticking to my face. It was five a.m. Outside the window I could hear Tokyo bucking and tossing through the dying moments of a storm and, for a moment, I thought I could still detect the screaming in the undertones of the wind, as if the baby was rocketing through the empty rooms downstairs. I sat very still, the duvet clutched in my hands. The heating was chugging and the ventilation pipes rattling, and the room was full of a strange, grey light. And, now that I thought about it, there was another noise. An odd noise that had nothing to do with my dream and nothing to do with the storm. It was coming from somewhere on the other side of the house.
44
Nanking, 20 December 1937
All knowledge comes with a price. Today Liu Runde and I have learned things we wish we could forget. Pushed up against the wall in the small room at the factory was a low army cot, a filthy blood-stained mattress thrown casually on it. A kerosene lamp, a Chinese make, stood unlit on it, as if someone had used it to light whatever diabolical procedure was performed there – whatever it was that had produced the copious amounts of blood that had congealed on the floor and walls. It seemed the only things not sticky with blood was a pile of belongings stacked against the wall – a pair of split-sole tabi overboots and a soldier’s pack made of cow-hide so raw that there was still hair attached. On the small desk, next to the manager’s old abacus, stood a row of small brown medicine bottles sealed with waxed paper, Japanese lettering on the labels; a handful of phials containing a variety of coarse powders; a pestle and mortar, alongside squares of folded apothecary paper. Behind these were arranged three army mess tins and a water canteen with an Imperial chrysanthemum stamped on it. Liu put a finger on one of the mess tins and tilted it. When I leaned over to look inside I saw rags floating in an indescribable mixture of blood and water.
‘Good God.’ Liu set the tin upright. ‘What in heaven’s name happens in here?’
‘He’s ill,’ said the boy, sullenly indicating the medicine bottles. ‘A fever.’
‘I don’t mean the bottles! I mean this. The blood. Where is the blood from?’
‘The blood… the blood is… the boys on the street say that the blood is…’
‘What?’ Liu looked at him sternly. ‘What do they say?’
He ran his tongue uncomfortably over his front teeth. He was suddenly pale. ‘No, it must be a mistake.’
‘What do they say?’
‘They’re older than me,’ he said, lowering his eyes. ‘The other boys are much older than I am. I think they must be telling me tales…’
‘What do they say?’
His face twisted reluctantly, and when he spoke his voice was very quiet, no more than a whisper. ‘They say that the women…’
‘Yes? What about the women?’
‘They say that he…’ His voice became almost unintelligible. ‘He takes shavings from them. Shavings of their skin. He scrapes them.’
The food in my stomach rolled and heaved. I sank down to my haunches, my face in my hands, dizzy and sick. Liu took a breath, then gripped the boy by his jacket and drew him away from the room. He led him straight out of the building without another word, and shortly I stumbled out after them, my stomach turning.
I caught up with them about a hundred yards away. Liu had his son in a doorway and was grilling him. ‘Where did you hear this?’
‘The boys on the streets are all talking about it.’
‘Who is he? This yanwangye? Who is he?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He’s a human being – of course he is. And what manner of human being? Japanese?’
‘Yes. A lieutenant.’ The boy gripped his collar where an IJA officer would wear a rank badge. ‘The yanwangye in a lieutenant’s uniform.’ He looked at me. ‘Did you hear the motorcycle this morning?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s him. They say he’ll be hungry for ever because nothing makes him stop. The other boys say he’s on a search that will last for ever.’
I have to pause here as I write this because I am recalling a scene – a vivid scene – a conversation I had with Liu before the invasion. We are cramped in his reception room, some cups and a little dish of shredded Nanking salt duck between us, and he is telling me about bodies he saw in Shanghai, bodies desecrated by the Japanese. I can’t help reliving the scenes he drew for me that night. In Shanghai, apparently, anything was taken as a trophy: an ear, a scalp, a kidney, a breast. The trophy was worn on the belt, or pinned to a cap – soldiers who could show off scalps or genitals had great power. They posed with their trophies, waiting for photographs to be taken by their comrades. Liu had heard rumours of a group of soldiers who had stitched Chinese scalps, shaved into old-fashioned Manchu queues, to the back of their caps as the badge of their unit. Among them moved a soldier from another unit who carried a cine-camera, probably stolen from a journalist, or looted from one of the big houses in the International Zone. The men showed off for him too, laughing and throwing the plaits over their shoulders, aping the walk of the girls in the cabarets on Avenue Edward VII. They were not ashamed of their unnatural behaviour, rather they were proud – eager to show off.
Now when I stop writing all I can hear is my heart thudding. The snow falls silently outside the window. What about skin? Scrapings of human skin? What sort of unspeakable trophy was the yanwangye harvesting?
‘That’s one of them.’
The child hadn’t been very old. Maybe three or four years. Liu’s son took us to see her. She lay at some distance from us, in the street at the side of the factory, face down, her hair spread round her, her hands tucked under her body.
I looked at the boy. ‘When did this happen?’
He shrugged. ‘She was there last night.’