Shi Chongming got slowly to his feet. He steadied himself on his cane, then held up his hand to indicate the door to the student. ‘Quick, quick,’ he hissed, when the boy sat frozen in his seat staring at me. ‘ Come along now, quickly.’ The student got cautiously to his feet. His face was serious and his eyes were locked on mine as he sidestepped with great care to the door, slipping through and closing it behind him with a barely audible click.
Shi Chongming didn’t turn immediately. He stood for a while with his hand on the door, his back to me. When we’d been alone for almost a minute, and there was no chance of interruption, he turned to me. ‘Now, then, are you calm?’
‘ Calm? Yes, I’m calm. Very calm.’
‘Sit down. Sit down and tell me what’s happened.’
47
Nanking, 20 December 1937
There is nothing so painful, so agonized, as a proud man admitting he has been mistaken. On our way back from the factory, leaving the dead child on the street, we reached the point where we would separate and Liu put his hand on my arm. ‘Go home and wait for me,’ he whispered. ‘I will be with you as soon as I’ve seen young Liu back to the house. Things are going to change.’
Sure enough, less than twenty minutes after I’d arrived home, there was a coded series of knocks on the door and I opened it to find him standing on the threshold with a coarse bamboo-hemp folder under his arm.
‘We need to talk,’ he murmured, checking to make sure that Shujin wasn’t listening. ‘I’ve got a plan.’
He took off his shoes as a mark of respect and came into the small room on the ground floor that we use for formal occasions. Shujin keeps the room properly prepared at all times, set out with chairs and a red lacquered table, which is beautifully inlaid with peonies and dragons in mother-of-pearl. We seated ourselves at it, arranging our robes round us. Shujin didn’t question old Liu’s presence. She slipped upstairs to tidy her hair, and after a few minutes I heard her go out to the kitchen to boil some water.
‘There’s only tea and a few of your wife’s buckwheat dumplings to offer you, Liu Runde,’ I said. ‘Nothing more. I am sorry.’
He bowed his head. ‘There is no need to explain.’
In his folder he had a map of Nanking that he had prepared in great detail. He must have been working on it over the last few days. When the pot of tea was on the table, and our cups were full, he spread it out in front of me.
‘This,’ he said, circling a point outside Chalukou, ‘is the house of an old friend. A salt trader, very wealthy – and the house is large, with a fresh well, pomegranate trees and well-stocked pantries. Not so very far from Purple Mountain. And this,’ he put a cross a few li further into the city, ‘this is Taiping gate. There are reports that the wall has been badly shelled in this area, and there is a chance, with the rush to the west, that the Japanese won’t have assigned enough men to guard it here. Assuming we get through, we’ll walk from there along back-streets, following the main Chalukou road, reaching the river a long way north of the city. Chalukou can be of no strategic importance to the Japanese, so if we’re lucky we’ll find a boat, and from the far shore we will disappear inland to Anhui province.’ We were both silent for a while, thinking about taking our families through all those dangerous places. After a while, as if I’d expressed a doubt, Liu nodded. ‘Yes, I know. It relies on the Japanese being concentrated upstream at Xiaguan and Meitan.’
‘The radio says that any day now there’ll be an announcement about the self-governing committee.’
He looked at me very seriously. It was the most unguarded expression I’d ever seen him wear. ‘Dearest, dearest Master Shi. You know as well as I do that if we stay here we’re like rats in a drain, waiting for the Japanese to find us.’
I put my fingers to my head. ‘Yes, indeed,’ I muttered. Tears were suddenly in my eyes, tears I didn’t want old Liu to see. But he is too old and wise. He knew immediately what was wrong.
‘Master Shi, do not take this blame too heavily – do you understand? I myself have done no better than you. I, too, have been guilty of pride.’
A tear ran down my face and fell on to the table, landing on the eye of a dragon. I stared at it numbly. ‘What have I done?’ I whispered. ‘What have I done to my wife? My child?’
Old Liu sat forward in his chair and covered my hand with his. ‘We have made a mistake. All we have done is to make a mistake. We have been ignorant little men, but that is all. Only a little ignorant, you and I.’
48
Sometimes people forget to be sympathetic and instead they blame you for everything, even for the things you did when you had no idea they were wrong. When I explained what had happened at the house, the first thing Shi Chongming wanted to know was had I jeopardized his research? Had I talked about what he was looking for? Even when I gave him an edited version, a vague explanation about what Jason had done, how he’d brought the Nurse to the house, Shi Chongming still wasn’t as sympathetic as I’d hoped. He wanted to know more.
‘What an odd thing for your friend to do. What was going on in his mind?’
I didn’t answer. If I told him about Jason, about what had been going on between us, it would be like the hospital all over again, people tut-tutting over my behaviour, looking at me and thinking of mud-streaked savages mating in a forest.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘Look,’ I said, standing up, ‘I’m going to explain everything very carefully.’ I went to the window. Outside it was still raining – the water dripped from the trees, soaking the straw target bales stacked outside the archery centre. ‘What you asked me to do was very, very, very dangerous. One of us could have died, I’m not exaggerating. Now I’m going to tell you something very important…’ I shivered, rubbing compulsively at the goosebumps on my arms. ‘It’s more serious than you ever guessed. I’ve been finding things. Finding incredible things.’ Shi Chongming sat motionless at his desk listening to me, his face tight and intense. ‘There are stories about human beings,’ I said, lowering my voice, ‘dead human bodies, cut up and used as a cure. Consumed. Do you understand what I’m talking about? Do you?’ I took a breath. ‘ Cannibalism.’ I waited a moment to let it sink in. Cannibalism. Cannibalism. You could feel the word spoken on its own soaking into the walls and staining the carpet. ‘You’re going to tell me I’m insane, I know you are, but I’m used to that and I really don’t care, because I’m telling you: all this time the thing you’ve been looking for, Professor Shi, is human flesh.’
A look of immense discomfort spread slowly across Shi Chongming’s face. ‘Cannibalism,’ he said sharply, his fingers moving compulsively on the desk. ‘Is that what you said?’
‘Yes.’
‘An extraordinary suggestion.’
‘I don’t expect you to believe me – I mean, if the company in Hong Kong heard, they’d-’
‘You’ve got proof, I take it.’
‘I’ve got what people have told me. Fuyuki used to run a black-market. Have you heard of zanpan? Everyone in Tokyo used to say that the stew they served in the market was-’
‘What have you actually seen? Hmmm? Have you seen Fuyuki drinking blood? Does he smell foul? Is his skin red? That’s how you recognize a cannibal, did you know?’ Something bitter had crept into his voice. ‘I wonder…’ he said. ‘I wonder… Is his apartment reminiscent of the terrible kitchens in Outlaws of the Marsh? Are there limbs hanging everywhere? Human skins stretched on the walls ready for the pot?’