Kazuo Ishiguro (21 page)

‘No, no, sir’ - Grayson laughed nervously - ‘I was referring to the welcoming ceremony. I mean, the one welcoming back your parents after their years of captivity.’

This, I admit, rather took me by surprise and perhaps for a second I just stared at him. He let out another nervous laugh and said: ‘Of course, it’s somewhat jumping ahead, I realise. You’ve first to do your work. And of course, I don’t wish to tempt fate.

All the same, you see, we are obliged to prepare. As soon as you announce the solving of the case, everyone will look to us, the Municipal Council, to provide an occasion worthy of such a moment. They’ll want a pretty special event, and they’ll want it promptly. But you see, sir, to organise something on the scale we’re talking of, it’s no simple matter. So you see, I wondered if I could put a few very basic options before you. My first question, sir, before anything else, is if you’re happy with the choice of Jessfield Park for the ceremony? We will, you see, require substantial space…’

While Grayson had been speaking, I had become steadily aware of the sound - from somewhere behind the hubbub of the crowd - of distant gunfire. But now Grayson’s words were suddenly cut off by a loud boom which shook the room. I looked up in alarm, only to see all around me people smiling, even laughing, their cocktail glasses still in their hands. After a moment, I could discern a movement in the crowd towards the windows, rather as though a cricket match had resumed outside.

I decided to seize the opportunity to leave the table, and rising, joined the drift. There were too many people in front of me to see anything, and I was trying to edge my way forward when I became aware that a grey-haired lady by my shoulder was talking to me.

‘Mr Banks,’ she was saying, ‘do you have any idea at all how relieved we all feel now that you’re finally with us? Of course, we didn’t like to show it, but we were getting extremely concerned about, well’ - she gestured towards the sound of gunfire - ‘my husband, he insists the Japanese will never dare attack the International Settlement. But then you know, he says it at least twenty times a day, and that’s hardly reassuring. I tell you, Mr Banks, when news of your impending arrival reached us, that was the first good news we’d had here in months. My husband even stopped repeating that little mantra of his about the Japanese, stopped for at least a few days. Good heavens!’

Another thunderous explosion had rocked the room, provoking a few ironic cheers. I then noticed that a little way in front of me, some French windows had been opened, and people had pushed out on to a balcony.

‘Don’t worry, Mr Banks.’ a young man said, grasping my elbow. ‘There’s no chance of any of that coming over here. Both sides are extremely careful now after Bloody Monday.’

‘But where’s it coining from?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, it’s the Jap warship in the harbour. The shells actually arc over us and land over there across the creek. After dark, it’s quite a sight. Rather like watching shooting stars.’

‘And what if a shell falls short?’

Not only the young man I was talking to, but several others around me laughed at this idea - I thought rather too loudly.

Then another voice said: ‘We’ll have to trust the Japs to get it right. After all, if they get sloppy, they’re just as likely to drop one behind their own lines.’

‘Mr Banks, would you care for these?’

Someone was holding out a pair of opera glasses. When I took hold of them, it was as if I had given a signal. The crowd parted before me, and I found myself virtually conveyed towards the open French windows.

I stepped out on to a small balcony. I could feel a warm breeze and the sky was a deep pink. I was looking down from a considerable height, and the canal was visible past the next row of buildings. Beyond the water was a mass of shacks and rubble out of which a column of grey smoke was rising into the evening sky.

I put the glasses to my eyes, but the focus was entirely wrong for me and I could see nothing. When I fiddled with the wheel, I found myself gazing on to the canal, where I was faintly surprised to see various boats still going about their normal business right next to the fighting. I picked out one particular boat a barge-like vessel with a lone oarsman - that was so piled up with crates and bundles it seemed impossible for it to pass under the low canal bridge just beneath me. As I watched, the vessel approached the bridge rapidly, and I was sure I would see at least a crate or two fall from the top of the pile into the water. For the next few seconds, I went on staring through the glasses at the boat, having quite forgotten the fighting. I noted with interest the boatman, who like me was utterly absorbed by the fate of his cargo and oblivious of the war not sixty yards to his right. Then the boat had vanished under the bridge, and when I saw it glide gracefully out the other side, the precarious bundles still intact, I lowered the glasses with a sigh.

I realised a large crowd had been gathering at my back while I had been looking on to the canal. I handed the glasses to someone nearby and said to no one in particular: ‘So that’s the war.

Most interesting. Are there many casualties, do you suppose?’

This set off a lot of talking. A voice said: ‘Plenty of death over there in Chapei. But the Japs will have it in a few more days and it’ll go quiet again.’

‘Wouldn’t be so sure,’ someone else said. ‘The Kuomintang’s surprised everyone so far, and my bet is they’ll keep doing so.

I’d bet on them holding out a good while yet.’

Then everyone around me seemed to start arguing at once. A few days, a few weeks, what difference did it make? The Chinese would have to surrender sooner or later, so why did they not do so now? To which several voices objected that the conclusion was not nearly so cut and dried. Things were changing by the day, and there were many factors each impinging on the others.

‘And besides,’ someone asked loudly, ‘hasn’t Mr Banks turned up?’

This question, obviously intended to be rhetorical, nevertheless hung oddly in the air, causing a hush to fall and all eyes to turn to me once more. In fact, I got the idea that it was not only the immediate group around the balcony, but the entire ballroom that had fallen into silence and was awaiting my response. It struck me that this was as good a time as any to make an announcement - one that perhaps had been called for from the moment I had entered the room - and clearing my throat, I declared loudly: ‘Ladies and gentlemen. I can well see the situation here has grown rather trying. And I have no wish to raise false expectations at such a time. But let me say that I would not be here now if I were not optimistic about my chances of bringing this case, in the very near future, to a happy conclusion. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, I would say I am more than optimistic. I beg then for your patience over this coming week or so. After that, well, let us see what we have achieved.’

As I uttered these last words, the jazz orchestra suddenly started up within the ballroom. I have no idea if this was simply a coincidence, but in any case the effect was to round off my statement rather nicely. I felt the focus of the room shifting away from me, and saw people starting to return inside. I too made my way back into the room, and as I tried to find our table again I had for a moment lost my bearings somewhat I noticed that a troupe of dancing girls had taken the floor.

There were perhaps as many as twenty dancers, many of them ‘Eurasians’, dressed skimpily in matching outfits with a bird motif. As the dancers proceeded with their floor show, the room seemed to lose all interest in the battle across the water, though the noises were still clearly audible behind the cheery music. It was as though for these people, one entertainment had finished and another had begun. I felt, not for the first time since arriving in Shanghai, a wave of revulsion towards them.

It was not simply the fact of their having failed so dismally over the years to rise to the challenge of the case, of their having allowed matters to slip to the present appalling level with all its huge ramifications. What has quietly shocked me, from the moment of my arrival, is the refusal of everyone here to acknowledge their drastic culpability. During this fortnight I have been here, throughout all my dealings with these citizens, high or low, I have not witnessed - not once - anything that could pass for honest shame. Here, in other words, at the heart of the maelstrom threatening to suck in the whole of the civilised world, is a pathetic conspiracy of denial; a denial of responsibility which has turned in on itself and gone sour, manifesting itself in the sort of pompous defensiveness I have encountered so often. And here they now were, the so-called elite of Shanghai, treating with such contempt the suffering of their Chinese neighbours across the canal.

I was moving along the line of backs that had formed to watch the cabaret, trying to contain my sense of disgust, when I realised someone was tugging on my arm and turned to find Sarah.

‘Christopher,’ she said, ‘I’ve been trying to get over to you all evening. Have you no time to say hello to your old friends from home? Look, Cecil’s over there, he’s waving to you.’

It took me a little while to get a view of Sir Cecil through the crowd; he was seated alone at a table in a far corner of the room, and indeed was waving to me. I waved back, then looked at Sarah.

It was our first encounter since my arrival. The impression I received of her that evening was that she seemed very well; the Shanghai sun had removed her customary pallor to some advantage. Moreover, as we exchanged a few friendly words, her manner remained lighthearted and assured. It is only now, after the events of last night, that I find myself thinking over again that first encounter, in an attempt to discover how I could have been so deceived. Perhaps it is only hindsight that makes me recall something overly deliberate in her smile, particularly whenever she mentioned Sir Cecil. And although we exchanged little more than pleasantries, after last night, one phrase she uttered that evening - which even at the time rather puzzled me - has continued to return to me all day.

I had been enquiring how she and Sir Cecil had enjoyed the year they had spent here. She had been assuring me that although Sir Cecil had not achieved the breakthrough he had hoped for, he had none the less done much to earn the gratitude of the community. It was then that I had asked, with nothing much in mind: ‘So then you’ve no immediate plans to leave Shanghai?’

At which Sarah had laughed, cast another gaze towards Sir Cecil’s corner, and said: ‘No, we’re quite settled for now. The Metropolis very comfortable. I don’t expect we’ll be going anywhere in a hurry. Not unless someone comes to the rescue, that is.’

She had said all this - including this last remark about being rescued - as though telling a joke, and although I did not know exactly what she meant, I had responded with a small laugh to go with hers. We had then, as far as I recall, talked about mutual friends in England until Grayson’s arrival effectively put an end to a seemingly uncomplicated conversation.

It is only now, as I say, after last night, that I find myself searching back through my various encounters with Sarah over these three weeks, and it is this one phrase, added as a kind of afterthought to her breezy reply, to which I continue to return.

I spent most of the afternoon yesterday inside the dark, creaking boathouse where the three bodies had been discovered.

The police respected my wish to carry out my investigations undisturbed to the extent that I lost all track of time and hardly noticed the sun setting outside. By the time I crossed the Bund and strolled down Nanking Road, the bright lights had come on and the pavements were filled with the evening crowds.

After the long, dispiriting day, I felt the need to unwind a little and made my way to the corner of Nanking and Kiangse Road, to a small club I had been taken to in the days soon after my arrival. There is nothing so special about the place; it is just a quiet basement where most nights a lone French pianist will give melancholy renditions of Bizet or Gershwin. But it meets my needs well enough and I have returned there several times over these weeks. Last night, I spent perhaps an hour at a corner table, eating a little French food and making notes on what I had discovered in the boathouse, while the taxi-dancers swayed with their clients to the music.

I had climbed the staircase back up to the street intending to return to the hotel, when I happened to fall into conversation with the Russian doorman. He is some sort of count, and speaks excellent English learnt, he tells me, from his governess before the Revolution. I have got into the habit of passing a few words with him whenever I visit the club, and was doing so again last night when I no longer remember what we were discussing he happened to mention that Sir Cecil and Lady Medhurst had passed by earlier in the evening.

‘I suppose,’ I remarked, ‘they were off home for the night.’

At this, the count thought for a moment, then said: ‘Lucky Chance House. Yes, I believe Sir Cecil mentioned they were on their way there.’

It was not an establishment I knew, but the count proceeded without prompting to give me directions, and since it was not far, I set off towards it.

His instructions were clear enough, but I am still uncertain of my way around the side-streets off Nanking Road, and managed to get a little lost. This was not something I minded so much. The atmosphere in that part of the city is not intimidating, even after dark, and although I was accosted by the odd beggar, and at one point a drunken sailor collided with me, I found myself drifting with the night-time crowd in a mood not far from tranquillity. After the depressing work in the boathouse, it was a relief to be amidst these pleasure-seekers of every race and class; to have the smells of food and incense come wafting towards me as I passed each brightly lit doorway.

Last night, too, as I have come increasingly to do of late, I believe I looked about me, scanning the faces in the passing crowd, hoping to spot Akira. For the fact is, I had almost certainly seen my old friend shortly after my arrival in Shanghai on my second or third night here. It was the night Mr Keswick of Jardine Matheson and some other prominent citizens had decided I should ‘taste the night-life’. I was still at that stage in something of a disorientated condition, and was finding the tour of dance-bars and clubs tiresome. We were in the entertainment area of the French Concession - I can see now my hosts were rather enjoying shocking me with some of the more lurid establishments - and we were just emerging from a club when I had seen his face go by in the crowd.