Kazuo Ishiguro (35 page)

Near the back, over by a wall, was the body of a woman who might have been the young girl’s mother. Possibly the blast had thrown her there and she was lying where she had landed.

There was a shocked expression on her face. One arm had been torn off at the elbow, and she was now pointing the stump up to the sky, perhaps to indicate the direction from which the shell had come. A few yards away in the debris, an old lady was also gaping up at the hole in the ceiling. One side of her face was charred, but I could see no blood or any obvious mutilation.

Finally, closest to where we were standing - he had been obscured at first by a fallen shelf - lay a boy slightly older than the little girl we had followed in. One of his legs had been blown off at the hip, from where surprisingly long entrails, like the decorative tails of a kite, had unfurled over the matting.

‘Dog.’ Akira said beside me.

I stared at him, then followed his gaze. In the centre of the wreckage, not far from the dead boy, the little girl had knelt down beside an injured dog lying on its side and was gently caressing its fur. The dog’s tail moved weakly in response. As we stood watching her, she glanced up and said something, her voice remaining quite calm and steady.

‘What’s she saying, Akira?’

‘I think she say we help dog,’ said Akira. ‘Yes, she say we help dog.’ Then suddenly, he began to giggle helplessly.

The young girl spoke again, this time addressing only me, perhaps having dismissed Akira as a lunatic. Then she brought her face down close to the dog’s and continued to pass her hand gently over its fur.

I took a step towards her, untangling myself from my friend’s arm, and as I did so, Akira crashed over into some broken furniture. I looked back at him in alarm, but he had continued to giggle, and besides, the girl’s pleading had gone on unbroken. Laying my revolver down on something, I went over to her and touched her shoulder.

‘Look here… All of this.’ I gestured at the carnage, of which she seemed completely oblivious - ‘it’s awfully bad luck. But look, you’ve survived, and really, you’ll see, you’ll make a pretty decent show of it if you just… if you just keep up your courage…’ I turned to Akira in irritation and shouted: ‘Akira!

Stop that noise! For God’s sake, there’s nothing to laugh about!

This poor girl…’

But the girl had now grasped my sleeve. She spoke again, carefully and slowly, looking into my eyes.

‘Look, really,’ I said, ‘you’re being awfully brave. I swear to you, whoever did all this, whoever did this ghastly thing, they won’t escape justice. You may not know who I am, but as it happens, I’m… well, I’m just the person you want. I’ll see to it they don’t get away. Don’t you worry, I’ll… I’ll…’ I had been fumbling about in my jacket, but I now found my magnifying glass and showed it to her. ‘Look, you see?’

I kicked aside a bird-cage in my path and went over to the” mother. Then, perhaps out of habit as much as anything else, I bent down and began to examine her through the glass. Her stump looked peculiarly clean; the bone protruding out of the flesh was a shiny white, almost as though someone had been polishing it.

My memory of these moments is no longer very clear. But I have a feeling it was at this point, just after I stared through the glass at the woman’s stump, that I suddenly straightened and began to search for my parents. I can only say, by way of partial explanation for what ensued, that Akira was still giggling where he had fallen, and that the girl was continuing to make her pleas in the same even, persistent tones. In other words, the atmosphere had become fairly overwrought, and this might account to some extent for the manner in which I went about turning what was left of that little house upside down.

There was a tiny room at the back, completely destroyed by the shelling, and it was here I began my search, pulling up broken floorboards, smashing open with a table leg the doors of an upturned cupboard. I then returned to the main room and began to heave aside the piles of wreckage, smashing with my table leg at anything that failed readily to yield to my kicks and manoeuvres. Eventually, I became aware that Akira had stopped his giggling and was following me about, pulling at my shoulder and saying something in my ear. I ignored him and carried on with my search, not pausing even when I accidentally threw over one of the bodies. Akira continued to pull at my shoulder, and after a time, unable to comprehend why the very person I had counted on to assist me was instead bent on hindering me, I turned to him, shouting something like: ‘Get off me! Get off! If you won’t help, then just go away! Go off into your corner and giggle!’

‘Soldiers!’ he was hissing at me. ‘Soldiers coming!’

‘Get off me! My mother, my father! Where are they? They’re not here! Where are they? Where are they?’

‘Soldiers! Christopher, stop, you must calm! You must calm or we killed! Christopher!’

He was shaking me, his face close to mine. I then realised that indeed there were voices coming from somewhere close by.

I allowed Akira to pull me to the back of the room. The little girl, I noticed, had now fallen silent, and was gently cradling the dog’s head. The animal’s tail was still making the occasional faint movement.

‘Christopher,’ Akira said in an urgent whisper. ‘If soldier Chinese, I must hide.’ He pointed to the corner. ‘Chinese soldier must not find. But if Japanese, you must say word I teach.’

‘I can’t say anything. Look, old fellow, if you’re not willing to help me…’

‘Christopher! Soldier coming!’

He tottered across the room and disappeared into a cupboard standing at an angle in the corner. The door was sufficiently damaged so that the whole of his shin and a boot were clearly visible through the panel. It was such a pathetic attempt to hide that I began to laugh, and was about to call out that I could still see him, when the soldiers appeared in the doorway.

The first soldier to come in fired his rifle at me, but the bullet hit the wall behind me. He then noticed my raised hands, and the fact that I was a foreign civilian, and shouted something to his comrades, who crowded in behind him. They were Japanese, and the next thing I remember, three or four of them began to argue about me, all the time covering me with their rifles.

More soldiers came in and began to search the place. I heard Akira call out from his hiding place something in Japanese, then as soldiers crowded around his cupboard, I saw him emerge. I noticed he did not seem particularly pleased to see them, nor they him. Other men had gathered around the little girl, also arguing what to do. Then an officer entered, the men all stood to attention, and a silence fell over the room.

The officer - a young captain - glanced about the room. His gaze fell on the child, then on me, then settled on Akira, now supported by two soldiers. A conversation ensued in Japanese, in which Akira himself took no part. A resigned expression, with elements of fear, had come into his eyes. He once tried to say something to the captain, but the latter immediately cut him off. There was another quick exchange, then the soldiers began to lead Akira away. The fear was now very evident in his face, but he did not resist.

‘Akira!’ I called after him. ‘Akira, where are they taking you?

What’s wrong?’

Akira glanced back and gave me a quick, affectionate smile.

Then he was gone, out into the alley, crowded from my view by the soldiers accompanying him.

The young captain was looking at the child. Then he turned to all me and said: ‘You Englishman?’

‘Yes.’

‘Pray, sir, what do you do here?’

‘I was…’ I looked around. ‘I was looking for my parents. My name is Banks, Christopher Banks. I’m a well-known detective.

Perhaps you’ve…’

I did not quite know how to continue, and besides, I realised I had been sobbing for some time, and that this was making a poor impression on the captain. I wiped my face and continued: ‘I came here to find my parents. But they’re not here any more. I’m too late.’

The captain looked around once more at the debris, the corpses, the little girl with the dying dog. Then he said something to the soldier nearest him, never taking his eyes from me.

Finally he said to me: ‘Pray, sir, you come with me.’

He made a polite but firm gesture that I should precede him out into the alley. He had not holstered his pistol, but then nor was it aimed at me.

‘This little girl,’ I said. ‘Will you take her somewhere safe?’

He gazed back at me in silence. Then he said: ‘Pray, sir. You leave now.’

I was on the whole looked after decently by the Japanese. They kept me in a little back room within their headquarters - a former fire station - where I was fed and a doctor treated me for several injuries I had barely noticed receiving. My foot was bandaged and I was even provided with a large boot to accommodate it. The soldiers in charge of me spoke no English, and appeared uncertain whether I was a prisoner or a guest, but I was too exhausted to care; I lay on the camp bed they had put up in my back room, and for several hours, drifted in and out of sleep. I was not locked in; in fact, the door to the adjoining office would not close properly, so that whenever I came back to consciousness, I could hear Japanese voices arguing, or else shouting down a telephone, presumably about me. I now suspect I was suffering from a mild fever for much of that period; whatever, as I went in and out of sleep, the events not only of the past few hours, but of the last several weeks, circled around my head. Then gradually, one by one, the cobwebs began to clear, so that by the time I was awoken, towards the late afternoon, by the arrival of Colonel Hasegawa, I found I had an entirely fresh view on all that had been troubling me about the case.

Colonel Hasegawa - a dapper man in his forties - introduced himself politely, saying: ‘I am glad to see you are feeling so much better, Mr Banks. I trust these men here have looked after you well. I am pleased to tell you I have come with instructions to escort you to the British consulate. May I suggest we set off at once?’

‘Actually, Colonel,’ I said, rising gingerly to my feet, ‘I would prefer it if you could take me somewhere else. You see, it’s rather urgent. I’m not sure of the exact address, but it’s not so far from Nanking Road. Perhaps you know it. It’s a shop selling gramophone records.’

‘You are so eager to purchase gramophone records?’

I could not be bothered to explain, so just said: ‘It’s important I get there as quickly as possible.’

‘Unfortunately, sir, I have instructions to deliver you to the British consulate. I fear we shall cause great inconvenience if I do otherwise.’

I gave a sigh. ‘I suppose you’re right, Colonel. In any case, now I think about it, I fancy I shall be too late.’

The colonel looked at his wristwatch. ‘Yes, I fear you might.

But if I may suggest. If we set off straight away, then you will be enjoying your music again with minimum delay.’

We travelled in an open military vehicle driven by the colonel’s batman. It was a fine afternoon and the sun was beating down on the ruins of Chapei. We moved slowly, for though much of the debris had been cleared out of our path there were huge piles of it on the roadside - the road was pitted with craters. Occasionally we would pass down a street with almost no sign of damage; but then we would turn the corner and the houses would be little more than piles of rubble, and every surviving telegraph pole would be standing at an odd angle between tangled cables. Once, as we moved through such an area, I found I could see a fair distance across the flattened ruins, and caught sight of the chimneys from the two furnaces.

‘England is a splendid country.’ Colonel Hasegawa was saying.

‘Calm, dignified. Beautiful green fields. I still dream of it.

And your literature. Dickens, Thackeray. Wuthering Heights. I am especially fond of your Dickens.’

‘Colonel, excuse me for bringing this up. But when your men found me yesterday, I was with someone. A Japanese soldier.

Do you happen to know what became of him?’

‘That soldier. I am not certain what became of him.’

‘I do wonder where I might find him again.’

‘You wish to find him again?’ The colonel’s face became serious.

‘Mr Banks, I would advise you not to concern yourself any more with that soldier.’

‘Colonel, has he in your eyes committed some offence?’

‘Offence?’ He looked at the passing ruins with a gentle smile.

‘Almost certainly that soldier gave information to the enemy. It is likely that is how he negotiated his release from captivity. I understand you yourself said in your statement you found him near the Kuomintang lines. That is most suggestive of cowardice and betrayal.’

I was about to protest, but realised it was in neither Akira’s nor my interests to fall out with the colonel. After I had been silent for a time, he said: ‘It is wise not to become too sentimental.’

His accent, which was otherwise impressive, faltered on this last word, so that it came out as ‘sen-chee-men-tol’. It rather grated on me and I turned away without responding. But a moment later he asked in a sympathetic tone: “This soldier. You had met him somewhere previously?’

‘I thought I had. I thought he was a friend of mine from my childhood. But now, I’m not so certain. I’m beginning to see now, many things aren’t as I supposed.’

The colonel nodded. ‘Our childhood seems so far away now.

All this’ - he gestured out of the vehicle - ‘so much suffering.

One of our Japanese poets, a court lady many years ago, wrote of how sad this was. She wrote of how our childhood becomes like a foreign land once we have grown.’

‘Well, Colonel, it’s hardly a foreign land to me. In many ways, it’s where I’ve continued to live all my life. It’s only now I’ve started to make my journey from it.’

We passed through Japanese checkpoints into Hongkew, the northern district of the Settlement. In this region too there were signs of war damage, as well as those of anxious military preparation. I saw many piles of sandbags, and trucks filled with soldiers. As we approached the canal, the colonel said: ‘Like yourself, Mr Banks, I am very fond of music. In particular, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms. Chopin also. The third sonata is marvellous.’