The Devil of Nanking (31 page)

When it seemed that he wasn’t going to speak again, I sat forward and lowered my voice to a whisper: ‘Shi Chongming. Tell me what happens on the film.’

He shook his head.

‘Please.’

‘No.’

‘I need to know, I need to know so much.’

‘I’m sorry. If you need to know so much you’ll help me with my research.’ He looked up at me. ‘That is why you’re here, isn’t it?’

I sighed and sat back in the chair. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, it is.’

He smiled sadly. ‘I thought I had lost you. For a long time I thought you had drifted.’ He gave me a look then that was sad and sweet and quite unlike any look he had ever given me before. For the first time since we’d met I had the feeling he liked me. I supposed I’ll never know what journey he’d been on during those few weeks when we didn’t speak. ‘What made you come back?’

When I got up to go I should have just opened the door and left. But I couldn’t help myself. I stopped at the door and turned back to where he sat at the desk. ‘Shi Chongming?’ I said.

‘Hmmm?’ He looked up, as if I’d interrupted his thoughts. ‘Yes.’

‘You told me that ignorance and evil are not the same thing. Do you remember?’

‘Yes. I remember.’

‘Is it true? Do you think it’s true? That ignorance isn’t evil?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course it’s true.’

‘You really mean it?’

‘Of course I mean it. Ignorance you can forgive. Ignorance is never the same as evil. Why do you ask?’

‘Because . . . because . . .’ A feeling was racing through me, coming from nowhere, making me feel strangely powerful and lightheaded. ‘Because it’s one of the most important questions in the world.’

As the day went on it was getting colder. There was a threat of rain in the air and in the lines of traffic waiting at the lights car windows were closed tight, steamed up. The wind skulked round corners, out of sight, then leaped, picking things up and racing off into subway entrances with its prize. I got off the train a few blocks away from Fuyuki’s apartment complex, tightened my coat and walked quickly, using the red and white Tokyo Tower as a guide, going through streets I didn’t recognize, full of small restaurants and noodle-makers. I passed a wholesaler’s called Meat Rush, and slowed, staring rudely at the customers in the basement car park loading up their huge cars with twenty-pound joints. Meat. Japan and China had shared years when the only protein people could get was silkworm cocoons, grasshoppers, snakes, frogs, rats. Now they had places called Meat Rush.

Meat, I thought, stopping at the iron railings outside Fuyuki’s apartment. Meat. One of the garages was open and a man in overalls was waxing one of Fuyuki’s big black cars. The windows were open, the keys were in the ignition, and the radio was playing a song that sounded to my ears like the Beatles. A gardener was using a hose to clean the path. I laced my hands round the railings and looked up the outside of the building to the penthouse. The windows were mirrored, black. They showed nothing, only the reflection of the cold sky. Shi Chongming thought that whatever Fuyuki had in his apartment needed to be preserved.
Especially if it was dangerous or difficult to replace his supply
 . . .

There was a phone box just opposite the apartment building so I went to it and got inside, where all the photos of Japanese girls in their knickers were wedged into the creases behind the coin box. I fumbled in my wallet, took out Fuyuki’s
meishi
and stared at it. Winter Tree. Winter Tree. I pushed my hair off my face and dialled the number. I waited, biting my nails. Then there was a click and a mechanical woman’s voice said in Japanese: ‘Sorry, but this number is unobtainable. Please check and redial.’

Over in the apartment buildings the gardener was coiling up the hose. The water ran off into the flower-beds, where the ornamental cabbages had been wrapped with string to keep their shape over the winter. I hung up the receiver, pushed the
meishi
into the bag and turned for home. Tonight was the night Mama Strawberry got her drinks delivered. She was usually in a good mood. Tonight I was going to ask her again what she had meant when she told me not to eat at Fuyuki’s.

When I saw Jason again, at the club that evening, it was almost as if nothing had happened. I was checking my makeup at the mirror in the little cloakroom when he stopped on his way to the bar and said, ‘I know what you need. I know how to make you feel better.’ He pointed at my stomach and winked slyly. ‘You just need to work off a little frustration, that’s all. We’ll figure it out when we get home.’ When he’d gone, and I was sitting on my own again, looking at my face in the mirror, I was surprised to find that I felt nothing. Nothing at all. There’s something scary about how quickly I can draw back into myself. It’s practice, I suppose.

It was an odd night. I didn’t say much to the customers, and some of the other hostesses asked me if I was feeling well. From time to time, in a lull in the conversation, I’d find Jason staring confidently at me from where he stood in front of the bar. Once he raised his eyebrows and mouthed something I couldn’t understand. I didn’t respond.

Mama Strawberry had been drinking tequila for a long time. I’d been watching her out of the corner of my eye, seeing her light cigarettes then forget and leave them smouldering in ashtrays. She kept sitting on customers’ knees, and swayed when she walked. When there was a break between customers I went to the desk and sat down opposite her. ‘Strawberry,’ I said. ‘I still need to know. I need to know what stories you heard about Fuyuki.’

‘Scccht!’ she hissed, flashing a dangerous look at me, her blue contacts catching light from the skyscrapers outside and refracting it back like diamonds. ‘You forget everything Strawberry say. Okay.
Everything
.’

‘I can’t forget. Why did you tell me not to eat anything?’

She swallowed more tequila and clumsily fitted a cigarette into her holder, making three or four stabs at it before she succeeded. She lit it, and searched my face with her watery eyes. ‘Listen,’ she said, after a while, in a different, softer voice. ‘I’m gonna tell you something. I’m gonna tell you about Strawberry mother.’

‘I don’t want to hear about your—’

‘Strawberry
mother
,’ she said steadily. ‘Very interesting woman. When she a girl, little girl like this big, everyone in Tokyo got no food.’ I opened my mouth to interrupt but Mama Strawberry’s hand lifted to stall me. Her voice was intense, focused, her eyes pinned on a point above my head. ‘You know that, Grey? Everyone hungry.’

‘I do know. They were starving.’

‘Yes. Yes.
Starving
. Terrible. But then something happen. Something amazing for my mother. Suddenly the
yakuza
markets start.’

‘The black-markets.’

‘No one in Tokyo call them
black
. They call them blue. The Blue Sky markets.’ She smiled up into the air, opening her hands as if describing the sun coming up. ‘Blue Sky because it the only place in Tokyo there no clouds. The only place in Tokyo there food.’ She looked out of the window, past the Marilyn swing. It was a rainy evening: the neon of Yotsuya Sanchome was spitting and fizzing, throwing little spurts of light down into the wet street hundreds of feet below. The skyline was shimmery, indistinct in the rain, as if it was a fairytale illustration. ‘Biggest market was over there.’ She pointed out into the night. ‘In Shinjuku.
Brightness over Shinjuku
.’

I’d read about the Mafia-run market in Shinjuku. I’d always imagined it to be an incredible sight in bombed-out Tokyo – the sign was supposed to have been made from hundreds of lightbulbs: it would have been visible from miles around, blazing above the charcoaled city roofs, like a moon over a petrified forest. The stalls sold tinned whale, seal sausages, sugar, and there must have been the atmosphere of a street festival, with lanterns hanging from the trees and charcoal-burners hissing and men propped against stalls, drinking
kasutori
and spitting on the ground. In those days
kasutori
was the only substitute for
sake
you could find in Tokyo – the third glass, they said, made you blind, but who cared? What did a little blindness matter when everyone was dying?

‘Strawberry mother love Blue Sky market. She always go with other children to see the car of
yakuza
boss. It the only car you ever see in Tokyo in those days and Blue Sky a place like heaven to her. She buy clothes and bread and
zanpan
stew.’ Strawberry paused and looked at me sideways. ‘Grey-san know what
zanpan
stew is?’

‘No.’

‘Leftover stew. Made from what the GI Joe don’t eat. From GI Joe kitchen. There not many meat in
zanpan
. If
yakuza
put extra meat into
zanpan
they can ask more money. It all about ca-ching ca-ching.’ She mimed cash going into a till. ‘Ca-ching ca-ching! So the
yakuza
go inland, to Gumma and Kanagawa, and steal meat from farmers . . .’ She raised her eyes to me. Suddenly she looked very small and young, sitting there with her hands folded penitently on the table.

‘What?’ I said. ‘What is it?’

‘
Zanpan
.’ Her voice lowered to a whisper. Her car-enamel-red lipstick winked and glistened. ‘That’s what I want to tell Grey-san. Strawberry mother find something strange in
zanpan
from Brightness over Shinjuku market.’

‘Strange?’ The word came out in a whisper.

‘Grey-san know who running Brightness over Shinjuku? The Fuyuki gang.’

‘And what did your mother find in the stew?’

‘Fat that taste bad. Not normal. And bones.’ Her voice was almost inaudible now. She was sitting forward, her eyes gleaming at me. ‘Long bones. Too long for pig, too thin for cow.’ I thought I saw something like sadness in her eyes, as if she was seeing images she was ashamed of. Behind her, out of the window, Marilyn swung to and fro, flitting in front of the video screen that glowed on the opposite building.

‘What sort of animal would have bones like that?’ I said.

She narrowed her eyes and gave me a tight, sarcastic smile. ‘In Blue Sky market you can buy anything. You can buy
oshaka
.’

Oshaka
. I knew the word from somewhere.
Oshaka
 . . .

Strawberry was about to speak when the crystal lift chimed its arrival and, just as if we’d been demon-conjuring, we turned to see one of the aluminium doors standing open, and hovering in the lobby, in her awkward, hunched way, her head averted slightly so that the glossy hair covered it, the unmistakable figure of the Nurse. She was dressed in a fawn-coloured raincoat and matching leather gloves, and she was clearly waiting for someone to come to her.

Moved by an almost physical force, Strawberry shot to her feet, colouring shockingly under her makeup. ‘
Dame!
’ she hissed. ‘Did you know she was coming?’

‘No.’ I didn’t take my eyes off the Nurse, but leaned across the desk to Strawberry, whispering urgently. ‘What did you mean
oshaka
? What’s
oshaka
?’

‘Ssh.’ She gave a shudder and shifted around inside her coat as if ice had been poured down her back. ‘Don’t talk so loudly. Shut up now. It’s not safe.’

Fuyuki had sent the Nurse to choose girls for another party at his apartment. The news got round the club in no time. I sat at the gilded desk, my head pounding, watching the Nurse speaking softly to Mama Strawberry, who stood with her head bowed, her face dark and bitter as she jotted down the names. At one point the Nurse pointed into the club and muttered something. Strawberry’s little gold pen halted, poised in mid-air above the notepad. Her eyes drifted towards me and, for a moment, it seemed she would say something. Then she must have changed her mind, because she bit her lip and wrote another name on the list.

‘You’re chosen,’ Jason said, sliding up to the desk. It wasn’t closing time, but he had undone his bow-tie and there was a cigarette between his fingers. He was looking thoughtfully at the Nurse. ‘Another party. And it couldn’t be better for us.’ When I didn’t respond he murmured, ‘Look at the heels she’s wearing. Do you know what I’m saying?’ His eyes were on her feet and legs, taking in her tight skirt. ‘She’s giving me serious ideas, weirdo. Something you’re really going to love.’

He slipped away from the table and caught up with the Nurse at the crystal lift as she was waiting to leave. He stood close to her, his face near hers. She was unusually still while she listened to him. I stared at her long gloved hands.

‘You think he going to put his hand in Ogawa’s skirt?’ Mama Strawberry said, sidling up to me, her eyes on Jason, her mouth close to my ear. I could smell the tequila on her breath. ‘You make a bet with me, Grey. You bet when he put his hand in Miss Ogawa’s skirt what he gonna find. Eh?’ She clutched drunkenly at my arm for balance. ‘Eh? You ask Strawberry, Jason gonna find a
chin chin
in her panties. You ask Strawberry – Ogawa look like a man.’

‘Strawberry. What was the meat in the
zanpan
?’

She tightened her hold on my arm. ‘Don’t forget,’ she hissed. ‘It’s all rumours. You don’t repeat.’