The China Lover

by Ian Buruma

  Shimizu Toru, the director of the film, was another shifty character with a reddish background. He was on loan from a Tokyo film studio. I suspected fraudulence as soon as I saw the man. So when I was asked by Amakasu to keep an eye on him, as well as on Hotta, I had no hesitation. It wasn’t a question of spying so much as of saving Ri from getting into trouble. She was much too gullible and prone to fall under the spell of clever men with a plausible manner.

  The story of My Nightingale takes place in the 1920s, when Chinese warlords and Russian Bolsheviks were running amok in Manchuria. The Japanese girl loses both her parents in an attack by Chinese bandits, and is saved in Harbin by a Russian opera singer. He refuses to sing any longer himself, after his performances are disrupted by Bolshevik saboteurs, but teaches his adopted daughter. When the same Chinese bandits who robbed the girl of her parents threaten to take over Harbin, the Russian refugees are terrified. But all is well in the end when the Japanese army restores order in 1931 and offers protection to the poor Russian refugees. The girl’s stepfather agrees at long last to sing Mephistopheles in a performance of Faust, but becomes fatally ill, and collapses on stage. This would have been one way to end this sorry little melodrama. But there is another twist. They learn that the girl’s real father has survived, after all. When he hears that his daughter is safe in Harbin, he allows her to tend to her sick Russian stepfather until he finally dies in a harrowing last scene, designed to squeeze the public’s tear ducts like a lemon.

  Life on the set was fraught from the beginning, and relations quickly descended into a war of old goats. Like Helen in the old Greek myth, Ri became the object of masculine warfare. Shimizu could not bear to let her out of his sight, especially when Hotta was hovering around. But Ri couldn’t resist the attentions of a famous Japanese actor who flew in from Tokyo to play the part of her father. And the Russian baritone of the Harbin Opera Company, Dimitri something or other, who played her stepfather, was so smitten that he howled with rage whenever Ri went out for dinner with one of her Japanese admirers. She was so trusting, so eager to learn from these men, to whom she foolishly looked up, that she was an easy mark for their beastly ends.

  And then there was Max, poor, foolish Max. It was my fault. I should never have introduced him to Ri. But I thought he would enjoy watching how a movie was made. He had expressed an interest. He loved movies, he said. It was just puppy love, no doubt, and he was too timid for any physical relations, but he wouldn’t stay away, following Ri around the set, insisting on taking her out for dinner, calling her at the hotel, until I had to put a stop to it. I’m afraid I got angry with him and told him in no uncertain terms not to go anywhere near Ri ever again. He went white as a ghost and said very softly: “You were my friend.” Then he turned round and disappeared. I stopped hearing from him, which made me feel bad. But what could I do? I wanted to protect him, but my main duty was to protect Ri.

  That’s why I had to keep a close watch on Hotta and Shimizu. This involved many nights of heavy drinking in the bar of the Moderne. I heard a great deal of lovesick whining and tearful complaints about the difficulty of making good films in troubled times. But they were too clever to divulge any truly dangerous thoughts. Only once did Hotta’s caution slip, and that was after a monumental bout of drinking. He had fallen asleep with his head on the table. Just as I was ready to go up to my room, he raised his head, trained his bloodshot eyes on me, and slurred: “You know, Sato . . . We’re going to lose this war. That’s for sure. We’ll lose, because we’re just a poor, small island country and America is too big and powerful. But even though we’ll lose, I want to show the world that we can make a musical film that’s just as good as theirs. No, it’ll be better, better than Hollywood. At least we’ll have accomplished that. This’ll be the best musical film ever . . .”

  19

  ONE DAY, AS I was sitting alone in my hotel room while the crew was out shooting on location, I heard someone calling, or rather shouting, my name and banging on the door. It was Ellinger, wild-eyed and uttering strange animal-like sounds. I got him to sit down and gave him a glass of water. He finally managed to stammer something in his broken Japanese. “They’ve kidnapped him!” He fell on his knees, sobbing like a woman. I was confused at first. Kidnapped whom? Why? Where? I could not help feeling contempt for Ellinger’s lack of composure. That is the other side of the Jew: take away the protective cloak of money and you find a miserable heap of sniveling humanity.

  But I was shocked too, when I realized it was Max. I should have looked out for the boy. He was too trusting. Perhaps I had been too harsh on him. But of course, Ellinger himself was partly to blame. He had gone around bragging about his precious Max, his talent as a singer, his good looks, his success in Paris, and so on. He had broken the golden Harbin rule: Never attract attention.

  I asked Ellinger whether anyone had demanded a ransom. No, he hadn’t heard anything yet. Had he been aware of any particular threats? He shook his head. I decided to talk to the one-eyed Greek, who was perched at his usual spot in the lobby, squinting at a newspaper without any interest in its contents. A cowering little wretch, one felt soiled even talking to him. He said he knew nothing, had seen nothing, and heard nothing. He was just minding his own business, drinking his morning coffee. All he could offer was a tip to check the Russian papers. “If they’re Russians, they’ll state their price in the personal advertisements,” he said. Ellinger could hardly bear to touch, let alone read these “anti-Semitic rags.” In any case, there was nothing in the papers that day.

  The following afternoon, by which time Ellinger had been reduced to a gibbering wreck, I received a message to come and see Captain Nakamura at the Kempeitai headquarters on Bolshoi Prospect. The building, known to locals as “Devil’s House,” used to be a Russian bank. It had a large steel door behind a row of massive columns. On quiet days, it was claimed, you could hear screams coming from the basement cells, which were obscured from the street by thick iron bars. Nakamura’s office was up a flight of marble stairs on the first floor. Apart from a map of Manchukuo, the office was bare of any ornament. A round-faced man with plump, pinkish hands, and a toothbrush mustache above a tight little scar of a mouth, Nakamura didn’t bother to get up from his desk when I entered. Somewhat to my surprise I saw Muramatsu sitting in a comfortable chair. “You know one another?” Nakamura enquired. I said we had met. Muramatsu turned his pale, pockmarked face toward me and said nothing.

  Nakamura did all the talking, in his vulgar Hiroshima accent. Fighting the American imperialists, he said, was proving to be a drain on our economic resources, and the strain was felt in Manchukuo, too. To finance our necessary presence here, and keep up the war effort, we needed every cent we could get. The Jews, whose lives we protected with much inconvenience to ourselves, had been typically reluctant to help us out, so it was decided that we should, as he put it, “shake a few coins from that Jewish money tree.” Proud of his way with words, he revealed a perfect row of gold teeth, which caught the light of his desk lamp. I must have noticed, he continued, the unfortunate disappearance of Ellinger’s son. Listening to his words, I felt a sudden chill. Sweat began to pour down my neck. I had paid no special attention to it at the time. It was just one of those things one overheard, the kind of rough talk one grew accustomed to in Manchukuo. But now it came back to me with a horrifying clarity: the Ri Koran Fan Club. Colonel Yoshioka and Muramatsu, the transparent silk stockings, the artist son of a Harbin Jew.

  “He’s in the hands of our friends the Russians,” Nakamura continued. “They know how to treat the rich Jews.” A grayish tongue flicked his little mustache, as he glanced across to Muramatsu. Then back to me: “You are a friend of Ellinger’s, and we have observed that you have been out on the town with the boy.” I felt sick, and could only hope that it didn’t show. “A ransom will soon be demanded. It would be in your interest, as well as ours, if you persuaded the Jew to cough up. And this time, don’t slip up.”

  Even though he was sm
iling, I realized that this was a serious threat. My failure to get rid of Eastern Jewel had not gone unnoticed. I loathed the arrogant tone of this horrible little man, but I had no choice. It was the only chance of getting Max out of trouble. Even with the backing of Amakasu, I had the forces of the Kempeitai and organized crime stacked against me. I later discovered that the man who informed our Military Police of Max Ellinger’s movements was none other than the one-eyed Greek. I would have been happy to strangle him, but that would have been most unwise in the circumstances.

  So when, a day or two later, a notice appeared in Nash Put, the Russian Fascist newspaper, demanding fifty thousand dollars for Max’s release, I told my friend that he should pay up immediately. Ellinger, however, wouldn’t hear of it. “How dare they!” he cried. “Why should I, a humble man of business, who never did harm to a fly, bankrupt myself for these gangsters? It is an outrage! An outrage!” I agreed, of course, but tried to persuade him that he had little choice. I didn’t give him any details, but hinted that I knew whom he was up against. But Max was a French citizen, Ellinger shouted; he would go to the French consulate. I said that that might make things worse. Still the old man wouldn’t budge. Two days later a package arrived at the Hotel Moderne. Inside, wrapped in a piece of paper torn from Nash Put, was a finger, reddish, like a small sausage.

  Amidst all this commotion, I still had to keep an eye on Ri, whose relations with Hotta were becoming uncomfortably close. On and on she went about Hotta-san this and Hotta-san that, how clever he was, how much he knew, how well he understood her feelings. She repeated, in her childlike way, Hotta’s political views on American capitalism and the Asian proletariat. These conversations usually took place in the Victoria coffee shop on Kitaskaya Avenue, where she stuffed herself with Russian pastries, licking the cream off her fingers while telling me all about Five-Year Plans, as well as her troubles with men. Shimizu was so kind to her, she said. She just had to accept his dinner invitations. At the same time, however, Abe Shin, the actor playing her Japanese father, was so suave and attentive, and promised her anything she wanted if only she would go back with him to Tokyo. She shook her head as she adjusted the fur collar around her neck, like a pretty little bird. “Ah, men,” she sighed. “I try to give them what they want, but then they become so . . . so . . .” I watched and said nothing as she removed a fleck of cream from her upper lip.

  While Ellinger was secluded in his rooms, not willing to talk to anyone, the film crew had taken over part of the hotel. The main bridal suite had been transformed into the apartment of the Russian baritone and his Japanese daughter. Shimizu was directing a distinguished Russian actress named Anna Bronsky through an interpreter, a disreputable-looking fellow, who scribbled away in a little notebook when he thought no one was looking. Heaven only knows to whom he was reporting. Behind the director sat Nakamura, a frequent visitor to the set. The scene took place during an attack by Chinese brigands. “Oh!” the Russian woman cried. “We are just helpless refugees without protection. Where are the Japanese?” The baritone, looking rather frantic himself, patted her shoulder and told her that everything would be all right. Ri clutched her stepfather’s arm and whimpered. Her facility to cry on call was a source of constant wonder. One moment she would be merry, laughing along with one of the actors. Then, as soon as the director said, “Start!” her face crumpled in a look of utter helplessness and the tears began to flow. “Papa,” she cried, “Papa!” as the baritone embraced her a little too tightly. Tears even welled up in Nakamura’s piggy eyes. For he, too, was one of Ri’s ardent fans.

  “Cut!” cried the director, his face crimson with anger. “Tell him not to hold Ri like that,” he shouted at the interpreter. “But I’m her father,” boomed Dimitri, a picture of innocence. “I don’t give a damn,” shouted Shimizu. “It won’t do in Japan.” Dimitri: “But I’m Russian.” Shimizu, screaming: “But she’s Japanese!” Dimitri stomped off the set, the interpreter rushing after him with his little black notebook. Russian voices, one pleading, the other petulant, could be heard on the other side of the wall. Poor Ri was sobbing on Hotta’s shoulder, as though he could intervene in the Russian contretemps. I know I should have paid more attention to all these dramas, but my mind was elsewhere, on Max, on the stubbornness of Ellinger, who refused to do what was necessary to get his son released. I didn’t even want to imagine what they might do to the boy.

  Just then a Chinese fellow from the reception desk tried to enter the room, but was barred by our Japanese security guards. Apparently he wanted to see me. For this, he received a slap in the face. I had no idea what was going on. But eventually a message was passed to me anyway. Ellinger asked me to come to his room at once. At first, I couldn’t make him out in the dark. I just heard a succession of moans, like those of a wounded animal.

  “What is it?” I asked, reaching for the light switch. His eyes were red from crying. He threw up his arms, as though in supplication to his Hebrew God. I looked around the room and on the table was a note with a piece of paper, stained with streaks of red. Neatly wrapped inside was a large ear, shriveled like the petals of a dead rose.

  “Tell the Jew that if he pays up half the ransom, he can see his precious son.” Nakamura looked away, as he spoke from behind his desk, and worked on his fingernails with a small silver file. “The second half after he’s released.” He was clearly displeased with my inability to persuade Ellinger. But I felt a wave of hope. At least Max was still alive. I said I’d do my best. Nakamura dismissed me with a grunt. “I’ll talk to the Russians, as soon as he coughs up. Then you go with Ellinger. And under no circumstances will you even think of uttering my name.”

  Ellinger, after much persuasion, finally realized that he would never see his son again if he didn’t pay the money. We were driven in a car for what seemed like more than an hour. It was night, so I couldn’t make out where we were going, except that our destination was far from the center of town. Ellinger was shivering in a thick winter coat. The driver was Chinese. An armed Russian with vodka and garlic on his breath sat next to him in the front seat. We stopped at an unremarkable gabled house, the kind of place reserved for middle-ranking Japanese bureaucrats, with a modest front garden, covered in a layer of hard, crunchy snow. Another Russian quickly let us in. Five men were sitting around a table, listening to a recording of sentimental Russian songs. Three looked Russian and two were Japanese, of the worst type, the kind of tattooed thugs who made one feel ashamed of one’s country. Several empty vodka bottles stood on the table. One was broken in half, its jagged edges pointing toward us. There was no sign of Max. One of the Japanese was working his teeth with a toothpick.

  “Let’s see the cash,” said the Japanese, who had a crudely fashioned image of the Goddess of Mercy carved into his upper arm. I told him that we had to see Max first, as we had been promised. “Who are you,” asked one of the Russians in Japanese, “the Jew’s lawyer?” This made the other men snigger, as though it were a capital joke. “Bring out the boy,” said the other Japanese, an odd-looking brute with eyebrows tattooed onto his forehead. The Russian got up lazily from his chair and left the room. Ellinger could barely contain himself. After a few minutes, the door opened, and the Russian appeared, dragging a human figure by a rope. A single lamp shining onto the table made it hard to see more than shadows, since the men were standing in the dark. Ellinger wanted to rush toward his son, but the Russian ordered him to sit down.

  The Japanese with the false eyebrows grabbed the lamp and shone it into the prisoner’s face. It was impossible to tell whether it was Max. His eyes were hidden under a swollen mess of pulpy tissue, his skin was a patchwork of yellow and blue, and his mouth a great gash crusted with dried blood. Unable to stand by himself, his head was held up by his hair. I recognized the dark curls, and a dark scab where his right ear should have been. Perhaps he was trying to tell us something, but all we could hear was a high-pitched moan. Bubbles appeared from what looked like a toothless mouth. “I’m afraid he w
on’t be able to do much warbling any longer,” said the Japanese with the Goddess of Mercy on his arm. The men giggled. One of the Russians pointed to a pretty glass jug, standing on a side table. In it a purplish piece of flesh floated obscenely. “He’d seen a little too much for his own good. Now pay up if you want him back.”

  I turned toward my friend, who opened his mouth wide and howled, and kept on howling, louder and louder, until he stopped and slumped over unconscious. It was the last sound he ever made, poor Ellinger. For he never regained consciousness, which was probably just as well, for Max, too, did not survive much longer. His corpse was found in the rubbish dump near the river, half eaten by stray dogs. There were no obituaries. The French consul protested. The Japanese police deplored the rise in violent crime and said they had done everything to save the young Parisian singer. And when I next saw Nakamura, he waved his pudgy hand dismissively and said: “It can’t be helped. You know what they’re like, those barbarous Russians. They always go too far. We Japanese will never understand their hatred of the Jews. A cultural difference, you know.”

  I could no longer stand being around the movie set. I hated the whole enterprise with a passion. But it was my duty to be there. So I watched without really taking anything in. All I could see in my mind’s eye was the bloody mess that once was Max. But what could I have done? Ellinger should not have been such a braggart.