by Mo Hayder
I picked up the three sheets of kanji – hunger, power, healing – went to the wall, pinned them on to the Tokyo skyline and looked at them thoughtfully. Japan ’s history was all coiled around China ’s: so many things had been transferred, why not this? If human flesh could be a medicine in China, then why not here in Japan? I returned to my textbooks. There had been something. I had a vague, vague recollection of something… Something I’d read in a module at university.
I pulled out a study of post-war Japan. Somewhere in it were transcripts of the Tokyo war trials. I quickly lit a cigarette, sat down cross-legged on the floor and leafed through it. I found what I was looking for two-thirds of the way through: the testimony of a young Japanese woman employed during the war by the notorious 731 unit. I sat there in the dim light, my hands and feet suddenly terribly cold, and read the chapter: ‘Dubbed “maruta” (logs), allied servicemen POWs were subjected to vivisection and human experimentation.’
There was a picture of the assistant who had given evidence. She was young, pretty, and I could imagine the chill and absolute silence in the great military training auditorium, no one in the court moving – or even breathing – as she described in a small, clear voice the day she had eaten the liver of an American serviceman. ‘ For my health.’
I sat there for a long time, staring at the picture of this beautiful young cannibal. In 1944 at least one person in Japan had thought that cannibalism could help their health. It was time to take Fuyuki much more seriously than I ever could have imagined.
43
It took me a long time to fall asleep, the duvet wrapped round me like a shroud, and when I did I dreamed that everything in the room was laid out just as it was in real life. I was on the futon, exactly as I was in reality, in my pyjamas, lying on my side, one hand under the pillow, one on top, my knees drawn up. The only thing that differed was that in the dream my eyes were open – I was wide awake and listening. A steady rhythmic noise came from the corridor, muffled, like someone having a whispered conversation. From the other side, the window, there was the sound of something gnawing at the mosquito screen.
My dream self’s first thought was that the gnawing was a cat, until with a wrench and a grinding of steel wire the screen gave, and some heavy thing like a bowling ball rolled into my room. When I squinted down I saw that it was a baby. It lay on the floor on its back, crying, its arms and legs agitating, going up and down like pistons. For a brilliant, exhilarating moment I thought it must be my baby girl, having made it at last across the continents to see me, but just as I was about to reach for her, the baby rolled on to its side and reached blindly for me. I felt hot breath and a little tongue licking the sole of my foot. Then, with horribly vicious speed, she snapped her gummy teeth round my toes.
I bolted from the bed, shaking her and batting at her, grabbing her by the head and trying to prise open her jaws, but she clung on, snarling and snapping and turning furious somersaults in the air, saliva coming from her mouth. At last I gave a final kick and the baby flew against the wall, screeching, and dissolved into a shadow that slid to the floor and flowed out of the window. Shi Chongming’s voice seemed to come out of her as she disappeared: What will a man do to live for ever? What won’t he eat?
I woke with a start, the duvet tangled round me, my hair sticking to my face. It was five a.m. Outside the window I could hear Tokyo bucking and tossing through the dying moments of a storm and, for a moment, I thought I could still detect the screaming in the undertones of the wind, as if the baby was rocketing through the empty rooms downstairs. I sat very still, the duvet clutched in my hands. The heating was chugging and the ventilation pipes rattling, and the room was full of a strange, grey light. And, now that I thought about it, there was another noise. An odd noise that had nothing to do with my dream and nothing to do with the storm. It was coming from somewhere on the other side of the house.
44
Nanking, 20 December 1937
All knowledge comes with a price. Today Liu Runde and I have learned things we wish we could forget. Pushed up against the wall in the small room at the factory was a low army cot, a filthy blood-stained mattress thrown casually on it. A kerosene lamp, a Chinese make, stood unlit on it, as if someone had used it to light whatever diabolical procedure was performed there – whatever it was that had produced the copious amounts of blood that had congealed on the floor and walls. It seemed the only things not sticky with blood was a pile of belongings stacked against the wall – a pair of split-sole tabi overboots and a soldier’s pack made of cow-hide so raw that there was still hair attached. On the small desk, next to the manager’s old abacus, stood a row of small brown medicine bottles sealed with waxed paper, Japanese lettering on the labels; a handful of phials containing a variety of coarse powders; a pestle and mortar, alongside squares of folded apothecary paper. Behind these were arranged three army mess tins and a water canteen with an Imperial chrysanthemum stamped on it. Liu put a finger on one of the mess tins and tilted it. When I leaned over to look inside I saw rags floating in an indescribable mixture of blood and water.
‘Good God.’ Liu set the tin upright. ‘What in heaven’s name happens in here?’
‘He’s ill,’ said the boy, sullenly indicating the medicine bottles. ‘A fever.’
‘I don’t mean the bottles! I mean this. The blood. Where is the blood from?’
‘The blood… the blood is… the boys on the street say that the blood is…’
‘What?’ Liu looked at him sternly. ‘What do they say?’
He ran his tongue uncomfortably over his front teeth. He was suddenly pale. ‘No, it must be a mistake.’
‘What do they say?’
‘They’re older than me,’ he said, lowering his eyes. ‘The other boys are much older than I am. I think they must be telling me tales…’
‘What do they say?’
His face twisted reluctantly, and when he spoke his voice was very quiet, no more than a whisper. ‘They say that the women…’
‘Yes? What about the women?’
‘They say that he…’ His voice became almost unintelligible. ‘He takes shavings from them. Shavings of their skin. He scrapes them.’
The food in my stomach rolled and heaved. I sank down to my haunches, my face in my hands, dizzy and sick. Liu took a breath, then gripped the boy by his jacket and drew him away from the room. He led him straight out of the building without another word, and shortly I stumbled out after them, my stomach turning.
I caught up with them about a hundred yards away. Liu had his son in a doorway and was grilling him. ‘Where did you hear this?’
‘The boys on the streets are all talking about it.’
‘Who is he? This yanwangye? Who is he?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He’s a human being – of course he is. And what manner of human being? Japanese?’
‘Yes. A lieutenant.’ The boy gripped his collar where an IJA officer would wear a rank badge. ‘The yanwangye in a lieutenant’s uniform.’ He looked at me. ‘Did you hear the motorcycle this morning?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s him. They say he’ll be hungry for ever because nothing makes him stop. The other boys say he’s on a search that will last for ever.’
I have to pause here as I write this because I am recalling a scene – a vivid scene – a conversation I had with Liu before the invasion. We are cramped in his reception room, some cups and a little dish of shredded Nanking salt duck between us, and he is telling me about bodies he saw in Shanghai, bodies desecrated by the Japanese. I can’t help reliving the scenes he drew for me that night. In Shanghai, apparently, anything was taken as a trophy: an ear, a scalp, a kidney, a breast. The trophy was worn on the belt, or pinned to a cap – soldiers who could show off scalps or genitals had great power. They posed with their trophies, waiting for photographs to be taken by their comrades. Liu had heard rumours of a group of soldiers who had stitched Chinese scalps, shaved into old-fashioned Manc
hu queues, to the back of their caps as the badge of their unit. Among them moved a soldier from another unit who carried a cine-camera, probably stolen from a journalist, or looted from one of the big houses in the International Zone. The men showed off for him too, laughing and throwing the plaits over their shoulders, aping the walk of the girls in the cabarets on Avenue Edward VII. They were not ashamed of their unnatural behaviour, rather they were proud – eager to show off.
Now when I stop writing all I can hear is my heart thudding. The snow falls silently outside the window. What about skin? Scrapings of human skin? What sort of unspeakable trophy was the yanwangye harvesting?
‘That’s one of them.’
The child hadn’t been very old. Maybe three or four years. Liu’s son took us to see her. She lay at some distance from us, in the street at the side of the factory, face down, her hair spread round her, her hands tucked under her body.
I looked at the boy. ‘When did this happen?’
He shrugged. ‘She was there last night.’
‘She needs to be buried.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’ But he made no attempt to move.
I went a short way down the street to look at her. As soon as I got near I saw that her jacket, dust-silvered in the sun, was moving. She was breathing shallowly. ‘She’s alive,’ I said, looking up at them.
‘Alive?’ Liu gave his son a fierce look. ‘Did you know this?’
‘No,’ he said, backing away defensively. ‘I promise – I promise I thought she was dead.’
Liu spat on the ground. He turned away from his son and came to stand next to me. We peered down at her. She wore a quilted jacket and cannot have weighed more than thirty jin, but no one had picked her up. Her feet were bound with a scrap of olive wool – the material of a Japanese army blanket.
I bent to her. ‘Turn over,’ I said. ‘Roll on to your back.’
She remained motionless, only the shadows of a maple branch overhead moving across her back. I bent, took her by the arm, and turned her on to her back. She was as light as firewood, and once on her back her hair and arms lay where they fell, loose and spread out in the snow. I took a step back, choking a little. The front of her trousers had been cut away and a hole about the size of a rice bowl had been scraped in her right side, just below the ribs where her liver would be. I could see the blackish stain of gangrene around the edges of the wound, where she had been gouged at, and the smell made me grope instinctively for my sleeve, fumbling to hold it over my nose and mouth. It was the smell of the most vicious gangrene. Gas gangrene. Even if I could get her to a hospital she would not live.
I stood with my arm across my face, staring at the hole in the child’s stomach, trying to imagine why it had been made. It was not accidental. It was not a stab wound. This hole had been carved out of her body with a purposefulness that made my blood run cold. ‘What is this?’ I muttered to Liu. ‘Is it a trophy?’ I couldn’t think of any other reason for such a mutilation. ‘Is this a trophy he’s taking?’
‘Shi Chongming, don’t ask me this question. I have never seen anything like this…’
Just then the child’s eyes opened and she saw me. I didn’t have time to lower my arm. She caught the disgust in my face, she saw my sleeve held tightly against my mouth, trying to block out her smell. She understood that I was sickened by her. She blinked once, her eyes clear and alive. I dropped my arm and tried to breathe normally. I wouldn’t allow my disgust to be one of the last impressions she had of herself in the world.
I turned to Liu in anguish. What should I do? What can I do?
He shook his head wearily, and went to the side of the road. When I saw where he was heading I understood. He was making his way to a place where a heavy paving-stone had come loose at the foot of a building.
When the act was complete, when the child was quite dead and the stone smeared with her blood, we cleaned our hands, rebuttoned our coats and rejoined the boy. Liu took his son in his arms and kissed his head over and over again until the boy became embarrassed and struggled to get away. The snow was falling again and we all headed in silence in the direction of our houses.
Old Father Heaven, forgive me. Forgive me for not having the energy to bury her. She is lying in the snow still, the reflections of clouds and branches and sky moving in her dead eyes. There are traces of her on the front of my greatcoat and under my nails. I am sure traces of her are sticking to my heart too, but I can’t feel them. I don’t feel a thing. Because this is Nanking, and it is not new, this death. One death is hardly worth mentioning in this city where the devil stalks the street.
45
Around me the room was emerging slowly from the darkness. On the futon I sat very still, my heart thudding, and waited for the noises outside to become recognizable. But every time I thought I’d got the tail of it between my fingers it faded under the racket of the storm. Shadows of leaves carried by the wind passed the window, and sitting in the semi-dark like that I began to imagine all manner of things: I hallucinated that the house was a little raft in the dark, juggled on the waves, that outside my room the city was gone, blasted away in an atomic attack.
The sound again. What was it? I turned to the door. My first thought was of the cats in the garden. I’d seen their kittens sometimes, clinging like monkeys to the mosquito screens, screaming into our rooms like baby birds. Maybe a kitten was in one of the other rooms, crawling froglike up a screen. Or maybe it was…
‘ Jason? ’ I whispered, sitting up straight, my skin crawling. This time it was louder, an odd, ululating sound lisping round the house. I tipped on to my hands and knees and crawled to the door, opened it a little way, very silently, trying to take its weight so it didn’t shriek on the runners. I peered out. Several of the shutters had been pulled back and opposite Jason’s room a window stood open, as if he’d stopped there after our argument just long enough to smoke a cigarette. Outside, the garden was rearing and thrashing in the wind – branches had broken, and near the window a Lawson’s Station carrier-bag, brought on the wind and caught in a tree, shifted and hissed and crackled, throwing its eerie shadow skittering round the corridor, up the walls and across the tatami matting.
But the storm wasn’t what had woken me. The more I looked at the familiar passageway, the more I knew something was wrong. It was something about the light. Usually it wasn’t this dark. Usually we left the overhead lamps on at night, but now the light coming under the doors from the Mickey Rourke poster was the only source of luminance, and instead of a row of lightbulbs, I could see jagged glitters of broken glass. I blinked a few times, my thoughts moving curiously slowly and calmly, allowing time for this to sink in. The lightbulbs in the corridor had been smashed in their fittings, just as if a giant hand had reached up and pinched them out.
Someone’s in the house, I thought, still strangely calm. There’s someone else in the house. I took a breath and stepped silently into the corridor. All the doors on this side of the house were closed – even the kitchen door. We usually left it open, in case someone was hungry or thirsty in the night. The toilet door, too, was shut tight, eerie in its blankness. I took a few steps up the corridor, stepping over the broken glass, trying to ignore the howling wind, trying to concentrate on the noise. It was coming from the third section of the corridor, where the gallery bent sideways and Jason’s room lay. As I stood there, breathing carefully, the sound began to separate itself, detaching minutely from the wind, and when at last I recognized it my pulse leaped. It was the soft sound of someone whimpering in pain.
I stepped sideways and opened one of the windows a crack. Another noise was coming from the same part of the house: an odd, furtive rummaging, as if every rat in the house had converged on one room. The trees bent and whipped, but from here I had a view directly across the garden to the far corridor. When my eyes got used to the tree shadows bouncing off the glass, what I saw made me drop to a crouch, gripping the frame with trembling fingers, peering cautiously over the sill.
I blinked a few times, thinking in a surreal, fevered way: What is this? Why are they here? Is it a joke? I straightened a little, and now I could see the top of Jason’s head and shoulders: he was face down, prone, pinioned to the ground by the chimpira, whose foot was planted directly on the back of his head. Just then the Nurse shifted a little, and settled herself in a sitting position, her big, muscular knees in the black nylons parted wide and high either side of her shoulders, her arms straight down between them. That thin, awful sound I’d heard was Jason pleading, struggling to get free. She wasn’t listening to him – she was going about her business with unnerving concentration, her shoulders hunched, rocking herself calmly back and forth. Her hands, which were just below the frame of my vision, operated in small, controlled motions, as if she was performing a complex and delicate operation. I don’t know how I knew, but I had a moment’s rare clarity: You’re watching a rape. She’s raping him.
My trance fractured. A sweat broke out across my back and I stood up, opening my mouth to speak. As if she had smelt me on the wind, the Nurse looked up. She paused. Then her huge shoulders rose, the polished wig swayed round her great angular head, which she held back a little, as if she was rising from an interrupted meal. I froze: it was as if the whole world was a telescope, containing me at one end, the Nurse at the other. Even now I wonder how I must have looked to her, how much she saw: a moving shadow, a pair of eyes glinting in an unlit window at the far, lonely end of the house.
