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.