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 Manchu 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.