Sometimes people forget to be sympathetic and instead they blame you for everything, even for the things you did when you had no idea they were wrong. When I explained what had happened at the house, the first thing Shi Chongming wanted to know was had I jeopardized his research? Had I talked about what he was looking for? Even when I gave him an edited version, a vague explanation about what Jason had done, how he’d brought the Nurse to the house, Shi Chongming still wasn’t as sympathetic as I’d hoped. He wanted to know more.
‘What an odd thing for your friend to do. What was going on in his mind?’
I didn’t answer. If I told him about Jason, about what had been going on between us, it would be like the hospital all over again, people tut-tutting over my behaviour, looking at me and thinking of mud-streaked savages mating in a forest.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘Look,’ I said, standing up, ‘I’m going to explain everything very carefully.’ I went to the window. Outside it was still raining – the water dripped from the trees, soaking the straw target bales stacked outside the archery centre. ‘What you asked me to do was very, very, very dangerous. One of us could have died, I’m not exaggerating. Now I’m going to tell you something very important…’ I shivered, rubbing compulsively at the goosebumps on my arms. ‘It’s more serious than you ever guessed. I’ve been finding things. Finding incredible things.’ Shi Chongming sat motionless at his desk listening to me, his face tight and intense. ‘There are stories about human beings,’ I said, lowering my voice, ‘dead human bodies, cut up and used as a cure. Consumed. Do you understand what I’m talking about? Do you?’ I took a breath. ‘ Cannibalism.’ I waited a moment to let it sink in. Cannibalism. Cannibalism. You could feel the word spoken on its own soaking into the walls and staining the carpet. ‘You’re going to tell me I’m insane, I know you are, but I’m used to that and I really don’t care, because I’m telling you: all this time the thing you’ve been looking for, Professor Shi, is human flesh.’
A look of immense discomfort spread slowly across Shi Chongming’s face. ‘Cannibalism,’ he said sharply, his fingers moving compulsively on the desk. ‘Is that what you said?’
‘Yes.’
‘An extraordinary suggestion.’
‘I don’t expect you to believe me – I mean, if the company in Hong Kong heard, they’d-’
‘You’ve got proof, I take it.’
‘I’ve got what people have told me. Fuyuki used to run a black-market. Have you heard of zanpan? Everyone in Tokyo used to say that the stew they served in the market was-’
‘What have you actually seen? Hmmm? Have you seen Fuyuki drinking blood? Does he smell foul? Is his skin red? That’s how you recognize a cannibal, did you know?’ Something bitter had crept into his voice. ‘I wonder…’ he said. ‘I wonder… Is his apartment reminiscent of the terrible kitchens in Outlaws of the Marsh? Are there limbs hanging everywhere? Human skins stretched on the walls ready for the pot?’
‘You’re teasing me.’
There was sweat on his brow. His throat was working hard under the high mandarin collar.
‘Don’t tease me,’ I said. ‘Please don’t tease me.’
He took a deep breath and tilted back in his seat. ‘No,’ he said tightly. ‘No. Of course I mustn’t. I mustn’t.’ He pushed back the chair, got up, and went to the sink where he ran the tap and scooped water into his mouth. He stood for a while with his back to me, watching the running water. Then he turned off the tap, came back to his chair and sat down. His face had smoothed a little. ‘I do apologize.’ He looked for a while at his fragile hands resting on the table. They were twitching as if they had a life of their own. ‘Well,’ he said at length, ‘ cannibalism, is it? If that’s what you believe you’ll bring me proof.’
‘What? You can’t want more. I’ve done everything. Everything you told me to do.’ I thought about the house, the windows, the doors smashed, I thought about all the money that had been taken. I thought about the Nurse’s shadow on the Salt Building – doing what to Jason? The beast with two backs…‘You’re not keeping your promise. You’ve broken your promise. You’ve broken your promise again!’
‘We had an agreement. I need proof, not speculation.’
‘ That’s not what you said! ’ I went to the projector and pulled it out of the corner, ripping away the plastic cover, turning it on its castors, trying to find a hiding place. ‘I need the film.’ I went to the shelves, pulling out books, dropping them on the floor, pushing my hands into the cavities behind. I pushed piles of papers on to the floor, and wrenched aside the curtains. ‘Where’ve you put it? Where is it? ’
‘Please, sit down and we’ll talk.’
‘No, you don’t understand. You are a liar.’ I clenched my hands at my sides and raised my voice. ‘ You are a liar.’
‘The film is locked away. I don’t have the key here. We couldn’t get to it even if I wanted to.’
‘Give it to me.’
‘ That’s enough! ’ He shot to his feet, flushed, breathing rapidly, and pointed his cane at me. ‘ Do not,’ he said, his chest rising and falling, ‘do not insult me until you understand what you are dealing with. Now, sit down.’
‘What?’ I said, taken off-guard.
‘Sit down. Sit down and listen carefully.’
I stared at him in silence. ‘I don’t understand you,’ I whispered, wiping my face with the back of my sleeve and pointing a finger at him. ‘ You. I don’t understand you.’
‘Of course you don’t. Now, sit.’
I sat, glaring at him.
‘Now, please.’ Shi Chongming pushed back his chair and sat down, breathing hard, trying to compose himself, pulling his jacket into shape and smoothing it, as if the action might wipe away his anger. ‘Please – you would do well to learn that sometimes it pays to consider things outside your immediate sphere of understanding…’ He dabbed his forehead. ‘Now, allow me to make you a small concession.’
I exhaled impatiently. ‘I don’t want a small concession, I want the-’
‘ Listen.’ He held up a shaky hand. ‘My concession… is to tell you that you are right. Or, rather, that you are almost right. When you suggest… when you suggest that Fuyuki is consuming…’ He shovelled his handkerchief into his pocket and set his hands on the desk, looking from one to the other as if the action would help him concentrate. ‘When you suggest…’ he paused, then said, in a steady voice ‘… cannibalism, you are almost correct.’
‘Not “almost”! I can see it in your face – I’m right, aren’t I?’
He held up his hand. ‘You are right about some things. But not everything. Maybe you are even correct about those dreadful rumours – human flesh for sale in the Tokyo markets! The gods know the yakuza did terrible things to the starving of this great city, and a corpse was not a difficult thing to find in Tokyo in those days. But to cannibalize for medicine?’ He picked up a paperclip, twisting it distractedly. ‘This is something different. If it exists in the Japanese underworld, then maybe it arrived in some parts of Japanese society centuries ago, and maybe again in the forties after the Pacific war.’ He twisted the clip into the shape of a crane and set it on his desk, regarding it carefully. Then he put his hands together and looked at me. ‘And this is why you need to listen carefully. I am going to tell you exactly why I can’t give you the film yet.’
I made a noise and sat back, my arms folded. ‘You know, your voice irritates me,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I really hate listening to it.’
Shi Chongming looked at me for a long time. Suddenly his face cleared and a small smile flickered around his mouth. He flicked the paperclip bird into the bin, pushed back his chair, stood up and fished out a bunch of keys from a desk tidy. From a locked drawer he pulled out a notebook. Bound in thin cowhide and held together with string, it looked ancient. He unwound the string and sheafs of yellowing paper fell on to the desk. They were covered in Chinese writing, tiny and unreadable. ‘My memoirs,’ he said. ‘From the time I was in Nanking.’
‘From Nanking?’
‘What do you see?’
I leaned forward, wonderingly, squinting at the tiny calligraphy, trying to decipher a word or phrase.
‘I said, what do you see?’
I glanced up at him. ‘I see a memoir.’ I reached out for it, but he pulled it back, crooking his arm round it protectively.
‘No. No, you don’t see a memoir. A memoir is a concept, like a story. You can’t see a story.’ He rubbed the first page between his veined fingers. ‘What is this?’
‘Paper. Can I read it now?’
‘No. What is on the paper?’
‘Are you going to let me have it?’
‘Listen to me. I’m trying to help. What is on the paper?’
‘Writing,’ I said. ‘Ink.’
‘Exactly.’ The strange grey light coming through the window made the skin on Shi Chongming’s face almost transparent. ‘You see paper, and you see ink. But they have become more than this – they have ceased to be just paper and ink. They have been transformed by my ideas and beliefs. They have become a memoir.’
‘I don’t know about memoirs and ink and paper,’ I said, my eyes still locked on the diary. ‘But I know I’m right. Fuyuki is experimenting with cannibalism.’
‘I had forgotten that Westerners do not understand the art of listening. If you’d listened carefully, if you’d listened less in the manner of a Westerner, you’d know that I haven’t disagreed with you.’
I looked at him blankly. I was about to say ‘ And? ’ when what he was trying to say leaped at me, fully formed and quite clear. ‘Oh,’ I said faintly, lowering my hands. ‘Oh, I think I…’
‘You think?’
‘I…’ I trailed off and sat for a while, my head on one side, my mouth moving silently. I was seeing image after image of the Liberian Poro boys, squatting fearsomely over their enemies in the bush, of the Human Leopard Society, of all the people around the world who had eaten the flesh of their enemies, something transformed by their ideas and beliefs. The kanji for power that I had painted last night came back to me. ‘I think,’ I said slowly, ‘I think… flesh can be transformed, can’t it? Some human flesh can have a – a kind of power…’
‘Indeed.’
‘A kind of power – it can be transformed by… by a process? Or by…’ And suddenly I had it. I looked at him sharply. ‘It’s not just any human being. You mean it’s someone particular. It’s someone special – special to Fuyuki. Isn’t it?’
Shi Chongming shuffled the diary together and secured it with a rubber band, his mouth in a tight bud. ‘That,’ he said, not looking at me, ‘is what you need to find out.’