Nanking, 21 December 1937
And it is unbearable now to think of it: to think of that one moment of clear peace, of clear hope. How very still everything was in those few seconds before Shujin’s screams echoed through the forest.
I looked round vaguely, as if someone had casually mentioned my name, frowning into the air, as if I didn’t know what I’d heard. Then she screamed again, a short yelp, like a dog being beaten.
‘Shujin?’ I turned in a trance, pushing aside the branches and moving back through the trees. Maybe the birth was closer than I’d expected. ‘Shujin?’
No reply. I began to walk. I crested a slope and picked up speed, breaking into a numb trot back to the place I had been sitting. ‘Shujin?’ Silence. ‘Shujin?’ My voice was louder now, a note of panic creeping in. ‘Shujin. Answer me.’
There was no reply, and now real fear hit me. I broke into a run, leaping up the slope. ‘Shujin!’ My feet slid, pine trees dropped their soft snow loads on to me. ‘ Shujin! ’
At the base of the tree the handcart had been set upright, our blankets and belongings scattered around it. A set of muffled tracks led away into the trees. I swerved into them, my eyes watering, ducking as the bare branches whipped against my face. The track led on for a few more yards, then changed. I skidded to a halt in a flurry of snow, breathing hard, my heart racing. The tracks had become wider here. An area of disturbed snow stretched around me for several feet, as if she had fallen to the ground in pain. Or as if there had been a struggle. Something lay half buried at my feet. I fell to a crouch and snatched it up, turning it over in my hands. A thin piece of tape, frayed and torn. My thoughts slowed, a terrible dread creeping over me. Attached to the tape were two Imperial Japanese Army dogtags.
‘ Shujin! ’ I leaped up. ‘ SHU – JIN?’
I waited. Nothing came back to me. I was alone in the trees with just the sound of my panting and my pulse. ‘ SHUJIN! ’ The word reverberated into the trees and slowly folded away into the forests. I spun round, searching for a clue. They were out there somewhere, the Japanese, holding Shujin, crouching and sharpening their bayonets, framing me with their blood-filled eyes, somewhere, behind one of those trees…
Very close behind me someone released their breath into the silence.
I whipped round in a crouch, my hands out, ready to leap. But there was nothing, only the trees, black and mossy, icicles dripping in the branches. I breathed in and out through my nose, my ears straining for any sound. Someone was there. Very near. I heard a whisper of dry leaf, a rustle from about ten feet away where the ground dipped, then the crack of a branch, a sudden, mechanical sound, and a Japanese soldier stepped out from behind a tree.
He wasn’t dressed for combat – his webbed steel helmet hung on his belt with the ammunition pouches, and his badges of rank were still in place. He held up not a rifle but a cine-camera, the lens pointed directly into my face. It was whirring, the crank handle whipping round and round. The Shanghai cameraman. I knew him instantly. The man who had filmed the soldiers’ exploits in Shanghai. He was filming me.
We stood for a few seconds in silence, me staring at him, the lens staring unflinchingly at me. Then I lunged forward. ‘ Where is she? ’ He took a step back, the camera steady on his shoulder, and at that moment, from further down the trail, I heard Shujin’s voice, as sweet and breakable as porcelain.
‘Chongming!’
Years and years from now I will recall that sound. I’ll dream about it, I’ll hear it in the cold white spaces of my future dreams.
‘Chongming!’
I stumbled away from the cameraman into the trees, the snow almost up to my knees now, blindly following her voice. ‘SHUJIN!’
I waded on, tears in my eyes, ready for a bullet to come whistling through the air. But death would have been easy when compared with what happened next. From ahead came the distinctive jangle of a bayonet frog in the frosty air. And then I saw them. They stood a hundred feet further down the goat track, two of them in their mustard greatcoats, their backs to me, looking at something on the ground. A motorcycle leaned against an old black pine tree. One of the men turned and glanced nervously at me. His hood was pulled over a field cap: he, too, was not dressed for battle, and yet his bayonet was slotted into his rifle. There was a line of blood on his face, as if Shujin had scratched him during the struggle. As I stared at him he lowered his eyes with shame. I had a brief flash of what he was, not much more than a teenager kept awake on amphetamines, worn down to nothing but skeins of naked nerves. He didn’t want to be there.
But then there was the other man. At first he didn’t turn. Beyond him, against a tree, Shujin lay on her back in the snow. One of her shoes had come loose, the naked foot blue against the snow. She was clutching a small, lacquer-handled knife against her breast. It was a sharp little fruit knife for dicing mango, and she was holding it in both hands, pointing up at the men.
‘Leave her,’ I shouted. ‘Stand back.’
At my voice the other man became very still. His back appeared to grow – to gain in stature. Very slowly he turned to face me. He wasn’t tall, only my height, but his eyes seemed to me very terrible. I slowed to a trot and then to a walk. The single gilt star on his cap flashed in the sun, his fur-collared greatcoat was open, his shirt ripped, and now I saw that it must have been his dogtags I’d found. He was close enough for me to smell last night’s sweet sake in his sweat and the odour of something trapped and old coming from his clothing. His face was damp, a sick, sweaty grey.
And in that moment I knew all about him. All about the stained bottles lined up in the silk factory. The pestle, the mortar, the endless search… For a cure. This was the sick man who couldn’t be cured by army-issue medicine, the sick man who was desperate enough to try anything – even cannibalism. The yanwangye of Nanking.