by Mo Hayder
‘What do you think?’ he said eventually, not turning to look at me. ‘We have food for two days, then we’ll starve. Do you think we should go out to look?’
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said quietly, watching the flicker of red illuminate the underside of the billowing smoke. ‘The city has fallen. It won’t be long before it’s safe to leave our houses. Maybe two days, maybe less. Soon they’ll tell us that it’s safe to go out again.’
‘We should wait until then?’
‘Yes. I believe we should wait. It won’t be long.’
Nanking, 17 December 1937
We haven’t eaten for two days. I worry about how long Shujin can go on like this. It can’t be much longer before peace is restored. There are radio reports of attempts to set up a Self-governing Committee for the city – they say it won’t be long before we can walk around openly and the Red Cross will be giving out free rice rations on the Shanghai road. But as yet there has been no announcement. We swept up the rice that had been spilled during the theft and mixed it with the remainder of the pickled vegetables that Shujin happened to have stored in the kitchen, and that lasted us for two meals; and because Liu’s wife is concerned about Shujin they distributed what little they had left. But now there is nothing. This is life laid bare to the bone. Shujin doesn’t complain, but I wonder about the baby. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I have an odd sensation that something in Shujin, something intangible, like an essence or a spirit, is stretching, and I can’t help imagining it’s our moon soul reaching out in hunger.
I leave the chores until after dark – taking out our soil pot and bringing in wood for the fire. I guard jealously the little oil I have for my lamp. It is bitterly cold and even in the daytime we wrap ourselves in quilts and coats. I am beginning to forget that there are good things in this world – books and beliefs, and mist above the Yangtze. This morning I found six boiled eggs that had been wrapped in a qipao and tucked into a chest at the foot of the bed. They were dyed red.
‘What are these?’ I asked, taking them downstairs to Shujin.
She didn’t look up. ‘Put them back where you found them.’
‘What are they for?’
‘You know the answer to that.’
‘For our moon soul’s man yue? Is that it?’
She didn’t answer.
I looked down at the eggs in my hands. It is surprising how changed only two days without food can make a person. My head became very light when I considered cracking the eggs and eating them. I set them hurriedly on the table in front of her and took a step back. ‘Eat,’ I said, pointing at them. ‘Quickly. Eat them now.’
She sat and stared at them, her coat wrapped tightly around her, a distant, blank look on her face.
‘I said eat. Eat them now.’
‘It would be bad luck for our moon soul.’
‘Bad luck? Don’t talk to me about bad luck. Do you think I don’t know the meaning of bad luck?’ I was beginning to shake. ‘ EAT!’
But she sat silent and obstinate, her face closed in on itself, while I paced round the room, my frustration wanting to burst out of me. How can she be so foolish – to put our baby’s health in jeopardy? Eventually, with a supreme struggle of will, I turned my back on the eggs, slammed the door and went into my study, where I have been sitting ever since, unable to concentrate on anything.
Nanking, 17 December 1937, afternoon
As I was writing the last entry something happened. I had to stop and put my pen down and raise my head in wonder. A smell drifted through the shuttered windows. A smell both terrible and wonderful. The smell of meat cooking! Someone nearby is cooking meat. The smell shot me from my desk and sent me to the shutters, where I stood, trembling, my nose to the gaps, hungrily sucking in the air. I imagined a family – maybe only in the next alley – sitting round the table, looking at fluffy piles of rice, corn cakes, succulent pork. Could it be the thieves, cooking what they stole from us? If it is they’ve forgotten the legend of the beggar’s chicken, they’ve forgotten what every thief in Jiangsu should know – to cook stolen food underground and not in the open air, where the smell advertises itself to everyone.
I have to stop myself rising from the table, seduced by that aroma. It is so sweet, so pungent. It has decided me. If people feel safe enough to cook lunch so openly – to allow the smell to drift wantonly through the streets, then peace can only be hours away. It must be safe to go outside. I am going out now. I’m going to find food for Shujin.
25
Not a plant. That was what Shi Chongming had said. Not a plant.
That morning I thought about this, poring over my textbooks sitting hunched on the steamer chair. I had been reading for almost an hour when something distracted me. Less than a foot away from my feet, a cicada nymph was dragging itself out of the ground, first a feeler, then a tiny face like a newborn dragon. I put down my book and watched it. It crept a short way up a piece of rotten wood and, after a few minutes of resting, began the laborious process of pulling its wings out of its shell, one at a time, painfully slowly, the casing flaking off in iridescent slivers. I’d read in one of the books that the wings of cicadas could be used in a traditional cure for earache. I thought of the dried powder clinging to the sides of Fuyuki’s glass. It’s not a plant you’re looking for. If not a plant then…?
The beetle straightened, new and confused, its wings white-webbed with birth, looking around itself. Why was it coming out now? All the cicadas had come and gone weeks ago.
‘What’re you dreaming about?’
I jumped. Jason had come through the wisteria tunnel and was standing a few feet away from me, holding a mug of coffee. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt; his face was clear and tanned. He was staring at my exposed legs and arms, a look on his face as if they reminded him of something.
Instinctively I folded my arms round my knees and bent forward a little, hunching over the book I’d been reading. ‘A cicada,’ I said. ‘See?’
He squatted down and looked, shielding his eyes with his hand. His arms were the colour of burnt butter and he must have had his hair cut that morning, because I could see the round shape of his head, and the nice slope of his neck where it met his shoulders. The hair-cut had revealed a small mole just below his ear.
‘I thought they should all be dead,’ I said. ‘I thought it was too cold.’
‘But it’s hot today,’ he said. ‘And, anyway, all manner of weird shit goes on in this garden, you know. Ask Svetlana. The rules are suspended.’
He came and settled down on the steamer chair next to me, the coffee cup resting on his thigh, his feet crossed. ‘The baba yaga s’ve gone to Yoyogi Park to watch the rockabilly boys,’ he said. ‘We’re all alone.’
I didn’t answer. I bit my lip and stared at the gallery windows.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘Well what?’
‘What were you thinking about?’
‘I wasn’t. I was thinking about… about nothing.’
He raised his eyebrows.
‘Nothing,’ I repeated.
‘Yes. I heard.’ He finished his coffee, up-ended the cup so a few mud-brown drops fell on to the dry earth. Then he looked sideways at me and said, ‘Tell me something.’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Tell me – why do I keep staring at you?’
I dropped my eyes and fiddled with the book cover, pretending he hadn’t spoken.
‘I said, why do I want to stare at you? Why do I keep looking at you and thinking that you’re hiding something that I’d find really interesting?’
All of a sudden, in spite of the sun, my skin seemed cold. I blinked at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, in a voice that sounded small and distant. ‘What did you say?’
‘You’re hiding something.’ He raised his arms and used the sleeves of his T-shirt to wipe his forehead. ‘It’s easy. I just look at you and I can see it. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ve got the – the instinct it’s something I�
��m going to like. See I’m a…’ he raised two fingers and lightly tapped his forehead ‘… I’m a visionary when it comes to women. I can feel it in the air. My God, my skin.’ He shivered and ran his hands down his arms. ‘My skin just about changes colour.’
‘You’re wrong.’ I wrapped my hands round my stomach. ‘I’m not hiding anything.’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘I’m not.’
He looked at me in amusement. For a moment I thought he was going to laugh. Instead he sighed. He got to his feet and stood, stretching languidly, running his hands up and down his arms, ruffling his T-shirt, giving me glimpses of his flat abdomen. ‘No,’ he said, squinting thoughtfully up at the sky. ‘No.’ He dropped his hands and turned in the direction of the wisteria tunnel. ‘Of course you’re not.’
26
I once read a story about a Japanese girl trapped in a garden when the cicadas came out of the ground. They all came at once. She looked up at one moment and there they were, everywhere, colonizing the air and the trees, so many that the branches were loaded and drooping. All around her the soil was pockmarked, a million maiden flights going up into the branches, the noise getting louder, echoing around the walls until it was almost deafening. Terrified, she ran for shelter, crushing cicadas, hopelessly fracturing their wings, cracking them out of their protective cases so they squealed and spun on the ground like broken catherine wheels, round and round, a blur of brown and black wings. When at last she found a way out of the garden she ran straight into the arms of a boy, who caught her up and carried her to safety. She didn’t know it then but the cicadas had been a blessing. This was the boy she was destined to love. One day she’d become his wife.
I jumped. Something had hit my foot. I sat up quickly, looking around blearily. The garden was different – dark. The sun had gone. I’d been lost in a daydream. In my dream it was Jason who caught up the girl and carried her away. His shirt was open at the neck and as he carried her he was whispering something rude and seductive into her ear, making her blush and cover her face. Something hit my arm and I stumbled off the chair in shock, dropping my books. Everywhere little dimples were appearing in the earth, dust flying up as if from bullet hits. Rain. It was only rain, but I was still in the story, with the Japanese girl, a million beetles jumping from the dust and catching in her hair. The drops on my bare skin were like acid. Quickly I gathered up as many books as I could, and raced across the garden to the wisteria tunnel.
I slid closed the screen door. The stairwell was cool; there were dead leaves in the crevices of the stairs. Behind me the rain beat against the rice-paper screen and I imagined the garden getting darker and darker, beetles shaking the branches and coalescing above it, like a huge dust-devil funnelling upwards above the roofs. In the gloom I kicked off my shoes and hurried up the stairs.
Jason was at the top, standing in the corridor, just as if he’d expected me. He was dressed to go out, but his feet were bare. I came to a halt in front of him and dropped my books on the floor.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s cut me,’ I said, running my hands over my arms, imagining beetle wings fraying my skin. ‘I think the wisteria’s cut me.’
He bent over and pressed my ankles between thumb and forefinger. I flinched, jerking my leg back instinctively. ‘What’re you-’
He put his fingers to his lips. ‘What’m I-’ he mimicked, looking up and raising his eyebrows at me. ‘What’m I what?’
I stood paralysed, my legs slightly apart, staring at him in silence, as he calmly ran his hands up and down my calves, like a stablehand feeling a horse for flaws. He let his hands rest on my knees, a few inches inside the hem of my skirt, half closing his eyes as if his fingers were a stethoscope and he was listening for damage. Sweat broke across my shoulders, on the back of my neck. He straightened and lifted my right hand and ran his palms up my arm, cupping the elbows, running his thumb over the thin skin of my wrists. The roar of the rain echoed through the house, rattling down the fragile corridors like hail. Jason put his right hand on my right shoulder and pulled my hair up and round behind my neck, gathering it all on the left side of my head in a bundle and raking his fingers through it. I could feel my pulse pounding against his palm.
‘Please-’
He smiled out of the side of his mouth, showing the edge of a chipped tooth. ‘You’re clean,’ he said. ‘Very clean.’
I wanted to put my fingers to my eyes because there were little bubbles of light popping against my retina. I could see the mole on the side of his neck, and under it the faint flutter of his pulse.
‘You know what time it is now?’ he said.
‘No. What time is it?’
‘It’s time for us to do it.’ He took my hand lightly, holding it at the palm between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Come on. We’re going to find out what you’re hiding.’
I tightened my knees, digging my heels into the spot. My skin was unbearably taut, as if every hair was standing straight up in its bed, struggling to stop a phantom me that wanted to slide out and slip straight into Jason. Two distinct rivulets of sweat ran down between my shoulder-blades.
‘Hey,’ he said, smiling slyly, ‘don’t worry – I’ll take my hoofs off before we start.’
‘Let go,’ I said, pulling my hand away from him and stepping back, almost stumbling. ‘Please, leave me alone.’
I gathered up my books clumsily and ran back to my room, bent forward a little, the books crushed against my stomach. I slammed the door and leaned against it, in the semi-dark, for a long time my heart beating so loudly I couldn’t hear anything else.
At six p.m. it was already dark and the light from Mickey Rourke was filtering into the room through the curtains. I could just see my silhouette in the mirror outlined in gold, sitting in trembly silence, a wavery line of cigarette smoke rising into the air. I had been sitting there for almost five hours, doing nothing but smoking one cigarette after another, and still the feeling hadn’t gone. It was a fizzing, euphoric sensation, like bubbles bursting all over my skin. Whenever it faded, I’d only have to think of Jason saying, ‘ We’re going to find out what you’re hiding,’ and the feeling would rush back at me.
After a while I pushed a strand of hair from my forehead and stubbed out the cigarette. It was time to get ready for the club. I was shaking as I stood up, took off my clothes, opened the wardrobe and pulled out the bags. Sometimes you get to a point in your life when you just have to hold your breath and jump.
I found a pair of French knickers, crushed iridescent silk, with wide grosgrain ribbons hanging low, a single central pane in devoré velvet, hundreds and hundreds of purple medieval flowers twining through the panel and bursting out on to the silk like a psalter illumination. I stepped into them, pulling them up high so that the waistband was sitting across my navel. Then I turned and looked at my reflection. All of my stomach was covered, from the navel to the tops of my thighs. You couldn’t see anything.
At the other end of the house, the Russians were shouting at each other, squabbling as they usually did when they were getting ready for work. Vague howls of outrage echoed along the corridor, but I hardly heard them. I put a finger inside the crotch of the knickers and pulled aside the lace. You could get inside there and the top of the knickers wouldn’t move. You really wouldn’t know there was anything wrong. Maybe life could change I thought. Maybe I’d been wrong, maybe I could make it change, after all.
I dressed in a trance, pulling on a slim black velvet dress. I sat on the stool, my feet planted slightly apart, and dropped my head between my knees the way I’d seen the Russians do it, spraying my hair so that when I sat up it was heavy and glossy, very black against my white skin. The velvet dress held me closely where I’d gained weight, touching me, making me want to push back at it in some places.
Outside, the Russians were still yelling, the argument raging up and down the corridor. Very carefully I blotted my lipstick, took a little patent-leather clutch bag, pushed it tig
ht up under my arm, put on stiletto shoes and left the room, walking down the corridor a little unsteady on the heels, my shoulders back, my head held high.
There was a light on in the kitchen. Jason was in there with his back to the door, singing to himself to try to drown the racket, moving around, looking in cupboards, in the fridge, mixing a last-minute martini. ‘Dumb-ass Ruskies,’ he was singing to himself. ‘Dumb-ass, katsap, glimmer girls.’ His voice trailed off when he heard me passing the door.
I kept walking. I was some way down the corridor when, from behind me, he said, in a loud voice, ‘Grey.’
I stopped dead, my hands in tight balls, my eyes closed. I waited until my breathing had calmed, then I turned. He was standing in the corridor staring at me as if he’d seen a ghost.
‘Yes?’ I said.
He stared at my makeup, my hair, the shiny black stilettos.
‘Yes?’ I repeated, knowing my face was colouring.
‘That’s new,’ he said eventually. ‘The dress. Isn’t it?’
I didn’t answer. I fixed my eyes on the ceiling, my head pounding.
‘I knew it,’ he said, and there was a kind of fascinated smugness in his voice. ‘I always knew that underneath it all you were just pure, pure sex.’
27
Jason rarely spoke to any of us, but that night, during the walk to the club, he wouldn’t stop talking. ‘You put that on for me, didn’t you?’ he kept saying, walking along next to me, his hands linked into the holdall strap that he wore across his chest, a cigarette in his mouth. ‘It’s for me, isn’t it? Go on – admit it.’
The Russians found this the funniest thing that had happened for a long time, but I couldn’t find the words to answer. I was sure my skin was reddening on the side that was exposed to him, and the French knickers seemed to slither around under the dress, as if they had a life of their own and wanted to communicate their presence to Jason: Yes, she did – she put it on for you.