“Sorry for the trouble,” said the officer to them both. Aki bowed his head in reply. “This is Tongli-zhen. You’re not lost. To get to Wujiang, just go straight for another five kilometres. So, head that way, and be careful. Have a safe delivery, ma’am.”
Engine off, the boat glided forward with oars. Wujiang was a big town on Lake Taihu with an emergency hospital, so the pretext of taking a woman in labour there was plausible. The boatman had come up with this story on the spur of the moment; his ingenuity and Li Xing’s quick-witted response had saved the day. Yet if they kept on as they were, they would end up in the wrong town – just the opposite direction from Zhouzhuang. And if they turned around, they would attract suspicion.
The fog steadily deepened. Time after time, the man swore and spat into the haze. The woman in the bow kept insisting they find another route. If this was Tongli-zhen and they were on their way to Wujiang, it meant they were headed west. Zhouzhuang was some twenty kilometres west-southwest of Wujiang. The thing to do was find a cross-creek as quickly as possible and change direction; they had to get further south.
They travelled another couple of kilometres before finally coming to another creek that crossed theirs at an angle. The man swung the boat to port and switched on the engine.
For nearly two hours more, they continued to wander lost in the watery maze, the sound of the engine echoing over ponds and the surface of the lake. It was already three in the morning. They had to get where they were going before daybreak. By morning their names would be on the wanted list not only in Shanghai, but all over the surrounding countryside. Not even the creeks would be safe then. Once the sun came up, their escape route would vanish like the dew.
The boat was swallowed up in a waxy fog. With his arms held straight out in front of him, Aki couldn’t see the tips of his fingers. They cut the engine again. The woman in the bow stopped smoking and laid aside her pole. With the unsteady light of an oil lamp at her side, she squatted, her arms around her knees. The man talked fiercely to himself as he rowed on, giving an impression of unreliable determination.
Hand in hand, Aki and Li Xing came out from under the awning. Sometimes locks would loom up out of the thick fog, blocking the way, and the boat would have to turn back. The two of them lost hope. The fog seemed to have fallen on them from another world.
Now and again it would suddenly thin to reveal the meagre lights of a village or a stand of hemp on the bank, swaying in fantastical shapes. The next moment, a heavy white cloud would fall like a curtain. Then no matter how they rubbed their eyes, they could see nothing, not even the water beside them. It was as if the boat were floating mid-air.
And it was too quiet. The only sound was the scraping of the oars in the oarlocks. Why no croaking of frogs, no chirping of insects? Not a fish jumped.
“We’re lost on the face of the earth.” Li Xing’s voice was steady. “But it’s lovely. Because for all we know, we may have died and won’t ever be apart again.”
Their faces were largely hidden from each other, but as her words suggested, she was in a buoyant mood, with a smile just visible, like a pale moon at midday.
Aki, for his part, barely managed to keep his spirits up by playing with her fingers.
The man at the oars said something.
“Shenma?” asked the woman.
“I said the typhoon must’ve missed Shanghai, must’ve swung off in another direction. Otherwise this damned fog would blow away.”
“Went to Japan, like as not.”
Abruptly Li Xing raised her head. “Smell that? Where’s it coming from? It’s jasmine.”
Aki thrust his nose into the air and sniffed, inhaling a lungful of air mixed with fog. He shook his head. “Xingxing, that’s the fog you’re smelling.”
“No, I’m positive. It’s Yin Dan’s tea.”
This time he leant over the side of the boat, above the water. A distant, faint ribbon of scent was barely distinguishable. Yet the smell of Yin’s jasmine tea was quite recognizable; make one pot of it and your room would be redolent for days. No mistake about it, she was right.
“Comrade, go straight on here!” she called out. “A bit slower. That’s it, now to the right. Go on. Left here, that’s the way.”
The smell of jasmine strengthened imperceptibly. After a time, lights along the banks began to seep through the darkness. Ahead were the dark forms of houses.
“It’s Zhouzhuang!” shouted the man in the stern.
Slowly they passed under an arched bridge. Up ahead loomed a three-story building – a teahouse – with stone steps descending straight into the water. The man manoeuvred the boat to the foot of the steps. The scent of jasmine came from here, conveyed to each particle of fog as surely as if Yin were doing it by hand himself.
The hard bow of the boat scraped against the steps.
“We’re there.” Aki picked up Li Xing by the waist and lifted her towards the side of the boat.
“Kiss me,” she whispered. “As if it were the last time.”
She leant down and pressed her lips to his.
The riverside town of Zhouzhuang was lovely. It turned out to be on an island some thirty kilometres southeast of Suzhou. A central north-south canal was intersected by another pair, forming the town’s axis. In its present form, Zhouzhuang dated back to the late thirteenth century. Two- and three-story wooden buildings stood overhanging the grid of canals side by side, each with space enough in front to secure a boat lengthwise. In all, fourteen arched stone bridges spanned the canals, where small boats with sails passed up and down. Clustered near the bridges were teahouses, pharmacies, inns, and barbershops; an outdoor market was held every morning in a square at the foot of one of the bridges.
Here, roads were canals. On dry ground, narrow lanes formed an intricate maze where you could wander around and around before coming again to the sparkling water of a creek. At strategic points there would be stone steps leading down to a rowboat. Before the construction in 1986 of a bridge to the north, waterways were the sole connection between Zhouzhuang and the surrounding area.
For the Green Gang, the town was an important base, as local authorities were unable to police the creeks at night. Other underground organizations opposed to the Chinese Communist Party had followed its lead.
The son of a prominent calligrapher, Yin Dan had graduated from the Nanjing College of Painting and Calligraphy before getting into the Shanghai motion picture industry and distinguishing himself as a cameraman. People used to say: In Beijing there’s Zhang Yimou, and in Shanghai, Yin Dan. Little by little, he cultivated a reputation for eccentricity that allowed him to devote himself, undetected by Mango, to the creation of an antigovernment movement with a secret base of operations in Zhouzhuang. The director Xie Han was completely in the dark about this.
Their reunion was friendly and heartening. Here in Zhouzhuang, Yin was no different, the same watchful little man who had greedily attacked the beggar’s chicken in the restaurant on Fuzhou Road. Wearing a scruffy, open-necked white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, he made them a pot of jasmine tea. His habit of stroking his pear-shaped head or pulling on his ear gave him an air of studied nonchalance. His small, bleary eyes were the eyes of a monkey feeling the cold. He looked nothing like a man who had single-handedly built up an underground organization in opposition to the most heavily policed state in the world. Though he could be as rough as the rapids of the Yellow River, he seldom showed that side of his personality. In his presence, people let their guard down and relaxed. Yin Dan himself provided all the camouflage needed to fool Mango.
Aki, too, settled back. However, after a mere ten or fifteen minutes of desultory conversation with Yin, and despite being fortified by the jasmine tea, all at once he felt an overwhelming drowsiness.
Li Xing said little or nothing, sitting with her head drooping. The fog on the creeks had left her looking pallid. That Aki would come with her this far was something she’d never expected. Yet now this much was clear: All I can
do is leave everything in Yin’s hands. He’ll do what’s best for all of us, what’s best for Aki.
They would discuss their next move after getting some sleep, they decided. An old woman who’d been standing invisibly in a corner of the room led Li Xing and Aki off to their sleeping quarters, her gait suggestive of bound feet. Down a corridor with earthen walls, around a small inner garden, and up creaking wooden stairs they went till they came to their rooms. He and Li Xing would share the same room, Aki had assumed, but to his disappointment that wasn’t to be. He felt disgruntled that on the first night of their new life as fugitives they would not be sleeping together under a single sheet. Her kiss still lingered on his lips. Later, he told himself, he would slip into her room.
The decorative window in his room was a simple carved wooden frame fitted with ground glass. Just outside was a canal. He heard drain water gurgling in a stone trough and falling onto the broad surface of the water below. Far away, oars squeaked. He remembered Li Xing settling herself into the wicker chair. Though still heavy, the fog was turning pale, showing signs of the approaching dawn. With every step he took, the wooden floorboards creaked. Li Xing was next door, her floor creaking faintly, too.
He took his pyjamas out of his bag. Remembering Li Xing’s teasing, he smiled ruefully. Without putting them on, he fell into bed as he was.
Though this extraordinary day had been exhausting, sleep would not come. A green frog and a wall lizard crawled around on the ceiling. It was hot. Next door, all was quiet. Had she gone to sleep? He got up and went out into the corridor.
“Xingxing,” he called softly. No reply. He reached for the doorknob and tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t move. The key was still in the lock – no, the door was locked from the inside. He went hot with exasperation and disappointment. Yet, willing himself to think rationally, he had to concede that the teahouse contained not only the two of them but also Yin Dan, the old woman, and no doubt assorted other people as well. Locking her door was surely only reasonable.
Going back to his room, he decided to lock his own door, but was puzzled to find it had no lock. He lay down again and, closing his eyes, tried to empty his mind. Sleep came in light snatches. In his sleep, or rather as he lay drowsing, drifting in and out of sleep, he heard all sorts of sounds: the grate of something being dropped or dragged, the near-whispers of urgent speech. Underneath it all, in a ceaseless accompaniment, flowed the various water sounds unique to a town in the river district.
In a dream he saw the interior of the room next door. Much like his own room, with an iron bed. But of Li Xing there was no sign. He awoke in surprise, sprang up and ran to her room. Reached for the doorknob, which turned with disconcerting ease. The door opened on a scene exactly like his dream. She was gone. Her suitcase was gone. The bed-sheets were folded neatly with no sign of use.
Yin Dan had come up behind him. “She’s not here anymore. You go on back to Japan,” he said flatly, as though it needed no explanation. Then, rubbing the top of his head, he turned on his heel and walked away.
Aki followed him and waylaid him in the courtyard. But he was too wrought up to talk sense.
“Calm down,” he was told. “Here, here’s your credit card back. No one used it, don’t worry.”
“What do you mean, she’s not here? Where did she go?”
“It was what she wanted, and we thought it was the only way, too. Just ask yourself, Mr Waki: what kind of life could you, a Japanese, have with Li Xing in this country? A life on the run is no life. You would’ve had to get out, go overseas. Right now that’s not possible. What would you do, seek asylum in the Japanese embassy?”
A look of aversion filled Aki’s eyes, and he shook his head. Inside him, he was cursing and yelling. His face was drawn taut, the outline of the bones showing prominently. If only he had someone else to blame for this disaster, this humiliation and heartache, he could have breathed more easily.
Yin Dan swung open a heavy door and led him into his private quarters. “Sit down,” he said. On rare occasions Yin had a nasty tongue – mostly when speaking about Japan and the Japanese. “I used to think that you people were shallow and stuck-up. But you, Mr Waki, are a little different. I should have expected no less from a son of Waki Tanehiko. You’re actually the first Japanese ever to come to this setup of ours.”
Yin got up from a rosewood chair carved with peonies and walked over to a large open window. His cloth shoes made no sound. The window had a balustrade and a curved-back seat. The fog had finally lifted; sunlight reflecting off the surface of the water shimmered and danced.
“Why don’t you come and sit here? This kind of window seat is called a meirenkao – a beauties’ bench. Until the Qing dynasty, young women of good families were forbidden to leave the home without good reason. Their daily lives were confined to the innermost courtyard and the sitting room, and they could look outside only from a seat like this.”
Meirenkao, murmured Aki. A bench for a young beauty to lean back against. He had assumed this teahouse facing the creek was a single, independent structure, but in fact it extended far back in a linked chain, building upon building. He now saw that Yin Dan’s room looked out on a different, smaller creek to the rear. Could she still be somewhere on the premises, hidden away back there?
“Mr Yin, I understand what you’re saying. But please, could I just see her one more time?”
His voice was choked with emotion; but Yin, still looking like a monkey out in the cold, made no direct reply. “Last night they arrested Liu Hong.” He offered the remark with studied casualness.
“And she found that out, did she?” said Aki, the words sounding like a groan.
Yin nodded. From his rear pocket he took out a bundle of paper folded in half. Aki had seen it somewhere before. Yin tore off a page, crunched it up to soften it, then spread it out and blew his nose loudly.
Aki lunged forward and snatched Li Xing’s notebook away. Forced to leave in a hurry, she must have run down the corridor, never noticing when she dropped it. Later, the old woman probably picked it up and handed it to Yin. It was covered in unreadable Japanese writing. The paper was fine and soft, perfect to use as tissues or toilet paper. Several other pages had already been torn out and disposed of in this way.
Back in his room, he read on one page in the bedraggled notebook, “He’s come back to me.” The words were a hasty scribble, the handwriting fast and fluid. He thought, I know when she wrote this. That time I came back to the hotel soaking wet, after being chased by public security officials on bicycles. All along, it was me she meant. The next day she’d spent all morning in her room, and in the afternoon, after showing him that business with the teacups, she’d said, You know what I was doing all morning? Guess. What had she been doing, he asked, and she answered, Being in love.
With who?
With you.
Her voice seemed to hang, echoing, in the air. He knew then for a certainty that she was gone.
Aki made his way back to Shanghai, where he was arrested by someone from the foreign affairs section of public security.
16
He spent the anniversary of his wife’s death in a foreign jail.
He found himself mulling over Li Xing’s question: “Are you going to do the same thing your father did?” There was an odd sort of comfort in the idea.
Since her notebook was unlikely to escape the attention of public security, he’d thought of tossing it in the water, but in the end decided to return it to Yin Dan. If it had to be thrown away, Yin might as well have the thing to blow his nose on.
The Public Security Bureau was located inside the former Shanghai Public Works Building, a substantial, old-fashioned structure. From across an intersection, it stood facing the Metropole Hotel, his father’s onetime residence, and Hamilton House, where Huaying, the film company he worked for, had been located. Aki was not handcuffed. Ma Zuqi began by addressing him in a menacing tone, then set to work interrogating him about his escape route and the locati
on of the organization that had assisted him.
The interrogation went on from nine in the morning till five in the evening, with a two-hour break for lunch. At precisely five o’clock, Ma abruptly ended the session and went home.
“Where did you come into contact with this underground organization?”
“Wang le.”
“How did you travel, by car or by boat?”
“Wang le.”
“Don’t make a joke of it.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Where did you arrive?”
“Wang le.”
“Who was there?”
“Wang le.”
“Were you intimate with Li Xing?”
“Wang le.”
Ma stared into his eyes. Aki gritted his teeth, determined not to look away.
Sometimes it felt as if he were being squeezed to death, and yet he was still confident in his ability to get through it, for his ears rang continually with the echo of Li Xing’s voice asking, “Are you going to do the same thing your father did?” The fantasy that his father was shouldering half this ordeal made it possible to continue. But if Ma Zuqi had used torture, he knew for a certainty that he could not have withstood it.
Six years earlier, death had carried Sato off. Now Li Xing had disappeared, as if she’d been abducted.
Li Xing was alive, somewhere in this more immediate world, and he clung to the hope of seeing her again. If luck was with him, it could happen. But if he gave in to Ma Zuqi now and revealed the escape route and the location of Yin’s organization, she was lost to him. It was hard to explain, but he was quite sure of it.
The building he was in was large, with a flagstone courtyard, sounds from which continually reached his cell. Oddly, these consisted mainly of the wails of children and the voices of their scolding mothers, the chop-chop of cooking knives, the clatter of runaway washtubs, the squeal of bicycle brakes. The riddle was soon explained – part of the building was set aside as residences for the families of civil servants with offices here. “I live right above here,” Ma Zuqi told him.
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