by Meira Chand
The stone was icy beneath the coats, discomfort in the extreme. Through the clumsy layers of clothing she could feel him hard against her belly, between her legs. The dim beam of the torch showed her his face, exposed to every emotion. All she wanted was to solder herself upon him. She felt she would scream if he did not now enter her. She raised her limbs to lock herself about him, and at last he thrust into her, to the deepest recess she could offer. She gasped aloud with the pleasure. And now there was nothing but the wild, unstoppable race of their bodies to consume each other. She could not spread herself enough about him. The pulse of her body mounted to suffuse her, until it ripped through her. She heard herself cry out.
It seemed she had returned from some place beyond herself. Slowly, she was aware of the silence, the cold, the weak beam of the torch, the fusty smell of rodent droppings. Far above she heard again the flapping of wings. And, in the distance, the scream of a woman. The cry came again and again. It had mixed with her own, moments earlier. She blocked it from her ears. He stroked her face lightly, running his fingers over her eyes, her mouth, looking down at her in the spear of light. He bent to kiss her breasts.
‘It is not right,’ she whispered.
Her body was full of the languor of satisfaction, but her mind was suddenly filled by confusion. What right had they to such gratification, at this time and in this place? The obscenity of it appalled her. She hid her face in his shoulder. And she had shared this lust with a man who belonged to those who ran the killing machine.
‘It is right,’ he said, and drew a coat over them for warmth. He raised himself on an elbow and looked down at her. He saw there were tears of distress in her eyes.
‘Why?’ he asked, wiping them with his fingers.
‘Because this whole town is consumed by this same evil flame: lust. We are no better than those animals out there. Do you not see, we have been touched by the same poison as them.’ She remembered again the cry she had heard in the midst of their emotion.
He shook his head. ‘You are wrong. This feeling, this lust you speak of, it has many faces. Out there it is death. But here, between us, it is life. It is only good.’
She could not agree. ‘It is not love that we feel for each other, you know that. So how can it be good?’ Already she knew that what she felt for him was not what she felt for Donald. There was no gentleness in this feeling. There was only a fire, burning away beneath them. It would burn until they were destroyed. If he wished she would spread herself again for him now, in an hour, tomorrow, in a week. As many times as he wished she would weld herself to him in any base manner. There was nothing left of herself. She would beg for what he could give.
‘You do not understand,’ Kenjiro replied. ‘We are alive. Perhaps this is why we have needed each other. To confirm that, in the midst of this evil, something good can still exist. This feeling between us is proof of life, of regeneration. It is a gift. Take from it and be thankful.’
She looked at him in silence. In the darkness she was alight again. She could think of nothing but the need to be filled by him once more. Reaching out, she drew his hands to her body. If this molten shoot within her was life, then she needed to know it, again and again.
22
End of the Day
‘Is Nadya back?’ Lily asked, fear rounding out her words. Flora shook her head.
‘The man from the Embassy is with her. He is nice. She will be all right,’ Flora comforted, and wished she herself could be so easily assured.
The hospital kitchen was deserted. Its huge cauldrons were stacked in piles or hung from hooks upon the walls, the patina of age upon them. Earlier they had bubbled upon great burners, full of rice or vegetables. It was no longer easy to feed the patients. Supplies were running out. As always there was the lingering smell of stale cooked food in the room.
‘She is not a spy,’ Lily burst out.
‘Of course she is not,’ Flora assured.
‘Then why did they take her?’ Lily argued.
‘Nothing makes sense at this time,’ Flora replied. She poured milk into a small pan and set it to boil. Martha had been called to an emergency operation.
‘Mother and the others have been to wherever it is she was taken to. They were told she would be released soon, but first they have to ask her some questions. She should be home soon,’ Flora assured.
Now, although she knew the worst sights were still kept from her, Flora was allowed on to the wards as auxiliary help, like Nadya. She took temperatures, helped to give bed baths, fetched and carried as directed, and did not back away from the things she saw. It was surprising to trace the rise of confidence in herself. She decided then that she wished to be a doctor. Martha was delighted.
It was only that one word, rape, that still reverberated icily through her. Everything else she had faced. And she knew who those women were, bed after bed of them. They lay silent, faces vacant. Something within them was destroyed. It terrified her in an inexplicable way.
‘Do you want hot chocolate?’ Flora asked.
Lily nodded. ‘It is full moon. I want to go outside.’
‘In a few minutes. I’ll come with you,’ Flora promised.
‘I want to go out now,’ Lily was truculent. She felt like a dog on a lead, allowed nowhere without Flora. ‘I only want to go into the garden.’
‘In a minute,’ Flora admonished. ‘First I have to take these towels upstairs. Wait here.’ She put the hot chocolate down before her sister. Lily sat with a pout, and took the mug in her hands. She watched Flora disappear from the kitchen, half-hidden behind a pile of towels.
She did not want to be a doctor. She hated everything to do with the hospital, from the smells of disinfectant to the crying children, to the mangled expressions on the faces of patients. Even school would be better than this. Never again would she dismiss the advantages of school. Why was Nadya not back? She felt sick with worry. Everyone else seemed to be able to immerse their worries in yet another flurry of work. Only she seemed excluded from this relief. Instead, Martha insisted she study and had even secured a teacher from one of Nanking’s schools, who spoke fluent English and French. She had come to live in the hospital. Every day with Miss Han Lily studied. There seemed no time for anything else. It was just as her mother planned. Sometimes, it was difficult to remember the city was in the midst of a sacking. The hospital was an island.
Why was Nadya not back? If it were not for Nadya she would scream from boredom. When she was older she intended looking like Nadya. Sometimes, Nadya invited her into her own room and opened the cupboards and the trunk which stood at the end of her bed. Then Lily chose. There were dresses fine as gossamer. There were the robes of Mandarins, embroidered with butterflies and peonies, like fantastical gardens. There were jade bangles that clanked upon her thin wrists and beads of sea-washed colours. There was a necklace brilliant as the setting sun. This was coral, Nadya told her and came from deep in the sea. There was the fur of a silver fox, softer than anything she had ever touched. Lily drew her breath tight when Nadya draped this about her. And scarves. Nadya had scarves of every colour, flowered, paisley, spotted, silver as the moon, gold as the sun, worked in thread or splashed with paint.
‘One day we shall go to Paris together. Everyone will look at us. We will be the talk of the town. All the men will want to dance with us,’ Nadya told her.
Then, when they were both dressed, the best part came. Nadya wound up the phonograph. They stuffed a towel down the trumpet so that the sound would not carry.
‘One two three. One two three.’ Nadya hummed. They both whirled about the room. Lily screamed with delight.
It was a secret between them. Lily told nobody, not even Flora to whom usually she told everything. She had the feeling Flora, now she had decided to be a doctor, might not approve of frivolity. Nor she was sure would her mother. Already Nadya had taught her the waltz and the fox-trot. Next, promised Nadya, they would advance to the polka.
‘When?’ Lily screamed.
‘Wh
en there is time,’ Nadya promised. For this was sometning they could not indulge in every day. These were serious times. And yet, now that Nadya was teaching her to dance, nothing seemed so serious.
‘One. Two. Three.’ Lily sipped her hot chocolate, swinging the cup before her.
‘What are you doing? How can you sing when people are dying?’ Flora came back into the room. ‘Mother says to go home and get ready for bed. She is coming soon. You wanted to go out. Let’s go.’
Flora opened the back door into the compound. Across the yard the lights were on in their home. Donald could be seen in a chair by a window, head bent, reading. It was bright in the servants’ quarters, Amah would be waiting for them. Flora led the way. Lily looked up at the window of Nadya’s room, dark and unoccupied. A chill passed through her.
‘She is all right. Before we sleep she will be back,’ Flora reassured. Lily could detect the stress now behind Flora’s easy words. They reached the square of garden in the middle of the compound.
‘It is still Christmas Day,’ Lily remembered.
She looked up through the bare branches of a tree at the glint of stars. Nadya had a black velvet jacket, padded and tightly waisted, embroidered with points of silver, that looked just like this sky. ‘It is still Christmas. I want to stay out here,’ Lily pouted. Any moment Nadya must come through the gate. ‘See, that bright star up there, that’s the Pole Star, the one the Three Kings followed.’
‘You must come straight in. You know the rule. Mother will be angry.’ Flora was cold. The iciness pinched her nose. Lily wore a padded Chinese suit and so did not feel the chill so acutely.
‘I’ve only got this sweater on. Not being left on your own is for your protection,’ she pointed out. Lily did her famous pout.
‘Why is it only me who needs protection? Has anything happened to me yet? You go in. I shall sit here. I love it under this tree. It’s like fairyland.’ She stared up again at the magic blossom, massed in drifts against the dark. Just to be out of the smells and the sights of the hospital was a precious thing.
Flora pursed her lips. She had had her fill of Lily’s perversity. Wherever she turned she must remember Lily. She wanted nothing now but to close her eyes and sleep for one hundred years. Martha. Lily. Lily. Martha. She felt the weight of them both upon her, like a pair of scales she must balance forever.
‘Then you sit here. I am going in,’ Flora announced. She would leave Lily five minutes and then come back. She strode forward and opened the front door with her key, shutting it firmly behind her.
Lily smiled. Donald’s head was still bent low over his book, she wished he would look up. He had become very strange, not speaking to anyone. She wondered if he too was waiting for Nadya or if he even knew she was gone. He had been shut in his room all day. She stared up again through the blossoms at the sky. When Nadya returned she would insist that tomorrow they make a start with the polka.
The sound came from behind, and she turned at once. Nadya must be back. A shadow seemed to drop from the wall about the compound. Sometimes wild monkeys came down from Purple Mountain or the surrounding hills, especially in winter when food was scarce. They had come like this before into the hospital compound, and been chased out with brooms.
She stood up to call out to Flora and a weight fell upon her. A hand stopped the scream coming loose from her mouth. She saw then there were men, holding her tight, dragging her towards the gate in the wall. It was opened and they pulled her with them, up the road and into the night. She struggled to get her teeth into the hand over her face and bit as hard as she could. Immediately she could breathe again. She began to scream.
It was not even five minutes. It was three minutes and fifty seconds that she had waited. Flora opened the door.
‘Lily.’ She called but there was no answer. Again she must go out into the freezing night. Flora reached up for a jacket from the coat stand in the hallway, and struggled into it as she walked.
‘Lily.’
She saw at once that the gate to the street was open.
‘Lily.’ How could she have gone out? Anger surged through her. How stupid could Lily get? She strode towards the gate.
‘Lily.’ She heard the scream and began to run.
She could already see them. The lights of the hospital spread over the road for a distance. The shadowy shapes of men appeared bunched and dark, like vultures moving over carrion. Soon they were before her.
She saw Lily pinned between them, her clothes ripped from her body, her bare limbs spread apart and held by force, revealing the centre of her body and its childish brush of hair. As she watched a man thrust himself before Lily. Even as he drew away, another came towards her.
The word that had lain so long, like a stone in the lining of her belly, swam free at last. It sliced her like a knife. She screamed it out again and again.
The men turned, surprise upon their faces. They began to laugh. She was dragged with Lily into the night.
Martha put her hand on the stair rail, and stopped. The feeling was inexplicable, bursting through her. Something had happened. She ran down the stairs into the kitchen. Flora and Lily had already gone. Had something happened to Nadya? She let herself into the compound. The plum was in bloom against the black sky, lit by the lights of the hospital. She remembered it was still Christmas Day. The outline of Donald’s head, bent to a book, was framed by his window. She too was breaking down under the stress and must control her feelings. She stopped under the plum for a moment, looking up through its branches at the starry sky. Then, suddenly, she noticed the door in the wall of the compound was open. Outside the street was dark and blank. The feeling she had had upon the stairs burst through her again.
‘Lily! Flora!’ She ran into the house, and knew already they were nowhere. The Amah and cook came running. ‘Bring torches,’ she ordered. She beat upon Donald’s door. Life seemed to stir in his face at last, and he followed her.
She ran ahead of them into the night. Almost at once they heard the screams coming from the grounds of the temple up the road. Donald pushed past Martha, holding her back, flashing the beam of the torch before them.
She saw the men as she had seen them on that night they entered the hospital, like a pack of satyrs with their crooked legs bound tight in puttees. They bobbed like scavengers about a carcass, uttering guttural cries. She began to scream.
‘Lily. Flora.’ For now she saw them.
Flora was held against a wall, forced to look at what they did. In their midst Lily was as a piece of succulent meat, ripped apart by wild dogs. At the light and the noise, they let her go and ran. ‘Lily. Flora.’ Her limbs would not move. She met Flora’s eyes and knew they had not touched her. Slowly then she forced herself forward, to pick up the torn shreds of Lily’s clothing. She slipped her arms out of her jacket and bent to cover Lily’s body as once before, many years ago, she had covered the baby beside the river. Behind her she could hear the loud wailing of the Amah.
Suddenly then she saw Nadya, and the Japanese man from the Embassy. She heard Nadya draw her breath in a sob. The Japanese man said nothing.
23
Photographs
Late January, 1938
At the British Consulate in Shanghai Donald was told he must wait. The Consul General was not in town, and First Secretary Percival was at tea. He looked at his watch. There were not many working hours left to the day.
‘Tell him this is a matter of national importance,’ Donald threatened, impatient with petty bureaucracy. The receptionist looked apprehensively at the closed door. She entered the room, and then reappeared to beckon him in.
First Secretary Percival looked up from his desk and rose reluctantly to his feet. A cup of tea and a half-eaten slice of fruit cake lay upon a tray. Donald held out a buff envelope.
‘What is this?’ Annoyance deepened in Henry Percival’s face. His experience of reporters was that they played the prima donna. News, in his view, could usually wait, at least until he had swallowed his
tea. It was said Addison was a man who liked attention. He had read his reports in The Times, and did not always agree with his views.
Percival opened the envelope and took out a bundle of photographs. His lardy face did not easily register emotion. He shuffled the photographs slowly. Donald watched for shock to spear his complacency and soon, as Donald expected, Percival sat down, hands trembling.
‘What are these?’ His voice had a sudden hoarseness.
‘Nanking,’ Donald replied, sitting down unasked in a chair. ‘I have to get them out of China. And you’ll have to help me. There is also a reel of movie film. I need to get the film and the photos to England or the States. I want them in a magazine that is not squeamish and has a worldwide circulation. I think Look would be best. And the film must go to the British or American Government.’
As soon as the gates of Nanking opened, Donald had made his way to Shanghai. The negatives of his Nanking photographs and the reel of movie film were sewn into the lining of his jacket, close to his body at all times. On arriving in Shanghai he had gone straight to a foreign-owned photographer’s, monopolising his staff and services, until all the reels were processed. Seeing the content of the film Chinese staff at the photographer’s came forward with offerings of secret prints taken from reels handed in by Japanese soldiers. They asked him to send them abroad for the world to see.
Donald’s nightmare was that his films would be discovered and confiscated before leaving Japanese-controlled Shanghai. It was impossible to cable news out of the censored town. Art Morton had tried to cable his newspaper from Shanghai about the conditions at the Nanking River Gate, and was asked to withdraw his article. Explicit material such as Donald now held was a danger to its owner.
Percival pushed the photos hurriedly back into the envelope, as if their touch might sully him. ‘Shanghai was never like this. We’ve been hearing of atrocities in Nanking, but I had no idea . . .’ His voice trailed off before he continued. ‘You were on the Panay, I believe? How did you get back into Nanking? No other reporter was there through it all. Quite the man of the moment, aren’t you.’