The Devil of Nanking (22 page)

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 tight 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.’

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
.

Eventually he gave up, and spent the rest of the walk in silence, an amused, thoughtful expression on his face. When we all got into the crystal lift he turned his back to us, hands in his pockets, staring out at Tokyo, pushing up on to his toes then dropping down to his heels. I stared at the back of his head thinking:
Do you mean it? You’re not teasing me. Please don’t let this be you teasing me. It would be too much
 . . .

The club was busy – a party from Hitachi had taken over four tables and Mama was in a good mood. In my velvet dress everyone was aware of me, as if I was incandescent, like a geisha’s lantern glowing in a Kyoto alley. It’s amazing how seductive flattery and sex can be – it was only when the Fuyuki gang came into the club that I realized I hadn’t thought about Shi Chongming’s medicine all evening. When I saw them in the doorway I sat straight in my chair, preternaturally alive.

The table was set. Strawberry sent the waiters off round the club, pinching dead blooms from the flower arrangements, putting out hand-towels in the gents’, making sure that Fuyuki’s personalized Scotch bottles were polished and catching the light, and I was summoned, along with six other hostesses. The group had been gambling at the Gamagori speedboat stadium in Aichi and they were in a good mood. The Nurse had hung back, not coming into the alcove but waiting instead in the lobby, sitting on the
chaise-longue
, her legs crossed. I’d get glimpses of her foot in its stiletto every time the aluminium doors opened, and each time I would forget what I was saying and trail off, thinking of the crime photograph. The Beast of Saitama. I remembered the pinched look on Shi Chongming’s face when he pronounced the word
embellishments
. How strong would you have to be to murder a man? How much would you have to know about anatomy to remove what was inside him, and not leave a mark on the outside? Or had Shi Chongming made up that bit to scare me?

Fuyuki was talkative. He’d had a big win and later that night he’d be hosting a party at his apartment. The message soon got round the table that he’d stopped here to trawl for hostesses to take home. Just as Shi Chongming said he might. His house, I thought, running my fingers across my hair, up my calves to smooth out my stockings, maybe the place his secret was kept. I adjusted my dress so that it ran in an exact straight line across my shoulders.
Are they all so pretty in England?

Amazingly, Bison was there. Still confident, blue-chinned like a henchman, his elbows resting on the table, jacket sleeves rolled up to show his massive forearms and still entertaining the group with stories – the club circuit in Akasaka, a scam he’d become embroiled in, shares that had been sold in a non-existent golf club. On and on went the stories, but something in his face was missing. He was subdued, the ready entertainer’s smile had gone, and I got the impression that he was there under duress – the court dwarf. I pretended to listen politely, smoking and nodding thoughtfully, but actually I was staring at Fuyuki, trying to work out how to pin my existence into his head.

‘They’d sold nearly all the shares when they were rumbled,’ Bison said, shaking his head. ‘Imagine that. When Bob Hope heard a Japanese golf club had been set up in his name, he nearly killed someone.’

‘Excuse me,’ I said, stubbing out my cigarette and pushing back my chair. ‘Excuse me for a few moments.’

The toilets were in the corner block abutting the entrance hall. I’d have to pass Fuyuki’s wheelchair to get to them. I smoothed my dress, straightened my shoulders, let my arms drop loosely at my sides and began to walk. I was trembling, but I willed myself to keep going, slowly, in a fake sexy way that made my face burn and my legs feel weak. Even above the music and conversation I could hear the
shoosh-shoosh
of nylon as my thighs brushed against each other. Fuyuki’s small head was only a few feet from me, and as I drew nearer I dipped my hip, just enough to catch the back of his wheelchair and startle him.

‘I beg your pardon.’ I placed my hands on the chair to steady it. ‘I’m sorry.’ He raised his arms slightly, trying to twist his stiff old neck round to look at me. I calmed him, pressing my fingers reassuringly on his shoulders, deliberately moving my right leg against him again, letting the beguiling crackle of nylon static and warm flesh rise up to him. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I repeated, and pushed the chair back to where it had belonged. ‘It won’t happen again.’

The henchmen were staring at me. And then I saw Jason at the bar, frozen with a glass of champagne to his mouth, his eyes fixed on me. I didn’t wait. I straightened my dress and went on my way. I got to the bathroom and locked myself in, shaking uncontrollably, staring at my hectic face in the mirror. This was incredible. I was turning into a vampire. You would look at me now and not think me the same person who had arrived in Tokyo two months ago.

‘My advice is, don’t go,’ Strawberry said. ‘Fuyuki ask you to his apartment, but Strawberry think it bad idea.’ When the gang had first arrived she’d got the table arranged, then retreated moodily behind her desk where she’d stayed all night, drinking champagne as fast as possible and scrutinizing us all with her narrow, suspicious eyes. By the time the club was empty, all the chairs were on the tables and a man with an industrial polisher was moving silently between them, she was furiously drunk. Under the floury Marilyn makeup her skin showed a deep pink round her nostrils, her hairline, on her neck. ‘You don’t understand.’ She pointed her cigarette-holder at me, stabbing it in the air. ‘You not like Japanese girls. Japanese girls understand people like Mr Fuyuki.’

‘What about the Russians? They’re going.’

‘The Russians!’ She sniffed indignantly, pushing a tiny straggle of white-blonde hair off her forehead. ‘The Russians!’

‘They don’t understand any better than I do.’

‘Okay.’ She held up her hand to stop me. She drained her glass, sat up straight and patted her mouth, her hair, trying to regain her composure. ‘Okay,’ she said, sitting forward and pointing the cigarette-holder at me. Sometimes when she was drunk like this she’d show her teeth and gums. The funny thing was that with all the surgery she’d never had her teeth fixed – they remained discoloured, one or two were even black. ‘You go to Fuyuki apartment you
be careful
. Okay? If it me, I don’t going to eat nothing in his house.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘I don’t going to eat any meat.’

The hairs on the back of my neck rose. ‘What do you mean?’ I said faintly.

‘Too many stories.’

‘What stories?’

Strawberry shrugged. She let her eyes wander out to the club. Fuyuki’s cars were waiting fifty floors down and most of the girls were already in the cloakroom getting their bags and coats. Outside a sour wind had started to blow, and from the panorama windows we could see that it had taken down power lines. Parts of the city were in darkness.

‘What do you mean?’ I repeated. ‘What stories? What meat?’

‘Nothing!’ She shook her hand dismissively, still not meeting my eyes. ‘Just jokes.’ She laughed then, a high, artificial laugh, and noticed her cigarette had gone out. She plugged a new one into the holder and waved it at me. ‘Better we finish this. This discussion finish now. Finish.’

I stared at her, my mind cantering forward.
Don’t eat the meat?
I was thinking how to pursue it, how to stalk her, sure she was dropping a vital clue, when quite suddenly Jason appeared, sitting next to me, leaning forward and gripping my chair, turning it round to face him.

‘You’re going to Fuyuki’s?’ he whispered.

He had already changed out of his waiter’s tuxedo into a grey T-shirt with a faded
Goa Trance
slogan. His holdall was strapped across his chest, ready to walk home.

‘The twins told me,’ he said. ‘You’re going.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’ll have to go too.’

‘What?’

‘Because we’re spending the night together. You and me. We’d already agreed that.’

I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t make anything come out. I must have looked odd, my pupils wide, my mouth open, a light haze of sweat on my neck.

‘The Nurse,’ Jason said, as if I’d asked a question. ‘That’s why I’ll be welcome.’ He licked his lips and glanced at Strawberry, who was smoking another cigarette, her eyebrows raised knowingly at this exchange. ‘Let me put it this way,’ he whispered. ‘She’s kind of itchy for me. If you know what I mean.’

Fuyuki and his entourage had gone ahead, leaving a string of black cars, with ‘Lincoln Continental’ written in curlicue script on their boots, in the street to pick up the guests. I was one of the last to leave the club, and by the time I got to street level almost all of the hostesses, and Jason, had followed him, leaving just one car. I slid into the back seat with three Japanese hostesses whose names I didn’t know. As we drove they chattered about their customers, but I was quiet, smoking a cigarette and staring out of the window at the moats of the Imperial Palace flashing past the car. As we came through Nishi Shinbashi we passed the garden where I had first met Jason. I didn’t recognize it at first: it was almost behind us when I realized that the odd rows gleaming in the moonlight were the silent stone children lined up under the trees. I swivelled in my seat to stare at them through the back window.

‘What’s that place?’ I asked the driver in Japanese. ‘The temple?’

‘That’s Zojoji temple.’

‘Zojoji? What are all the children for?’

The driver looked at me hard in the rear-view mirror, as if I was a surprise to him. ‘Those are the Jizo. The angels for the dead children. The children who are stillborn.’ When I didn’t answer he said, ‘Do you understand my Japanese?’

I turned back to gaze at the ghostly lines under the trees. A little shudder crossed my heart. You can never be sure what’s going on in your subconscious. Maybe I’d always known what the statues were. Maybe that was why I had chosen the park to sleep in.

‘Yes,’ I said distantly, my mouth dry. ‘Yes, I do. I understand.’

Fuyuki lived near the Tokyo Tower, in an imposing apartment building set in private gardens behind security gates. As the Continental swept down the driveway, the wind coming off the bay made the big palm trees rustle. The guard roused himself from behind a low-lit reception desk, crouched to unlock the bottom of the glass doors, and escorted our party through a quiet marble lobby to a private lift, which he opened with a key. We crammed in, the Japanese girls giggling and whispering behind their hands.

When the doors opened at the penthouse the man in the ponytail was waiting for us. He didn’t speak or meet anyone’s eye as we filed out into the small hallway, but turned smartly and led us into a long passage. The apartment was arranged round a square. A long walnut-panelled corridor linked all the rooms and seemed to go on for ever; concealed lighting dropped round pools of light in front of us, like a runway, inviting us into the distance. I walked cautiously, shooting looks around me, wondering if the Nurse lived here too, if she had a lair behind one of these doors.