The Devil of Nanking Read Free

rigidly together, my bag on my lap, clutched tightly to my stomach. Shi Chongming limped around, filled an electric Thermos from a sink, oblivious to the water that sprayed out and darkened his mandarin-style tunic. The fan gently shifted the stacks of papers and crumbling old volumes that were piled on the floor-to-ceiling shelves. As soon as I walked in I’d seen, in the corner of the room, a projector. A dusty 16mm projector, only just visible where it had been pushed up in the corner among the towering piles of paper. I wanted to turn and stare at it, but I knew I shouldn’t. I bit my lip and fixed my eyes on Shi Chongming. He was delivering a long monologue about his research.
    ‘Few have a concept of when Chinese medicine first came to Japan, but you can even look at the Tang era and see evidence of its existence here. Did you know that?’ He made me tea and rustled up a wrapped biscuit from somewhere. ‘The priest Jian Zhen was preaching it, right here, in the eighth century. Now there are kampo shops everywhere you look. Only step outside the campus and you’ll see them. Fascinating, isn’t it?’
    I blinked at him. ‘I thought you were a linguist.’
    ‘A linguist? No, no. Once, maybe, but everything has changed. Do you want to know what I am? I’ll tell you – if you take a microscope and carefully study the nexus where the biotechnologist and the sociologist meet . . .’ He smiled, giving me a glimpse of long yellow teeth. ‘There you’ll find me: Shi Chongming, a very little man with a grand title. The university tells me I’m quite a catch. What I’m interested in is just how much of all this . . .’ he swooped his hand round the room to indicate the books, colour plates of mummified animals, a wall-chart labelled Entomology of Hunan ‘. . . how much of this came with Jian Zhen, and how much was brought back to Japan by the troops in 1945. For example, let me see . . .’ He ran his hands over the familiar texts, pulled out a dusty old volume and put it down in front of me, opened at a bewildering diagram of a bear, dissected to show its internal organs coloured in printer’s pastel shades of pink and mint. ‘For example, the Asiatic black bear. Was it after the Pacific war that they decided to use the gall bladder of their Karuizawa bear for stomach ailments?’ He put his hands on the table and peered at me. ‘I expect that’s where you come in, isn’t it? The black bear is one of my interests. It’s the question that brings most people to my door. Are you a conservationist?’
    ‘No,’ I said, surprised by how steady my voice was. ‘Actually, no. It’s not where I come in. I’ve never heard of the – the Karuizawa bear.’ And then I couldn’t help it. I turned and glanced at the projector in the corner. ‘I . . .’ I dragged my eyes back to Shi Chongming. ‘I mean that Chinese medicine isn’t what I want to talk about.’
    ‘No?’ He lowered his spectacles and looked at me with great curiosity. ‘Is it not?’
    ‘No.’ I shook my head precisely. ‘No. Not at all.’
    ‘Then . . .’ He paused. ‘Then you’re here because . . . ?’
    ‘Because of Nanking.’
    He sat down at the table with a frown. ‘I’m sorry. Who did you say you were?’
    ‘I’m a student at London University. At least, I was. But I wasn’t studying Chinese medicine. I was studying war atrocities.’
    ‘Stop.’ He held up his hand. ‘You have come to the wrong man. I am of no interest to you.’
    He started to get up from the desk but I unzipped my holdall hastily and pulled out the battered pile of notes secured in an elastic band, dropping some in my nervousness, picking them up and putting them all untidily on the desk between us.
    ‘I’ve spent half my life researching the war in China.’ I undid the band and spread out my notes. There were sheets of translations in my tiny handwriting, photocopies of testimonies from library books, sketches I’d done to help me