‘Ah yes, “Song of the Open Road”?’
‘Indeed,’ said Jones, and now he laughed again. ‘Sa-ikō …’
Outside the Café Parisien, the wide avenue was deserted now except for the rickshaw pullers. Ryūnosuke looked at his watch and asked, ‘Isn’t there anywhere else we could get a drink round here?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Jones. ‘Just up here …’
Only the sound of their shoes echoing in the street of three- and four-storey buildings, looking up at the stars in the sky, then down at the occasional lights of the shops – a pawnshop with white walls, a placard for a doctor, a worn stucco wall covered with advertisements for Nanyang cigarettes – as Ryūnosuke said, ‘I’m awfully thirsty …’
‘Patience,’ said Jones. ‘It’s just up here …’
The café was far more low-class than the Parisien. Near the glass doorway, an old Chinese woman sold roses. In the middle of the room, three or four British sailors danced suggestively with heavily made-up women of the world. At the back, before a pink wall, a Chinese boy with his hair parted down the middle was banging away on a huge piano. In another corner, at another table, Jones and Ryūnosuke ordered two cold sodas –
‘I feel as though I am looking at a newspaper with illustrations,’ declared Ryūnosuke. ‘And there is no doubt “Shanghai” could be the only possible title for that illustration …’
Drunkenly, a group of six more sailors fell through the door, knocking the basket of roses out of the arms of the old Chinese woman and onto the floor, rushing into the middle of the room, frantically dancing with their shipmates and their women, crushing the flowers under their feet, stepping on the fingers of the old Chinese woman –
Jones stood up. ‘Let’s go …’
‘Yes,’ said Ryūnosuke.
Jones threw a coin in the old woman’s basket as he said, ‘Let me tell you about life, Ryūnosuke …’
‘Go on then,’ said Ryūnosuke. ‘What is life?’
Jones held open the door for Ryūnosuke, declaring, ‘Life … life is but an open road strewn with roses …’
Outside, rickshaw pullers descended on them from all four directions. Ryūnosuke felt a hand on his sleeve, pulling him back towards the café. The old flower woman was gripping his arm, her other hand stuck out like a beggar, spittle on her lips, shouting something over and over into his face.
‘Madam, I feel truly sorry for your beautiful roses,’ Ryūnosuke told her. ‘Being trampled on by those drunken sailors, yes, but also being sold by such a greedy person as yourself …’
But Jones just laughed and, for the second time that day, said, ‘Welcome to Shanghai, Ryūnosuke. Welcome to China …’
‘Thank you,’ said Ryūnosuke. ‘But I refuse to believe Shanghai is China.’
‘Perhaps not yet,’ said Jones. And then, suddenly, he sneezed.
3
Feeding charcoal to the fire, we speak of the foetus …
In the Banzaikan, in his room, in his bed, Ryūnosuke awoke suddenly from a terrible dream. A twisting knife under his ribcage, a stabbing pain in the side and lower part of his chest. Ryūnosuke sat up in bed and coughed. But the pain was real, the pain intense. Spreading from his abdomen, crawling along his shoulders, tightening around his neck. Again Ryūnosuke coughed, again the pain. Shooting through his chest, digging into his shoulders. He was shivering, he was burning. Ryūnosuke collapsed back onto his pillow. It was cold, it was damp. Ryūnosuke lay sweating on his bed. He cursed his ill luck, he waited for the maid. And then the doctor.
The diagnosis was dry pleurisy. Ryūnosuke would need to rest in the Satomi Hospital, on Miller Street, for two weeks, maybe longer. Dr Satomi would personally administer a shot to him every other day.
Helpless and in despair, Ryūnosuke feared he would have to cancel his trip. He dictated a telegram to Osaka. The reply came quickly: Get well soon, but take your time. Then continue as planned. We await your reports and travelogue as soon as you are fit again.
On his back, in his bed. In the room, on the ward. Jones or Murata visited every day. From time to time, baskets of fruit and bunches of flowers from unknown admirers also arrived. After a while, in a row, by his head, there were so many cans of biscuits that Ryūnosuke did not know how he would ever dispose of them. Luckily, Jones always brought a voracious appetite with him. Thankfully, he also brought books: the stories of Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, the essays of Herbert Giles and the poems of Eunice Tietjens.
Ryūnosuke was grateful for any distraction. His fever did not easily subside, his mind constantly stricken. In the daylight, he was certain sudden death was just around the corner. In the twilight, he took Calmotin to spare him the terrors of the night. But Ryūnosuke was always awake before the dawn, repeating the line from the poem by Wang Cihui: ‘Imbibing medicine with no effect, leads only to the recurrence of strange dreams …’
A vaudeville performance back in Tokyo; on the stage, a hanging screen, a magic lantern show, scenes from the Sino-Japanese War: the Battle of Weihaiwei, the sinking of the Dingyuan, Captain Higuchi directing his troops with one arm, protecting a Chinese baby in his other; all around him, a large crowd was cheering the Japanese flag, screaming at the tops of their lungs, ‘Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!’ A hand grabbing his sleeve, the hand gripping his arm, squeezing it tighter and tighter, the hand of a woman, a woman he recognised; a woman he once lusted after, a woman he now loathed, the woman laughing now, the woman saying now, ‘Sa-ikō …’
Above his head, a Chinese lantern, through the window, a Chinese balustrade; in a courtyard, a locust tree, through the gates, a city burning; at a station, on the platform, a baby charred, its mother dead, its arms outstretched, its
