Back outside the house, Murata said, ‘That guy is very smart.’
‘Very impressive, indeed,’ agreed Ryūnosuke.
Murata smiled and said, ‘And you know, when he was a student in Japan, Li was an avid reader and admirer of your own work?’
‘Every man has his flaws,’ sighed Ryūnosuke.
8
On his last night, in another café, in another corner, at another table, under a Chinese lantern, Ryūnosuke and Jones were drinking whisky and sodas, watching crowds of Americans and Russians swarming around the room, women leaning against the tables, listening to the Indian musicians of the orchestra. One particular woman, wearing a gown of celadon green, fluttered from one man to the next, her face beautiful, yet with something porcelain, almost morbid about her: Green satin, and a dance, white wine / and gleaming laughter, with two nodding earrings – these are Lotus …
‘Who is she,’ asked Ryūnosuke, ‘the girl in the green dress?’
Jones shrugged and said, ‘Her? French, I think. An actress.’
‘Do you know her? Her story …?’
Jones shrugged again. ‘People call her Ninny. But just look at him, that old guy over there. Now there is a man with a story …’
Ryūnosuke glanced at the man at the next table. He was holding a glass of red wine in both hands, warming the glass, rocking the wine, moving his head in time to the music of the band.
Jones whispered, ‘He’s Jewish, you know. He’s lived here for almost thirty years. But he’s never said what brought him here, or what makes him stay. I often wonder about him …’
‘What do you care,’ said Ryūnosuke.
Jones said, ‘I just wonder. I’m already fed up with China.’
‘Not with China,’ said Ryūnosuke. ‘With Shanghai.’
Jones nodded. ‘With China. I lived in Beijing for a while, too.’
‘Because China is gradually becoming too Western?’
Jones seemed about to answer, but then stopped.
‘Then if not China,’ asked Ryūnosuke, ‘then where would you live? How about Japan again? You could return to Tokyo …’
Jones shook his head and said, ‘You should never go back to the places you’ve lived. You can’t really …’
‘So where then?’
Jones smiled and said, ‘Russia, under the Soviets.’
‘Then you should go! You can go anywhere you want …’
Jones closed his eyes, was silent for a while, a long while, and then, in Japanese, quoted lines from the Man’yōshū, lines Ryūnosuke had long forgotten: ‘The world is full of pain / And the shame of poverty / But I am not a bird / I cannot fly away …’
Ryūnosuke smiled.
Jones opened his eyes, looked again around the room and said, ‘I don’t know about that old Jewish guy, but even Ninny seems happier than me …’
‘Ah-ha,’ laughed Ryūnosuke, ‘I knew you must know her!’
Jones shrugged and said, ‘I am not a straightforward person, Ryūnosuke. Poet, painter, critic, journalist and more. Son, brother, bachelor and Irishman. And on top of all that, a romantic in my mind, a realist in my life and a communist in my politics …’
‘And a lover of Ninny,’ laughed Ryūnosuke.
Now Jones laughed, too. ‘Yeah, yeah. And an atheist in religion and a materialist in philosophy. Now, come on. Sa-ikō …’
Outside, the city was lost in a strange yellow fog. Its false fronts, buried for now. Ryūnosuke followed Jones along the streets, towards the sound of the water, the sound of the waves …
By the water, they stopped. A customs-house spire dimly visible through the fog. A black sail, torn and tilted, creaking along, adrift and alone. The river swelled and flowed backwards. The black legs of a wharf bound in chains. Mountains of off-loaded cargo. Coolies on barrels stacked on the embankment in the damp air …
‘It’s too late’, said Jones, ‘to change anything.’
‘Then that means you’ve wasted your life.’
A group of exhausted Russian prostitutes sitting on a bench. The blue lamp of a sampan moving against the current, rotating ceaselessly, hypnotically before their silent, wasted eyes …
‘Not only me,’ said Jones, ‘but all the people of the world.’
The dull clank of copper coins, Chinamen gambling on top of barrels. The gaslights in striped patterns, through the yellow fog and the wet trees. The boats tied to the quay rocking in the waves, floating up and down in the flicker of the lamplight.
‘Hey, look at that,’ said Jones, pointing into the dark water –
At their feet, on the tide, the pale corpse of a small dog kissed the stones of the quay. A wreath around its neck –
Rising and falling, on the tide.
Ryūnosuke turned his back, lit a cigarette and watched the prostitutes stand and saunter away along an iron railing. A young woman at the end of the procession glanced back furtively with her pallid eyes, and Ryūnosuke felt overwhelmed by the sudden, crushing sadness of a dream: when that woman Shigeko had told him that her second child was his, then turned and walked away, she had glanced back at him in that very same way. Now the young woman stepped over the ropes that moored the boats, then disappeared among the barrels with the others. All they left behind was a banana peel, stepped on and splattered. Ryūnosuke stared back out across the water. Day and night, coins and goods flowed in and out from the port, and all along the river the warships of the world spread out their batteries of guns.
‘I wonder why we do that,’ said Jones, quietly, still watching the dead dog bobbing up and down on the black water.
‘Do what,’ asked Ryūnosuke.
‘Make a wreath,’ said Jones. ‘For the dead.’
Ryūnosuke stared back down at the corpse, then shook his head and said, ‘I don’t know. But I’m glad we do. Or some of us do.’
‘Maybe it was Ninny,’ said Jones.
Ryūnosuke looked back up at Jones, remembering again lines from that poem by Eunice Tietjens: You too perhaps were stranded here, like these poor / homesick boys,
