Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [251]
But the woman they saw before them now was quite different.
Her face was so fair she might never have been touched by the sun or the wind. Her skin was so velvety smooth that they were sorely tempted to reach out and touch it. Her eyes were dark and deep as the sea, with just a flicker of melancholy on the surface of the water. Her blue tunic was very plain but it was filled out by her buxom curves. Her abdomen bulged slightly, straining against her tunic and making it gape at the hem. They may have been three armed soldiers fleeing for their lives, but the sight of this woman made them aware that they were also men.
Step by step they came nearer to her. The woman said nothing, just stared fixedly at them. It was not a sharp stare—fear was written all over her face. But there was something in her gaze which hobbled their legs together like a rope.
Sasaki was in front. Her eyes met his, challenging them, and he knew that if he carried on looking he would have to declare himself beaten. So he simply averted his eyes and forced himself to stare at the wall of the classroom behind her. It was an old wall and the plaster had cracked. There were streaks of blood on the plaster from squashed mosquitoes.
Sasaki ripped the front panel of her tunic open with one downward movement, revealing a thin white vest underneath. The girl holding one end of the tissue paper roll gave a shriek of terror and Sasaki waved his finger in her face. “Shut up!” he shouted. The girl gave a shrill wail in response. Sasaki, worried that the noise might alert people outside, gestured to Kobayashi, who pulled his gun from his shoulder. A slight prick of the girl’s belly with the bayonet and a gash opened. As easily as a fish spawning, coils of something white and snakelike spilled out over the floor.
Such pushovers, these Chinese, thought Kobayashi.
Kam Sau could hear her own teeth chattering violently. She addressed her pupils gravely, forcing out the words: “Shut your eyes.” The girls obeyed. The only sound to be heard in the room was a trickling, as urine dripped from the thin fabric of their trousers onto the floor.
Kam Sau shut her eyes too. The door slammed shut. She could still feel the sun, the memory of light dancing on her eyelids. She felt her feet leave the ground and she was carried to the rostrum. Someone pulled her vest off, while someone else yanked on her trousers. There was a draught coming through the cracks in the walls and she felt it brush over her naked body. Hands, so many of them, felt her all over. They were cold and covered in calluses. They were as abrasive as sandpaper.
But there was worse to come. Something was hurting her back, something icy cold and hard. The scissors she had been using to cut paper were pressing into her.
Kam Sau opened her eyes. Sasaki’s face was close to hers, so close she could see the soft down which would one day grow into a moustache on his upper lip, and a pus-filled pimple on the side of his nose.
He was just a boy.
Kam Sau measured the space between herself and Sasaki. She was secretly waiting for the chance to shift her right hand and get hold of the scissors under her back. She would stick them first into his windpipe and then into her own. In five seconds, perhaps ten, certainly not more than half a minute, she could put an end to two lives.
But the chance never came.
She felt a sharp pain between her legs as something thrust violently into her, pounding until she felt as if the life was being crushed out of her. Then darkness washed over her and she lost consciousness.
By the time the girl who had gone for help returned to the classroom with a crowd of men armed with knives, staves and carrying poles, the Japanese had gone. The first man through the door lost his footing, and fell over. As he got up and rubbed his knee, he realized he had slipped on a length of human gut. In the corner of the room