The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel

by Maureen Lindley

  Although I was delighted to be officially Kawashima's and Japan's daughter, it was an honour Natsuko begrudged me. She had me moved to the western wing of the house, the nearest she could get to banishing me from her sight without incurring her husband's anger. The wing, more generously proportioned than the main house, had been built mostly for show. I think that the Kawashimas found its European furnishings odd and uncomfortable and Shimako described it as being fit only for barbarians. It suited me very well though as the rooms were spacious and the furnishings deliciously foreign. I slept in a bed carved from ebony and walked on floors scattered with Persian rugs. The thing I most loved about it was that it was linked to the main house by a narrow hall with a sprung wooden floor that sang like a bird when walked on. I always knew when someone was coming and became expert at recognising people by their footsteps.

  In those years of my youth life progressed well enough. I was often at odds with Natsuko and Shimako, but I had friendships of varying sorts with the children of the house. I was always occupied and never bored. I indulged my passion for food, my interest in sex and my need for information. I took life on without fear, but I could not control the terror in my dreams, which were filled with death and the cold and images of me alone in a barren landscape.

  I learnt early that to know other people's secrets was to have power over them. Sorry procured information that was to ease my path through life and allow me to bargain to my advantage. One spring she told me that Natsuko had been soaking sponges in bitter green tea and putting them inside herself to stop her conceiving. A fortune teller had predicted that she could now only conceive girl children. Six daughters was shame enough and Natsuko, deeply in love with her husband, was terrified that he would find out and never call her to the marriage bed again. Shimako had suggested that eating live stag beetles had been known to reverse the trend, but desperate as Natsuko was she had a horror of all insects and could not summon up the courage to do it. So when she threatened to tell her husband of my behaviour in the cellar, I said that in return I would tell him what she had been up to with the sponges and bitter tea. At first she was furious, her lips went white at the edges where they were unpainted, she said my behaviour was so low that she could hardly believe I was a girl of high birth. When I stood my ground, bending her will to mine, she became confused and crumbled before my eyes. She began to weep and begged me to keep her secret.

  'My husband will be furious if he finds out. A good marriage is essential to a woman's happiness, Yoshiko, you will come to understand that one day. Please do not betray me.'

  I was not one to be touched by another's tears, but Natsuko's affected me deeply. I had no intention of telling Kawashima of his wife's pathetic secrets; that would have been a betrayal of my hidden affection for her. Yet I enjoyed my power and I wanted to pay Natsuko back for never accepting me as a daughter in her house.

  'What can I give you?' she cried, reaching into a chest elaborately painted to resemble bamboo. 'Take this perfumed rice powder, Yoshiko, it is pounded twice to make it the softest you will ever feel; your skin will glow more richly than gold.'

  I did not move to take it.

  'Give me your black pearl,' I said simply.

  Natsuko stiffened, a tiny nerve flickered in her forehead, but her hand fluttered to her neck to release the pearl that seemed to me to have more lustre than ever before. She held it out to me tentatively as though she was feeding a tiger. I should have said, 'Oh Natsuko, save me. Do not give me the pearl. Give me your love instead.' But I didn't. I hung the dark globe on its silken thread where it lay between my breasts, a good-luck charm to remind me that information is power. I was twelve years old.

  When Shimako, getting fatter and plainer as she aged, found out about Natsuko's gift to me she said, 'A black pearl to complement your nature, eh, Yoshiko?'

  A year later I began my monthly bleeds. Sorry told me that I was becoming a beauty of the kind that did not need fine silks or hair combs to be noticed. She stood me in front of a mirror and told me to look at myself. 'What do you see, Little Mistress?' she asked. I looked and saw a girl with eyes the shape of the sloes that bear fruit in winter, a soft pink mouth and small teeth that were very white and even. I had my mother's skin, paler than that of my Japanese sisters. Like my mother's my breasts were round and well matched. I had slim hips not made for childbearing, and beautiful unbound feet with toenails like pearlescent shells.

  I no longer trailed after the boys but left them to their own devices. In no time at all they began to seek my company and instead of me playing their games they began to play mine. They offered me full membership of the 'Secret Sake Club' but I declined the offer, saying that I had grown out of the childish games they played. To test my powers I would set them against each other, showing Hideo more affection than Nobu, delighting in their misery and their competitiveness. Just as they had negotiated my entrance to their rituals by the intimacies they took with me, I now took payment in kind from them. An ivory letter knife might secure a second of my tongue in their mouth, a goldfish fashioned in jade the run of my hand along the length of their member.

  Sorry sold my trophies to the shopkeepers in the back streets near the house, and I gave her a share of the proceeds so that her old age might not be too hard. She often bought opium from the Chinese shopkeepers and I frequently smoked it with her. The Japanese do not care for opium and most never enjoy the pleasure of an opium dream. For me it has been a lifelong delight, its musky smoke redolent with memories and the promise of oblivion.

  My life in the household continued as though it would never change. I spied on the Kawashima family and prided myself on knowing their secrets. I allowed the brothers their privileges, sparred with Natsuko and occasionally crossed swords with Shimako. I smoked opium with Sorry and Turkish and American cigarettes when alone. I listened to western music on a record player that I bought second-hand from a college friend of Hideo's. Hardly a day passed that I did not venture into the labyrinth of Tokyo's streets. I did not think of myself as an ambitious person, only as one with an enthusiasm and lust for life.

  Kawashima was a member of Japan's prestigious intelligence network and often entertained visitors who came to discuss politics with him. Through his numerous connections he distributed patronage to those prepared to further his own cause, which he claimed was to sustain the glory of Japan. The men who came were themselves powerful, with strings of their own to pull and information to share. Like Kawashima they came from the Samurai class and included politicians, businessmen and the odd high-ranking officer, usually from the Imperial Guard. I loved their talk of honour and the way they linked the ideas of courage and loyalty to Japan, rather than to their families. I suppose it made me feel more like them, less like the orphaned outsider that I now realise I was.

  With no thirteenth sister around, spying on the meetings was an easy matter. I would conceal myself between the bamboo-and­paper wall screens, or behind the fruit trees in summer when the screens were open to the fine weather. I was rewarded with news of the outside world that never failed to thrill me. The fate of emperors and the progress of revolutions informed me that, despite my adventurous nature and my escapes into the city, I lived in a small confined world.

  The war in Europe had ended with Japan claiming the German concessions in China for themselves. I heard that China was weak and stood by too helpless to do anything about it. I felt proud when I heard Kawashima say that Japan would continue to bite chunks of China to fatten its own empire. I had developed feelings of shame about my Chinese origins and I once bit Hideo's hand, drawing blood, when he referred to me as his Chinese sister.

  My distant cousin Pu Yi had been restored to his rightful place as Emperor of China, but I had no wish to claim kinship with him. Kawashima called him the Son of Heaven, and laughed. I envied Pu Yi's wealth and power and wondered how he spent his days in the delightful Forbidden City that I remembered from my childhood. I did not know then that his power was limited to his imm
ediate surroundings and his wealth was finite.

  I discovered in myself a passion for knowledge of the world. I wanted to understand its history, and to understand too the emotions that powered revolutions and wars. Battles excited me, and I longed for the freedom men had to pursue their ambitions and to claim what they wanted from life. I never wanted to be a man, only to have the privileges of men.

  Kawashima and his cohorts would talk late into the night and sometimes I would fall asleep between the screens and wake stiff and cold, urgently needing to relieve myself. I would be so frustrated at having missed the conversation that I taught myself to stay awake by keeping hungry and pinching my cheeks so hard that they bruised. As the men talked, they drank bowls of tea and shots of sake served to them by the geishas who came to the house with the men who had 'adopted' them. It was called adoption, but in my eyes it amounted to a master-slave relationship. Most of the Japanese men I have known tend to disguise their ownership of women in a form of language that speaks paternally of care and guardianship, but however they choose to term it, it is the woman who is on her knees. I have never understood how any woman can bear to be owned by a man, which in effect they were, like a horse or an ornament. The geishas heard much but said nothing. Although mostly young, they could be relied upon to be discreet, as they prided themselves on the trustworthiness of their profession. Of course, they knew that the slightest betrayal of confidence would see them thrown onto the streets to end up as common prostitutes.

  Personally, I would have preferred the freedom of a prostitute to the rule-bound life of a geisha, but in general geishas, particularly young ones, are a timid lot who take refuge in the customs and protections of their trade. Like western nuns, geishas are pumped with the idea of service, of sacrifice to a master who they hope will act benignly towards them. Still, at least they have sex, while nuns, ecstatic with the denial of it, save themselves for the God to whom they are impotently married.

  Kawashima often overindulged in drink, but at those meetings he liked to keep his wits about him and would sip his sake frugally. He took pleasure in observing the weaknesses and subsequent indiscretions of his colleagues. I admired him greatly for his cunning and his intellect. Sometimes, one of the men would seal a daughter's fate by arranging a marriage to another's son. They disposed of their womenfolk more casually than they did of their stocks and shares. I was sick at the thought that one day I might hear of my own destiny decided in this way; I knew that despite the indulgences shown to me by Kawashima, he would never allow me to choose my own path in life. Notwithstanding his flirtation with western ideas, he believed, like Confucius, that women, although human, were lower than men and that it was the law of nature that they should be allowed no will of their own. Also, and more to the point, I came with a large dowry, which was his to dispense where he would. I knew that one day he would use it to seal a deal, or receive a favour, and I might find myself with a husband not of my choosing. If that was to be the case I vowed that I would not be a compliant wife.

  More than seven years of my life passed following this pattern until on a day when she was far from my mind, I was told that my mother had died in great pain from taking bad medicine to bring about the abortion of a child caught in her fallopian tube. My hurt at the news was so deep that I could not weep and wail as people do at the death of a heroine in an opera. I was too like Prince Su in nature for that. I dug my nails into the palms of my hand until they bled and I cursed the gods for their cruelty to so sweet a subject.

  I have never been able to bring myself to throwaway the half­eaten box of lychees with their promise of reunion, for we cannot know in this life which of our ancestors will greet us in the next; I pray that it will be my gentle mother.

  Persimmons in Honey and a Bowl of Golden Tea

  On the eve of my fifteenth birthday, just when I thought the day would pass without event, two things happened that I will never forget.

  Dusk had fallen when the old man Teshima sent for me saying that he wished to present me with a gift in celebration of my auspicious day. Sorry brought me the message grudgingly.

  'Not all gifts are to be welcomed,' she said darkly. 'This may be a favour you would wish from someone other than this Japanese grandfather.'

  I went to Teshima's quarters and found him sitting on a wooden sofa, his feet raised from the floor and placed apart on a long stool. At each foot a young peasant girl no more than twelve years old knelt on a straw mat cutting and smoothing his toenails. The room was infused with the smell of the sandalwood incense he favoured. It thinned the air and caught at the back of my throat. Teshima was wearing a long cotton coat loosely tied and draped across his knees leaving his legs bare. I could see the blue run of his veins through his old man's skin, which was as white as rice paper. His thin hair oiled flat against his skull gave him a skeletal appearance, and he looked as though he had rouged his cheeks to mimic youth, but it might have been the effect of his high blood pressure. Between his fingers a fat handmade cigarette rolled in black paper sent a snake of smoke into the air. The girls completed their task by massaging coconut oil between his toes and into the weak muscles deep in his calves. Teshima seemed unaware of me as he rested a hand on each girl's head and rocked back and forth, sighing with pleasure. When they had finished they sat back on their haunches and waited for his dismissal. He lifted his hands from their heads and shooed them from the room. Then he beckoned me to the vacated mat and as I sat by his oily feet he handed me a small cedarwood box with an iron key in its lock.

  'I have waited a long time to give you this, Yoshiko,' he said, looking at me enigmatically with his small dark eyes. 'I think that you are ready for it at last.'

  I opened the box and saw nestled against each other on a bed of dark-green silk a pair of woodcarvings of a phallus and a vulva.

  'They are ancient and carved by a master,' he said, reaching across me and picking them up. 'A most suitable present for a young woman on her fifteenth birthday.'

  He showed me how the two pieces fitted into each other and became one entwined piece. From the age of eight years I had known how a man and woman fitted each other and I laughed out loud at this ancient man who thought that this old lesson would be new to me. Teshima smiled and laughed with me.

  'Don't be embarrassed, little Yoshiko,' he said. 'You are old enough to know of these things. Soon you will have to pleasure a husband, better you know how than to go to him afraid and ignorant.' We sat in silence for a while, then he laid my gift back in its box and placed it on the floor.

  'Give me your hand, Yoshiko,' he said.

  He took my fingers into his mouth and licked them one by one until both my hands were wet with his saliva. Then he guided them under his coat to his phallus and moaned when I tightened my grip around it. It was as thin as young bamboo, unlike his eldest grandson Hideo's, which was of a more generous girth.

  Teshima clasped his hands over mine and began to slide our four hands along the length of his member. After what seemed like a long time it became thicker and he led me to his bed and told me to undress and lie down. And I did as he asked without objection. I was both fascinated and repulsed by the old man's desire. I liked the feeling that was gurgling through me like gingered sake. I didn't like his fish breath or the softness of his skin, yet I was thrilled at last to be a participant in this familiar ritual.

  He lifted his coat and mounted me in a sitting position, pushing into me slowly and telling me to relax. When I struggled a bit, half changing my mind about liking it, he growled at me to be still and I was. Taking a twisted stick from the chest at his bedside, he dipped it into a honey jar and dribbled it across my lips, sucking the stick noisily himself before placing it back in the jar. Then he bent down and put his tongue in my mouth. As he came panting to his climax, he pushed deeper than I thought it was possible to go inside another person, and his moaning became one long hum as though he were in agony. So that I would not cry out and that I would always associate the act with sweetnes
s, he released his own mouthful of honey into mine at the same time as the pain pierced me. I was surprised that there was pain, I had never heard a concubine complain of it or heard a whimper from the bound­footed girls my father straddled.

  'Better it was me, Yoshiko,' he said, leaving the bed and clapping his hands for his servant girls. 'I have been gentle with you, which is something that a young husband might fail at. I can promise you that it will never hurt as much again.'

  There was a tiny trickle of blood on the sheet, which Teshima said I should be proud of as it proved II was now a woman. He returned to the bedside to scoop a finger of honey from the pot, clapping his hands and shouting for his servants on the way.

  As I left his room feeling strangely sad and out of sorts, I passed his peasant girls hurrying to his side with water and soft cotton towels. Despite the pain, I had enjoyed the act, although given the choice I would not have chosen Teshima as my first lover. I have never blamed my greed for sex on that odd coupling, even though after it I could not wait to lie beneath a man again. Although I felt important, chosen, I think that in some hidden part of me, I knew that I had not only lost my virginity, but also my claim to be a child of the Kawashimas. Once again, but this time in a new way, I was being excluded from the care and support of a real family.

  When I returned to Sorry, I showed her the present and laughed at the old man's foolishness. I said that we would do well to sell it as Teshima had implied that it was an original, and worth quite a bit. She asked me if there had been blood and I nodded. We decided to eat early as I was tired from my experience and Sorry thought that I looked pale. But in her secret way Shimako had decreed that no head in the Kawashima household would lie early on the pillow that night.