The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel

by Maureen Lindley

  Although the weather had turned for the better, Natsuko caught an infection and took to her bed. She frequently suffered bouts of beriberi for which Dr Mura gave her vitamin injections, but this time she said it was influenza. It may have been a ploy to keep her from having to attend my wedding, although she did lie pale on the pillow.

  When the time came for me to go she took her leave of me with her customary formality.

  'I would wish you fortune in your marriage, Yoshiko,' she said, 'but that would be foolishly optimistic for someone born in the Year of the Tiger. Tigers are never satisfied, nor do they ever give up hunting.'

  I couldn't resist the urge to fence with her one last time. 'Natsuko,' I said, 'your husband's geisha was born in the Year of the Tiger. If rumour is to be believed her life has been excessively fortunate.'

  She smiled pityingly at me. 'In Osaka,' she said, 'the unlucky year is that of the ram.'

  My rooms in the western wing looked lifeless without my belongings to decorate them. While living my life there I hadn't noticed that the walls were crumbling and in need of painting, or that the mirror I gazed into every day was leaden with age. Yet, somewhere steeped in the plaster and in the still air of the rooms there remained a trace of the excitement, the misery and the sexual encounters they had hosted. Yamaga was there too and that was a memory that could never be pure, it would always come with pain attached to it. I took up the cup he had last sipped sake from and let it fall to the floor; it broke into three shards, I stamped on them, powdering them to dust. I would take no memento of him to distract me from living. I knew, though, that his image and my pain would return unbidden no matter what I left behind me.

  I wanted to live my life as it happened, not lost in nostalgia or anticipation. I didn't expect to be happy. It seemed to me that happiness was only found in those moments when time is occupied with something that takes you out of yourself. I determined to live day by day in my life, and avoid the long-term pursuit of happiness. I would let the pleasure principle guide me through my allotted time, so that when death sought me out it would find me still living life to the full.

  Bone Stew and Mare's Milk

  Kawashima and Nobu accompanied me on the journey to Port Arthur where I was to be married before travelling to Mongolia. Hideo was to remain at home as temporary patriarch as his grandfather was now too old for such duties.

  My trunks, filled with clothes and wedding gifts, had gone before me, but in my precious writing case I carried on board the half-eaten box of lychees now shrivelled with age, my bee in amber and my mother's coral earrings.

  We flew from Tokyo across Korea to the beautiful peninsula of Port Arthur in a military plane as the guests of Admiral Ube Sadamu. The Admiral, an influential and aristocratic cohort of Kawashima's, had helped to arrange my marriage to Kanjurjab as part of Japan's effort to make as many footholds in Mongolia as possible. It is a pity that power rarely comes with beauty, for the Admiral was as ugly as he was powerful.

  We had news that China's weak Emperor Pu Yi had fled the Forbidden City under the protection of the Japanese. With Peking in turmoil his Imperial Majesty's safety was at risk. On a grey February morning in 1925 he had been secreted out of the city in the company of his tutor Reginald Johnston to set up home in Tientsin, the birthplace of his wife Wan Jung. Admiral Ube had a hand in the matter, and I could tell by the way that Kawashima deferred to him that he was a powerful man. Nobu told me that the Admiral was at the centre of Japanese affairs and was a personal friend of Crown Prince Hirohito.

  The journey was thrilling, especially the take-off, which was doubly exciting for me because of Nobu's obvious fear of flying. I told him I was determined to fly a plane myself one day and he laughed, not only to annoy me but because he was genuinely amused. Nobu enjoyed making me angry to compensate himself for the many humiliations he had suffered in his youth at my hands.

  'You will be a wife, Yoshiko,' he jeered. 'Wives do not fly planes, they lie on their backs and breed.'

  Nobu had grown into a handsome man whose strong looks belied his weak nature. He told lies to ease his path through life and always took the line of least resistance, relying on his charm to get him what he wanted. I liked him well enough, though, he had a good sense of humour and I once saw him delicately release a panic-stricken butterfly from a spider's web. His true ambition was to be a poet, but he didn't have the courage to speak of it to Kawashima. I doubt he had the talent either. Despite his prodding, I think that he admired me, even though I had, over the years, frequently exposed the frailties of his nature. I did not blame him now for taking a little pleasure in my situation.

  Although he did not know it then, Nobu was to marry the daughter of our host Admiral Ube. The girl was high-born and the marriage pleased Kawashima, but she was sickly and suffered many stillbirths. She delivered Nobu only one living child, a girl who, having no brothers to compete with, grew to be not only decorative, but also scholarly.

  We had taken off in what the pilot had described as excellent flying weather; the air was perfectly still with a clear bleached sky and good visibility. As we descended in an inky light, one or two stars appeared in the sky and the faint outline of the moon looked red. Kawashima took a silver flask from his pocket and offered us a shot of malt whisky. It was my first taste of any spirit other than sake or Chinese wine. The strange flavour brought to mind temples and tobacco and left my throat hot. I thought the taste interesting and admired the silver flask. But Nobu, who strove to appear unimpressed with everything, said that sake was better and Kawashima and Sadamu nodded in agreement.

  I was informed by Kawashima that Port Arthur had been captured from China by Japan and was now Japanese territory. It was therefore a most suitable place for the marriage to take place, particularly so as Kanjurjab had no wish to cross a sea to meet his bride. Kawashima said that when I reached Mongolia I would be expected to promote my country in all things. As a daughter of Japan I must never forget the debt lowed to my adopted land. I could not believe that the country I so loved could truly wish me to give my life to the cold plains of Mongolia. Surely Japan had higher things in mind for me?

  Kawashima had arranged for us to wait for Kanjurjab's arrival in a large house built like its neighbours in the western style, with an overgrown garden at the back, full of oily laurel and bleeding snowberry. Designed to sit comfortably in an elegant semicircle, it was painted white and guarded at its entrance by iron gates wrought with dragons and peonies. The interior was decorated in the Chinese style and overfilled with dark furniture and uncomfortable seating. My rooms were on the first floor at the front of the house, and despite the many servants they were untidy and a little dusty. The air in the house was heavy and sweet, which brought to mind decay, and the sofas and cushions were a little damp.

  The house overlooked a coastline shadowed by ragged cliffs that met a grey strip of sand and shingle at the water's edge. From the back of the house the prosperous city of Port Arthur fanned out in rows of similar homes sitting in green lagoons of gardens that were lush with bamboo and magnolia. The broad streets lined with acacia trees were well kept but lifeless. I much preferred the area we had driven through from the airfield, where the poor lived around the dockyards and under the dripping bridges. There the narrow dark lanes, hung with washing and littered with everything from food remains to dead cats, had a sense of danger about them as though at any moment you might collide with adventure on their mean streets.

  From the ice-free port great steamers plied their way to Shanghai, and around the aged wooden piers sampans crowded together selling fish and vegetables. You could be tattooed or drink tea served to you by women who themselves were for sale. I have always thought it a pity that wealth and position remove us to the top of the hill, away from the real life of the teeming streets where boredom is rarely a problem.

  My bridegroom wasn't due to arrive until the day of the ceremony, which gave me two days to settle into the house. I thought this lack of urgency display
ed a reluctance on his part to commit to our union, a reluctance which I certainly shared with him. Kawashima said that the timing was quite proper and was intended so that I would not feel rushed and would have time to prepare myself.

  On our first night in the house we were served a splendid banquet at which Kawashima, Nobu and myself were the only diners. Admiral Ube had travelled on to Manchuria for some supposedly secret meetings. There were fried dumplings in a spicy broth and shredded lamb with capers. Course succeeded course, until the memory of the earlier ones had left us, but I do recall some good pancakes stuffed with winter radish and an apricot pickle made from the hard fruits usually kept for making dye. I enjoyed everything and ate voraciously.

  After the servants had retired to their kangs, the little raised platforms of bricks laid side by side in the yard at the back of the house, things quietened down. I could hear the sea lapping the cliffs and the occasional call from ships far out at sea.

  Nobu prepared himself to visit the 'flower girls' in a local brothel that Admiral Ube had recommended to him. The Admiral had told him that the girls in this house were the best you would find anywhere. They were mostly Chinese and had so many ways of pleasing a man that they were uncountable; no desire would be left unfulfilled, no request denied. Ube had confided in Nobu that for himself, only girls of fourteen or younger would do. After that age, he said, the scent of youth left their skin and their expressions became sour. Nobu and I laughed at the thought of the fat little Admiral making love. He was as broad as he was short with low­hanging buttocks and a pompous little swagger. Only his eyes, which were deep set, bright and serious, saved him from looking ridiculous.

  I asked Nobu what he would choose from the uncountable list.

  'First, I will take a bound-foot girl with white teeth,' he said excitedly. 'Just so that I can see for myself what the Chinese make all the fuss about. I will put the whole of her tiny lotus foot into my mouth as though it were a little breast. I hear that the girls with the smallest feet are the most exciting, because they are used to pain and are humble. When you have finished with them, they bathe you and feed you honey from their fingers.' As he spoke Nobu became flushed with anticipation.

  'After the bound-footed girl, who I hope will be a virgin,' he continued, 'I will try the Polish girl they have at this house. Ube says she is ugly but it will be something to remember that I once mounted a girl with gold hair, and I need not look at her face.'

  I envied Nobu his freedom to take off into the night and do as he pleased. I approved of his choices and would have accompanied him happily, if only to watch. For a moment I thought of running away and starting a new life. But something in me told me to wait. It was not time yet. My escape would need to be well planned and I would know where I was running to.

  The moment I put my head on the pillow, I slept and dreamt of a house of colours so gorgeous that I felt strangely ill, as though I had feasted on food too rich and wine too heady. Walls of exquisite turquoise dripped with fringes of pure gold. Purple ran through violet to pink across ceilings so high that eagles nested in their corners in glittering eyries. Great cascades of silk coursed around me in luminous swathes of palest green through the spectrum to verdigris, while reds of every hue poured from huge glass bowls into pools of silvery mercury. Pearls the colour of the pinkest azaleas bejewelled every surface. As I ran through the rainbow rooms, I became aware that I was being hunted by my birth father in the guise of a huge black dog. He intended to kill me before I could disgrace him further. I ran into a small windowless room where the orgy of colours had changed into a muddy brown of the kind you create as a child, when from your paint box you mix too many colours and lose them all. In this room a race of warm blood coursed around my bare feet and a hot pain woke me and I found that Kawashima had entered me from behind and had one hand over my breast, the other covering my mouth.

  'Be quiet, Yoshiko,' he whispered. 'Your cries will wake the house.' He promised to leave no bite marks that night as he thought it only good manners to hand me to Kanjurjab without a mark on my pelt. Instead he contented himself with pulling on my hair like a rein, and thrusting into me cruelly. No marks on the outside, but sore for days inside.

  When he had finished he gave a satisfied grunt and rolled off me. 'I will miss our coupling, Yoshiko,' he said. 'You have such an interesting flavour, both salty and sweet.'

  I smiled and leant over as though to kiss him, but instead I bit deeply into his lip until my mouth was filled with his blood. He pushed me from him and threw me on the floor.

  'You taste only of salt,' I said.

  I left my mark on him with a scar he would carry home to Natsuko. Yet, despite the pain involved and the disservice it had done me, I always found sex with Kawashima exciting. Since I first lay with him I was spoilt for tenderness. Lovers who are too kind leave you drowning in molasses.

  Next morning, angry at the sight of his swollen lip, Kawashima grudgingly put out the gift of money I was to place at the shrine while offering up a prayer. I was about to become a wife, so I had to follow the tradition of praying for happiness and prosperity with my new husband. I was a good enough actress to fool Kawashima into thinking that I had accepted his choice of life for me, I feigned obedience and agreed to go. I had hidden my own money in the lining of my trunk and had no intention of telling Kawashima of it. I was determined to keep my money and to add to its reserves whenever I could.

  I bathed in a stone bath lined with smooth pebbles to stimulate the blood and added salt to heal me from Kawashima's excesses. As I relaxed in the steamy water I took sips of whisky from the silver flask I had stolen from his pocket as he slept. Then I ate a breakfast of milk and fried eggs and made my way to the temple.

  I could smell the musty scent of incense before the shrine appeared out of the gloom, and was reminded of how uneasy I always felt in such places. I prayed neither for happiness nor prosperity. Instead I asked for an exciting life that need recognise no counsel but my own. If I had to offer the gods something in return, they could make my life a short one if it pleased them.

  I returned to the house to open the gifts that had arrived from the Kawashimas and the little linen bags of money, presents from rich Tokyo and Osaka families attempting to impress Kawashima with their generosity. The bags would be presented to Kanjurjab's father as part of my dowry.

  Ichiyo had sent the embryo of a monkey preserved in alcohol as a fertility charm. It was horrible. Hideo sent a small jewelled dagger with a note to say it was for handling the tough meat I would have to get used to in Mongolia. I suppose he thought that was funny. There were gifts from Itani and from Hideo's betrothed Taeko, who sent an uninteresting pair of mother-of-pearl earrings. Hidden in my luggage, Sorry had wrapped a box of dried lychees with a letter she must have paid to have written for her. She said the lychees were to remind me of the journey I had taken with her long ago from China to Japan. She advised me not to drink Mongolian milk as it came from yaks, who were dirty animals. She said it was just as well that I was demanding of fortune, for I may have difficult times ahead of me. Then, apologising for giving me advice, she signed it with a cross.

  Apart from the wedding kimono that Natsuko had chosen for me and sent in a cedar box, she gave me a small lacquer chest locked with a gold key in a jade bolt. The interior of the lid was decorated with old Satsuma work displaying boughs of trailing wisteria. The box housed two compartments lined with silver enamel. One was filled with the honey of April, the most perfumed of all honeys, the other a May conserve heavy with the scent of limes. Both compartments were sealed with a thin translucent cover of beeswax. It was magnificent.

  Kawashima remarked that Natsuko, queen of her own hive, was sending some of its sweetness with me on my nuptial flight. He had forgotten that Natsuko herself had been given the box at the birth of her third daughter by her hated mother-in-law with the words, 'I chose such a fine gift in the expectation that you would deliver my son a boy, but it seems you are done with that. You may a
s well have it as the sight of it will only remind me of his disappointment and my own disgust.'

  By passing the box on to me Natsuko was sending me a cloaked message, one she knew I Would understand. At one and the same time it communicated her dislike of me and reminded me of my barrenness. For a brief moment she became splendid in my eyes. I was reminded that women make more interesting enemies than men because of their subtlety and their ability to inflict exquisite, rather than brutal, pain. I think it was on that day, as I held Natsuko's gift, that I first realised that I truly loved her, despite knowing that she would never love me.

  The night before Kanjurjab arrived I slept alone in my bed. Kawashima didn't bother me, but said that I should enjoy my solitude as it would be the last time I would lie unstraddled. That night he took a young male servant to his bed, a beautiful, deathless-looking boy.

  Shortly after dawn, Kanjurjab, his parents, siblings, concubines, dogs and unpaid servants arrived in a noisy and unselfconscious manner. As I spied on them from an upstairs window my heart sank at the thought that by nightfall I would be one of their number. Despite the finery of their clothes, they looked rough, too weathered and unrefined for my taste. Kawashima had not done well for me in his matchmaking. I had harboured the view that I was in some way special to him, but on seeing his choice for me I knew that I had been mistaken.

  Kanjurjab's portrait had been a flattering one. Now, dressed in a western suit with dusty shoes and a cap made from felt, he looked a little lost amongst his tribe. He was taller than most of the Japanese men of my acquaintance, but he looked plump and boyish to me. With his hair hanging lank and his shoulders slumped, he was not at all like the wild Mongolian that Sorry had described meeting by the walls of the Forbidden City.