The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel

by Maureen Lindley

  The woman I took at first glance to be his mother turned out to be his concubine Mai. She was homely-looking, rotund and ruddy as the plums she was named after. Having a sweet and uncomplicated nature, Mai had a simple trust in life that eased her path through it. His mother Xue, named after snow because she was winter born, was a religious woman whose life was made more complicated than necessary because of her strict adherence to Lamaism, the religion of the Kanjurjab family. Xue was dressed in a silk topcoat the colour of sulphur with an elaborate headdress of silver and gemstones. She moved quickly, as though time was running out, and no matter what the company, she always seemed to be standing in a space of her own. She had a thin mouth and slits for eyes but her long dark hair woven through with silver beads was impressively thick. I came to know that she was possessed of a native cunning, but not a great intelligence.

  Kanjurjab's father Tsgotbaatar was also dressed in western garb. It was to be the only time that I saw either of them in those suits. Perhaps they had been purchased specially for the occasion, for neither man looked at ease in them. Tsgotbaatar was a man who communicated with few words, mostly grunting his refusal or acceptance of offerings. He had the capacity to remain completely still and I thought then without knowing him that he would have been happier in a wilder place than Port Arthur. Later I came to understand that his stillness was actually bewilderment; in strange surroundings he would sniff the air as though searching for some lost, predestined path.

  The kimono that Natsuko had chosen for me was of deep-red silk, the colour for weddings. It was embroidered with yellow circles to remind me of China and edged with a border of green satin. The under kimono felt light and soft against my skin, but once its topcoat was added and wound several times with an obi sash it became bulky and uncomfortable. I hated the elaborate wig I was expected to wear to cover my fashionably short hair, and indulged the idea of hanging geisha hair bells on it and painting my eyelids red to annoy Kawashima, but decided against it. I would go through the marriage service with good manners and think of it as a stepping stone to my freedom.

  Shortly before the ceremony, Mai, Kanjurjab's concubine, came to my room with a spray of wild orchids as a gift. She wished me many sons to play on the grasslands with her own, and daughters to comfort me in myoid age. She said that Kanjurjab and his family were honoured to have such a high-born and modest young woman as a wife for their beloved first-born son. Obviously Kawashima had sold me with a fake pedigree.

  After the old man Tsgotbaatar and Kawashima had exchanged family gifts, a simple ceremony took place and the deed was done. I stood beside Kanjurjab while the wedding photograph was taken, smelling the musty odour of his clothes and looking down at the curled-up toes of his felt boots. He had changed into traditional Mongolian dress for the ceremony, which suited him better than the western suit he had looked so uncomfortable in. I wondered what sort of lover he would make. I suspected that his body would be soft and his energy far from infinite. But then, even a poor meal can taste good if you are hungry enough.

  At the banquet that followed, the men and women were separated by low paper screens framed in black wood above which you could just about see. Most Eastern men do not like to see women eating. Women were, I suppose, expected to live on air like the delicate creatures of legend. But Mongolian men are far more robust than their Japanese brothers and take it as a healthy sign if a woman eats well. I dined with Kanjurjab's mother, his two sisters Alta and Nandak, and an assortment of female cousins and friends. His father's concubine Kara, named after the great sea, was meant to be amongst our number, but she had wandered off distractedly before the first course was served. I had noticed her distress during the ceremony. She seemed to be having some kind of fit and Alta and Nandak had to hold her down by her arms. Mai did not join us, as she was busy in the kitchen checking Kanjurjab's food and making sure he was served good portions.

  Kawashima had fourteen guests. They included Admiral Ube and five high-ranking army officers, there to impress the Mongolians. Tsgotbaatar's guests looked like an anarchic lot who appeared to care little about how they were viewed by anyone. Amongst their number was Jon, one of Kanjurjab's brothers-in­law, who had positioned himself so that he could stare at me through a space in the screens. I had been aware of his interest all day and had noticed the flush that coloured his cheeks whenever I caught his eye. Throughout the long dinner, at which he hardly ate, his eyes rarely wavered from my face and I wondered why his wife Nandak, sitting next to me, appeared oblivious to the attention her husband was giving me.

  We were served five-snake stew, an ancient recipe supposed to contain dragon, tiger and phoenix, but in our case made from snake, cat and chicken. It was followed by little mounds of coagulated blood taken from the backbones of young chickens and allowed to half dry in the air. Lastly came oysters, each one with a pearl held fast in its glutinous membrane. 'A small token,' as Kawashima so elegantly put it, 'from Japan to its most esteemed allies.'

  When the meal was finished Nobu came to take his leave of me. He wished me luck and said that if I had been his blood sister he would have been sorry for me, but as it was he thought I would do well in the country that bordered the one my ancestors had ruled. 'Life will be less interesting without you,' he said kindly.

  As I waited alone for my new mother-in-law to take me to my husband, Kawashima entered my room smiling. He stood behind me and cupped my breasts with his square hands, squeezing them until I moaned with desire and pain.

  'Never again, Yoshiko,' he said. 'What a pity.'

  I put my finger to his still-swollen lip and pressed until he winced with pain. Nothing more was said. After all that had been between us our goodbye was to inflict pain on each other. As tenderness had never been an ingredient of our lovemaking, I did not expect or miss it in our farewell.

  Mai came in Xue's place to tell me that Kanjurjab would not lie with me that night as the journey had tired him and he did not wish to disappoint me. Her little moon face was flushed red and her eyes would not hold mine.

  And so, on our wedding night my husband chose over me the comfort of his plump little concubine who treated him more like a son than a lover. I thought it showed a lack of adventure and did not bode well for our future intimacy. Despite Kawashima's prediction, that night, as on many others to follow, I slept alone and unstraddled.

  I found my new home Suiyuan, the blue city, so named because of its skies, a poor place compared to Tokyo. It was called a city, but in reality it was the size of a large village. Appearing out of a frozen plain in a mass of squat, sloping-roofed houses and half­covered animal shelters, it hunkered like a fort against the wilderness. At its heart stood a handful of plainly built decaying temples, from which rows of muddy lanes fanned out depressingly. Dusty little shops displayed herbs and potions that looked as though they had lain on the shelves for centuries. There were brothels run by Chinese, whose whores were girls of peasant stock from the towns belonging to China that bordered Mongolia. Amongst their regulars were the lamas, the holy men who were supposed to be celibate. There were two saddle makers in the town who worked from dawn until dusk, as did the jeweller who sat at a table made from stone, fashioning and repairing the headdresses and ornate necklaces that all Mongolian women wore for special occasions.

  We arrived in Suiyuan in a blizzard, the sky leaden, the ground a slippery frozen mud. The wind was so cold it made my eyes ache and dried out my tongue. I could feel the veins on the back of my hands swelling as my lips went numb. I had hoped that it might not be too bad a place, but so alien did it appear that I could not imagine even after a hot meal and a night's sleep that it would seem any better. We had left Port Arthur with a thin sun warming our heads, lifting even my spirits. Kanjurjab had told me that it was already spring in Mongolia. It might have been, but it was not spring as I knew it.

  My new husband seemed embarrassed by my presence and ill at ease in my company. His way of dealing with me was to tell me what he thought I wanted to h
ear. This effectively dismissed me, and saved him from having to prolong any discussion we were engaged in. Like a child who has been told he must play with a stranger when he would rather be with his familiar friends, he was distant and formal and could not wait to release himself from any congress with me.

  Mai, his kindly concubine, had whispered in her strange husky little voice that the weather would not be clement until a few weeks later in May. Even then, she said with a laugh, the wind would come carrying the promise of snow. She was a simple woman who could be relied on to tell the truth, because she was without guile and had no desire to manipulate events. She reminded me a little of Sorry, although she did not have Sorry's deference or her intelligence.

  Built out of the ruins of an old monastery, Kanjurjab's house missed being modest due to its long, shapely roof and ornately carved door. It had one huge half-moon courtyard at the front of the house that was crowded with gers, the circular Mongolian tents of his tribe, while the back was open to a strip of muddy land looking towards the town. The entrance hall, used mainly as a store for saddles and winter animal feed, was the largest space in the dark house. The windows had no glass but were fashioned with double wooden panels stuffed with felt and camel hair to resist the wind. All the rooms were long and narrow and led warren-like into each other without doors; there were rugs and furs scattered around, which softened the otherwise austere interior. In the room where I was to sleep, a huge brass bowl sat on the floor filled with muddy­looking water. I wasn't sure if it was for drinking or washing. The furniture looked Chinese but had lost its lacquer and even the nacre inlay looked dull and lifeless. There was, though, an exquisitely carved chest big enough to sleep in, which housed a few pieces of felt and a bundle of wooden poles. I learnt later that it had come with Xue as part of her dowry and was carved with twin fish to symbolise marriage harmony. Etched solidly at each comer of the chest, the symbol of the endless knot of Buddha's entrails performed a complicated dance. Something about the grand presence of this remarkable piece amongst the otherwise rude furnishings made me want to weep. Like myself, it had come down in the world and was meant for a more superior home than the one it was in.

  Apart from a couple of poorly trained servants who could never be found, I was the sole human occupant of the house. A pair of the ubiquitous shaggy dogs that were everywhere in the camp roamed the house at will, leaving their hair and their rank odour on everything. My mother-in-law Xue suggested that I should stay in the house until I felt ready to move into my husband's ger. She told me that the family preferred the gers because of their spaciousness and their connection to the earth and assured me that they were more comfortable than the house. She said that once my memory had let go of the image of myoid home, I would come to prefer them too.

  I asked her if she remembered her own childhood home in China.

  'Of course,' she replied. 'It had two courtyards and I lived in the corridor of the concubines with my mother who gave my father three sons before she died. My father was the youngest son of an ancient banking family, favoured over his brothers for being the only one to present his father with grandsons.'

  'Do you miss your birth home, Xue?' I asked. She said that she didn't because she was on the path that had been chosen for her and she was glad to be well along it and did not care to waste time looking back.

  'Life is about the journey we have to get through. It only slows us up to look back,' she said. 'Perhaps if you could accept the journey chosen for you, Yoshiko, you would find contentment.'

  'What makes you think that I am not content?' I asked her.

  'I have seen the colour of your water,' she said. 'When it becomes the same yellow as butter you will have settled.'

  However good Xue's advice might have been, she herself appeared not to have taken it. I think she was the least content person I have ever known, always fussing with the future and quite unable to live happily in the present.

  I was surprised to learn that with uncharacteristic kindness Kawashima had advised my father-in-law Tsgotbaatar that I would need time to adjust to a lifestyle so different to the one I had known in Japan. I almost wept when Xue told me of his act of consideration. I should have hated him for banishing me from a civilised life, but I longed to return to his familiar, if partial, protection.

  From the moment of arrival in Suiyuan I had realised that it would not be an easy place to escape from. The temperature alone might fell me and its remoteness was frightening. I was ill with homesickness and suffered a wrenching urgency to be back in my western wing of the Tokyo house where the floor sang and the air was perfumed with the smoke of Turkish cigarettes.

  Kanjurjab shared his ger with Mai and their twin sons, Otongbayaar and Batbayaar, so named because they had been born smiling. Mai was six weeks pregnant with their third child and would eat only mutton and milk because she thought such a diet produced sons. She lived to please Kanjurjab and knew that he would take pride in presenting his parents with another grandson. Whenever Mai spoke of her pregnancy she made a point of wishing me many sons with Kanjurjab. I believed that she meant it, as she bore no resemblance to the envious concubines that I had known in my father Prince Su's household. I was disturbed by her attitude because I enjoyed her sweetness and the friendship she offered and did not wish to hurt her when Kanjurjab eventually came to my bed, as I knew he must.

  It was impossible to be unaware of Mai's obsessive love for Kanjurjab. She was both mother and lover to him, leaving no desire unfulfilled, no need outstanding. Her life revolved around his care and comfort. I had seen her rubbing his stomach when he had eaten too much to help him burp or break wind. When he returned from riding, which he excelled at, she would unselfconsciously open her robe and warm his hands against her breasts. She would wipe his mouth after he had eaten and cool his tea with her breath. I am sure that in their lovemaking everything was done for his pleasure in the same way. He in turn was very physical with her, his hands always about her body somewhere, his eyes seeking hers to share some secret intimacy between them. Their bodies communicated so well that words were hardly necessary and were used sparingly. I have never before or since seen such oneness between a man and a woman.

  Mai was so content that I could not pity her, but I did not desire her subjection as a way of life for myself. There was something horrible to me in being so enslaved to another human being. When Xue had travelled from China to marry Tsgotbaatar, the six-year­old Mai had come with her in her entourage. She had known and cared for Kanjurjab all of his life and it had been no surprise to anyone when he chose her for his concubine. Like Xue, she preferred to be thought of as Mongolian, not only because the people of her adopted land did not like the Chinese, who had always attempted to subdue them, but also so that she might close any divide between her and the man she loved. Mai said that in fairness to Mongolians, it was widely acknowledged amongst them that China produced fine horses and beautiful women. Kanjurjab had told her that no Mongolian woman compared favourably to her in beauty or sweetness of nature. Although Mai's nature would have been recognised as generous anywhere in the world, in japan, at least, her looks would have been considered unfortunate.

  In those first miserable days in Suiyuan it was a mystery to me why Kanjurjab had agreed to our marriage. Money hardly seemed to matter, but then that is never truly the case and my dowry was large. There was no doubt that he was a prince of a rich family, for although the day-to-day living was mean, the women wore gold jewellery and spectacular headdresses while the men owned many finely crafted saddles and feisty little Chinese horses.

  Perhaps it was simply that tradition cannot be snubbed and no matter how happy you might be with a concubine, it was customary to marry someone of equal rank. Sadly for Mai, a prince could not marry a peasant. It was, though, a problem for my husband for he needed no one but Mai. She was mother, sister and wife in one plump little bundle. I had no doubt that I could seduce Kanjurjab if I needed to, but he would always love Mai and I did not grudge her
the love I did not want.

  My mother-in-law Xue was a cold personality who never showed affection to anyone. She was well mannered towards me but her stare was critical, she was indifferent both to my company and to my suffering. Always at some altar or other, worshipping the gods of the temple and those of the river and trees, Xue in the way of many devout women heard only her own inner voice. Guided by earth, fire, and water, she was thought to be good at diagnosing illnesses, and spent much of her time concocting medicines from herbs and minerals, and the putrid organs of dead animals.

  Looking back now with more knowledge than I had then, I suspect that Tsgotbaatar probably suffered from syphilis. He was slowly going blind and although still capable on a horse and good at wrestling, his mind wandered and he was rarely lucid. Xue diagnosed him as having too much water in his body and treated him with brimstone and blood letting. I don't believe that she had lain with her husband for some years for she displayed none of his symptoms, while his concubine Kara seemed as distracted as he was and was often in a foul mood with her master, a rare thing for a concubine, even a Mongolian one.

  Xue had conceived Kanjurjab in the first week of her marriage to Tsgotbaatar. It had been a difficult pregnancy and the pain in her back was so bad that she could not stand. When the time came to follow the livestock to pasture, she had to be taken on a cart and cried out at every bump in the road. Her labour lasted three days and left her weak and forever prone to periods of exhaustion. Her next two pregnancies were even more difficult than the first. She bled heavily and this left her anaemic with no pink in her mouth or eyes.

  Xue's eldest daughter, Alta, looked like her but her youngest, Jon's wife, Nandak, seemed possessed of only Mongolian blood and was darker-skinned and shorter than her mother. Mai said that Xue might look strong but that she had never made up the blood lost at the births of her children, and that life in the grasslands was too hard for her. She added in a whisper that she would be surprised if Xue made old bones.