The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel

by Maureen Lindley

  When I did report to Muto, it amused me that he was so ill at ease in my company. I thought the man odious and took full advantage of being a princess. I would drop the names of Japanese aristocrats whom I had known as a child and watch him squirm in the knowledge that I was better connected than him. But despite holding my own against his relentless small-mindedness, I began to despair of ever enjoying my work again. I was still unpopular with the Chinese in Shanghai and I knew that Jack found my notoriety hard to bear. He wanted me not only to stop working for Japan, but also to denounce it publicly. For his sake I kept a lower profile than usual, but that was the most I was prepared to do.

  Just like Jack, Muto would try to talk me into giving the work up. 'You have a new life now,' he would say. 'Surely it conflicts with your duty to Japan to be so close to this American?'

  'On the contrary, Major,' I would reply. 'I think that it keeps me better informed.'

  Tanaka still wrote to me regularly. I replied infrequently. I wanted to tell him that I had moved on, but I couldn't bring myself to write the words. He was doing well in Mongolia and often wrote of his successes, saying that when the time came for us to return to Japan, we would be feted for our services to our country. My affection for him was as strong as ever, but whatever was to happen between Jack and me, I knew that things would never be the same with Tanaka again.

  I tried to imagine myself living in America with Jack. I supposed that many Japanese had made a good life there. I could seek out Tamura under her new name of Mrs Jasmine. I could make friends, be with Jack and continue our story. But however hard I tried I could not picture it. Where would we live, what would I do with my days? Jack would travel and leave me in a country I had no connection with. Often in the throes of lovemaking, he would whisper in my ear, 'Come home with me. I love you more than Japan ever could.' But America was his home, not mine. Mine was to be found in the very name Japan, which could not be separated from my heart, even though Jack now occupied a place there too.

  Almost two years passed before a decision needed to be made. In that time I continued to work for Muto. While Jack wrote, my days were spent trawling Shanghai, listening to the pulse of the place and to the people who gave me insights into its hidden language. Mother was still useful, as were Mari's Korean boys, who knew everything going on in the underworld. I frequented the Central's International Bar, chatted to its doorman and gleaned as much as I could from Jack's colleagues. It was not the same life that I had lived with Tanaka. It lacked the sense I had enjoyed in those days that the world could change at any moment and that if it did I would be at the centre of the storm. But my world did have Jack in it, and that was enough for then.

  Years ago, in my misery over losing Yamaga, I had vowed never to seek happiness again, but in Jack's lovemaking, the sweat from his skin printing the memory of his body onto my own, I realised that, without even knowing it, I had been happy since that first dinner with him in Little Tokyo.

  Then, in a horrible coincidence of timing, Jack was recalled to New York in the same week that the Empress Wan Jung, through Doihara, sent for me to go to her new home in Manchuria. She was feeling lonely and longed to hear the gossip from Shanghai. Doihara sneeringly said that Wan Jung felt the need for some sophisticated company, which he took as an insult to the Japanese who surrounded the imperial couple, never letting them out of their sight. I was to stay in the Emperor's household until Doihara recalled me to Shanghai. I imagined that it would be a month or two at the most.

  Just as I didn't want Jack to leave me, so it would hurt me to leave him, but at the same time I knew that I would go to Wan Jung. If he really wanted me to spend my life with him, he would wait. I told him that I had to fulfil this order from Japan. Doihara had said that I was needed and Tanaka, hearing of the posting, wrote to me, without any reference to Jack, and chose the words duty and honour to remind me where my loyalties lay.

  Outraged that I could even consider going, Jack did everything in his power to stop me. There was a day when he wouldn't let me out of bed. Between passion and anger, he took me as though he could convince me better with his body than with words. I tried to explain to him that I had orders and must go, but he wouldn't listen to reason. In the end I resorted to myoid habit of deceit and told him that if I had to finish with Japan, then it must be done properly. I spoke the words 'finish with Japan', knowing that I could never orphan myself in such a way. The ethos of honour and loyalty to emperor had seeped through the pores of my skin as I had spied on Kawashima from behind the paper screens. It had entered my blood when Yamaga had made love to me, survived through heartache and betrayal and had been, and was, the one constant in my life.

  'If you stretch the ties between us too far they will break,' Jack said flatly. 'It's not country or blood that should hold us, but our love. How can you even consider parting us?'

  'Will your love die if I go?' I asked.

  Jack sighed. 'I'll wait a month for you,' he said. 'If you don't

  come to me by then, I'll know that you never will.'

  Jack, who made his living from words, had finally run out of them.

  'I will come,' I said. 'I promise.'

  On our last day together we didn't go out; neither of us wanted to talk to other people. Jack helped me to pack, folding my clothes as if in slow motion. He sat me on our bamboo sofa and took a photograph of me wearing his favourite dress, a thin-strapped blue cotton one with a matching bolero. I never understood why he liked that dress so much; I thought that it made me look ordinary.

  He was going back to the Park Hotel for his last month in Shanghai. He said that he couldn't bear the idea of living in the villa without me, it would be pointless. He wanted people and noise around to distract him from his feelings.

  We went to bed and made excessive love, vowing to be together again. Jack was brutal in his lovemaking. In the end neither of us found the reassurance we were looking for that the bond between us was unbreakable. As we rose and fell together, I found that I was able to put a barrier around my desire, to limit the damage to a drop of distilled toxin that would fester in my heart. Jack said that he felt as though he were falling from a great height, without a parachute. I had no idea of whether I would see him again and could not bear the thought that I might not.

  On my way to the airfield, I called into Major Muto's office to file my last report. I could tell that he was put out that I should be invited to visit the Imperial Family, even if it was only the Chinese one. But he was relieved too. My removal to Manchuria would return his days to the conventional order that he treasured.

  Champagne and Pickled Ginger

  I arrived in Changchun, renamed Hsingking by the Japanese, in a military supply plane. Doihara had arranged the flight for me, which was a smooth one. As I came down the steps from the plane a young officer saluted and escorted me to the army truck waiting on the runway to take me to Pu Yi's palace. It was an early summer's day of the kind I had experienced in Mongolia. The sun was high in the sky and there was a thin shell of snow on the ground and on the sloping roofs of the houses.

  Hsingking was a small farming city in the process of being rebuilt by the Japanese, who boasted that it would eventually rival Paris. Alongside the indigenous population there were thousands of Japanese immigrants making new lives in the country that they had been told would feed Japan, and make them rich.

  It was a short journey from the airfield to Pu Yi's residence, where in the large reception hall I was greeted by General Hayao Tada. I knew him to be the Chinese Emperor's chief military advisor. Doihara had told me that he was a man of great wit, but too in love with the lifestyle of the upper-class Chinese to be reliable in his judgements.

  He addressed me as Major and welcomed me as a fellow officer, even though I was dressed in a wool suit and draped in my fox furs. I told the General that I was honoured that he should receive me personally. He said that he had been looking forward to meeting such a famous princess, whose reputation as a great beauty he co
uld see now was an understatement. His flattery made me laugh, as I knew it was meant to.

  General Tada was an interesting-looking man who, unusually for a Japanese officer, smiled a lot. He had receding hair the colour of iron, horseman's legs, which were slightly bowed, and a muscular physique. I noted that he smelled of the same 4711 cologne that Pu Yi used, and wondered if the Emperor gave him presents. He was clean-shaven, with a square jaw line and deep­set eyes. I was to become familiar with his habit of pulling on his eyebrows and with his unsettling stare, which I had no trouble in meeting.

  Tada told me that he had heard a lot about me from Doihara, who had been promoted to Major General and was having great success in Mongolia in the company of Prince Teh. He said that Doihara referred to me as Asia's 'Catherine the Great', and I must say that, despite seeing through the flattery, I liked the reference.

  'Seeing you in the flesh, Princess,' Tada said, 'it is a wonder to me that such a beautiful woman is also such a successful soldier. Your triumphs in Tientsin and Shanghai are impressive. I hope that we might spend some time together discussing them.'

  As he took his leave of me, he clicked his heels together and, without even the slightest touch of humility, bowed so low that he almost touched the top of my boots.

  'I should tell you, Princess, that I love all things Chinese,' he said. 'It is rare that there is an exception to that rule, and in your case, quite impossible.'

  For the first time that I can remember, I was not insulted by being referred to as Chinese by a Japanese male. There was something so completely disarming in Tada's personality that it was impossible to be offended by anything that he said. He left me in the company of the palace's Japanese chamberlain, a man responsible for the household staff and expenses. With his flat face and little currant eyes, the man looked mean enough to be good at his job. Tada said the chamberlain knew the palace inside out and would give me a guided tour before showing me to my quarters.

  I did not find Pu Yi's Manchurian palace beautiful. It had been remodelled out of the old Salt Tax Office and still had the air of commerce about it. Yet it was a good deal more fitting for an emperor than the shambolic Quiet Garden in Tientsin had been.

  You entered the residence by anyone of the four iron gates set in the fourteen-foot-high brick walls. At each of the four corners were gun towers. The spacious courtyard was bare of plants, but there was a magnificent pair of terracotta pots, taller than the Japanese guards who, like the vessels, stood at either side of the main door. The house consisted of two long, low buildings, built one in front of the other, their roofs fashioned with sloping tiles in the Chinese manner. The two mansions were connected, as though by an umbilical cord, through a wide hallway that was hung with dark red silk and carpeted with a runner of imperial purple. In the first mansion there was a large reception room that housed a vast table scattered with papers and boxes of files stamped with Pu Yi's crest. The wood-panelled walls and doors were carved with images of lions and mad-eyed dragons chasing their own tails. The ground floor of this building had numerous small rooms that were occupied by Japanese secretaries and junior officers, all seemingly about the business of aiding Pu Yi. In fact, their true function was to never let him out of their sight. They were always in earshot of even his most private conversations, and although I worked for the secret service myself, there was something about their manner that revolted me. The top floor housed the sleeping quarters of Pu Yi's Japanese butler and others of his domestic staff. The rooms there, having no fireplaces, were cold and draughty.

  The second building was decorated more fussily with walls painted in the imperial yellow, to make the Pu Yis feel at home, I supposed. Its rooms had wider windows than those in the first house, but they were covered with dingy fly screens that blocked the light. Some effort had been made to make the rooms fit the Emperor's station and they were filled with lacquered furniture, embroidered hangings of orange and blue silk and low couches. In the day sitting room, there was a western-looking fireplace with a crudely painted portrait of Pu Yi in a gilt frame hanging above the mantle. It reminded me of the one I had received from Kanjurjab before our marriage. It flattered the Emperor, much as mine had flattered my husband.

  When I referred to the house as the Imperial Palace the flat-faced chamberlain said that it was called the Emperor's Palace, as his Imperial Highness, the Emperor of Japan's residence was already known throughout the world as the Imperial Palace. I knew that WanJung would be insulted by such distinctions and ashamed that her husband, once the greatest man in China, had accepted the mean discriminations of his Japanese masters. In Tientsin, she had confided to me that she thought her husband would have made a better eunuch than an emperor. I pointed out at the time that even the Forbidden City's eunuchs used their power well and would not have wanted to trade places with the Emperor.

  My quarters in the Salt Tax Palace consisted of two small rooms and an even smaller bathroom that had a tin bath in it, but no taps or toilet. There was a wooden shelf and a copper water carrier, which I guessed was used by the servants for filling the bath. In the bedroom, there were Chinese rugs on the wooden floor decorated with peonies that appeared to be carved into their velvety pile. Under the bed there were two plain white porcelain night pots. The second room had a desk, a low sofa and floor cushions made from thick black cotton. The curtains were made from the same black cotton and lined with felt. They were ugly but I thought that at least they would keep out the draughts. I was pleased to note that both of my rooms had fireplaces. Wan Jung had left a note on the desk, saying that she was delighted that I had arrived and that she would come to my rooms before dinner, so that we might greet each other in private.

  When she came, surrounded by a cloud of the little Pekinese dogs that she loved, I was shocked at how ill she looked. In Tientsin she had been painfully thin, but now she was skeletal. Her dark hair had lost its shine and was scraped back severely from her face and set in braids. She had finally succumbed to the peculiar livid skin of the opium addict and had developed a pronounced tremble throughout her body. Yet, despite the ravages opium had wrought, to me she was still beautiful. I had expected her to be in western dress but she was wearing a Chinese high-necked coat of emerald­green silk with gold satin fastenings. Long jade earrings swung elegantly just above her shoulders and a huge silvery pearl set in a gold ring weighed down the middle finger of her left hand. In the memories I have of my blood mother, she is dressed in much the same way as Wan Jung was that day.

  I greeted her as 'Your Majesty', and she smiled and said, 'In Manchuria, I will call you Eastern Jewel. We will not forget that we are Chinese, or ignore those formalities that will make us feel at home when we return to the Dragon Throne in the Hall of Supreme Harmony.'

  I had forgotten how WanJung could never speak normally when she spoke of the Dragon Throne. Her language became archaic, while her voice took on the gravity of an actress playing the part of an empress. Yet in all other conversations, she had a delightful sense of fun and a charming naturalness.

  She seemed genuinely pleased to see me, even though the smile that lit her face did not fully reach her eyes. She said that I was as beautiful as ever, but that I must excuse her colour, which was, she sighed, due to the polluted air of Changchun.

  'You are lucky, Eastern Jewel, to have such beautiful skin. I suspect that it comes from your mother. Her beauty was renowned among concubines.'

  I thanked her and asked her what her life was like in her new palace in the capital of Hsingking, which I noted she still called Changchun. She said that she was sick with longing for her true palace in Peking. She lowered her voice and told me that she hated everything about Manchuria, which she said was a brutal place full of peasants and soldiers.

  'We are infested with rats here,' she said scornfully, as though rats were unheard of in the Forbidden City. 'Only the Japanese would call such a humble building a palace. It is so small that it is impossible even to lose your way.'

  It was tru
e that compared to her Peking home, where you were likely to lose your way in the hundreds of alleys that opened onto vast courtyards, her Manchurian home was a poor thing. She said that in the Forbidden City, you could enter the palace through fifty gates, visit a different temple every week of the year, dally on the myriad little bridges over lilied ponds, or take green tea in the Imperial teahouse while watching archery.

  No Chinese likes to lose status and 'She of the Beautiful Countenance' was no exception. It seemed to me that Wan Jung was more out of touch with reality than she had been in Tientsin. She would never accept the Salt Tax Palace as home and constantly spoke of a future when she would return to the life she had lived as wife to the great Qing Emperor of China. It was impossible not to be aware of the yearning that was eating away at her. Her longing for her imperial home was so strong that it overcame her natural pessimism. I understood the ache of homesickness, but Wan Jung's had become an obsession that diminished her usually fine powers of reason. Despite her hatred and distrust of the Japanese, she nurtured the belief that they would eventually return her and Pu Yi to Peking in triumph. She told me that this belief was the only thing that kept her from drinking hemlock, although on those days when it was hard to keep her hopes alive she sometimes considered it.

  After I had listened sympathetically to her news we sat informally on the floor cushions in the small study and talked of the latest fashions, while she petted one or other of her little Pekinese. I showed her my jewellery and the silk nightdress trimmed with exquisite French lace that I had bought to console Jack only days before our parting. I had never worn it. She was like a child being given the run of their mother's possessions. It was touching to watch her going through my things with such admiration. That afternoon, we chain-smoked cigarettes and between us we drank a bottle-and-a-half of champagne. I made her a gift of the silk nightdress and she told me that, when she returned to Peking, I could take my pick of anything of hers that I liked from the Imperial Palace.