The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel

by Maureen Lindley

  Pearl and Li stopped giving parties on the excuse that, like the Japanese royals, they had other more pressing matters to deal with. Sumida did his best to bear the loss of his son in true Japanese style, but the ambition in his nature had deserted him. He was no longer exciting to be around and because I did not seek his company, I did not notice that he was avoiding mine. Kim, listening to the chatter of the Chinese, worried that Chiang would soon enter Peking. Through a neutral consulate she tried to reclaim her American citizenship, but they would not have her. She said that she was going to suggest to Sumida that she accompanied him when he was recalled to Japan. But for some reason she never broached the subject with him. I think she knew that he would have refused her. She told me that she thought that a Chinese mistress was a fine thing in China when you occupied her country, quite another in Japan when you have been seen off. I told her not to worry, that Japan would always succeed, but she wasn't comforted. A few months after Kim's failed attempt to regain her American citizenship, Sumida found out about it and dropped her. I think that she was pleased to be rid of him, but she said the damage to her reputation with the Chinese had already been done.

  Around the same time, Jack's friend Misha Salmonov arrived in Peking. Sumida told me to contact him and rekindle our friendship. He thought the Pravda correspondent was spying for Russia and wanted me to feed him misinformation. Although he had never mentioned it to me, Kim had told me that Sumida knew of my affair with Jack. Like most Japanese men I suspect that he would have thought less of me for it, especially now that we were at war with Jack's country. But he was pleased enough to use my contacts from that time when it suited him.

  I asked Misha to dine with me at my hotel and he accepted with enthusiasm. He told me that he would soon be on his way to Chungking, where he expected to see Jack who was on his way there to interview Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

  'Jack's in China?' I asked quietly.

  'Yes, but of course he can't come to you in Peking, Yoshiko. He would be arrested as an enemy agent, just as you would be if you went to Chungking.'

  'Would he come if he could?' I asked.

  'I honestly don't know, Yoshiko. He says that you love Japan and he hates it. He is still angry with you for choosing Peking over him.'

  It wasn't so much that Misha stirred memories of those intense days in Shanghai, or that his quiet style reminded me of Jack that made me drink too much and end up in his bed. It was more to obliterate the pain I felt knowing that Jack had returned to China about his own business, which did not include me. When I said to Misha that we had both betrayed Jack, he bruised me by replying that he didn't think so. In his company I had sought unsuccessfully to find the girl in the blue dress, the one who smelled of musk and had slept with Jack on boats named after her for the voyage. But she was Jack's girl, not Misha's, so we did not lie together again. I saw Misha a couple of times after that night. We had a drink or two and spoke of old times, but being in his company only made me sad. He said he thought Chiang would succeed over the communists and would also rid China of the Japanese. I did not agree with him, but I liked Misha and didn't feed him the misinformation that Sumida had asked me to.

  A few weeks after Misha left Peking, America dropped its cowardly atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Within days of those events my world, like those tragic islands, disintegrated.

  I woke one morning to find Kim banging at my door. She told me through sobs that the Japanese Emperor had capitulated to America. She had heard him on the radio surrendering in a stilted voice. She said that Sumida had already returned to Japan and that she and I had been left to face the revenge of our countrymen. I thought that she had got it wrong and tried to console her, but she would have none of it.

  'Don't be a fool, Yoshiko,' she sobbed. 'This is not a tactical withdrawal - Japan is crushed. You don't have Japan and you don't have China. If you are found by Chiang's men you will be executed as a traitor.'

  I gave her a shot of the Russian plum brandy that Misha had left in my room and she calmed down a bit. She told me that she hoped to bring together a plan she had been working on for months, and that she would do her best to help me if she could but that for the time being she was going into hiding and that I should do the same. I left her in my bathroom at the Pekin repairing her ravaged face with cold water.

  I caught something of her panic when, with a pounding heart, I visited the officers' mess and found it deserted. All Japanese soldiers were confined to barracks and were pulling out as fast as they could. They had been ordered not to show their faces on the streets of Peking. I didn't fully panic until I called on Li and Pearl and discovered that they had left for Japan at the same time as Sumida. Their newly emboldened maid attempted to shut the door on me but I put my foot in her way and insisted that she look to see if Li had left a note in my name. She took pleasure in telling me that he had not. A chill began to creep through me. I knew without doubt that I was in serious trouble. After all I had done for them Li and Pearl had left without the slightest thought for me. For all their noble blood, they had turned out to be worms in the end.

  I drove out to the airfield with Faithful and Chou to discover that, apart from a couple of pilots who were loading their plane with what looked like boxes of official papers, the place was deserted. They said that everyone who had been on the official list had already been flown to Japan. I asked the younger of the two to fly me back with them but he said it was against their orders to carry civilians. I told him that I was a commissioned officer in the Japanese Army and he laughed. Japan, it seemed, had forgotten my existence, and my heart ached with the betrayal of it. Just as my father had given me to Japan, so Japan had cruelly returned me to China. Overnight I had become a refugee in fear for my life, with no country or family of my own.

  In a panic, I attempted to radio Japan from Sumida's office but the airwaves were deserted, silent as snow. While I was there I took the opportunity to destroy any papers that had my name on them and I burnt the meticulously kept invoices of payments to me. In a futile act of revenge I shredded the photograph of Sumida's dead son, which, in his hurry to be gone, he had forgotten.

  That night in the Pekin I slept badly and dreamt that there was an earthquake that crumbled the hotel to dust. At dawn next day I visited my one-time friend and informant Jin. He offered me money, but said it was dangerous now for him to have his name linked with mine.

  'If I am asked I will claim never to have known you, Yoshiko,' he said.

  I took the money and his advice that I should attempt to change my appearance and get out of the city as quickly as I could.

  When I looked for Kim she was nowhere to be found. Both her shops were open but her staff hadn't seen her for days. I couldn't hang around, hoping that she would turn up. Wherever she was I guessed that she would be experiencing the same panic as me. Time was running out and so I began my own hastily put-together plan. I oiled my short hair back from my face and added a twist of false hair to the back to give me the traditional look of a conventional Chinese woman of the middle classes. I threw away my jodhpurs and evening dresses and wore only plain cheongsams and low­heeled embroidered shoes. I tried to find lodgings with those Chinese families that I had helped in their hour of need, but none of them wanted to know or to help me. A man I had saved from ruin hissed at me to go away and die. They may have had troubles of their own, but it was hard to excuse their treachery.

  Within a few days of my airport visit there were Chinese troops in Peking. I saw them swaggering in the streets and thundering down the narrow lanes in their jeeps, looking triumphant. The peasant Chinese welcomed them with open arms and the wealthy, fearing an uprising of the common man, managed false smiles of welcome.

  The twins offered me lodgings in their shack and, much as I hated the idea of it, I knew that I had to accept. The Hotel de Pekin was already filling with Chinese officers and I didn't trust its staff to keep my identity from them for long. I moved out quickly, taking only what I could carry w
ith me. I took my precious writing case with its sentimental contents, my jewellery and a bottle of good sake and settled myself in the twins' hideous hovel. I had a fair sum of money with me, but not as much as I could have hoped for. The safe in Sumida's office where I had always kept enough for a year's good living had been looted. At first, out of habit, I suppose, I found it hard to believe that Sumida had taken my money. I searched around in the drawers and cabinets hoping that he had hidden it for me in some other place. It was true that he had left me in the lurch, but to cut off my means of survival seemed too Iowan act for a Japanese officer. But as only the two of us had known the combination of the safe it was hard to retain my faith in his honour, or to believe that he had ever thought of me as Japanese. Perhaps he had known that I would never be sent for by Japan, that whatever I believed myself to be, I was nothing more than a colourful but expendable Chinese spy to them.

  Depressed and panicked, I could only think of getting back to Japan. I still loved it and I played a game with myself of sometimes being angry at my abandonment and at others believing that there had been a terrible mistake, that Japan had not knowingly relinquished me. Even though it might only be to share Japan's defeat, I longed for home.

  The thought of being captured by the Chinese was hateful but I was confident of avoiding that fate. I needed time to plan my escape and, although I loathed the mean little hovel, it was a place of safety that would do well enough for the time being. But as I settled into the damp shack it was with the worst possible timing that I discovered the unmistakable signs of the French Pox on my body. Brown sores appeared on the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet, I developed a throat so raw that I could not swallow. I had been feeling below par for some weeks and had suffered a rash on my chest and back, but it had disappeared and I had forgotten about it. Syphilis is a terrifying illness. I knew that it could make you blind and cause a slow death and I was very frightened. I went from feeling sorry for myself to believing in my strong survival instincts. I hoped that the signs of the illness would disappear without effect as they often did. At one and the same time I both cursed and felt sorry for Misha Salmonov, who must have passed it on to me without knowing.

  Faithful said that he knew someone who could help me, and brought to the shack a man who believed that he could entirely rid me of the disease. He was not a doctor but called himself a healer. He earned his bread by removing warts and moles from his patients and from bloodletting with leeches. Syphilis, he said, could be cured with a new drug that had been specially developed for it called penicillin. He had seen it work on more than one occasion and due to its efficacy he had entirely lost the fear of the disease himself. Penicillin was hard to come by unless you were rich, but he had contacts at a hospital that used it and, for the right price, he would get me some. He was a slimy creature with boiled gooseberry-like eyes and a mean mouth, but I had no choice other than to deal with him. If I was to get myself out of China and home to Japan I needed to be well. We bartered until I had to part with over half of the money I had left, which he complained allowed him little, if any, profit for himself. As I didn't trust him to return with the medication, I sent Faithful with him to ensure that he brought me back the treatment.

  Miraculously, within a couple of weeks of taking the drug, the sores on my hands and feet disappeared along with the raw throat and high fevers that I had been running. One moment there had been a sword at my stomach, the next I was reprieved. My good fortune turned my mood to optimism and to hope for the future. It felt wonderful to be better, but the cost had been high and I was finding it hard to keep up the payments to the twins for my protection. I could not eat their terrible congee and sent them daily to the market for fresh meat, fruit and sake, which seemed to increase in price at every visit. I decided not to indulge in opium until I was in a safer position, and so I slept badly, suffering dreams of drowning in the dirty water of the river that the twins caught their horrible fish in.

  I dispatched the brothers to the city to try and find Kim, in the hope that we could be of use to each other. Worryingly, they stayed away for two nights and I couldn't sleep for concern at what their absence meant. But eventually they returned with the good news that Kim had become the mistress of the Chinese merchant Chi Ming, who, due to his secret financial support of Chiang Kai-shek, was now in favour with Peking's new masters. I remembered the man from my early days in Peking, when Li had introduced him to me as someone who gave excellent business advice. I recall that he had liked the Japanese well enough then. Kim had been wiser than me, she had suspected what might happen and had made her plans. I had been blinded by my belief that Japan would always succeed, and that trust had been my downfall.

  Chi Ming was older than Sumida, with thin hair and rotten teeth, but he had long desired Kim, who I knew would weigh his ugliness against his power to protect her. I shuddered at the thought of her sweet firmness in his thin old arms. She was set up in a small house on the road between the zoological gardens and the Five Pagoda Temple, a popular district with the mistresses of the rich.

  Faithful told me that Kim had said that she would do her best to help me, but I must not go to her house until she sent a message that it was safe to do so. At Chi Ming's insistence she had signed her properties and shares over to him and it wasn't easy to get money out of him. But she promised that she would find a way to help me and urged me to be patient. I was elated that my prayers had been answered. With Kim under the guardianship of the old merchant my chances of escape had suddenly increased. I was relieved that she was safe and I trusted her to be as good as her word. Life in the shack was so dreary that I knew it would be hard to be patient, but I had no option, I had to live off what I had and wait for her to contact me.

  Faithful said that Chinese troops were everywhere in the city, and that those Chinese who had been obliging to their Japanese masters had been harshly dealt with. They were either dead or suffering at the hands of their victorious countrymen. Apparently, the Hotel de Pekin had become a dull place, full of sour-faced officers who had no sense of fun or any idea of how to enjoy their victory. He added spitefully that nobody missed the Japanese.

  It wasn't long before I had to sell my jewellery to live. As I couldn't take the risk of being recognised I had no option but to trust the twins to sell it for me. One bangle fashioned from almost pure gold brought so little money that I suspected Faithful and his brother of keeping most of the profit for themselves. They knew the money was running out and were debating whether they should go on harbouring me. I promised them that when I got back to Japan I would send them enough gold to live on comfortably for the rest of their lives. I am sure that it was only that promise that kept them in my service at all.

  Thoughts of escaping Peking and getting back to Japan were constantly on my mind, but the Chinese had secured every exit and everything I thought of seemed doomed to failure. I wondered about stealing a plane and flying myself to Japan, but the airfield was heavily guarded and even if I managed it the plane would have been shot down anyway. All boats and trains were inspected and had Chinese guards on them. I no longer enjoyed the friendship of those with influence, nor had I enough money to bribe my way out of my problem and China. It was against my nature not to act, but I believed my best chance of escape lay in Kim's hands.

  Soon the good food and drink that I enjoyed became too expensive for my purse. I had no choice but to live on the same muddy fish and poor quality rice as the brothers. As my funds diminished, Faithful and Chou became rude and reluctant to follow my orders. They would disappear for hours, leaving me alone to fear what they might be up to. With the gift of familiarity I no longer smelled the peasant smell of congee or noticed the dirt in the shack. But it had become my prison, a hateful damp place that brought out the worst in me. When not angry at my fate, I was in misery at the treachery of those I had considered to be my friends.

  Faithful told me that there was a rumour in Peking that I was being harboured and that there was a reward f
or my capture. He said I was referred to as the spy and war criminal responsible for the murder of Chinese babies and their mothers.

  'They call you Japan's whore,' he laughed.

  Despite my notoriety, I was surprised that I was being actively hunted. The thought of it so terrified me that I stopped going out in the hours of daylight, even to sniff the air. I made do with as little sleep as possible and developed a habit of listening for unexpected sounds. I was ready for flight, but to where I didn't know. Sometimes at night I would walk along the riverbank, thinking of my past and longing for a future. In the moonlight, without the sun's cruel exposure of its shabby banks and slum dwellings, the river looked deep and mysterious. On those night walks I could pretend that the world was still beautiful. For an hour or two I would breathe in the marshy air, my thoughts unpolluted by the horrible fear that usually invaded them. Despite the fact that I had heard nothing from Kim I still trusted her to help me, and it was that trust that kept my spirits up.

  I often thought of simply continuing my night walk, going from village to village until I reached the sea, where I might stowaway on a boat to Japan. But I knew that to be an unlikely means of escape. I had a small amount of money set aside for extreme emergencies and I considered paying a forger to make me an American passport and papers. With a new identity I might bluff it out with the authorities, go to America and become Jack's girl again. But as I no longer trusted the twins to organise it for me and did not dare be seen in the capital, it was hard to know how to enact the idea. In any case, no plan that I thought of came with any guarantee of success. Those that had the best chance needed more money than I had at my disposal. I never stopped thinking of ways to escape but I always returned to the plan of waiting for Kim.