The Ginger Tree

by Oswald Wynd

  Sir Claude, I am very sorry to be making this such a long letter, but if you are to help me you must understand what really happened. The stories about what I did are not true. The facts are that I heard our outer gate being opened about one in the morning, far too late for the cook to be coming back from the bathhouse. My quilts were downstairs and I got up, going to the kitchen door, opening it very quietly. The sliding door to the maid’s room was directly opposite and I was sure I heard whispering behind those screens. I crossed the kitchen very quietly and listened again. There was whispering, and I was quite sure I recognised both the voices. I banged back the door, Misao was kneeling on the matting in front of a wicker basket, packing her clothes. She had come back secretly to collect her things. She had never disappeared.

  That was when I behaved like the mad woman they say I am. Is it any wonder? Misao tried to run for the door from the maid’s room to the front court, but I caught her and threw her down on the matting. I admit I was shouting. I called the name of my son and then said: ‘Doko? Doko? Doko?’ which as you know means ‘Where?’ I am quite certain that was all I said. I know I never said I would kill her. It is true I did bang her head up and down, but it was against the soft matting, not against a wooden pillar as the police say. She was not hurt in any way. How could she have been, for she broke from me and ran across the kitchen to the main part of the house. I did follow her, but I was not carrying a knife as they say I was. I did not pick up a knife as I ran through the kitchen. The one they found must have been snatched up by Misao. She had been meaning to use it to defend herself against me. I thought she had gone into the downstairs room where I had been lying but instead she went up, probably remembering that the shutters up there were much easier to open. I was still below when I heard these sliding back. Stupidly I went up the stairs, instead of going out into the garden. She jumped down. By the time I got to the gate the street was empty, but I ran along it. From a corner I saw a ricksha turning another corner. She had come in that in order to carry away her things. I couldn’t run after it. I had to rest against a fence. By the time I got back to the house the cook had been to the police station which is quite near us, and there was a policeman waiting for me. Very soon the man who spoke English arrived and began questions again. Some of my answers may have sounded wild. I was under guard all night and then in the morning I was brought here. All this is the truth.

  Sir Claude, I am not sure whether or not, after coming to Japan the way I did, I am still a British subject, though I think I must be. I have, or did have in the house – the police may have taken it - a British passport in my maiden name of Mackenzie which I did not return when I married Richard and was entered on his passport as his wife. If that entitles me to ask for your assistance then all I want from you is to find out what has happened to Tomo. I do not ask for the Embassy to try to get him back for me, which I realise would be difficult, seeing Tomo’s father is a Japanese and my baby was born here. But it will be some easing of my mind just to know where he is and how he is being looked after. Not knowing is a nightmare from which I feel I will never wake. Surely, as Ambassador, there is something the Japanese authorities would tell you if you asked them? I beg that you will do this.

  Yours very sincerely,

  Mary Mackenzie

  St Luke’s Hospital, Tsukiji, Tokyo

  January 17th, 1906

  They have brought me the notebook and the fountain pen I asked for, perhaps because they are curious to see what a mad woman will write in it. I hope they enjoy reading me talking to myself on paper because there is no one else I can talk to.

  Alicia came yesterday. In a way I have been keeping her outside what has happened, in control enough to do that, and for her own sake as well as mine. She may be a High Anglican but a large part of her has become completely Japanese, and it is with that part of herself that she is looking at me now, thinking that to see someone in my position is very sad indeed, but also that what has happened may be for the best in the end. If I accused her of thinking that Tomo will be happiest in the care of those to whom he has been given she would be shocked, the English part of her coming into play again. But the Japanese part would not be shocked. There is nothing strange in this. In a very short time I have found myself picking up some Japanese ways of thinking and doing things, and Alicia has been here for thirty years, with only three visits to England in that time, none of which she really enjoyed. So she is mostly High Anglican Japanese, which can’t be so very far from being High Shinto Japanese, the same worship of ancestors.

  I must be better to be able to write like this. In a way I am if I don’t think of Tomo as anything more than my lost baby, and stop there. But if I go further and remember him lying on a quilt exercising his legs, then all the little bricks of carefully built up pretended strength crumble into nothing and I am back in the pain again, hopeless and helpless.

  There has been no answer to my letter to Sir Claude. Perhaps it didn’t get there. Alicia says that Aiko is still in Osaka, or somewhere away from Tokyo. Though we didn’t either of us say it, what we both think is that she could well be occupying a cell in a southern jail, more of a prisoner than I am. Dr Ikeda spent longer with me this morning than usual, as though there was something on his mind he wanted to talk about but couldn’t because he has never found talk easy either in English or his own language. Whatever part he has played recently, either willingly or because he had no choice, I believe that now he wishes me well, and more than that perhaps. There is a kind of bond between a woman and the doctor who has delivered her child, in my case Tomo’s life so literally in his hands because I could do nothing.

  It may be that he wants to explain why I am being kept in this hospital when it is obvious there is no physical reason for it. In that case he needn’t bother, because I can find the answer for myself. I am here on orders from on high, not just the Chief of Police in Tokyo either, well above that. I know now that Kentaro is a member of one of the old aristocratic families who still have the power to do almost what they like without being challenged. He would not want his mistress to be taken into custody on a charge of attempted murder. Anyway, it is a charge that would be difficult to prove in any honest court, Misao’s word against mine. The cook had run out of the house to get the police and was not a witness of anything except my banging Misao’s head on the matting. I am sure that woman would lie against me quite happily, but I am quite convinced now that the Kurihamas want to avoid all publicity on this matter, just in case the real reason for what happened came out, as it would, because I would see that it did. Kentaro knows me well enough to guess how I would react in court. So I am being ‘protected’ in hospital, free to sit in a chair by the window looking at what passes for a garden in the courtyard. In a country of beautiful gardens this is a very dreary one. When the weather permits patients sometimes walk in it for a little, tottering around like ailing prisoners in an exercise yard.

  St Luke’s Hospital, Tokyo

  January 23rd, 1906

  Aiko was not in an Osaka jail, though certainly risking arrest again in speaking to such women’s organisations as exist in cities like Himeji and Hiroshima of their rights under the Emperor Meiji’s Constitution. It appears that they have some, though the men have been at great pains to make sure that the women don’t hear about this. As an angel of enlightenment Aiko is both dangerous and in danger, as well she knows.

  I admire her. She was born to the kind of life I would just have accepted and enjoyed, but acceptance is not in her nature. Only a hundred women in Japan like Aiko could threaten a man’s world, and the men know it. There were detectives wherever she went in the south, in plain clothes, but not bothering to hide themselves from her, the same faces at the back of halls, watching and listening. She is sure they have orders to arrest her if she ever so much as mentions the name of Emperor Meiji again, so has to contrive her lectures on the constitution – which he is supposed to have given his people – with no reference to him at all. Having now had some
experience of the Japanese police, I really am frightened for her.

  We didn’t for a long time talk about anything personal to either of us, the conversation stilted. It was plain that she had to force herself to come here today, which is entirely my fault for, from the moment when Kentaro came back, I made no attempt to get in touch with her. I have earned her contempt as the woman who was prepared to sit behind a wooden fence waiting her Lord’s pleasure. She knows as well as I do that if Tomo had been left to me I would still be sitting behind that fence.

  We were talking about nothing really, I think it was the food in the hospital, when suddenly what has happened hit me again as it does often still when I think I am on guard against feeling. I just want Tomo. I cried out, as though it was torn from me: ‘What have they done with him, Aiko?’

  She had not been looking at me, but did then. It seemed as though there was something like fear in her eyes. It was quite a long time before she said: ‘Didn’t Kurihama ever give you a hint what he meant for the boy?’ I shook my head. I told her that it had been a joy to me that he seemed so fond of Tomo, accepting him.

  Aiko began to talk, quite fast. It was my misfortune that the Count had accepted my son by him, because this meant accepting Tomo as a Kurihama. Legitimacy does not matter in the least in Japan. What might have mattered would have been a son who looked like a Westerner. If I had been ginger-haired and green-eyed and Tomo had been born with both these things the Baron would never have acknowledged him as Kurihama blood. I had lost my baby because he looked completely like a Japanese. An accepted son of the Count was a candidate for adoption into a good family, probably somewhere away from the capital, Kyoto perhaps, or Osaka. He would become a yoshi, an adopted son, and as such take the family name of his adoptive parents and in due course marry their daughter. Aiko, being almost brutal about it, outlined what I had known vaguely from reading, that all the better families were prepared to keep their names going in this way. And there were few in the country, on the outlook for an adopted heir to their line, who would turn away from a baby of the Kurihama blood even though the mother was a foreigner.

  The sickness I felt then made my protest feeble: ‘Women have no rights at all in this country?’ Aiko’s answer was harsh. ‘No. And not too many in yours, either. You lost your daughter, didn’t you?’

  I have not wept often since Tomo was taken. Once or twice I seemed to wake up crying, my cheeks wet, but mostly it was as though the terrible bleakness of my thoughts dried up tears, denying me that relief. But with Aiko sitting opposite I began to cry, not noisily, not with any retching sobs, but still something I couldn’t control. Quite suddenly she got up and came over to kneel by my chair. I was leaning forward and she put an arm around my shoulder. She said: ‘Mary, Mary,’ and then, awkwardly, almost as though it was something she had never done before, or had done to her, pulled my head down on to her shoulder. And that was how I wept, for what seemed a long time. My misery was eased a little.

  St Luke’s Hospital, Tokyo

  February 3rd, 1906

  The British Embassy got my letter all right and after considering it for two weeks have returned it to me inside a large, important-looking envelope. Before I opened it I stared at King Edward’s embossed crest, wondering if any of his subjects had ever got further from their monarch in mind and body than I have. The pages I had written under stress fell out to rebuke me for having appealed to officialdom in highly personal language. Their letter continued the rebuke. It was not from Sir Claude, but signed by the First Secretary, who hoped that I would find my communication to His Excellency enclosed and then went on in polite, formal language to state that His Britannic Majesty’s Plenipotentiary in Japan was washing his hands of any responsibility of any kind for Mary Mackenzie, or Mary Collingsworth, or whatever she might now call herself. I am recommended to approach the British Consul who, under certain circumstances, is in the position to arrange the repatriation of British subjects to the homeland. It is pointed out that my son is a Japanese by birth, as well as by an admitted paternity, which could not be contested, and in these circumstances according to both British and Japanese legal practice the nationality of the mother is irrelevant. In the view of the First Secretary my son has not disappeared, but has been removed from the custody of his mother by a person, or persons, with the authority to do this. I will appreciate that the situation is complicated by the fact that the child is illegitimate and can only be legitimised at some future date if he remains in this country. For the British Embassy inany way to interfere in such a situation is totally out of the question as the Secretary is sure I will, on reflection, appreciate. He repeats his earlier suggestion that my present distresses might be alleviated, at least to some extent, by making immediate contact with the British Consul.

  I am putting all this down as I remember it because I was foolish enough to tear up the First Secretary’s letter the moment I had read it. There was also the suggestion that if, by any chance, I succeeded in finding my son and then attempted to take him out of the country, I could be committing a criminal offence under Japanese law. What he meant was that the Embassy wouldn’t be sending me any food parcels to the jail.

  A fortnight ago, or even a week ago, that letter would have plunged me into the pit. Today I was almost ready for it. Everyone wants me out of Japan fast, even at the cost of the British taxpayer having to find the money for my Second Class passage on a P&O liner to London. I am not going. The Japanese can try to deport me if they like, but somehow I don’t think they will try that, because as a deportee I might manage to talk to a reporter of the Japan Advertiser whose editor is also the Tokyo correspondent of the London Times. Given publicity, my case just might make quite a nasty little footnote to the Treaty of Alliance and Friendship so recently signed between Great Britain and Japan. If that would seem to be making myself far too important, there is also the fact that the last thing Kentaro wants is a strong, harsh light beamed on himself and the Kurihama family. This appears very cold and calculating. It is how I must be now if I am to survive.

  So far I am the only one who knows this, but I am leaving St Luke’s Hospital today. The clothes I had on when they brought me here are hanging in the wardrobe and during the quiet hour after lunch I shall put them on, then walk down to the entrance where there are always rickshas available.

  Okatsu Hotel, Ekoro Machi, Azabu-Ku, Tokyo

  February 4th, 1906

  Aiko’s hotel is a very bad one, with a smell of frying greeting you in the entrance area. The bedroom in which I am writing this is not actually dirty, but it has an air of neglect, as though the maids really have no idea how to maintain ‘foreign’ furnishings. I will sleep tonight in the first bed I have used in Japan. This has a hair mattress and sagging springs. The only quite pretty things are the ewer and basin on the washstand, these of blue Dutch pottery, nicely shaped. I wonder how they got here? The walls are paper thin and someone with a cigarette cough is next door.

  Aiko is in Sendai, as I knew, the reception clerk made a little uneasy by my query as to whether she would be back tomorrow. He will be even more uneasy when the police arrive with questions about me. Perhaps the same detective who watches over Aiko will do for us both now, though there is no need for the Japanese to economise with manpower.

  Sitting here with my notebook open on a yellowed, machine lace tablecover, I ought to be feeling depressed, but I am not. The excitement which seemed to sweep me out of the hospital, and then on to the house Kentaro had rented for his foreign woman, still holds. It is almost like a picture I have seen of Hawaiian swimmers riding those boards on the crests of monster waves, the whole thing a matter of balance, the least loss of this toppling you off. I mean to keep my balance. I shall also keep the money Kentaro gave me and use it. I have earned it, after all.

  As I had expected, Okuma San was in the little house acting as caretaker, her surprise and shock producing the first real expression I had seen on her face. She had no explanations from me, I simply we
nt in and ordered her to bring to the downstairs room my little cabin trunk which had been stored in an outhouse. I packed the suitcase upstairs and carried it down myself. There was a bad moment when I was taking off its nail a scroll painting of storks I had bought at the night stalls; one of Tomo’s balls fell off a shelf and rolled over the matting. Then, on a ledge, I saw a row of those origami toys Kentaro had made for his son.

  Okuma brought the trunk, panting and blowing, after which she scuttled off without a word. A moment later I heard the clatter of her clogs crossing the courtyard and I went after her fast, in stockinged feet over the flagstones. She was trying to get the ricksha man to go away. I shouted the worst words I know in Japanese: ‘Dame! Bakayaro! Ike!’ She fled, probably for the police station. If she returned with a policeman it was to find the little house empty.

  It will not, of course, take the police any time to find me, the reception clerk has probably already reported my arrival here, but I have no doubts at all that official red tape will work in my favour. Before any step is taken to keep me in semi-custody again the matter will have to be referred to Kentaro in Korea. An attempt to get me out of this hotel, even at night, could be a cause for scandal. Also, it will be known that I was in touch with the British Embassy, if to no avail. I think the police will receive instructions to do nothing meantime, except surveillance. The weapons available to me are flimsy, but I believe I am learning how to use them.

  I think I understand Kentaro a lot better than he understands me. I tried to hate him for a time, to escape from pain that way, but I wasn’t able to. He knew perfectly well that he could never have reasoned me into accepting the idea of Tomo being adopted into a Japanese family, so he did his duty again, and it may be that the way he timed it, just before he was posted, means that he could not bear to be here to see the suffering he had to inflict on me. I may be flattering myself that he cares as much as that. It could be that he is hoping that in time I will come to understand why he had to do what he did. I understand it now, but what I cannot do, and never will be able to do, is believe that it was for the best, which is why I cannot live under his protection any longer, and never will again.