The Ginger Tree

by Oswald Wynd

  It is something, I suppose, to have the servants you are leaving weep for you. How many other people, when they heard about what had happened to me, would? There is nothing like living in a country as an enemy alien to really thin down the roster of your friends. On the stairs, made less steep than is usual in Japanese houses, I lugged the heavier case, Toba taking the other, and I thought of what Peter once said about needing no trunks for your travels in living. I was being forced to take his advice this time, for whatever was ahead of me wasn’t going to be much assisted by a great load of experience from the lost years, if only because so much of it was experience totally meaningless in terms of life in the West.

  Philosophy got me past the weeping Toba and out to the car all right, and I didn’t look back at the gates in that fencing, or at a curve of tile roof with a hint of pine reaching up to it, but at the end of the road, through the windscreen, was Mount Fuji, snow at the summit still shining in late afternoon sun. Tears reached my eyes then.

  There are no tears now. I feel dried out from any kind of grief as we sail south into the tropic sun, our ship glowing with light at night as a proclamation of neutrality, though there are no other lights in these seas that have already seen so much death and will see so much more. The ambassadors on board all stick together, the top aristocrats of our temporary society, a little like deposed monarchs trying to pretend they still have some importance in a crumpled world, surrounded by their courts of wives, secretaries, chancellors, all of them playing yesterday’s protocol games. I rate beneath the governesses kept on because it wouldn’t have been right to send the poor old things home straight into the bombing. The Swedish crew and stewards are slightly aloof, standing back from the violence to which their particular type of civilisation has made them immune. I seem to sense their contempt for all these assorted relics of a wrecked order, though they are very polite, like the four Japanese policemen who called at my house on the Bluff.

  Kentaro put me on this ship, the last act in his enduring duty towards a woman he got with child on a Chinese hill thirty-seven years ago. Everything he has done for and to me has had a kind of inevitability in terms of the man himself, though I think he might have managed, after considering the matter very carefully like he did that proposal of marriage, to tell me about Tomo. After all this time it would have been safe enough, our son’s life long since set and remote from us both, but the Count Kurihama confines his risk-taking to his soldiering.

  M/S Gripsholm, at Singapore

  August 19th, 1942

  I could be imagining it, but I feel an almost morbid curiosity permeating this ship ever since we came alongside the dock here this morning. It is as though everyone on board wants to see as much as possible of how the great new colonial power is operating here at its southern base. Not that there is much to be seen from the boat or promenade decks, godown roofs separate us from the rest of the dock area, which in turn is like a no man’s land between us and life in the city. We can just see people and traffic in the distance, with the Japanese flag flying on ships and buildings, but not much else, the pier beneath us deserted, though there is a gangway down to it. If there are soldiers or police on guard to prevent anyone approaching the Gripsholm they must be stationed beyond the shed, for there is no sign of them. No one really knows why we have stopped here, but it is rumoured that the ship is to take on mail written by prisoners of war and internees. At lunch I heard someone say they had seen what looked like a gang of POWs, naked to the waist under full sun, at work unloading a freighter. Immediately after that a man at the same table told us in a loud voice that he couldn’t wait to get to South Africa for a change from Swedish food.

  The almost unbearable heat in this cabin keeps that woman out of it during the day, and I am blessedly alone, if perspiring.

  M/S Gripsholm, Singapore

  August 20th, 1942

  It wasn’t the heat that kept me awake last night, I kept thinking about something that happened in Yokohama just before this ship sailed. There was an enormous horde of pressmen and photographers on board, all out to get pictures and, if possible, stories from the departing enemy diplomats. It wasn’t because I thought anyone might want a story from me that I went up to the boat deck, it was cooler up there, and I sat on a bench which did not give me a view of the city or Mount Fuji, just an off-sea breeze. There were other escapees from the crowds down below and when I saw what was obviously a reporter, with a cameraman in tow, coming from a companionway, I thought someone else was the target, but the young man was after the human interest angle, and must have seen a picture of me somewhere, perhaps in police files.

  I was addressed by name, no uncertainty about that, the reporter polite enough at the start – how did I feel about having to leave a country in which I had lived for so long? I said sad to be going in these circumstances, and looked at the sea while the cameraman moved around me, clicking away as though I was one of those movie stars on the slide who, before this war, always seemed to come to Japan to help them recover from nervous breakdowns. I suggested that all this was a waste of film in view of the still limited use of pictures in Japanese newspapers, and for some reason this made the reporter turn nasty. Did I have any plans to return here, if permitted to, after the Imperial forces had completely crushed the Allies? I said I had no intention of coming back until Tokyo and Yokohama lay in ruins and the Occupying Forces were in need of a controller of Japanese Customs. I meant to apply for that job since I thought my business experience in this country gave me unique qualifications to do it well.

  It was a lunatic thing to say, but I was suddenly wildly angry. So was the reporter. He took a step forward and I thought he was going to hit me, but after glaring for a moment he turned away, shouting for the cameraman to follow. If that piece of arrogance on my part was reported in the Japanese press I could easily be taken off this ship here in Singapore and put in an internment camp, or much worse.

  August 20th, afternoon

  The ship has a loudspeaker system to all decks. I was in the cabin wearing very little when I heard my name called, asking me to report to the Purser’s office. I had to dress, and did this, feeling frightened. There was a repeat call before I was out in the corridor.

  The Purser didn’t look at me as he said he had received an order from the port authorities that I was to go to the main lounge and wait there to be interviewed. I asked him what right the port authorities had to give orders to a Swedish ship sailing under the protection of the Red Cross, even though it was tied up in Japanese-conquered Singapore? He stared at a ledger. ‘Madam, they could put a platoon of soldiers on board in five minutes and there is nothing we could do to stop them.’ I didn’t ask if he thought he would soon be removing my name from the Gripsholm’s passenger list.

  The lounge is air-conditioned which means that it is pretty crowded most of the time. There were three bridge games going and nearly all the chairs occupied, but one alcove near the now closed bar hatch, usually very popular, was empty, almost as though it had been cordoned off. In it was a long corner settee, a table and chairs. A blond steward indicated that I was to wait there. I walked across the room conscious of eyes watching. Whatever was going to happen to me had a capacity audience. I sat down on the settee and looked at people looking at me until, rather sheepishly, they returned to books, or bridge, or chat. There was noise in the lounge again, though not enough to cover the sucking made by a door with rubber sealing as it was pushed open.

  A Japanese officer had come in from the foyer. He stood looking about, his head turning quite slowly from right to left, his hand on the hilt of his sword. The blond steward pointed me out. The talk and games and reading had stopped again. The soldier came towards my table, the links on his scabbard chain clinking, his boots heavy on linoleum. I felt just slightly sick.

  My visitor didn’t register very clearly in the physical sense, all I really noticed was that he was of about average height for a Japanese, and that under the cap he continued to wear his head
was shaven. His ears seemed to stick out more than most Oriental ears and he had heavy dark eyebrows. His uniform was tropic beige colour with an open-necked white shirt. Just beyond the table between us he stopped, brought his heels together, then bowed, still with a hand on the sword hilt. It was the bow of a military man for a civilian woman, the politeness only a little more than minimal. I returned the greeting without rising. This seemed to surprise him. He said nothing for a moment, then came out, in bad English, with words that at least half the lounge must have heard: ‘You Madam Ma-ken-shi?’ I nodded. He introduced himself: ‘I Major Nobushige Ozaki.’ He pulled out a chair to the full extent of the chain holding it to the floor and, carefully managing his sword, sat. The chill in my heart hadn’t much thawed. I said: ‘It might be well, Major, if we spoke in Japanese. For privacy.’

  That made him turn his head to the watching eyes, which at once disengaged their interest. Few of these people would have more than a slight acquaintance with the language of the country in which they had been living. In his own tongue the Major did not shout, for which I was grateful.

  He asked if I would like tea, as though this was his ship, which I suppose it could have been if he had wished to make it so. I thanked him, but said no, my politeness careful. I kept glancing at the glass doors to the foyer for any hint of more Japanese soldiers stationed out there, but could see no sign of them. They might be waiting at the gangway. The Major said that it was very comfortable in this lounge after the heat outside, then pulled a handkerchief from an inside pocket of the uniform jacket to dab at the beads of perspiration on his forehead. He seemed to find it hard to look at me directly, surprising in a military man of his rank. It could be that he found this mission distasteful. The four policemen who had put me on this ship hadn’t enjoyed their assignment either.

  Our talk languished. I felt an almost ridiculous need to get it going again. Since the information seemed unlikely to be classified as of use to the enemy I asked if he was a regular soldier. He said he was in the Air Force, then added: ‘I come from Lieutenant-General the Count Kurihama.’

  I must have been continuing to breathe up until then, but tightly. Now I felt as though I had been freed to really fill my lungs with artificially cooled air. I think I held my eyes shut for a minute, and when I opened them he was staring at me. I said stiffly: ‘I hope the General is well?’ ‘Yes, he is very well. But unable to visit you. You understand?’ ‘I hadn’t been expecting a visit. Are you an aide of his?’ ‘No. I come only to deliver his message. He wishes you to lead a happy life in future.’ I said: ‘Thank you,’ reminded of those pumice courts in Karuizawa, the elasticised balls bouncing back and forth over the net, like our words.

  There was silence again. The Major reached into that inner pocket, this time producing a wallet. I was sitting very straight, as I had been since this man came through the glass doors. Kentaro was about to do, through contacts in Singapore, what he could not have done easily in war-rigid Japan, offer me more money. The wallet was laid on the table, then opened flat. What came out looked like a postcard until turned over; then I saw it was a photograph. The Major pushed this across the table.

  The picture had been taken in a Japanese garden that looked as groomed as my own, a woman standing just to one side of a stone lantern, and in front of her, arranged according to age, like steps, were three children, two girls and a boy. The boy was tallest, about ten, perhaps more. He was smiling. I knew the smile.

  Words had to be pushed past a constriction in my throat: ‘Your wife and children, Major?’ He nodded and said: ‘Hai.’ I didn’t have to ask if he was a yoshi.

  We both sat very still. Perhaps my eyes should have been hungry for his face, his hands, the stiff figure in the chair, but I looked at the table top. I would not embarrass him. He had come, under orders, not knowing what to expect from a foreign woman. He must not take away anything that might be shaming in the memory. I said: ‘When you see Count Kurihama please give him my sincere thanks.’

  I could sense his relief. There was to be no scene. I had learned the proper disciplines, which gave dignity to the ritual of showing me a photograph of people I would never meet, but who were now to be regarded as my relatives. I had the wildly funny thought that when I died I would be duly acknowledged as an ancestor at a Japanese family altar, but I didn’t want to laugh.

  We talked like strangers sharing a table in a crowded restaurant, about the humidity of southern regions, the tastelessness of most tropic fruit. Our quietness had faded almost all the interest in us, apparently no real drama on schedule from the reserved corner of the lounge. A man loudly rebuked his partner for her bidding and she snapped back at him. Those voices seemed to disturb the Major and, as though feeling he had to cover them, he said: ‘When you return to Japan after the war I hope you will visit Nagoya.’ He had told me where he lived without being asked. I said: ‘Perhaps. And we may meet then.’ He smiled. It was not Kentaro’s smile. ‘If I am not in my native place in body when you come, I will be there in spirit.’ That clamp on my heart again was this time from a different fear. ‘Why do you say that?’ His answer was simple: ‘This will be a long war. I am a flier.’

  He did not believe that Japan could win or that he would live to see the peace. I wanted to cry out in protest, but he had come to feel safe with me. We both sat very still, now looking at each other, until he reached across the table for the photograph. This went back in the wallet which was then stowed away carefully in that inner pocket. His left hand went to the sword hilt, which meant that he was getting up, but before he did he leaned forward and said in a low voice, almost as though afraid of being overheard: ‘Life has been good for me. I must now return to duty.’ He added the conventional phrase: ‘Please take the greatest care of your health.’

  This time I stood for my bow and his was not for a woman of little importance. He turned and thumped towards the glass doors. A moment later I followed him out of the lounge, eyes on me again. I went up to the boat deck and when I reached a rail between davits Major Nobushige Ozaki was already down the gangway and walking towards a car parked in front of the dock sheds. He did not look back at the ship. A soldier got out of the driving seat and opened the car’s rear door. Even after this had been slammed I could see the back of Tomo’s head through the rear window. The car began to move, going quite slowly over a rough surface, then disappearing around the end of the sheds. I tried to find some vantage point from which I could see it passing through the dock gates, but wasn’t able to reach one in time. From a wing of the ship’s bridge the blond Swedish officer of the watch stared down at me.

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  Eland was started in 1982 to revive great travel books which had fallen out of print. Although the list soon diversified into biography and fiction, all the titles are chosen for their interest in spirit of place.

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  Copyright

  First published by William Collins Sons & Co Ltd in 1977

  First published by Eland Publishing Limited

  61 Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QL in 1988

  This ebook edition first published in 2012

  All rights reserved

&n
bsp; Copyright © Oswald Wynd 1977

  The right of Oswald Wynd to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–1–906011–98–7

  Cover Image: Cedar Door of a Guest Room, Shugakuin Imperial Villa © Sadao Hibi