The Painted Cage

by Meira Chand

  ‘Never,’ Dr Charles said emphatically.

  ‘So you have no experience?’ Mr Easely confirmed.

  ‘No.’

  Amy felt the resentment of the room at Dr Charles’s discomfort, the contraction of curiosity. Old Mrs Thomas closed her mouth as if upon unripe fruit, Mr Porter moved uneasily. Lettice Dunn exchanged a sarcastic shrug with Tilly Marley.

  She saw then that Mabel Rice had come into court, a beautiful, flaming bird in the midst of funereal silks and thoughts. She was grateful for the smile Mabel flashed as she accepted a seat a man jumped to vacate. Amy felt herself reflected to the court in the mirror of Mabel’s presence. Everyone knew they were friends. No one ignored Mabel Rice. But, once seated, Mabel was hidden behind Mrs Thomas’s bonnet. Amy was alone again.

  Dr Dixon was called to give evidence of the post-mortem. Soon there began the solitary bleat of his voice, like that of a crusty old ewe. And, listening, Amy heard a story as unfamiliar as the distortions of her own face in a fairground room of mirrors. Nobody wanted the truth.

  4

  Yokohama, 1891

  It did not matter what she was told. On leaving Sungei Ujong Amy remained unconvinced of the joys of Yokohama. They joined the ship for their journey east at Singapore, and found amongst the tourists people returning to Japan from leave abroad. They gave positive accounts of the place. Jack Easely and his wife, a serious woman with kind, sharp eyes, insisted they share a dinner table. Easely was a barrister and had been in Yokohama since its earliest days. He told many tales. As a young man he had served under Sir Rutherford Alcock at the British Legation in Tokyo, and been present there during an attack by some wild Japanese. He spoke of other early residents, of a cartoonist named Wirgman and someone known as Public-spirited Smith. There was an acrobat, Risely, who arrived with a circus from America, stayed to start an ice house, then a dairy, and left again with a circus of his own. A Reverend Goble devised the first rikisha from a perambulator as a conveyance for his invalid wife. It was like a magic lantern show or a book of fairy tales.

  ‘Most of our pioneers have gone their way. There are only a few of us left. Dr Charles is one, you’ll meet him, of course. He doctors us all. His name is a legend in Yokohama. I remember him saving the life of a fellow called King, in 1871.’ Mr Easely sat back in his chair with a glass of port after dinner. He insisted the ladies should not leave them immediately. Amy was as glad as Reggie of the friendship the Easelys offered. In their quiet integrity was the reassurance Amy needed to face the future. Jack Easely’s face appeared always calm. His grey hair was exactly parted, he wore a short, well-clipped moustache but in spite of a lack of passion there was nothing detached about him. His eyes were interested and warm.

  ‘What about this fellow King?’ Reggie insisted, anxious to learn all he could of Yokohama. Easely nodded and continued.

  ‘King was a teacher in Nigata, a town to the north, on the Sea of Japan, a great distance from Yokohama. During the time of anti-foreign feeling King was attacked by sword-wielding samurai. When the message came through to Dr Charles he jumped onto his pony and rode off into the night. He reached Nigata in eighty-four hours, only leaving the saddle to change his mount. By a miracle King was still alive, and old Charles somehow managed to save him. Yokohama was made by men like that,’ Jack Easely proudly remarked.

  ‘Oh, but you must not let him frighten you with all that sword and samurai talk,’ Dorothy Easely interrupted, seeing the shadow on Amy’s face. ‘There were some awful troubles in the beginning, but all that is over now, by and large. It isn’t something to worry about.’ Mrs Easely smiled and laughed, lightly or grimly as occasion demanded, but there was strength beneath her smile, the need of which became apparent when she told stories of her own.

  ‘Yokohama now rivals Shanghai. You’ll love it, my dear,’ she said to Amy. ‘Everybody does.’

  ‘I’ve heard there’s nothing you cannot get there. It will be a change from Sungei Ujong,’ Amy replied.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Easely confirmed. ‘But I know all about deprivation; we’ve been through that too in Yokohama. The place wasn’t born whole, as it now is. When I think back the thirty years we’ve been there, my own memories seem quaint enough to be lies. We’ve come so far in so short a time, I can hardly believe it myself. I was most unhappy in the beginning. I wondered what Jack had brought me to. There was no railway, no lighting, no meat or milk; it was a crude boom town of rough men. Why, in 1866 at Sir Harry Parkes’ first ball, I remember we proudly mustered thirteen of us against ninety men.’ Mrs Easely laughed, quick to see the humour. She was full of the grit of the pioneers. She leaned forward to pat Amy’s hand. ‘Now you’re not to worry about a thing. You’ll be surprised at what Yokohama offers.’

  The accumulation of more information was impeded for Amy by ill health. Malaria and a threatened miscarriage made the journey monstrous. Mrs Easely visited frequently with comfort and advice but, incarcerated within the stuffy, rolling cabin, enclosed in pain and apprehension, it seemed to Amy she had left one hell only for another. She did not believe the talk of wonderful Yokohama, or Dorothy Easely’s assurance of the changes of three decades. She did not believe the gin-tinted bar talk Reggie brought her, his voice excited, his depression allayed. She relied instead on Murray’s famous guidebook, found in Singapore and studied through the voyage. Murray cautioned wisely and rarely enthused, except about mountain views. She was advised, when travelling off beaten tracks, to take plenty of flea powder and carbolic acid. Beyond the Treaty Ports milk was unobtainable; a whisked-up egg yolk was suggested instead in either tea or coffee. The Japanese language appeared horrendous, without singular or plural or persons or verb, sense only gathered from context. She must prepare to be stared at and laughed at and show no impatience. Storming at coolies would mend no matters. She thought of the deckfuls of excited tourists, hot for the mysteries of the Far East, and felt at some point they would meet disillusion. Then she lay back again upon the bunk and wished she too might sail home after adventure.

  At last they neared Yokohama. Amy joined the crowded deck as they rounded the island of Oshima. The sky was a fierce reflection of the volcano on Oshima, like a portent, Amy thought grimly, fighting against the relief and excitement the sight of land brought to her. There was a stir throughout the boat, a heightening of voices, a banging of doors and later much finery and high spirits at dinner. The view of the land was constant now, hilly and wooded. The air was crisp. Fishing boats were everywhere, thick as clouds of white-winged moths. They passed a huge junk, drifting like a phantom galley. In the Gulf of Yedo the water was calm after their endless rolling. A mist hung about upland forests, the coast was a mass of sandy coves in which nestled deep-roofed villages. Tiny rock islands littered the coast like crumbs broken off the shore, possessed by weathered pines. On deck they waited for a sight of Mount Fuji. At last Amy saw it, pale and solitary against a pale sky. It swept up in a single cone of snow, skirted by mist and a motionless sea. Its silence filled her with disquiet. Suddenly she did not know what to expect. The pessimism that had been her defence throughout the voyage no longer seemed adequate against apprehension. She went down into the cabin to tidy up the last few things, and her hands began to tremble. Yokohama would be nothing like Sungei Ujong. She shivered in excitement.

  They anchored out in the bay at Treaty Point, beyond which no foreign vessel could go. A liner nearby was surrounded by coal barges, its sides festooned with female porters balanced upon precarious planks, passing coal hand to hand in small baskets. The telescopes and binoculars that had been trained on Mount Fuji, the fishing boats and villages, were now folded and packed; people waited for exotic reality. Hotel barges and sampans took them ashore, pestered by tenacious men selling wares even before they landed. After the panorama of the bay Yokohama, as they drew near, disappointed people. It appeared neither one thing nor the other, too European to be Japanese and too Japanese to be European. The tourists were quick to complain. There was nothing pi
cturesque in the western-style buildings of the Foreign Settlement sober with brick, gables and domes. But Amy, at the sight of forms so familiar, had little to complain of.

  They left the Customs House with the Easeleys and stepped out onto the Bund. There was at once a great clamour for their attention from an army of rikisha runners, waiting with their carriages. Beyond them the bay was lavishly spread with fishing boats, yachts and liners. Two outgoing warships thundered salutes. The bagpipes of a British vessel accompanied paint-chipping hammers upon its iron sides and the whirring of winches on cargo ships. Great sailed junks passed by. Close to the Bund, crammed into creeks and canals, sampans rocked together in dirty floating islands. The Bund was bordered by a row of straggly pines douched by spray when the wind got up. Busy with rikishas and cartloads of goods, it smelled of oil, sardines and salt. Far off rose the bulk of the Grand Hotel. Behind its elegant façade the cream of foreign travellers found repose and sophistication. Its cuisine and view of the bay, its orchestra and gardens, its attention to detail and décor made it a natural rendezvous for those steaming about the world. The Redmores were staying at the Club Hotel, adjacent to the Yokohama United Club. The sea views there were framed by unpretentious prices, plain cooking and plain rooms. Some corner of darkness in these sensible things made Amy later feel they had already placed themselves in the eyes of Yokohama. Beyond the Bund loomed the Bluff, an arm of wooded hill spread above the Settlement, the roofs of foreign-style houses thrusting from its greenness.

  ‘It’s up there we all live, up on the Bluff,’ Mrs Easely said. ‘Nobody of matter lives down in the Settlement, it’s a business town. We’ve made ourselves comfortable. No need to remember we’re in Japan. Once you’ve lived in Yokohama, you can’t live anywhere else.’ Mrs Easely laughed and drew her shawl around her.

  ‘It looks lovely,’ said Amy, happy at the sight of houses so familiar in style. From where she stood the distant Bluff, studded with gables and chimneypots amongst a cloud of trees, looked a paradise. ‘It’s so good to be back in civilization.’

  It was cool and fresh on the Bund in the late October morning. Amy was glad of thicker clothing, of her boots and flannel petticoats made up quickly in Singapore. She caught from her cape the odour of damp wool; a memory of home and a memory of winter. She had been told to expect a bitter winter; the thought filled her with pleasure. She sniffed the crisp air and its alien smells.

  ‘I hope the winter here lasts forever,’ she announced. ‘I don’t ever again want to contend with anything related to a tropical heat.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Easely, ‘I’m afraid we do have rather a summer of it here, short and terribly hot. We all go up to the hills, to Miyanoshita or Karuizawa.’ Summer, thought Amy, was far away, and a few months would be nothing to endure after a summer of two years.

  ‘Jack!’ Mrs Easely called to her husband who was pointing out steamers in the bay to Reggie. ‘Don’t you think you’d do well to take a ride through the Settlement before driving to the Club Hotel? It would give them some idea of the town.’

  At a word from Mr Easely they were surrounded by rikisha men dressed in blue tunics, bare-legged or in rough hose, their straw hats the shape of mushrooms. Mr Easely inspected them, speaking in Japanese.

  ‘You must be careful to choose the cleanest rikisha. Just in case, I always carry some flea powder,’ Mrs Easely warned.

  The Easelys’ own rikishas had been sent from the Bluff to collect them. Those chosen for the Redmores clattered up. The men grinned, took off their hats and hung them on the shafts in preparation for their run. Amy and Reggie climbed into the contraptions and Jack Easely advised them how to balance their weight so as not to be pitched out.

  Dorothy Easely patted Amy’s hand. ‘We’ll meet soon. I’ll show you the Bluff.’ Then, with a jerk that threw them back in their seats, the Redmores were trundled off towards Main Street,

  Once on the go the rikisha runners were friskier than colts, swinging, cutting, switching suddenly round corners until Amy hung on and prayed. It unnerved her to see the shoulders of a man straining between shafts like an animal. The metal wheels of the rikisha bounced. People were missed by a hair’s breadth as Amy’s runner raced with Reggie’s. The whole town seemed on the move in the same lacquered prams, like a great scuttling army of black beetles. Foreign men, be whiskered and frock-coated, fashionable women smart enough for Paris or London, Chinese compradores in brocade coats and greasy pigtails, Japanese peasants and businessmen, demure women in kimonos appeared unaware of their part in the comical living theatre. Amy laughed. The place seemed mad, utterly mad; a town of black beetles racing and chasing about in pandemonium. And on their backs rode straight-faced, haughty Europeans, expressions unmoved above it all. She looked back and saw Reggie jolted along, his large frame out of all proportion with the bow-legged manikin and the carriage.

  They entered the Native Town and instead of foreign faces and foreign-style buildings, picturesque poverty surrounded them. The streets were narrow and odoriferous, the wooden houses rickety, heavily shuttered or flung open, baring their insides to the town. Whole walls rolled back to expose the intimacy of daily life or close out all air and light. Shops were open-fronted spaces without doors or glass cases, piled with merchandise, draped with bunting and large signs in Japanese writing. They criss-crossed bridge after bridge over canals crammed with junks and fishing smacks, launches and sampans. A smell of drains and excrement corroded the place; carts, people and rikishas clogged each street. The runners shouted and shoved their way dangerously through.

  Soon they emerged again into the Settlement, to orderly streets and occidental faces. Buildings were stately stone, shops boasted porticoes and glass windows. They were impressed by pavements, gutters and gas lamps, the post office, the police station and consulates. Main Street was full of foreign shops and looked like an English high street. The European names and European assistants, the well-known provisions and supplies had made a pilgrimage across the world to delude exhausted minds. After Sungei Ujong, such delusion was heaven to Amy. If it was only possible to extract from the scene the unending surge of Japanese faces, she might almost at last be home. There were many chemists in Main Street of familiar propriety, all far from the lore of pickled snakes. Behind the windows of Brett’s, Schedel’s, North & Rae’s and the Normal Dispensary she saw the comforting arrangement of perfumes and pomade, iron tonics and hair washes, brands she had used at home. There again was the fortifying essence of chicken and beef she had been tenderly spooned as a child. J. Curnow & Co. Family Grocers welcomed her with Huntley & Palmer’s biscuits, with condensed milk, cocoa and chocolate, with wine, liqueurs and marmalade. At Kelly & Walsh there were books and more books, and the arrogance of Lane Crawford, 59 Main Street, General Importers, Tailors and Outfitters, Universal Providers and Department Store announced in discreet good letters, ‘Experienced London Cutter Within’. It was wonderful, all wonderful.

  Soon they were back on the Bund, which took its name from those alien words the British digested in India. All it meant, said Reggie, was something built along the sea, an embankment or a causeway. And a Bluff, he explained – for Amy laughed at the hill above the Settlement – was no more than any headland with a broad, perpendicular face. But no such levity could divest Amy of the feeling that Yokohama was a fantasy, where East and West tripped over each other to fall inextricably and improbably entwined. Driving past the Grand Hotel, she looked up in envy at its verandahs adorned by the fashionable of the world, who revolved through life to a tune she was now already eager to learn.

  They continued along the Bund and soon arrived at the Club Hotel, a large, double-fronted house. There were bay windows, a glass porch, iron railings and a hedge. The Yokohama United Club beside it was all new brick and balconies. Reggie descended from his rikisha and looked up at the club apprehensively. Its balconies held men in cheery conversation, sunk in basket chairs or leaning on a railing. White-coated waiters hurried about with attentive
trays. To Reggie, men and building seemed to merge in an indestructible way. He became subdued, facing at last the reality for which he had come so far. His entry into this impregnable world had appeared, from the distance of Sungei Ujong, only a matter of formality. Now it seemed uncertain. What would they live on? Where would he begin if he failed to secure the job? He pulled himself up, stuck out his chin and strode into the Club Hotel.

  A clock ticked in the entrance hall above dark furniture and polished wood. Through the front door came smells of the sea and oil and fish. Deep in the interior of the hotel cabbage had been cooked. The proprietor appeared, rubbing his hands and smiling wetly beneath a moustache. There was nothing that was not solid and well provided, but it could not compare to the opulent Grand with its elegant guests and orchestra during dinner. As they waited, the ground shook suddenly beneath their feet with the boom of the midday cannon. At this signal the time ball fell from a pylon on the French pier for Yokohama, both at sea and on shore, to check watches, clocks and chronometers. Reggie adjusted his timepiece and replaced it in his pocket with a nod of satisfaction, as if they were now established in the town.

  Amy saw little more of Yokohama until Mrs Easely’s visit. She felt unwell and rested in the Club Hotel. But soon a message from Mrs Easely arrived with a servant and a chit book which Amy signed to assure its safe reception. In Sungei Ujong they had had nothing to do with the intricacies of colonial social life. The internal workings of Yokohama seemed infinitely complex and revolved around the constant movement of a great variety of chits. There were chits that were messages, invitations and commands, chits that were letters or threats. There were also chits that were IOUs. The extravagance of life in Yokohama had everyone in debt, incurring expenses out of all proportion to the businesses that supported them. Chits were signed for everything, and the day of reckoning rarely thought of until disaster loomed. Chits could even be dropped into the church collection box, such was the spirit of the place.