A Most Immoral Woman

by Linda Jaivin

  At one station, the train stopped long enough for him to send a telegram: FAREWELL MY DARLING. GOD BLESS YOU AND GIVE YOU MUCH HAPPINESS. ALWAYS THINKING OF YOU. ERNEST.

  At Kobe’s Oriental Hotel, Morrison met up with a correspondent who had witnessed both the crossing of the Yalu and a battle at the Manchurian town of Chu Lien Cheng. ‘The Japanese fighting must be seen to be believed,’ the man raved. ‘They are devils unchained. Nothing can stay in their path.’

  He walked out onto the beach, past fishermen laying sardines to dry on straw mats and children playing by the water’s edge as their mothers squatted nearby mending nets. Overcome by unreasonable hope, he turned his steps to the Telegraph Office. He had left her his itinerary. The clerk checked. Nothing had come for him. He scribbled out a second telegram and handed it to the clerk. JUST ARRIVED. LEAVING TOMORROW. AM WRITING MUCH LOVE FROM ERNEST. ORIENTAL HOTEL. Restless, he strolled to the ancient port of Hyogo, barely taking in the fine temples and shrines. Marooned by language, he spoke to no one. Returning to the hotel, he asked the desk if anything had come for him. Nothing had. What is she doing that she cannot find the time for a telegram? He could guess.

  The Japanese press claimed the Manchurian city of Liaoyang had fallen. That would be good news indeed. Morrison wondered if James had made it in time to witness the battle.

  He slept poorly.

  The following morning, just before ten o’clock, the hotel delivered a telegram. It had been sent from Yokohama at eight past nine. NEVER FORGET YOU AND DEEPLY GRIEVED AT PARTING. HAVE PLEASANT VOYAGE TO PEKING. SURELY LEAVING ON THE MONGOLIA. MUCH LOVE MAYSIE.

  Morrison instantly wired back: DORIC LEAVING TONIGHT MIDNIGHT ARRIVES NAGASAKI SUNDAY EARLY. PROCEEDING SAME EVENING SHANGHAI ARRIVING EARLY TUESDAY. YOUR KIND TELEGRAM JUST RECEIVED GIVEN ME MUCH PLEASURE FOR I WAS WORRYING GREATLY NOT HAVING HEARD FROM YOU YESTERDAY. ALL LOVING HEARTFELT WISHES FOR YOUR HAPPINESS AND CONTENTMENT. ERNEST.

  On deck, Morrison discovered in his pocket a pamphlet he’d picked up when waiting for Mae a few days earlier. Having made the acquaintance of a Japanese merchant on the same boat who was supplying canvas tents to the army, he asked him to translate it. The man read it and frowned. ‘The author, Kotoku Shusui, is a famous journalist. He says that if war promotes the cause of humanity, ethics and freedom, that is good. But if it is to advance the careers of politicians and military men, and benefit speculators with the result that people’s wealth is plundered and their children must die, we must firmly oppose it.’

  ‘I see.’ Morrison frowned, unexpectedly rattled by the recollection of Mae’s sharp little commentary on the morality of men and war. He could have argued, of course. But that would have given Egan an advantage. It seemed so important then, the competition. It was over, all of it, and he needed to accept that. The story was finished, his last telegram the coda. He should not think of her again. He and the Japanese merchant stared into the waves.

  The Doric stopped at Nagasaki around four o’clock on the afternoon of the twenty-sixth of June. MISS PERKINS GRAND HOTEL YOKOHAMA. JUST STARTING FOR SHANGHAI. MAY YOUR VOYAGE HOME BE ALL SUNSHINE. YOUR RETURN WHILST LEAVING MANY DESOLATE IN THE ORIENT WILL SURELY MAKE GLAD THE HEARTS OF THOSE DEAR TO YOU IN OAKLAND WHO ARE SO EAGERLY WAITING TO GIVE YOU WELCOME. I TRUST THAT AMIDST YOUR DISTRACTIONS YOU WILL SOMETIMES FIND LEISURE TO WRITE TO ME AND WILL NOT LET ME SLIP ALTOGETHER FROM YOUR MEMORY I KNOW NOT IF FATE WILL EVER PERMIT US TO COME TOGETHER AGAIN BUT WHATEVER HAPPENS I SHALL ALWAYS TREASURE YOUR MEMORY. AND GRATEFULLY RECALL THOSE HAPPY MOMENTS I HAVE SPENT WITH YOU. GOODBYE MY DEAR. ERNEST.

  By the time the steamer departed on its final leg, it was four in the morning the following day. No telegram had come in reply. He was not sure why he’d expected one might. She must have gone in the Mongolia after all, he wrote in his journal. Being always under the influence of the last-comer, she would at the time of leaving have forgotten all about me.

  Exhausted, he lay on his bunk. The cabin was airless and hot. The ship’s whistle blew continuously. Sweating and tossing on the small bunk, Morrison gave up on sleep and opened his journal once more. But what does it matter? The sooner that it ended, the better. It has been a curious episode in my career, this passionate attachment.

  He felt himself on the move again, for him a state much like home.

  Breakfast consisted of a cup of terrible coffee and a greasy bologna sausage at the same table as a man who had been horribly disfigured, he explained to Morrison with disconcerting good cheer, by the blowing out of his rifle breech. It was stifling below deck and insupportable above. Trying to read on a long chair on deck, he imagined Maysie in her elegant stateroom on the Mongolia, singing for the other passengers in the first-class music room, playing her little food game with the fine meals in the dining saloon. He suddenly recalled her telling him that Mrs Goodnow had said that once she’d been ‘kissed’ by another woman she’d never look back. Mae had declared she was going to get a Japanese maid who would kiss her all the way to America. He wondered if she’d done so, and lingered a moment on that thought. Dozing off, he woke up with sore legs, a headache and sunburn, as well as the sense that beauty, comfort and pleasure had been leached from his world.

  The merchant had disembarked at Nagasaki. The only remaining diversion was one Miss Florence E. Smith, tall, splendidly shaped and off to Shanghai to marry her lover in the Standard Oil Company. Morrison could have sworn he’d seen her in Yokohama in the company of Major Seeman. When the Doric berthed in Shanghai the next day, her lover was nowhere in sight and Miss Smith was awash in tears. Just as Morrison thought he’d worked it out—another faithless woman, another tragic tale—and considered offering to console her himself, the lover appeared and Miss Smith sprang into his arms. What a fortunate pair. Such complete happiness. A love that is most beautiful to witness.

  Morrison’s heart contracted suddenly around the thought of Maysie. It occurred to him that she might, at that very moment, be unwrapping a pile of his letters and reading them to, perhaps, the captain of the Mongolia. He tried to smile at the image.

  In Which It Is Seen That Heat Lingers

  Even as the Earth Cools

  In Peking, the leafy tendrils of the willow trees whispered to the waters of the Grand Canal and the moat around the Forbidden City. Pendulous white flowers hung off the cedrela. The markets were ripe with stacks of Indian corn and melons. A racket of cicadas welcomed Morrison home. After the oppressively moist heat of Japan, Morrison revelled in the blazing aridity of Peking.

  The moment his mafoo collected him from the station, Morrison had a premonition. ‘Where’s Kuan? Kuan tsai na-li?’ He mulled over the mafoo’s hesitant answer, a Chinese phrase that translated as ‘there is no relationship’ or ‘there’s nothing to be concerned about’, an ambiguous saying that only deepened his apprehension.

  Kuan and Yu-ti had run away together. No one knew where they had gone, but there was a rumour it was to Shanghai to join the revolutionary anti-Ch’ing underground. Morrison professed himself shocked. But then he thought about it and it began to make sense. It was clear enough that Kuan and Yu-ti had been childhood sweethearts. And then there was the admiration Kuan held for Professor Ho and, more tellingly, the interest Ho and the others took in Kuan. Not surprisingly, Cook was furious and humiliated by his wife’s betrayal. He had refused to speak to anyone for more than a week now. The household, Morrison learned, was much relieved at his return.

  On his desk, hidden under his blotter, Morrison found a letter from Kuan, written in careful English and requesting him to destroy it after reading. Kuan apologised for not saying anything about his plans and for leaving without saying goodbye. He told Morrison he and Yu-ti would always remember his kindness. They hoped that one day they would see him again, in a China that was free of the curse of the Ch’ing, a China that was strong and sovereign. He trusted that Morrison would understand and forgive. In a postscript, couched in the politest of terms, he hoped that Morrison’s faith in Japan’s good in
tentions towards China were not misplaced.

  As Morrison burned the letter, he couldn’t help feeling a grudging admiration for his Boy. He has followed his heart.

  Ten days after the battle for Liaoyang, Lionel James’s report reached the paper:

  A sleet of lead…Japanese infantry is not to know failure…mown down in hundreds…dressing stations of the field hospital. All were filled with double their capacity…casualties…at the lowest computation were not less than 10,000…many bodies will never be found until the crops are cut…the Japanese army, after five days of the fiercest fighting the world has seen since the American Civil War…were in occupation of Liaoyang.

  The baking heat of summer departed. The earth cooled. A sweet melancholy settled over the capital, sung into being by the plaintive cries of the grape-sellers roaming the hutong with the fat purple fruit stacked in leaf-lined baskets on their carrying-poles. The light grew sharp and lucid. As the Harvest Moon gave way to the Chrysanthemum Moon, wealthy Chinese donned sable-lined satin gowns and undervests of lambskin, and the poor dressed in thick jackets and trousers of cotton wadding. Fear grew in the eyes of the poorest: it would soon be the season for the mule carts to make their daily dawn rounds of the enceintes to collect the frozen bodies of the homeless. In north China now, there were more homeless than ever, thanks to the war.

  Dumas came to the capital with his wife for a visit. They informed Morrison that she was expecting. Morrison congratulated them, eyes misting with joy and envy.

  ‘Have you heard?’ Mrs Dumas asked. ‘That nice American correspondent Martin Egan is engaged to be married.’

  ‘To whom?’ Morrison’s heart slammed in his chest.

  ‘I believe you know her.’

  Dumas hastened to clarify. ‘Eleanor Franklin.’

  ‘Miss Franklin?’ Morrison thought of their conversation that night in the Yoshiwara and smiled.

  ‘You look surprised,’ Mrs Dumas remarked. ‘And don’t you ever think of taking a bride? They say married men live longer, you know.’

  His eyes met those of Dumas, and he knew that his friend was thinking of the same quip: Or does it just seem that way?

  ‘What’s the secret?’ Dumas’s wife asked, looking from one to the other.

  ‘I wish I knew,’ Morrison replied.

  When his visitors left, he opened the glass front of the rosewood curio cabinet in his parlour and wrapped his hand around the piece of imperial jade he had looted from the palace during the siege. As it warmed in his hand, he felt for the crack in its surface. It was a flaw that endeared it to him even as it confounded him, proof of the elusiveness of perfection.

  In Which Morrison Dreams an Old Dream,

  Attempts to Account for the Unaccountable and

  an Illusion Vanishes

  It had been a strange year, this Dragon Year, full of drama, exhilaration, optimism and risk. As for it being auspicious for marriage—sheer superstition. Mae never wrote. Morrison used a single word to express his feelings about that in his journal: disappointed. He remembered something else Professor Ho had told him about fox spirits that time aboard the boat to Chefoo—that they were by their nature ephemeral, transitory. ‘When a fox spirit departs,’ Ho said, ‘the illusion gutters for a moment, then is gone. A star twinkles in the sky, a shadow flickers on the ground, wounds heal, scars disappear and life goes on.’

  In the middle of December, Morrison received a parcel from his mother. In her letter, which she had written several weeks earlier, she said the mercury in Geelong had already topped one hundred degrees. She told him the house smelled of Christmas, thanks to the brandy-soaked pudding that hung wrapped in cheesecloth in the kitchen, slowly ripening. She and his father were looking forward to the break, which they would spend as usual in Queenscliff. His father anticipated good hunting of bandicoots and native bear. As he read of that and other news of home, Morrison could hear his mother’s warm Yorkshire accent in his head.

  The parcel included a new anthology of Australian verse. He read into the wee hours. Heartily homesick, he wrote in his journal before turning in. That night, he dreamed the old dream of running through the Victorian bush. He could smell the eucalyptus in the air, hear the ringing of bellbirds, the screech of cockatoos, the hum of insects and his own panting breath. In the dream he was young, and whatever he was chasing lay just around the corner.

  The year’s end was Morrison’s time for summing up. Methodically, he squared his blotting paper, filled his inkwell and pulled on his sleeve-guards. The red leather binding of his journal, squeaky-firm at the start of the year, fell open easily to the final, faintly lined pages.

  He entered the money spent on rickshas, servants and hotels, each penny fretfully counted, followed by an account of assets acquired and money saved, each pound proudly noted. Then there were snatches of gossip, remembered jokes and puns, observations about the war and politics. In his compressed, fluid hand, Morrison ordered and fixed all of these for posterity.

  He stared at his ink-stained hands with their long, square-tipped fingers. The veins stood out, blue against the freckled skin, his knuckles pink and dry. The spray of freckles. I love your opinionated, cantankerous intelligence. Closing his eyes, he heard again her easy laugh. He felt her hot insistent breath on his ear and neck, the urgent grip of her thighs. He saw once more the flash of her eyes, a blend of seduction and defiance.

  The last of the day’s light, yellow as old parchment, faded behind the high latticed windows. The titles etched into the leather bindings of the books on his shelves grew indistinct and the room’s lime-and-plaster walls exhaled a chilly breath. Despite the best efforts of the wheezing kettle atop the potbelly stove to introduce some humidity, the air scratched his throat, stubbornly dry. His tea grew cold. Mice scrabbled in the alleyway and a scrap collector called for bottles and rags. In the brazier, coals shifted and sighed.

  From across the courtyard came the sizzle and spit of something frying in a wok; he imagined that he could smell garlic. His Boy would call him into dinner soon. Dinner for one. Dining alone again. Much pleased with the company. Morrison’s lip curled sardonically. At least I amuse myself.

  Turning up the flame in the spirit lamp, he snugged his scarf around his neck. He dipped his nib in ink and tapped it against the rim of the bottle. How did I meet Maysie? War broke out…Dumas and I arrived at Mountain-Sea Pass. It was a night of perfect moonlight almost as light as day. It has done me much good to meet her. She has stimulated and rejuvenated me…He wrote and wrote.

  Blotting the ink, Morrison reread the final pages and, with a small sigh, closed the journal. I have the presentiment that I will meet her again. His joints ached; all the old wounds were giving him trouble.

  He almost called Kuan’s name, then remembered. ‘Chan!’

  ‘Yes, Master.’ His new Boy, a man of forty-five, stepped smartly into the room.

  ‘Fetch my p’aotzu. I’m going for a walk.’

  ‘Very cold.’

  ‘I know.’

  Near Ch’ien-men Gate, Morrison came upon a theatre. An opera was in progress. Gongs clashed and a line of young acrobats ran on stage, each carrying a gaily painted rice-paper lantern. They twisted, tumbled and twirled to the insistent music of clappers, drums and flutes, the lanterns calligraphing strokes of light on the air like golden ink. Finally, they piled one on the other to form a fan, which opened, closed, and opened again, this time as a field of peonies, setting the scene for the opening of Peony Pavilion. The second piece was a popular athletic pantomime about a fight between men in a darkened inn, each unable to tell if grappling with friend or foe. The final piece brought the audience to its feet as a lithe maiden played by a young boy called Mei Lan-fang, ribbons fluttering from his costume, danced and sang the part of a celestial sent by the gods to scatter flowers over the earth, creating colour and beauty where there had been none.

  After the final applause, the paper-lantern footlights were extinguished, and the rackety crowds streamed out.
Unwilling to face the night so soon, and lost in thought, Morrison stared blankly at the scrolls hanging on either side of the empty stage. Once the play is done, the tragedy, the comedy, the fallings-apart and comings-together all vanish like a dream. Eventually he stood. Pulling his collar up and stuffing his hands deep into his pockets, he began the walk home. Fresh snow fell, creating a new landscape of jade and silver, covering up his footsteps.

  In Which, By Way of Afterword, We Note That

  It Is True That…

  With half a million combatants on either side, the Russo-Japanese War escalated into the largest-scale conflict the world had ever seen. Despite the initial efforts of the Japanese to restrict access to the front, it also become the most widely reported war in history to that point. In fact, as James once wrote to Morrison, some Japanese generals grew so fond of the coverage that they would delay the start of a battle if the correspondents had not yet arrived. Almost no one ever referred to it any more as Morrison’s War.

  Port Arthur fell to the Japanese on 2 January 1905. The war itself didn’t conclude until September that year, with the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth. Morrison travelled to New Hampshire for the negotiations and US President Theodore Roosevelt won a Nobel Prize for his role in mediating the peace. By then, each side had suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties. The fighting flattened more than two hundred Chinese villages and left nearly three thousand hectares of fields trampled. Thousands of Chinese perished and countless others lost their homes and livelihoods.