The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel (10 page)

The moment I put my head on the pillow, I slept and dreamt of a house of colours so gorgeous that I felt strangely ill, as though I had feasted on food too rich and wine too heady. Walls of exquisite turquoise dripped with fringes of pure gold. Purple ran through violet to pink across ceilings so high that eagles nested in their corners in glittering eyries. Great cascades of silk coursed around me in luminous swathes of palest green through the spectrum to verdigris, while reds of every hue poured from huge glass bowls into pools of silvery mercury. Pearls the colour of the pinkest azaleas bejewelled every surface. As I ran through the rainbow rooms, I became aware that I was being hunted by my birth father in the guise of a huge black dog. He intended to kill me before I could disgrace him further. I ran into a small windowless room where the orgy of colours had changed into a muddy brown of the kind you create as a child, when from your paint box you mix too many colours and lose them all. In this room a race of warm blood coursed around my bare feet and a hot pain woke me and I found that Kawashima had entered me from behind and had one hand over my breast, the other covering my mouth.

'Be quiet, Yoshiko,' he whispered. 'Your cries will wake the house.' He promised to leave no bite marks that night as he thought it only good manners to hand me to Kanjurjab without a mark on my pelt. Instead he contented himself with pulling on my hair like a rein, and thrusting into me cruelly. No marks on the outside, but sore for days inside.

When he had finished he gave a satisfied grunt and rolled off me. 'I will miss our coupling, Yoshiko,' he said. 'You have such an interesting flavour, both salty and sweet.'

I smiled and leant over as though to kiss him, but instead I bit deeply into his lip until my mouth was filled with his blood. He pushed me from him and threw me on the floor.

'You taste only of salt,' I said.

I left my mark on him with a scar he would carry home to Natsuko. Yet, despite the pain involved and the disservice it had done me, I always found sex with Kawashima exciting. Since I first lay with him I was spoilt for tenderness. Lovers who are too kind leave you drowning in molasses.

Next morning, angry at the sight of his swollen lip, Kawashima grudgingly put out the gift of money I was to place at the shrine while offering up a prayer. I was about to become a wife, so I had to follow the tradition of praying for happiness and prosperity with my new husband. I was a good enough actress to fool Kawashima into thinking that I had accepted his choice of life for me, I feigned obedience and agreed to go. I had hidden my own money in the lining of my trunk and had no intention of telling Kawashima of it. I was determined to keep my money and to add to its reserves whenever I could.

I bathed in a stone bath lined with smooth pebbles to stimulate the blood and added salt to heal me from Kawashima's excesses. As I relaxed in the steamy water I took sips of whisky from the silver flask I had stolen from his pocket as he slept. Then I ate a breakfast of milk and fried eggs and made my way to the temple.

I could smell the musty scent of incense before the shrine appeared out of the gloom, and was reminded of how uneasy I always felt in such places. I prayed neither for happiness nor prosperity. Instead I asked for an exciting life that need recognise no counsel but my own. If I had to offer the gods something in return, they could make my life a short one if it pleased them.

I returned to the house to open the gifts that had arrived from the Kawashimas and the little linen bags of money, presents from rich Tokyo and Osaka families attempting to impress Kawashima with their generosity. The bags would be presented to Kanjurjab's father as part of my dowry.

Ichiyo had sent the embryo of a monkey preserved in alcohol as a fertility charm. It was horrible. Hideo sent a small jewelled dagger with a note to say it was for handling the tough meat I would have to get used to in Mongolia. I suppose he thought that was funny. There were gifts from Itani and from Hideo's betrothed Taeko, who sent an uninteresting pair of mother-of-pearl earrings. Hidden in my luggage, Sorry had wrapped a box of dried lychees with a letter she must have paid to have written for her. She said the lychees were to remind me of the journey I had taken with her long ago from China to Japan. She advised me not to drink Mongolian milk as it came from yaks, who were dirty animals. She said it was just as well that I was demanding of fortune, for I may have difficult times ahead of me. Then, apologising for giving me advice, she signed it with a cross.

Apart from the wedding kimono that Natsuko had chosen for me and sent in a cedar box, she gave me a small lacquer chest locked with a gold key in a jade bolt. The interior of the lid was decorated with old Satsuma work displaying boughs of trailing wisteria. The box housed two compartments lined with silver enamel. One was filled with the honey of April, the most perfumed of all honeys, the other a May conserve heavy with the scent of limes. Both compartments were sealed with a thin translucent cover of beeswax. It was magnificent.

Kawashima remarked that Natsuko, queen of her own hive, was sending some of its sweetness with me on my nuptial flight. He had forgotten that Natsuko herself had been given the box at the birth of her third daughter by her hated mother-in-law with the words, 'I chose such a fine gift in the expectation that you would deliver my son a boy, but it seems you are done with that. You may as well have it as the sight of it will only remind me of his disappointment and my own disgust.'

By passing the box on to me Natsuko was sending me a cloaked message, one she knew I Would understand. At one and the same time it communicated her dislike of me and reminded me of my barrenness. For a brief moment she became splendid in my eyes. I was reminded that women make more interesting enemies than men because of their subtlety and their ability to inflict exquisite, rather than brutal, pain. I think it was on that day, as I held Natsuko's gift, that I first realised that I truly loved her, despite knowing that she would never love me.

The night before Kanjurjab arrived I slept alone in my bed. Kawashima didn't bother me, but said that I should enjoy my solitude as it would be the last time I would lie unstraddled. That night he took a young male servant to his bed, a beautiful, deathless-looking boy.

Shortly after dawn, Kanjurjab, his parents, siblings, concubines, dogs and unpaid servants arrived in a noisy and unselfconscious manner. As I spied on them from an upstairs window my heart sank at the thought that by nightfall I would be one of their number. Despite the finery of their clothes, they looked rough, too weathered and unrefined for my taste. Kawashima had not done well for me in his matchmaking. I had harboured the view that I was in some way special to him, but on seeing his choice for me I knew that I had been mistaken.

Kanjurjab's portrait had been a flattering one. Now, dressed in a western suit with dusty shoes and a cap made from felt, he looked a little lost amongst his tribe. He was taller than most of the Japanese men of my acquaintance, but he looked plump and boyish to me. With his hair hanging lank and his shoulders slumped, he was not at all like the wild Mongolian that Sorry had described meeting by the walls of the Forbidden City.

The woman I took at first glance to be his mother turned out to be his concubine Mai. She was homely-looking, rotund and ruddy as the plums she was named after. Having a sweet and uncomplicated nature, Mai had a simple trust in life that eased her path through it. His mother Xue, named after snow because she was winter born, was a religious woman whose life was made more complicated than necessary because of her strict adherence to Lamaism, the religion of the Kanjurjab family. Xue was dressed in a silk topcoat the colour of sulphur with an elaborate headdress of silver and gemstones. She moved quickly, as though time was running out, and no matter what the company, she always seemed to be standing in a space of her own. She had a thin mouth and slits for eyes but her long dark hair woven through with silver beads was impressively thick. I came to know that she was possessed of a native cunning, but not a great intelligence.

Kanjurjab's father Tsgotbaatar was also dressed in western garb. It was to be the only time that I saw either of them in those suits. Perhaps they had been purchased specially for the occasion, for neither man looked at ease in them. Tsgotbaatar was a man who communicated with few words, mostly grunting his refusal or acceptance of offerings. He had the capacity to remain completely still and I thought then without knowing him that he would have been happier in a wilder place than Port Arthur. Later I came to understand that his stillness was actually bewilderment; in strange surroundings he would sniff the air as though searching for some lost, predestined path.

The kimono that Natsuko had chosen for me was of deep-red silk, the colour for weddings. It was embroidered with yellow circles to remind me of China and edged with a border of green satin. The under kimono felt light and soft against my skin, but once its topcoat was added and wound several times with an obi sash it became bulky and uncomfortable. I hated the elaborate wig I was expected to wear to cover my fashionably short hair, and indulged the idea of hanging geisha hair bells on it and painting my eyelids red to annoy Kawashima, but decided against it. I would go through the marriage service with good manners and think of it as a stepping stone to my freedom.

Shortly before the ceremony, Mai, Kanjurjab's concubine, came to my room with a spray of wild orchids as a gift. She wished me many sons to play on the grasslands with her own, and daughters to comfort me in myoid age. She said that Kanjurjab and his family were honoured to have such a high-born and modest young woman as a wife for their beloved first-born son. Obviously Kawashima had sold me with a fake pedigree.

After the old man Tsgotbaatar and Kawashima had exchanged family gifts, a simple ceremony took place and the deed was done. I stood beside Kanjurjab while the wedding photograph was taken, smelling the musty odour of his clothes and looking down at the curled-up toes of his felt boots. He had changed into traditional Mongolian dress for the ceremony, which suited him better than the western suit he had looked so uncomfortable in. I wondered what sort of lover he would make. I suspected that his body would be soft and his energy far from infinite. But then, even a poor meal can taste good if you are hungry enough.

At the banquet that followed, the men and women were separated by low paper screens framed in black wood above which you could just about see. Most Eastern men do not like to see women eating. Women were, I suppose, expected to live on air like the delicate creatures of legend. But Mongolian men are far more robust than their Japanese brothers and take it as a healthy sign if a woman eats well. I dined with Kanjurjab's mother, his two sisters Alta and Nandak, and an assortment of female cousins and friends. His father's concubine Kara, named after the great sea, was meant to be amongst our number, but she had wandered off distractedly before the first course was served. I had noticed her distress during the ceremony. She seemed to be having some kind of fit and Alta and Nandak had to hold her down by her arms. Mai did not join us, as she was busy in the kitchen checking Kanjurjab's food and making sure he was served good portions.

Kawashima had fourteen guests. They included Admiral Ube and five high-ranking army officers, there to impress the Mongolians. Tsgotbaatar's guests looked like an anarchic lot who appeared to care little about how they were viewed by anyone. Amongst their number was Jon, one of Kanjurjab's brothers-inlaw, who had positioned himself so that he could stare at me through a space in the screens. I had been aware of his interest all day and had noticed the flush that coloured his cheeks whenever I caught his eye. Throughout the long dinner, at which he hardly ate, his eyes rarely wavered from my face and I wondered why his wife Nandak, sitting next to me, appeared oblivious to the attention her husband was giving me.

We were served five-snake stew, an ancient recipe supposed to contain dragon, tiger and phoenix, but in our case made from snake, cat and chicken. It was followed by little mounds of coagulated blood taken from the backbones of young chickens and allowed to half dry in the air. Lastly came oysters, each one with a pearl held fast in its glutinous membrane. 'A small token,' as Kawashima so elegantly put it, 'from Japan to its most esteemed allies.'

When the meal was finished Nobu came to take his leave of me. He wished me luck and said that if I had been his blood sister he would have been sorry for me, but as it was he thought I would do well in the country that bordered the one my ancestors had ruled. 'Life will be less interesting without you,' he said kindly.

As I waited alone for my new mother-in-law to take me to my husband, Kawashima entered my room smiling. He stood behind me and cupped my breasts with his square hands, squeezing them until I moaned with desire and pain.

'Never again, Yoshiko,' he said. 'What a pity.'

I put my finger to his still-swollen lip and pressed until he winced with pain. Nothing more was said. After all that had been between us our goodbye was to inflict pain on each other. As tenderness had never been an ingredient of our lovemaking, I did not expect or miss it in our farewell.

Mai came in Xue's place to tell me that Kanjurjab would not lie with me that night as the journey had tired him and he did not wish to disappoint me. Her little moon face was flushed red and her eyes would not hold mine.

And so, on our wedding night my husband chose over me the comfort of his plump little concubine who treated him more like a son than a lover. I thought it showed a lack of adventure and did not bode well for our future intimacy. Despite Kawashima's prediction, that night, as on many others to follow, I slept alone and unstraddled.