The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel (8 page)

In his eagerness to placate me and to remove himself, Yamaga dressed quickly, his haste twisting the pain in me. His voice took on a hateful tone of pity.

'Look, Yoshi,' he said, 'I am going to tell you something that Kawashima should have told you himself. You are already promised to Kanjurjab, a prince and therefore your equal. You will go to him in Mongolia. He knows nothing of your reputation here and he will not judge you by it. It was a diplomatic choice made many months ago and should suit you well. We have had our fun and now it is over. You are a strong woman, I know that you will make the best of it. A prince for a princess will be an equal match.'

'And what of love?' I cried.

'What of it?' he said. 'It has nothing to do with us or with marriage, it is a thing apart and must not intrude on life's serious purpose. Stop thinking with your blood, Yoshiko, use your mind and prosper.' He picked up his hat and moved towards the door. 'Have a fortunate life, Yoshi, be a dutiful wife and accept your fate. At the end of the day you are only a woman, there is no other way for you.'

He was wrong in that, there are always other ways for those prepared to risk them. But I was so wounded then that I could not take relief from that conviction or from my mother's words, which Sorry kept repeating like a mantra: 'The stronger the wind the stronger the tree.' I had never desired anything or anyone as much as I desired Yamaga, but in loving him I had forgotten my vow never to care for anyone above myself, and I was paying a high price for that lapse.

I would say goodbye to that day, put it behind me for ever. From now on I would date the things that happened to me to be before Yamaga or after Yamaga. He remains for me a splendid, deathless man, the only one I was to love in the way that can leave you feeling disembowelled. He left an ache in me that can be accessed far too easily for my liking, and one that still erupts on shadowy days in what I call my little deaths. Yet I have never regretted my time with him. It is proper to experience true love at least once in your life.

Sorry brought me an opium pipe to remove me from my misery, but I refused it. I could not bear the thought of waking from a sweet dream to such morbid pain. I lay deathly quiet, fearing to move in case I broke into pieces. Through those dark hours I made no attempt to soothe Sorry, who was curled on the floor at my bedside, crying my tears for me.

I could have licked my wounds and tried to change, but that is more easily said than done. In any case I knew that my appetite for sex would overpower any attempt I might make at ladylike celibacy in the future. I was not a hypocrite, nor did I want to impose on my nature those things that Japanese men require in a wife. Even though I was branded shameless, I refused to stand in anything but my true colours. Yet had I been more like Natsuko, diffident and submissive, Kawashima might not have been tempted to use me in the way that he did. I thought it useless to fight my nature for it would take alchemy to achieve a metamorphosis; my fate, though, was a different matter. I do not share the Chinese attitude of resignation to fate, I believe that, even unknowingly, we make our own. I made a vow never again to be the victim of my senses. I would keep that giving part of me, once offered to Yamaga, separate. It was possible I would love again, but never so deeply, or at such a cost to myself.

Natsuko took a sly pleasure in telling me that Yamaga had become engaged the month after he had met me to the youngest daughter of a family with spectacular ancestry. This girl, she said, was so exquisite that she had been likened to the legendary Chinese beauty Xi Shi. It was said of Xi Shi that she was so delicate she could dance on a lotus leaf without sinking beneath the waters. Natsuko said the fortune-teller had forecast that Yamaga's wife-tobe would give him many sons and fill his heart with music.

I tried not to let her see the pain her news gave me but she knew it instinctively, like an animal in a fight knows its opponent's weaknesses. I let her have her victory. Poor Natsuko, taking so much pleasure in a triumph that was not of her own making. From that time on, I understood that there are two kinds of women, those like Natsuko and Yamaga's chosen one, who give up the adventure of their lives to live safely and well thought of, and women like me who live as we choose, whatever the price. Much as I longed for Yamaga to love me, he had convinced me that I could never be the sort of woman he would be happy to take as a wife. It was useless lamenting the experiences that had made me. It was done and that was that.

I waited until I could speak without weeping before tempting Kawashima back to my bed. I played the whore for him, the boy for him, and let him mark me with bites and bruises. But it was too soon for the pleasure of the pain he gave me to erase the deeper hurt of Yamaga's rejection.

As Kawashima never spoke of the marriage supposedly arranged for me with the Mongolian prince, I began to hope that Yamaga had been mistaken. But soon whispers surrounding my forthcoming betrothal began in the house. I went to Kawashima and asked directly if it was true that I was betrothed to Prince Kanjurjab. He said that it was and that I should celebrate the engagement as it would be a fortunate union for me. He told me that Kanjurjab's family were highly thought of by the Japanese and it was an honour that I had been chosen by them.

I was outraged at the idea that I would be sent like a sack of good rice to this stranger thought to be my equal, and I did all that I could to persuade Kawashima to allow me to break the marriage agreement and remain a daughter of his house. He became furious and ordered me to be silent and never to speak of disobeying him again.

'It was my duty to find you a husband, Yoshiko; don't be so ungrateful as to question my choice.'

He was ordering my fate in much the same way my father, Prince Su, had done when I was eight years old. Yet little had changed in the eleven years that had passed since then, I knew that there would be no reasoning with Kawashima. I was a woman and it was unthinkable that I should have ambitions of my own.

'You will go to Kanjurjab in two months' time at the winter's end,' he said. 'The spring sun will lift your spirits and allow you to see how fortunate you are. In the meantime we can enjoy our lives as we have always done.'

Natsuko rejoiced in Kawashima's choice of Kanjurjab for me, a union she would not have wished for any of her own daughters. Yet with me gone, whom would she have to blame for the bad luck that dogged her life?

Sorry was old now, and didn't feel strong enough to accompany me to Mongolia, but neither did she wish to return to China. She had heard that nobody knew who ran China any more. The number of poor had increased and were dying on the streets from starvation.

'I have lost touch with my family and have lived here in Japan too long to fill my stomach with old water, mistress,' she said.

I would miss her terribly but I didn't insist she come with me. Instead I went to Natsuko to request she allow Sorry to remain in her home as a kitchen servant. That way she could at least live amongst familiar faces and have a roof over her head. Our years together had secured Sorry enough money to indulge herself in the small luxuries she enjoyed and the opium she loved above food. I wanted her to have an easy old age. Natsuko listened politely to my request, her pale face expressionless.

'Tell me why I should do you this favour, Yoshiko?' she asked.

'Why should you not, Natsuko?' I replied. 'It is such a little thing. An act of kindness from a benevolent lady to a humble servant.'

She smiled coldly, relishing the silence while she kept me waiting for her answer.

'It is as you say, Yoshiko, a small act of kindness. Yet that is something you have never shown me. However, I am not one to harbour grudges so I will keep your servant in my household. There is, though, a price for this insignificant favour.'

'Well then, Natsuko,' I said, 'name your price.'

'Give me back my black pearl,' she said quietly.

Without hesitation I untied the cord from around my neck and handed her the dark globe, still warm from my body. She didn't thank me but I heard the faintest sigh as she reached up and secured the pearl around her own neck. It did not flatter her as it had me. Her skin, soft with time, made a poor setting for such a fine gem. And so it was that I was able to buy for Sorry a sheltered old age. Years later in Shanghai I purchased a similar jewel of a better quality, but it lacked the potency of Natsuko's pearl and had no history to it.

Spring came gloriously with glazed blue skies, a profusion of pink and white blossom in the orchard, and the starry white flower of the garlic scenting the air. Then nature, fickle as the gods, changed her mind and an unseasonal snow froze the blooms, turning them to the colour of tea before felling them to the ground.

Natsuko complained that fruit would be scarce that summer and the household expenses sure to rise. She had a mean-spirited streak that I despised. Money is for the living after all. What use will it be to any of us in the afterlife? Our wits, I am sure, will be a better currency.

Two weeks before my departure, Teshima requested to see me. With watery eyes he said that he would miss me. He called me by his dead daughter Satsuko's name and apologised for the great age that barred him from making the journey to my wedding. I thought that he must have entered his dotage, his mind seemed clouded and he had begun mixing up people and places. I knew that his daughter Satsuko had died of food poisoning in the year before Kawashima had been born, and seeking to hurt him I bluntly reminded him of this. He just looked at me quizzically and said, 'You must be a good girl, Satsuko, and show your husband honour by giving him many sons.'

Even in senility, Teshima assumed the right to lecture me. Standing before me dressed in his loosely tied cotton coat and little else, he reminded me of how he had prepared me to be a 'good wife'. He reached towards me with a bony hand and began to fondle my breasts, closing his eyes and sighing. The gesture, so filled with ownership and expectation of my compliance, was hateful and filled me with anger. My own desire, so much more discerning now than in the days when Teshima had used me, remained unstirred at the sight of his thin veined hands and stained skin.

'Don't speak to me of honour, old man,' I hissed at him. 'What honourable man would seduce his own granddaughter?'

He turned from me and began feeding the little caged bird that lived its days in the shadowy corner of his room.

'Satsuko is a hawk come to eat you,' he sang, poking his fingers into the cage. The songbird hopped soundlessly about its perch, its tiny eyes dulled in resignation to its captivity. As I left the room the two young peasant girls Teshima had owned since the day of their birth entered carrying bowls of soup and rice. One began spooning soup into his mouth while the other mopped his chin with a length of damask. I thought that he had already forgotten our conversation, but in a moment of lucidity he called out my Chinese name.

'Eastern Jewel,' he said contemptuously, 'we are not of the same blood, you foolish girl. It's blood that counts, after all.'

It occurred to me then that even though I hated the idea of living in Mongolia, and intended in one way or another to escape it, I would not be sorry to leave this house that ate the lives of women. I felt a creeping sympathy for Natsuko who, suffering loneliness from the neglect of her family, had retreated sadly to her shady rooms. I knew that the men would continue to prosper. Teshima in his old age would have his every wish fulfilled by the serving girls whose lives were his. Kawashima and his sons Hideo and Nobu would continue their lordly lives as rich powerbrokers. In those last days in his house I felt that I had little to thank Kawashima for, other than my Japanese nationality of which I was proud. I couldn't know then that years later, when it would mean life or death to me, he would deny me even that.

With her daughters married, except for her birth-marked girl Itani, who Kawashima had set up in a junior branch of his house in Osaka where her brothers would stay on their trips to that city, Natsuko was bereft. Soon she would be left with only her spoilt daughter-in-law Taeko for company. Taeko was to marry Hideo in the summer when the white anemones would be in flower. It was said that Taeko, although beautiful, had a mean nature and rumoured that she beat her servants when they displeased her.

I imagined that the ghost of poor Shimako would always accompany Natsuko in the shadows of the house, but a dead sister is poor company in difficult times. Ichiyo, herself now married to a wealthy industrialist twice her age, told me that Natsuko thought Hideo's wedding date too close to the festival of the dead to be a fortuitous one. I wished Natsuko many grandchildren to liven her days. I could not bring myself to be so pitiful as to hold a grudge against her for all her little acts of cruelty. After all, I had performed so many of my own. In any case, it is a waste of energy to harbour ill will against the unlucky. I was pleased to discover in myself an affection for Natsuko that defied all that had been between us. I was ready to leave, but I would miss her familiar cool smile and the ordered home that she ran with such dedication.

On my last night in Kawashima's house I dreamt that I needed to relieve myself. Every pot or hole I approached was cracked or had a snake in it. Try as I might I could find no place that was suitable and I awoke exhausted. I lay in bed watching the sky lighten, thinking that I would never again view the dawn from the bed I had shared with Yamaga or hear the singing of the hall's wooden floor as Sorry brought me breakfast.