The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel (18 page)

She was right. Not that we were really alike in little things, but more that we had the same determination to make our own lives, whatever the cost. Like me, regardless of tradition, Tamura ignored class and convention and took the path most enticing to her.

The journey passed quickly in her company and on the last day as we passed Mount Fuji I pointed it out to her, saying, 'How beautiful it is, Tamura, the snow so untouched. It will be as cold as Suiyuan at the top.'

'I don't care for mountains and open views much,' she said. 'I am only at home where buildings etch the skyline and the streets are full of p-people.'

'You would hate Mongolia, Tamura,' I said. 'There is nothing but space there.'

I knew what she meant by open spaces being frightening, but despite my love of cities and my unhappiness in Mongolia, nature still had the power to touch me without fear. For all her strength, Tamura did not entirely trust herself with her own survival. She believed that money solved every problem and that without it life was a dangerous thing. But money, while useful, will not solve every problem and it would have been of little help to her at the top of Mount Fuji.

Perhaps having a child made Tamura more vulnerable than me. While I was sure that I was the safety net in my own life, Tamura thought hers was wealth, but despite that, she was one of the bravest women I have ever known. I had no doubt that she would be happier in America, where money could buy you any life you wanted. In that land of giants the rules were not made by old men whose chauvinistic traditions were bred in the bone. It was easy to picture Tamura swinging on her high heels through the streets of New York, wafting the scent of jasmine around and standing out in the crowd.

Before the journey was over she had offered me one of her smaller houses in the students' quarter, which she said was a very lively area. If I agreed to accept the men she sent to me, she could assure me that in no time at all I would have enough money to establish my own household, or even to join her in New York. I had no desire to go to America, Japan was my only family, but I accepted her offer. It solved my problem of where to live, and I knew that the men Tamura would introduce me to would be of the highest rank and that my life would not be boring. It would suit me very well until it was time to move on.

That journey from Port Arthur to Tokyo remains with me as one of the most delightful trips I have ever made, and the day I met Tamura Hidari remains one of the most fortunate of my life.

My twentieth birthday was celebrated in Tokyo, just as I had hoped it would be all those months ago on the cold plains of Mongolia. It was thrilling to be back in my home city, and I loved the house that Tamura set me up in, not least because every room spoke to me of her. It stood three storeys high with two rooms on each floor and had windows hung with shades the colour of parchment. It was painted pale yellow and wisteria grew against the front walls, reaching almost to the roof. The first floor had a wooden veranda where in the evening, in the cooling air, it was pleasant to sit and listen to the crickets chatter. A long staircase with a turned handrail rose through the house like a tree heading for the light. Every room was warm, which endeared the house to me more than any other of its numerous advantages. At ground level there was a kitchen that smelled of rice water and vegetables. It had two sinks, one at kneeling height, the other sunk into the stone floor. There was a low table bleached white by the summer sun which filled the room from dawn to noon. Three or four sleeping mats were rolled neatly by a door that led out to a walled yard, empty except for a large smooth stone for washing clothes.

I took up residence at the top of the house where in the slightest breeze the roof whispered small complaints to itself. My bed, a low wooden frame with a thin mattress, had a blue cover made from a silk as crisp as paper. It was embroidered with white honeysuckle and single-petal peonies. Behind a tall screen, there was a jug and a basin for washing as well as a square basket filled with cotton towels. Shards of sunlight channelled their way through the thin fabric of the blinds, showing up motes of dust in the lit air.

The rooms on the first floor were mostly used for entertaining, although if I felt tired in the afternoon I would sleep in one or other of them. They were furnished with bamboo furniture, which Tamura liked better than dark wood. She said the gloominess of rosewood and ebony reminded her of her mother-in-law's house. Delicate drawings of storks and weeping fig trees in painted frames lined the walls. There was an oil painting of a girl with long hair carrying an open fan. She was taking tea with an old man who looked like the three-chinned Wu, only not quite as sly. Both rooms shared the veranda and when the wisteria was in flower they seemed cooled by its fragrance. One had a western-style daybed draped with an old kimono and there was a gramophone, which stood on the floor, accompanied by a stack of popular dance and jazz records. By the glass door that led to the veranda, a small painted chest housed not only sake and vodka, but also the newly imported gin that looked like water, smelled of juniper and tasted of sloe. Tamura had generously filled a cedar box with Turkish and French cigarettes, enough to last a month.

The second room was longer and more traditional in style. It had a low Japanese bed which stood only an inch above the floor, a paper screen that hid a large Satsuma-ware washing bowl, and a low bench where tea could be made and served in plain white bowls fashioned from such fine porcelain that you could see the tea glowing through.

I loved the house for being mine alone, and for the way it sat anonymously between similar houses, allowing it the privacy of the undistinguished. My dark days receded in those sunlit ones and it seemed easier to fight my demons when they came.

Tamura sent me a diminutive maid called Miura. She was fifteen years old, worked hard and did what was asked of her without being in the least subservient. Miura would have been startlingly pretty had it not been for a birth deformity that challenged her otherwise enchanting little face. She had been born with a drooping eyelid that almost covered the whole of her right eye, so that she appeared to be permanently winking. Her mother, in desperation to help her daughter, had sold her hair to a wigmaker to pay for a doctor to repair Miura's eyelid. The doctor was in his sixtieth year and suffice to say he would have made a poor seamstress. Miura's eyelid had been only marginally lifted and now it had an uneven scar along the length of it.

I let her sleep in the half-open-to-the-sky room next to the kitchen, which she said was a great luxury for her as she would have been perfectly happy on the kitchen floor. She didn't have a change of clothes and wore shoes two sizes too large for her which she fastened by tying rags around them. She kept a caged canary that she called 'Baby', and talked to it constantly in her own birdlike voice.

Every day I sent her to the market for fresh flowers, as I hated to see even the smallest sign of decay on the lilies and the sprays of orange blossom that I favoured. I cared nothing for the extravagance and in any case I think that Miura sold on the day-old flowers to a nearby hotel that rented its rooms by the hour. As far as I was concerned she was welcome to the few coins she made from the transactions. I have always thought it a good policy to be a generous mistress. Envy and deprivation are the enemies of loyalty, after all.

In no time at all, I became familiar with the complex run of streets, little squares and dead ends that made up my new habitat. It was a busy area where both Japanese and Chinese students in their smart uniforms thronged together as they made their way to their lessons. There were plenty of shops, a few small hotels and a reliable laundry. Two streets away there was a bathhouse that was known for its pure water and scented steam.

Wealthy Chinese families had begun sending their young bloods to Japanese military academies, to be trained in the tradition of discipline and instilled with the determination to rid China of the communism that threatened their privileged way of life. Dressed in uniforms that reminded me of Yamaga, they came in their time off to socialise in the streets of my quarter where they could speak their own language and eat their native food, cooked on the pavement by other scholars funding their own education.

I was glad to see Chinese families recognising the superior qualities of a Japanese military training, not only because usually Chinese soldiers are merely untrained drifters without a trade or land, but also because communism is alien to human nature. The strong will always succeed over the weak, oil will always rise above water and there's an end to it. Be it emperor or dictator, both require an underclass to rule over. The language may differ, but the common man's life will always be formed by hands other than his own.

I enjoyed the sight of the students strutting around, but for me they did not compare with their Japanese counterparts who, although usually shorter in stature, had a stronger measure of iron in their blood.

I would have loved to have worn such uniforms myself, but Tamura advised that I would be better disguised as a mysterious high-born Chinese, rumoured to be of royal blood. She thought that Japanese men would flock to such a creature and would pay well to be entertained by a woman of a higher class than their own. I pointed out to her that such a disguise was not too far from the truth of my origins and she said that she knew that, but it was not Eastern Jewel who I was attempting to hide, but Kawashima Yoshiko.

So I stayed in my elegant dresses and took to wearing elaborate make-up and imported shoes with heels as high as Tamura's. I smoked my cigarettes through a long ivory holder and wore fresh flowers in my hair. I called myself Yang Fuei Fei, the name of a legendary Chinese imperial concubine who, like Helen of Troy, was said to have brought about the ruin of an empire. I would have preferred more comfortable clothes, but I had to agree with Tamura that not only did I look beautiful in the clothes she urged upon me, but also my disguise was thus complete.

I only entertained men who appealed to me. They did not have to be handsome, but as Tamura sent me only rich ones, my wealth increased at a satisfactory pace. Occasionally, for my own pleasure and excitement and at no cost to them, I would take to my bed one of the numerous uniformed boys who filled the streets and who were themselves looking for adventure. I had no objection to sharing my couch with older men, but no one wants to dine on fish alone and variety has always pleased me.

Tamura told me that my reputation as a woman of royal blood, talented in the art of lovemaking, was spreading, and she had more requests from men who wanted to meet me than it was possible for one woman to fulfil.

'You will make us both rich,' she said. 'No matter how much I ask for an introduction there is always a waiting list of eager suitors ready to pay the price.'

'Let's make the most of it,' I said. 'Next season they will want only virgins or peasant girls.'

'Then we will give them what they want,' Tamura said confidently.

I knew though that the life I was living would not suit me for long and eventually something new would take my fancy. In any case, Tamura had already begun to sell off her businesses and would soon have enough money to live the life she desired for herself and her daughter in America. I thought that she should go sooner rather than later as, despite the effort she made to appear happy, I could tell that she was pining for her daughter Sachiko.

I asked her how she intended to claim her daughter back from her in-laws, for they were unlikely to just hand the child over. She said that she had everything planned and that nothing would stop her, certainly not her disagreeable mother-in-law, who was a stupid woman without imagination or wit and who was easily deceived. Tamura still had a key to her husband's family home and she said she intended to enter their house in the hours before dawn when everyone was in a deep sleep. She would take her daughter, and within the shortest period of time she and Sachiko would have begun their journey to America.

'What if Sachiko cries out?' I asked her.

Tamura laughed. 'She won't,' she said. 'Sachiko is used to my visits; I go into that house and her room several nights a week. The moment I wake her, she smiles and wants to play. She knows that I love her and will come with me willingly. She is a clever girl and has kept her promise to keep my visits secret.'

I worried about Tamura stealing into her in-laws' house and shuddered at the thought of her being apprehended. For a week after she had told me of her nocturnal visits, all my dreams concerned flight and capture and I could not sleep easy knowing that she put herself at such risk. If Tamura was discovered, her mother-in-law would remove Sachiko to one of her daughter's houses where Tamura would find it impossible to see her. She could be arrested or even confined to an institution for what would be considered her unnatural behaviour. An independent woman willingly divorced from her family is likely to be thought mad in Japan.

I knew that she had already begun to convert the money from her businesses into dollars. She would have enough to make the journey and set herself up in America before summer came again to Tokyo. She often tried to talk me into going with her to New York, but much as I cared for her, I could not imagine myself there.

Time was passing quickly, as it always does when life is full. I often thought of my Japanese family who were close to me in distance yet might as well have been a million miles away, barred as I was from their company. Yet one overcast, humid day as I was entering a hotel to have lunch with Tamura and a new client, I almost collided with Kawashima as I walked through the revolving door into the lobby. He was leaving with a colleague who, like him, was dressed in a western suit with dark shoes, carrying a leather briefcase. He glanced at me with interest but without recognition, and gave a little bow of apology as I turned my face from him. I was so shaken by this brief encounter that I had to sit in the lobby until my heart stopped racing.