The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel (19 page)

It gave me a thrill to notice that the small, jagged scar I had inflicted on his lip was still there, permanently etched white against his florid lips. As I watched him through the glass door taking leave of his companion, I felt weak with desire for him. I longed to stand with him behind me and feel his desire and anger as he entered me in the rough way that rarely varied in his lovemaking. I could smell him where he had brushed against me, and I savoured once more the scent of his sweat and the familiar fennel soap that he always used.

That same night my companion, one Doctor Atarki, was the beneficiary of all the passion Kawashima had stirred in me. Atarki, a respected Tokyo surgeon, liked to play the victim, the princess's servant. He enjoyed me ordering him to my bed to be my plaything. But that night it was my pleasure that was paramount. I blindfolded him so that I could impose in my mind Kawashima's face in place of his. Although he enjoyed being commanded by me, I don't think Atarki was comforted that night, and feeling that I had used him more than he me, I refused his gift of money, which embarrassed him.

'You must let me give you a present, Princess,' he said. 'Maybe some jade? I know a craftsman who works in a stone so pale it is almost white.'

'You may owe me a favour and that will be the end of it,' I dictated, and he agreed.

It was at this point that I decided it was time to make contact with Sorry. I knew that I could simply wait for her at dusk by the opium seller's door where she came at least once in every three days to replenish her stocks. But instead I positioned myself across the street from Kawashima's house, disguised in my dress and high heels with a fan for extra concealment.

I hoped that I might catch a glimpse of Natsuko, which was unlikely as she rarely left the house. I cannot explain my love for Natsuko. I stole her husband, brought trouble to her house and unsettled her boys. I never once gave Natsuko a reason to love me, but against reason I longed for her affection. I did not see her that day nor was I ever to see her again, but I remember her whenever I see black pearls or extra bright carp. She lives in the shadows of my life, in my dreams and in my worst fears. Who would have thought that Natsuko would come to occupy such a potent place in my heart?

There was something different about the house that I couldn't at first work out. Then I noticed that there was no watchman at the gate, a sight from my youth that was no longer common in Tokyo. I felt proud that I had lived on that cusp between the old and the new world. I had spent my childhood in a land where women practised the tea ceremony for their masters, where girls were not properly educated and where men took all the decisions that mattered. A few years earlier, Kawashima as good as owned the watchmen he allowed to guard our gate, who would have starved without his patronage. Now, although there were beggars on the streets still, there was plenty of work in the factories and small rooms could be rented cheaply. Modern Tokyo had risen amazingly quickly out of the earthquake that had seen off not only the old buildings, but many of the old ways too.

My heart ached that I could not enter my old home. I would like to have strolled around the western wing and stood quietly by the shrine where Shimako had ended her life. I longed once again to hear my wooden floor sing with the sound of Kawashima's footsteps, and smell the scent of the food Sorry brought to my rooms. So much had happened to change me since I Was last a daughter of the Kawashima household, but I believed that for as long as that house stood there would be a part of me in it that I could never reclaim.

I stayed until the fireflies came out, but Sorry didn't appear; I had to wait three more days before she emerged from the house. When she did, I followed her down the familiar streets to the opium seller's door and called out her name. I was shocked that she recognised me right away and that to her my disguise was completely transparent. She told me that it was my voice that had given me away. Face to face, she said I looked so different from little mistress that even had her eyesight been as good as in her youth she would not have known me. She looked the same sweet old Sorry, but she had developed a chronic cough and her old hands trembled a little. She had the pallor that comes from overindulging in opium, and her once-lively eyes were dull.

I took her back to the little yellow house where we sat on the veranda and drank sake, which made her face red. She knew I had run away from Kanjurjab and told me that Kawashima had been informed of it, and in disgust had said that I was dead to him now and my name was not to be mentioned in his house again.

Sorry was happy enough in her old age but she said without me she could never feel completely at home anywhere. Since my departure there was no one to bring the servants' gossip to, no one who truly understood the workings of a Chinese mind. She was eager to tell me everything about the Kawashimas and her eyes sparkled with joy at sharing news with me once again.

She told me that Natsuko was content to have my name banned and that she had given my rooms to Hideo and his cruel young wife Taeko, a girl who was full of complaint and spent extravagantly.

Teshima's mind had gone. He often had to be reclaimed from the streets, where he wandered with no idea of where he was going. His peasant girls secretly taunted him with tepid soup, cold-water baths and massages too strong for his old bones. They let his toenails grow and never cleaned his teeth. At night they slept either side of him in his bed to wake him on the hour so that he did not pass water on his mattress. Sometimes they would fall back asleep, leaving him on the pot for hours. 'He has a wild look,' Sorry said, 'as though his mind is in a place of torture.'

I did not feel pity for him. After all, he had owned those girls since their birth and they only became what he made them by example.

'They have a good life now,' Sorry laughed. 'It is they who get the best food and he the scraps. Of course, they would be beaten if Kawashima ever found out, but they are as crafty as Teshima was in his sane days and protect themselves from discovery.'

After our first meeting Sorry came to see me every afternoon. I loved being with her and hearing all the Kawashima news. As in the old days she cooked for me, bought my opium and each evening before she returned home she would brush my hair. She taught Miura some of her Chinese recipes and told her stories of what an adventurous child I had been. I was the heroine of Sorry's tales and in them I always triumphed over adversity.

Sorry told me that Natsuko was kind to her and would often give her little presents of fruit. Occasionally they would walk together in the garden and Natsuko would reminisce about happier times spent with her sister Shimako. She never mentioned me or spoke of my time in her house, but she treated Sorry well and I was grateful to her for that. Whatever Sorry said about missing me, she had found a good home in which to spend her last years.

Kawashima had adopted a new, younger geisha in Tokyo who Sorry said pleased him greatly. The one in Osaka was left with her hundred kimonos to dream of happier times.

In 1926, at the beginning of winter, Tamura sent me a politician called Sesyu Hanaoka. Sesyu came from a wealthy, established Tokyo family who for a century had dealt in wine, tea and salt. He had the whitest teeth I had ever seen and dark hair with eyes to match. He was ridiculously generous and even though he had paid Tamura an unusually large bonus to put him at the top of her list for me, he still showered me with presents. In no time at all the little house began to fill with bolts of silk, gold cigarette lighters, imported perfume, strings of pearls and endless supplies of tobacco and alcohol.

Sesyu was a man who enjoyed having fun. He would take me to the latest American films and to dinner in the private rooms of the best restaurants. He gave parties at my house where his friends would come with their cafe girls and stay until dawn. Although he was a member of the diet he never talked politics with me, but would sometimes speak about his family business.

Like most of his friends who came to the house, he had married into his own class. He had four children, all boys whom he loved and indulged. Tamura told me that his wife was ten years younger than him and quite pretty, but Sesyu himself rarely mentioned his family. It suited me not to talk of them with him. He had his life with them which had nothing to do with me. I knew they would be with him long after I had left him and that was how it should be. It was easy not to be the jealous lover for I did not love Sesyu, although it was impossible not to like him for his sense of fun and his generosity, which bordered on madness. It was not confined to me alone; he gave Sorry and Miura presents of money and once he bought Miura a beautiful metal cage for her canary to replace her ageing wooden one. She was speechless with gratitude and cried for hours.

During our lovemaking, he liked me to keep my high heels on and sometimes he would paint my nipples with honey and at the height of his passion lick it off as though it were the nectar of the gods. The smell of honey and sex would always remind me of Teshima, and my fifteenth birthday.

I enjoyed the way that, after sex, Sesyu would lie on my bed and smoke with me, telling me jokes and seeking my opinion on things. As far as Japanese men go he was less traditional in his views on women and more relaxed than any I had known before him. Like Tamura, he admired all things American. He bought me nylons and pretty suspender belts so that he could slide his hand up the silky length of my legs and make love to me as I leant against my bedroom wall, wearing nothing but them and the shoes that made me taller than him.

Within a few months of knowing me, Sesyu made Tamura the offer of a huge financial settlement so that he might be my only lover. Tamura, by then almost ready to leave for America, accepted his offer and honourably gave me half of the money. I secretly continued to see Dr Atarki, not only because by his neediness he had found a friend in me, but also because I did not wish to be owned by Sesyu.

In autumn of the following year, when the trees were bare of leaves and the evenings dark Sesyu told me that he was madly in love with me. He said that he wanted to buy me a bigger house where I could live elegantly with servants and where he would feel more at home. Although it was a tempting offer I didn't consider it, not even for a moment. I was already bored with life in the little yellow house and I knew that when Tamura left Tokyo there would be little to keep me from moving on. I had no intention of spending my life as Sesyu's girl only to end up like Kawashima's Osaka geisha, alone and dependent on his favours. I told him that I would consider his offer, which was a generous one, but needed thought. He was not happy, but feeling sure of my eventual acceptance he granted me the time. It was lucky for me that I did not love him or my fate would have been sealed under his exclusive protection. I would have been condemned to the life that Sesyu ordained for me until my looks began to fade and he to tire of me.

I had a fancy to go to Shanghai for a while. I had heard that life was exciting there and that women were not as confined by tradition as they were in Japan. Sesyu himself had told me that Shanghai was considered to be the Paris of the east and was full of foreigners, imported goods and American marines. His enthusiasm was infectious and increased my desire to go. Japan was my true home, but I could no longer live there without the recognition I so craved. I would need to do something noble so that I would eventually be able to return to my homeland as a welcomed daughter, with my reputation restored. Perhaps in Shanghai I would think of a way of doing that.

A cool spring followed that winter but by May Tokyo had become hot and humid. Sesyu continually pestered me to move with him to a larger house and I told him that I would, but that I wanted a few weeks in Tamura's house to pack up and to give her time to find a new tenant. Sesyu, impatient as ever, bought the house anyway and, generous as always, presented the deeds to me as a gift. He reluctantly agreed to keep his word and not expect me to move in until the summer's end.

As if in slow motion, those last few weeks crawled by in long, humid days and short, rain-drenched nights. My time was taken up with a series of pleasures made more delightful because they were coming to an end. I entertained Atarki in the mornings when I knew that Sesyu would be working. Most days I had lunch with Tamura who, almost ready for flight, was full of nervous energy and could never quite settle to a conversation, or sit still for long. I caught something of her excitement and began in my head to make my own plans for departure. In the afternoons I slept on the daybed on the first floor, covering myself in a silk shawl. In my dreams I would find myself in intimate conversations with Natsuko, or watching Teshima's girls giggling together at his discomfort. I would wake just before Kawashima was about to enter me and be filled with disappointment.

I didn't look forward to telling Sorry that once again I was leaving Tokyo. I knew that it would make her sad. She had struck up a touching friendship with Miura, who had found another mother in Sorry. The pair of them would come to my bedroom full of excitement, as I dressed for the evening. We would drink gin flavoured with the juice of sloes and smoke the French cigarettes that went well with it. Miura would help me to bathe and get my clothes ready, while Sorry, finding it hard to bend or to move quickly, would sit on the bed and explain to Miura how I liked things.

I usually dined out with Sesyu and his friends in one or other of the popular restaurants where, because they spent like emperors, they were treated like royalty. Once he took me to the Kabuki theatre, where all the female parts were played by men. They clicked around the stage as though on bound feet, their faces slyly painted into characterless masks that mocked real women. Despite the make-up and the exaggerated movements, some of them contrived to look more beautiful than one would have thought possible.