The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel (23 page)

When my mood returned to normal, Mari brought her for dinner at the Central and introduced us. 'Call me Valerie,' she said in her light, evenly pitched voice. It was a name she liked and had chosen for herself. Her real one, she said, would have given away her royal connections and put her in danger from the revolutionaries that she said were everywhere in Shanghai.

As the city was full of people claiming to be from foreign royal ancestry it was hard to be impressed by Valerie's story, but she certainly had something of the patrician about her. No foreigner in Shanghai liked to be thought ordinary. I did not blame her any more than I did myself for promoting the most glamorous image that she could. Valerie was a year or so older than me, but she contrived to look younger. She always dressed in white, like the American naval wives who shopped at Hall and Holtz, and mimicked the accents of the English upper class. She used a man's cologne that smelled of lime and basil and was never seen without her string of pearls, which she said lit the paleness of her skin.

She liked to give the impression of being more cynical than she actually was, but I discovered her to be quite tender in her nature. She gave money she could ill afford to beggars and loved children, especially those of the poor. I didn't care much for her air of moral superiority, but she had a quality of goodness in her nature that encouraged friendship. There was something trustworthy about Valerie that put people at ease. Perhaps it was the confident way she moved or her childlike acceptance of everyone she came into contact with, but whatever it was you could not walk with her without linking your arm through hers, or stop yourself from taking her hand as you crossed the road.

Mari thought that we would make good companions and, in a desire to be in control of everything and everyone, she encouraged me to become Valerie's lover.

And so it was Valerie who introduced me to the games that women play in the bedroom. And that was what they were for me, just games to while away the long afternoons when Shanghai slept. Valerie was too gentle in bed to satisfy me, but I found comfort in being touched by her and never suffered those moments of loneliness I experienced after sex with men. Her pale skin, delicate bone structure and air of fragility were so feminine that I could not think of her as a lover even though I always had wonderful orgasms in her company.

I think that Mari's lovemaking must have been quite different to Valerie's. She had once shown me a leather dildo that had been fashioned for her in India and I remember thinking that, if she enjoyed that, how much more she would enjoy the real thing. When I said as much to her she replied that she was the one who used it on the girls who came to her bed, never the other way round. Valerie relied on a more sensuous style of lovemaking that did not involve toys. I enjoyed the strange perverseness of it, but then I enjoy a good massage or a dish of sushi, both of which I can live without. I discovered that sex with a woman is like being hungry for meat and being given soup; you do not starve but it isn't quite enough.

Valerie didn't agree that sexual love between women was perverse. She said that she believed that whatever existed in nature was by definition natural, and that God had chosen for her to be as she was.

On Christmas Eve, a few days after my first sexual encounter with Valerie, I was looking for fun and agreed to share a flower girl with Mari at the house of Sure Satisfaction where the male clients, taking us for prostitutes, handled us familiarly, one of them saying he would take both of us for the night. When they discovered we were about the same business as themselves some were amused, but most were disgusted. I have never understood why men feel so challenged by a woman's sexual appetite when they don't seem to mind other kinds of greed too much. Perhaps it clashes with their notion that the seed of a woman's lust should not set itself, but be planted by the one perfect gardener.

For myself I never felt ashamed of my choices, yet I will say that from the first time I slept with Valerie, I lost something earthed in myself and became with her, as with every other woman I coupled with after, a good actress. I knew that Valerie was being faithful to herself and her true nature, while I was going against mine and seeking comfort under false pretences. I found it unsettling and began to experience feelings of disgust with myself. I didn't want to end up like Mari, indulging in too much of everything and excited by nothing. In the sleepless reaches of the night, I was taken down strange paths where, although I was lying still, unnamed fears made my heart race. There were times in those boundless days in Shanghai when I longed to be back with Natsuko and Sorry, unaware that as well as excitement and fun there was a high price to be paid for freedom. As a child I had wanted to break the few boundaries that held me. As an adult I mourned that there were none left.

But despite my misgivings, Valerie turned out to be one of the better things in my life, at that time at least. She was interesting and generous and I enjoyed her cool company and the way she tapped her way lightly through life. The best thing about making a woman your lover is that she will become your intimate confidante and closest friend. And so it was with Valerie. The lovemaking became nothing more than an aperitif to the sharing of confidences and the companionship that grew between us. She did not mind that I had other lovers and told me that her own plan was to marry a rich man so that she would never have to worry about money again. But despite her venal plans, there was something puritanical about her. And though I liked her well it was hard to love her because she kept a portion of herself in reserve.

I had expected to see Mari at the Christmas Eve party at the American Club but she didn't turn up. It was odd, because I knew that she was looking forward to it. I thought that perhaps she was still at the House of Sure Satisfaction, where I had left her asleep in the arms of the doll-like prostitute she seemed so taken with.

Christmas Day was spent in bed with Valerie, recovering from the excesses of the night before and discussing how unlike Mari it was to miss the fun. So after a rest and a good dinner, Valerie and I went to the Central to see what had happened to her. I asked for her at the desk where they said that she had checked out without leaving a forwarding address or a return date. It was hard to believe that she would have left so suddenly without taking any leave of us. I went to her rooms and found them completely empty of her things. The bed was made up, its cover smooth, its pillows plumped. The vacant wardrobes smelled of her perfume but nothing else spoke of her occupancy. Even the cedarwood linings were gone from her drawers. There was only the faintest scent of Mari to suggest that she had spent the last five years in those tidy rooms that looked as anonymous as any other unoccupied suite at the Central.

I questioned the doorman of the hotel who told me that he hadn't seen Mari leave, but that she had sent friends for her belongings. He wouldn't tell me who the friends were, even though I tipped him generously. I could see that he was scared and I didn't push him. It wasn't hard to work out whose names he could not bring himself to say.

When I checked with her Korean partners, they told me that she had gone back to India. I had seen her only the day before and she had said nothing to me about leaving Shanghai. I knew that she had intended claiming back her stake in their club, and putting the money into some shares she had been given a tip about. I couldn't help feeling that that was at the root of things and it disturbed me. It had only been a week since she had commissioned a diamond bracelet to be made for her by the talented Russian jeweller who worked from a tiny shop in the so-called Nevsky Prospekt. She had spent a long time over its design and put down a large deposit on it. It seemed unlikely that she would have left without her money or the bracelet.

I waited two days before informing the police of her disappearance. I didn't really expect her to suddenly turn up. They said they would make enquiries, but they stressed that people came and went in Shanghai as they pleased. As she had checked out of the Central of her own free will there wasn't much they could do.

Valerie told me not to worry. She said she had met women like Mari before and they rarely put down roots. She had probably tired of Shanghai and had left wanting to avoid a fuss. I couldn't take comfort in Valerie's view of events. For one thing she hardly knew Mari and for another, I knew Mari well enough to know that she was still in love with Shanghai.

I don't know why Mari's disappearance bothered me so much; after all, I felt little if any true attachment to her. But I did suspect that something in her life had gone badly wrong and I felt that, had she been planning to leave, I would have been amongst the first to know. It was unsettling and I would have wanted her to enquire after my well-being if I had disappeared. There is, after all, an unspoken obligation of care in every friendship.

Years later at a time when I had nothing to do but think about my past, I remembered that at the time of Mari's vanishing, I had come to a crossroads in my own life. I was aware that my nature was reckless and that if my spirit was to remain basically good, I had to rein it in. But my instinct led me to explore the shadows of my nature and I chose the darker path and let go of Mari. I should not have given up the search so easily, but as I was to discover, whatever I did would have been of no use for I believe Mari was dead even before I reported her missing.

I slept only once more with the sly-eyed Korean partner of Mari. I had grown tired of his brutality and his peasant's nature, which was greedy and desperate. As in other lovers that I chose because they reminded me of Kawashima, he turned out to be like all imitations, a poor one. I knew without proof that he was responsible for Mari's disappearance and after we had made love and he had drunk a third of a bottle of gin, I asked him to tell me what had happened to her. All he would say was that perhaps some poor farmer would get more with his night-soil delivery than he had bargained for, and that I would be wise to forget Mari and stop asking about her.

Mari had run up huge gambling debts which she had demanded the Koreans pay for her out of the club's profits. Perhaps she had threatened to expose the brothers' illegal dealings and was becoming a nuisance to them. It was likely that rather than allow her to retrieve her money and continue to meddle in their affairs, they had murdered her and disposed of her body.

Such was the ethos in Shanghai in those days that I was not particularly surprised. I knew that given the passing of a few weeks, Mari would be completely forgotten. It frightened me to think that if I upset the wrong people, what had happened to her could easily happen to me. It was tragic that Mari, so fastidious and obsessively tidy in life, should end up mingling her blood with the pungent ooze of Shanghai's night soil. I dreamt of her lying at the bottom of a lake, her dark hair tangled in weeds, her huge eyes translucent and hopeless.

Perhaps I should have left Shanghai then, when I was still afraid and still able to be shocked. Instead I bought myself a small pearlhandled revolver, and although I felt a little ashamed not to be pursuing justice for Mari, I went on with my life. I whiled away the next couple of days in the company of opium and an assortment of unexceptional men and agreed to go with Valerie to the New Year's Eve party at the Cathay Hotel.

By the time we arrived at the Cathay's splendid ballroom it was crowded to capacity with Shanghai society, the orchestra was in full swing and Valerie and I had to shout at each other to make ourselves heard. The singer, a Chinese boy, polished to perfection, looking like a ventriloquist's dummy in a western tailcoat with white tie, was crooning a song about the moon and love. His hair was slicked back and glossy to match his shoes and I remember noticing that he wore make-up. The huge ballroom was extravagantly decorated with hundreds of tiny lights strung around the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, which were set in ornate plaster frames. White lilies garlanded the malachite pillars that supported the domed ceiling of the vast chamber in which no space had been left unembellished.

Shanghainese, White Russians, the British, of course, and quite a lot of Japanese who looked bemused by it all lined themselves three deep at the bar and crowded the dance floor. There were stars from the new film studios, dressed in satin evening dresses and wearing spectacular faux jewellery, their eyes dark as ink in their overpowdered faces. American sailors in white uniforms that looked too small for their big bodies stood heads above everyone else. Beautiful Chinese and Russian girls with their gangster lovers flaunted their imported dresses and freshly permed hair. There too, attempting to look as though they were enjoying themselves, were the mournful-eyed Jewish Russians who drank too much and took snuff. I saw the manager from the Venus Cafe with his exquisite half-French, half-Chinese boyfriend and the girl who had dressed my hair that afternoon in the beauty parlour in the French concession.

By the time I had drunk two vodkas and the best part of a bottle of champagne with Valerie and some others we had picked up at the bar of the Central, I was feeling lively and looking for fun. Amongst our party was the pink-skinned German who had been in the pool of the Shanghai Club. This time he was with a Chinese girl dressed in a tight gold cheongsam as bright as Natsuko's lucky carp. Mari's two Koreans joined us with their new partner, a fat little Russian who chained-smoked and had a habit of polishing his bald patch with his hand every couple of minutes. They were drinking malt whisky and flirting with Valerie who looked wonderful in an evening dress of cloudy white chiffon that she had bought in Cairo in more affluent days. I had chosen chiffon too, but a sea-green one with silver shoes. I had silk wisteria in my hair and I was wearing the moonstone ring that Mari had given me. Valerie said that she had never seen me looking more beautiful.