The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel (31 page)

In Shanghai there was a new mood amongst the Chinese of the city that made the Japanese uneasy. Secretive as ever, the Chinese were divided amongst themselves politically, but they were as one in their hatred of the Japanese. You could sense it in their silent insolence and in the way they addressed you in emotionless voices and took your money without thanks. Even Mother, whom I paid to keep me up to date with what was going on in her decimated quarter, had cooled towards me and advised me against visiting her without a bodyguard. The Chinese knew my face, apparently, because a poster had circulated after the fake war with my likeness on it. It named me as a murderer of my own kind and called for the blood of Chinese babies to be revenged with the shedding of mine. After she told me that I always made her come to me. I never visited her again in the little house by the Gate of Longevity. I couldn't trust her not to betray me and take a price for my head. She was a woman without principles and would have done anything for money.

I began to feel uneasy and isolated whenever I found myself in my villa alone. I got rid of my Chinese servant woman and replaced her with a Russian girl, who was a poor laundress, but less of a worry to me.

My dreams were haunted with the images of dead babies and I would often wake in the night thinking that I heard their mewling. In daylight, sense reasserted itself and I knew the cries to have come from the legions of Shanghai's cats whose complaints were made bolder in the dark.

As the months after the fake war passed, my dark days became more frequent and I found myself dwelling on the past. The death of Natsuko had made me uncomfortably aware of time and drawn my attention to how many of my relationships with those I had loved had gone wrong. It was no longer fine to be good enough for myself; I had not been enough for Yamaga and was perhaps too much for Tanaka, I had betrayed Mai's friendship, lost Tamura to another country and cruelly deceived the touchingly frail Wan Jung.

It is only when you look back and discover that you have the sort of history that you may not have chosen for yourself that age begins to trouble you. I was in my late twenties, mirrors still reflected my beauty, but even though time had been kind to me there were tiny lines appearing around my eyes and I seemed to have lost my love of self. Some mornings I felt newborn, as though I could start my life from scratch and become something more than I was, but as the day progressed the burden of my nature overtook me and often made the need for opium urgent.

Tanaka had been disappointed not to be promoted after the taking of Shanghai's Chapei district and returned to being moody and argumentative. We saw less of each other than ever before, but I still thought of him as my true partner in life, until one day I walked into the Park Hotel and was introduced to Jack Stone, an American journalist working for the
New York Herald Tribune.

He was standing at the Park's bar with his arm around Lauren Brodie, a red-haired Irish reporter, one of the few female journalists in Shanghai. Jack had only been in Shanghai two days, but was already surrounded by a group of what seemed to me to be admirers.

My first sight of Jack Stone made me feel as though I were standing on the edge of a precipice and the centre of me had been thrown off balance. From the moment I first heard his name, the sound of which reminded me of the clatter of mah-jong pieces, something in me softened. He was five years older than me and an inch shorter, but I always felt that I was looking up at him. He had a delicately repaired harelip that gave his mouth a fragile, sensuous appeal, brown hair and grey eyes the colour of the sky just before it snows. Jack wasn't really good-looking, but he had a magnetic appeal and women loved him. Perhaps it was his quiet wit that drew them to him, or maybe it was the way he listened, his body still, his head slightly to one side as though he wanted to hear every word. Whatever it was, I was immediately seduced, and although he was not instantly mine, I desired him as much as I had Yamaga.

A couple of days after our introduction, Lauren Brodie came to see me and asked if I would be prepared to be interviewed by Jack. He was doing a piece on Shanghai personalities and wanted to include me in the group. I agreed to the interview and arranged to meet him in the rooftop restaurant of the Park Hotel. It was part of my job to know the foreign correspondents and to try and influence their reporting. But I dressed to meet Jack more as though I was going to a lover's bed than to a work meeting.

Jack was the sort of man whom Tanaka would be jealous of, and one that might give more trouble than pleasure. In any case, I was coming to the conclusion that giving in to my desires, as I had always done in the past, was perhaps the very thing responsible for my depressions and disquieting dreams. Yet I tried on three outfits for that meeting before settling on a shapely skirt and high-heeled sandals. I added a soft satin blouse, leaving the top buttons unfastened and powdering the valley where my breasts met. As my only jewellery, I wore a pair of tiny seed pearl earrings so that he would notice my small ears. Instead of my usual chrysanthemum oil, I chose musk for desire and touched it lightly at my throat and wrists.

I saw him in the restaurant before he noticed me and felt the same twist in my stomach as on the day I had first seen him. He was talking to the hotel manager and when he saw me he smiled and instantly came to join me. He was very business-like and probing in his interview. He pushed me on what he called my pro-Japanese stance, questioning my allegiance to a country that wanted to 'crush' my homeland.

'China was where I was born,' I said. 'But I was sent from it as a child and I don't consider it my homeland. Japan gave me a home and an identity; we belong to each other. Whatever happens, Japan will always have my loyalty.'

'America is my country,' he said. 'But we can be critical of country, surely? It's people that come first, don't you think?'

I didn't answer him. My loyalty to Japan was something that I had never questioned before and I found the subject quite disturbmg.

We talked for a couple of hours, mostly about my rank in the Japanese Army and how I viewed the so-called 'fake war'. He asked me about my relationship with Tanaka, but he didn't write anything in his notebook on that subject. It felt more informal, less like an interview that way and I learnt as much about him as he did about me. I discovered that he chain-smoked Camel cigarettes, that he drank whisky, bourbon when he could get it, that he believed that wearing silk pyjamas under his normal ones would protect him from malaria, and that he was estranged from his wife, who hated him for leaving her alone so much. I asked him if he loved her and he said that, obviously, the very fact that he was in Shanghai showed that he loved his freedom more.

'And Lauren Brodie?' I asked.

'Just a friend,' he said and smiled.

I left the restaurant annoyed with him. He hadn't flirted with me or paid me a single compliment. Months later, Jack confessed that our meeting at the Park had affected him deeply and that he could hardly think straight when he came to write about me for his paper. He said that, although he was good at disguising his feelings, he had been overpowered by the look and the scent of me. He had tried, without success, to dampen the feelings of what he described as an unsuitable attraction, unsuitable not because we came from different continents, but because I loved Japan and Jack despised it.

When I told Tanaka about the meeting, he said that most of the foreign journalists in Shanghai were pro-Chinese and that westerners had a sickly sort of admiration for the underdog. He said that Jack Stone was highly thought of amongst his fellow Americans, but that I should be wary of him.

'Let him seek you out,' he said. 'And then only feed him what we want him to know.'

Six weeks passed before I saw Jack again. During that time Tanaka had received orders to report to Doihara in Inner Mongolia to assist him in setting up an independent government under the Mongolian Prince Teh. I had never met Teh, although he was a kinsman of mine through my marriage to Kanjurjab. I had heard stories that he was a fearless warrior and much loved by his tribe. I advised Tanaka not to mention his connection with me, as I was sure it would work against him in Mongolian circles.

I felt sorry for him, as I knew that he would hate working in close contact with the Colonel. He told me that he could not take me with him because my orders were to stay in Shanghai and ease the path for his successor, but I think it was more that he couldn't bear to see me in the company of Doihara. Nothing would have taken me to Mongolia anyway. I joked with him about the climate, warned him not to eat the butter and told him that he would like the Mongolian girls, who were plump and warm-hearted. They would, I said, be impressed by his size and his inventiveness in lovemaking.

On the day that he left, he told me that he hated the cold air of parting between us. He said that he would always keep the image of my face in his heart and that he would never fail to protect me in whatever way he could. He begged me to give up opium, which he thought would eventually destroy me.

'It's the only Chinese thing about you, Yoshiko, and your worst habit.'

It was true that the Japanese thought little of opium and despised the weak nature of the Chinese for using it, but I didn't agree with him that it would be the ruin of me. It was I that used opium, not opium that used me. I had smoked it since girlhood and knew how to stay on the right side of addiction.

Tanaka left me a little money, but to save face he had to payoff his own debts, which were considerable. He said that he could not guarantee that his successor would be as generous with my expenses as he had been, so he arranged for me to draw a monthly salary, something that I had never bothered to do before.

'You will have to live more carefully,' he said. 'It could be months, maybe even a year, before I return.'

In fact it was to be many years before Tanaka would leave Mongolia and he was never to return to Shanghai. I had already come to my own decision to be more cautious, if not with money then with my emotions. My meeting with Jack Stone had worked on me in a strange way and I could not get him out of my mind. I had been dissatisfied with myself and my way of life for some time and sensed that in Jack's company I might find relief. Tanaka thought that opium was the problem, but opium was only the bandage on the wound of a hollow life. I had come to the conclusion that a constant stream of lovers took away rather than gave comfort, and I was experiencing a desire to change.

Weeks passed before I was to see Jack Stone again. Meanwhile I was grooming myself to be a different sort of woman. One that would take no more lovers, less opium, and experience, as a result, more restoring sleep and contentment.

There was a night when I dreamt that I saw Jack on a bridge as he crossed the Huangpu River. I called his name and he turned, held out his cupped hands and showed me happiness lying in a glass bowl. It was a dark little kidney-shaped bean, curled as in sleep. 'We can share it,' he said. I couldn't bring myself to touch it for fear that it was not sleeping, but dead.

Tanaka's replacement, Major Muto, was a man who counted every yen and did not approve of debt or extravagance. I could see that things were not going to be easy for me under his supervision. He seemed to disapprove of my Chinese blood and declined to address me either by rank or as Princess. He didn't question the salary that Tanaka had arranged, but he was meticulous in scrutinising my expenses, which he often declined to honour, saying Japan should not have to pay for my pleasures. It was obvious he did not have Tanaka's understanding of how a spy needs to live.

Muto was older than Tanaka by about a decade. He was married and had eight daughters but no sons, which kept him poor and feeling inadequate. He was poisonously cruel to inferiors and slimy in the presence of his superiors. I disliked him at first sight and developed the habit of calling into his office only once or twice a week. I would relay to him any information that Mother had brought me, as well as what I had discovered for myself through my own contacts. The rest of the time I avoided him. This infrequent connection suited Muto, as he was ill at ease in my company and didn't know how to deal with a Japanese woman who had not only aristocratic blood, but also rank.

Tanaka wrote me letters saying that he missed me, but he felt that he could do well for Japan and for himself in Mongolia. I knew that he had an ambition to return to Japan covered in glory. I believed that he would achieve his desire. But in his absence it was not Tanaka who filled my thoughts, but Jack Stone. Even though I hadn't seen him since that day at the Park Hotel, I knew through Lauren Brodie that he was still in Shanghai.

One evening when the rain smelled of dust, I made my way to the telegraph office and contrived to bump into Jack as he arrived to file his copy. He didn't seem too pleased to see me, but in the awkward silence between us he blurted out an invitation to join him for dinner if I was free. Of course I accepted. Breathing in his scent of pine and whisky, I waited for him in the small telegraph office while he dispatched his work. I felt oddly shy with him, a most unusual experience for me. When he had finished, we took a rickshaw to an unfashionable Japanese restaurant north of Suzhou Creek, in what was known as Little Tokyo. Jack said he loved the raw fish they served and the fact that no other westerners seemed drawn to the place. He told me that he usually ate there alone, that the simplicity of the surroundings pleased him and that he had never taken anyone there before. I allowed the flattery to melt through me, sweet like honey, bypassing my usual cynicism. Even then, so early on in our relationship, I discovered in his company a less wary self.