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, carr
ying 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.
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 ca
me 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.
The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel Page 14