The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel

by Maureen Lindley

  Like me, Mari enjoyed being a woman who made her own decisions, and said that she intended never to marry and have to answer to a man for her actions. She was a silent partner in a nightclub owned by a couple of Korean brothers, who also ran brothels and the lucrative night-soil business.

  They were good-looking in a hard sort of way. The younger had a thin scar that ran the length of his right cheek, which spoilt his otherwise perfectly balanced face, but added to his roguish appeal. The elder brother was thickset with sensuously full lips and watchful eyes. He had a suspicious nature, but could be generous to those he liked and he seemed to like Mari.

  Mari never went into detail about where her money came from, but behind her back everyone who knew her said it came from crime. I believed them, because although she told me she received a small allowance from her father, she spent like an heiress, denying herself nothing and living in the most expensive suite the Central had to offer.

  The brothers enjoyed her contacts and her company, were themselves good company, but I wouldn't have trusted them for a moment. They supplied Mari with the pretty girls she preferred to men, and took her gambling at the Chinese Jockey Club, out beyond Hangkou Park. Mari was a compulsive gambler and lost a fortune on those so-called 'china ponies', which were imported from Mongolia. She borrowed money from her Koreans to pay her debts, and ended up doing them favours of a kind she said would probably shock me. Mari often boasted that if she was ever desperate for money she had enough information on those brothers to insure her an income for years to come.

  Through her I made a lot of interesting contacts myself, and learnt that it was who you knew in Shanghai that determined how successful you would be. She took me to cocktail parties at the houses of the rich French who lived on Avenue Joffre and to the homes of the more sedate British at the residential end of Nanking Road, whose gardens, she said, were based on those of the stately homes of the British aristocracy.

  I still wore my jodhpurs and boots and whenever we were out together the contrast between them and her beautiful saris always caused a stir. The fashion for Chinese women in Shanghai was a seductive version of the Manchu cheongsam which, influenced by western taste, had become shorter and tighter, revealing more of the female shape than the modest flowing folds of the original. I liked them and bought a couple, but I tired of them quickly. I was looking for a different image to the familiar one of a Chinese beauty. Under Mari's guidance I was influenced into French chiffon dresses and shoes with straps that wound sinuously around my ankles. I more often wore my jodhpurs, but I will never forget the feel of that silk chiffon against my skin, or the way those shoes made me feel potent and desirable.

  Mari hated the way the men flocked about me, 'like jackals around a kill', she would sneer. She was never one to give a compliment easily. She said that it was just that I was 'fresh meat'. She was wrong, of course. I never had trouble attracting men and I always found generous ones prepared to support my lifestyle.

  But it wasn't a truly satisfying life. I had little idea of what would be. Intoxicated with the heady variety and uniqueness of Shanghai, I chose to ignore the little island of emptiness within. I told myself that it must be homesickness. I certainly thought of myself and of my home as Japanese and still planned to return to it in glory one day when the chance offered itself.

  So, when the Chinese in Shanghai became anti-Japanese there was no question of whom I sided with. They resented Japan for harbouring Pu Yi and suspected the Japanese of trying to claim Manchuria for themselves. But they were cowardly in their hatred and the Japanese were able to walk the Shanghai streets without fear of attack.

  Time passed, and in 1931 a week or so before my twenty-fifth birthday I was contemplating whether to take up with a German industrialist who had been pursuing me, when an Englishman called Harry Sanger bought me a drink at the bar of the Central and became for a while my friend and lover.

  Harry was without doubt the best-looking European I had ever seen. Each feature of his face was perfectly proportioned, from his blue eyes, so dark they were almost navy, to his slim nose and full lips. He had brown hair and was tall even for a European. He wore linen shirts and brogue shoes, and sometimes a panama hat with his Garrick Club tie fastened around its brim in the noon sun. He had a warm scent about him that reminded me of oranges and a deep laugh that was always close to the surface. Harry wasn't the first European I ever made love with, but I discovered in him a run of passion that belied the cool exterior that he, like most Englishmen I have known, presented to the world. He enjoyed having fun, loved good food and never said no to a drink. It was Harry who introduced me to wine, which I didn't enjoy, because it tasted ancient and the smell was reminiscent of wet fur and mould. When I became used to it, he tried to teach me the difference between a good wine and a great one, but I never got it. I preferred the instant way that spirits heated the blood.

  Harry constantly teased me, which at first I didn't understand for it wasn't an oriental way of behaving. His practical jokes could be cruel, as he was quick at noticing what others tried to disguise about themselves and couldn't resist making them squirm. For instance, Mari had a problem with hair on her upper lip, and like a man she shaved it daily. Noticing the shadow, Harry quipped that she was changing into the man she had always wanted to be. As Mari didn't like her preference for girls to be spoken of and was conceited about her looks, she was very offended. I think his habit of embarrassing people was a way of keeping the spotlight off himself. I suspected he was not everything he made himself out to be. He told me that he was getting married to an English girl called Jenny, whom he loved because she had an uncomplicated nature and would willingly climb mountains with him. He said she was a tall girl with green eyes and strong hands and to his delight she rode a horse like a man. His engagement meant nothing to me. Harry was fun and that was enough for the present.

  In any case, I could not claim to be exclusively his. As well as sleeping with him, I frequently took the younger brother of Mari's gangster partners to my bed. He was a man who, like Kawashima before him, not only believed he was superior to any woman, but was also pitiless in bed. Although he never mentioned it, I think that Harry knew and didn't object. Like most men in Shanghai he was caught up in the idea that any sexual fantasy could be gratified and that he could have whatever he desired. Perhaps he found it exciting to share his lover with a gangster. It would give him something to remember in the long winter nights ahead of him in England, as he sat by the fire with his green-eyed wife.

  Harry was in Shanghai to do business for his family company, which dealt in porcelain. He found it amusing that he could sell china in China, and that the expatriate English thought his product superior in style and quality to local porcelain.

  From our first meeting I was as comfortable with Harry as though I had known him all my life. In the months I spent with him before he returned to England we managed a lot of fun and made memories of things that could only have happened in Shanghai.

  One midnight, dressed as a servant boy, I went with him to the glorious Shanghai Club, the so-called headquarters of the British community in the city, whose members were supposed to be the pillars of the Establishment. No Chinese were allowed, but Harry said he had a connection, and as it was late and I was disguised as a servant we would get away with it. It always seemed odd to me that the British were so anti-oriental, mainly, I suppose, because I felt superior to them.

  We filled my flask with brandy and although it was only a short distance from the Central we took a rickshaw to the Shanghai's impressive main door. Harry gave only the briefest of acknowledgements to the night porter, who obviously knew him, and without even glancing at me, said, 'Good evening, sir,' and returned to reading his book.

  We walked through a small library where Harry paused briefly at a circular table littered with newspapers to read the headlines of the North China Daily. Then he turned, pulled me to him, put his tongue in my mouth and gave me a long, long kiss. I tasted the st
range curdled taste peculiar to Europeans and wondered what I tasted of to him. Taking my hand he led me down some steps to the echoing halls of the basement and on through double doors that opened into a columned room housing an elegant swimming pool that shimmered in dim light.

  Two naked men were embracing in the water, one of them whose face I could not see had his back to me; his legs were wrapped around the other's waist and they were kissing passionately. The movement of their bodies in the water made delightful little slapping noises, which echoed around the room. Their skin, turned to the colour of limes by the reflection of the pool's tiles, appeared in the pitchy light to form one strangely shaped animal. They took no notice of us and went on embracing as though we didn't exist. I expect they thought that Harry was of their own persuasion and that I was a paid-for short-time boy. The scene, framed by the Grecian columns and gold-leafed walls of the spectacular pool, would have made an exceptional painting. I said as much to Harry and he replied, 'In a peculiar sort of whorehouse, maybe.'

  Even though he professed to disapprove, I think that, like me, Harry was excited by their sport. He pushed me behind a pillar and kissed me in an urgent sort of way and told me that I looked delicious dressed as a boy, and then assured me that it was just a joke, for he was all man when it came to women. We took our clothes off in one of the cubicles housed along the side of the pool. It had half doors like those of a stable, so that the legs and the heads of the occupants could be seen from the outside. When we emerged naked, the pool was empty.

  Harry practically threw me into the water and then performed a perfect dive and came up beside me. I teased him that perhaps he had only found me attractive in the first place because of my jodhpurs and boots and the fact that I had short hair like a boy's. I was laughing, but for once Harry wasn't. He shoved me against the side of the pool and told me to shut up. We swam a couple of lengths not touching, then he pulled me to the steps, and as we left the water I could see that he was already hard. We made love in the cubicle with me standing on the narrow bench with my back against the wall, so that Harry, who was at least a foot taller than me, could stretch his arms out to each wall and enter me with ease. He looked like the painting of Hercules holding up the pillars of wisdom that I had seen in the club's entrance hall.

  Halfway through our coupling, I heard two splashes and an odd high-pitched laugh. Harry cursed and held his cries in as though he thought that in silence we would not be noticed. His thrusts became quicker, as if he couldn't wait to finish, and as he did he told me I was a good boy and then cursed again.

  I told him that he made love beautifully and he said that what we did was fucking, not making love. I liked the word, but I was used to oriental euphemisms and when I tried it out it sounded strange on my tongue and made Harry laugh. He said that it was a man's word anyway and didn't come out right when a woman used it.

  I remember thinking that night that Harry's wholesome mountain-climbing bride would get more than she bargained for with him as a husband. I hoped for her sake that, like myself, she had a certain boyish charm that would keep him from wandering down amongst the boys.

  As we were leaving, I noticed that one of the new men in the pool was the star of that season's popular Peking opera The Drunken Beauty. We had seen it with Mari at the Lyceum the night before and had thought him exquisite. He still had his performance makeup on, which in the dim light of the pool looked oddly threatening. I recognised his partner as the wealthy German who could be found most nights at the Casanova club, a girl on each arm, a fat cigar in his mouth. He was a huge pink-skinned man in his fifties, with fingers like sausages, and the coldest eyes I had ever seen. He had his young lover pushed firmly against the wall of the pool and was entering him from behind with such force that the water splashed over the edge in choppy waves. The boy had to hold on to the side so tightly that his fingers were white with the effort of it.

  I wondered briefly what those English wives, with their white gloves, reserved voices and rigid rules, would have made of what went on in the club's pool after the midnight hour.

  We were making our way through the famous long bar with its high stools and gleaming mirrors when Harry suddenly picked me up and sat me on its polished surface. We served ourselves a generous measure of whisky from a cut-glass decanter, linked arms and drank it down in one go.

  'Let's fuck again,' he said, unbuckling his belt and practically dragging me to the floor. I knew his lust had been stirred by the rough coupling of the fat German and his slight oriental lover, but whatever the inspiration, I always enjoyed Harry's enthusiastic lovemaking.

  'That will help you to remember me, if I can ever bring myself to leave Shanghai,' he said. I told him that no woman ever forgot her most passionate lover, which seemed to satisfy him. He needn't have worried. He compared well to all of my lovers, and not only did I never forget him, but over the years I have often thought of him with tenderness and a degree of regret at his absence.

  I believe that in Shanghai Harry found a way of being that satisfied the shadowy side of his nature, probably kept hidden in England. There were nights when he was nowhere to be found and times when his bruises spoke of a more desperate sort of sex than the kind we shared. Had he stayed in Shanghai, perhaps he would have indulged that side of his personality too much and lost that part of himself that was full of happiness and light.

  A few years later the Shanghai Club would be occupied by the Japanese, who would shorten the legs of the tables and chairs for the convenience of their bantam-sized officers. I expect they behaved in the same way as the English club members did, only the language of their hypocrisy would have been that of honour, as opposed to that of manners. As night became day, did samurai kiss samurai in the love pool of the British club, I wonder.

  I never lost my attraction to Japanese men, but after Harry Sanger my taste where lovers were concerned became more liberal. I grew to like not only the creamy smell of Europeans, but also their generosity and sense of humour which, once you are used to it, colours your way of thinking forever.

  On the way out of the club, Harry stopped at the night porter's desk and openly offered him a large note which he took without once looking at me. He said to Harry that on such a muggy night he supposed a midnight swim was very refreshing. Harry replied that it had made him feel like a new man. We went on to the Venus Cafe and ravenously ate beef stroganoff and paskha, a delicious pudding of cream cheese and dried apricots. Then, with our stomachs hot with vodka, I took Harry to the opium den around the corner from the Astor Hotel for his first taste of the poppy. Six hours later, he told me that he thought we had only been there for a few minutes, although he remembers dreaming that he was on a beautiful beach made of flat white pebbles that were soft to the touch. The water was as tender as velvet and his playmates were his old school friends whom he loved and admired.

  During Harry's last week in Shanghai the air was heavy with humidity and high winds that whipped the street's litter into doorways and rattled the ill-fitting windows of the Central Hotel. Everyone said that a typhoon was on its way and that it would be the last one of the summer before winter was upon us. At night the leaden air made it hard to breathe and turned my dreams into nightmares where I watched myself walking down empty streets without even thoughts for company. When the storm finally broke, it wrenched the tiles from the roofs and sent them crashing to the street. It littered the Bund with sea debris and flooded the drains so that the roads ran with water so high that it lapped at the rickshaw boy's knees.

  I was in the Nanking Cinema with Harry watching an American movie called Forty Winks at the time. We had been drinking sake from Kawashima's flask and smoking Harry's English cigarettes. The torrential rain on the roof drowned out the soundtrack of the film, so we left and ran back to the hotel for our last night together. By the time we got there we were completely drenched and shivering. We shared a hot bath, drank a lot more sake and made love twice. Harry asked me to slick my short hair back like a boy's and t
o wear the high heels, suspender belt and black stockings that Sesyu had given me. He liked me half boy, half girl; it satisfied all his needs, I suppose. Later, when I sat on the floor playing cards with him, dressed in that way and smoking one of my black cigarettes, he told me that if he ever had a reluctance to make love to his wife he would picture me as I was then and he was sure it would solve the problem. I observed that he called it making love and not fucking and I felt a little envious of his bride to be.

  Next morning we went for breakfast at the Chocolate Shop on Bubbling Well Road. Harry ate eggs and pancakes and I had ice cream, which I had never eaten before. He gave me money, and a St Christopher coin on a chain. He said St Christopher was the patron saint of travellers. He told me that he worried about where I would end up, and that it wouldn't harm me to have a saint on my side. We left the Chocolate Shop arm-in-arm and went to the Siberian Fur Store where he bought me an astrakhan coat and two silver fox collars to keep me warm through the winter months. The dark little eyes of the pair were fashioned from tiger's eye; there was a brocade loop that held their tails in a symbiotic knot and their feet hung realistically over my shoulder.

  We walked back to the Central Hotel along the crowded streets, where we had to press ourselves against a wall to allow an elaborately decorated bridal sedan to pass. It was covered in fresh flowers and accompanied by musicians and the bride's family. Harry shouted out 'Good luck', but they ignored him. He asked me what I thought of marriage and I told him it was probably a good thing for a man. He laughed and said that he would let me know.

  I could tell that he was sad to be leaving, but he said that he intended to come back and that I hadn't seen the last of him. I didn't believe him. I thought that he was just one of those people who hated goodbyes. In those days no one who had once sampled the delights of Shanghai could believe that they would not do so again. But after that time I never saw Harry again.