The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel

by Maureen Lindley

  I felt strangely empty without him, as though I had no idea of what I should be doing. I took a bath, missed lunch, and I suppose I missed him too, at least for the rest of that day. But Shanghai was a difficult place to be lonely in for long.

  Mari, pleased to have Harry out of the way, took me over once again. She had a jealous nature and hadn't liked me moving away from the intimacy of her connections. She couldn't bear her friends to wander or to have experiences that she wasn't a part of. When I told her about swimming at the British Club, she said that she had done a similar thing in India, only with the wife of a colonel in the Indian Army. I often felt annoyed with Mari and it would be a lie to say that I liked her, but she was a useful contact and kept me company in the months leading up to that New Year's Eve, when things were to change dramatically for both of us.

  It was Mari who found me the beautiful villa on Rue Lafayette, at half the price of my room at the Central. I moved in that December, when Shanghai seemed to forget that it was Chinese and celebrated Christmas as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Weeks before Christmas Day there were decorations and artificial snow in the windows of the stores. Along the promenade of the Bund the trees were hung with shiny glass stars, and there was a Christmas tree in front of the Shanghai Club. The Chocolate Shop served Christmas pudding with ice cream and on the Avenue Foch you could buy gold and silvered almonds in boxes tied with red satin bows.

  It was colourful, fun and foreign, and Mari who had experienced European Christmases before was even more excited about the season than me. She took me shopping for presents and to a different party every night. We bought flesh-coloured lingerie edged with pale lace, and chiffon dresses that floated like gauze in the slightest breeze. In a rush of excess, Mari bought me a ring set with a huge moonstone and we drank champagne at every stop we made. In the early hours of the morning, I would return to my rented villa exhausted and sleep until after noon the next day, when we would start the whole thing over again. Sometimes Mari would come to the villa to pick me up. She would talk to me while I bathed in the delightful marble-floored bathroom that had mirrored walls and brass taps. Sitting on the edge of the bath puffing on Camel cigarettes, she would fill the small room with smoke and gossip. The bathroom had stone shelves on which I kept my chrysanthemum oil, and a chandelier above the bath where I hung Harry's St Christopher's coin on its silver chain. Camouflaged amongst the crystal drops I forgot it, and have a fancy that it is still there, swaying in the humid air of that scented room.

  On my first night in the villa I dreamt that Miura's little songbird was caught up in the room. It flew about in a panic, dashing itself against the walls, getting tangled in the folds of the chintz curtains that hung at the long windows. When I finally clasped it in my hands, I saw that it had the face of poor Shimako and thinking that it would flyaway, I threw it out of the window, only to watch it fall to the ground.

  It doesn't matter how lightly we may choose to travel; in the shadows and in our dreams the company of ghosts is always with us. Shimako often comes to me in mine in the form of a flying creature, perhaps because I like to think of her free at last from her dragging leg. I think Natsuko would have been surprised to discover that even in death her sister accompanies me, stirring my longing for home.

  With Harry gone my dark days came more often. They were deep and disabling and I dreaded them. I knew when they were about to overtake me because nothing would be right, not how I looked, how I felt nor how I related to others. I would dwell on my life's disappointments and relive the feelings of those painful times in a self-indulgent wash of misery. The loss of my mother, Yamaga's desertion, Natsuko's coldness to me all seemed to be alive in the present and no amount of socialising could console me. I would take to my bed, get drunk on sake or lulled by opium until the dark hours passed. And they always did, leaving me light-headed and longing for company.

  On one bright morning during those weeks of Christmas festivities, I woke with the dreaded hollow ache and knew that it would not be a good day. The pain made no sense to me. There were painful memories from the past, but my current life, although lacking direction, was interesting and, I thought, hopeful. But that day, the gloom was so deep that I didn't have the energy to go to my favourite opium house. I started drinking early to deaden the pain and to dull the sense I had of being completely worthless. I could not wipe the picture of my sweet mother's face from my mind, or lessen the sound of Shimako's voice telling me, when I was just twelve years old, that her sister's black pearl matched my nature.

  I missed my appointment with Mari and she came to the villa, furious with me for letting her down. She said that my depressions were a luxury that I gave into too easily. 'Sometimes, Yoshiko, I feel a little tested by life myself, but it is foolish to lose the day. You know that I can't bear to be let down. I waited in the Virtue teahouse for almost an hour.'

  I apologised to her and determined that I would not allow the next dark time that came to possess me in the way it had done that day.

  Perhaps I was too free, too unbounded to feel safe. I was as alone as an orphan and frustrated in my desire to be a true daughter of Japan. The Kawashimas may have rejected me, but in my heart I felt that my country never would. I needed to find a way to serve it that would give me the recognition and purpose I so craved. Much as Shanghai had captivated me, I wanted to be taken back into the fold, cherished and treasured by the only parent left to me, my beloved Japan.

  Dismissing my melancholy as indulgence, Mari was interfering and full of advice. She said that I was a determined person and could help myself if I really wanted to.

  'Try a girl for a change, Yoshiko. I swear it would lift your gloomy moods in a way no man ever could.'

  Just for the sake of experience I agreed, although I had my doubts that I would enjoy it. I felt odd and unsettled at the thought of it, as though I was about the business of building a house on a swamp.

  A few days before, Mari had met an interesting Russian girl in the French Jew's pawnshop on Nanking Road. Trying not to catch Mari's eyes, she'd had tears in her own as she handed over a rather fine diamond brooch, and took in return a small wad of used notes. The pawnshop was a familiar haunt for Mari, who was always running out of cash because, as she said, her father had so many daughters to support that he often forgot to send her funds. I didn't believe that her father sent her anything, and as she usually reclaimed her treasures from the pawnbroker within weeks, it was obvious that she had a secret means of obtaining money that she did not want known.

  Under Mari's sociable front there was something dark and unreachable. It showed in the way that she suspected any act of kindness, and in the restlessness of her nature. It was as though if she sat still for too long she would be overtaken by her demons. I think that she hid what she thought would revolt others under a cloak of sophistication and the pretence of gaiety. Though I could not bring myself to like her, I was attracted to the air of danger that hung around her.

  In her usual way of collecting people, Mari had made friends with the Russian girl and discovered that she had been the lover of an heiress in Cairo, who for the sake of respectability and to secure her father's fortune had married a high-profile politician and given up her lesbian lover. She had arranged a small fund to secure her lover's silence, on the provision that she left the country and never contacted her again. According to Mari the girl had set about a world tour and had fetched up in Shanghai, low on funds and friends, but full of charm. She claimed to be a countess, of course, one who, fleeing the Bolsheviks, had arrived in Egypt alone and almost penniless. Mari said that she was a cold-climate beauty with narrow grey eyes and pale skin as matt as paper. She had only been in Shanghai a few weeks and was already pawning her jewellery to pay for the undistinguished room she had taken in a small hotel near Yanglingbang Creek, on the edge of the French concession.

  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.