The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel

by Maureen Lindley

  The Colonel had advised me not to be fooled by the Emperor's seeming indifference to his wife, for although he did not love her, he trusted her passion for the Dragon Throne and knew her desire for its restoration to be as strong as his own. However, he did blame her for the desertion of his consort, Wen Hsiu, for whom he had a pale sort of affection. After her departure, Wan Jung had insisted that the girl be demoted from the rank of consort to that of commoner. It still rankled with him that Wan Jung had shown great pleasure when Wen Hsiu had been granted a divorce, something that Pu Yi had been horrified at. If a commoner could divorce an emperor, then the world was even more of a mystery to him than it had become since his flight from the Forbidden City. There had been a great deal of rivalry in the household between the two women, which Pu Yi had found amusing and had not discouraged. But since his consort's departure, he felt his home to be diminished and found his bed colder than ever before.

  I was given a room on the top floor of the house next to Wan Jung's lady-in-waiting. It was comfortable, with thick rugs and walls painted the exact colour of the sanguinaria poppy print of the bedspread and curtains. The colours stirred memories of those blood-and-bandage dreams I had suffered in Mongolia. The room was dusty and cold and I sought out a servant woman and told her to clean the room and to hang up my clothes. I told her to put a hot stone in my bed, and that if I found my room not cared for again she would be beaten. From being surly she became humble, as even the worst servant will when encountering a mistress she knows will not hesitate to carry out her threats. I brushed aside her assurances that I would have no reason to complain, and sent her off to bring me tea and fruit.

  I would speak to Doihara and arrange that the royal couple were given more servants and a chamberlain to oversee them. It was not fitting that the Emperor, who lived under the care of the Japanese, should reside in such chaos.

  Wan Jung's lady-in-waiting told me that the Empress was looking forward to meeting me and that she would see me at dinner, which she liked people to dress for. I chose a simple black dress and wore it with the black pearl I had bought, against my better judgement, in Shanghai. It didn't match the beauty of Natsuko's gem, which had passed between us with such feeling, but it reminded me of her, which was oddly comforting.

  Pu Yi was already in the dining room when I arrived. He was dressed in a dinner jacket and black tie, his sleeves were cuffed with diamonds and he wore an expensive-looking gold wristwatch.

  'I have a very fine collection of pearls myself,' he said, looking at mine closely. 'I especially like the ivory ones as they are more as nature intended, as well as being flattering to the skin.'

  The Empress arrived and was introduced to me by Pu Yi, who told her that I was one of his many distant cousins.

  'Yes, I know of you, Eastern Jewel,' she said in a surprisingly strong voice.

  Although still young, Wan Jung appeared ravaged by the experience of her years. She walked as slowly as a woman twice her age and pulled nervously on the long rope of bloodstones that looked too heavy for her delicate neck to support. A litter of Pekinese dogs yapped at her feet, which were clad in high-heeled shoes a little too wide for her narrow feet. Despite her frailty, I could see where her reputation as a beauty came from. She had a fine bone structure, a delicate nose and a sweet soft mouth, and there was a touching sadness in her eyes that remained even when she smiled. She was morbidly pretty and so thin that when I took her birdlike hand in mine, I felt as though the slightest pressure might crush it. Opium addicts often have a livid hue, but Elizabeth was so pale that even the spots of rouge on her cheeks did nothing to disabuse me of the idea that she was seriously ill and might collapse at any moment. There were dark shadows under her eyes and her deep-red lipstick emphasised her opium-stained teeth. Every so often, with a pained expression, she would place a hand on her temple, as though she had momentarily forgotten what business she was about. Her fingers had the smudged brown tint that came from softening opium into pellets, and her hands trembled slightly so that her cigarette shook. Yet despite these handicaps, she appeared, at least in my eyes, to have an ethereal beauty that was timeless. Her features were pleasingly symmetrical and the dark eyes under the arches of her perfect eyebrows were of a luminous black.

  I felt an immediate connection with her and, unusually for me, I was overcome with what felt like a sisterly desire to save her from her demons and return her to a healthy life.

  'Perhaps we will be friends,' she said without emotion.

  I replied truthfully that I hoped that we would, and secretly regretted that our true relationship would be based on lies.

  That first dinner together, like all of those to follow it, was a tortuous event taken almost in silence. Pu Yi ate course after course, concentrating on the food greedily, while his wife chain­smoked French cigarettes and drank champagne. Occasionally Wan Jung would pick up a morsel of food and drop it onto the floor, where the sea of snuffling little Pekinese patrolled hopefully. For once in my life I found myself without appetite, grateful for the wine, which was pleasantly rich.

  After dinner, Wan Jung picked up her two favourite Pekinese and invited me to her room to play mah-jong. She said goodnight to Pu Yi and he replied formally that he wished her a pleasant evening.

  'I hope you sleep well at Quiet Garden,' he said to me. 'And that my late hours of working do not disturb you.'

  Wan Jung's room was a touching homage to the west, which she obviously admired. In a clutter on her dressing table were French perfumes and English lavender water. A round tub of Max Factor powder sat next to a pink enamelled hand mirror that needed polishing. On every surface there were silver-framed photographs of herself and Pu Yi with western leaders and pictures too of American film stars who I doubt she had met. At her bedside she kept the works of Shakespeare and the poetry of Byron, although I had heard that she had struggled to pick up even a few words of English. The books appeared untouched and had tasselled markers at their centre. In a glass-fronted chest of drawers of the kind found in haberdashery shops were pairs of white buckskin gloves and fine-seamed nylons stacked neatly in their Cellophane wrappers. There were supplies of foreign cigarettes in gilt boxes and gold lighters and porcelain ashtrays painted with roses, which sat on the tables at her bedside. On a round mahogany table underneath a grimy window, a silver tray of gin and English tonic water was accompanied by a small dish of sliced lemons. The only Chinese influence in the room was in one corner where a low sofa plumped with silk cushions sat beside a foot-high coffer that housed everything an opium addict might need to indulge their passion.

  We didn't play mah-jong that night. Instead we smoked an opium pipe and shared confidences as though we were old familiars. I felt genuine warmth towards the frail Empress, which took me by surprise, as I had not expected to like her.

  Wan Jung asked me to tell her the story of my life and so I told her of my childhood in the Kawashima household. She said that it would not have suited her as she had never cared for the Japanese, finding them full of brutality and oblivious to true art. I said that on the whole I found Japanese men to be interesting lovers and that I liked their arrogance. She laughed and said that she thought that their legs were too short and their noses so poorly designed that they snorted rather than talked.

  She confided to me that at first she hadn't wanted to marry Pu Yi as, even though he was Emperor, he was not the sort of man most young girls dream of as their ideal husband. But over the years she had come to value her position as wife of the twelfth Emperor of the great Qing dynasty. She said that although she had never experienced true love, she had heard that it was short-lived anyway, and she believed that it was status that would keep her warm in her old age. I didn't point out that it was her status and the life it had imposed on her that had reduced her to her present state of ill health and indecision.

  It was with true conviction that she said she would give up opium when Pu Yi was restored to his rightful place in the Forbidden City. It would be no hardshi
p, she claimed, as she wasn't addicted and smoked merely to remove herself from the difficulties of her everyday life in Tientsin. Her longings for her old palace, she said, were so strong that without opium she would spend her days in misery. I knew an opium addict when I saw one, and Wan Jung was amongst the worst I had come across. In truth, she was dying in the thrall of the gory little poppy.

  That night I slept in her room and dreamt a blue opium dream of the kind I had experienced before. Blue is the most bloodless of colours and I woke calm. Wan Jung seemed calm too, but she looked even worse than she had the night before. Her eyes were red and circled with dark smudges, her skin had taken on a greenish hue and her voice had lost its strength and was cracked and shaky. Even so, it was still possible to see in that frail fading creature how she had once deserved the name Radiant Countenance. I thought that even the most delightful photographs I had seen of her might not have done credit to her beauty in the days before she fell in love with opium.

  When I returned to my room, I congratulated myself on how easily I had achieved her confidence. She had even told me that she knew that I was someone she could trust and that she actually did remember me from her childhood. She said that my name was a threat on the lips of concubines to their daughters. They would tell them that obedience would save them from the fate of Eastern Jewel, a girl who, like a tiger cub, fought and bit her way through her days and would never find a husband in this life or the next.

  I knew that to stay friends with Wan Jung I would have to live two lies. Firstly, I must not appear to be on the side of the Japanese, whom she hated. Secondly, I would have to appear to smoke opium with her every night or I would lose her friendship as quickly as I had seemed to gain it. Faking would not be easy, but I would need to learn it fast or I would be as out of control as the Empress herself. Loving opium as I did, it was easy for me to understand Wan Jung's addiction. I have addictions of my own, but they do not poison my life's blood as opium will when it is your only lover.

  After that first night of sharing confidences with her, I had no doubt that I would be able to talk her into convincing her husband that the imperial couple's future lay in Manchuria. But despite many weeks spent in a similar pattern, in which our friendship grew and she said that I had lightened her days, Wan Jung's determination not to go to Manchuria remained. She had a run of stubbornness in her make-up that belied her frail looks, and such a strong dislike of Doihara that she was bound to resist anything that had his stamp of approval.

  'He has the poker player's trick of lying with a veiled face,' she said. 'How can such a man be trusted? In any case, it is an insult to expect us to take the advice of a mere Colonel.'

  I attempted to raise Doihara in her esteem by telling her that, although she disliked him, she must believe that he did have the Emperor's best interests at heart. As for Doihara's lowly rank, I said that just as a farmer would better a prince if you wanted advice on growing crops, so the Colonel was an expert, not only in politics, but also on the north-east region of China where he had served, learnt the language and history.

  But while I talked into one ear, Wan Jung's childhood tutor, Chen Tseng Shou, whispered into the other. He told her that he was not convinced that the Japanese had all three of the north-east provinces under control and that he had heard that in any case, they intended to name Pu Yi Chief Executive, and not Emperor of Manchuria. He advised her to be cautious of Doihara's promises and suggested that she warn the Emperor that Japan had not been honest with him. Chen Tseng Shou had known Wan Jung all her life and she trusted him above anyone else. It was obvious that he loved her and was loyal to her family, just as it was obvious that he despised Doihara and was suspicious of all Japanese.

  Despite Doihara's view that Wan Jung was a stupid woman, I must say I found myself agreeing with her instincts regarding what would be best for herself and Pu Yi. When she told me she believed that going to Manchuria would be the end of them and that they would be safer and happier leaving China altogether, I thought that she was reasoning well. Had I been Empress, I too would have left the country and let others seek to reinstate me. But of course I could not tell her that and continued to attempt to convince her to go to that harsh land, where I knew she would suffer not only the distress of the dangerous journey, but, once there, the indignity of watching her husband kowtowing to his Japanese masters.

  I had to be a silent witness to my own cruel deceit of the frail Empress, which I could see was beginning to take effect. Wan Jung knew that the tide of events was against her. Pu Yi's brother, studying in Japan and impressed with the successful Japanese nation, wrote to the Emperor advising him to trust the Japanese and go to the north-east. Pu Yi himself, although still listening to his wife, was becoming more susceptible to Doihara's advice. His overpowering desire to resume the role of emperor influenced every thought in his head and often caused arguments between him and Wan Jung.

  Her fears of Manchuria were visceral, her bowels literally loosened at the very thought of the journey to that place. If they were discovered by the Chinese they would be beaten to death. And she was afraid of losing home and family and finding herself powerless to escape what she believed would be a hateful situation. Although she would never have admitted it, she worried about the practicalities of feeding her opium habit in new and unfamiliar surroundings and feared the nightmares she knew would come if she could not.

  She was right to worry about such things, but with me her instincts let her down, for she believed me to be her true friend. Owing to her loneliness and desire for friendship, she trusted me. And even though she did not heed my advice and knew that my presence in her house was influencing her husband, she remained kind to me. She told me that despite us not being able to agree on the Manchurian question, she believed that I was only advising what I thought best for her.

  It took me years to learn, and then only under the most dire of circumstances, that it is people, not country, who are owed loyalty. In retrospect, I wish with all my heart that I had advised Wan Jung to leave the Quiet Garden with or without Pu Yi and to make her way from China to the west, where she could have played the Empress-in-waiting in safety. Instead as she slept her long drugged sleeps, I made plans to terrify her into leaving Tientsin for the north-east. I was tiring of the life I had to live in the limited house and longed for the pleasures of Shanghai.

  Doihara, although a daily visitor to the Quiet Garden, had not approached me intimately again as on that first night. Despite the less than memorable sex on that occasion, I had suggested that it might amuse him to spend the night in my room, while Pu Yi dreamt of restoration in his, a few feet away. He declined, saying it would not be a good idea, for if we were found out Pu Yi would be less inclined to trust me. Wan Jung would turn her back on me and be even more set against going to the north-east.

  'In any case, I like new flavours, Princess,' he said. 'But I am flattered that you would wish to eat the same dish twice.'

  In my frustration, I attempted to comfort the two soldiers that Doihara had left on guard under threat of disciplinary action. But he had scared the liver out of them and despite my offer to please them both they thought it was a trick to test them and declined. So I resorted to known paths and found relief in the short-time boys that plied their trade in the dark lanes around the docks. But short­time boys live up to their name and, like weak opium, satisfy only the hunger, leaving the desire unquenched.

  I decided to put all my energies into motivating the royal couple to remove themselves to Manchuria as soon as possible. So it was a fortunate stroke of luck for me when Pu Yi's old tutor, Reginald Johnston, paid one of his visits to the Quiet Garden. He had come to ask Pu Yi to write a preface to a book that he was writing about his time as the Emperor's tutor. It was to be called Twilight in the Forbidden City, and Johnston, describing himself as a 'faithful and affectionate servant to his Majesty the Emperor', had dedicated the book to him. Pu Yi was immensely flattered and wrote a short preface for Johnston, praising
him as one not surpassed even by the best of China's native scholars.

  During Johnston's visits, Pu Yi always insisted on evening banquets, where course after elaborate course was brought to table in portions that would have fed the thousands of eunuchs of the Forbidden City. The best of fish, meat and wine was consumed, while Pu Yi's ego was massaged by Johnston until he glowed with self-esteem. The Emperor and his old tutor talked together as though no one else existed. This annoyed Doihara, who did not like or trust this foreigner who had the Emperor's full attention. The Colonel would have kept all but Japanese voices from Pu Yi's ears if he could.

  On one particular occasion Pu Yi, knowing them to be a favourite of Johnston's, ordered tiger prawns to be served in abundance. Less than an hour after gorging himself Pu Yi was the only one at the banquet to come down with food poisoning. He suffered agonising pains in his stomach, his skin turned green and he was violently sick for hours. I took the opportunity to persuade him that there must be a Chinese agent in the house out to assassinate him and that, from now on, all his food must be tasted before he touched it. Of course the truth of it was that, with his usual bad luck, he had selected and eaten a bad prawn. But after our talk nothing could have convinced him of that and he was so scared by my suggestion of assassins that the house was in an uproar for days while he had every member of staff, including the Japanese, interrogated.

  Wan Jung was unmoved by the commotion and her husband's fears. She thought that his bad luck had struck again and believed that greed was the cause of his illness. Just as a lifetime of talking would not have persuaded the Empress that they would be safer in Manchuria, I began to think that neither would the odd suspected attempt on her husband's life. But Pu Yi was more susceptible to fear than his fragile wife, and in his state of apprehension he began to set his sights towards Manchuria by sending presents of jade to those generals in the north-east who had submitted to the Japanese forces of occupation. Doihara thought it a good sign and said that Pu Yi was making allies in Manchuria so that he would have his own power base there when he arrived.