Elly, to her embarrassment, felt the sting of tears in the back of her throat. Of course Madame Sawada was right, she recognized that. But she felt that she was being judged and found wanting by someone who scarcely knew her. What’s the point of this meeting, she thought, if all we are told is that we’re not fit to be adoptive parents?
‘But in your case,’ continued Madame Sawada, seeming to unbend a little, ‘I do have an impression from your letter that you are sincere. And as it happens we have one little girl who would . . . But let me ask you some questions first. I understand from your letter that your mother was Japanese and your father was English?’
‘Scottish, actually,’ said Elly. ‘From Sterling in Scotland. He went to the Indies as a young man, and ended up running a little plantation near Bandung. Mother’s parents migrated to the Indies from Nagasaki. They had a drapery store in Bandung, and that was where my parents met.’ She had no intention of explaining that her father had taken advantage of a convenient business trip at the time of Pearl Harbor to abandon his half-Japanese family and his failing plantation to their fates, while he took refuge in the relative safety of Bombay. As far as she knew, he was still there today, living another life with his new wife and their three children . . . or was it four?
Madame Sawada nodded, apparently satisfied with the reply. ‘Ah, so I think you will have particular insights into the difficulties faced by our children.’
Will I? I’m a misfit like them, thought Elly, but I doubt if that gives me any special insights. Aren’t we all misfits in our own ways?
‘And you have some experience of teaching children, I understand?’
‘Yes. I worked for a while as a teacher’s assistant in Australia during the war.’
‘You were in Australia during the war?’ asked Madame Sawada, looking at her sharply. ‘That must have been difficult.’
‘Yes,’ responded Elly, ‘it was.’ Madame Sawada waited for her to elaborate, but she simply added, ‘I’m afraid I haven’t got any formal teaching qualifications, but I always enjoyed helping the children with their schoolwork, and sometimes I would take a class if the teacher was ill or called away.’
‘Australian children?’ asked Madame Sawada.
‘A few were Australian. Some were Japanese, or Chinese, or Korean. Several were part-Malay. Some of them were children with Aboriginal mothers. Actually, I still do a bit of teaching, but now it’s just private English language classes.’
‘Excellent! Just the sort of background we’re looking for. But of course, there are a lot of practical problems to be considered. Adoption by foreigners is no easy matter, as I’m sure you’re well aware. I should ask you first,’ here the philanthropist switched abruptly into English and addressed herself to Fergus, ‘do you both intend to live for many years in Japan, Mr Ruskin, or will you go home soon?’
Home? thought Elly.
As though she’d spoken aloud, Madame Sawada hastily added, ‘Back to England, I mean . . . or, should I say, Scotland?’
‘We’ve no plans to leave Japan any time soon,’ replied Fergus. ‘We’re both children of expatriate Scots. I spent most of my childhood, the early part at least, in Shanghai. Elly, as you’ve heard, spent hers in the Dutch East Indies. We feel as much at home in Tokyo as anywhere.’
Do we? Elly wondered. She remembered how passionately she had hated Tokyo when she first arrived there with her mother and her brother Ken, at the end of the wretched sea voyage from the southern hemisphere. Even after war and defeat, even after the four years of limbo in an Australian internment camp, she had still somehow dreamed that the city would look the way that it did on the calendars that her Japanese grandparents had once proudly displayed on the walls of their little shop in Bandung: the imperial palace, with its wide moat and luridly green pine trees; the bustling red and gold of the Asakusa Shrine. Instead, what they had found on their arrival were half-sunken warships rusting in a scummy sea, sad-eyed prostitutes on street corners, and children fishing with pieces of string in the black waters of flooded bomb craters. They had stayed for weeks in one bedroom of a freezing prefabricated repatriation centre near the docks until the welfare agencies found them an apartment with a single cold tap and a privy in a shed in the yard.
But then, once she started her job as a clerk and general dogsbody at the Press Club, and particularly once she met Fergus, something had changed. She had begun to notice the little rice paddies popping up between the chaos of wooden and corrugated-iron houses, and marvelled at the miniature gardens of potted trees that flourished unexpectedly on doorsteps. She had discovered curio shops filled with ancestral treasures, and smoky cafés where she could sit alone with a book, while all around, earnest men and women expounded their visions of global disarmament and argued whether Benny Goodman was greater than Glenn Miller. And yes, Tokyo had begun to feel like some kind of home . . .
Elly forced her attention back to Madame Sawada, who was speaking in Japanese again. ‘I must warn you though, Mrs Ruskin, that it could be a challenging process trying to adopt in Japan. You’ll have to go through courts, which can be slow and complicated, and expensive too, particularly if you use a lawyer. It would help if you had a sponsor — some prominent Japanese person who could vouch for you.’ She stared at Elly and Fergus dubiously, evidently sceptical that they moved in the right circles. Then she glanced at her watch, clearly eager to bring the conversation to a close. ‘In any case, today is just the first step, a chance for you to learn more about our children’s home, and for me to get to know you a little better. After this, I suggest that you think very carefully whether you want to go ahead, and if you do, try to find someone influential who can be a sponsor for your adoption process.’
‘You mentioned a little girl . . .’ said Elly tentatively.
‘Ah yes. Little Maya. Dear little Maya.’ Madame Sawada was rising to her feet already. ‘She needs a family to call her own. They all do, of course, but Maya in particular. She seems somehow rather lost in our home. Her father was Indian. From the Punjab, I gather. He went back there when his regiment left Japan four years ago. She’s nearly six. You’ll see her in the choir today. She’ll be in the front row. But please, I’d rather you didn’t speak to her individually. I wouldn’t want to raise any false hopes.’
* * *
By the time they returned to the assembly hall for the concert, the audience had begun to gather. Most were Japanese, but there was a sprinkling of foreigners among them: Elly spotted one rotund figure whose name she had forgotten, but who, according to Fergus, was something big in US military intelligence. The women wore brocade kimonos or cashmere and pearls and little fur stoles. Elly’s best suit — blue, with glass buttons and a skirt that always seemed to be slightly creased despite her energetic ironing — looked tired and sad in their company.
They took their seats in the front row, and Fergus quietly reached out to take Elly’s hand in his.
She smiled at him. ‘So, how was Misawa?’
‘Freezing and dreary. Good to be back in Tokyo.’
‘And was it the communists?’ she asked, referring to the incident he had gone to investigate — a landmine planted beneath a rail track, but fortunately found and defused before a train could pass over it.
‘Buggered if I know,’ said Fergus with a shrug. ‘Communists, trade unionists, Koreans. All three, could be. At least, that’s what the military and the police wanted me to believe. “The Red Menace to Japanese Democracy”’ — these last words intoned in his excruciating version of an American accent. ‘They say it was supposed to disrupt the flow of goods to the Korean War front. But then again, it may just have been the local yakuza trying a spot of blackmail or wreaking revenge on someone. They seem to be doing a roaring trade in that part of the world. We’ll probably never find out.’
They were interrupted by a silver-haired Japanese man who greeted Fergus like an old friend and took the vacant seat next to Elly. He produced a name-card from a monogrammed card case and introd
uced himself to her, quite formally, as Ogiri Joji, President of the Pacific International Trading Company. His face was unlined, and he could, Elly thought, have been aged anywhere between fifty and seventy-five.
‘I’ve known your husband for quite some time now,’ said Mr Ogiri, ‘and I’m delighted to meet you too.’ His Oxford English was as impeccable as his immaculately tailored suit and silk tie. ‘In fact, I have been wondering: Ruskin — does that mean, by any chance, that your husband is connected to the famous British art critic?’
Elly laughed. ‘I’m sure my father-in-law would love you to think so, but I’m afraid our Ruskins are just a long line of Scottish grocers and textile salesmen.’
‘And you,’ asked Mr Ogiri with just a slight raise of the eyebrows, ‘are you from Scotland too?’
She was saved from answering by the fact that the auditorium was abruptly plunged into gloom, leaving only a row of lights illuminating the stage. Madame Sawada strode on to the podium, followed by a gaunt, bespectacled young interpreter, to introduce the concert and its performers.
After a few words of English greeting, Madame Sawada began to speak in Japanese, warming to her task and talking rapidly and passionately, without notes and without hesitation. She began with a few facts and figures about the number of foreign servicemen in Japan and the ‘inevitable tragic consequences’: abandoned mixed-race babies, with absent fathers or none, and mothers often completely incapable of taking care of them. Then she launched into a personal anecdote.
‘I was on a train to Kyoto,’ she said, ‘four years ago now. How quickly those years have gone! The train was packed with people, taking goods to sell on the black market and so on. I’d been lucky enough to find a seat, and was sitting there reading a book and minding my own business when a group of policemen boarded the train looking for contraband, and asking people to open their bags. When they came to the spot where I was sitting, they said, “What’s that bundle on the luggage rack above you?” Well, I hadn’t noticed there was anything there at all, but sure enough, when I looked up, there was a bundle wrapped in newspaper. I suppose it had been left there by a passenger who got off earlier. The police took it down and opened it in front of my eyes, and there inside — I almost fainted when I saw it — was the body of a newborn Negro baby. Stone dead, poor little mite.’
Elly heard a double gasp from the audience — first from the people who understood Japanese, and then, like an echo, from the rest, as Madame Sawada’s words were translated into English.
‘Well, that was the beginning,’ continued Madame Sawada. ‘I think the Holy Spirit must have spoken to me that evening. I knew then that I had to do something to save those innocent children from such a dreadful fate, and that was when I started to plan my children’s home, which, as you’ll know, I named after dear Elizabeth Saunders, who left her life savings to support our work.’
She went on to talk about the home she had created in ‘our beautiful old holiday house in Oiso’, and ended by gently pointing out the donation boxes on either end of the trestle tables — ‘We welcome any gift, however large or however small. And now I would like you to welcome our charming little children, who have a few songs they would like to sing to you.’
Then the children trooped on to the stage in a neat line, the boys in suits and little black bow ties and the girls in black-and-white dresses with ribbons in their hair. They all seemed to be aged around five, and they reminded Elly, with startling clarity, of the classroom in Tatura, the internment camp in Australia where she had been incarcerated for the duration of the war. There, as here, the children had dark complexions and fair ones, curly hair and straight, black eyes and blue. There was something familiar about the expressions on their faces too. These were the faces of children inured to the scrutiny of strangers, children who accepted their own powerlessness. Or, perhaps, who had just learned to conceal their thoughts from the prying eyes of others.
Elly leaned forward and scanned the front row, looking for Maya. Second on the right. That had to be her. She was relatively tall for her age, and her large eyes stared out from beneath a fringe of wavy hair with an expression of fierce concentration: trying, it seemed, to solve some particularly challenging puzzle. There were faint dark smudges under her eyes, as though she slept badly, and she had a small mark like a beauty spot just to the right of her upper lip. Elly could see how tightly the little girl was clasping her hands together, and sensed her nervous tension. Her own hands, too, were clamped together, palms damp with sweat.
As the children’s chorus started singing the cherry blossom song, Elly strained her ears to see if she could pick out Maya’s voice from among the others, but the child seemed to be singing very quietly, though intently. The only individual voice that reached Elly belonged to one little boy in the middle, who fixed the audience throughout with a dazzling smile, for all the world like a miniature Mantovani.
The choir worked its way quite competently through ‘Swanee River’ and ‘The Apple Song’, ending with a much-applauded rendering of ‘Goodnight Irene’. Then the children bowed deeply to the cheering audience, before being gently ushered offstage by a couple of matronly women. As they departed, Maya turned suddenly, looked at the audience with an unfocused and bewildered expression, and then gave a surprisingly cheeky little grin. Elly stared at the child as she vanished through a doorway at the far end of the room. She felt her heart contract. My daughter. Could that be my daughter? How strange to be so close and still so far apart. Maya. She repeated the name to herself. Maya.
Dusk was thickening over the garden by the time Elly and Fergus left the reception that followed the concert, having duly deposited a hundred-yen note in one of the donation boxes. They walked side by side in silence, Elly inhaling the chill air and sensing the calm that descends in the interval between sunset and dark.
As they passed the front of the Western mansion she saw that the guard on the steps had disappeared, and the door of the building was now firmly closed, though lines of light were visible from behind the shutters that covered the windows. For a moment Elly thought she could hear a confused and distant noise, like someone shouting, coming from within the building. The shape of the unlit stone lantern beneath the cedar tree loomed through the dusk like a grotesque, stunted human form.
Then Fergus flung his arm around her shoulders and said, ‘There. You see. There is hope. We’re going to do this. Together we’re going to do it, whatever the difficulties.’
And she felt the warmth of his body against hers as they walked out of the gateway and back into the noise and chaos of Tokyo.
CHAPTER 3
When Jun opened his eyes, he found that he was lying on a mattress in a very small room. The ceiling was a mouldy green colour, and there was a naked lightbulb hanging directly above his head. He lay still, feeling as though he were floating. Very cautiously, he opened and closed his fists, and stretched his arms. He touched his head, and found that one side of his forehead was covered by a stiff bandage. I am alive, he thought. I am still alive.
It was good to lie completely still on his back, utterly powerless. There was nothing he could do. He was in the hands of unseen strangers. He had simply to wait for them to come to him. He heard footsteps passing by outside, and once the sound of raised voices engaged in some kind of quarrel, though he couldn’t catch the words. He was dressed in a loose khaki shirt and baggy trousers that he had never seen before. When he turned his aching head to one side, he could see that the mattress was spread on frayed tatami matting. In a corner of the room stood a low wooden table and an enamel pail. There was, he assumed, a barred window somewhere high above him, because long lines of watery light and shadow fell on to the wall to his left.
As Jun lay there, watching the shadow bars creep very slowly across the room, fragments of memory — or were they fragments of a dream? — came back to him. He seemed to remember sitting on a hard wooden bench, and a man — a thin man with gold-rimmed glasses — saying to him, ‘Your name? What
is your name?’ He vaguely recalled reaching for the seaman’s card in his jacket pocket, only to find that they were all gone: the jacket, the card, the purse of coins, all vanished. And he seemed to hear his own voice saying, ‘I am Kamiya Jun.’
After a very long time, there were noises outside the door. A scraping of metal bolts, and the sound of chesty coughing. The door swung open, and a stout man entered the room carrying a tray with two metal bowls on it.
‘Stand up!’ commanded the man.
To his own surprise, Jun found himself obeying. He groaned at the pain in his ribs as he moved, but he was able to stand, propped against the wall. The light from the window had faded, and the dim single bulb left the corners of the room in deep gloom.
‘Am I in prison?’ he asked.
‘You’re in a holding cell in Aomori police headquarters,’ said the man.
‘Why?’
‘Because you are suspected of being an illegal boat person,’ replied the man, dumping the tray on the table in the corner so roughly that liquid slopped from one of the bowls. Jun could smell the tempting odour of chicken broth.
‘So,’ Jun hesitated, ‘what happens now?’
‘Eat your food and go to sleep,’ replied the man. And then, less reassuringly, ‘They will come for you on Monday morning.’
Which meant nothing to Jun, since he had absolutely no idea what day of the week it was.
* * *
Jun spent four days in the cell, lying on the mattress and staring at the walls and ceiling. Sometimes he slept, and sometimes odd scenes from his life in Karafuto drifted through his mind. He recalled the fat, kindly faces of his family’s Russian neighbours, the Zimnikovs — Auntie and Uncle Zima, as Jun and his sister Kiyo called them — who had lived in Karafuto for ever and told them stories of the old days before the Japanese came. It had seemed to Jun and Kiyo that bushy-bearded Uncle Zima knew everything about the island. He showed them where the native people used to fell trees to make canoes, and where to gather the plumpest of the flower-shaped white mushrooms that flourished in autumn. He helped Jun to catch his only pet: a mottled black-and-golden orb-weaver spider with eight eyes, which Jun kept in a matchbox — producing satisfying screams of disgust from Mother and Kiyo — and then released into their back garden in the hope that it would spin one of its magnificent circular webs right across their little vegetable patch. But of course, the spider simply disappeared back into the forest to build its web elsewhere.
THE LANTERN BOATS an utterly gripping and heart-breaking historical novel set in post-war Japan (Historical Fiction Standalones) Page 4