Dragons in the Forest

by Peter Yeldham

  He sat in a chair beside her. A small fire flickered in the grate and warmed the house. Other than saying she’d been away almost half the week and missed the bombing, Cecile had given no explanation of her absence while they ate. Even now she hesitated for a moment to compose herself, then quietly began.

  “It was three days ago, quite early in the morning before I went to work. A very attractive girl came to the door. A Swedish girl. She worked at her country’s embassy. At first she said Jacques had been hurt in a raid, and was asking for me. He’d been living with her, she said, and she had used influence to get him into a small hospital where she knew a Swedish doctor. But then she admitted he wasn’t just hurt, he was dying … and he wanted to see me.”

  Alex leaned forward and took both her hands. Apart from her fingers tightening on his, she gave no indication she was aware of it.

  “The girl obviously felt humiliated, but Jacques had heard I was living here, and made her promise to come and ask me. She did admit she had thought of pretending, then going back to tell him I’d refused, but found she couldn’t in all conscience do this, so she was here to ask on his behalf. Would I come? She rather doubted it, since he hadn’t treated me at all well, and he’d had affairs all the time we were married. Not only with her, although she had spent last summer with him at Karuizawa.”

  The blonde at the tennis, Alex thought, as she continued.

  “I said of course I’d come. And if there was a telephone at this hospital, I’d ring my office and explain I’d be late for work. She had a car from the embassy, and we sat in the back talking in French so the driver wouldn’t understand. Talking about Jacques. How they’d gone skiing in the winter, but decided against Karuizawa this year, because he’d heard the Count and Moustique were there, and he didn’t want any embarrassing encounters. It was so strange, Alex. There we were, his latest paramour and me observing the courtesies, chatting politely as if we were talking about some casual acquaintance.”

  “Where was the hospital?”

  “In Sumida-ku. Very private. I got the impression it was more for abortions than anything else, but the Swedish Embassy clearly had some influence, because Jacques was in their best single room. The doctor said I should go straight in, as they thought he couldn’t last more than an hour or so. The trouble with that was, they didn’t know their patient. Didn’t know his capacity for survival. It took him two-and-a-half days to die — and all that time he held my hands and begged me not to leave him.”

  Oh God, Alex thought. Two-and-a-half days!

  “Even when I had to go to the lavatory he kept calling for me. And when I fell asleep in the chair beside his bed, he just kept on talking as though I could hear. I knew that, because he was saying the same things each time I woke.”

  “What did he talk about?”

  “Our lives. How unique and wonderful they’d been, how magical the future would be. Now the war in Europe was over, he said, we’d go back to Paris together — we’d flee from whatever the past here contained, and start all over again. It was no use my telling him the war wasn’t yet over in Japan. That we could go nowhere. He rambled from one thing to another, sometimes surprisingly coherent but mostly gently raving, because in all his recollections our life together had been so marvellous. Then just before he died, he suddenly looked at me with such clarity and said — ‘I’ve been an awful shit, old dear. Treated you badly. I’m truly sorry.’ And those were the last words he said.”

  Alex wished he knew how to deal with this. Was she in mourning for him, or relieved to be free? Had her rush of tears that morning been for Jacques Clermont, or for the derangement he had caused in her life? As though sensing his state of ineptitude, she smiled and released his hands. She moved slightly towards him on the settee; he took it as a request to sit closer to her. When he did, she made a satisfied murmur and gratefully rested her head on his shoulder.

  “I had to tell someone I trust,” she said, “and I don’t think I know anyone that I trust more than you. Strange, isn’t it, with the difference in our ages.”

  “Not a bit strange.”

  “I’m glad you said that. Please stay here with me tonight. Don’t leave me, Alex. I don’t think I could bear to be left alone.”

  “Of course I’ll stay,” he said, but was confused by a feeling of immaturity, uncertain of exactly what he was being asked. He felt desperately sorry for her, and self-consciously put an arm around her shoulders, in an attempt to comfort her. She gave a soft murmur of content at this and leaned against him. Her breathing became regular, and within moments she was sound asleep.

  ALEX’S DIARY: MAY 17th, 1945

  It was a long, slow journey back to Karuizawa, for the line had been bombed, and the engine crawled its way over repaired tracks. After going home I cycled to the Count’s to tell him the news. There was a lot to tell, and strangely he seemed more disturbed about the destruction of his garden and the bonsai, than the loss of the bank.

  “That cedar tree gave pleasure to people for at least 100 years. Now it’s dead. Whereas the bank was insured. It can be rebuilt.”

  “Not with 3000 yen.”

  “Three thousand? But our insurance is in excess of two million.”

  I explained to him what I’d learned from Tommy Hashimoto many months ago, that three thousand was the secret government limit on any war damage claim. If it was a shock, he absorbed it with considerable savoir-faire.

  “Then it’s just as well we have ample cash,” he said, adding, “but perhaps Japan won’t have an economy for us to trade in when this is over. Perhaps in defeat there’ll be no logical reason for a French bank.”

  It was one of the rare times I heard him admit the war might end with Japan’s collapse. By then, of course, it was difficult for an intelligent man to believe in any other outcome. I had supper with he and Moustique, and told them about Cecile and the death of Jacques Clermont. But only the bare details. Most of what she’d confided would always remain private between us.

  The Count said he had already heard from Prince Konoe. “I had a telephone call saying the names on the list had been contacted, and the matter is under control,” the Count said. “But there can be no more favours the way things are, that was the message.”

  I cycled home that night, and fell into bed exhausted. I couldn’t sleep, there was so much to think about. It was fortunate the errand was successful. But mostly my thoughts concerned Cecile Patou. Despite two uncomfortable nights, one in the rain, and another with a cricked neck while she slept against my shoulder, I was very glad I’d gone to Tokyo.

  I wondered why I’d ever considered Cecile severe. Perhaps it was a combination of things: the starched convention of the bank, the formal suits and high heels she wore, the stress and pain she must have lived with, trying to cling to a marriage that she secretly knew was hopeless. During the long night, using me as a pillow, wearing slacks and a jumper, barefoot, and with her hair spilling over her face, she looked like a different person, completely relaxed and years younger. It seemed strange to think it then, but she looked content, even happy.

  She insisted on coming with me to the station, and just before the train left I found out the reason for that happiness. They were slamming the doors and the guard was blowing his whistle, when she suddenly told me. There was a new man in her life, a Swiss lawyer she’d met in her job. Not a glamorous figure; not a tennis player, not a skier or a romantic, not the least bit like Jacques Clermont, instead a nice, kindly widower, nearly 15 years older than she was, who wanted her to live with him.

  There was hardly time to absorb it, let alone reply. The train was pulling out as I shouted: “You will do that, won’t you?”

  “Yes.” I could hardly hear, but I knew the answer from her smile.

  “Promise?”

  I don’t know if she heard over the noise of the train, but she laughed, and just as she’d done in Hibiya Park all those months ago, waved and blew me a kiss.

  28

  THE HIROHIT
O HOTEL

  With the approach of summer, the sexual temperature rose considerably in blissful Karuizawa. The young took their pleasure in the woods, or among bushes on the golf course — the latter preferably by night because daytime had been declared dangerous, with rank amateurs liable to slice or hook with equal ferocity, one never knew where the next ball was coming from. This remark, attributed to Odette Daubigny, caused raised eyebrows and much amusement among the young. Whatever made her say that, they asked each other, then proceeded to slyly ask Alex if he was contemplating taking up the game of golf?

  As the days warmed, so did the heat of passion. Who knew how much longer they’d be at liberty, or what might happen if invasion came? The rumours, the sense of living on borrowed time in this enclosed society, dominated their lives. They were people in limbo, all of them with an uncertain future, determined to snatch their gratification while they could. Many were sybarites who had always done so; they simply went on doing what they did best, enjoying their uninhibited lifestyle.

  Unlike the young, the mature community could conduct their erotic affairs with more decorum, in the privacy of their homes. The Countess d’Almedia, the attractive widow of a Portuguese diplomat, was known to have three current lovers, each assigned two days of her energetic and libidinous week. On Sundays, she told close friends, no man was allowed to cross her threshold. On the Sabbath, like any good Christian, she rested.

  Wealthy Madame Juliette Lelouche, who looked a chic 60 but was reputed to be 80, had been a great beauty in Paris and a seductress of some renown. It was said she’d bedded most of the Crown Princes of Europe in the best hotels and made love on the top of the Eiffel Tower to Monsieur Eiffel himself, when he finished his phallic structure in 1889. It was discreetly known in Parisian society as the alternative opening ceremony. And while these events took place long before Alex and his friends were born, it was well known she had not retired from dalliance or conjugation yet.

  Her husband, some 20 years younger than her and a noted drunk, was invariably in an alcoholic daze before morning tea time. This left Madame Juliette free to pursue her own activities — with anyone who took her fancy. She was rumoured to be having a torrid affair with the French Vice-Consul, but this was thought unlikely. She was an aficionado of the physical; the Vice-Consul had only one leg, having lost the other in the First World War at Verdun.

  “That pair together? What do you think?” Claude asked.

  “I think it’s disgusting,” Mathilde’s friend, Octavia, said.

  “I think it’s impossible,” Mathilde herself declared.

  Now summer was here, the days were filled with invitations, and a great deal of entertaining ensued. They were all invited to lunch at the fashionable Lelouche villa. Madame Juliette placed her guests with care at the table. The Vice-Consul would sit alongside her. During lunch, Alex dropped his napkin, and bent to retrieve it. Beneath the table he saw his hostess’s long and still shapely legs wrapped tightly around the Vice Consul’s single limb. The one male leg was moving in slow but lecherous rhythm, the two female legs ardently responding.

  Very tactfully and with great care, in the next half hour various table napkins were dropped. Heads were lowered and eyebrows raised, as they saw the proof for themselves. They were immensely impressed that all through lunch, the elderly Frenchwoman kept up an animated conversation, as though nothing at all was happening beneath her lace tablecloth.

  After lunch, coffee and brandy was served on the terrace and the guests disported themselves outside. The Lelouche house had a rotunda that contained a guest suite. To this, as soon as it was politely possible, the hostess and the Vice-Consul repaired for an afternoon nap. As the others played boule and croquet on the lawn, they tried to ignore the sound of bedsprings and ecstasy coming from the open window of the building.

  “It’s absolutely indecent,” the Countess d’Almedia said, “they’re too old and decrepit to fuck like that.”

  “You should know, sweetie,” Paul Jacoulet told her. “You’ve been shafted more times than a milkman’s horse.”

  “Bloody poof,” she accused him. “Raving old queen.”

  “Flatterer,” he retorted, and went in pursuit of a naval attaché from the Argentinean Embassy, about whom he had distinct hopes.

  Alex and Odette dutifully waited until their happy hostess emerged from her siesta — the Vice-Consul was presumably resting or fitting on his wooden leg — and after thanking her for such a pleasant lunch, explained they were expected at the tennis club. Waving their goodbyes they cycled off.

  “Have a nice game,” Madame Lelouche called, knowingly.

  “We will,” they promised.

  “Tennis club, my arse,” Claude said to his new girlfriend, a svelte looking blonde named Lisette. “They’ve got a secret place where they go at it like a pair of rabbits. And talking of rabbits, here comes Le Vice-Consul. What a hero! What a shagger! She’s used to the best, is our Madame, so he must be a real Olympian between the sheets.”

  “Talking of sheets,” Lisette murmured softly, “can we go home soon? My parents are in Nagano visiting friends and won’t be back until very late.”

  “Anyone else at home?”

  “No. Shall we go?”

  “Yes, please,” Claude said.

  In the thickest part of the forest that he knew so well, Alex and Odette had a new sanctuary. Some animal had dwelt there once, well hidden by ferns and japonica; they wondered if it might have been the haven of an antelope or a chamois. They’d decided it was the perfect solution to the problem that had plagued them for so long. The sleeping bag was secreted there, together with an old palliasse Alex had found, and these they now stored in a large grove of bamboo for when they required a soft landing to share.

  They called their love nest the Imperial Suite, or the Hirohito Hotel, since this land like all wooded areas was owned by the Emperor. Alex told her how it had been his childhood playground, and how he had kept his sister and her friends away by telling them how there were mystic dragons in the forest.

  “I’ll settle for dragons,” she replied, “as long as there are no golfers.”

  Feeling safe from intrusion they made love until late afternoon. Then it was time to put on clothes, return to where they’d left their bicycles, and ride their separate ways home.

  Like everyone in this summer of lust, they were seeking a release from tensions that no-one wanted to contemplate. The war was nearer every day. On Okinawa the Japanese were giving way to the marines, but only by inches. They were dying in their thousands rather than surrender. It created new disquiet that festered in foreign enclaves like Karuizawa. Terrible rumours were proliferating about what might happen to neutral foreigners when Japan itself was attacked. The most persistent was, irrespective of nationality, they would be used as hostages. Or even worse — the first marine to step on the country’s sacred soil would result in the slaughter of all civilians.

  “It’s nonsense,” the Count insisted. “But how do you convince people of that? They agree it’s alarmist, even unlikely, then spend all their time fretting about it.”

  “Because none of us trust the militarists,” Moustique said. “If it did come to an invasion of mainland Japan, they’re ruthless enough to do almost anything.”

  Alex agreed with her. He was a frequent visitor at their residence since his return from Tokyo, and only rarely these days was it to do with bank business. He was progressively more at ease with them both, and much of this was due to Moustique. When she was present the Count was far less conservative, and Alex felt more able to express his own personal opinions.

  “I’m with Moustique,” he said, “the military are butchers.”

  “And I’m in the minority again,” the Count protested wryly. “Even the most sensible people seem to have these bizarre conceptions.”

  “People are concerned, Your Excellency. And if the idea seems bizarre, remember what we learned about the Nazi death camps. This war has shown humans are capable o
f any savagery.”

  He thought he might’ve gone too far, but the Count merely nodded. It was only three years, but it felt like a lifetime ago, that he had come as a nervous supplicant to the aristocratic Savignan de Champeaux, seeking a lowly job at the French bank.

  In the main square of Karuizawa that summer of ’45, the most welcome sight for Alex and his friends was the humiliation of the Germans who had openly flaunted their Nazi sentiments. The braggarts with their swastika armbands and fascist salutes, so fond of bullying other nationalities, were not only mortified by their country’s resounding defeat and their leader’s inglorious suicide, they were also destitute.

  Accustomed to being paid a regular salary by the embassy, they had lived well. Many had been permanent residents at the Mampei Hotel, occupying the best suites there. They had also monopolised the dining room and bar. But with their unconditional surrender, the weekly issue of all funds had abruptly ceased. The German Ambassador announced that payments would no longer be available and the edict would take place immediately. In response to their despairing complaints that it was unfair, that they would be penniless, he said he took his instructions from Berlin, and since the Allied Command was now in charge of that city he had been given orders to close the embassy and return to Germany. All his bank accounts were frozen. There was no finance so there could be no possible exceptions, he told those who came to plead for a loan, or to vent their indignation.

  In Karuizawa, those who had suffered the invective and sometimes physical violence of the Nazis, were moved to express their delight. No longer was it necessary to be careful; disdain and open scorn was now admissible. Children in the streets gave cheeky Nazi salutes and brazenly mocked them. Claude Briand regularly greeted them with a loud “sieg heil” and asked if there was any recent news of Adolf? Aryan Doktor Wirtz had to treat his patients without hope of a fee. Jewish doctors Plessner and Wittenberg were pleased to treat the long-term resident Germans whom they knew and had always attended, but declined the goose-stepping party members on the grounds that examining these patients might contaminate them. The Japanese, to whom such total defeat was dishonour, showed only contempt for their former allies and no longer cared if they were humiliated.