The Ginger Tree

by Oswald Wynd

  I heard when Misao dared to disturb the Lord and Master below with the suggestion that he might like his supper. I waited until I was sure there had been time for her to set up the table, and then descended the almost ladder stair without being summoned, to find Kentaro seated cross-legged in the baby’s corner of the room making origami paper toys, a little procession of completed ones marching towards the small quilt. The sight seemed to stop my heart.

  The samurai who had suddenly called on us had taken off his haori coat which Misao must have tidied away, and appeared utterly intent on what he was doing, entertaining an infant. Tomo was lying on his stomach, a position he only rarely rolls himself into, and I was sure his father’s hands must have turned him over, settling him like that. Tomo lay absolutely still, black eyes fixed on fingers working paper. I thought I had come in silently but Kentaro turned his head and then smiled. It was the smile I remembered from the temple, which ripped away a soldier’s years.

  Later we made so much noise in that little upstairs room that it might almost have been one of the small earthquakes. Tomo, left below, woke and started to yell. I tried to get up to go to him but Kentaro held me. After a while we heard Misao coming from the maids’ room and then her voice singing the little song she uses often, this always seeming to me like a cross between a lullaby and a marching tune.

  Tsukiji, Tokyo

  October 9th, 1905

  I spend my days waiting for him to come. He never tells me when he is going to, sets no times, makes no promises. On Tuesday he brought me what a Japanese woman might use as a sash ornament, a gold brooch with three small rubies. I have a feeling that the maids are watching me in a way they never have before, something intense now about their curiosity which makes me uncomfortable. There can be no doubt at all that Tomo recognises his father, the baby’s interest when Kentaro arrives quite marked.

  This morning I tried to put some kind of normal control over feeling by writing to Marie, attempting the light view of things in the way I have done quite easily before, but the words wouldn’t come. I have heard nothing from Aiko and am sure she is keeping away because she knows Kentaro is back and visiting me. I still haven’t said anything about her to him, there has been no occasion to, and he never asks me questions about anything. Though he is almost always kind, I have the feeling there is no room in his life for him to consider me too deeply. This may be unfair. But there is no understanding between us of what the other is thinking. He may be completely incurious about what is in my mind. The second wife is for relaxation, you have a duty towards her, but it is a much lighter duty than you bear towards a first wife. Perhaps this is something I’m imagining from my own uncertain situation. It is uncertain because, though I am now sure Kentaro will always look after me, I want more than what we are giving each other. I don’t really know what that more could be, but I want it anyway.

  Tsukiji, Tokyo

  Ocober 11th, 1905

  I’m sure Kentaro knows I cannot have any more children and is glad of this. He must have seen Dr Ikeda. Is it possible that this was something arranged, that after Tomo there could be no others? No, that could not be, not in a hospital like St Luke’s. And I have heard that Dr Ikeda is a Christian. I must not let myself think these things.

  Yesterday Kentaro told me that Fukuda San will be leaving at the end of the month. Her mother is ill at home in Sagami Prefecture, and needs to be looked after. Somehow this seems an excuse that has been used often before and it leaves me wondering whether, for some reason, he does not approve of the girl? I thought I noticed the other day that Fukuda had been crying, but this was possibly from worry about her mother. I shall miss her. She is in many ways more mature than Misao, and though Misao is really Tomo’s nurse I feel much happier about leaving the baby when I know that Fukuda will be there to look after him. In fact I just don’t go out unless I’m sure both of them will be home and, even then, on outings with Aiko I’m suddenly hit by spasms of worry about all the things that might happen, including fire, that great bogey of Tokyo life which has come to haunt me, too. The earthquakes are just Kentaro’s dragon twitching. In a brick house I might be nervous but only light wood and paper round about gives the feeling that you wouldn’t be trapped. Alicia says that the heavy tile roofs are the real danger, that they sometimes come down all in one piece over the collapsed framework of the houses, like a lid.

  Since Kentaro’s return I haven’t once been in the city, only going for walks down to the river, sometimes with Misao carrying Tomo tied on her back in the Japanese fashion. I don’t really approve of this method of taking the baby out for it seems likely that Aiko is right when she says that tiny legs straddled across a woman’s spine have made countless generations here bow-legged. There is no doubt that Kentaro is slightly so, in spite of all the hard exercise to which he has subjected his body.

  I am a sort of half prisoner in this house again, after having broken free for a time, Kentaro never suggesting that we go anywhere together. It is not the thing for men of his class in society to be seen in public with their wives of either category, first or second. It is as though, having expensively established a woman in a house, they expect to find her in it at any time of day or night.

  One of the things I am determined to do, whether this is approved of or not, is learn the language properly. I cannot go on living in a country in which I am unable to really communicate with the people. I want a teacher, and may even learn to read and write in spite of all those thousands of characters that have to be memorised if you are going to do this.

  Tsukiji, Tokyo

  Ocober 26th, 1905

  The nights are beginning to have a real chill now, winter with its huddling over charcoal braziers not far off. I can’t see why one couldn’t have a coal or wood stove in these houses. It could be mounted on a cement base and though not very pretty, what a comfort when Tokyo’s wet snow is coming down outside. I will mention this to Kentaro when he is in a better mood. He is odd just now, not coming sometimes for two days, once not for three, saying very little while with me, as though he was here to forget what was troubling him, probably a family matter. I have to keep reminding myself that he has another complete world in his other Tokyo house, and, with four children, no doubt many problems about which he would never speak to me. He has never mentioned his other family and I’m quite certain has never told his wife about Tomo. Of course she knows about me and the boy just as I know about her.

  I wrote a longish letter to Mama, to which there will be no reply, of course. I have never been able to write to her at any length before since coming to Japan but suddenly she has become utterly remote. I remember that world in Edinburgh only through a kind of haze of what has happened since, so am released to talk to her on paper as though we were only quite friendly acquaintances instead of me being the daughter she has lost to total sin. I was reading over what I had written when suddenly the thought came … supposing Tomo should some day write to me like this, from the great and safe distance of strangeness? Tears came to my eyes, half for Mama, half for me. I hope I am not getting too emotional. Kentaro won’t like it if I show signs of this.

  Tsukiji, Tokyo

  Ocober 28th

  In spite of the shrinking sun this garden is still warm in the early afternoon and I was out there today in my wicker chair reading translations of Japanese poems, these having been put into English by a professor of Literature at Tokyo University who comes from Oxford. It is his idea that all poetry must be made to rhyme and it seems to me he has made jingles out of the sentiments. Kentaro arrived suddenly as he often does and just took the book out of my hand, standing for minutes to turn over the pages. Then he handed the poems back and said one word: ‘Kusai.’ Fukuda uses that word every time I bring home cheese from a Ginza shop. The meaning is, it stinks.

  I suggested he write me another poem, like the Western Hills one. He stared down: ‘You kept that, Mary?’ I said that of course I had and that if he didn’t like the idea of writing poetry
in cold blood, then we could have a little competition between us, which is after all a favourite Japanese game. He finds it very difficult to refuse a direct challenge of any kind, so at once sat down cross-legged on the paving, accepting paper and pencil. However, inspiration came to me first. In the pool, half hidden by floating leaves, was one of Misao’s goldfish, poisoned as usual. I wrote, refusing to follow the Oxford professor into rhyme:

  Dirty pond,

  Dead fish.

  I handed the sheet to Kentaro and then watched the change come almost slowly into his face, the boyish look there again just before a great bellow of laughter. He threw himself back flat, his body shaking. We both laughed until we were practically weeping. Laughter between two is sometimes a closer act of love than any other.

  Tsukiji, Tokyo

  November 8th, 1905

  Fukuda San stayed an extra week, which makes me think that her mother’s illness can’t have been so very serious. But she has now gone, dry-eyed when she bowed her farewells before going off in a ricksha with her bundles around her, but not looking at me either. We have parted forever without my knowing whether she even liked me a little. The only thing I am sure of is that she was devoted to Tomo. The replacement arrived two hours after Fukuda had disappeared, a much older woman, solemn and correct in a dark brown kimono and black haori. I could see that Misao disliked her at sight, and I at once had the feeling that with Okuma San in the kitchen the atmosphere in this little house is certain to change, and not for the better. However, it is only fair to give her a reasonable trial before I complain. Kentaro says the lady ‘understands’ foreign cooking, whatever that may mean, and no doubt if I am served delicate soufflés somehow contrived on a charcoal brazier I will soon be regarding Okuma San as a treasure beyond price.

  Some days before she went I asked Kentaro if I should tip Fukuda and he said it wasn’t necessary, she was well looked after. I then added that I would be tipping her out of money I had brought from Scotland and not from the cash inside his fish which was now safely in a bank earning interest, at which he suddenly grinned and said I could do what I liked. Kentaro is in no way mean about money. After Richard, I suppose I was expecting all men to be this, at least a little, but Kentaro seems to have a samurai’s disdain for pelf. It could, of course, be a rich man’s indifference to something he has never had to bother about.

  I gave Fukuda twenty yen, which I’m sure is much more than she earned in a month. She was most reluctant to accept the money, almost as though she did not want to take anything from me, so finally I just left the envelope in the kitchen and went away. It was not returned to me.

  I can never quite get accustomed to the way we can share a house and living patterns with someone for a long time so that, at least in physical terms, we think we know them well, and suddenly a door is shut or a gate closed and we never see them again, and soon never think of them either. Poor Yao of the unbalanced eyes who wept on our parting is rarely remembered by me and I’m sure he doesn’t now think of me either, yet he was a real support in time of trouble, offering kindness when I had no right to expect it anywhere. It seems such a waste that we lose people this way. Even Jane, my daughter, is now just a shape beyond a screen, like a performer in that drawing-room game we used to play of hanging up a sheet to make shadow pictures on it. I sometimes wonder if under the disguises I wear to make myself bearable to me I am really hard and selfish, pursuing what I want and brushing aside anything that is likely to hinder me in achieving this. I have pretended that what happened at the temple was almost an accident, something beyond my control. But could it be that I wanted Kentaro from that moment at Marie’s when he said there was a dragon under Japan? A few nights ago before we became sleepy I nearly asked him when he had first been interested in me. But I didn’t, I think because I was afraid of his answer – that he noticed me when I became available. He would not have put it quite like that, but near enough.

  13

  Letter from Mary Mackenzie to Sir Claude Macdonald, British Ambassador in Tokyo

  St Luke’s Hospital, Tsukiji, Tokyo

  January 11th, 1906

  Dear Sir Claude – The last thing I ever thought I would do was make a personal appeal to you. I will never forget your great kindness to me in Peking at the time I married Richard, but as a result of what I did later you may well regret that kindness. I have no right to ask for your help now, but I do it because I am quite desperate, with no one else to turn to.

  I do not know what you will have heard about me and what I am supposed to have done, but whatever stories may be circulating I am not, as I am sure most people believe, out of my mind. It has been politely called a nervous collapse. I am in a private room here and everyone is most kind, but I am watched. If this letter reaches you it will be because I have been able to bribe a cleaner to post it. The nurses or doctors would probably take any letters I wrote, promising to post them, but not doing this. Perhaps I am wrong here, but I do not think so.

  They say I tried to murder my maid. That is not true. I must beg you to bear with me while I explain the circumstances in which I did what I did. It may have been a temporary madness of a kind, but it was the result of having endured a week of misery so dreadful that it cannot really be understood by anyone who has not been through something like it. My son was taken from me. I have no doubts now that this was deliberate, and had been planned for some time, many little things point to that, though in the days leading up to what happened I did not notice one of the warning signs. Now, almost three weeks later, I still do not know where my baby is, but what is so horrible is that I am quite sure that everyone with whom I have been in contact, the doctors, nurses, the police, all know a great deal more than I do about what has happened to my son but are under orders not to tell me. Is it any wonder, Sir Claude, that I have been behaving as though I was out of my mind?

  I will tell you exactly what happened, and this is the truth whatever you may have heard from the police or read in the papers. On the day they took Tomo it was raining, cold, threatening snow. I had been expecting a visit from the man under whose protection I came to Tokyo. He had not been for three days, and I was sure he would come that afternoon. Misao, my maid, who was also the baby’s nurse, suggested that Tomo had not been out in the fresh air at all that day and she would take him on her back to the river before it became dark. I helped her tie my baby on her back and then cover him with the loose outer haori coat she wore, so that only his head was sticking out. I went with them to the gate and watched them go down the road towards the bridge over the canal. That was the last I saw of Tomo.

  When they were not back in about an hour I went out to hunt for them, spending some time walking along the embankment of the Sumida river. Then, because Misao might have come home another way, I returned. My new cook was there but no Misao or the baby. I was sure there had been an accident. I sent Cook for the police. They came. It was the first of what seemed like a hundred visits. One man not in uniform spoke quite good English but seemed to be trying to trip me up in what I had to tell him, not really wanting to help. I asked them to get in touch with my protector but was told that he had left the day before to take up military duties in Korea. My only real friends in Tokyo are an elderly English lady whom I could not burden with my troubles, and a Japanese lady who has been in trouble with the police because of her views on some matters. She would have helped me and the next day I went to the hotel where she lives, but she had gone to Osaka and they had no address for her there. Or they said they did not. After that I went to the doctor who has attended me since I came to Japan and is still looking after me here. He was kind and promised to help. All that help amounted to was pills to make me sleep. They did not make me sleep. The police said there was no trace of Misao, and there had been no accident involving a maid with a child on her back, no such patients at any of the hospitals.

  Sir Claude, I lost my daughter through what I did. Now I have lost my son, too. You can imagine what my feelings were like durin
g that first week which now seems like a hundred years ago, and at the same time just yesterday. I went out in the city on my searches, always with the hope that when I came home there would be Tomo brought back to me by some miracle. Instead there was only the empty house and the cook, a woman who has no kindness for me at all. I know now that she was carefully chosen to replace the girl who would have helped me, but who had been sent away. God knows, I have felt alone quite often since I came from Edinburgh to the Far East, but never like this, a woman walking the streets of a city in which she could not speak much of the language, looking for her son, going to the police time and time again to beg them to help. There was no help for me anywhere except from the English lady who wanted me to come and stay with her. I think now that probably she guessed what had happened to Tomo, though she has not admitted this on her visits to me here in this room where I am a prisoner. It was kind of her to offer to take me in, but I had to go back to the little house in case there was the miracle of Tomo’s return.

  They have taken my son to give him to someone else to bring up. This was beginning to dawn on me by the end of that week and as I lay on my quilts in the dark. I may have slept sometimes during those earlier nights, but I do not think so. Quite often I was sick. I had not eaten much, though the cook kept bringing me food, as though this was her duty and she would do it. I will admit that I hated her. For the rest of my life I will see her cold face as she brought in a tray laden with ‘foreign’ cooking that was supposed to be what I wanted.