by Meira Chand
‘I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it,’ she answered. Her mind reeled with confusion.
‘So many thoughts, each one blowing against the other.’ He teased, he still held her hand. ‘That is why you try but cannot be like the others. You are different. I noticed it that first day at the races; it attracted me to you. I felt it was our fate then to come to know each other. Will you meet me sometimes here, like this, alone?’ He spoke smoothly. His face was lean, the blond moustache curved above a smile. His green eyes were those of a cat, never forgetting himself for a moment. ‘You have not met anyone before like this, alone? Your husband I am not counting, of course?’ he inquired, like a doctor making a diagnosis, firm but kind.
She shook her head, feeling foolish, hearing him laugh to himself. She wished she had lied. He knew his way, had walked this path many times before with other women. As had her own husband, who, with different words far away in time, had brought her to a similar place of choice within herself. And Reggie too made the same arrangements, even as she sat here, persuasive in a similar manner to women who complied. As she now complied. Already, coming here alone with Guy, she had proved something to herself. There was no turning back, she had made her decision.
‘Will you meet me again, here, like this? We shall talk, we shall be friends.’ His voice was near her ear, his breath covered her face. He bent and kissed her lips, lightly, without passion. She did not move. He smiled and drew away.
‘That is, how do you say it in English, to seal our friendship. Trust me, please, I will not harm you. We shall enjoy much from knowing each other.’
She nodded, silent. He stood and held out his hand to pull her up. The rain had lessened, they could leave.
They left the hut and rode upon a narrow path across uneven ground. When it widened enough to ride together, Amy urged her pony into a gallop, as if the speed with which she covered the earth was a simulation of the new purpose in her life. Guy le Ferrier kept pace with her; sometimes beside her, sometimes in front, never falling back. A life that had been all bone had suddenly put on flesh. She laughed at the sheer madness of all she would do, free as the crow who winged above and cawed loudly from the sky. The path narrowed again and they slowed to a trot.
‘If you would like to think more about fate, I know a man they say can see the future. We must go to him, all of us. I shall suggest it to Mabel today,’ Guy said, breathless beside her. Amy nodded, pleased. Soon they saw the others riding parallel on a converging path, depressed in sodden wraps and dripping leather, caught by rain upon the road, while she was warm and dry. She laughed and rode up to Mabel.
‘You see,’ said Amy. ‘It was just as I told you. We didn’t even keep you waiting.’
*
That night, against her inclination, Amy accompanied Reggie to the Gaiety Theatre where Elsa Bolithero was performing. Amy watched her with resentment. Upon the stage Mrs Bolithero, in lavish costumes of quick change and constant décolleté, was caught by her own exaggerations. Her little feet stamped and strode about, she postured and connived, her white, ample and well-exposed breast followed by men’s eyes. Looking at Reggie’s rapt attention, Amy was suddenly furious. She clenched her fists and did not understand why she should feel such anger. Why should she be jealous of a loose woman, deserving of no one’s respect? She had the thought of Guy le Ferrier now to hold onto in herself. It gave her a feeling of self-respect, and a comforting, well-rounded sense of revenge as Reggie applauded Elsa Bolithero’s songs. She let the thought of Guy flood her mind. Tomorrow she would see him. He was taking them all to a fortune teller in the Native Town.
*
Mabel’s group piled into rikishas the next afternoon to ride down from the Bluff to the Native Town. Mabel objected to the smell and the crowds. She had brought a lavender bag to see her through the worst. The fortune teller lived beyond Isezakicho-dori, the street of Japanese theatres. Mabel’s group urged their runners past the rickety exteriors of Kabuki theatres covered with bunting and Japanese script, past garish merry-go-rounds and catchpenny games. There were restaurants and secondhand clothes bazaars and one-man kitchens trundled on wheels or slung from poles upon shoulders. At every corner were vendors of ice cream, grilled squid and bean cakes. There were magicians and jugglers and acrobats, knife swallowers and performing dogs. Music wailed about them. It was a road to jumble up the senses – ears, eyes and noses assailed simultaneously; an oriental fairyland gone, thought Amy, completely mad. She wanted to stop and look.
‘Can’t we go slower, can’t we look?’ she shouted to Mabel when their rikishas drew level. Mabel held the lavender bag to her nose.
‘Look? My darling, are you mad? What is there to see? And that terrible fishy smell of squid, I simply cannot stand it.’ She was jerked smartly ahead by her runner. Amy saw her laugh, repeating to Guy le Ferrier the impossible suggestion.
‘Stop. She wanted to stop and smell and see.’ They teased her when they reached their destination.
‘Darling, if it intrigues you so, we can call some of the jugglers to the Bluff. We can have a garden party. They can perform in the comfort of our homes, instead of us standing on that filthy road like a lot of common tourists.’ Mabel laughed and they all joined in, enjoying Amy’s confusion.
They left the rikishas and filed up a narrow path between two houses. Mabel held her nose before the open gutters. She lent her lavender bag to Ada, who feared she would faint at the smell of the drains.
‘Where on earth have we come to?’ Enid wondered, tripping on a stone. ‘We must be quite mad. Guy, you persuade us to do the craziest things. It’s a good thing poor Rowly didn’t come – he would have been wedged so tight in this lane we could never have pulled him out.’ They all had to stop because they were laughing so much at the thought of fat Rowly Bassett stuck in the lane.
Eventually they reached a door in a ramshackled wall. Behind the gate was a short, neat path; the house was poor but clean. An old woman led them inside. There was a bother about leaving their shoes, and much complaining from Ada and Enid.
‘Come along,’ ordered Mabel loudly. ‘Where’s your spirit of adventure?’
Amy followed the old woman along a narrow, polished corridor. Her stockinged feet slid about; she felt ashamed of Ada and Enid. The old woman knelt to pull back a sliding door and bowed for them to enter. The room was small with a floor of rush mats. It was like no room Amy had seen. She had not been inside a Japanese house before; they had appeared dirty and dull. She looked about now, surprised at the dignity of the small room, bare of all adornment but a low table, cushions and a blue china brazier. One wall opened onto a tiny garden and a brilliant flowering bush. An old man with horn-rimmed spectacles knelt beside the table, frail as a piece of antique china, wrapped in a dark kimono. The bones of his eye sockets, nose and chin showed through the gleam of old, stretched skin. The others burst in and the place was suddenly a cupboard into which they must all squeeze. Ada and Enid were still complaining. The old woman knelt. Guy le Ferrier sat beside her, awkward with his long, stiff legs, to interpret for them. Amy stood nearest the table, and the old man called her first. She sat down, arranging her skirts so as not to take up too much room.
The man’s eyes were not the cloudy eyes of age but sharp as polished seeds; they settled and germinated in her. She could not look away. He began mumbling incoherently. Amy felt apprehensive and looked at Guy, who pulled a face. The old man picked up a bundle of wooden rods, lifting them to his forehead, bending low over the table, groaning and muttering. Then he was silent, his eyes upon Amy again. He asked her birthday, reasoning her sign in the Japanese zodíac, parting the divining rods into two bundles. He picked up a huge magnifying glass to examine the lines of her face. Behind it his own eye grew until it filled the glass like the red-rimmed eye of a monstrous cyclops. Soon he seemed satisfied and counted the reeds in each bundle. Through Guy le Ferrier he began to speak.
He told her facts about her past that were astonishing in accur
acy, but of the future he spoke in incomprehensible riddles. He stared at her from cunning eyes she had now begun to hate. They were the eyes of a lizard or a snake. There was something about him, something in the room that pressed tightly about her. Guy urged the man on; he continued in sentences without meanings or ends.
‘In the crowd you are different. Many people but always alone…. I cannot say, I cannot see. A tunnel, darkness and a bare room. Among many people you are alone.’
The weight grew tighter and heavier about her. She must escape, she felt nauseated, a rich smell of drains filled the house. There seemed to be no air. The old man’s eyes did not let her go. Then suddenly it was broken, something was gone, and he was looking over her shoulder for the next person. Her head ached, she got up and stumbled from the room.
There was a white paper door in the corridor behind which light glowed. She pulled it back and faced a tiny, enclosed garden, a patch of moss and stones and shrubs, weathered as the walls about it. It was peaceful. She sat down on the kerb of the corridor that she saw now, with its paper doors drawn back, became a verandah. She could hear Mabel’s voice debating her future with the old man. Amy leaned back. The little garden was beautiful; she felt its wisdom. She was suddenly tired. What nonsense the old man talked – he was nothing but a fake. Another of Guy le Ferrier’s madcap ideas; she felt warm when she thought of Guy. It was difficult to think of anything else now. She closed her eyes. Soon Mabel roused her with a hand upon her shoulder. They were finished, trooping out of the room, talking all at once.
‘He’s nothing but a charlatan,’ declared Enid loudly, putting on her shoes. ‘You made us waste our money, Guy.’
‘How good to be out of that crooked little house. What a horrid place,’ Ada said as they emerged into the sun.
‘It was clean,’ Amy observed.
‘Clean?’ Mabel reiterated. ‘My innocent, are you feeling well today?’
‘There was a beautiful little garden inside the house,’ Amy said.
‘Yes, I saw it,’ laughed Mabel. ‘A few deformed shrubs. How funny you are today, Amy.’ Her eyes flashed in amusement. Amy walked ahead, impatient with them. She did not feel herself; because of Guy le Ferrier she felt nothing but confusion.
They were travelling once more down Theatre Street when their rikishas were suddenly surrounded by a crowd of child acrobats. Their limbs were frail as reeds but, pliable as rubber. They circled the rikishas in a tumbling group like a flock of twittering sparrows. They flicked their bodies into the air as if they were Chinese crackers. They cartwheeled about in awesome contortions, then doubled backwards over their shoulders, feet beneath their chins. In this manner they ran about upon their hands like a crowd of decapitated hens. Two older boys beat drums. It was a shock in the middle of the road, and Amy heard Ada scream. It was impossible to proceed. The runners put down the rikisha shafts and stood grinning at the show. Amy felt sick looking at the bare feet and ragged clothes of the children, their malnourished bodies whacked at by the drummer boys. A crowd formed, watching, hesitating to interfere. From the back of Amy’s rikisha a child began to climb up, its weight rocking the contraption dangerously. Suddenly a dirty head poked up level with Amy’s shoulder; she looked into a filthy face with a wicked grin and the cratered skin of smallpox. The child screamed something at her. Its small mouth opened upon the red hole of its throat and broken decayed teeth. She tried to beat it off. She felt suddenly desperate, fearful of the tiny child, of its purpose and its face that had already in its first years of life seen more than she in twenty-four. She met the eyes of a wizened manikin, who placed a claw upon her. She drew back in terror, but suddenly, like a leech pulled off a limb, the awful child was gone and hung struggling and screaming in mid-air, held by a strange, foreign man. He put the child down and it ran away.
‘Just pay them something and they’ll go,’ the man said.
‘Why should we pay them?’ Amy asked, confused, still trembling from the shock.
‘Charity,’ said the strange man. ‘Even the devil, dear lady, must find the means to keep body and soul together. Do you not believe in charity then?’
Mabel, from the rikisha behind, had overheard. ‘Charity, they say, begins at home. And that is where I keep it, or a recognized orphanage or hospital, or the institutions of the church. These children wouldn’t even say “Thank you”.’
The man shrugged, put a hand in his pocket and produced some coins. He gave them to the drummer boy.
‘These children are always about this road. They mean no harm. Their parents are lepers,’ said the man. Amy exclaimed in horror.
‘The child is not a leper,’ the man explained. ‘In the hospital at Gotemba they believe the disease is not necessarily too contagious. I would rather share a room with a leper than a consumptive. I am often on this street. I have spoken before to these children.’
‘Here?’ Amy was surprised. She could not imagine Guy and Henry or Rowly Bassett ever finding their entertainment here.
‘I rather like their theatre,’ said the man. His eyes, like the fortune teller’s, seemed to hold her. She asked the next question before she could stop.
‘Their theatre? You like it?’
The man nodded. ‘It is also for me a matter of research. I’m preparing a paper upon it for the Asiatic Society.’
‘The Asiatic Society?’ Amy echoed his words incomprehensibly. She was relieved to see Guy le Ferrier running up. He shook hands with the man and thanked him. It appeared they had met before.
‘They’ve gone, I paid them,’ Guy told Amy.
‘Then I’ll be off,’ said the man. He nodded and strolled on down the street.
‘How horrid,’ said Amy with a shiver, remembering the child’s poxed face and toothy grin. ‘And what a strange man. Do you know who he is?’
‘Of course,’ said Guy. ‘That was Matthew Armitage. Some people they call him “Mad Mat”. He’s with the University of Tokyo – an expert on their culture. He’s well known as a writer, a botanist, an art historian and anything else you can think of.’
‘Shall we go on?’ Mabel called impatiently from the rikisha behind. The runners picked up the shafts and they began to move again.
Soon they left the Native Town and re-entered the order of the Settlement with its clean façades and foreign faces, its stonework and its brick. Amy breathed in the tangy air of the Bund, clear of the fetid, rotting smells of the Native Town. Her mind was all stirred up. The words of the fortune teller and his reptilian eyes kept returning to her, as did the sight of his garden, ancient as himself. She could not forget the peace of it. And that strange foreign man, appearing from nowhere? She had never met anyone in Yokohama who actively dug about in the incomprehensible mass of Japanese culture. Many people collected curios and some, like Guy, even spoke the language, but nobody bothered with the culture. It was said that in Tokyo foreign residents were different and spent time upon such things, but not in Yokohama. Tokyo, Mabel said, had a bad effect upon people. They became bookworms and bluestockings and Japanophiles and later published memoirs and travel books and diaries, but they never learned to live. Yet the face of Matthew Armitage kept appearing in Amy’s mind. His beard had been clipped to a neat point, his small eyes were humorous and intense. She remembered the integrity in his face.
Before the Naval Hospital they parted and went their various ways. Mabel waved quickly and was gone, but Guy le Ferrier passed close to Amy and leaned across his rikisha to whisper, ‘Next week on Thursday we could meet. Tomorrow I go to Tokyo. I will not be back until then.’ Amy nodded. Something stronger than herself seemed to have gripped her life.
*
The richness of the day overpowered Reggie Redmore. There was a breeze, he let the yacht drift and lay back to light a cigar. His own yacht. He had called her Cocktail. It had taken no time to decide the name. He had slammed his glass down on the bar top of the Club; ‘Cocktail’, he shouted. People had crowded to congratulate him. The yacht would be paid for from Am
y’s allowance; she took only some pin money, the rest was Reggie’s to use as he wished. That was the arrangement with her father. The sea was mercurial beneath the sun. In the distance Robert Russell waved from the bow of a magnificent sloop he had helped design himself; Dr Charles was out with Cooper-Hewitt far off upon the horizon. He waved back to Russell and drew on his cigar. He closed his eyes; the sun was hot upon his eyelids. The yacht rocked in the wake of Russell’s great sloop. One day, thought Reggie, he would have a craft like that, Cocktail was a secondhand bargain, bought cheaply, but it established him further. Men looked at him in envy – a rich wife, two ponies and a yacht, besides his job at the club. He had gone in at the top in Yokohama without the struggle of a climb. There were many things Reggie now desired; Yokohama was that kind of place. The water lapped against the boat, Reggie tasted salt upon his lips. You could not put one foot before another without money in Yokohama. He had done well to find a wealthy wife.
At this moment she must be riding, up in the hills or on the course, with Mabel Rice and the usual men. He did not like the way things were going. He could feel the resistance in her; she did not hide her resentment now. It was a strange place, Yokohama, dangerous for a woman like Amy. The town had rules of its own, informal sometimes to a point that would outrage the morals of those at home. Amy had changed, had grown sure of herself through Mabel Rice’s tutelage. She had access now to the influential diplomatic corps, through that worthless Guy le Ferrier. Unpronounceable name. The Ferret, Reggie called him when he spoke of him to Amy. The man was paying too much attention to her. He would not be made a fool of like Robert Crossly or George Manley. God, no, he would not. He sat up and took the cigar from his mouth. Amy must be brought to heel before things went too far. He turned the yacht and headed back towards the town. He would not be home for dinner, he was going out with Cooper-Hewitt.
*
The street lights were extinguished when he returned to the Bluff. He groped his way in the darkness, entering the sleeping house. In his pocket his hand touched a crumpled bill he could put off paying Mother Jesus no longer. He wanted to cough, his head reeled. They had served him something with raw rum at Number Nine. O Yumi had laughed and tipped it to his lips. The loose neck of her kimono parted upon her small breasts, pubescent as a child’s. He had drunk it quickly and turned to her. The last stair creaked, as did the bedroom door. Amy stirred in bed, she was not asleep. In the darkness her resentment was hard as a pebble, shoring up the room. Nothing was said, but she knew where he went; she did not believe his lies.