The Painted Cage

by Meira Chand

  ‘Somerset? A country lass. No wonder you so quickly made use of this joyful little brook.’ He smiled. She was overcome with horror. He must have been there from the beginning. He had watched her take off her stockings.

  ‘I do not know all their names,’ she argued, to cover her embarrassment, ‘but there are many flowers I recognize here, that I saw at home, or have drawn and painted. Some names I know and some I don’t, but my appreciation is the same.’

  ‘Ah, you paint, that’s interesting,’ he replied.

  She thought he would use the same condescension as Reggie and Mabel about her painting. She regretted admitting to such a practice.

  ‘Then I may have misjudged you. And if so I apologize,’ he said with a smile. ‘Tell me about your painting.’ He changed positions to settle himself comfortably on the other side of the stream, drawing unhurriedly on his pipe.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell. I paint. That’s all. Flowers usually.’ She felt awkward. She must get away, but to do so she must take her feet from the stream, revealing more than her ankles, put on her shoes and pull up her stockings. This could not be done before a strange, mad man. He appeared in no hurry to leave.

  ‘I should like to see your sketches and paintings. Would you consent to show me some?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve none here,’ she said. She could not make him out. ‘Why should you want to see them? I think you’re being impertinent,’ she added, exasperated.

  ‘Impertinent? Oh no, dear lady, you misunderstand me.’ His expression was of astonishment; he knocked his pipe on a stone, preparing to explain. Before he could speak there was a noise from the slope above. A young Japanese girl burst out from amongst the trees, breathless and laughing. Amy drew back startled. The girl was naked to the waist, and the sun beat on her bronzed skin and dark, loose hair. She wore tight white gaiters, buttoned to the knee, and above the obi her kimono was thrown off to hang limply about her, baring her breasts. In the crook of her arm she held a sheaf of wild flowers. When she saw her audience she laughed, unembarrassed. Three younger children, two boys and a girl, ran up behind her, all half-naked, a mass of bare limbs and flying draperies. They stopped beside their sister at the sight of Amy and Matthew Armitage, then they were gone and the clearing was empty again. Matthew Armitage sat still, his pipe in his hand. Amy looked at him, embarrassed at seeing such nakedness with him, a stranger and a man. Yet the girl had looked beautiful there, like a natural part of the woods.

  ‘A woodland nymph,’ Matthew Armitage said voicing her thoughts. ‘Would that we could all capture in our lives a little of such innocence and joy.’ His expression was respectful. Amy relaxed; the stance of shock that propriety demanded was unnecessary.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘A woodland nymph.’

  ‘We’ll ruin them, you know, these poor people, inflicting upon their innocence a shame they’ve never felt. They view the body without prurience in its naked form. They are at one with nature, they see themselves as part of it, obedient to its laws. They do not, like us, feel themselves superior, they do not try to harness nature to their whims. They have a respect we have lost or never had. But of course, they are enviously without our concept of sin.’

  ‘They are not Christian,’ Amy said, not knowing what else to say, uncertain of the direction of the conversation.

  ‘They are, dear lady, as religious as any race I know, as concerned with virtue as they translate it, just as much as us. We do wrong to think that we alone should have a monopoly on God,’ Matthew Armitage replied.

  She could not answer, could not judge. She knew nothing of their religion, except that it was not Christian. She felt suddenly angry. It was ridiculous, sitting with her feet in a stream, trapped in mad conversation by a mad man. Would he never move, would she ever be free? To take her feet from the stream she had to pull up her petticoats and show him her knees.

  ‘I was on my way to look at the view,’ she said firmly so that he should know their acquaintance was ended.

  ‘Ah, then we can go together. I too was on my way there, before the saxifraga detained me.’ He drew unconcernedly upon his pipe.

  ‘But I have to put on my shoes and stockings. I have to dry my feet,’ she said. ‘Surely you do not expect me to do so in front of you?’ It was farcical. Mabel would have made the man feel less than a louse.

  ‘My apologies. I thought you were enjoying the stream. I’m unused to women’s ways – I live a solitary life. Sometimes my manners, I am aware, appear lacking. Forgive me. I shall turn around and you shall tell me when you are ready.’ Without taking the pipe from his mouth he swivelled round until his back was towards her.

  She gave a sigh of exasperation and drew up her feet, drying them on her petticoat. Behind a bush she pulled on her stockings and shoes and then came back to the stream.

  ‘I’m ready,’ she told him. She did not see why the objective of her climb should be sacrificed. Strange as he was, he seemed harmless, perhaps even interesting. It would be an adventure to tell Mabel about.

  ‘It’s not far.’ Matthew Armitage led the way up the steep slope. He turned to offer a hand at difficult places, but Amy ignored him, scrambling up as best she could. Soon they emerged again into the sun of a small plateau. The teahouse was deserted, a heap of rustic, disused bones, its insides open to the elements. Amy sat down on a weathered bench. Matthew settled himself beside her, taking off his red scarf and mopping his face.

  The teahouse stood on a precarious ridge, jutting out over pine-furred slopes. The world appeared in the distance to face them upright, like a backdrop, the details of mountains and towns vivid, the sea glazed and still as glass. The island of Enoshima lay like the hull of a great dark ship; inland Mount Fuji reared up from lower hills. It was a breathtaking view, more like another world than the mundane terrain to which they belonged. Matthew gave a sigh of appreciation.

  ‘Ah,’ he murmured, ‘what imperfect creatures we are.’ Amy looked at him, but he did not appear to be speaking to her as he retied the red scarf about his neck. He pulled upon his pipe his expression distant and absorbed. But his silence, instead of shutting her out, seemed to incorporate her. Her irritation suddenly faded, she looked at him curiously. For all his strangeness there was something about him that inspired implicit trust. Around the bowl of the pipe his hand was muscular but sensitive, there was grey in his coarse brown hair and beard. His clothes were a combination of textures and colours that a man like Reggie would laugh at, yet he did not look badly dressed, just different. And she felt different with him. She realized Matthew Armitage expected her to have a mind, expected things of her no one else did. She felt suddenly interested in this part of herself that he had taken stock of and she had not.

  She looked at the panorama, feeling the pleasure of the moment, trying to see what he saw, feel what he felt, silent beside him in harmony. And slowly she was drawn into the stillness where the concentration of Matthew Armitage seemed to hold her, suspended. Thoughts flowed in and out of her mind and dissolved into nothingness. She seemed no longer to observe the view but to be part of it, resting in it, peacefully. Matthew stirred and stretched as if from sleep. He held his face to the sun, then smiled at Amy companionably.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ he said. Amy nodded. Without incident or words the balance between them seemed suddenly changed, an intimacy enclosed them as it would old friends. She felt expanded within herself. She could not understand why she felt different with Matthew Armitage.

  ‘A perfect place for meditation, don’t you think? At the crack of dawn or sunset, with the forces of the day and night awakening or dwindling, converging upon a cusp,’ he remarked.

  ‘Meditation?’ she questioned. There was not a thing he said that was predictable or even comprehensible.

  ‘As practised by Buddhists and Hindus and here by Zen monks. In Japanese they call it zazen.’

  ‘What is zazen – meditation?’ she said, trying to remember what her Murray’s had said about the strange rel
igions of Japan.

  ‘A withdrawing into oneself, to a silent centre, to find the true self and, eventually, enlightenment.’ He spoke without affectation, as he would about the weather.

  ‘Enlightenment?’ she asked, drawn on by something she could not understand within herself.

  ‘Knowledge and realization of truth. Or, if it makes it easier, that force within themselves men call God.’

  ‘Like prayer, I suppose,’ she remarked to cover her inadequacy. She felt out of her depth.

  ‘A little, in a way, if you wish, but really something different. The early Christians knew all about meditation, but later the church got rid of the practice – to their great loss, I feel.’ He smiled disarmingly, scrutinizing her perplexity.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s all a little over my head.’ She laughed suddenly, willing to admit to ignorance.

  ‘Now that is a pity,’ Matthew said after consideration. ‘It should not be, it need not be, if you wished it different.’

  ‘I have just never thought about such things,’ she answered.

  ‘Yes, I expect that is it,’ he said. She wished she understood all the things he talked about.

  ‘Well now,’ he smiled, ‘perhaps we had better be on our way. I must get at least a little work done, otherwise I would be content to sit here all day.’

  They retraced their way down the slope and across the sunny clearing, light refracting from the stream in liquid veins. The incline backing the Fujiya Hotel seemed now as sheer as the descent down a ladder. Matthew offered his hand again, and Amy was obliged to take it to save herself from slipping. It was a powerful, comfortable hand. Once he stopped so suddenly she collided with him. He held out an arm to bar her way and looking down she saw a snake, slim and endless as a coil of brown rope, slide noiselessly across the path before them. She shuddered and kept as close to him then as propriety allowed. Soon they reached the Fujiya Hotel and she said goodbye to Matthew, who was staying at a Japanese inn further down the road. She walked back beside the neat white fence, past the bachelor quarters. On the verandahs, shaved and dressed now, the men still lazed upon long chairs, threshing gossip and news. As she turned into the hotel gate Dicky Huckle waved and came towards her.

  ‘We were worried – we couldn’t find you. We thought of sending out a search party.’ Dicky was delighted to have discovered her. He took her to Mabel who adorned a verandah, stretched out upon a chaise longue.

  ‘For goodness sake, where were you? You don’t know this place. You could fall down a gorge or into a geyser. And look at you, where have you been? There is grass in your hair and your face is all burned.’ Mabel was a schoolteacher, sullen with migraine and responsibility. She sipped a glass of lemonade.

  ‘Sengenyama?’ she exclaimed when Amy explained. ‘But what did you want to go up there for? A dilapidated teahouse a hundred feet up with only an average view?’ Mabel had no sympathy. Dicky laughed.

  ‘You should have come with us to Kiga,’ Ada said, appearing with her arm through Enid’s.

  ‘It’s only a short walk and all on the level.’ Enid picked a leaf from Amy’s hair.

  Amy felt impatient with them all. She remembered her happiness in the clearing before Matthew Armitage appeared. It was not something for ridicule. About her meeting with Matthew she remained silent. There was nothing she could tell that they would not laugh at; they laughed at everyone except themselves. She turned away and went up to her room. It was as if they always played a game, rejecting reality for a charade. For the first time she had met someone against whom she could compare them. She felt angry and banged the door of her room behind her.

  She did not see Matthew Armitage again, although she looked out for him. The next days passed lazily, stupefied by the heat, they made few excursions. Amy walked sometimes with Enid and Ada along the Jokotsugawa gorge to a teahouse at Kiga, to see the waterfalls and feed the goldfish there with rice-cakes. They walked once up to Kowakidani, the Valley of the Lesser Boiling. The name was only an allusion to a cluster of small sulphur springs. They decided to leave the long trek to the terrifying Owakidani, the Valley of the Greater Boiling, until Reggie and possibly Guy le Ferrier arrived at the weekend. On Thursday the Cooper-Hewitts and Figdors came up in dust-covered rikishas, weary with discomfort. Mrs Cooper-Hewitt had been pitched out head-first over her runner when the fellow stumbled on a rabbit hole. Her hands still trembled with the shock; she held them out to demonstrate. There was a cut on her nose and her smelling salts had broken, covering her with a fierce odour. They brought news that Reggie would arrive the following day. Amy felt depressed. He would spend his time with the Cooper-Hewitts and the Figdors and not mix with Mabel’s crowd. He would scrutinize her constantly, watching her manner with Dicky Huckle, Rowly Bassett and any bachelor who was near. She would have to change tables and sit with the Cooper-Hewitts and make polite remarks. And what if Guy le Ferrier really came? Her agitation grew.

  On Friday morning in the gardens of the Fujiya Amy sat beneath a tree, watching Cathy and Rachel under the shade of a wisteria arch. The gardens were still and hot, in places the lawns were scorched. There was the sound of birds and running water. A man worked in a fir tree, thinning out needles, clipping and pruning. The garden and the hills beyond whirred ceaselessly with cicadas. A sketchbook lay open upon Amy’s knee at a page of Mabel’s orchids. She had thought she might draw the climbing hydrangea on a trellis near the tree. But she was not in the mood for anything. She stared at the passive vista of the hills, in dread of Guy le Ferrier arriving. She watched a group of early dragonflies, their bodies metallic in the sun. From a bush a praying mantis turned a green bulbous head to observe her. She flicked through the pages of the sketchbook.

  ‘They’re not at all what I expected,’ said a voice from behind. She looked up to see Matthew Armitage inspecting the sketches over her shoulder. He wore a crumpled linen suit and a panama hat with a red bandeau about it. His pipe curled as usual from his mouth. She knew then she had been waiting for him.

  ‘Lilium auratum, Lilium japonicum, also speciosum and longiflorum and, I think, a good old tiger lily. You seem inordinately fond of the genus, if I may say so,’ Matthew Armitage remarked. She was forced to tell him then of Mabel’s conservatory and the orchids she brought her to sketch.

  Matthew sat down beside her, cleaned his pipe and refilled it with tobacco. ‘May I look at the rest?’ he asked. Amy nodded, unable to escape. Matthew took the sketchbook and turned the pages slowly in silent consideration.

  ‘They’re not really fine enough,’ Amy said to hide her embarrassment. ‘They will not turn out as I want them to, delicate and light.’

  ‘Ah, you mean without body or life, limp and ethereal, without sap in their veins or leaves that adhere firmly in the right places? Yes, I know the kind of thing you mean, the refined efforts of drawing room ladies. No, these, Mrs Redmore, are certainly different. They’re remarkable. In fact, I am amazed. You have talent. Don’t think so little of yourself.’ She looked at him, surprised, thinking he only humoured her, but he nodded in confirmation.

  ‘I think you’re very good. I’m compiling a book on Japanese wild flowers. It’s nearly finished, but my illustrator, a talented young man, a student of mine at the university, died recently of consumption. The fact is, I am searching for a new illustrator. You have talent and a style that would blend with what is already done. May I offer the proposition, Mrs Redmore? It would be a business arrangement. I should be delighted to meet your husband and put the matter before him.’ He spoke politely and persuasively.

  She was taken aback by his praise and the proposition; excitement ran through her. Reggie’s consent would, however, be needed; she might sometimes have to meet Matthew Armitage other than by accident. At the thought of Reggie, her enthusiasm collapsed. She could see him already, a taunt in his eyes, summing up Matthew Armitage, noting his battered panama hat and his crumpled suit with a stain upon the lapel. The achievements of his intellect would be pulped beneath Reg
gie’s ridicule. Matthew Armitage had neither the usefulness nor the money to command his respect. Or if there were money, then his priorities were at fault, for Matthew would not spend it on a pony or a yacht. He would not even join the club; he was not of Reggie’s world. The excitement left her, she mustered her defence. It would be useless to approach Reggie on the derisory subject of wild flowers; she could already hear his scorn. But it would be difficult to refuse or even explain such inevitabilities to Matthew Armitage. Her own talent had trapped her. Matthew watched her quizzically, waiting for an answer.

  ‘It is not that I wouldn’t like to do it,’ she replied, twisting her rings. ‘But my husband is not an easy man.’ She was forced to admit it for want of a better excuse.

  ‘Ah, I see the problem,’ he smiled at once. ‘Well, let us not anticipate. Let me put it to him if you agree.’

  ‘I would love to do it, but I think it probably will not be.’ She spoke in a low voice, guilty in spite of everything to show disloyalty to Reggie so quickly with a stranger. ‘He will arrive tomorrow.’

  ‘I see. He is not here yet.’ Matthew drew on his pipe, leaning back upon the bench. She looked at him curiously. His strange talk and crumpled suit might be rejected by Reggie, but she felt reassurance beside him. He was not a man of appearances; he lived with different priorities in another world.

  The swarm of blue and green dragonflies darted about. One alighted on the edge of the seat, its wings mercurial in the sun. Matthew pointed to it. ‘There are more than fifty varieties,’ he informed her in his usual instructive way. ‘Those blue and green ones are the commonest and come out in the hottest part of summer. Here, you know, they believe certain dragonflies are ridden by the dead. During the festival of O Bon they are said to carry the souls of ancestors back to their former homes. At that time children are forbidden to molest them, especially any that enter a home,’ Matthew explained. ‘There is a vast literature in Japan not only of dragonflies, but of all insects. I think a people who can find such delight, century after century, in watching the ways of insects and in making verses about them must have comprehended much better than we the simple pleasure of existence. They may not describe the magic of nature as our great Western poets have done, but they rejoice in a simple and whole-hearted way, like inquisitive and happy children. I envy them.’ He gave a diffident smile.