The Bonsai Tree

by Meira Chand

  Nothing was anything like Kate had imagined.

  2

  What right had she, what right? Jun stared at his mother, standing beside him. This factory at least had been his own to manage as he wished; she had not visited it regularly. Itsuko’s perfume among the heavy smells of machinery was something thin and slippery. He swallowed angrily. Before him in the factory, within the new machine, thread spun faster and faster, twisted upon small pockets of air, invisibly pressured and manipulated. He waited knowing what would happen. The thread snapped, the machine slowed and stopped. ‘It’s too soon, I told you,’ Jun said. ‘There are adjustments to be made.’

  ‘Again. Try again.’ Itsuko took no notice of him, commanding the foreman.

  Anger knotted in Jun. The man looked at him in query, and he nodded reluctantly. The machine was started, the thread snapped again.

  ‘It’s not good enough, not running at the speed you promised,’ Itsuko admonished.

  ‘It will,’ Jun replied as calmly as he could. ‘We still need time. These things are not achieved overnight.’

  ‘Work faster then. Tamura has begun work on a similar device. We must patent this before he progresses any further.’ Itsuko ordered.

  ‘Tamura can do nothing. As I heard he has already abandoned the project. He hasn’t a work team like ours.’

  ‘Still, we can’t risk being beaten by that upstart,’ Itsuko stated.

  ‘Just wait a little longer,’ Jun insisted. His mother had invested money and her pride in this invention, but he had invested emotion, as had everybody standing tensely about the machine.

  He had warned her not to test it now. He bit his tongue, swallowing words that came to his lips. What right had she, the machine was his idea, his conviction. While he had been away she did not care if it failed, but now she sensed success she was anxious to control. It would be another achievement in her name; to spin at twice the speed of conventional machines, taking crude thread to its final stage in an arrogant rejection of orthodoxy; all she wanted was that glory.

  He watched her turn and leave, and after a moment followed her out as she made her way to another shed on her inspection of the plant. The morning sunlight was thin and sharp and glittered on the metal of cars in front of the office. Tiny and frail, his mother walked ahead through the blending and the carding sheds, never overpowered by the group of men about her. Itsuko’s will turned the balance of equations upside down. Even from a distance Jun felt the hard, fierce light within her.

  The high-roofed sheds, their roof beams dusty with fluff, were filled with machines, row upon row, snapping and moving in unison. Itsuko surveyed them like an army as they clicked and purred. The air that was thick and moist from wheezing vaporisers. Jun stepped back before a large vacuum cleaner patrolling a row of machines, sucking up dust. Combed thread ran in waterfalls over the rollers before him; he felt as if the machines communicated to him. He could not help his bitterness. All this before him was supposedly his, but how long before he could claim it? His mother should have retired as expected several years before, and more and more he found he resented her manipulation and control. Each way he turned she confronted him, depriving him of an independence that would have made his life worthwhile; she allowed him no ultimate responsibility. He had not felt this way before he went abroad. His three years away, accountable only to himself, had been an education not easily relinquished, but his mother blamed this sudden restlessness on his unsuitable marriage. Since then she delighted in extracting the most from the dark space that now existed between them. He knew it was his punishment.

  Throughout his life her expectations had followed him. ‘You are a Nagai. People’s eyes are upon you and what account you give of yourself to the world.’ He remembered her expression as she spoke, colourless as glass behind her words. He remembered hearing them once on the edge of a moonlit garden as she chastised him for some prank. As she spoke the moon withdrew behind a band of clouds. Cold, defeated and nine years old, he had stared at her in contrition. She had waited for his apology, and as he spoke the moon reappeared in the sky. You are a Nagai. Responsibility settled upon his tiny frame and dissolved within his mind. He never forgot, except when he married Kate.

  Kate. In the beginning it had seemed so simple. He wanted her. He was used to having the women he wanted but with Kate the affair did not end with that slowing to boredom in himself as it did with other women. Instead, the need for her thickened in him, spreading, pushing into every corner of his mind and body. The light on leaves and the sharp shadows between tall buildings were like the thought of her. Each day seemed thin without her, until he was frightened. Until then love had been to him a matter safely confined; romance was the simple illusion of women’s magazines. He was unprepared for the sudden widening of horizon, the discovery of a new level of deep feeling. It was a revelation to him.

  Until he met Kate he had also felt in London as if fallen from another planet, with senses and feelings of no use in that world. He knew Kate was impressed by his knowledge of Western culture, of music, art and history. But these things were just the embroidery on a cushion of knowledge available to any educated Japanese. The stuffing inside was another matter, as impenetrable an enigma as his own culture was to Kate.

  In Japan all inner thoughts and self were guarded from the world, every daily meeting meticulously dictated in word and action the distance between men. The careless familiarity he found abroad unsettled him until he learned through Kate that this spontaneity was not always what it seemed. Through her he perceived a deliberate structure in a culture he had found difficult to understand before. He began to absorb an ideology that contradicted all he knew. Kate took him into a new dimension. When the thought of marriage first came to him he pushed it aside. The image of his mother polarised his thoughts, not only did he contemplate a marriage of his choice, but to a foreigner whom his society would not easily accept.

  There was another shadow too, that lay in his mind like a still, dark pool. How he wondered could he live with that? What would Kate do if she ever knew? He pushed the thought away. It would remain what it was, a secret, just a shadow in his mind. When he returned he would deal with it. There were ways. If he was careful Kate need never know. He had pushed the tangles from his mind, allowed himself the licence of impulse and spontaneity, the new doctrine he had learned. He had asked Kate to marry him.

  That distant time in London appeared far away now, as he watched the combing machines spin around. His mother called to him from where she stood beside another machine, her small, bright eyes questioning him.

  After the inspection there was a quick lunch of eel and rice. They ate in the upstairs conference room they used at the plant, when they came out twice a week from the Osaka office. Jun finished his meal and took in his hands the small bowl of tea. He had lost count of the times he had eaten in this room, the times he had sat in this same chair. Every piece of furniture had been in this room as far back as he could remember. As a small child he had sometimes accompanied his father to the factory and sat here, in this room, swinging his legs. Then, as now, they had eaten eel. Then, as now, the huge oil painting on the wall before him had filled him with depression. It had been acquired by his grandfather soon after the Sino-Russian war, the work of a famous Western-style artist. Jun stared at the bleak vastness of war torn Manchuria and the bleaker sight of men and guns, depicted against a stormy sky. The room was clinical in its cold, white hush. Each chair and sofa, crowded one beside the other, was shrouded tightly in white covers and antimacassars, a white cloth draped the large table beneath a sheet of clear plastic. There were the same bare worn boards beneath his feet that still echoed and creaked. Nothing had changed. Everything was as he remembered.

  Beyond the room there was always the loud din of movement. When he came to the factory as a child with his father he remembered there were always new machines, each more dazzling than the last, rattling and racing miles of yarn faster and thinner year by year. There were alwa
ys new buildings and facilities in progress. Now there were things he wanted to see implemented here, things he wanted to do. All that time in England his mind had been alert to every scrap of information that might be of use in the expansion of Nagai. He had notebooks full of points of relevance he had wished later to apply. But since his return to Japan he could not place these new perspectives anywhere. Frustration throbbed within him, the hushed white certainty of this one, unchanging room closed about him. As nothing had changed within it over the years, so it seemed nothing could change within him.

  Later, there was a meeting with some of the staff. Jun sat beside his chief manager at the plant, Yamamura, who coughed, chestily, as he sat down at the conference table. A plump flaccid figure in his beige overalls, everything about him was soft and malleable except his shifty eyes. Jun regarded him wearily; whatever his performance, they could never get rid of Yamamura. He was a cousin of Itsuko’s and had been promoted on Jun’s father’s death to the headship of the business by a family council. Itsuko at once assured her joint control by stepping in for Jun, the child heir. She soon learned to undermine Yamamura’s territory and consolidate her own. Inclined to mahjong, women and the bars, he entered with Itsuko’s encouragement a new phase of self-indulgence, relieved to relinquish the complexities of command to her able mind. He made no effort to obstruct Itsuko’s rise to power, the balance in their partnership was of satisfaction to them both. Beside Jun at the table, he picked a tooth and explained to Itsuko the proposals of the labour unions for the annual Spring offensive.

  With the absence of any powerful national unions, company unions negotiated individually with their separate managements. The labour union leaders sat in an orderly group at the end of the table, waiting their turn to speak. Jun listened intently to the voices about him, to the quiet presentation of arguments, each like a well-worn actor’s role, devoid of heat or whittled edge. They went through this regularly twice a year, the results always the same small, inflexible advance by the unions. It was all quite different from his observations abroad and he was thankful for this native, orderly system of things. But that time abroad had changed him. On his return he found himself agreeing with a small radical group of businessmen who were voicing a need for modifications to cope with a complex future. Attitudes everywhere were changing, there were advances to make for a final break with feudalism into full maturity. He had recently written an article for a business magazine in which he had stated that the British factory had the complexity of a jungle, full of dark corners no one dared touch for fear of finding a viper’s nest, and that the Japanese factory had the aseptic fixed complexity of an overplanned maze. His mother, when he repeated this, had refused to see any change must come. They argued endlessly, Itsuko always adamant that the traditions that served so well in the past and produced their present prosperity were valid for the future. Because of his views she held back even more, he suspected, on the responsibility he craved. If she could not retire she should have the grace to recede to another role and place, supportive yet behind him. How long must he wait, he wondered again?

  They were now discussing with a group of senior managers the addition of an extra verse to the factory song. There had been a competition amongst the workers to submit the new verse; a verse to the true spirit of harmony. The winner stood up and smoothed his hair and cleared his throat before them.

  May the plans we make today

  Be the promise of tomorrow.

  May our spirits lead us on

  Towards the high ideals of our

  Ultimate achievement.

  For the honour of Nagai.

  Behind Jun the workers’ delegation clapped, joined by the labour leaders. Itsuko smiled and nodded, looking towards Jun. He stood up to make the acceptance speech. His mother watched him as he spoke, her eyes bright, but he was aware of a critical element in her gaze that he had never felt before. Although there was no way to overcome her disappointment in his marriage, there was not now that daily crucifixion. They had moved, he and Kate, into a home of their own. It was temporary, for he wanted to buy land and build. It was far from ideal, only two blocks from Itsuko and one of several properties she owned. But they were alone, no longer subjected to her vigilant inspection. He had it in mind to move since Itsuko told him the tenant was relocating to Tokyo. He had approached his mother the night Kate had been so upset, the night of their wedding anniversary.

  ‘It will be better,’ he had said to Itsuko, ‘if you have not to see her before you all the time. Better for us all.’. He sat alone with her and Fumi.

  ‘What difference does that make to my disappointment?’ Itsuko’s insisted, tight and hard. He had never apologised for his marriage.

  ‘I am thinking only of you. For Kate, in her present condition, it will not be easy to cope with a household. I am anxious for you and the strain upon your nerves. There will at least be peace, if we move. It is only two blocks, far enough to ease the strain, yet near enough for contact between you and I.’

  He feared she would not agree. Age had not softened her beyond a slight slackening of the skin. She saw things only as shapes to be moulded in her hands. In the darkness of the room the low lamp had picked out the outline of her nostril and the thick double fold of her lids.

  Kate, Fumi told them, had gone to bed, exhausted by distress. He had thought of Kate in the room above, thought of the coldness with which he was forced to treat her before his mother. She did not understand the inequalities that were here the rule of life, and dictated a differing patterning of affection. Her faith in freedom and equality, her spontaneous response to everything were poles apart from the world he lived in, where each was allotted a proper station, rigid in its order and nature of response. In the room above she waited, weary of this constant, vicious game. Across the table Fumi sat crocheting, her little hook moved deftly to the mortar’s constant clack, clack, clack in the garden.

  ‘Perhaps you are right. Perhaps it is better that you move. We shall tell people your wife could not adapt to our Japanese ways. People will understand,’ Itsuko acquiesced, inclining her head with a gracious nod.

  Too easy, too soft. So that immediately he had wondered what she was scheming. And at the same time thought, it did not matter. They would be alone, they would have some life she could not touch.

  ‘We are moving,’ he had whispered into Kate’s ear. ‘We will be alone in a home of our own.’ She came into his arms then, and the tenderness between them that night lasted like a secret.

  From the next morning Kate had been different, calmer, brighter, hope was a weakness she could not hide. Alone at last in their small, bare home the hard shapes that had encased them for weeks dissolved. They were like children released from school, brimming. With a young maid Kate worked through each day until the house was flushed with the crisp, sharp smell of scrubbing, of dark corners released to sun. Everywhere, there was the slosh of cloths and bucket upon bucket of water. Suddenly in the rooms there was the clean, bright movement of cushions and curtains and plants and flowers. Armfuls of flowers stuck thick and tall into wide-necked vases.

  ‘Not those poor solitary blooms manipulated to rigid rules, not a petal out of place. I want free and messy vases.’ Kate laughed. They had both forgotten she could laugh.

  ‘Happy?’ he asked. ‘Happy now?’ and was glad for her, wishing to give her the world then. Loving her.

  Now, in the conference room, the factory clock ticked away the afternoon, moving with arthritic clicks. Outside, the roof of the blending shed was like the dark back of an animal. The labour union leaders stood up and in an orderly crocodile, filed from the room. It was nearly time to go. Jun stacked up his papers and excused himself from the room. He could not use the phone there, nor the one in the office downstairs. He went instead to the public phone before the workers’ canteen. The area was deserted, it was not an hour for meals. He dialled the number quickly, and listened to the ring. The child answered in its piping, baby voice.

 
; ‘Your mother. Call your mother,’ he said. And almost immediately he heard her voice.

  ‘Chieko?’ he said. ‘I’ll come this evening, but not for long.’

  ‘As always, I’ll be waiting,’ she replied.

  He replaced the phone and turned away. The thought of Kate fragmented him. But what could he do? There was no choice. He turned back towards the building. In the lighted window of the second storey he saw his mother descending the stairs.

  3

  There were times now in the mornings when bare trees were festooned with flocks of tiny warblers, pale as old grey moss. They quarrelled in the willow tree and the swelling branches of the cherry. They would only sing, Aunt Fumi said, when the blossoms burst and bloomed. The sun was yellow and firm, about the sudden fragrance of a flowering bush, and lay light and lemon coloured on the stones beyond the porch. Kate took her breakfast into the garden. Her companion at these times was often a book of Japanese grammar. She felt better now she was more fluent in the language. She believed she was beginning to speak with a natural ear. The lack of communication was the worst thing that faced any new arrival. Kate was thankful for her ability to learn a language quickly.

  On a chair in the porch she drowsed and drifted when not reading, the short morning’s warmth was soft on the skin, precious as the solitude she could now enjoy. The house was her own, its rooms free of other people’s thoughts and the dark accumulation of emotion. She felt the need to wander through them several times a day, looking and planning. She had already divided the rooms, new furniture was ordered and arriving every day. Fresh paint filled the house with light. It was all decided, each corner and accessory. Her mind and body ached with the shopping and anticipation, but it was nearly finished, and slowly there grew around her a world of her own choosing; an upright world of sideboards and tables and familiar perspectives. In the drape of chintz, the shine of wax, she thought she found a relevance that had thwarted her until now.