The Bonsai Tree

by Meira Chand

  For the child there was a small, white room opening off their own. There was a chest with nursery characters and a lamp shaped like a bunch of balloons. Her emotions overflowed at the thought of the small and milky presence that would inherit all these things. Already, the drawers in the room were full of tiny knitted garments, but it was still difficult to relate these things to the child that stirred inside her.

  She rarely saw Itsuko; a silent, mutual understanding agreed upon by everyone concerned. From a window of the bedroom Kate could see the corner of a roof of the main house some distance down the hill. And the waterfall connected them, for the stream, like a moving thread cut down beside both homes. Its sound rushed through each day and each night, knotting her present life to its recent past. She saw Fumi every day, visiting or visited. Their relationship was easy and comforting to Kate, and sometimes conspiratorial. In her loose, overstretched woollens, Fumi sat with her back to the sun in the newly painted lounge, and the light was soft and yellow, filling her lap. She lowered her voice to counsel small things. A cake to please Itsuko, the use of wheat tea for drunkenness and a paste of beans for burns. She told of the superhuman power of foxes and the danger of possession and how their evil spirits entered through the space between flesh and fingernails. She advised on brands of vinegar and soap and counselled the importance of directions; the east was luckiest, northeast the devil’s door. She was horrified to find they innocently slept with their heads due north, in which direction corpses were laid, and demanded immediate rearrangement. The bright vanity of Kate’s rooms was a marvel to Fumi. She touched the chintz and the velvet cushions and the baskets for bread in gentle, curious pleasure, but drew back at the brink of this alien world, preferring the cluttered frugality of her own. She hurried back guiltily to the sunless rooms of the family house and her sister’s evening meal.

  Sometimes, when she knew Itsuko was out, Kate returned to the main house to visit Fumi. The old house had a sad solemnity that both compelled and repelled her. She liked to sit with Fumi in her room, their feet beneath the quilt that skirted the kotatsu, the table topped foot-warmer. On this quilt were printed the clouds and birds and wild plants of some secret garden world. Fumi’s room looked out at the back of the house onto a murmuring pine and the leaves of an elderberry. The light shifted and fell through the boughs, dull and green as old bronze, to lift the shadows of the room. It seemed to Kate the room held the very shape of Fumi’s life. There was a touch of dampness and the smell of old paper. Tall, worn chests, grain shiny with age, contained in their dark recesses the punctuation of a life. Fumi lifted out gently the burnished folds of her wedding kimono and spilt them across the floor, rich and soft as the thoughts that had once briefly filled her. She displayed with a laugh the white hood worn by brides to cover their ‘devil’s horns.’ For a moment a tiny, appliquéd apron brought back to life a daughter. A spotted yellow square of newspaper froze forever in its mildewed type the graduation of a son. Two small wooden boxes, ribbon bound, revealed shrivelled leather worms that were the umbilical cords of these forgotten babies. The picture of a thick-jowled husband, a silver thimble, a temple charm, a pressed spring flower; the smell of mothballs bound together the memories in that cold, green lighted world. And in the kitchen, dark and brown as the rest of the house, old Hirata-san washed rice in a tiled sink. Here Fumi explained the preparation of a pickle bed that could last for generations. She revealed the mysterious properties of soybean paste and the ying and yang of vegetables. She insisted that a bowl of Japanese soup with its fermented enzymes and sea mosses, was a condensed form of the ancient, primordial sea. She demonstrated the art of cutting that could turn a common stump of turnip into a chrysanthemum. She was a land, she was a culture, she was a history in herself. But more than this she was comfort and love.

  So that, when Kate returned to her own home, she was enlightened and enriched, but sometimes confused. She walked back up the winding road to her own small home, her mind still full of the old house with its faint smell of drains, and creaking corridors. And the strange details Fumi always imparted remained embedded in her mind, like rare stones in an old jewel box. As she opened her gate she looked up at the firred slopes of Mount Rokko from the garden of her home, and wondered at her presence in this densely detailed and unfamiliar world. Then, for a while, it seemed as if the shadowy residue of the main house had followed her, and filled her own home. But the feeling faded, her rooms returned to the familiar essence she demanded about her. She sighed and noted the passing of yet another day.

  But there were other confusions, less easily dealt with. When they first moved into their own house, they had been like children, released from the imprisonment of their own bodies. Each day they arranged their furniture and promptly rearranged it, laughing and unravelling potential future worlds. It all seemed as full as full; until Jun did not return on time, once or twice, then frequently, detained on the way home by Itsuko at the old house, on one pretext or another. He phoned and his voice was concise, as if his mother’s eyes encased him. He must stay, he said, for dinner, there was business to discuss. When he returned he could only explain, there was nothing he could do. It was not a question of personal preference, but a matter of order and obligation. It was not possible in his circumstances to elevate a wife above a mother.

  She tried to understand. To greet him cheerfully when he returned and ease the strain she saw in his face, at the divisions apparent in him. It was not his fault, it was an order of life that would have raised few questions in a Japanese woman. For this reason Kate tried to grasp the restrictions of her role and contain the bitterness growing within her. But there were other evenings when he did not return, that she remembered noting even when they lived in the old house. But then, preoccupied with the difficulties of life with Itsuko, she had not noticed each new detail of Jun’s daily routine. Now she found there were evenings when the obligations of work forced him into a ribald world, the thought of which unexpectedly enraged her. This was a side of Japan she had been unprepared for among the exotics and aesthetics, a neon-lighted dissolute world of bars, of women and drink, that seemed to play such a part in everyday life and was essential, it seemed, for business.

  ‘It is the custom, I cannot refuse to go, I cannot escape even if I wished to. Business associates expect it of me. Here it is difficult sometimes to know where business ends and leisure begins. You must understand. It is only a drink, nothing more,’ Jun told her firmly. But beside him in bed, while he slept heavily and the smell of drink escaped from him, she was filled by a fury she did not understand. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the scent of that other dissolute world that so frequently claimed him, beyond the life they lived together. She would learn, she supposed. She trusted him.

  For one reason or another then, there were many evenings spent alone. Jun returned always apologetic and tender, and she tried to assure him she did not mind. She believed she was learning to accept a different and difficult order of things. There was also the pleasure of the growing comfort of the house, and the child, turning within her, evolving for her the sureness of a future. And she was also filled with new confidence, for Paula and Pete had returned to Japan, reassigned again to Kobe. It made all the difference to know she had a friend.

  It was strange to see Paula, settled on a hill above Kitano-cho in a draughty house that was in style neither Japanese nor Western. It was strange to see emerge from the pile of crates scattered throughout the house, the familiar objects she had seen before in their London home. The repatriated bric-a-brac, re-rooted now in its original soil, appeared self-consciously decorative. Looking once more at the woodblock prints of sumo wrestlers on the wall, at the candlestick lamp and the lacquer bowls, Kate felt she retraced herself in time. She stared again at the kai-oki box and remembered the night Jun explained it at that party long ago. Suddenly everything about her was familiar and known. There was James, the Baileys’ son, scattering his war planes about the house, there was Paula’s embroid
ery frame flung untidily onto a cushion. There was the toss and banter of words between Pete and Paula, in a way she had forgotten. With the Baileys’ return a whole stiff, traumatised section of herself struggled back to life. She may have changed, thought Kate, but nothing changed the Baileys, they retained their identity anywhere in the world. She remembered again then the Baileys’ pale, bare rooms in Pimlico above an antique shop. She remembered a threadbare tapestry behind a lacquered Chinese chest in the window of the shop. And she remembered the afternoon, so long ago now, when upstairs in Paula’s flat the sun had set in a pallid winter sky and she had told Paula that Jun had asked her to marry him. She did not know why she recalled that sky, except that it seemed the future began that afternoon. She remembered the Baileys’ words of caution, and their advice about Japan. There was nothing she could change, nor would if it were possible.

  She put a hand upon her belly then, possessive of the future, and realised that the child had not stirred for several days.

  4

  She heard the door close and then the room was silent and dark. Where would they take the child now? The thought was a pain no one could stop. The dusk, like an ugly spreading bruise, covered the walls, thickening in corners. The clank of the trolley pushed by the nurses faded from the corridor, now the loud caw of a crow outside carved suddenly into the evening. Her hands stretched on the strange flat expanse of her belly, then lay still again upon the white covers of the narrow hospital bed.

  She had held the child in her arms and felt its tiny weight. She had touched with a finger the black spikes of fine hair, the little creases and folds of its face. And only then had she seen the stillness and heard the silence of those before her. Only then had she seen the child was dead.

  ‘A beautiful baby, a boy.’ The nurse bent to touch Kate’s arm. ‘Stillborn ... I’m sorry ... there was nothing ...’ She heard the sympathy in their voices like sounds from another world. She had clung to the child then, to that still, small weight, like a nugget of hope in her arms. But they handled her firmly, they handled her calmly. Now they were gone, the room was dark, the crow rasped once again. Before her was space and yet more space, as void as her emptied body.

  ‘Kate, Kate.’ The sound pulled her forward, and she opened her eyes. Above her she saw the face of her husband and hated him for the first time in their brief married life. Seeing Jun she saw again the child and the same set of their eyes. Go away. The words welled up but lay mute on her tongue. Then she closed her eyes again and was ashamed, for there was nothing he had done.

  Soon she was back in the ward, the room was warm with the glow of a lamp. In a corner Aunt Fumi’s comfortable shadow scratched her head with a crochet hook, then continued to structure a doily. She sighed unfolding cotton skeins, head bent again to her work.

  ‘Kate.’ His voice was near her ear this time, he sat on a chair by the bed.

  ‘Did they show him to you?’ Jun took Kate’s hand, the silence shapeless between them.

  ‘I saw him,’ she whispered.

  Kate heard Fumi sigh, a small, sad sound like the shutting of a book. Where had they taken the baby? Wherever they had they put him it could be nowhere near the other babies. The pain returned then faded, Kate closed her eyes and slept.

  Jun waited, but Kate did not stir, in sleep her face was peaceful. He stood up slowly then, and made his way to the telephone in the lobby, for he could delay the call to Itsuko no longer. His mother had just returned home, Hirata-san announced. Itsuko’s voice was as always, cool and divorced of emotion. But he knew she was waiting, he had heard the slight edge, like the arc of a blade in her voice. Without elaboration he told her what he had to.

  ‘A stillbirth ... ?’ She repeated his words and he heard strength return to her voice, until it rang with relief.

  ‘It’s too late now, I shall come in the morning. Fumi will stay this first night. You must go home and rest.’ Her voice was soft with sudden warmth. Before the telephone Jun gave a small bow of respect before he replaced the receiver.

  She came as promised in the morning, to the private maternity home, the chauffeur walking behind her with a massive basket of fruit. The shroud of mauve cellophane wrapping crackled and turned the yellow of grapefruit and apples to a sickly undertone, a red ribbon sealed the package. Stood upon a table, the basket appeared to Kate half as big as her mother-in-law.

  As soon as she entered, Itsuko possessed the room, it condensed about her so that nothing else was of importance. She pulled a chair up to Kate’s bed.

  ‘So sad, such a pity. I’m filled with sympathy for you.’ Her face arranged regret, but her voice remained compact beneath a slight inflection. She smoothed the kimono over her knee and her hands lay calm and white as two fans upon her lap.

  In her corner Fumi continued to crochet, but glanced out of her flat and plain brown face at the immaculate back of her elder sister. Stuffed down deep in a linen knitting bag, unfinished baby clothes lay in the chair beside her.

  ‘She slept well, but ate only a little breakfast, just a bowl of miso soup.’

  ‘Now that will not do. You must eat and regain your strength. An apple would do you good. I shall peel you one myself.’ Itsuko fussed.

  Taking a plate and a knife from Fumi, she lifted the crackling mauve cellophane and retrieved a giant apple. Spreading a handkerchief on her knee she placed the plate on it and began to peel the fruit. Soon apple skin grew in an unbroken waxy rope from her polished fingers.

  ‘Here you are. Let me see you eat.’ Itsuko offered the cut fruit to Kate.

  It was as if some rite had been performed. She refolded the handkerchief on her knee, then drew from her handbag a tissue to dab her fingers. This too was then neatly folded and laid in an ashtray. Her movements were like the gestures of some rarely seen performance. Kate could not remember in the few months she had known her mother-in-law, a show of such concern. At the wash basin Itsuko rinsed the apple juice from her hands. Fumi rested her crochet hook in a thicket of lace and stared warily at her sister’s back, and then back at Kate.

  They waited for her in the office, an important conference had been arranged, Jun may already be there. Itsuko threw the words lightly about, patting her hair before the mirror. Kate did not trust herself to speak, for she knew why an undisguisable glitter illuminated Itsuko this morning. But soon she was gone, no more than footsteps fading down the corridor, accompanied by Fumi to her car. For some time after her departure, the empty room remained shaped by her perfume, a dark, uneasy smell. She would not visit again, and she was glad, Kate knew, that the child was dead. She had not wanted a half-caste grandchild, to sully the Nagai dynasty.

  She heard the door opening and Fumi’s return. Her kindly presence was beside Kate again. It was a reassuring custom that allowed a relative some share of nursing duties. Fumi insisted she stay at the nursing home with Kate, and Itsuko agreed, and also arranged a private nurse to supplement hospital staff. Kate clung to Fumi, whose flat face gave comfort.

  ‘Don’t let her upset you, you’ll bleed the more.’ Fumi spoke quietly, touching Kate’s face with a cool, damp cloth. A faint smell of cologne drifted from her, like perfume left in an empty drawer. Her skin was soft and pouched on the unadorned planes of her face, and like her sister her hair was kept resolutely black, but in a short hard perm. Sad memories slipped from her in the gentle touch of her hands.

  ‘There will be other times, other babies.’ She plumped up a pillow and replaced it beneath Kate’s head. ‘You must put this behind you.’

  She sat back on her chair, absorbed in her crocheting again, the growing blond doily trembling gently in her hands. To Kate’s sleepy eyes the tangle of cotton seemed to grow, expanding to fill the room like a thick skeined web above her bed. And hanging from the centre, staring down out of a bleached and knotted halo, Kate imagined the face of her mother-in-law, eyes infused with malice.

  Through the window the sun was warm on her arm, and the cobalt tiles of a neighbouring roof blazed m
olten in the morning. A fly settled on a water jug and proceeded to clean its wings. She observed these things, yet none seemed as real as the great basket of fruit, moored near the bed, like a ship with a cellophane sails. The empty paper nest that had held the giant apple stared out like a missing eye. She wanted to scream, but the moment passed, and her eyes filled with tears at last. Beside her, Fumi and her little hook knitted a tangled world. On the windowsill Kate counted the bodies of dead flies.

  She reached out and from the bedside cabinet took up the letter she had received that morning from her mother.

  ‘Dear Katherine.’ Opening it again she read once more the bright, chatty lines littered with inflated details and holding in their school blue ink her mother’s personality and a distant world. And reading, that world filled Kate’s again like a forgotten dream. None of it seemed part of her, none of it seemed real. She remembered the day she had first taken Jun to meet her mother, and indicated their future plans. Mrs Scott had been agreeable, sitting in her flat facing Putney Heath, surrounded by her memories of a travelled life in India before Kate was born, late and nearly not at all. Mrs Scott, widowed, plump, full of causes, committees and borrowed opinions, slim at the ankle, full at the hip; Mrs Scott did not object.

  ‘The world,’ said Mrs Scott, sitting between many occasional tables, a fat tabby cat on her lap, ‘The world nowadays is a very small place. And I have always been so fascinated by the beautiful works of Utamaru. Such a highly decorative art, and yet not decorative as we translate it, which is the light result of mere copying. Oh no. One lump or two, dear?’ pouring tea into translucent cups. ‘And not to forget Pussums,’ as the cat stretched impatiently on her lap, kneading its claws, starting a ladder in the stockings under her heather tweed skirt. She placed a saucer on the floor and reached low with the milk jug to fill it. The cat jumped down and began to lick before the stream was finished.