The Bonsai Tree

by Meira Chand

  ‘Katherine is an adaptable girl. I’m sure she will make an easy transition to living in Japan. What an interesting country, so picturesque and exotic. How I envy you both.’ Mrs Scott handed a cup to Jun. ‘A wholemeal scone dear, or a scotch pancake? Her father and I lived, you know, many years in India. I adapted, I found and took the best. It’s a question of mind, and also of spirit.’ Mrs Scott recalled again the lawns of the club in Delhi, spread with tables and basket chairs, the turbaned waiters the only colour in her all-white world. The bridge tables in the card rooms, the lazy turning fans, and the sunburned necks of Englishmen as they clustered in the bar. She remembered the taste of daiquiris and the smell of jasmine in the evening. The rest she refused to recall. But she had no doubt she had adapted. Had she not survived and returned?

  ‘Now tell me about that old man Hokusai who lived to such a grand old age and could even they say, paint with his toes.’ Katherine tells me, dear, that you come from a very old line, from the old aristocracy. We too trace ourselves back a long way. I’ll show you our little treasures.’ She had unlocked the small glass box on the mantelpiece and brought back in her hands the bits and pieces. ‘This locket was given to one of our ancestors by Elizabeth the First. It should be in a museum. And the ring and the silver doublet button, see.’ She sat down again beside Jun. Kate remembered how impressed he seemed.

  ‘We are an old family, but we were always merchants, we had to marry into Samurai class,’ he told Kate afterwards, as if confessing something.

  She remembered too how she had sat back, relieved at their collusion over the past, and turned to look at the photograph of her father on the mantelpiece. He stood, stiff and proud beside Mountbatten, before the open door of an ancient car in India. She remembered him always patient with her mother. He sat quietly with his pipe and heard her out on everything. He knew how to handle her, which was more than Kate could do. His death had been devastating to Kate. It had surprised her to see how quickly her mother rose to the organisation of a new life. Within a year Kate went to University to read modern languages and did not come home again. Her mother, when she saw her, was filled with work for Oxfam, societies and committees for saving old buildings; she had covered her sense of loss. For Kate it continued, for years she heard the knock of her father’s pipe and his sane advice on her fears.

  She had looked away from the photograph to her mother and Jun, wishing it was her father who sat there. But strangely, although it seemed impossible in Jun’s broad oriental features and short, sturdy frame to find any likeness to her father, there seemed in his manner a quiet strength she found familiar.

  In the beginning, she remembered now, it had been all learning with Jun, every day a new facet or clue to fit to the jigsaw of him. She learned of his kindness and humour, his attention to details in manner and dress, his eye for the shape and the colour of a thing. She learned of tolerances, and intolerances that sometimes surprised her. Each small learning appeared a destination in a strange voyage of discovery. But sometimes when she surfaced from the journey of love, in dark night hours between the dreams, it seemed it was herself she was discovering, and that of him, in spite of all she had learned, she knew not the slightest thing. Then his face rose before her in the night, his smile hiding in its depth the very secret of himself, some mysterious point deep within him that never would be shared. There were things she felt he shut off in himself in closed boxes, like the strange black lacquer cases of esoteric images she had read were kept in Japanese temples that were opened sometimes, or sometimes never touched. And in spite of the love between them, she felt within him she had her own small box that he opened and closed when he pleased.

  Yet she was sure she loved him, whatever that word might mean. But the weighing of it was impeded by the physical feelings he filled her with. What she had taken for a suaveness she soon found was the animality of the sure, hard-muscled cat, naked in his purpose. He was a small, physical man. And she remembered when she let herself, the rather tired, dispassionate way he looked at the women about him: as if at some time he had had them all. But these thoughts only filled her with rich and sinuous feelings, and drew her under, away from clear observation. The physical need of him burned in her veins. Whenever they lay together it was never enough. She knew she would follow him anywhere, that all will was completely lost. Now, as she gazed at Fumi intent on her crocheting, these memories seemed so far away in both time and in experience. Now, the jaunty flow of her mother’s writing and the bright shapes that they conveyed had little meaning for her.

  ‘Dear Katherine,’ she read again. The tears would not stay back then, but ran from her cheeks onto the pillow. Tears for the child and tears for everything else she had lost. The confidence that filled her on arrival and that she struggled so hard to retain was gone. She knew now she faced a future unforeseen in all her dreams. And the thought welled up painfully in her again. Where had they taken the baby? What would they do with him now?

  5

  The child was still up, he could hear its small, angry cries from behind the door. Chieko was inept at motherhood and slovenly besides. Jun rang the bell again impatiently. The door opened and as soon as she saw him her face became sullen. The child ran to him and pulled at his trouser legs. He bent and picked the boy up. His nose ran, and Jun took out his own handkerchief to wipe it and then sat down in a chair with the child on his lap. She stood in front of him.

  ‘Where were you? Why didn’t you come last week? I can’t go on like this.’ She crossed her arms before him, determined.

  ‘It was difficult. I was busy.’ He shrugged. ‘Here.’ He took a packet from his pocket and laid it on the table. At once she brightened.

  ‘I don’t mean to bother you, but I have my problems, I have my difficulties.’ She opened the envelope and counted the money inside.

  ‘Only this?’ she asked angrily.

  ‘It’s enough. What more do you want?’ he replied.

  ‘I can’t manage on this. I’ve all kinds of bills at the moment. Yukio’s sick as you can see, and I’ve that coat to pay for.’ She nodded to a fur jacket draped over the back of a chair.

  ‘It’s not the time of year for fur,’ he retorted.

  ‘It’s cheaper out of season.’

  ‘That’s your affair. I’m not expected to pay for that. I pay the rent, I maintain the child. The rest is not my responsibility.’ He sat up angrily. The child began to cry again at their raised voices.

  ‘Father.’ The word was stiff and formal in the boy’s small, mouth. It was the first word she had taught him to say. She always knew the right move, always knew how to corner him.

  ‘Ssh.’ He jiggled Yukio on his knee, then pulled from his pocket the bag of sweets and a cheap plastic toy he had bought on the way.

  ‘That’s all you think him worth?’ Chieko looked bitterly at the toy.

  ‘Get me a coffee. I’m tired.’ He stroked the child’s hair. ‘Have I come here for this?’

  ‘How does it work? Show me,’ Yukio held up the toy, smiling at Jun.

  ‘Here,’ he said gently, ‘this way. Like that. See?’ A small, plastic space module shot out into the room and hit a hanging light. Yukio laughed and clapped his hands.

  Chieko turned away and went into the kitchen. Soon she reappeared with the coffee, and he saw her expression had changed. She never wasted time with the futile, but moved on to a more efficient wile. She sat down and stirred his coffee for him.

  ‘You do look tired. Come, drink it while it’s hot.’ Her voice had dropped to the soft and persuasive, she waited meekly at his side. After some time she took the child to bed, insisting suddenly and brusquely when he cried in disappointment.

  ‘Let him stay. I can’t be much longer,’ Jun said.

  ‘No. It’s late,’ Chieko replied, pulling the child from him.

  He waited aimlessly in the chair, as if he had lost his way and rested for a moment at some impersonal junction. He gazed about the untidy room. Toys, magazines, heaps
of clothes, liquor bottles, glasses, cushions were strewn about him with the haphazard neglect of days. The pink carpet was ugly with stains, a bowl of half-eaten soup and noodles, the remains of Yukio’s supper, sat on the table congealed and cold. A satin brassiere and a string of folded paper cranes dangled from a chair. The stale smell of the room had been masked by a synthetic airfreshener, the close, sickly smell of lemons filled the air.

  Chieko came back into the room and went straight to a bottle of whiskey on a shelf. He shook his head to her enquiry, but she frowned at him sternly and poured two drinks. He watched her rummage for ice in the refrigerator, through the open kitchen door. She was devilishly attractive to him still. In spite of everything, he could not rid himself of the effect she had upon him; it was the reason she had trapped him. She was slim, but with a rare voluptuousness, her hair was coloured a soft cinnamon, and was smooth as plush. Without make-up her skin had a sallow, unhealthy pallor but seemed only to add to her allure. In a high, clear forehead the brows were plucked to almost nothing above her brazen eyes. She could still open with a look that dark secret part within himself like no other woman could. So that for moments at a time he did not recognise himself. He could look at her and think these thoughts and yet still say he loved his wife; he was two men within one body. He turned his eyes away from her.

  She brought him the drink and sat close beside him, running a finger over his ear. Looking at his watch, he saw it was early still. He knew too well each the way she had of achieving her purposes. He wished he could leave, that he had the will. But as always when he felt her hands begin their work upon him these thoughts drifted beyond his reach. He knew he was weak. He thought of Kate, but in his mind her face was expressionless and bore no relevancy to the man within this room. He drained the glass of whiskey and allowed its electric pulse to confuse his mind still further. Then he reached across and pulled the woman roughly to him, wishing suddenly to shake and devour her at the same time. She wound herself artfully about him and soon drew him to that point from which there was never a return.

  Afterwards, as always now, he hated himself. He prepared quickly to take his leave, pulling on his clothes, smoothing away before a mirror all trace upon him of the woman. She shrugged sourly at his hurry, leaning on the bathroom door.

  ‘When will you come again?’

  ‘I don’t know. Soon.’

  ‘Yukio cries for you.’

  ‘No he doesn’t. He doesn’t know me more than you’ve taught him to. It’s in his own interests that you don’t build up much in his mind. I can never recognise him.’

  ‘A father’s a father. You can’t deny that.’

  He was silent and pulled on his jacket, then walked quickly to the door. Outside once more he started the car and drove away, trying to focus his attention, where would it all end? Why could he no longer take this part of his life for the small pleasure it could offer and leave it at that, as any other man would, as he had before he married Kate? Why did he now feel torn apart? He drew up and stopped the car before the damp side of a temple wall. It had begun to rain, and in the light of a street lamp the old stones of the wall were ancient with secrets. He dropped his head in his hands, filled with self-disgust.

  He had met her five years before in a bar. He had sought his pleasure where he could then, unrelentingly. He had money, he was a man, and part of a society unhampered by any sense of Christian sin. He lived with the same indulgences his father had before him, as was expected of a man. For the pleasures of the flesh he had been taught to regard as a wholly permissible part of life, in no way related to any other part of himself. He set Chieko up as his mistress, as was not unusual with a woman of her type or a man in his position. It did not disturb him when his mother talked periodically of marriage, although he found excuses always to put it off, when she showed him the formal, posed photographs of girls eligible for his hand. Such an event would anyway be the marrying of his family to another, a duty he must eventually defer to, it was unlikely there would be love. That was no part of the ideal his mother had in mind. He had seen no reason at that time for Chieko in any way to disturb the tempo of his future. But she grew difficult and perverse as their relationship established, several times he tried to cut it off, but somehow her body always drew him back, like a bad spirit, until she told him about the child.

  ‘What?’ he had shouted.

  She had stood before him, a cool expression on her face and he knew she had planned it.

  ‘You know I can’t marry you.’ There was no question of that, a woman of her class. But he knew as the words left his mouth that a child would seal them together forever as surely as any marriage. There was no love, just arithmetic in her. And she thought nothing of the child, or the stigma of illegitimacy. She thought only of herself and the advantage it would bring her.

  ‘Get rid of it,’ he told her brusquely, pushing her roughly away, so that she stumbled over a chair.

  ‘It’ll cost money.’ She looked up, her face brazen and hard.

  ‘Here,’ he said the next time he saw her, handing her the envelope. There was more than enough, and she understood.

  ‘I’ll go away. You won’t see me again,’ she said defiantly. There had been silence then, and he had relaxed, and put the moment and its horror behind him. Soon the plan for him to go to England to study textile processes began to materialise and he prepared to leave for the stay there. Chieko became just a shadow in his mind, but he should have known better, should have known nothing with Chieko could have been finished so easily. Three weeks before he left for London she reappeared with the child.

  ‘See,’ she said. ‘See, your son.’ She thrust the small bundle at him. He drew back in horror, his dry mouth devoid of words. Small choked noises began in the knitted package, there appeared signs of some weak struggling. He backed further away, she laughed.

  ‘His name,’ she said, ‘is Yukio.’

  And at once, sealed with a name, the woollen parcel began to heave and roar until its cries filled the dark rococo coffee shop where they sat, that he had entered unsuspectingly only moments before. Yukio. The word became the rhythm of the bawling. It filled his head and in one deft stroke shifted his life forever into a different gear. A small, pink foot appeared from the angry bundle and kicked out and kicked over a coffee cup. The contents spilt across the table towards him. He stood up, stared numbly, and fled.

  Next she went to his mother, discreetly, politely, adroit and vulpine, the bundle on her arm.

  ‘You must pay,’ Itsuko told him, blanched and white as a naked almond. ‘You must pay to keep her quiet. Make sure I never see her again, that I hear no more of this.’

  He paid and left as quickly as he could for the broad, clean sweep of England. And there the thought of Chieko became thankfully a dream. Only the monthly bank draft tied him sometimes to reality. He locked the secret deep within him. It was as separate and silent and as sealed to him as the dark, buried square of a grave. It did not disturb the daylight or the smooth running of his life. He almost forgot. He met Kate and the past seemed then to sink still further and condense within him. He told Kate nothing. He could find no words and there seemed no need. Only when he returned to Japan did he realise the past was not something so easily shed.

  The child was three now, and called him, father. He had imagined only a future of impersonal bank drafts; he had not wanted to see the child. But at his return the machinery of fate seemed to grate into life. Reality now regained a focus and became hard and clear edged. He did not contact Chieko, but she heard about his marriage and demanded that he see her. She demanded more money and occasional visits for the sake of the child. Otherwise, she said, otherwise...

  He had no option but to agree. The thought of Kate ever knowing was more than he could bear. He wondered sometimes now how he could have so impassively deceived her. It had been the fear of losing her, and even then he did not have the courage to see upon her face the destruction of everything they had built. He could n
ot take that from her, or risk that she might leave him.

  That first time he saw the child after he returned with Kate, Chieko did nothing, she was docile and compliant. She had the instinct of an animal. She mixed a drink and did not even allow their fingertips to meet upon the glass. The child looked at him, with shy but friendly eyes. He could not see himself within the boy, only the set of Chieko’s eyes.

  The second time he brought some sweets, and another time a toy. He did this from a guilty sense of duty and not from a wish to establish anything with the child. As he thrust his gifts awkwardly at the small boy, Chieko exclaimed and pushed down the child’s head in an obligatory bow. Slowly then Yukio began to greet him with an expectant smile.

  Once Jun found the door of the flat ajar and entered, unannounced. The child looked at him then scrambled up from some toys on the floor and ran to an inner room. ‘Father’s come,’ he shouted excitedly to Chieko. The words echoed strangely back to Jun as the boy ran up again to him.

  ‘Why didn’t you come sooner?’ he demanded in his high voice. ‘Come and see my new helicopter.’

  He took Jun’s hand and pulled him forward. Jun was helpless to resist, the sticky palm was tiny within his own. It took some moments before Chieko came and the child chattered happily. Standing above him, Jun looked down upon his small head and delicate neck. His ears were large, his hands grubby about the helicopter. For the first time then he saw the child was a separate entity in himself, devoid of calculation or the games that adults play; he had not asked to be born. He was no more than a small trusting smile; his son in spite of all. Against his will Jun smiled back, and something broke within him, something tight and painful. The child reached up and pulled him by the hand, he bent on a knee beside it, and began awkwardly to explain the action of propellers as the child listened. He knew then he could never desert the boy, knew then too in one far-sighted, horrible flash to just what extent the woman had trapped him. He looked up and found her watching from a doorway, satisfaction in her eyes.