The Bonsai Tree

by Meira Chand

  The interview had taken place some days before for a women’s hour programme on the local network. Jun’s business opinions were sometimes sought by journalists, but it was his mother who attracted attention. She was a Nagai, and that stood for much even in her husband’s day within inner business circles. Her name was known beyond spheres of work for she was all but alone in her position in Japan, as an active, powerful woman in industry. As such she was championed by fledgling women’s groups and interviewing journalists. Through domestic days in countless little houses women stopped the stirring of a pan and heard or read her name. Itsuko Nagai.

  ‘Do you think of the achievements of your life as being the kind of ideal for modern Japanese women?’ a young woman asked.

  ‘In my own lifetime the position of women in Japan has changed in an undreamed of way. But there are women now, who would have us ape some kind of Westernised freedom, although this, thank goodness, is not yet widespread. The average Japanese woman still feels her place firmly in the home. This is as it should be. I believe most women see their strength and power more truly there than in other roles, with their imported ideas of emancipation. I myself believe in the strength of all our traditional virtues. I do not like the erosions I see. I believe they have weakened our identity. I have said many times and I shall say it again, I have not chosen my present role in life from any elevated notion, from any wish to expand my place as a woman. Rather the opposite, it was from that strict observance of my traditional place, in obedience to my husband, that made me determined to devote myself to his memory with the same single-mindedness as when he lived. Until his death, I had taken no active part in the business. I see only total disaster, total social confusion ahead if we abandon our traditional roles.’ On the screen Itsuko’s eyes were firm beneath soft words.

  ‘But you have now a foreign daughter-in-law. Will this not bring about some change within the family? Did you oppose your son’s marriage?’ The interviewer addressed herself to Itsuko, but the camera settled on Jun. Now he watched his own anxiety reflect again in that strange face. Itsuko did not stumble, her smooth voice remained unchanged, she smiled.

  ‘There are some evolutions I cannot oppose, the world is a very small place nowadays, there will be more and more of these marriages. But I have always thought we understand far more about the West than the average Westerner knows about Japan. As such I look forward to teaching my new daughter-in-law our customs and attitudes. We should not always think we must learn from the West. There is much they can learn from us. This is a unique opportunity within the heart of my family.’

  Even now she took his breath away, even now he must admire her. How she turned the rough into the smooth, the wayward to her purpose. On the screen Itsuko’s lips moved easily in reply to other questions. Jun listened to her elegant replies, and it struck him now for the first time, how avidly she guarded her own domain. How, having found her own strengths and freedom, she would deny other women the same. Before the war her position would have been unthinkable, whatever her abilities. It was precisely the Westernised trends she proposed to condemn that allowed her to be what she was. He felt the heat of annoyance at such hypocrisy. Beside her he appeared on the screen ineffectual and received little attention. But soon brash advertisements ended the interview and when the programme continued, a cookery demonstration replaced them. Jun switched off the television and the room retreated behind the glow of a table lamp.

  Itsuko patted her hair and adjusted her neck within the collar of her kimono, her mind still full of the image of her own face. Amidst dewy colour and commercialism it had remained something separate and contained. Unlike that pert little interviewer with her endless, calcified smile. Satisfaction animated Itsuko’s small frame, she thought she came out of it all very well.

  Immediately Fumi began to bustle, hurrying up old Hirata-san in the serving of their dinner. She began to fuss about Jun, like an anxious hen.

  ‘See,’ she said, ‘I have made sea bream today in your favourite way. Especially for you. I knew you’d like it.’ She giggled at Jun’s pleasure, eyes bright and tender. Her hands, settling the many small dishes before him, changing slightly their positions, pulling the pickles nearer for convenience, fluttered unashamedly affectionate.

  Itsuko stared coldly, but Fumi seemed not to see. Chose not to see, thought Itsuko. It was always like this, everyday, every meal. It had begun when Fumi came back to live in the old house after Itsuko’s husband died. Almost at once she established a bond with the young Jun. They spoke in corners, warm laughing glances were exchanged and the perplexities of adolescence Jun carried to his aunt. In the beginning Itsuko tried not to notice, but bad dreams shredded nights and drove into her day. She could not look at her sister’s plain and kindly face. For a good part of that first year together she refused to speak to Fumi, who for months entreated to know the reason. Itsuko kept her silence deliberately, but she told her at last in the autumn, while viewing the maples in Kyoto.

  In the Kiyomizu Temple they had stood together at the edge of the huge stage of the hondo that hung out in the air upon massive supports. The great shingled roof towered above and the famous vista, crimson with maples, was clear before them as if they stood upon a mountain top. It came out of her mouth at last then, like a round, hard, bitter stone.

  ‘You’ve stolen my son.’

  She heard Fumi’s shocked silence, clear as the call of a bird above them. ‘You have lost your own and would now steal mine.’

  Fumi went rigid and had not said a word.

  As she spoke then, memories flowed back into Itsuko, so that she reached out and gripped the rail before her. For she remembered that other time many years before, when she had come to the temple to pray to the Kiyomizu’s eleven-faced, thousand-armed kannon, for the easy birth of a son. Her husband had been with her then, and they had stood exactly there, looking out across Kyoto. Few words, she remembered, passed between them. It was winter then and before them all Kyoto seemed as frugal and bare and brown as the temple’s weathered, wooden structure, a strong wind whistled in their ears. A son, she had prayed, a son and heir. Beside her she knew her husband willed the same hard wish. She had heard in the past peasant women in birth closed their thighs upon girl children, or drowned them within minutes. And she had understood, for she knew already the shame the birth of a girl would bring her; both her husband and father waited for a son.

  Even the husband who had stood beside her, adopted as her father’s heir was not free of that affliction. The obligatory bonds placed upon him as an adoptive husband, behooved him for life to a special burden. In private he spoke bitterly to Itsuko of the resentments he felt, but could never indulge. He became a morose and silent man, and once she had safely borne a son and had the status of a mother, she allowed herself to despise him. He turned for comfort to debauchery, taking as mistress a famous geisha, whom he set up in an establishment of her own. Itsuko’s heart had filled with violence, but there was nothing she could do, it was her duty to accept. He did no more than live the established pattern for a man of substance, a traditional townsman in every way. He did no more than her own father, and his father too before him. Itsuko was merely a wife; her small sphere was ringed and fenced, what happened beyond her little plot could be no concern of hers. Itsuko put her memories behind her, and turned away from the television towards the table. When she remembered the interview some balance seemed righted. She lifted the lid of a lacquer container and began to serve the rice.

  ‘The fish is so good,’ Jun praised Fumi. ‘I’ve not had sea bream like this for years.’

  ‘I went to the market on the way home from the hospital, I wanted to surprise you. Hirata-san had already begun something different, she’s upset with me for changing her menu. But I made it for you myself in just the way you like,’ Fumi laughed.

  ‘Delicious,’ Jun shook his head and took another bite.

  Itsuko averted her eyes from the gentle game they played together. She tried to contr
ol the feelings that began to stir in her. It was not fair, it was not right. Jun was her son, it was she who had nursed him until he was four, and could no longer sit comfortably upon her lap. But even after that he had slept until quite big beside her in her bed; his father had slept in a separate room. His hand had often stolen to fondle in sleep her bare breast beneath her kimono. Yet even that intimacy between them had not brought the easy affection Fumi seemed immediately to procure. A cold, tight jealousy filled her.

  Often in their childhood she had felt this way about Fumi. They had been brought up in this old house. For as long as Itsuko could remember she had eaten at this table, sat each evening in this room. Its wooden beams in the ceiling above had looked down on each hour of her life, each pain and dream. It was an introverted house full of dark corners. Trees fenced in three sides, shutting out the sun that filtered through in a dark, green light. At night the trees stirred and murmured against the shuttered windows. Often, as a child, Itsuko woke and felt the restless melancholy of the place. In the dark it seemed to fill and claim her. She listened to the rustling trees and the waterfall that fell forever behind the house and strange thoughts and violent feelings filled her. Once, she remembered still, turning to look at little Fumi asleep on a futon beside her. The darkness obscured Fumi’s face but the moon cut in a blade across her throat. Itsuko rose on an elbow and stared, and a terrible feeling had filled her. The same passion for hate as when secretly, she pulled the wings of insects from their helpless bodies. She lay back, and the feeling had throbbed in her, louder than the stirring leaves.

  The sense of direction in her now was sharp as that blade of light so long ago upon Fumi’s throat. Already the solid mass of confusion confronting her these past months was gone. The future lay in her to mould, she was impatient to begin. Itsuko could not remember a single incident in her life that was not eventually arranged as she wished. She simply closed herself upon ambition until within her body there was no break, not the breadth of a hair, between what she willed and what would happen. For the first time now since Jun’s marriage, she was sure it was not too late.

  Jun accepted a bowl of rice from his mother, but did not meet her gaze. A strange, distracted energy seemed to come from her this evening. Her glance was preoccupied, a cold vivacity brimmed in her eyes. He had seen that look on her face before and knew some dubious mechanism had begun to work within her. And as soon as the meal was finished, he noticed she found a reason to be rid of Fumi, so that they sat alone.

  The room still held the warm spring evening and the earthy smell of the garden. The moon hung red in the branches of the loquat tree, a moth fluttered against the window. The light of a low standing lamp filled the room, Itsuko faced Jun across the table, her hands cupped about a bowl of tea.

  ‘So, she comes home tomorrow.’ Never once had she used Kate’s name. Jun nodded. ‘Some women have not the talent for children,’ Itsuko noted meditatively.

  ‘She just did too much after we moved and emotionally, settling is difficult for her. Everything is strange, all these things have played a part. There will be other times, other children,’ Jun repeated Fumi’s words.

  ‘Perhaps we will always seem strange to her. Perhaps she will never settle,’ Itsuko softly observed. In the low light of the room an emerald flashed upon her hand.

  ‘You must give her time. It was the same for me when I went to London. It was not just another country; it was another world. It was not until I met Kate that I learned a truer understanding.’

  Itsuko raised an eyebrow. ‘It seems you have understood so well you have forgotten your own heritage,’ she replied.

  Itsuko held up a hand as Jun protested. ‘No, tonight you must listen to me. I speak only for your good. All these strange ideas you have learned from your wife. I am not saying for her they are wrong. She belongs to a different culture. Do you not understand your position? Some day you will sit where I am. She is not the right wife. Not the right wife for a man in your position. She has divided and confused you.’ Itsuko was adamant.

  ‘Your views, Mother, are not part of today’s world. The Japan we live in is very different from the Japan you were brought up in.’ He dared to tell her, the words fighting angrily in him.

  ‘As far as I am concerned very little has changed for the better. We had strong guidelines then that are sadly lacking today. But we are the same nation, the same people with the same belief in ourselves. Our strength and direction has not altered, only our vocabulary.’

  ‘But I have married her,’ Jun stated, angrily.

  ‘Well,’ said Itsuko, suddenly and softly, her voice dropping as she leaned across the table. ‘You can unmarry her. You can divorce her. You can marry again, a more suitable match. It’s not too late, not with our position and wealth.’

  ‘Mother!’ He started back on his cushion, shocked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, not seeming to notice his horror. ‘I have thought and thought and this is the way. You made a mistake. You were confused and maybe lonely in London. I am also to blame, I should have insisted you marry, long before. I should not have listened to you. In the old days as you well know, I would have had the authority to dissolve your marriage, even expel you from the family for marrying without my permission. Yes, when I think of it now, times have indeed changed.’ She laughed, not unkindly, animated by all she was saying, and the power it seemed to give her.

  ‘But we live in modern times, as you say. And I am not one to push my authority. I just ask you to seriously consider my proposal. There is no need for shame, there are several valid reasons to put forward to the world. She is a foreigner, everyone will understand. Her unsuitability, and inability to adjust can be stressed. It is not your fault, you will not be blamed. It is for your good, and hers. I do not think she will ever settle.’ Itsuko pulled back across the table and regarded her son gravely, watching the weight of her words upon him.

  ‘Mother,’ he leaned forward determinedly. ‘I love her, I want no other wife.’ Even to say it to her, so nakedly, made him curl inside. How could she ever understand how he had met and married Kate?

  ‘Love?’ She laughed incredulously behind her hand. ‘You are not a woman. What is love compared to duty? Have you forgotten everything to which you were born? What has this woman done to you? Love? Where is your strength of will?’

  He wondered, beneath his throbbing pulse, what Kate would make of this conversation if she could overhear. How could she ever understand that to his mother’s way of thinking the pursuit of personal happiness as a goal in life was both amazing and immoral. The strength of will that duty required was all that mattered to her. They were not a nation of “happily-ever-afters”. Heroes here were not rewarded by earthly happiness for virtue. Lovers gave up love for duty and came to tragic but virtuous ends. Happy couples committed suicide in the proper performance of duty. Weak feelings must never come between a man and his obligations.

  ‘Love,’ his mother considered the word and then continued. ‘Tell me, what will this mean to your wife when she knows of your other love?’ Her eyes were dark now and wily as she laid her trump card in the space between them. It was as if she hit him, she saw his whole body contract. ‘What will all this love you talk of mean to her then?’

  ‘That was something of the past, as you well know. And something quite different to what there is between Kate and I. It was before I met her. I was a different person then.’ He spoke stiffly, in a low voice. ‘She must never know.’

  ‘It is very difficult to keep a secret like that. How long can it be before she hears in one way or another?’

  ‘Who will tell her?’ He had never thought she would bring this up, stoop to this kind of blackmail.

  ‘Certainly not I, rest assured. But it is something beyond yourself. It is a risk you will always live with. And Chieko is the jealous type, clever too. And what then? Your wife will not understand in the way a Japanese woman would. What then of this great love of yours?’ He did not reply.

 
It was enough. She sat back, and drew new breath, and poured herself more tea. She had planted her seeds, but looking at Jun she felt a sudden rush of warmth at the despondence in his face. She did not wish always to appear a jailer, but life had cast her as custodian of the lives about her. It was her duty to inflict these disciplines that later he would be grateful for. She gave him a bowl of tea and sighed before their combined and uncertain fate.

  ‘Come. It is for your good that I say these things. I would not be your mother if I did not worry for your welfare. Think about what I have said, there is no hurry. I feel you have made a grave mistake, but there is this way out. It is not too late. And I suspect even now, she might gladly go home if you gave her the opportunity. She is not happy here, she will never adjust.’

  Jun stood up, the bowl of tea untouched and left the room without a goodbye. Itsuko followed and stood staring after him as he closed the door.

  When he had gone she did not go back to the tatami room but turned instead into her Western-style lounge. The room was for visitors, not for everyday use. It lay out of bounds in a solitary, shuttered confinement only Itsuko was allowed to break. Here the upright world of furniture was like an island in the low eye levels of the house. Here a raised-work velvet couch and chairs were part of a prim, stiff land of polish and glass and antimacassars and a candle chandelier. An arrangement of spring flowers stood between a large portrait of Itsuko and a copy of Utrillo’s Église de Saint-Mamert. Itsuko sat down in a chair and sadly smoothed an antimacassar over a velvet arm. Her portrait always brought her here at times of trouble or confusion, and she turned in the chair to gaze up at it. Within its painted likeness she found a comfort the mirror now refused to give. The picture had been painted by a well-known artist soon after she was married. The strange flat style blended the patterns of Itsuko’s kimono into the thick, dark foliage of the background. From these soft shapes and colours her face stared out like a pale bloom, exotic and untouchable; her own mystery seemed to possess her. The portrait appeared with magnificent assurance to fix her, ageless, upon the plane of time. She never tired of its reflection, and looked at it again now, seeking reassurance. She found it always in the painted image of her own eyes, and knew again her way was right.