by Meira Chand
‘It has been a shock. But I’ll try to understand. It is something from another life, before we met. I expect I shall get over it.’ She gave a wan smile and placed her hand upon Jun’s across the table.
‘We’ll put her behind us. But you must not see her again. Do you promise? If you see her again it will mean all we have between us is nothing to you. Do you promise not to see her? Do you?’
The words he desperately sought to bring forward danced into the distance. The moment had passed, it was too late. To tell her the rest would be too much at one time. He should let her absorb this much first, and later tell her the rest. That would be best, he decided.
‘I promise,’ he said and meant it.
She could not sleep. Beside her Jun’s breathing was even, her forgiveness appeared to release him from further reflection. She however was left distressed and confused. His face was touching as a child’s in sleep and showed no wounds or complexities. She wished she could wake him, for the comfort of his arms that might banish her fears. Instead she let him be and lay back, arms folded beneath her head, she was ill with thoughts and fears. There was so much she did not understand. The longer she lived here, the more she knew and the less she comprehended. She had not just to battle with her own jealousy, but to understand a different order of things. Here it seemed a man was allowed many faces to deal with many different situations. Life was parcelled into its separate compartments, each with its own code of behaviour. Here contradictions appeared to her to be the uniformity of life. Jun had tried to explain this to her once long ago.
‘We believe a man has two souls. They are not his good impulses fighting his bad impulses, they are his rough and gentle souls. One is not destined for Heaven and the other for Hell. Each is a part of him, each necessary on different occasions. No evil is inherent in man’s soul.’
It had seemed exotic to her then, a strange plumed bird of thought. Now she faced the reality of it all. Life was like a mortgage from a bank, everything must be paid back, everything was borrowed, man was a debtor, and accounts must be kept of words and deeds and gifts. It was a complex world to be walked through warily.
Tears of rage choked suddenly in her throat, sweeping away the numbness of earlier shock. She wanted to wake and shake Jun. Instead she got up and left the room. Downstairs in the dark kitchen she drank a glass of water. The room was silent, a clock ticked somewhere. Then the tears began, rising in her, a great wave of passion that carried her away.
Jun came quickly downstairs, and found her locked into hysteria, wet with tears. He picked her up and carried her back upstairs, kissing her neck and murmuring contrition, desire already stirring within him. She lay beneath him exhausted, and wept again at his touch. Then she folded him within her arms and slept, before he could stir her to life.
13
Paula was deadheading the roses in her small angular garden. Her house, on a prestigious stretch of hill along Kitano-cho, was high above the centre of the town. The area was densely populated, houses clung precipitously to the hillside, traversed by narrow uneven lanes above a panoramic view of the town and bay. Paula’s house was an awkward, perpendicular affair crowned by a turret, like a holiday hat. It fitted no known school of architecture but appeared assembled in whimsy. Far below them in the distance, the town of Kobe spread in a long, narrow ribbon, hemmed in between the sea on one side, and the hills on the other. Osaka could be seen in the distance from Paula’s turret, a mass of concrete and gasometers glinting in the sun.
It was peaceful in the garden. Paula snipped carefully between thorns. Behind her a marmalade kitten played in the undergrowth, jumping suddenly from a hydrangea bush. The bell at its neck sounded in the warm, clear morning.
‘Thank God,’ said Paula, ‘all that humidity has gone. I love the autumn. You must see the maples, they’re almost garish they’re so splendid. The trouble with you Kate is, you’re caught between a past and a future.’
The kitten pranced sideways at Kate’s feet upon its long, thin legs, cuffing its paw at a toffee wrapping James had dropped the day before.
‘Whatever do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Well,’ said Paula, ‘everything is changing here. The old mores have given way to more flexible forms, families are nuclear, no longer communal, marriage is mostly by choice and not arrangement, old people live on their own. Women are asserting themselves in new ways; everything is moving and widening. Jun knows that, he’s part of today’s world, but he’s not yet able to free himself from the past. But he will, his marrying you is proof of it.’ Paula sat back on her heels to gather up a pile of dead and shrivelled rose heads.
‘Jun’s telling you the truth, it’s something from his past,’ Paula reached out to snip absently at a dead leaf. The kitten jumped to it as it fell.
‘I’m all right.’ Kate gave a small smile and then a cry, as the kitten jumped from a bush to land on her shoulder. She extracted him gently and placed him on the path again, laughing now with Paula.
‘He’s James’s,’ Paula announced. ‘We thought it would do him good. He’s better lately, I think we’re through the worst. There’s another American family returned here whom we knew before. Their son Tom was James’s friend, so you can imagine the difference that’s made to things. It’s great to see him happy again. And that’s what you need too, some friends. I don’t mean like me, or all those other women I’ve introduced you to in the foreign community. None of us can understand your problems. You need someone in your own position, in a mixed marriage whom you can relate to. I’m sure it would help to know someone like that. I want to introduce you to Mandy Takeyama. I met her on a train and got talking to her, I think she’s also lonely. I told her about you. She’s English too. She wants to meet you. I’ll ring right now and see if she’s in.’
Mandy Takeyama had straw-coloured hair cut in a close arc about her round face, clear light eyes and open pores upon her chin. She lived in an unfashionable part of town, on the second floor of a danchi, an apartment block. Stone stairs led up to a narrow alley that traversed the centre of the block, and where all the front doors looked like back doors, of scrubbed, unpainted wood. Beside each protruded a mechanism to heat the traditional tub in a bathroom just inside the front door. From kitchen windows hung umbrella-like clothes lines strung with bits of washing. On the railing of the stairway quilts were draped to air in the morning sun. The alley between the rows of front doors was crowded with tricycles and small children. Mothers chatted with one another at open doors. A chained puppy snapped at Kate and Paula’s heels.
Mandy’s door was open, she called to them to come in. The porch was so narrow they stood one behind the other to take off their shoes. At one side of the entrance Mandy’s brogues stood neatly beside her husband’s, a size larger than his and crushed down at the backs. She came forward and knelt at the genkan and reaching for her husband’s shoes, thrust them into a cupboard, to make room for their own in the small entrance.
‘My husband’s away for a few days. In Japan when the man of the house is away, they usually leave his shoes in the porch, so his absence is not apparent.’ She laughed in a good natured way, greeting them as they stepped up into the house.
It was the tiniest living space Kate had yet seen, a single room of six tatami mats, with a small kitchen and bathroom off it. It was bare and neat. Mandy lived Japanese style; the bed of quilts stored in a deep cupboard during the day, a low table and cushions brought out in exchange. Some hanging plants and shelves of books, a television and a small low chest were all the furniture in the room. A large chart of the acupuncture points on the human body was pinned upon a wall. The kitchen appeared spotless beyond a beaded curtain that clicked and swung as Mandy pushed through it with a jug of coffee. She knelt, and poured gracefully into earthenware mugs.
Kate gazed about as she sipped the sweet creamy coffee. The room, though small, seemed spacious, a Zen scroll hung in the tokonoma alcove above three flowers in a vase. Mandy offered little Japanese suga
r cakes and a variety of wafers. Her husband, she told them, worked with Kobe Steel as a research engineer, and she was studying acupuncture and moxibustion. She had met her husband in Japan, when she came to learn about martial arts. Her interest in acupuncture began when she was cured of an injured knee. The philosophy underlying it intrigued her.
‘An imbalance in the meridian flow is what creates disease,’ she told Kate; her eyes direct and uncomfortably assessing. Kate felt her critical judgment in spite of Mandy’s smile. Mandy pointed to the acupuncture chart on the wall. ‘All those positions on the body are tsubo, where the energy flow can be struck by inserting the needles, or applying heat, as in moxibustion, when a small piece of the mugwort plant, called mokusa, is burnt.’ Her face was round and flat, almost Japanese; Kate began to wonder if she had some Japanese blood in her, a grandmother maybe. She had found recently she was unsure of her assessment of people. Many foreigners now looked nearly Japanese, and the Japanese all looked as if they might have mixed blood, the distinguishing points seemed suddenly vague. Kate looked again at Mandy’s straw-coloured hair and pale eyes and decided she must be losing her grip.
‘The whole philosophy of oriental medicine is based on the theory of ying and yang and on the Five Element Theory, made up of moku, wood, ka, fire, do, earth, gon, metal, and sui, water,’ Mandy continued. ‘Ying and yang are not negative and positive forces, but complementary. Take the stomach for instance, the outside is yang and the inside is ying, and the head and feet have a ying-yang relationship. And each of the five elements generates another. Wood burns, creating fire. Fire turns wood to ash, ash becomes metal and metal can melt to liquid. They oppose each other too. Water destroys fire. Fire destroys metal. Metal destroys wood and wood stops soil, soil blocks water. So, if you have trouble in the kidneys it can be because of the liver, lungs or spleen.’ Mandy spoke authoritatively, offering another wafer.
All this, it further appeared, along with physiology, pathology, oriental philosophy and Western medicine, Mandy studied in the Japanese language at an institute for oriental medicine in Osaka. She had been just over four years in Japan.
‘All that in Japanese?’ Kate asked astounded and alarmed. ‘I’m not bad at the language and I knew a lot before I got here, as far as conversation goes. But I doubt if I could manage all that in four years,’ she admitted.
‘Oh well, where there’s a will there’s a way,’ Mandy shrugged casually.
Kate shrank back and wondered what thick walls within herself prevented a more fluent understanding of Japanese. She listened to Paula question Mandy on her adaptation to Japanese life. She did not seem lonely or perplexed, as Paula had explained.
‘I love it here. I can’t say I ever had many difficulties in adaptation.’ said Mandy with a smile. Kate began to hate her smooth, round face.
‘I found only help and kindness,’ Mandy continued. ‘In the beginning of course, things were strange, but the secret is not to fight it, but to go with it, to be Japanese. And I did just that. I learned a different way of living and one I think far superior and sensible to ours, far more perceptive to economy, hygiene and bodily needs. And I found everyone accepted me, everyone was kind.’
As Kate remained silent Paula asked about Mandy’s Japanese parents-in-law.
‘They’re farmers,’ she said, ‘in Shikoku. We go back there at Obon and New Year. Last year we helped them harvest the rice. Sometimes they come and stay with us. For a while in the beginning we lived with them. I loved it, I fitted in easily, they seemed happy with me. Of course, I tried my best to be a Japanese daughter-in-law. I did everything I could to please Kenji’s mother. I got up early, I cleaned the house, I cooked when she taught me, I massaged her shoulders, I massaged her legs. I went last in the bath, I made them all up their lunch boxes before they went out in the mornings. I forgot I was not a Japanese. I’m very fond of them all, although I’m not saying it wasn’t a relief to come and live alone with Kenji, and do something for my mind.’ Mandy laughed and turned to question Kate on the circumstances of her life.
Kate thought, as she had many times before, how different things would have been had Fumi been Jun’s mother, instead of Itsuko. And she too, thought Kate, might also be able to please a good-natured farmer’s wife. The differences that divide existences cannot be judged by the sum of things. Her circumstances were different from Mandy’s, it was impossible to compare. And the more she thought the more she was sure, Mandy would not have put up with a fraction of the things that made Kate’s life. She would have stamped her sensible brown-brogued foot, and stomped out of that Japanese life. Kate had the feeling she had been summed up in Mandy’s clear eyes, as weak-willed and self-indulgent. Kate tried to explain something of her life to Mandy, but none of it sounded right.
Mandy listened to Kate and then shook her head.
‘You live in a different world. And as you see, we’re too poor for Kenji to get into any trouble,’ she said in reply to Kate’s bitter reference to the philandering of Japanese men.
‘Sometimes, Kenji stops off for a coffee or a quick drink with a friend on the way home, once in a while he goes out with the boys. Kenji’s not an expense account man, he’s not at that level. None of his friends have enough money either to get very far. I’m glad for him to have a good time. Our dire financial straits always keep him in order. All this bar-going in Japan, it’s just harmless drinking for most of them, you know. I haven’t met any of your problems here, or I’ve slipped through them if I have,’ Mandy declared.
Soon she looked at her watch and found with relief they could go. Mandy told her to come again whenever she wanted. ‘But ring me before, because I’m usually at the institute, this morning you were lucky. And my advice to you is; get yourself moving. Get going, get a job. Interpret or teach English. Even a jackass can teach English here and make a living from it. It’s what everyone does.
‘And listen, if you can’t swim with the current, strike out against it. If you’ll excuse the observation, you’re standing still and drowning. Get off your ass. I can see you’re unhappy. Strike out. If you’re strong enough, you’ll swim,’ she said briskly, then shut the door.
They should never have come, thought Paula as they turned away. Kate’s face was tense with unspoken strain. All she had thought was that they were both married to Japanese, and that common ground would help Kate. It had been foolish of her not to realise that such different circumstances of marriage might offer little relevancy. The visit had probably done more harm than good.
Kate walked ahead of Paula, quickly down the stairs. The sun had gone behind a cloud, shadows consumed her coldly. She swallowed hard as Paula’s steps caught up with, her, sympathetic and supportive; Paula understood. But if she was fair, Kate knew Mandy was right, at least in the last analysis. She was standing still, and she was drowning, in some slow and nameless way. She must strike out against the current. The cliché stuck in her mind, offering a banal comfort. She did not think she would see Mandy again; there was little to connect them. There must be a way to turn negative into positive. If Many had done it so could she, Kate thought. She must put that woman Chieko behind her, she could do nothing to them now. Kate turned then and smiled at Paula, determination in her eyes. The sun came out and lit again the bright quilts upon the wall.
14
The meeting with Mandy upset her. She did not go home after leaving Paula but walked aimlessly, absorbed in her own emotions. She did not know where she walked, furrowed deep within herself. The sky threatened rain, and it was late afternoon. To Kate life seemed suddenly full of alternatives but few choices. She was the sum of her own limitations. She looked up to meet the painted peacock eyes of a mannequin in the window of a store, and found in the blatant gaze a familiar audacity. It was the face of the woman Chieko again, and she turned away quickly.
‘Kate.’
Someone tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned to find Yoko beside her. Her lazy, feline smile, uncritical as ever, filled Kate with a
rush of warmth.
‘It’s been so long,’ Yoko smiled. ‘Don’t say you’re in a hurry. We’ll have a coffee.’
Kate nodded in pleasure. It was weeks since Kate had last seen her. Yoko’s visits to the family were rare, the lines she must not overstep and the frequency dictated was a silent code of etiquette understood only by her and Itsuko. Her life after all was one of digression, and she had chosen it herself. She had made her own bed and now she must lie on it, Itsuko unfailingly implied. The laxity of will that was Yoko’s road in life must in no way reflect the family honour. Itsuko was firm, relenting only on occasion. But Kate liked Yoko, liked the ease of her, so different from her sister, and above all liked the slatternly instincts that made her defy conventions. She thought her brave and bold. She had told Jun so, but he only shrugged. A woman of her class, he said, should not do those kinds of things. He spoke as narrowly as an old woman, and she fell silent in surprise.
Yoko’s voice was low and husky, thick as blotting paper. Awareness seeped from her like a scent. Her eyes saw little further than her appetites, and since these were satisfied she could be generous, and uncritical. Kate marvelled at these differences in her more liberal-minded in-law as they walked along together. Yoko pointed out a coffee shop and they crossed the road towards it. Pushing open the door they entered a pseudo-Tyrolean world, of cuckoo clocks and yodelling music. They found a table and Yoko ordered Vienna Coffee without prior consultation.
‘It’s the best thing here,’ she explained regally. ‘You must have it. This place advertises that it makes the best coffee in Kobe.’ Her eyes, bold and amused, held Kate’s in unhurried scrutiny.
‘Tell me how you’ve been, away from the main house and my sister’s short, tight rein?’ she demanded, raising her eyebrows and lowering her voice, deepening their intimacy.
‘I’m fine,’ Kate replied mechanically, trying not to remember the past few days.