The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel

  'I agree, Boria,' I said. 'But what is to be done about it, especially as I have no desire to change my nature? Whatever you plan to do about it, I will not spend my life in this desperate place. Jon is the only one who will help me escape it.'

  'You care nothing for Jon,' he said scornfully. 'You will use him and desert him without a thought.'

  'I care, Boria,' I replied. 'But I am desperate. I will do what needs to be done to avoid living in your frigid world. It is my nature to free myself, just as it is yours to be bound by duty.'

  Boria snorted in disgust. 'No matter how clever you think you have been, Yoshiko, you have simply overwhelmed a less devious nature than your own. Jon is too good a person to believe that anyone could plan what you have without love being the spur. I am angry with him for being such a fool, but I won't let you use him so badly.'

  'You can't stop Jon helping me,' I said. 'We will find a way no matter how difficult you make it.'

  'I know that,' he said flatly. 'But I can save Jon from a life he would find not worth living. When you leave, Yoshiko, it will be without him.'

  'But my dilemma is that in order to go, I need Jon to take me.'

  'Jon is not the only one who can take you out of Suiyuan. I have a plan that will help you leave tonight without his knowledge, one with a greater chance of success than you would have had with him.'

  I was suspicious of Boria; he was a clever man, sure of himself and determined. I could see myself as the victim of his plan.

  'So it will be the honourable Boria who helps me to leave my husband?' I asked quietly.

  'It will be me,' he said. 'Not because I care what happens to you, Yoshiko, but because it is the lesser of two evils.'

  'Still, Boria,' I said, 'I am Kanjurjab's wife, and you put yourself and your family at great risk by assisting me.'

  'Like you, Yoshiko, it seems I have no choice. This way only Kanjurjab's pride will be hurt, but without his family Jon's life will be a poor thing not worth the living, Nandak's heart will be broken and my family will be damaged beyond repair. So, providing you do exactly as I say, you will get what you want so badly and in time we will all recover from the disgrace of our connection with you.'

  'It seems that I don't have much choice, Boria, so tell me your plan and perhaps I will agree.'

  'Firstly, Jon must not come to you tonight, you must make certain of that. Be ready to leave as soon as it is dark, keep the fire going and the dogs in as normal so that no one's attention is drawn to the house. If you do as I say and make no goodbyes to anyone, my plan will work.'

  'I will be waiting for you, Boria, but if you let me down it will be you as well as Jon who pays the price,' I warned.

  'Bring only what you can carry with ease,' he said, ignoring my threat. 'And remember, nothing is accomplished yet. We will be in danger until the moment that I return here unseen and without you.'

  After he left, I felt excited by the thought of where I might find myself when the sun next rose. Somehow I knew that Boria was right when he said his plan had a better chance of success than Jon's would have. He had a cool head on his shoulders, whereas Jon's, hot with passion and romance, was blind to the true danger of our situation.

  I believe that Boria cared for Jon a great deal, but his willingness to help me stemmed more from his fear that his whole family would be torn apart if Jon ran off with me. In Kanjurjab's small tribe, the chain of family and honour was linked by blood and loyalty and these two were considered paramount to a decent life. The stain on the family from the chain breaking in such a fashion would humiliate them all for years to come. By helping me, Boria sought to avoid that humiliation. I would be the only miscreant, a woman without loyalty who had deceived them. They would hold my foreign blood to blame and never return to Japan for a bride.

  That afternoon under a deliciously hot sun I rode to the pagoda with Jon. He said that he found me distracted, so I told him that my mind was full of our plans and that it was excitement and not distraction that he sensed. I said too that he should not come to me that night as Mai had told me that Kanjurjab intended to visit me himself. I knew that Jon would fret his night away thinking about it, but I could not risk Boria's plan. Seeing the pain on his face, I kissed him tenderly and told him that Kanjurjab meant less than nothing to me, but we should not risk our future together for the sake of one night. We made a sad sort of love and held each other close. Jon could not know that I was saying goodbye to him, but when he looked back on it he would understand that it was my farewell, even though a little later we made a second more vigorous coupling. As we left the pagoda I leant across the divide between the horses and locked hands with him; we didn't let go of each other until Suiyuan came into sight. I was full of pity for him, but my resolve to be done with all things Mongolian was as strong as ever. As we were dusting the horses down he put his hand possessively over my breast.

  'Remember, Yoshiko,' he said pleadingly, 'think only of me tonight.' I took up his other hand and slipped it under my del onto my naked breast and promised him that I would. I wanted to comfort him, to postpone his misery for one more night.

  Mai was sitting outside my house watching her boys play. Her stomach and breasts were swollen with her pregnancy, she looked tired out, as though the child in her womb was using her up. She greeted me and said she had come to ask me to comfort Kanjurjab who was still sad at the loss of Tsgotbaatar. He was in his ger and nothing she could do seemed to cheer him at all. I put my arm around her and told her that I would do my best. I would like to have taken a good leave of her, but as that wasn't possible, I contented myself with a sisterly hug. I told her to rest on my bed for a while but she said she had to help Xue pack up her medicines, as we would be leaving for the summer grazing in two days' time.

  I didn't find Kanjurjab sad, although he did seem eager to be distracted. 'Turn the page of your picture book, Yoshiko, and show me something new,' he said.

  For the first and the last time in his presence I stood before him and slowly removed my clothes, leaving only Xue's pendant hanging heavily between my breasts. Kanjurjab was wearing a long unbuttoned del, he was smoking one of my Turkish cigarettes, watching me with interest. I took the cigarette out of his mouth and drew deeply on it before throwing it onto the fire. Opening his coat, I pressed my naked body against his half-clothed one, putting my hands on his buttocks and pushing us together so that I could feel him stirring. He said he was surprised to find my body so perfect. He had thought I must have some small deformity hidden beneath the clothes I was usually so unwilling to remove. After he had stroked and admired me I rubbed him between my breasts till he was hard, bending my head to lick his member, knowing that I would never experience his peculiar taste again. Then I lay on my stomach at his feet, arching my body over his saddle so that he would know to enter me from behind. His thrusts were strong and without thought for me, which I didn't object to. I moaned out his name until he became so excited that he climaxed too quickly for my pleasure, but I had enjoyed our last coupling and quite forgot to think of Jon. Later, when he was sleepy, I sat naked on his buttocks and massaged him with my hands curled into fists. I licked him under his arms and in the crease at the back of his neck, as I had once seen Teshima's peasant girls do to him; Kanjurjab seemed to like it as much as Teshima had. When I had finished, I built up the fire and lay with him naked beneath a fur cover, letting him sip vodka from my mouth until the flames of the fire and the vodka made us so hot that we had to throw off the cover. He told me that I would have made a better concubine than a wife.

  As I left his ger, I wondered briefly if he would miss me more than hate me once I was gone. But then how can you truly miss someone that you do not know?

  Once back in the house, I finished sewing my money into the lining of my del and put on all the jewellery I possessed. I filled a small felt bag with my writing case, Natsuko's honey box and the three gold nuggets that I reasoned Jon would want me to keep. I concealed Hideo's knife in the top of my boot and filled
my flask with vodka. Taking off the jade pendant, I placed it on top of Xue's wedding chest where she could not fail to see it.

  After darkness had fallen I waited two hours for Boria to come. Just as I was beginning to despair of him, he entered the house so quietly that even the dogs did not stir. In a gesture of silence he put his finger to his lips and beckoned me to follow him through the back door of the house. I picked up my bag, covered my head with the scarf that Mai had given me and took a last look around the room that had been mine for the few cold months of my marriage. I prayed that I would never see it again. On an impulse, I took back the jade pendant and slipped it into the pocket of my jodhpurs. Xue would not care, she had already ticked it off her list.

  As we made our way stealthily from the house I froze with fear at what I took to be the howling of a wolf. Boria whispered that it was only Tsgotbaatar's old dog keening for his dead master. A bitter wind blew from the east as though to remind me of the hostility of the landlocked country I was fleeing. It rocked Suiyuan with the frigid air I had come to loathe. I could not wait to be done with Mongolia, that land between Russia and China whose way of life would not have been out of place a thousand years ago, and whose people, if you were not careful, would steal your heart and keep you captive.

  Soon we had left the gers behind us and were weaving our way through the narrow streets of Suiyuan where the poor excuses for houses rose from the hard mud roads like squat tea boxes. The little town was silent, shut tight against the keen night. We saw no one on the streets and apart from the occasional cough and the short bark of a dog, it would have been possible to believe that Suiyuan was entirely deserted.

  Boria's stride was long and it was an effort to keep up with him. Once, as he turned a corner well ahead of me, I thought that I had lost him. I was breathless by the time we reached the small Chinese quarter where, in the second lane, without knocking, he opened the door of a house indistinguishable from that of its neighbours. The padded felt door shut behind us with a soft thud and for a second or two until my eyes adjusted to the gloom the room appeared completely dark.

  I heard light footsteps on the stone floor approaching the room and assumed them to be those of a woman. But Boria was greeted by a tiny Chinese man dressed in a drab brown coat, wearing a fur hat so large that it made his body appear more that of a doll than of a man. He had long dirty nails and shoulders that slumped forwards as though he suffered from a curved spine. There were white bristles sticking out of the three little rolls of fat beneath his chin, and his turned-up nose looked as though it had not grown to a proper size. At one and the same time his appearance gave the impression of slyness and humility.

  We were in a small, poorly stocked shop that had bunches of herbs hanging so low from the ceiling that they touched the top of Boria's head. In the far corner of the room below an empty birdcage there was a fat barrel of mouldy-looking rice. Dotted about on the uneven shelves pots of five-grain wine and clay jars of juniper berries gathered dust. A chipped glass bottle, half-full with the bitter gum of myrrh, was seeping its contents into a sticky puddle. Dusty and unlit, the shop was heavy with the unpleasant smell of old rice. I hoped that Boria was not going to leave me there alone; indeed, for one unsettling moment I thought that I had been brought to this charmless place to be murdered. But I didn't really believe that Boria thought me worthy enough to lower himself to such an act.

  We were ushered through to a narrow corridor off which three rooms, each lit by a single candle, stood doorless in a line. Two of these chambers were occupied by what I recognised to be flower girls and their customers. From the room furthest away, a man was grunting with such pleasure that Boria, filled with embarrassment, would not catch my eye. He tried to drown out the sound by stamping his feet and clapping his hands together as though to warm them from the cold. He did not like it when I laughed.

  I caught the familiar fragrance of opium and thought of Sorry. Suddenly in that mean little brothel I felt more at home than I ever had in Kanjurjab's house or his ger. I felt that nothing would happen to me there that I could not control or change by bartering.

  Boria told me that the shopkeeper Wu Yang had planned to travel from Suiyuan later that summer to his homeland in China where he would buy a new whore and fresh supplies for his shop. For the right price he was prepared to leave before dawn on that very day with me hidden in his cart. He would take me to the Mongolian city of Baoton, where I could board a train on the newly built railway that would take me to the coastal towns of China. Once there, I would have the choice to stay or to return to Tokyo as I pleased. Boria knew that I could not return to Kawashima's household, and said that if I had any honour left at all, I would change my name and disappear into a world peopled with my own kind. I wondered what sort of creatures he considered to be my own kind, but I didn't bother to question him on the subject.

  In a high little voice, Wu said that his price was only for getting me to Baoton. After that I was on my own and he would take no further responsibility. He would accept either money or jewels and didn't care which, so long as he was paid well. I thought I might regret letting him know that I had money so I offered him my mother-of-pearl earrings. He laughed and said, 'I would not risk my dog for those.'

  Turning to Boria, he whined that he would do it for a fair sum because he was an old man whose heart had grown as soft as his body, but he was no fool and the earrings were an insult.

  'You have better ornaments, Yoshiko,' Boria said bluntly. 'Let us get on.'

  'Take the earrings or nothing,' I said to Wu. 'They are more than generous for a ride in a cart.'

  'One risks a lot smuggling princesses,' he replied, as though it were a regular occurrence for him. 'I would be a fool to bargain with my life for such paltry baubles.'

  'Then don't,' I replied. 'I will find someone else to take me.'

  'Give him what he asks,' said Boria darkly. 'There is no going back now.'

  Sensing that Boria's anger was barely contained and that the plan might fall to bits if I pushed too far, I offered Wu the smallest of Jon's nuggets on the condition that he threw in a pipe of opium. I intended to do the cart part of the journey in the sort of sleep that would protect me from the ruts in the road and from the cold of the east wind. Wu accepted the nugget so quickly that I knew it was more than he had expected. He said that we would leave in an hour and went into the unoccupied room to set up the pipe for me. I turned to take my leave of Boria who had already reached the door of the shop.

  'Wish me luck, Boria,' I called.

  'If you ever come back, Yoshiko,' he said, 'I will kill you myself.'

  'Don't worry, Boria,' I replied. 'If I had to return to Suiyuan, I would let you.'

  After all my fearful imaginings, the journey out of Mongolia proved to be so much easier than the one that had brought me in. I slept my opium sleep in Wu's cart and dreamt that I saw Xue in the light of a huge fire. It was night, the sky was dark and starless, with a wind that fanned the flames and sent them higher than her ger. She was burning Tsgotbaatar's belongings, one by one. Each time she threw something into the fire she became thinner. As the flames grew and devoured every last remnant of Tsgotbaatar's life, Xue, as thin as a stick, her face as expressionless as ever, turned into a hawk and flew away. In the light of the fire I watched her dark wings merge with the black sky until she became invisible.

  I woke to Wu shaking me to tell me that the train was about to leave. 'If you want to be on it,' he said laughing, 'you must board immediately.'

  The sun was at that place in the sky that tells you it is well past noon. My mouth was dry from the opium and I felt dazed from my long sleep and dazzled by the brightness of the sun.

  'Why did you let me sleep so long?' I asked him.

  'I do not often get the chance to gaze on such a sleeping beauty,' he replied, with the faintest hint of sarcasm.

  'Are you boarding too?' I asked, grabbing my bag and jumping from the cart.

  'No,' he said. 'It would be an
honour to accompany you, but I take a different path to the one that is best for you.'

  I paid the Chinese guard for my ticket from a few yen I had put in my boot for such expenses. As I settled myself into an empty coach, the train pulled away and I saw Wu sitting on his cart waving to me. Under his huge hat his three-chinned face was creased into a smile that looked triumphant.

  Twenty minutes into my journey I was awake enough to notice that Xue's pendant and the two remaining gold nuggets were gone. There are some things that you are just not meant to keep. I wished Wu bad luck of them as I patted the reassuring bulk that lined my del, and fingered with relief the Su family crest etched into my mother's precious writing case.

  I closed my eyes and allowed myself to imagine a bath filled with steaming water and perfumed with my favourite chrysanthemum oil. I intended to make my way back to Tokyo under an assumed name, to make contact with Sorry and to make a life for myself that would be neither conventional nor boring. But for a few days I would enjoy the comparatively civilised amenities that China could offer. I needed time to make a better plan than the one I had in my head. I wanted new clothes and to eat delicately prepared food that contained neither mutton nor butter.

  It was hard to believe that I was free. I would remember 1926 not only as the year of my twentieth birthday but also as the year of my liberation.

  Life-prolonging Eggs and Goose Testicles

  The inn called The White Syringa in Port Arthur stood above the pier where the steamers departed for Shanghai. There was a syringa tree in the inn's small garden, not white as in its name, but suffused with the more usual lilac flowers. If I left the shutters of my room open I was overcome by its scent, a fragrance which, like that of ripe strawberries, was so heady as to be reminiscent of decay.

  The house, a single-storey building, had airy rooms, low beds and light that entered as though filtered through a prism. The wooden structure, a little damp from being so close to the sea, was half-painted white, as if someone had tired of the work and given up. To this day if I smell syringa, I am reminded of the feelings of excitement and regret that I experienced in that charming half­painted house, and the joy I took in being clean, perfumed and warm.