The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel

  I followed a servant into the dim interior of the house, leaving my own to follow with my possessions. The scent of camellias hung thick in the air, their ghostly blooms staring from vases arranged like sentries along the length of the hall. Because their flowers drop so abruptly they are thought to symbolise death, yet how beautiful they are in the brief time they have to prosper.

  Kawashima's mother had died the previous week, and arriving as I had at a time of death was a bad omen for me. So it was that from the moment I set foot in the house the women thought me unlucky and therefore did not seek my company.

  The servant beckoned us on. We passed a long room half screened with white muslin drapes where a small elderly woman, tightly wrapped in a grey kimono, was bent over a table, fat with delicious-looking food. Softly outlined against the pale drapes she appeared like a ghost at the banquet but was probably a cook or a servant of some kind. Hunger rumbled in my belly and I remembered the last proper meal I had eaten in my father's home, fish cooked with ginger, little honey dumplings and ground almond paste wrapped in rice paper as thin as tissue. I darted to the end of the table and grabbed a rice ball that was dripping in a glossy, plum oil. The old woman hissed with shock at my savage manners. My Chinese servant woman, whom I had named Sorry, because of her habit of constantly apologising, mumbled an appropriate excuse for my forgotten manners. She pulled me from the room, wiping my hands on the hem of her skirt.

  The two male servants who had accompanied us from China were to return to my father's house. Sorry was to remain with me in Japan as my personal servant. I was glad of it as I had come to care for her over the course of the journey, just as she had decided to love me as best she could, and to be loyal.

  We were shown to small quarters on the north side of the house that overlooked a narrow strip of garden. Although it was summer there were no flowers, no roses or peonies, nothing to sweeten the air or stir the senses. It was a garden of stones, flat and uninteresting. Compared to the spaciousness of my mother's quarters the small rooms felt like cells. Even Japanese as rich as Kawashima did not live in quite the same splendour as their high-ranking counterparts in China. Sorry went in search of food for us and to take her leave of our servants, who would enjoy a much-needed sleep before returning to Peking.

  Left alone in the three almost empty little rooms, I felt sad and frightened. Compared to the noisy hallways of my family home the house was silent and full of melancholy. I ached for my mother and I wondered what would become of me without her. I missed my brothers and sisters and wondered who would there be in this house that I could play and fight with, as I had done with them. I was a person without family, banished in shame from my home. It dawned on me then for the first time, but by no means the last, that perhaps I was truly an unlovable person. I think that unconsciously I chose to live up to that expectation of my nature rather than to change it. That was a mistake, as so many things have been in my life.

  I was deep in my musings when one of the household servants, a woman as skinny as a stick, came to tell me that the Kawashima family could not greet me, as they were visiting the shrine of their ancestors to pay their respects and to seek consolation. They were to return in a day or two. The stick woman gave me a cricket in a brass box pierced with tiny breathing holes. She said its chatter would keep me company. When she left I opened the box and let the cricket out. It hopped dismally to the corner of the room and sat in the dust looking as forlorn as I felt.

  As in most of the difficult times in my life, all I could think of was sleep, so I curled up on the lowest bed with my back to the wall and slept. I had no idea how much time had passed when I was woken by Sorry bearing a bowl of egg noodles and some uncooked white fish. I knew that she had been gone a long time because the light had changed, but the news she returned with was worth her long absence. My Japanese family, she told me, comprised Kawashima Naniwa who was to be my new stepfather, his father Kawashima Teshima who was in his seventieth year and in deep mourning for his recently dead wife, my stepmother Natsuko and her unmarried half-crippled sister Shimako. Kawashima and Natsuko had two sons, Hideo and Nobu, and six daughters, one of whom had an unlucky birthmark marring her face. All the Kawashima offspring had the strawberry birthmark somewhere on their body. It was usually a small stain on the foot or hand; only their daughter Itani was disfigured by it.

  To my amazement, Sorry told me that there were no concubines in the house. The cook, who was a great gossip, had confided in her that Kawashima took his pleasures away from home in the teahouses and brothels that flourished in the streets of Tokyo. He often went away for long periods of time to Osaka, the great merchant city, where he was said to keep a geisha in enviable luxury. This geisha was rumoured to have a hundred kimonos and many jewels which Kawashima lavished on her because of her various and delightful ways of welcoming his snake into her pit. Sorry laughed with pleasure at the vulgarity of this and apologised to me for the language she used. She said that Kawashima did not love his wife and this was Natsuko's tragedy as well as the fact that she had given him more daughters than sons, which displeased him greatly. Although Kawashima did not desire his wife he did have great respect for her, for she was the daughter of a most influential and refined family. It was whispered in the house that Natsuko's grief for her mother-in-law was false, a show to impress her husband. Kawashima's mother had been a difficult woman to please and had treated Natsuko badly, implying that her daughter-in-law had fooled her son into believing that her womb would be rich in sons.

  I thought that Sorry had done well to gather so much information in so short a time. I loved gossip, it made me feel at home and I always felt safer when I knew what was going on around me. I told her that she would make a good spy. She laughed and said that we had come to a household where the servants were indiscreet and we would be wise to keep our secrets to ourselves. I knew that I would not find being secretive too hard as I had been brought up with concubines and their competitive daughters and thus had an untrusting nature.

  It was to be six weeks before I met Kawashima himself. His wife and her sister Shimako welcomed me formally and without warmth on my fourth day in their home. Their coldness filled me with gloom and I was glad I had Sorry to discuss them with. I told her that I did not like them at all and she said even though it would be difficult, I must try to please them, if only to make my own life easier. She advised me to pretend that my mind was as young as my body, for they would find my knowledge of life vulgar in a girl of my years.

  But whatever I said or did I would not gain the affection of my stepmother Natsuko or her sister Shimako. They were set against me from the start and the best I could hope for from them was indifference. They were an odd pair, quite different in appearance but devoted to each other. Natsuko's great beauty, her long dark eyes, high cheekbones and rare smile, belied her nature. Shimako was plain with a broad face and a bent body and seemed made by the gods to mop up misery. It must have been hard for her to live in the shadow of her beautiful sibling and her charmed brother-in-law Kawashima.

  The only person I could truly rely on was Sorry. She was always on my side even though there were times when I tested her patience to breaking point. Her loyalty to me never wavered and without her my early life in Japan would have been very bleak.

  After a few months I settled into the rhythm of the house, my homesickness faded as I grew out of my shoes and out of my misery. I discovered in that long house with its monochrome garden a place for myself that was more interesting and complex than the one I had occupied in my Chinese home. It took me some time to get used to a house without concubines. At first I had thought it novel, but I soon realised that I missed the chatter and the constant dramas that a house confining thirty women is bound to host. But my life was freer and more independent in my new home as no one other than Sorry seemed to be in charge of my welfare, and I grew more autocratic and more determined to have my way than ever before. Sometimes I found myself in the company of the women of the house b
ut I never felt myself to be one of them. I had a secret desire for Natsuko to favour me but I could not bring myself to court her, and so instead I became the adversary she had from our first meeting taken me to be. While Shimako mostly ignored me, Natsuko broke my heart with her sarcasm and coldness. The Kawashima women never relented in their dislike of me and my own contempt for them was confirmed as I grew up an outcast amongst them. It was not in my character to be a victim and so I set out to shock them by being their opposite in both morals and manners.

  As the years passed I wove myself into the fabric of the Kawashima family life while never losing sight of the fact that my thread was of a different colour to theirs. Japanese society was unlike the one I had known in China. It was not my heritage but I liked it better, especially as I had no predetermined place in it.

  With Sorry more in my charge than me in hers, I had the freedom to expand boundaries and to take my pleasures in a variety of ways that would never previously have been allowed me. As neither true daughter nor guest, I may have thought of myself as special, but in hindsight I think that I was simply abandoned. I was the daughter of a prince, high born and equal in status to my adoptive family, but I know now that to Kawashima I was just a novelty with a good dowry.

  Unlike China, Japan was coming to terms with the modern world, but in the Kawashima household old traditions still held sway. Had Kawashima's daughters been born just a few years later, they would have been educated at a ladies' seminary, shopped in department stores and enjoyed a life outside the home. As it was, they were on the cusp of that time and spent their days perfecting the tea ceremony and enduring hours of calligraphy lessons.

  No one questioned that I chose not to join the women in their delicate pursuits. Sometimes though, when I heard their soft laughter or saw Natsuko's head close to one of her daughters as she explained a stitch, I felt a pain as real as toothache.

  Like my father Prince Su, Kawashima was not much interested in me, that is, until my body ripened and my face became the sort that excited men. Unlike my father, though, he allowed me an education. I shared lessons with his sons and, like the women warriors of Japanese legend, I was taught judo and fencing. I picked up languages early and had adjusted to Japanese. Along with Hideo and Nobu I was instructed in the English language and quite soon I overtook them in my knowledge of it. I never questioned why Kawashima's blood daughters were not offered my opportunities, I just believed I was special and not cut out for their predetermined lives.

  On the rare occasions that I came to Kawashima's attention he seemed mildly amused by my boyishness. He knew the women did not like me and that their shunning of my company had turned me to his sons for companionship. He was entertained by my swaggering and indulged my extreme naughtiness with his indifference to it. In common with many of the men of his generation, Kawashima was half in love with western culture and I convinced myself that he had chosen me over his daughters as the one to take advantage of the liberation of the new century.

  Firmly rooted in the traditional camp, Natsuko was outraged by me, my very existence in her world unsettled her. I knew that she resented her husband's interest in me and was on the lookout for a good enough reason to have me sent back to China. Although her sister Shimako said little to my face and was always polite, I knew that she encouraged Natsuko's animosity. Bitter with grief for her crippled body which made her unmarriageable, Shimako loved intrigue and constantly whispered in her sister's ear, exaggerating everything and keeping the household in a state of tension. Secret enemies are always the most dangerous and despite her slyness, I knew Shimako to be mine.

  I liked the old man Teshima well enough and often ate with him in his rooms, but over time his insistent fondling became boring and I began to seek excuses to avoid his company. I had a friendship of sorts with Natsuko's third daughter Ichiyo, who was eight months older than me. Ichiyo spied for me, partly for the pleasure of sharing secrets but mostly because she was afraid of me.

  I liked to win and having my father's superior traits I naturally and enthusiastically adopted the Japanese code of conquest and courage into my own philosophy of life. This, Natsuko said, was so unfeminine that men would be repulsed by it.

  By the age of twelve I was wandering the house and grounds at will and had found my way out into the winding back streets of the city. The life of Tokyo spilled into those streets, thrilling me with its smells and colours, its endless noise and its parade of people. I saw geishas being carried to their assignations in rickshaws, businessmen making their way to their places of work, busy tea houses run by the mama-sans in their crude-coloured kimonos and the women of pleasure calling to each other from dark doorways and painted balconies. Once I saw a man in an alleyway force a girl to her knees before him. I was close enough to smell his sweat and desire and her fear, and to experience a wrench in my stomach so powerful that I found it hard to breathe. A few days later I tried to find the alleyway again but it had been reduced to dust and rubble. There were building sites everywhere as modern Tokyo emerged from the ancient city. New hotels and offices sprang up almost overnight amongst the little traditional shops and wooden temples, and whole streets were demolished in a single day.

  Once, during a bitterly cold winter, I discovered the beggar who stood daily outside our gate frozen to the iron pillar he had watched over since his youth. His body was bent with his right hand still cupped in the begging position. The air was so cold that winter that carp froze in the water and in the dawn hours birds dropped frozen from the sky. Sorry worried that my blood would turn to crystals and wrapped me up in so many layers that I could hardly walk. At night she put hot stones in the bed and brought me only cooked food. Unlike our gate-beggar we survived that bitter season, but ever since I have dreaded being cold; it is too close to death for my liking.

  In the company of Kawashima's sons Hideo and Nobu and their newly found college friends, I would sneak to the cellar beneath the western wing where the sake was kept. We would make a fire and heat the sake in an iron pot, dropping crushed ginger into it as it came to the boil. I loved the way it would fizz and heat me up in a thrilling way moments after I had downed a glass. I had first heard of the boys' 'Secret Sake Club' through Ichiyo who had discovered it while spying in my service. At first Hideo was furious that I had found out their secret, but, suspecting that I would make a dangerous enemy, he allowed me to join, as a junior member. The price of my entrance to this male ritual was to allow the boys to touch my breasts and to rub their hands between my legs. Nobu said that as an initiation the boys had cut their fingers and mingled their blood, but he thought that too harsh a rite for a girl. The first time Hideo approached me he clumsily unbuttoned my jacket and put his sweaty hands on my breasts. I knew that he was excited by the way his body trembled but he wouldn't look me in the eye and so I could not share the moment with him. One of the students, a fine-looking boy with a thin nose, said that he could have the servant girls from his father's household any time he wanted and that he had no interest in me. He was the only one to decline the childish game of feeling the Chinese princess.

  The initiation was a small price to pay as I enjoyed it as much as they did. I especially liked being half naked while they were buttoned to the neck in their student uniforms. It may be that it was in the dim cellar, full of warm sake and the scent of masculine sweat, that I developed my passion for dressing as a male myself and for men in uniform. I hugely enjoyed what I considered was my private fun, but nothing much remains secret in a household where servants go too quietly about their business and delight in trading gossip. Ichiyo told me that her mother and her aunt, hearing of my exploits, thought me wild and uncouth. I didn't care as I felt only scorn for their diluted experience of life. It seemed to me that they were trapped in the past, conditioned like geishas to live on their knees, rarely grasping the truth, which is that we are alive only in the dangerous moments.

  I secretly longed for Natsuko's affection but I could not bring myself to behave in a way
that might have secured it. I never pardoned my own mother for being so powerless and I didn't dare trust another to take her place. Yet Natsuko's rejection of me affected me powerfully and led me through my life to value, even above passion, the true friendship of women.

  If the women in my life at that time were unsatisfactory, I had no trouble with Japanese men. In their arrogance and unquestioning use of power I admired them even above their Chinese brothers. I thought of Kawashima as a great man who knew how to live his life and make the most of his opportunities. I believed that I would have made a better son for him than either Hideo or Nobu.

  That freezing winter that our old gate-beggar died I was officially adopted by Kawashima. I became a Japanese citizen and was renamed Kawashima Yoshiko. Japan was to be my new country and I felt overwhelmed with happiness. If a mother's acceptance was no longer possible for me, at least I could belong here in Japan. Sorry celebrated with me, even though she was not sure she approved of my new nationality. She continued to call me Eastern Jewel when addressing me formally, but Little Mistress was her usual and more affectionate choice of name. We ate a celebratory dinner and lit a firework that rocketed to the stars. Memories of my Chinese family, strong at first, began to recede as my new life took precedence. Occasionally Sorry would cook me a Chinese dish to remind me of my heritage. She would oversee everything in the kitchen to make sure I had the finest rice and noodles and the choicest fish and meats. Despite her fussiness she was well liked by the other servants for, as she often said, she was a humble person with a most interesting mistress.