I cursed Muto for not sending it on to me in Manchuria. It would have saved me months of pain and perhaps altered the course of my life. But I had already let Jack go in my mind and I wasn't sure that I wanted him back in my life. Yet just the sight of his handwriting made my heart race. Trembling even though the day was warm, I sat on my bed in the Pekin reading the letter over and over again. My body felt light, as though it were shedding the rust of years. I looked at the photograph of the girl in the blue dress and wondered if she still existed, if she had ever truly existed.
I wrote Jack a few brief lines explaining what had happened to his letter. I said that I loved him, that I had to stay in Peking for the duration of the posting and I asked him to write to me. His reply was quick but matter-of-fact, as though he too had reservations and did not wish to expose his hurt on paper. He wanted me to come to him and said that America would be the safest place for me. He was sure Japan would not be able to hold China, and that when it fell I would be in danger of falling with it. So there it was again: Japan was the essence of what divided us. I was torn, but as ever in my life I chose Japan. On the Pekin's thin notepaper I wrote him four words. 'You come to me.'
There was familiarity and comfort as well as pain in choosing Japan over Jack. I thought then that Japan would always come first with me, but I was wrong in that. I went to work with a heavy heart, but not entirely without hope that one day Jack might just turn up in Peking.
Colonel Sumida set me to work right away. He had contacts amongst the more prosperous Chinese in the city and knew an aristocratic second cousin of mine, Li Ching-yu, who was a Japanese sympathiser prepared to take me under his wing and introduce me to the right people. Li was a tall, good-looking man with soot-black hair and eyes as round as coins. He was the lightest-skinned Chinese I had ever met and I found the contrast between his dark hair and white skin quite shocking. Sumida told me that it was a pity Li had been born Chinese, because he was as loyal to the Japanese cause as any samurai. He could be totally relied upon to put Japan's interest above not only that of his business but also those of his friendships.
Li said that he was delighted to meet the famous daughter of Prince Su, a man whose reputation had lived on after his death. 'Your father, like mine,' he said, 'was a man of good instincts. He understood that Chinese nobles have more in common with their Japanese equals than with the peasant classes of their native lands. You and I were born with rare blood in our veins, Eastern Jewel, We must work together to ensure that our lines are not swept away by the envy of commoners.'
It didn't surprise me that Li held my father in such high esteem. Prince Su had always been admired by his peers as someone who lived up to the superior inheritance of his ancestors. In retrospect, even I, who as a child had been permanently angry with him, could applaud his strength of character, his recognition of Japanese intelligence and his disregard of what others thought. I believed that not only my father, but also Kawashima, would have accepted Li as one of his own. He would have warmed to Li's certainty, his sureness of his place in the world.
Li was married to Precious Pearl, a beautiful modern woman, who dressed in the western style and took her friends from amongst the most talented actors and artists in Peking. Preferring the pleasure of a man in his bed to that of a woman, Li had no concubines or children in his house. This state of affairs suited Pearl, as it allowed her the freedom to live the life she wanted, not only as a patron of the arts but also as the long-term mistress of Baron Matsuyama, a Japanese aristocrat and businessman living in Peking who was not only amongst Peking's richest citizens, but also its most influential.
Despite their unconventional marriage, Li and Pearl had a close friendship and an intimacy that felt very excluding. Their large house hosted luxurious parties, where interesting foreigners were to be found in the company of opera singers, artists, and visiting members of the Japanese Royal Family. Pearl told me that there were at least twenty princes connected to the Imperial Family who stayed as her guests on their visits to Peking. Sumida, a man of bohemian nature himself, was often to be seen at Li's parties. He had a wife and a geisha in Japan, but in Peking his charming returned emigree mistress, Madame Kim Yee, frequently accompanied him to social engagements.
Kim Yee owned two beauty shops in the city named Madame Kim's, one of which was in the Hotel de Pekin. She had become rich by exporting Chinese antiques to dealers in America, where she had lived for ten years before returning home to China. As well as her export business and the beauty shops, she also had an income from some well-timed investments she had made in America. She was still officially married to an American-born Chinese, but they had been separated long before she chose to return to China.
Kim was more than pretty, yet not quite beautiful. She usually dressed in western clothes, but occasionally she wore exquisite hand-embroidered cheongsams, her long hair twisted into a gleaming rope at the base of her neck, her eyes smoky with kohl. In this style she looked so delectably Chinese that General Tada would have found her irresistible. I approved of Sumida's taste in mistresses and as it turned out, I made a good friend of Kim. Her capacity for loyalty outshone any man's that I have ever known, and once she had accepted you as a friend it was unconditional and without judgement.
Kim had no children herself but told me that Sumida had three, two daughters who had married into respectable military families and a son who was a pilot in the army air force. He never spoke of his wife, but I expect that she was the usual loyal and obedient type who stayed at home and didn't question her man. I knew his kind well and was at ease in his company, for he could have been a template for the men that Kawashima had sent to my rooms. I worked well with Sumida and enjoyed Kim's friendship too much to court her Colonel. She was a possessive woman who, unlike most mistresses in China, was independent and protective of what she considered hers. In any case, I thought then that Jack might seek me out and I wanted him to find me without ties.
Sumida told me that I was Japan's most special of spies. 'You are that rare thing, a well-connected Chinese aristocrat with a Japanese heart,' he said. 'You were made to succeed in Peking.'
Regardless of how Sumida viewed it, it took me longer to feel at home in Peking than it had in Shanghai. I was a smaller fish in a bigger pond, and since knowing Jack, I had somehow acquired the desire to be liked, even loved, not an asset for a spy. It was months before I settled and reverted to type, which in the end we all do, for all that we may wish otherwise.
I told Kim about Jack, every detail. The way he made me feel, how in his company I seemed a better person and how he despised the Japanese. Strangely, she said that sometimes she despised them too and that she thought I should go to Jack. I had, she said, the sort of ambition that drove most Americans and I would do well there.
'Go to him, Yoshi,' she said. 'Who knows what will become of any of us in China?'
Although I denied it even to myself, I knew deep down that Jack would not come to me. His nature, like mine, would not allow him to be the one to bend to the other's will. I was a fool, I should have gone to him then when our countries were not yet at war, while that passageway of time was open to me.
But I stayed, and I stuck to the rules of the job so well that Tanaka would have been proud of me. I made the right contacts, listened to what they said, learnt to read the subtext of their words. I reported to Sumida everything I thought he should know. I used my influence for those I liked and I promoted the Japanese cause in every way possible. Peking society, snobbish and fawning under the Japanese, opened its doors and welcomed me in. Within two years I had become the filter through which the wealthy Chinese community made contact with their allpowerful Japanese occupiers.
My social life was good. I never wanted for a party or a dinner to go to, although often my preference was to wander the streets finding my own entertainment. I was not as well known amongst the populace as I had been in Shanghai, yet still Li advised me against my unaccompanied outings, on the grounds that it was f
oolish to take chances. I frequented the opera with Pearl, went to the cinema with Kim, and as always found myself drawn not only to the establishment figures of the community, but also the more interesting of those who lived the demi-monde life in the city.
Amongst my contacts was a man called Jin, who made his livelihood from selling guns to gangsters and to those Chinese families who recognised that they were living in changeable times. Jin introduced me to his group of bodyguards, an ill-assorted bunch drawn mostly from the peasant class and from the armies of the old Chinese warlords. Some relied solely on their strength and menacing appearance, but there were those who studied the martial arts and took a pride in their profession. Jin was always shadowed by one of the latter kind and advised me that I should be protected in a similar fashion. Although I didn't feel the same hostility that I had done in Shanghai, Jin's voice, added to that of Li's, decided me. Petty street crime was rife and no one was immune from the robberies and even the murders that were regular occurrences in Peking. In any case, Sumida himself had also suggested protection and had offered to increase my allowance to cover the expense.
With my usual excess, I chose a pair of twin brothers born in the Year of the Monkey. They were secretive by nature, short in stature, but with muscular bodies and powerful hands. The older of the two by eight minutes had taken the professional name of Faithful; the younger twin was simply called Chou.
After I hired them I went to drink tea with them in their house on the riverfront at the poorer end of the waterway. It was little better than a shack and so cluttered with objects that there was hardly room for its occupants. Every available surface of its one dusty room housed a muddle of delicate china ornaments that would not have looked out of place in an English drawing room. A collection of lace fans hung on the walls, so covered in dust that they all looked the same colour. Throws of mouldy velvet covered the low seating, while the floor was carpeted with grime and the stains of past floods. For good luck, the brothers kept an ugly fire-bellied toad in a glass tank on the sideboard. The wart-covered creature croaked before rainstorms and consumed the ever-present mosquitoes, which were one of the hazards of living on the riverbank.
Faithful and Chou lived cheaply off muddy fish congee, the smell of which impregnated the walls and furniture of the hovel with a stale, watery fragrance. The brothers had never known their father, and their mother had died before their fifteenth year from the strain that chronic malaria had put on her frail body. I suspect that it was more from inertia than respect for her memory that her sons had preserved the house exactly as she had left it.
Their previous employer, a brothel keeper, had retired to his home village after making his fortune, leaving them without a provider. Not everyone wanted to take on the expense of the two, but they assured me that I would not regret my decision to do so, as they were loyal and strong and would never let me down. I could tell they thought that protecting a princess would enhance their reputation.
Jin advised me to always pay them on time and to give them a regular bonus. That way, he said, they would be encouraged to look on me as a good employer. I did what he suggested and was overly generous in my payment to them. The twins accompanied me everywhere and I slept easier on my visits to the opium dens of Peking, dreaming my sugared dreams, knowing I would only have to open my eyes to find them nearby. For all the time that Faithful and Chou guarded me, Kim, who neither liked nor trusted them, never relented in her view that they were bad news. It worried me a little, because her instincts in such matters were good, but I thought that where the brothers were concerned she was wrong. Although they spoke little, they seemed content in their work, and apart from occasional visits to their home by the river they were hardly ever out of my presence.
I cannot say that I was as happy as I had been in the good times in Shanghai, but life was interesting enough and I had my successes. I was made president of the China Gold Mining Company as well as of the Association of Manchurians in Peking. They were prestigious roles, of great use to Japan, and my future seemed secure.
In 1941, the year that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, I completely abandoned the idea that I would see Jack again. Our countries were at war with each other. He could not come to me and I could not go to him. I no longer had the hope that I might catch sight of him, see him turning a corner or getting out of a car. Love, like everything else, grows old and we adapt.
I was in touch with Tanaka, who had been recalled in disgrace to Mukden by Doihara for failing in his battles to secure Mongolia for Japan. He had lost face by not sharing the hardship of his regiment of Mongolian horsemen, whom he had left to retreat on their own to the Japanese territory in the east, on the borders of Manchukuo. I could not bear his disgrace and I wrote to him telling him of my disappointment. My intention in writing was to spur him on, to encourage him to fight to restore himself in Japan's eyes, but I couldn't disguise my anger enough. He had always taken my criticisms hard and he replied promptly, reminding me that it was he who had opened his world up to me and that lowed my success to him. I let him have the last word on the subject, but I felt as though he had betrayed my faith in him.
My posting in Peking was going well. Sumida was more than pleased with my work which he often said was of great value to Japan. But my depressions were increasing and I relied on opium more and more. I pushed the fears of ageing and loneliness I had suffered since the loss of Jack to the back of my mind and dulled myself with alcohol and the sweetness of the precious poppy. I carried on as though I was still in love with life. I took the occasional lover, but without much enthusiasm. There were no lovers capable of ridding me of the awful emptiness I felt.
As in the past, I found that my allowance from the Special Service Organ was too small to support my lifestyle. Even though the China Gold Mining Company allowed me generous expenses, I was spending well above my income. So I set about getting my share of the huge amounts of money that circulated as bribes and indulgences in the capital. I let it be known that for a price I would intercede with my Japanese contacts to save the lives of those accused of collaboration or sabotage. More money than I could ever have anticipated came flowing in. A father will pay a high price to redeem a beloved son. A wife, if she loves her husband, will release his fortune to come to his aid. Those families, with their special needs, became my bankers, their money given willingly, for without me their causes were hopeless. To be fair to myself, I fulfilled for those families all that I promised and everyone did well out of it. Loved ones were returned to their homes and took care not to offend the Japanese again. Those merchants with hidden gold handed it over and were imprisoned, rather than given the more usual death sentence. Despite what some might think, I know that in their time of need those desperate people thought of me as their saviour.
The atmosphere at that time in Peking had become tenser than ever, mostly due to dissident Chinese challenging Japan's occupation in countless underhand ways. The citizens of Peking never knew from one day to the next who would end up in charge of their city, so they tried to please all sides. Those with money used it to gain favour and to protect themselves as much as they could. They paid their servants generously, hoping that, should China ever win back the capital, they would be loyal and keep their secrets. I would have been considered just another business expense, a sort of life insurance policy.
I gave generously to Pearl's charities, which were mostly for the support of artists and poets. I was always buying Kim expensive presents, and I ran up huge bills in Peking's nightclubs. My account at the Hotel de Pekin was enormous, as I often entertained there, giving banquets for visiting Japanese royalty and parties in private rooms for my less salubrious acquaintances. As I hurtled through those last years in Peking I spent on clothes and jewellery, gambling and opium, fortune-tellers and beauticians who promised to make me look younger than my years.
Without Jack to give me ballast or Tanaka to reassure me, it was hard to know what to plan for the future. I lived my life as though not
hing would ever change, while closing my mind to the knowledge that all things do eventually. I felt protected by the elite circle I moved in and did my part to sustain those connections. I saw Kim through two abortions, both of them more easily achieved than my own had been. I arranged for a lover of Li's, a handsome but mendacious young man, to disappear when he took to blackmailing Li with the threat of exposure of his sexual preferences. Most of Li's friends and family already knew where his desire lay, but in China it is not so much what you know but what you speak that counts. I helped Pearl through a difficult time when she fell in love with a young artist who courted her to his bed, before moving on and breaking her heart. So bereaved by her loss was she that she contemplated suicide. She had given up her lover Baron Matsuyama, and Li, although sympathetic, had no real idea of the pain she was in. She told me that without my support she would have had no one to turn to as her blood family lived in Nanking, and Li's mother would have taken pleasure in condemning her. I had made good and true friends of Li and Pearl, but it was Kim whom I loved and admired most. Her constancy and honesty were as sustaining to me as she said mine were to her.
It was only when Sumida's son died in a kamikaze attack on the American naval force in the Philippines that all of our lives suddenly seemed less secure. In the year that followed his death, Japan was pushed by the Chinese to discontinue operations in the interior of China. To my disgust, our troops were being withdrawn from Kwangsi province and sent home to reinforce defences there. To us Japanese who occupied Peking, ideas of failure were unthinkable and we put them from our minds. Not believing that we, the greatest warriors in the world, had suffered more than just a temporary setback, we danced the nights away in Peking, pretending that the rhythm of our lives was as constant as ever. But as though it knew better the city seemed to be holding its breath, waiting perhaps for the inevitable, while in subtle ways everyone around me seemed to be preparing for flight. The Chinese, secondclass citizens in their own capital, sensed change and became less subservient, less willing to work for Japanese families.