The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel Read Free

greeting.
    The other passengers spoke of a war just begun in the land of these lofty aliens and I tried without success to picture those pale giants in battle. They were always stumbling about as though their heads were too far from their feet so it was difficult to imagine them wielding swords.
    All three of my servants suffered terribly from seasickness and spent the journey being sick or lying on the deck moaning. I was ashamed of them, especially as, like myself, the foreigners were fine sailors.
    We were tired and dusty by the time we arrived at the house of Kawashima, only to be greeted by the colour of death. White lanterns hung on either side of the tall gates and fluttered from the trees in the gardens that surrounded the house. A watchman, shaking his head as though he were praying for the dead, ushered us along a narrow footpath that was edged with swept shingle. The house, a large traditional timber-built residence, was circled by a stone wall with a western-style wing built on at one end where the garden sloped to a carp-filled pool. Half hidden by winter plum trees a wooden shrine sat on one side of a deep pond and was reflected in the water.
    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