The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel Read Free Page B

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 but 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