The Ginger Tree (14 page)

In one of Marie’s Japan books there was a story that was quite horrible, but somehow fascinating. It was about a couple who were so poor that there was almost nothing for them to eat and when their baby
was born, rather than let it starve slowly, the father took the infant to a stream and drowned it. They continued so poor that starvation stayed a threat and the man drowned two more babies. Then things improved for the couple and the wife had her fourth child which they kept and it thrived, growing fat. Both parents doted on the son they had been able to keep, and one day the father was bouncing a ball for the baby when he was so overcome with love that he stopped and said out loud that the Gods had favoured them at last with this great gift of the infant. The child looked up and said clearly: ‘I’m glad you feel like that now, Father, for I tried to come to you and Mother three times before and you always drowned me.’ The father ran away, becoming quite mad.

Mama would think I am becoming quite mad, too, even to think about such things.

Western Hills
September 7th, 1904

Armand is just back from Peking where he has been for the last ten days. He brought the news that there has been a great Japanese victory over the Russians at a place called Liao-Yang and that as a result the Czar’s armies are in retreat on Moukden. There was no word of Richard at the British Legation and I have not had a letter for three weeks, but I am not worried because it seems that the Russian withdrawal north is quite orderly and, of course, Richard will be with headquarters and not near the actual fighting. There is apparently considerable excitement and some unrest in Peking as the result of the Japanese triumph, for the Empress Dowager would much rather have the Russians the dominant influence in Manchuria. She hates the Japanese and there are hotheads at court who would like to see China entering the war on the side of the Russians to drive the Japanese out and Armand believes that the old lady has been listening to them and is tempted. He also thinks that it would be unwise for us to return to Peking at the moment because it is known that the British and French favour the Japanese and there are signs of feeling against us because of this in the Imperial City. When we do go back, Jane and I, with
Amah, are to stay in the Legation Quarter with the de Chamonpierres until Richard returns, though this won’t be very convenient for Marie, who has all her packing to do before the end of the month. It was decided that we will stay on in the temple for another week or ten days, and Armand is going to stay with us. Marie told me afterwards that he has brought a rifle to have here, as well as others to supply some of the Legation people in other temples. I do not really mind all this for myself, because I can’t believe that anything will happen to us up in these hills, but I worry a little about Jane. With Richard away she is my complete responsibility.

Western Hills
September 11th, 1904

Nothing has happened, the sun shines, it is hot at midday but cooling down sharply by sunset. No more rumours or any news of the war have reached us, yet over everything there hangs this curious feeling of
something
about to happen that can only be bad. I don’t know whether Armand or Marie feel it too, they give no sign if they do, and everything seems perfectly normal. I forget about my feeling for hours and then suddenly there is that lead lump sitting in my stomach. It may be nerves. With her usual good cheer Edith told me to expect to be depressed for a long time after my baby was born, that it took her a year to really recover from the births of both her sons. I’m sure the doctor would say that this is nonsense and it is certainly nonsense for me. Admittedly I did have a bad time with Jane. As the British nurse at the Legation hospital was putting my baby in my arms for the first time she said: ‘Well, Mrs Collingsworth, I’m relieved, too, that she is here at last. It was beginning to look as though she didn’t want to come.’

I have thought of that often. Supposing it were just possible that Jane had decided too late she didn’t want to come to Richard and me? This is just a crazy idea from one of Marie’s books, yet I couldn’t have blamed the poor little thing if she had wanted to change her mind.

Western Hills
September 12th, 1904

I got up this morning before sunrise after a night of broken sleep, something that doesn’t happen to me often. I am rather ashamed that I don’t always wake when Jane cries, but this could be because I know Meng is there to look after everything. I suppose we are lucky to have these faithful amahs on duty practically all the time, but I sometimes wonder if it is good for the mother or the child?

I did my hair in what was almost the dark, putting on a skirt I have been wearing a lot up here, of flowered Japanese cotton in a pattern Mama would think far too gaudy for a lady. Because it was chill in the bedroom and likely to be chillier outside I added a grey Shetland cardigan which Mama sent me from Jenners on Princes Street last Christmas, this over a white blouse, the whole an outfit Marie would not have cared for very much since she believes that even casual clothes should remember elegance. I don’t think she really likes the country, though she pretends to; she is only at ease in a city. One of the things I like about this
half-camping
in a temple is that there are no mirrors about in which you can see how dreadful you are looking. I’m sure Marie misses mirrors, her house is hung with them, in the drawing-room one reflects another, and you turn to see at least fifty reproductions of yourself stretching away into the distance. This is all right if you are in looks and wearing the right dress, but not good for the spirits on off-days.

A temple is easy to get out of without making a noise, and just as easy for an intruder to enter, which was my thought as I went down three steps into the garden. We are really very isolated up in these hills, a long way even from the nearest village and certainly from any kind of help should it turn out that the area is not free yet of brigands or roving bands of
ex-Boxers
. In so far as I know, only two or three of the other temples are now occupied by Europeans, most back to the city again. I think another year I will suggest to Richard that we holiday in Wei-Hai-Wei under the British flag, the place certainly looked attractive from the ship. Perhaps responsibility for Jane is making me more nervous than I ought to be, but
I am getting a little jumpy about this place, marvellous as it has been to stay here with Armand and Marie.

It had rained during the night, not much, but enough to lay the dust, the paths firm. I haven’t walked very much since we came and don’t really know where all the tracks lead to, but I chose the one that climbed straight through the middle of a dense clump of enormous bamboos, and in that light it felt almost like going into a tunnel. When I came out on the other side, the path now much steeper, the sun was just rising over the saw-edged ridge of hills to the east, a sudden brightness quite dazzling. Birds, particularly one kind which Armand says is a Chinese species of finch, set up a terrific chattering, as though they had all slept in and were scolding each other. My way now climbed through masses of huge rhododendrons and above these a kind of oak tree which grows in the shelter of these glens. I had stopped, standing quite still, when there was a rustling and a long green snake came weaving out on to the path moving slowly, seeming unaware of me. It stopped too, as if for a warm up in the sunshine, but it wasn’t sudden heat that was making it sluggish: well down from the pointed head was a very large bump that could only be from a toad or perhaps one of the temple rats. The snake was digesting its breakfast, and would probably be doing that for a long time. One never really knows whether these creatures are poisonous, or I don’t, though I could see that this was far too big to be any type of adder. I’m not really frightened of snakes just because they are snakes, at the same time I was not going to challenge that one even though it had eaten, and I was about to turn back into the bamboo when I heard a sound underneath the bird noise, only audible because it was continuous, certainly a human voice in a kind of drone that didn’t even seem to take breaks for breathing. It reminded me of that endless whining from the Peking beggars, except that this was pitched much lower, a voice that in a singer would be classed baritone. The sound was coming from
somewhere
above, though I couldn’t really place direction through that thick growth all around. The reptile barring my path seemed disturbed by this sound, too, and with forked tongue probing out in front, a pointed green head parted grasses and then slowly towed a long body, distorted
by that swelling, out of sight, leaving me free to go on climbing if I wanted to.

I was beginning to be really curious about this incantation to the dawn. It might be one of the priests displaced from his temple now camping out in the woods until the foreign devils had gone back to the city and he could once again say his prayers under a roof. I moved carefully, kicking no stones, the drone becoming more prominent as that first rush of bird sound died down. The path levelled out, with an offshoot from it leading to another painted temple like ours, except much smaller and with what had once been its garden even more of a ruin. On a rocky outthrust, hidden from the path below and only just visible when I was a little way above him, sat the worshipper.

He was facing the sunrise, sideways to me, and completely unaware of anyone on the path, a man with the cropped head of a priest and in a white robe which is a colour you only expect to see for mourning in China. I recognised the Buddhist posture for prayer, the seated on lotus leaf position, legs tucked in tailor fashion, hands held palms together in front of his chest at about waist level, the drone of the chanting not broken by regular, low bows. There was something lying beside him on a straw mat which I couldn’t make out until I had gone a little higher. It was a crutch.

Suddenly I thought I knew what that crutch meant: a leper. He wore the white of death while putting up another hopeless petition that a new day might bring him some relief. Leprosy still produces a kind of panic in me in spite of all you hear about it being a very slow contagion. The most dreadful thing about the disease is that long-drawn-out destruction of the body while the mind remains intact. I had the panic thought that summer visitors to these temples might be coming to a secret leper colony and that it wasn’t priests who cleared out temporarily to provide holiday homes.

The man moved, the prayer pose suddenly abandoned. I watched quite frozen while he groped for the crutch with one hand, remembering then how some of these cripples from the disease can still move with astonishing speed. There is a horrible story about a leper beggar suddenly getting up and chasing a European woman, catching hold of her with his
good hand and laughing as he rubbed the crumbling stump of what had been his other hand against the bare flesh of her arm.

I had the sensation then you get in wild dreams, of wanting to run from a horror, but being unable to move, and while I stood there the man in white somehow managed to stand on one leg, propping himself up on the crutch while he bent over to roll up the straw mat. It seemed almost to be a drill, as though he had practised all the necessary movements, none wasted, and it was only when he had straightened, with the mat under one arm that I saw what he was wearing was a Japanese kimono. The sun caught a scar on one side of his head. It was Count Kurihama. I am sure he didn’t see me as he swung himself up towards the little temple. He never looked in my direction.

I have not told Marie or Armand that one of the heroes of the
Russo-Japanese
war is living just up the hill from us. I don’t really know why I am being secretive about this. It may be from a feeling that the man in the white robe would not wish to come to a picnic dinner-party given in his honour. Armand, coming back from one of his botanical expeditions, may well meet the Count, in which case his privacy will be ended, but I am not going to bring that about. I was back here lying on my camp bed by the time I heard Armand setting out for one of his early morning walks. The rats usually go silent as it becomes light, but this morning they went into a great flurry of activity, plus loud squeaking. Though they don’t seem to come down into the rooms I am always nervous about one of them getting at Jane under the tight mosquito netting stretched over her cot, and I got up again to have a look at her, quietly pushing open the sliding door.

Meng was asleep in a corner between two quilts but even through the mesh of the net I could see that Jane had her eyes open. She sometimes comes awake like this and instead of at once crying for her feed, just lies perfectly still looking up at the ceiling. It could have been the rats that wakened her, but if she had been frightened she would have cried. There was plenty of light, and Jane must have seen me bending over the cot, but I had the feeling she did not want to be picked up, was neither hungry nor in need of comfort. Sometimes, like this, Jane does not suggest the
helpless infant at all. Only a few days ago Marie said something that quite disturbed me: ‘You know, I have seen your baby lying laughing at her own jokes.’ Perhaps they are Collingsworth jokes. Jane is going to be as fair as Richard.

Western Hills
September 13th, 1904

All the time we have been here Marie and Armand have insisted on using English, at least in my presence, which means most of the day. They say this is practice for Washington. His accent is much less noticeable than hers, he seems to have trained himself to be able to think in English, too. With Marie you have to wait sometimes while she chooses the right word for the French one in her mind. Armand says that, next to the British, the French are the most arrogant people in the world about learning other languages. According to him, the real reason why Napoleon wanted to conquer us was that he was certain God speaks French and it was therefore maddening for him to know that across only twenty miles of channel were the British who had no doubts at all that the Almighty had always used English to communicate with man, even when He was dictating the tablets of the Law to Moses.