The Ginger Tree (20 page)

Tsukiji, Tokyo
Ocober 26th, 1905

The nights are beginning to have a real chill now, winter with its huddling over charcoal braziers not far off. I can’t see why one couldn’t have a coal
or wood stove in these houses. It could be mounted on a cement base and though not very pretty, what a comfort when Tokyo’s wet snow is coming down outside. I will mention this to Kentaro when he is in a better mood. He is odd just now, not coming sometimes for two days, once not for three, saying very little while with me, as though he was here to forget what was troubling him, probably a family matter. I have to keep
reminding
myself that he has another complete world in his other Tokyo house, and, with four children, no doubt many problems about which he would never speak to me. He has never mentioned his other family and I’m quite certain has never told his wife about Tomo. Of course she knows about me and the boy just as I know about her.

I wrote a longish letter to Mama, to which there will be no reply, of course. I have never been able to write to her at any length before since coming to Japan but suddenly she has become utterly remote. I
remember
that world in Edinburgh only through a kind of haze of what has happened since, so am released to talk to her on paper as though we were only quite friendly acquaintances instead of me being the daughter she has lost to total sin. I was reading over what I had written when suddenly the thought came … supposing Tomo should some day write to me like this, from the great and safe distance of strangeness? Tears came to my eyes, half for Mama, half for me. I hope I am not getting too emotional. Kentaro won’t like it if I show signs of this.

Tsukiji, Tokyo
Ocober 28th

In spite of the shrinking sun this garden is still warm in the early afternoon and I was out there today in my wicker chair reading translations of Japanese poems, these having been put into English by a professor of Literature at Tokyo University who comes from Oxford. It is his idea that all poetry must be made to rhyme and it seems to me he has made jingles out of the sentiments. Kentaro arrived suddenly as he often does and just took the book out of my hand, standing for minutes to turn over the pages. Then he handed the poems back and said one word:
‘
Kusai
.’ Fukuda uses that word every time I bring home cheese from a Ginza shop. The meaning is, it stinks.

I suggested he write me another poem, like the Western Hills one. He stared down: ‘You kept that, Mary?’ I said that of course I had and that if he didn’t like the idea of writing poetry in cold blood, then we could have a little competition between us, which is after all a favourite Japanese game. He finds it very difficult to refuse a direct challenge of any kind, so at once sat down cross-legged on the paving, accepting paper and pencil. However, inspiration came to me first. In the pool, half hidden by floating leaves, was one of Misao’s goldfish, poisoned as usual. I wrote, refusing to follow the Oxford professor into rhyme:

I handed the sheet to Kentaro and then watched the change come almost slowly into his face, the boyish look there again just before a great bellow of laughter. He threw himself back flat, his body shaking. We both laughed until we were practically weeping. Laughter between two is sometimes a closer act of love than any other.

Tsukiji, Tokyo
November 8th, 1905

Fukuda San stayed an extra week, which makes me think that her mother’s illness can’t have been so very serious. But she has now gone, dry-eyed when she bowed her farewells before going off in a ricksha with her bundles around her, but not looking at me either. We have parted forever without my knowing whether she even liked me a little. The only thing I am sure of is that she was devoted to Tomo. The replacement arrived two hours after Fukuda had disappeared, a much older woman, solemn and correct in a dark brown kimono and black
haori
. I could see that Misao disliked her at sight, and I at once had the feeling that with Okuma San in the kitchen the atmosphere in this little house is certain to change, and not for the better. However, it is only fair to give her a
reasonable trial before I complain. Kentaro says the lady ‘understands’ foreign cooking, whatever that may mean, and no doubt if I am served delicate soufflés somehow contrived on a charcoal brazier I will soon be regarding Okuma San as a treasure beyond price.

Some days before she went I asked Kentaro if I should tip Fukuda and he said it wasn’t necessary, she was well looked after. I then added that I would be tipping her out of money I had brought from Scotland and not from the cash inside his fish which was now safely in a bank earning interest, at which he suddenly grinned and said I could do what I liked. Kentaro is in no way mean about money. After Richard, I suppose I was expecting all men to be this, at least a little, but Kentaro seems to have a samurai’s disdain for pelf. It could, of course, be a rich man’s indifference to something he has never had to bother about.

I gave Fukuda twenty yen, which I’m sure is much more than she earned in a month. She was most reluctant to accept the money, almost as though she did not want to take anything from me, so finally I just left the envelope in the kitchen and went away. It was not returned to me.

I can never quite get accustomed to the way we can share a house and living patterns with someone for a long time so that, at least in physical terms, we think we know them well, and suddenly a door is shut or a gate closed and we never see them again, and soon never think of them either. Poor Yao of the unbalanced eyes who wept on our parting is rarely remembered by me and I’m sure he doesn’t now think of me either, yet he was a real support in time of trouble, offering kindness when I had no right to expect it anywhere. It seems such a waste that we lose people this way. Even Jane, my daughter, is now just a shape beyond a screen, like a performer in that drawing-room game we used to play of hanging up a sheet to make shadow pictures on it. I sometimes wonder if under the disguises I wear to make myself bearable to me I am really hard and selfish, pursuing what I want and brushing aside anything that is likely to hinder me in achieving this. I have pretended that what happened at the temple was almost an accident, something beyond my control. But could it be that I wanted Kentaro from that moment at Marie’s when he said there was a dragon under Japan? A few nights ago before we became
sleepy I nearly asked him when he had first been interested in me. But I didn’t, I think because I was afraid of his answer – that he noticed me when I became available. He would not have put it quite like that, but near enough.

St Luke’s Hospital, Tsukiji, Tokyo
January 11th, 1906

Dear Sir Claude – The last thing I ever thought I would do was make a personal appeal to you. I will never forget your great kindness to me in Peking at the time I married Richard, but as a result of what I did later you may well regret that kindness. I have no right to ask for your help now, but I do it because I am quite desperate, with no one else to turn to.

I do not know what you will have heard about me and what I am supposed to have done, but whatever stories may be circulating I am not, as I am sure most people believe, out of my mind. It has been politely called a nervous collapse. I am in a private room here and everyone is most kind, but I am watched. If this letter reaches you it will be because I have been able to bribe a cleaner to post it. The nurses or doctors would probably take any letters I wrote, promising to post them, but not doing this. Perhaps I am wrong here, but I do not think so.

They say I tried to murder my maid. That is not true. I must beg you to bear with me while I explain the circumstances in which I did what I did. It may have been a temporary madness of a kind, but it was the result of having endured a week of misery so dreadful that it cannot really be understood by anyone who has not been through something like it. My son was taken from me. I have no doubts now that this was deliberate, and had been planned for some time, many little things point to that,
though in the days leading up to what happened I did not notice one of the warning signs. Now, almost three weeks later, I still do not know where my baby is, but what is so horrible is that I am quite sure that everyone with whom I have been in contact, the doctors, nurses, the police, all know a great deal more than I do about what has happened to my son but are under orders not to tell me. Is it any wonder, Sir Claude, that I have been behaving as though I was out of my mind?

I will tell you exactly what happened, and this is the truth whatever you may have heard from the police or read in the papers. On the day they took Tomo it was raining, cold, threatening snow. I had been expecting a visit from the man under whose protection I came to Tokyo. He had not been for three days, and I was sure he would come that afternoon. Misao, my maid, who was also the baby’s nurse, suggested that Tomo had not been out in the fresh air at all that day and she would take him on her back to the river before it became dark. I helped her tie my baby on her back and then cover him with the loose outer
haori
coat she wore, so that only his head was sticking out. I went with them to the gate and watched them go down the road towards the bridge over the canal. That was the last I saw of Tomo.

When they were not back in about an hour I went out to hunt for them, spending some time walking along the embankment of the Sumida river. Then, because Misao might have come home another way, I returned. My new cook was there but no Misao or the baby. I was sure there had been an accident. I sent Cook for the police. They came. It was the first of what seemed like a hundred visits. One man not in uniform spoke quite good English but seemed to be trying to trip me up in what I had to tell him, not really wanting to help. I asked them to get in touch with my protector but was told that he had left the day before to take up military duties in Korea. My only real friends in Tokyo are an elderly English lady whom I could not burden with my troubles, and a Japanese lady who has been in trouble with the police because of her views on some matters. She would have helped me and the next day I went to the hotel where she lives, but she had gone to Osaka and they had no address for her there. Or they said they did not. After that I went to the doctor
who has attended me since I came to Japan and is still looking after me here. He was kind and promised to help. All that help amounted to was pills to make me sleep. They did not make me sleep. The police said there was no trace of Misao, and there had been no accident involving a maid with a child on her back, no such patients at any of the hospitals.

Sir Claude, I lost my daughter through what I did. Now I have lost my son, too. You can imagine what my feelings were like during that first week which now seems like a hundred years ago, and at the same time just yesterday. I went out in the city on my searches, always with the hope that when I came home there would be Tomo brought back to me by some miracle. Instead there was only the empty house and the cook, a woman who has no kindness for me at all. I know now that she was carefully chosen to replace the girl who would have helped me, but who had been sent away. God knows, I have felt alone quite often since I came from Edinburgh to the Far East, but never like this, a woman walking the streets of a city in which she could not speak much of the language, looking for her son, going to the police time and time again to beg them to help. There was no help for me anywhere except from the English lady who wanted me to come and stay with her. I think now that probably she guessed what had happened to Tomo, though she has not admitted this on her visits to me here in this room where I am a prisoner. It was kind of her to offer to take me in, but I had to go back to the little house in case there was the miracle of Tomo’s return.

They have taken my son to give him to someone else to bring up. This was beginning to dawn on me by the end of that week and as I lay on my quilts in the dark. I may have slept sometimes during those earlier nights, but I do not think so. Quite often I was sick. I had not eaten much, though the cook kept bringing me food, as though this was her duty and she would do it. I will admit that I hated her. For the rest of my life I will see her cold face as she brought in a tray laden with ‘foreign’ cooking that was supposed to be what I wanted.

Sir Claude, I am very sorry to be making this such a long letter, but if you are to help me you must understand what
really
happened. The stories about what I did are not true. The facts are that I heard our outer
gate being opened about one in the morning, far too late for the cook to be coming back from the bathhouse. My quilts were downstairs and I got up, going to the kitchen door, opening it very quietly. The sliding door to the maid’s room was directly opposite and I was sure I heard whispering behind those screens. I crossed the kitchen very quietly and listened again. There was whispering, and I was quite sure I recognised
both
the voices. I banged back the door, Misao was kneeling on the matting in front of a wicker basket, packing her clothes. She had come back secretly to collect her things. She had never disappeared.

That was when I behaved like the mad woman they say I am. Is it any wonder? Misao tried to run for the door from the maid’s room to the front court, but I caught her and threw her down on the matting. I admit I was shouting. I called the name of my son and then said:
‘Doko? Doko? Doko?’
which as you know means ‘Where?’ I am quite certain that was all I said. I know I never said I would kill her. It is true I did bang her head up and down, but it was against the soft matting, not against a wooden pillar as the police say. She was
not
hurt in any way. How could she have been, for she broke from me and ran across the kitchen to the main part of the house. I
did
follow her, but I was
not
carrying a knife as they say I was. I did
not
pick up a knife as I ran through the kitchen. The one they found must have been snatched up by Misao. She had been meaning to use it to defend herself against me. I thought she had gone into the downstairs room where I had been lying but instead she went up, probably
remembering
that the shutters up there were much easier to open. I was still below when I heard these sliding back. Stupidly I went up the stairs, instead of going out into the garden. She jumped down. By the time I got to the gate the street was empty, but I ran along it. From a corner I saw a ricksha turning another corner. She had come in that in order to carry away her things. I couldn’t run after it. I had to rest against a fence. By the time I got back to the house the cook had been to the police station which is quite near us, and there was a policeman waiting for me. Very soon the man who spoke English arrived and began questions again. Some of my answers may have sounded wild. I was under guard all night and then in the morning I was brought here. All this is the
truth
.

Sir Claude, I am not sure whether or not, after coming to Japan the way I did, I am still a British subject, though I think I must be. I have, or did have in the house – the police may have taken it - a British passport in my maiden name of Mackenzie which I did not return when I married Richard and was entered on his passport as his wife. If that entitles me to ask for your assistance then all I want from you is to find out what has happened to Tomo. I do not ask for the Embassy to try to get him back for me, which I realise would be difficult, seeing Tomo’s father is a Japanese and my baby was born here. But it will be some easing of my mind just to know where he is and how he is being looked after. Not knowing is a nightmare from which I feel I will never wake. Surely, as Ambassador, there is something the Japanese authorities would tell you if you asked them? I beg that you will do this.

Yours very sincerely,

Mary Mackenzie

St Luke’s Hospital, Tsukiji, Tokyo
January 17th, 1906

They have brought me the notebook and the fountain pen I asked for, perhaps because they are curious to see what a mad woman will write in it. I hope they enjoy reading me talking to myself on paper because there is no one else I can talk to.

Alicia came yesterday. In a way I have been keeping her outside what has happened, in control enough to do that, and for her own sake as well as mine. She may be a High Anglican but a large part of her has become completely Japanese, and it is with that part of herself that she is looking at me now, thinking that to see someone in my position is very sad indeed, but also that what has happened may be for the best in the end. If I accused her of thinking that Tomo will be happiest in the care of those to whom he has been given she would be shocked, the English part of her coming into play again. But the Japanese part would not be shocked. There is nothing strange in this. In a very short time I have found myself picking up some Japanese ways of thinking and doing things, and Alicia
has been here for thirty years, with only three visits to England in that time, none of which she really enjoyed. So she is mostly High Anglican Japanese, which can’t be so very far from being High Shinto Japanese, the same worship of ancestors.

I must be better to be able to write like this. In a way I am if I don’t think of Tomo as anything more than my lost baby, and stop there. But if I go further and remember him lying on a quilt exercising his legs, then all the little bricks of carefully built up pretended strength crumble into nothing and I am back in the pain again, hopeless and helpless.

There has been no answer to my letter to Sir Claude. Perhaps it didn’t get there. Alicia says that Aiko is still in Osaka, or somewhere away from Tokyo. Though we didn’t either of us say it, what we both think is that she could well be occupying a cell in a southern jail, more of a prisoner than I am. Dr Ikeda spent longer with me this morning than usual, as though there was something on his mind he wanted to talk about but couldn’t because he has never found talk easy either in English or his own language. Whatever part he has played recently, either willingly or
because
he had no choice, I believe that now he wishes me well, and more than that perhaps. There is a kind of bond between a woman and the doctor who has delivered her child, in my case Tomo’s life so literally in his hands because I could do nothing.

It may be that he wants to explain why I am being kept in this hospital when it is obvious there is no physical reason for it. In that case he needn’t bother, because I can find the answer for myself. I am here on orders from on high, not just the Chief of Police in Tokyo either, well above that. I know now that Kentaro is a member of one of the old aristocratic families who still have the power to do almost what they like without being challenged. He would not want his mistress to be taken into custody on a charge of attempted murder. Anyway, it is a charge that would be difficult to prove in any honest court, Misao’s word against mine. The cook had run out of the house to get the police and was not a witness of anything except my banging Misao’s head on the matting. I am sure that woman would lie against me quite happily, but I am quite convinced now that the Kurihamas want to avoid all publicity on this
matter, just in case the real reason for what happened came out, as it would, because I would see that it did. Kentaro knows me well enough to guess how I would react in court. So I am being ‘protected’ in hospital, free to sit in a chair by the window looking at what passes for a garden in the courtyard. In a country of beautiful gardens this is a very dreary one. When the weather permits patients sometimes walk in it for a little, tottering around like ailing prisoners in an exercise yard.

St Luke’s Hospital, Tokyo
January 23rd, 1906

Aiko was not in an Osaka jail, though certainly risking arrest again in speaking to such women’s organisations as exist in cities like Himeji and Hiroshima of their rights under the Emperor Meiji’s Constitution. It appears that they have some, though the men have been at great pains to make sure that the women don’t hear about this. As an angel of
enlightenment
Aiko is both dangerous and in danger, as well she knows.

I admire her. She was born to the kind of life I would just have accepted and enjoyed, but acceptance is not in her nature. Only a hundred women in Japan like Aiko could threaten a man’s world, and the men know it. There were detectives wherever she went in the south, in plain clothes, but not bothering to hide themselves from her, the same faces at the back of halls, watching and listening. She is sure they have orders to arrest her if she ever so much as mentions the name of Emperor Meiji again, so has to contrive her lectures on the constitution – which he is supposed to have given his people – with no reference to him at all. Having now had some experience of the Japanese police, I really am frightened for her.