Free The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel by Maureen Lindley Page A

Mongolia, but neither did she wish to return to China. She had heard that nobody knew who ran China any more. The number of poor had increased and were dying on the streets from starvation.
    'I have lost touch with my family and have lived here in Japan too long to fill my stomach with old water, mistress,' she said.
    I would miss her terribly but I didn't insist she come with me. Instead I went to Natsuko to request she allow Sorry to remain in her home as a kitchen servant. That way she could at least live amongst familiar faces and have a roof over her head. Our years together had secured Sorry enough money to indulge herself in the small luxuries she enjoyed and the opium she loved above food. I wanted her to have an easy old age. Natsuko listened politely to my request, her pale face expressionless.
    'Tell me why I should do you this favour, Yoshiko?' she asked.
    'Why should you not, Natsuko?' I replied. 'It is such a little thing. An act of kindness from a benevolent lady to a humble servant.'
    She smiled coldly, relishing the silence while she kept me waiting for her answer.
    'It is as you say, Yoshiko, a small act of kindness. Yet that is something you have never shown me. However, I am not one to harbour grudges so I will keep your servant in my household. There is, though, a price for this insignificant favour.'
'Well then, Natsuko,' I said, 'name your price.'
    'Give me back my black pearl,' she said quietly.
    Without hesitation I untied the cord from around my neck and handed her the dark globe, still warm from my body. She didn't thank me but I heard the faintest sigh as she reached up and secured the pearl around her own neck. It did not flatter her as it had me. Her skin, soft with time, made a poor setting for such a fine gem. And so it was that I was able to buy for Sorry a sheltered old age. Years later in Shanghai I purchased a similar jewel of a better quality, but it lacked the potency of Natsuko's pearl and had no history to it.
    Spring came gloriously with glazed blue skies, a profusion of pink and white blossom in the orchard, and the starry white flower of the garlic scenting the air. Then nature, fickle as the gods, changed her mind and an unseasonal snow froze the blooms, turning them to the colour of tea before felling them to the ground.
    Natsuko complained that fruit would be scarce that summer and the household expenses sure to rise. She had a mean-spirited streak that I despised. Money is for the living after all. What use will it be to any of us in the afterlife? Our wits, I am sure, will be a better currency.
    Two weeks before my departure, Teshima requested to see me. With watery eyes he said that he would miss me. He called me by his dead daughter Satsuko's name and apologised for the great age that barred him from making the journey to my wedding. I thought that he must have entered his dotage, his mind seemed clouded and he had begun mixing up people and places. I knew that his daughter Satsuko had died of food poisoning in the year before Kawashima had been born, and seeking to hurt him I bluntly reminded him of this. He just looked at me quizzically and said, 'You must be a good girl, Satsuko, and show your husband honour by giving him many sons.'
    Even in senility, Teshima assumed the right to lecture me. Standing before me dressed in his loosely tied cotton coat and little else, he reminded me of how he had prepared me to be a 'good wife'. He reached towards me with a bony hand and began to fondle my breasts, closing his eyes and sighing. The gesture, so filled with ownership and expectation of my compliance, was hateful and filled me with anger. My own desire, so much more discerning now than in the days when Teshima had used me, remained unstirred at the sight of his thin veined hands and stained skin.
    'Don't speak to me of honour, old man,' I hissed at him. 'What honourable man would seduce his own granddaughter?'
    He turned from me and began feeding the little caged bird that lived