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

its days in the shadowy corner of his room.
    'Satsuko is a hawk come to eat you,' he sang, poking his fingers into the cage. The songbird hopped soundlessly about its perch, its tiny eyes dulled in resignation to its captivity. As I left the room the two young peasant girls Teshima had owned since the day of their birth entered carrying bowls of soup and rice. One began spooning soup into his mouth while the other mopped his chin with a length of damask. I thought that he had already forgotten our conversation, but in a moment of lucidity he called out my Chinese name.
    'Eastern Jewel,' he said contemptuously, 'we are not of the same blood, you foolish girl. It's blood that counts, after all.'
    It occurred to me then that even though I hated the idea of living in Mongolia, and intended in one way or another to escape it, I would not be sorry to leave this house that ate the lives of women. I felt a creeping sympathy for Natsuko who, suffering loneliness from the neglect of her family, had retreated sadly to her shady rooms. I knew that the men would continue to prosper. Teshima in his old age would have his every wish fulfilled by the serving girls whose lives were his. Kawashima and his sons Hideo and Nobu would continue their lordly lives as rich powerbrokers. In those last days in his house I felt that I had little to thank Kawashima for, other than my Japanese nationality of which I was proud. I couldn't know then that years later, when it would mean life or death to me, he would deny me even that.
    With her daughters married, except for her birth-marked girl Itani, who Kawashima had set up in a junior branch of his house in Osaka where her brothers would stay on their trips to that city, Natsuko was bereft. Soon she would be left with only her spoilt daughter-in-law Taeko for company. Taeko was to marry Hideo in the summer when the white anemones would be in flower. It was said that Taeko, although beautiful, had a mean nature and rumoured that she beat her servants when they displeased her.
    I imagined that the ghost of poor Shimako would always accompany Natsuko in the shadows of the house, but a dead sister is poor company in difficult times. Ichiyo, herself now married to a wealthy industrialist twice her age, told me that Natsuko thought Hideo's wedding date too close to the festival of the dead to be a fortuitous one. I wished Natsuko many grandchildren to liven her days. I could not bring myself to be so pitiful as to hold a grudge against her for all her little acts of cruelty. After all, I had performed so many of my own. In any case, it is a waste of energy to harbour ill will against the unlucky. I was pleased to discover in myself an affection for Natsuko that defied all that had been between us. I was ready to leave, but I would miss her familiar cool smile and the ordered home that she ran with such dedication.
    On my last night in Kawashima's house I dreamt that I needed to relieve myself. Every pot or hole I approached was cracked or had a snake in it. Try as I might I could find no place that was suitable and I awoke exhausted. I lay in bed watching the sky lighten, thinking that I would never again view the dawn from the bed I had shared with Yamaga or hear the singing of the hall's wooden floor as Sorry brought me breakfast.
    For the first time since I had heard Kanjurjab's name I allowed myself to wonder what he might be like. He had sent me a garishly coloured portrait of himself. It showed him posed on a high-backed chair, dressed formally in dark-blue silk with a spiked fur hat on his big head. On a desk beside him sat a clock painted to forever read the mysterious hours of noon or midnight. The backdrop of the painting displayed sprays of gore-red anemones which appeared to be growing from his shoulders. I was not optimistic about our union. If his nature echoed his appearance it would make life too peaceful for my liking. I wondered what he expected of me, duty, beauty and humility, I