The Phoenix Tree. Jon Cleary
threatening and more presentable. Besides, he was not here on official business. ‘I’d have thought you’d be curious to know about your mother.’
‘She may not be my mother,’ said Natasha, more stubborn against the prospect than against him.
‘True. But I have seen her, Mrs Cairns – you haven’t. I assure you there is a distinct resemblance between the two of you. She is a very beautiful woman. So are you.’
‘Thank you.’ His intimacy told her how confident he was. But then the kempei were perhaps always confident? ‘No, I need time to think about it.’
‘Of course.’
Yuri brought in the drinks, prompted more by curiosity than a desire to please. She looked at Natasha for some hint of what was going on, but Natasha was too preoccupied with her own thoughts to take any notice of her maid’s curiosity. Yuri shuffled her feet for a moment, gave a loud sniff and went back into the house.
Nagata sipped his saké. ‘It would be better, Mrs Cairns, if you didn’t think about it too long. You could be very useful to me.’
‘How?’
‘If Madame Tolstoy is your mother – and I’m sure she is – if you could be reunited with her, there could be advantages for both of us. In return for any gossip you could pick up in your mother’s circle, I can arrange that you have a pass to go into Tokyo any time you wish. That would help, wouldn’t it? I mean if you want to buy a few things?’
Food had become very scarce in the past few months and the ration available in the village had been barely enough to ease Natasha’s and Yuri’s hunger. There was a general shortage of food throughout the country, but the alien internees had been the worst hit. Without the food they had managed to buy on the black market, Natasha and Yuri would have gone hungry more than half the time.
‘I can’t buy anything if I have no money, major.’ She was stating a fact, not asking him for money.
He misunderstood her; or pretended to. He took a silk handkerchief from his pocket and opened it to show a heavy gold bracelet. Natasha recognized it at once; it had been given to her by a Chinese admirer in Hong Kong. She had sold it three months ago for three hundred yen, less than a third of its value.
‘I’ll continue to hold this as – shall we say, as collateral? I could have you arrested, Mrs Cairns, for dealing on the black market. I know every piece you’ve sold and what you got for it.’
‘Everyone does it. I mean, buys on the black market.’
‘Not everyone, Mrs Cairns, only those with spare cash. A lot of people commit murder, but it’s still a crime. So is dealing on the black market, whether buying or selling. I don’t want to see you in jail – you would be no use to me there. But if you just make yourself useful …’
‘You want me to spy for you?’ She suddenly wanted to laugh at the irony of what she was saying, but managed to restrain herself. All at once she no longer felt in any danger, Major Nagata was no longer threatening her.
‘If you want to be melodramatic – yes.’ He carefully wrapped the gold bracelet back in the handkerchief and put it away in his pocket. ‘I’ll see that you should not go hungry. Food for gossip.’ He chuckled at his play on words and Natasha gave him the smile he expected. ‘We’ll meet once a week and you can tell me what you’ve heard. It should not be hard work for you. It may even be enjoyable, if your mother welcomes you. Life at General Imamaru’s level is very comfortable, I’m told.’
Natasha had begun to feel a certain excitement at the prospect of meeting her mother after all these years; but she could not feel any enjoyment. She hesitated, then took the plunge, into the past as well as into the future: ‘I’ll work for you, Major Nagata. But I’ll need money. I am penniless.’
Nagata smiled at her without smiling, then he took out his wallet and handed her a fifty-yen note. Years of corruption had taught him that his bank account had to have a debit as well as a credit side; he suffered the debit side because less went out than came in. He reached across and dropped the note into Natasha’s lap, a further gesture of intimacy that told her exactly where she stood; or sat. She was his servant.
‘We’ll agree on the terms after your first month’s work, Mrs Cairns. In the meantime that will be enough to be going on with. If your mother welcomes you to her bosom, I’m sure she will also welcome you to her table.’
He stood up, all at once became formal. He bowed, gave her a yellow smile, said goodbye. She escorted him but of the house and he went down the steps, walking with the light step of a man half his weight and one who had got what he had come for.
Yuri came out on the verandah. ‘I was listening. He is a dangerous man. You should not encourage him.’
‘It’s not a question of encouraging him. Did you also hear what he said about my mother?’
‘Yes.’ Yuri was tough-minded, as one should be who wants to be a surrogate aunt. She tightened the sash of her brown work-kimono, making the action look as if she were tightening a noose round someone’s neck. ‘I had better come with you when you go to meet her. You will need my advice.’
She was a proprietary servant. She would have made a good trade union official. She went back into the house, leaving Natasha to contemplate the darkening day and, possibly, an even more darkening future. The chrysanthemum bushes were like twisted balls of faggots. The maple tree beside the house was a many-armed crucifix. Out on the bay, on the leaden sea under the leaden sky, the fishing-boats, sails furled, looked like floating scarecrows in fields that no longer had crops. She felt utterly depressed, though not afraid.
She had never felt afraid of the future; living the life she had led, she had accepted there was only tomorrow to worry about. To think further, to next year, or the next ten, would have spoiled the present; even Keith’s unexpected death had brought no fear of what might lie ahead. She could be afraid, terribly so, but the cause and its effect had to be immediate. She wore dreams like armour.
‘Ah well,’ she sighed, and folded the fifty-yen note Nagata had given her and put it in her pocket. At least she would be well fed if and when she went to meet her mother. She practised the word, but could hardly get her tongue round it: ‘Mother … ?’
That night she made her monthly report to the US Signal Corps station in the Aleutians. She said she had nothing to report, but the station had a message for her. A man would soon be on his way to Japan and would contact her on arrival. His code name was Joshua. She took down the message, decoded it and sat wondering at how, on this otherwise ordinary day, the world was suddenly contracting.
2
‘One should never waste one’s time trying to impress those lower than oneself,’ said Professor Kambe. ‘One should only try to impress one’s peers or above. That, as the commercial men say, is where the dividends are.’
Natasha had heard this sort of mock heresy at parties at the university, but she had not expected to hear it in a house as grand as General Imamaru’s. The small group of men round the professor, however, raised their whisky glasses and laughed at his wisdom. One or two of them glanced at her to see how she had responded, but she kept her face blank and moved away to a safer distance; from the moment she had entered the general’s mansion she had felt she was under intense scrutiny. Her beauty, her different beauty, was a handicap, like an ugly birthmark; she was an outsider, the one foreigner in the room. Except for Madame Tolstoy, who had greeted her politely and without surprise.
‘We are pleased that Professor Kambe has brought you, Mrs Cairns. My friend, General Imamaru, is a great admirer of what your late husband did for Japanese art history. When Professor Kambe asked if he might bring you, the general was delighted.’
Natasha had been in a dilemma for several days before hitting on the idea of asking Professor Kambe if he would take her to a reception where she might meet Madame Tolstoy. She had shied away from the idea of going direct to Madame Tolstoy and introducing herself; the woman might just have refused