Read The Ginger Tree Online

Authors: Oswald Wynd

The Ginger Tree (34 page)

BOOK: The Ginger Tree
7.98Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

I must have been continuing to breathe up until then, but tightly. Now I felt as though I had been freed to really fill my lungs with artificially cooled air. I think I held my eyes shut for a minute, and when I opened them he was staring at me. I said stiffly: ‘I hope the General is well?’ ‘Yes, he is very well. But unable to visit you. You understand?’ ‘I hadn’t been expecting a visit. Are you an aide of his?’ ‘No. I come only to deliver his
message. He wishes you to lead a happy life in future.’ I said: ‘Thank you,’ reminded of those pumice courts in Karuizawa, the elasticised balls bouncing back and forth over the net, like our words.

There was silence again. The Major reached into that inner pocket, this time producing a wallet. I was sitting very straight, as I had been since this man came through the glass doors. Kentaro was about to do, through contacts in Singapore, what he could not have done easily in war-rigid Japan, offer me more money. The wallet was laid on the table, then opened flat. What came out looked like a postcard until turned over; then I saw it was a photograph. The Major pushed this across the table.

The picture had been taken in a Japanese garden that looked as groomed as my own, a woman standing just to one side of a stone lantern, and in front of her, arranged according to age, like steps, were three children, two girls and a boy. The boy was tallest, about ten, perhaps more. He was smiling. I knew the smile.

Words had to be pushed past a constriction in my throat: ‘Your wife and children, Major?’ He nodded and said:
‘Hai.’
I didn’t have to ask if he was a
yoshi
.

We both sat very still. Perhaps my eyes should have been hungry for his face, his hands, the stiff figure in the chair, but I looked at the table top. I would not embarrass him. He had come, under orders, not knowing what to expect from a foreign woman. He must not take away anything that might be shaming in the memory. I said: ‘When you see Count Kurihama please give him my sincere thanks.’

I could sense his relief. There was to be no scene. I had learned the proper disciplines, which gave dignity to the ritual of showing me a photograph of people I would never meet, but who were now to be regarded as my relatives. I had the wildly funny thought that when I died I would be duly acknowledged as an ancestor at a Japanese family altar, but I didn’t want to laugh.

We talked like strangers sharing a table in a crowded restaurant, about the humidity of southern regions, the tastelessness of most tropic fruit. Our quietness had faded almost all the interest in us, apparently no real drama on schedule from the reserved corner of the lounge. A man loudly
rebuked his partner for her bidding and she snapped back at him. Those voices seemed to disturb the Major and, as though feeling he had to cover them, he said: ‘When you return to Japan after the war I hope you will visit Nagoya.’ He had told me where he lived without being asked. I said: ‘Perhaps. And we may meet then.’ He smiled. It was not Kentaro’s smile. ‘If I am not in my native place in body when you come, I will be there in spirit.’ That clamp on my heart again was this time from a different fear. ‘Why do you say that?’ His answer was simple: ‘This will be a long war. I am a flier.’

He did not believe that Japan could win or that he would live to see the peace. I wanted to cry out in protest, but he had come to feel safe with me. We both sat very still, now looking at each other, until he reached across the table for the photograph. This went back in the wallet which was then stowed away carefully in that inner pocket. His left hand went to the sword hilt, which meant that he was getting up, but before he did he leaned forward and said in a low voice, almost as though afraid of being overheard: ‘Life has been good for me. I must now return to duty.’ He added the conventional phrase: ‘Please take the greatest care of your health.’

This time I stood for my bow and his was not for a woman of little importance. He turned and thumped towards the glass doors. A moment later I followed him out of the lounge, eyes on me again. I went up to the boat deck and when I reached a rail between davits Major Nobushige Ozaki was already down the gangway and walking towards a car parked in front of the dock sheds. He did not look back at the ship. A soldier got out of the driving seat and opened the car’s rear door. Even after this had been slammed I could see the back of Tomo’s head through the rear window. The car began to move, going quite slowly over a rough surface, then disappearing around the end of the sheds. I tried to find some vantage point from which I could see it passing through the dock gates, but wasn’t able to reach one in time. From a wing of the ship’s bridge the blond Swedish officer of the watch stared down at me.

E
L
AND

61 Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QL
Email: [email protected]

 

 

Eland was started in 1982 to revive great travel books which had fallen out of print. Although the list soon diversified into biography and fiction, all the titles are chosen for their interest in spirit of place.

 

One of our readers explained that for him reading an Eland was like listening to an experienced anthropologist at the bar – she’s let her hair down and is telling all the stories that were just too good to go into the textbook. These are books for travellers, and for those who are content to travel in their own minds. They open out our understanding of other cultures, interpret the unknown and reveal different environments as well as celebrating the humour and occasional horrors of travel. We take immense trouble to select only the most readable books and many readers collect the entire series.

 

Extracts from each and every one of our books can be read on our website, at www.travelbooks.co.uk. If you would like a free copy of our catalogue, please order it from the website, email us or send a postcard.

First published by William Collins Sons & Co Ltd in 1977
First published by Eland Publishing Limited
61 Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QL in 1988
This ebook edition first published in 2012

All rights reserved

Copyright © Oswald Wynd 1977

The right of Oswald Wynd to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

ISBN 978–1–906011–98–7

Cover Image: Cedar Door of a Guest Room, Shugakuin Imperial Villa © Sadao Hibi

BOOK: The Ginger Tree
7.98Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Hawke: A Novel by Ted Bell
Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History by Tananarive Due, Sofia Samatar, Ken Liu, Victor LaValle, Nnedi Okorafor, Sabrina Vourvoulias, Thoraiya Dyer
Dorsai! by Gordon R. Dickson
Destiny's Path by Anna Jacobs
Kage by John Donohue
Cherrybrook Rose by Tania Crosse