The Painted Cage (15 page)

The weight grew tighter and heavier about her. She must escape, she felt nauseated, a rich smell of drains filled the house. There seemed to be no air. The old man's eyes did not let her go. Then suddenly it was broken, something was gone, and he was looking over her shoulder for the next person. Her head ached, she got up and stumbled from the room.

There was a white paper door in the corridor behind which light glowed. She pulled it back and faced a tiny, enclosed garden, a patch of moss and stones and shrubs, weathered as the walls about it. It was peaceful. She sat down on the kerb of the corridor that she saw now, with its paper doors drawn back, became a verandah. She could hear Mabel's voice debating her future with the old man. Amy leaned back. The little garden was beautiful; she felt its wisdom. She was suddenly tired. What nonsense the old man talked – he was nothing but a fake. Another of Guy le Ferrier's madcap ideas; she felt warm when she thought of Guy. It was difficult to think of anything else now. She closed her eyes. Soon Mabel roused her with a hand upon her shoulder. They were finished, trooping out of the room, talking all at once.

‘He's nothing but a charlatan,' declared Enid loudly, putting on her shoes. ‘You made us waste our money, Guy.'

‘How good to be out of that crooked little house. What a horrid place,' Ada said as they emerged into the sun.

‘It was clean,' Amy observed.

‘Clean?' Mabel reiterated. ‘My innocent, are you feeling well today?'

‘There was a beautiful little garden inside the house,' Amy said.

‘Yes, I saw it,' laughed Mabel. ‘A few deformed shrubs. How funny you are today, Amy.' Her eyes flashed in
amusement. Amy walked ahead, impatient with them. She did not feel herself; because of Guy le Ferrier she felt nothing but confusion.

They were travelling once more down Theatre Street when their
rikishas
were suddenly surrounded by a crowd of child acrobats. Their limbs were frail as reeds but, pliable as rubber. They circled the
rikishas
in a tumbling group like a flock of twittering sparrows. They flicked their bodies into the air as if they were Chinese crackers. They cartwheeled about in awesome contortions, then doubled backwards over their shoulders, feet beneath their chins. In this manner they ran about upon their hands like a crowd of decapitated hens. Two older boys beat drums. It was a shock in the middle of the road, and Amy heard Ada scream. It was impossible to proceed. The runners put down the
rikisha
shafts and stood grinning at the show. Amy felt sick looking at the bare feet and ragged clothes of the children, their malnourished bodies whacked at by the drummer boys. A crowd formed, watching, hesitating to interfere. From the back of Amy's
rikisha
a child began to climb up, its weight rocking the contraption dangerously. Suddenly a dirty head poked up level with Amy's shoulder; she looked into a filthy face with a wicked grin and the cratered skin of smallpox. The child screamed something at her. Its small mouth opened upon the red hole of its throat and broken decayed teeth. She tried to beat it off. She felt suddenly desperate, fearful of the tiny child, of its purpose and its face that had already in its first years of life seen more than she in twenty-four. She met the eyes of a wizened manikin, who placed a claw upon her. She drew back in terror, but suddenly, like a leech pulled off a limb, the awful child was gone and hung struggling and screaming in mid-air, held by a strange, foreign man. He put the child down and it ran away.

‘Just pay them something and they'll go,' the man said.

‘Why should we pay them?' Amy asked, confused, still trembling from the shock.

‘Charity,' said the strange man. ‘Even the devil, dear
lady, must find the means to keep body and soul together. Do you not believe in charity then?'

Mabel, from the
rikisha
behind, had overheard. ‘Charity, they say, begins at home. And that is where I keep it, or a recognized orphanage or hospital, or the institutions of the church. These children wouldn't even say “Thank you”.'

The man shrugged, put a hand in his pocket and
produced
some coins. He gave them to the drummer boy.

‘These children are always about this road. They mean no harm. Their parents are lepers,' said the man. Amy exclaimed in horror.

‘The child is not a leper,' the man explained. ‘In the hospital at Gotemba they believe the disease is not
necessarily
too contagious. I would rather share a room with a leper than a consumptive. I am often on this street. I have spoken before to these children.'

‘Here?' Amy was surprised. She could not imagine Guy and Henry or Rowly Bassett ever finding their
entertainment
here.

‘I rather like their theatre,' said the man. His eyes, like the fortune teller's, seemed to hold her. She asked the next question before she could stop.

‘Their theatre? You like it?'

The man nodded. ‘It is also for me a matter of research. I'm preparing a paper upon it for the Asiatic Society.'

‘The Asiatic Society?' Amy echoed his words
incomprehensibly.
She was relieved to see Guy le Ferrier running up. He shook hands with the man and thanked him. It appeared they had met before.

‘They've gone, I paid them,' Guy told Amy.

‘Then I'll be off,' said the man. He nodded and strolled on down the street.

‘How horrid,' said Amy with a shiver, remembering the child's poxed face and toothy grin. ‘And what a strange man. Do you know who he is?'

‘Of course,' said Guy. ‘That was Matthew Armitage. Some people they call him “Mad Mat”. He's with the University of Tokyo – an expert on their culture. He's
well known as a writer, a botanist, an art historian and anything else you can think of.'

‘Shall we go on?' Mabel called impatiently from the
rikisha
behind. The runners picked up the shafts and they began to move again.

Soon they left the Native Town and re-entered the order of the Settlement with its clean façades and foreign faces, its stonework and its brick. Amy breathed in the tangy air of the Bund, clear of the fetid, rotting smells of the Native Town. Her mind was all stirred up. The words of the fortune teller and his reptilian eyes kept returning to her, as did the sight of his garden, ancient as himself. She could not forget the peace of it. And that strange foreign man, appearing from nowhere? She had never met anyone in Yokohama who actively dug about in the incomprehensible mass of Japanese culture. Many people collected curios and some, like Guy, even spoke the language, but nobody bothered with the culture. It was said that in Tokyo foreign residents were different and spent time upon such things, but not in Yokohama. Tokyo, Mabel said, had a bad effect upon people. They became bookworms and bluestockings and Japanophiles and later published memoirs and travel books and diaries, but they never learned to live. Yet the face of Matthew Armitage kept appearing in Amy's mind. His beard had been clipped to a neat point, his small eyes were humorous and intense. She remembered the integrity in his face.

Before the Naval Hospital they parted and went their various ways. Mabel waved quickly and was gone, but Guy le Ferrier passed close to Amy and leaned across his
rikisha
to whisper, ‘Next week on Thursday we could meet. Tomorrow I go to Tokyo. I will not be back until then.' Amy nodded. Something stronger than herself seemed to have gripped her life.

The richness of the day overpowered Reggie Redmore. There was a breeze, he let the yacht drift and lay back to light a cigar. His own yacht. He had called her
Cocktail.
It had taken no time to decide the name. He had slammed
his glass down on the bar top of the Club;
‘
Cocktail
',
he shouted. People had crowded to congratulate him. The yacht would be paid for from Amy's allowance; she took only some pin money, the rest was Reggie's to use as he wished. That was the arrangement with her father. The sea was mercurial beneath the sun. In the distance Robert Russell waved from the bow of a magnificent sloop he had helped design himself; Dr Charles was out with
Cooper-Hewitt
far off upon the horizon. He waved back to Russell and drew on his cigar. He closed his eyes; the sun was hot upon his eyelids. The yacht rocked in the wake of Russell's great sloop. One day, thought Reggie, he would have a craft like that,
Cocktail
was a secondhand bargain, bought cheaply, but it established him further. Men looked at him in envy – a rich wife, two ponies and a yacht, besides his job at the club. He had gone in at the top in Yokohama without the struggle of a climb. There were many things Reggie now desired; Yokohama was that kind of place. The water lapped against the boat, Reggie tasted salt upon his lips. You could not put one foot before another without money in Yokohama. He had done well to find a wealthy wife.

At this moment she must be riding, up in the hills or on the course, with Mabel Rice and the usual men. He did not like the way things were going. He could feel the resistance in her; she did not hide her resentment now. It was a strange place, Yokohama, dangerous for a woman like Amy. The town had rules of its own, informal
sometimes
to a point that would outrage the morals of those at home. Amy had changed, had grown sure of herself through Mabel Rice's tutelage. She had access now to the influential diplomatic corps, through that worthless Guy le Ferrier. Unpronounceable name. The Ferret, Reggie called him when he spoke of him to Amy. The man was paying too much attention to her. He would not be made a fool of like Robert Crossly or George Manley. God, no, he would not. He sat up and took the cigar from his mouth. Amy must be brought to heel before things went too far. He turned the yacht and headed back towards
the town. He would not be home for dinner, he was going out with Cooper-Hewitt.

The street lights were extinguished when he returned to the Bluff. He groped his way in the darkness, entering the sleeping house. In his pocket his hand touched a crumpled bill he could put off paying Mother Jesus no longer. He wanted to cough, his head reeled. They had served him something with raw rum at Number Nine. O Yumi had laughed and tipped it to his lips. The loose neck of her kimono parted upon her small breasts, pubescent as a child's. He had drunk it quickly and turned to her. The last stair creaked, as did the bedroom door. Amy stirred in bed, she was not asleep. In the darkness her
resentment
was hard as a pebble, shoring up the room. Nothing was said, but she knew where he went; she did not believe his lies.

He went regularly now to Number Nine. There was little to be had from Amy. Sometimes he went alone, sometimes with Cooper-Hewitt or other regulars. Runners pulled them past the railway station and along the dark night shore. The bodies of rats slid into gutters under the lanterns of the
rikishas.
Fortune tellers, noodle vendors and rag pickers, deep in foul refuse, prowled like nocturnal animals bleating their trade. The wail of cats, the crash of waves and the plaintive whistle of the blind masseur filled the dark road to the Yoshiwara, the pleasure quarter. The small walled town upon a marsh was surrounded by the croak of frogs; willow trees lined the wide main street. Lanterns, strung from trees and massed over doorways, banished the night. Elegant wooden teahouses and portly stone edifices lined the road, names belying substance – the House of the Flowering Plum, the Abode of the Eight Clouds. Enclosed within were fragments of even greater delicacy, painted and waiting. Jewel River, Moonlit Foam, Young Bamboo. Off this exclusive road were narrow lanes of restaurants, grog shops and cheaper brothels to fit all pockets and tastes. Before these the women were displayed in painted cages of red lacquer, like a flock of gilded birds. Some
flirted through the bars, loud-mouthed as vulgar
fishwives,
some smoked tapering pipes. Others sat passively in rich kimonos, hair stiff with oil and combs and silver pins, faces unknown behind white paint, a wall of mirror repeating the tawdry splendour. In some cages of
avant-garde
daring the women wore paste jewels and Western dress, displaying themselves on velvet chairs beneath cracked and precarious chandeliers. A motley male crowd thronged these narrow lanes, cosmopolitan as Yokohama. Reggie never stopped amongst the drunken men, the shrill voices of women, the clatter of clogs and the twang of
samisens.
Here disease was as sure as the money you paid, and women and bedding oozed with sweaty effluvium.

Standing alone in stately silence with massive doors, latticed balconies and pruned trees behind a bamboo fence was Number Nine. Light flooded from it welcomingly. Inside, Mother Jesus came forth to meet each client, her bulk swaying upon tiny feet, a flamboyant rooster of the night. Her fat red lips opened upon rotted teeth and broken English, her eyes were currents in her head. Her girls were hand-picked to please, all trained in the foibles of Western gentlemen. Mother Jesus clapped dimpled hands and creased cheeks like old steamed dumplings, and the girls appeared obediently for each customer to choose to his taste, faces devoid of the thick white paint that seduced all Japanese men. There was no reeking oil in structured hair, kimonos hung loose and simple. If these concessions were still too strange and quilts upon the floor not appropriate to libido, a high bed and silk stockings could be arranged. Mother Jesus understood such things, had grown rich upon such connivance. Her fame had spread throughout the Far East and along the China coast. A visit to Mother Jesus and Number Nine completed the itinerary of most male tourists to
Yokohama.
Besides the women, beefsteaks, petit fours, omelettes and whisky could all be had at Number Nine. These women aroused Reggie as Amy could not. They had the limbs and narrowness of children.

He could tell by the tenseness of her back that Amy
was not asleep. The rum still reeled in his head as he stood looking at her inert body. Her breath was irregular, knowing he observed her. He felt a pressure building in him. Did she think he had not noticed the difference in her since she took up with Mabel Rice, excessive in all ways? And the manner now in which she sometimes looked at men, bold as any whore? Soon there would be gossip. There was something in her that should not have been there, unwanted in good women. A strange light filled her and rose naked to her face at times, oblivious of her will. Before they married it had provoked within him both fear and desire. There was no knowing what a woman like Amy would take it into her head to do. Fantasy bred fantasy, as cloud bred cloud above the Bluff in the high and silent sky.