The Painted Cage (36 page)

She felt his hands upon her beneath the light nightdress as she struggled, his shoulder against her face. He filled her and filled her. Again and again. Until the resistance of her body seemed suddenly to convulse upon the moving bulk of him, clinging to him. Until she heard the sound of her own strange cry echo through the night, torn from an unknown part of herself. Once the cry died she began to scream and could not stop, the noise filled
the house. At its release Reggie’s weight lifted suddenly from her as he scrambled off the bed.

‘For God’s sake be quiet. You’ll wake them all,’ he mumbled angrily.

Amy stood in the doorway and, even as Jessie noticed her, Reggie cleared his throat, putting his clothes in order, as if surprised at Jessie’s agitation or his presence in her room. Already the children were stirring next door and called Jessie’s name.

‘What have you done to her?’ Amy gasped. She stood in her nightdress, a thin wrap about her shoulders, her hair thick and wild. She came across the room. ‘Cover yourself,’ she ordered Jessie, ‘and stop making that noise. You’ll bring the servants from their quarters.’ Jessie felt Amy’s hand upon her and shook it off, sobbing, shivering with shock.

‘Did you leave your door open? Did you tempt him in?’ Amy accused, her face in the dim light twisted unrecognizably.

‘I never,’ screamed Jessie, her hate for both Redmores overcoming all else. ‘I locked the door as always, but he forced it, he did. He forced it.’

‘All right. Be quiet,’ Amy commanded again.

‘I didn’t even get halfways with her. Nobody could if you ask me,’ Reggie mumbled.

‘Get out of here,’ Amy spat. Jessie thought she would hit him. She looked up at them both, looming above her in the shadowy room, and it seemed as if they stepped like giants through her life, waiting to destroy her. She was blighted now by their fetid ways. Her heart pumped, they would not get away with it. She would find the means to let the whole world know exactly what the Redmores were.

‘Get out!’ Amy ordered and followed him. Jessie heard her with the children, quietening them.

‘It’s nothing, my darlings, nothing. Go back to sleep again. Jessie had a nightmare.’ She returned a few moments later carrying a glass of brandy.

‘Come, drink this, Jessie. I apologize for Mr Redmore. I cannot apologize enough.’ Amy appeared calmer. Jessie
sobbed in anger now. She wished Mrs Redmore would go away. She did not want her kindness, if that was what her attention was. Jessie took the glass and drank the stuff quickly, choking on the fire it started in her throat. She wanted Mrs Redmore to go, she wanted to be alone.

Afterwards she lit a lamp and washed all trace of him from her as best she could. And still she felt unclean. At every turn of her head the memory of what had happened reappeared to sweep through her again and again, until her body trembled and her teeth began to chatter. But at the very core of her shock was that cry she had heard escape from herself, that was something apart from the screams of distress she had later invoked to the night. It echoed through her. She could not shut her ears to it nor stop the beating of her heart each time she heard it in her mind. It was horrible. Horrible. She would never be the same again. Her life had now become diseased with the Redmores’ own contamination.

The sun shone as normal in the morning, callous to events. The neat green Bluff spread out as ever, awaiting the pleasure of the day. It seemed to Jessie the night was a dream, a figment of the dark. The children rose as usual and came, shaking her awake, surprised she was not up. There were Rachel and her cousin Asa hauling pails of hot water up and down the stairs, the clink of Mrs Redmore’s breakfast tray and Mr Redmore calling for yet more water to facilitate his shave. Just the echo of his voice brought back with force the reality of events to Jessie. Her body throbbed with shame and anger. She sat up in the bed, she would pack and leave immediately, she could go to Miss Brittain, the missionary, who would take care of her. And yet it was not so easy, she realized suddenly. To accuse Mr Redmore as she wished was to confess to the world the loss of her honour and allow questioning of her morals. Even to confide in Bertha might not be too wise. There was no knowing what tales the Redmores might fabricate. Yokohama would listen to them, not her. She would not find another job and she did not have the fare home. The resolve she had made the night before to flee
the Redmores’ employment immediately became by day debatable; she could see how it might work against her. It was necessary to act with caution, to be sure no blame would reflect upon her when she left the Redmores. She must plan to that end. She had those letters as evidence of the Redmores’ degeneration for just this kind of need, but to use them to their full advantage the moment must be ripe. She must remain longer with the Redmores. God would show her a way. She had been innocently wronged.

Amy went into the Native Town, pushed by the weight that had filled her since the night before. She felt alone, a part of nothing. The world appeared united before her and only she divided, each fragment of her personality reflecting contradictions in her life and in herself. She seemed powerless to bring these parts together to a mature order. She had lost everything absorbed from Matthew. She moved only as events dictated, diverse facets of herself coming forward as demanded, like actors in a play. She had shed such instability with Matthew, his reflection in her strong enough to weld her to her core.

She directed the
rikisha
runner, choosing streets at random. The thronging, unsavoury world seemed to fall away before the urgency of her purpose. She came upon the area suddenly, remembering a triangular, rickety house Matthew had pointed out. The runner turned the corner and she stopped him in confusion. There was only the smell of new wood and the skeletons of unfinished houses, hammers and carpenters’ saws. Then she saw behind the raw façades the burned carcass of the temple, black ash upon the ground. She remembered the fire she had watched from the Bluff the night Matthew died; it had been in this direction. It might have been then, it might have been later that the temple was destroyed. There was no one who could tell her where the old priest was, if he had died in the fire, his life’s work, bound neatly in those three hundred volumes, interned forever with him. She sat silent in the
rikisha
;
there was nothing
now to rediscover but what remained in memory. She told the runner to move on. She was turned back upon herself, the past that could regenerate sealed off irretrievably.

She went on then through the Native Town without purpose or direction, unconscious of the curious looks, the crowds and smells, the push about her, unwilling to leave a world that still aroused within her the substance of her life with Matthew. Their relationship was founded upon this breathing, naked body of the Real Japan. She clung to it for the memory of all it had withdrawn.

She had no idea where they were, the deep throb of a drum pulled her on. The crowd flowed in the same
direction,
thicker by the moment, towards a massive temple. It was a feast day and a fair. She left the
rikisha
at the gate and followed the crowd, fighting her way amongst them. Someone stepped on her skirt, her hair collapsed about her neck. The great courtyard of the temple bustled like a marketplace, thronged with stalls of sweet-sellers,
peep-shows
and prophets. There were vendors of toys, paper butterflies and kittens, windmills and mobiles of tissue and silk. Her lips were dry with dust, incense smoked in thick white clouds from huge burners in the square. Everywhere there was the stench of excrement and tangy soya sauce cooking on the grilling bodies of octopus and squid. Over the noise came the clack of a multitude of clogs, busy with pleasure and worship of a mercenary kind. All the buildings of the shrine were occupied with the sale of horoscopes, talismans and prayers. Great coffers stood before the altars, filling by the minute. Services were in progress, the smell of tallow seeped about, gongs and the chant of sutras echoed. It appeared a picturesque stock exchange where shares in the Unlimited Company of Heaven were vigorously bought and sold. Beyond the purchase of a blessing in a fold of paper or the investment in a chance to enter paradise, old women with cages of birds haggled over the price of releasing a creature for the merit of mercy gained.

Beside the birds was another stall with smaller cages of delicate construction. Imprisoned within them were the
last singing insects of summer, crickets and shelly-winged cicadas. The stall buzzed like a discordant orchestra. Amy picked up a tiny painted cage and held it before her. Behind its ornate bars, filigreed and decorated, crouched an ugly brown cicada. Seventeen years beneath the roots of a tree it had waited for a brief two weeks to sing its life away. Amy remembered her butterfly then, long ago in Sungei Ujong. She had freed it to meet the dawn. But the cicada would sing in vain behind its pretty bars. Amy replaced the cage and turned away with a sudden shiver.

‘This temple to Kwannon, Goddess of Mercy,’ said a voice beside Amy. She turned to a young man in a blue kimono, grinning nervously. ‘I am student of English. I explain Japanese things to you?’ he offered. She shook her head and moved on, but he kept pace beside her.

‘I show you plays, I show you animals. Come. I know everywhere.’ The boy led her behind the main temple to a menagerie of captive animals. An elephant performed lethargic tricks, there were morose bears, a mangy lion, otters and apes and a two-headed goat. On payment, the animals could be fed with scraps of food from the end of a bamboo pole. Some accepted in sulky indifference, some refused in boredom. Beyond were waxworks of gory tableaux, in makeshift theatres mummers danced and leaped in devil masks. Dogs performed,
samisens
twanged, a geisha bared her tattooed back before a crowd of men. The stylized faces of Kabuki actors scowled ferociously from their posters, blowing in the wind. There seemed no end to the grotesqueness of humanity. This world she had stumbled inadvertently into was not the one Matthew had guided her through; this world seethed with vulgarity. Only she seemed untouched by all that filled the others. She turned and looked back at the captive animals, prodded with a bamboo cane to bestir
themselves
to tricks. Their eyes, bright with hate, seemed the only reality.

‘I show you more, I show you more.’ The boy led her on and on. She followed, dazed, as if he held her on a string, no less an exhibition than the animals. People parted where they walked to stare and point. She heard
laughter and comments that needed no translation. She could not get away; the crowd pressed about her, her foreignness of more curiosity than the mundane
amusements
of the fair. The boy led her across more courtyards until they reached a building and climbed the steps to its wide verandah. Within the dim recess was a ferocious wooden deity, its naked body rippling with muscle, its face creased in brutal expression. It was coloured a dull reddish brown, one arm raised in the midst of movement. In its face glass eyes protruded and glimmered with the reflection of tiers of candles. Two women knelt before it, swaying backwards and forwards, repeating a rhythmic, chant.

‘They are possessed by evil creatures. They must pray to the god until he draws the devil from them,’ the boy whispered. ‘Many people come to him. They speak the prayer of the sacred Lotus Sutra.’

There was a smell of incense and tallow and the reek of the crowd pressing about her, watching her as closely as they watched the women. Amy was pushed forward to the edge of the sanctuary. The women swayed
hypnotically,
unaware, time suspended within another
dimension.
As she stood there something seemed to open about Amy. The chanting voices of the women generated like a shape in the space before her, unearthly. Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, Amy felt her own body forced to move in unision. The invocation rose in pitch and pressure.

‘Namu
my
oho
renge
kyo.
Namu
myoho
renge
kyo
.’
The sound spiralled rhythmically, the pain grew tighter in her head. It was as if some writhing thing, released from the women, wound itself about her. The bulging eyes of the red-skinned imp flickered, swelling and growing. A breeze shook the candles and it seemed in that moment that the glass eyes burst into sudden flame. One of the women gave a shriek, rising and twisting wildly until with another scream she fell prostrate upon the ground. A cry went up from the crowd as if they too saw the evil creature, incarnation of her sins, wrenched from her physically now. The bodies pushed closer about Amy,
muttering in echoed chant of the women. The sound closed in about her.

‘Namu
my
oho
renge
kyo.’
There was no air; the remaining woman rocked faster and faster. The glass eyes of the devil or deity, without humanity or compassion, glowed across the space holding Amy’s own, as if to communicate some terrible knowledge, unalterable by human will. Terror gripped her; her body was rigid and cold. The second woman began to rise, moaning, the sound growing to a scream. At its release something seemed to break in Amy, she turned and ran, pushing through the crowd. The screams of the woman fell about her, filling the courtyard, following her.

She reached the great gates at the road, where she found a
rikisha.
Soon the shouts of the multitude of vendors and the rancid odours were left behind. Within moments she saw the green of the Bluff before a setting sun and knew, as much as she hated it, that there was no escape now from its insular life. She could not refuse to accept its fate. All that Japan might have taught her seemed suddenly shut like a door in her face. She
remembered
the nightmare she had left minutes ago and knew that within that Real Japan, without a guide, she was helpless to find her way.

Soon the
rikisha
surmounted the Bluff. She felt her heart close against its immaculate gardens and mansions of brick, its superficial people and obedient horses clopping about Negishi, preparing for yet another event, to
establish
superiority. It seemed unendurable. She shut her eyes and saw again the beady stare of those captive animals, hating her, and then the terrible statue, immovable in its judgement. The
rikisha
turned a corner and conjured up Mount Fuji, intractable as ever, waiting beyond a human world. As she stared at it she heard again the screams of the women, wracked by pain and superstition, locked into their nightmares as firmly as she, absolved abruptly of their sins. She felt suddenly tired and immensely small before the order of all things. Soon she was before her front door, there was a light in the nursery window and also in the bedroom. Reggie must be home.