The Phoenix Tree

‘Where do you go to?’

‘To Tokyo.’

‘What do you do there?’

‘Go shopping, mostly.’

‘On the black market?’ He smiled, to show he did not think it was a major crime. Though his teeth were not coated, they had a yellow tint, like an old man’s.

‘Of course.’ She also smiled.

‘Do you visit anyone? Friends?’

She thought of only Professor Kambe as a friend; the others had been friends of Keith’s and still tolerated her, mainly because the men amongst them admired her beauty and some of them, she knew, had dreams that some day she might be their mistress. Her vanity was very clear-sighted, enabling her to see others’ weaknesses as well as her own assets.

‘Some people at the university.’

‘Some who work for the government and the military?’

‘They may.’ She knew exactly who did; but she was certain that Nagata also knew them. She had the sudden feeling that he knew all about her, that his questions were designed not to give him information but to trip her up. ‘But you know, major, that men never discuss their work with women, especially women who are not their wives.’

‘Did Professor Cairns ever discuss his work with you?’

‘Never. He was Scottish – they are as bad as the Japanese. Do you discuss your work with your wife?’ She was uneasy, but she had always believed that attack was the best form of defence. Especially if it was accompanied by what Keith used to call her whore’s smile. In his cruel moments he could be as loving as a rugby forward, which he had once been.

‘Hardly,’ said Nagata, with a policeman’s smile. Then, still showing his yellow teeth, like a bamboo blade, he said, ‘Do you ever visit a woman called Eastern Pearl?’

Natasha frowned, wondering where this question was supposed to lead. ‘Eastern Pearl? Is she a geisha or some sort of entertainer?’

‘You might call her an entertainer. She is the mistress of one of our military leaders, General Imamaru. I thought you must have heard of her. People gossip about her.’

Natasha had indeed heard of the woman, but had paid no heed to the talk; Tokyo, she guessed, was like all capitals in wartime, full of mistresses. They were part of the fortunes, or misfortunes, of war, a compensation, for those who could afford them, for rationing and other inconveniences.

‘I’ve heard of her vaguely. But my friends in Tokyo are not the sort who gossip.’

‘Oh? I thought gossip was a major discipline amongst university people.’

‘You never went to university, major?’ Natasha had been well coached by Keith: she recognized the prejudice.

‘Just once,’ said Nagata. ‘In Mukden. To arrest one of the professors.’

‘I hope you got a good pass.’ She knew she was being impolite, keeping this policeman out in the cold waste of the garden, but she could not bring herself to invite him into the house.

‘I think so. The professor was executed.’ Nagata was enjoying the company of this young woman, though he wished she would invite him into her house. He did not like standing out in the open; he suffered from agoraphobia, the disease endemic to secret policemen. ‘I believe you have Swedish papers, Mrs Cairns.’

The change of tack was too abrupt. Natasha felt that her eyes must have squinted, as if she had been slapped. ‘Ye-es …’

‘Your father was Swedish?’

Three months after he had brought her to Tokyo, Keith had come home one day with the papers. She had had none up till then other than a badly forged British passport given her by one of her benefactors in Hong Kong. She had queried Keith where he had got the papers and why she should be Swedish.

‘Because before very long Japan is going to be in the war and if you and I are separated it will be best if you are a neutral.’

‘But why should we be separated? If they send you back to England, why won’t you take me with you?’ For the first time she had wondered if England was like Hong Kong, where driftwood, no matter how beautiful, was not displayed in the best houses.

‘I’ll take you with me, darling heart – if they send me back—’ It was another year before she had learned of his espionage work. ‘In the meantime you had a Swedish father – a ship’s captain—’

‘Swedish? But I have black hair and brown eyes—’

Physical features Major Nagata now remarked upon: ‘You don’t look Swedish, Mrs Cairns.’

‘My father came from the far north, Lapland.’ Keith had told her to say that; she had no idea whether Laplanders were blond or brunette. ‘Or so my mother said. I never knew him.’

‘No, of course not.’ Nagata was accustomed to liars; the secret police could be reduced by half if everyone told the truth. He did not resent the lying: he did not want to be put out of a job. He sighed contentedly, assured of a continuing supply of liars, including this charming one. ‘Mrs Cairns, we have made a few enquiries about Eastern Pearl. At one time she was married to an Englishman named Henry Greenway. We also have a file on you, courtesy of the Hong Kong police. They left so many things unattended to when we took over from them.’ He made it sound as if the conquest and rape of Hong Kong had been a business merger. ‘The file shows that your father was not a Swede. He was Henry Greenway and you were born in Shanghai, which was where Eastern Pearl married Mr Greenway and then left him.’

Natasha felt as if she were about to shatter into small pieces. She turned slowly, afraid that her legs would buckle under her, and went up the short wide steps to the verandah of the house. Beneath the steps she imagined she could see the small hole in the stone foundations through which she ran the aerial cable when she was broadcasting; everything was suddenly enlarged in her mind’s eye, the hole a gaping tunnel into which Major Nagata was about to push her. She led Nagata into the house and into the drawing-room. She sat down, waited for Nagata to take off his overcoat and seat himself opposite her. It struck her, oddly, as if her mind were seeking distraction, that he was the first man to sit in that particular chair since Keith died.

‘I’ve shocked you, haven’t I, Mrs Cairns? What did that? Finding out that we know all about you?’

It had been partly that; she had never really thought about how efficient the secret police might be. But the major shock had been learning who her mother was. She had often thought of her mother, but her father had brusquely silenced any questions she had asked. He had let slip that her mother had deserted them both but he had told her no more than that. As she grew up she had dreamed of some day meeting her mother, who would be a rich beauty, perhaps a Mongolian princess who had run off with a Rumanian oil tycoon; the reunion would be tearful and happy and very profitable for herself, since she also dreamed of a rich life. Now the thought that she might be about to meet the woman who could be her mother had the chill of a dream that could prove to have gone all wrong. She was a tumble of curiosity, puzzlement and fear; but so far the thought of love hadn’t entered her mind. She had always guarded against harbouring any love for a ghost.

‘I suppose I should have realized that eventually you would know all about me.’ Sitting down, she felt a little stronger: there is great strength in the bum, Keith used to say. Sometimes she had thought a lot of his philosophy had come from a rugby scrum.

‘Oh, we’ve known about you ever since Professor Cairns died.’

Natasha played for time. She called for Yuri to bring some saké, heard a grumpy response that told her the old woman would bring the drinks but in her own time. Natasha did not offer Nagata tea because that would have meant some ceremony and she was determined to keep his visit as short as possible.

She turned back to him. ‘I know nothing about this woman Eastern Pearl.’

‘Mrs Cairns, I am not suggesting you do. Madame Tolstoy knows nothing of you, I’m sure.’

‘Madame Tolstoy?’

‘It is the name she prefers to go by when she is with General Imamaru. It was down in Saigon, where he met her, that she was known as Eastern Pearl. Some people still use it about her in Tokyo. The gossipers, that is.’

‘I’ve only heard the name Eastern Pearl, never Madame Tolstoy.’

‘We must ask her if she has ever used Mrs Greenway.’

Yukio Nagata was an opportunist, a random spinner of webs. Not many babies are born to be secret policemen; he had been one of the very few. At school he had majored in intrigue; so devious was he that he was captain of the school before his fellow students realized how he had achieved it. Drafted into the army for his compulsory military training, he had spent more time studying the officers commanding him than on rudimentary military drill. When he was called back for service in Manchuria he had enough contacts to have himself placed in the secret police. If he had to fight a war, better to be out of range of the enemy. He had come to the conclusion that the present war was going so badly that Japan could not win it. So he had begun to gather evidence, most of it unrelated, that might stand him in good stead if and when the Americans came to claim victory.

‘Are you suggesting, major, that I go and meet this – this Madame Tolstoy – and ask her if she is my mother?’

Round her the house creaked, as if it had shifted on its foundations; she felt that she had no foundations herself. The house was like her, a hybrid, part-European, part-Oriental. It had two storeys and had been built by a doctor who had lived in Germany for four years before World War One; there was a heaviness about it that made it look like a tugboat amongst the yacht-like villas that surrounded it. Inside, the furniture was heavy and dark; the beds were meant to accommodate Valkyries rather than doll-like geishas. Till Keith Cairns had been sent here for internment everything about the house had dwarfed everyone who had stayed in it. Still, Natasha had been fortunate to be able to keep the house for just herself and Yuri and not have other internees forced on her.

‘I shouldn’t want you to force yourself on this woman.’ Nagata carefully arranged the creases in his trouser-legs. He usually wore uniform but today, calling on a beautiful woman, he had decided that his dark blue suit, bought at an English tailor’s in Shanghai, would make him look less 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.