The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel Read Online Free PDF Page B

lower than men and that it was the law of nature that they should be allowed no will of their own. Also, and more to the point, I came with a large dowry, which was his to dispense where he would. I knew that one day he would use it to seal a deal, or receive a favour, and I might find myself with a husband not of my choosing. If that was to be the case I vowed that I would not be a compliant wife.
    More than seven years of my life passed following this pattern until on a day when she was far from my mind, I was told that my mother had died in great pain from taking bad medicine to bring about the abortion of a child caught in her fallopian tube. My hurt at the news was so deep that I could not weep and wail as people do at the death of a heroine in an opera. I was too like Prince Su in nature for that. I dug my nails into the palms of my hand until they bled and I cursed the gods for their cruelty to so sweet a subject.
    I have never been able to bring myself to throwaway the halfeaten box of lychees with their promise of reunion, for we cannot know in this life which of our ancestors will greet us in the next; I pray that it will be my gentle mother.

Persimmons in Honey and a Bowl of Golden Tea
    On the eve of my fifteenth birthday, just when I thought the day would pass without event, two things happened that I will never forget.
    Dusk had fallen when the old man Teshima sent for me saying that he wished to present me with a gift in celebration of my auspicious day. Sorry brought me the message grudgingly.
    'Not all gifts are to be welcomed,' she said darkly. 'This may be a favour you would wish from someone other than this Japanese grandfather.'
    I went to Teshima's quarters and found him sitting on a wooden sofa, his feet raised from the floor and placed apart on a long stool. At each foot a young peasant girl no more than twelve years old knelt on a straw mat cutting and smoothing his toenails. The room was infused with the smell of the sandalwood incense he favoured. It thinned the air and caught at the back of my throat. Teshima was wearing a long cotton coat loosely tied and draped across his knees leaving his legs bare. I could see the blue run of his veins through his old man's skin, which was as white as rice paper. His thin hair oiled flat against his skull gave him a skeletal appearance, and he looked as though he had rouged his cheeks to mimic youth, but it might have been the effect of his high blood pressure. Between his fingers a fat handmade cigarette rolled in black paper sent a snake of smoke into the air. The girls completed their task by massaging coconut oil between his toes and into the weak muscles deep in his calves. Teshima seemed unaware of me as he rested a hand on each girl's head and rocked back and forth, sighing with pleasure. When they had finished they sat back on their haunches and waited for his dismissal. He lifted his hands from their heads and shooed them from the room. Then he beckoned me to the vacated mat and as I sat by his oily feet he handed me a small cedarwood box with an iron key in its lock.
    'I have waited a long time to give you this, Yoshiko,' he said, looking at me enigmatically with his small dark eyes. 'I think that you are ready for it at last.'
    I opened the box and saw nestled against each other on a bed of dark-green silk a pair of woodcarvings of a phallus and a vulva.
    'They are ancient and carved by a master,' he said, reaching across me and picking them up. 'A most suitable present for a young woman on her fifteenth birthday.'
    He showed me how the two pieces fitted into each other and became one entwined piece. From the age of eight years I had known how a man and woman fitted each other and I laughed out loud at this ancient man who thought that this old lesson would be new to me. Teshima smiled and laughed with me.
    'Don't be embarrassed, little Yoshiko,' he said. 'You are old enough to know of these things. Soon you will have to pleasure a husband, better you