Jasmine Page 2

  And yet, there was the case of Ito Ritsu to consider. A former member of the Japanese Politburo held in a Beijing prison for twenty-seven years on a spying charge, Ito had been freed in September 1980 and sent back to Japan. With that in mind, Aki couldn’t bring himself to dismiss out of hand the idea of his father surviving.

  Although Teite was a French restaurant, towards the end of the meal Shi Ying always served jasmine tea. Tonight his wife brought it out in a small white porcelain teapot.

  “Mmm, smells heavenly,” said Mitsuru.

  In their second cups they added a dab of fresh milk from Rokko Ranch, a variation devised by Shi Ying.

  Dessert was a chilled mango. Mitsuru weighed hers in her palm as though it were a ripe, heavy sigh, then started to peel it skilfully. Although she couldn’t go with him to Shanghai, she was looking forward to hearing about his trip. “But do be careful,” she urged. “Remember, Shuichi got arrested in China, and your own father was thrown in prison there.”

  Aki nodded, his eyes on her hands as she wielded the paring knife. “Mango says that on the third and fourth of June there were no injuries or fatalities at Tiananmen Square whatsoever.”

  “Mango? Sorry? What about the mango?”

  “Shuichi never told you? I learnt it from him. That’s what anti-establishment Chinese secretly call the Communist Party. With a mixture of sarcasm and contempt.”

  And so Aki passed on to his sister, Shuichi’s girlfriend, the meaning and origin of the term “Mango,” just as he’d learnt it from Shuichi more than twenty years before. In May 1966, when the proletarian Cultural Revolution was heating up, Mao Zedong had rewarded the Red Guard at Tsinghua University in Beijing, who had taken over the university, with a crate of mangoes. Overwhelmed with gratitude, the members of the Red Guard, after distributing the mangoes among themselves, each saved the fruit reverently without eating it. From then on mangoes came to symbolize the cult of Mao, and after he died the word became a code name for the Party.

  “How long will you stay in Shanghai?”

  “I’ll be back by the beginning of August. The 7th of August is the sixth anniversary of Sato’s death.”

  “That long already?”

  That long already, he echoed back silently.

  Illness had snatched her away at the age of thirty-one. Aki and Sato had met at Tanabe High School in Wakayama and married after he graduated from college. He still loved his wife – even more now, in a way, than when she was alive. For a time he had remained locked within the sadness of knowing that in dying, she took with her all their pleasures and dreams, all the lovely things they might have done together – such as going to Awaji Island to see the puppet theatre. They’d always meant to do it; now they never would. After her death, rather than turn his back on the comforts that money can buy, he had, if anything, increased his devotion to them, polished his savoir-faire. It helped him to forget. These days he seldom mourned his wife. He was glad to be released from his memories – but when they did return, he was hit all the harder by a sadness sharpened by surprise.

  Mitsuru was saying something, but whatever it was went by him.

  “Aki, it’s Mr Xu! Xu Liping,” she repeated, standing up. An old man was escorting an even older woman into the restaurant; together they were slowly making their way to a table in the back of the restaurant.

  Mitsuru called out in a low voice, which carried across the room, and this made Xu halt and turn around. Removing his monocle, he immediately recognized the brother and sister and waved to them. He saw the elderly woman to her table, then returned to speak to Mitsuru and Aki.

  “My dear children, hello, how are you?” His back hunched over even farther as he spoke. He’d known them ever since they were little, and although they were now grown up, his impression of them remained unchanged from the old days. He came up directly behind Aki, who twisted around as he got up.

  “How nice to see you again,” said Mitsuru warmly. “Thank you again for all you did for our mother.”

  “It was nothing. Such a big present you sent me – no need to go to all that trouble, my dear.”

  “It was the very least we could do.”

  “That reminds me – we were over at the Garden Oriental Soshuen for a get-together, and on the way back we stopped at the nursing home to say hello to her. She was in excellent spirits. It’s good you don’t have to worry about her anymore, isn’t it?”

  “How kind of you to do that. Thank you so much,” Mitsuru said with a pretty little bow: back straight, palms pressed together lightly at her breast, head dipped slightly. Xu Liping had once praised her for it; it was something she’d learnt from her mother. Still, she couldn’t help being a bit shocked to hear that her mother – after having forgotten who her own daughter was – had apparently been able to talk normally with Xu, like old times.

  About a year and a half ago, when they were trying to put their mother in the special care nursing home in Mikage, Xu Liping had gone out of his way to be helpful. The home in question was one of the best around, with a long waiting list. Faced with a wait of three or four years, Mitsuru and Aki had been at their wits’ end – until Xu stepped in and pulled a few strings. The land on which the nursing home was built had been an outright gift from him to the city, so no one could complain if he was done a favour in return.

  “My mother is back in Kobe for the first time in three years,” said Xu, turning to look at a big round table in the rear of the restaurant. The elderly woman he’d come in with was now seated, chatting amiably with five or six others, all members of the Xu clan.

  Xu Liping was fond of saying that the Xus and the Wakis had been friends since the days of Sun Yat-sen, and would remain friends forevermore. Some ten years ago, his mother had gone to Boston to live in with a daughter there. Xu’s business having failed, the family had all taken refuge with his elder sister in Boston, but even after things got back to normal in Japan, his mother had stayed on in the United States. Although down on his luck, Xu had responded to a request from Kobe authorities for land in the upscale residential district of Mikage by offering a plot for free – an act of generosity that was something of a family tradition.

  His grandfather, Xu Ruowang, was from the tiny island of Quemoy, off Fujian Province. On coming to Nagasaki, he led a troupe of budaixi, performers of a puppet theatre popular in Taiwan and Fujian, before moving to Kobe around 1885 and getting into the import-export business. By exporting matches and other items, he quickly made a pile of money, and his heir Xu Xinglin further expanded the business until he became the most prominent of all Kobe’s huaqiao, or overseas Chinese merchants. Xinglin also served as comprador for the Yokohama Specie Bank and Bangkok Bank. When the Revolution of 1911 broke out, he formed the Overseas Chinese Merchants Squadron, and when the “Second Revolution” in 1913 failed and Sun Yat-sen fled to Japan, Xinglin provided him with shelter and aid. It was Aki’s great-grandfather, Waki Atsuhiko, who had secretly invited Sun Yat-sen to his home in Tanabe for a bit of rest and recuperation.

  Aki and Mitsuru asked if they might greet Xu’s mother. Xu replaced his monocle and led the way to the back of the restaurant.

  “If I may ask, how old is your mother?” Aki asked him quietly.

  “She turned ninety-two in April.”

  As they drew closer, members of the Xu clan stood up amid a general scraping of chairs.

  “Mother,” Xu said in a loud voice, close to his mother’s ear, “this is Waki Akihiko, Tanehiko’s boy, and his little sister.”

  “My goodness, you’re all grown up!” The old woman remained seated and inclined her head slightly, wearing a smile as she held out both hands to Aki. He took them in his. The dry, papery skin conveyed a faint trembling, and something suggesting the chill of bones.

  “And you, my dear,” she added, turning her soft gaze on Mitsuru, “are extremely pretty. How old have you gotten to be, now?” Peeping out from under the table was a pair of dainty cloth slippers like black butterfly wings.


  “I’m twenty-eight.”

  “Are you, really?” She turned to her son. “When our Xiaolan left for the mainland, she was five years younger than this young lady.” She pressed a small white handkerchief, Shantou embroidery, to the corner of her eye.

  “Xiaolan?” inquired Mitsuru, bending down a little.

  Xu Liping explained: “My second daughter.”

  “Tell me,” said the old woman, her voice overlapping with her son’s, “how is your good father?”

  Xu whispered a mild remonstrance in her ear. She seemed not to understand.

  “Be sure to give him my best regards.”

  “Thank you very much, lao nainai,” replied Aki. “May you stay well always.”

  They went back to their table by the window, where they ordered a fresh pot of jasmine tea, and when they had slowly drunk it all, this time without milk, they left the restaurant.

  Aki had arrived from Tokyo the night before, and was staying at the Shin-Kobe Oriental Hotel. He’d sent his large travel suitcase ahead by courier. Mitsuru, meanwhile, lived in an apartment along the Ashiya River and worked at an industrial design office downtown in Yodoyabashi. She started down Tor Road in the direction of Motomachi Station.

  “I haven’t been in Kobe for a while, and it would be nice to go for a drive, so why don’t I take you home?” Midway down the slope Aki hailed a taxi. He climbed in first and instructed the driver to head for Ashiya. After the car had pulled out, he said, “Take the Sanroku Bypass.”

  “Okay, mister, but it only goes as far as Takahane.”

  “I know. So take a right at Takahane and get on the Yamate main road.”

  “That ends at Motoyama.”

  “Yes,” Aki replied with mild irritation, “so before you get to Motoyama you’ll need to take another right, then go straight, and get on Route 2 somewhere around Morikita.”

  Mitsuru pressed the button and lowered her window one-third of the way to let in some air. “Wasn’t old Mrs Xu a dear?”

  “Yeah, but she spooked me when she asked how my father was. Didn’t you say Mother said the same thing to you? What’s wrong with these old people? Also, I’d never heard of Xiaolan before. That means they had five kids. The other four I know. We never got around to asking what became of her, did we?”

  The taxi was heading down the tree-lined Sanroku Bypass.

  “What kind of trees are these? They’re huge.”

  “Camphor,” said Aki. “These go on for a bit more, till around Gomo Tenjin crossing, and then they’re gradually replaced by plane trees. Those go on till Takahane, and from there on it’s maples.”

  At Takahane the taxi turned right, went under the Hanshin Railway line, and entered the Yamate main road.

  “Look, we’re in Mikage already,” said Mitsuru. “Think Mom’s asleep?”

  “No doubt.”

  “I hope she’s having a nice dream.”

  “One where you and I ride quietly past as she sleeps, so as not to wake her up?”

  “Very nice.”

  “How old is she now, exactly?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I know her date of birth all right. I just asked because it’s easier for you to do the counting.”

  “Sixty-seven.”

  “Too young to be going senile. Look at Xu’s mother, she’s ninety-two. If my dad’s still alive, he must be… seventy-two. Anyway, I’ll go check on her tomorrow. We’ll see if she still knows her son, or asks, ‘And what might you be selling, young man?’”

  Near the mouth of the Ashiya River, the taxi stopped in front of a condominium building. Still settled back in her seat, Mitsuru sat quietly for a moment and then said without stirring, “Aki, don’t be angry with me, will you? Don’t ever give up on me. Be my friend.”

  Be my friend. The phrase struck him as odd at first, but the next moment he decided no, it was a frank and quite reasonable way of putting things. Instead of resting comfortably within the confines of the obvious relationship of brother and sister, how much better, more meaningful it was to tear them down and renew their relationship day by day. And they did get on amazingly well, he thought, considering that more often than not siblings experienced friction, just like parents and children. The two of them got on so well because the element of friendship was so strong.

  “When will I see you again?” she asked, before instructing the driver to open the taxi door. The automatic door swung open, and a gust of warm, moist wind blew in.

  “I really don’t know.” And then, for no reason, the words “Let’s stay alive” slipped out of his mouth.

  Startled, Mitsuru turned back with a look of perplexity, suddenly close to tears. Let’s stay well, he’d meant to say. What the hell had gotten into him? In a city of such beauty and prosperity, in a country free of war for over forty years, what had made him come out with a line that corny and sentimental? He nearly swore in annoyance. With an embarrassed smile, he waved a hand lightly at this friend of long years’ standing. He watched her hurry inside the brightly lit entrance of her building and then brusquely told the driver to get going.

  The clouds had parted. Looming straight ahead was the dark silhouette of the Rokko mountains, and hanging over them was the night sky, resplendent with a myriad stars. The shallow Ashiya River came tumbling down in a straight line from the mountains. Reflected light from streetlights, headlights, and moonlight played over the surface of the water like a school of tiny leaping fish. For no reason, he felt a mounting irritation.

  2

  Nowadays, with Shanghai only a three-hour hop by plane from Narita or Osaka, anyone opting for the three-day voyage by ferry had to have a good reason: old folks on tours steeped in nostalgia, vacationing college students with more time than money, high school kids on class trips. For a man in the prime of life with a fairly prosperous look about him to be travelling alone by sea was bound to strike the average person as eccentric, or vaguely suspicious. Stowaways, mused Aki, always go by boat.

  Yet he was hard pressed to account for this specific choice. He might have said he was on a journey to follow in the footsteps of the father who disappeared when he was a little boy, but that wasn’t it; he had no such sentimental leanings. All he could say was that like his father – and innumerable other stowaways before him – he had an uncontrollable yearning to travel by sea.

  The morning of departure, he got up at five o’clock. A call from the front desk woke him as scheduled at four, but he laid his head back on the pillow for another five minutes’ sleep. Five minutes stretched to an hour, so he rushed through the checkout procedure and made a dash for the port terminal by cab. At seven o’clock the Xin Jian Zhen slowly pulled away from Pier 4. The deck trembled slightly beneath his feet. For a split second he had the illusion that the boat was stationary, that Kobe and the Rokko mountains were in motion and steaming off into the distance.

  He remembered the night before last when he saw his sister, telling her about the English verb “to shanghai.” In the old days, everyone who went to China had gone by boat – including his father, who’d set off for Shanghai at the age of nineteen to attend university. Shanghaied, every last one of them.

  Yesterday he’d been to see his mother in the nursing home; when he told her where he was going, her response had been a negligent “Oh? Well, say hello to your father.”

  The uppermost A Deck on the Xin Jian Zhen had eight first-class cabins. Aki was the only first-class passenger from Kobe. Along the way, the boat docked at Tempozan Port in Osaka and picked up a dozen or so Chinese passengers, together with a large amount of luggage and freight containers. A well-groomed Chinese gentleman took the cabin across the passageway and down from Aki.

  The Xin Jian Zhen turned its bow south, heading through the quiet water of Osaka Harbour under skies that threatened rain. The steamer had a gross tonnage of 14,543 tons and measured 156.67 metres in length, with a maximum speed of 21 knots. It could accommodate 345 passengers and 242 containers. The paintwork was white,
the smokestack had a crimson band, and the decks were green. Once a week, the ferry made the trip from Kobe and Osaka to Shanghai in fifty-one hours.

  Aki was 1.75 metres tall and weighed 62 kilograms, with long, bony limbs. He could still run 100 meters in 13 seconds flat. His eyes were a very dark brown, his nose slightly aquiline, his cheekbones slightly high. His face was tanned. He played no golf. He was 37 years old.

  All was quiet. There were no more than sixty passengers on board, if that many. Perhaps because of the travel advisory put out by the government, Aki was the lone Japanese.

  As the outline of the Rokko mountains receded on the starboard side, the gentle shape of Awaji Island began to define the boundary of Aki’s view. Rising on the port side were the graceful lines of Mount Ikoma, Mount Kongo, and the Kisen mountains, scarcely distinguishable from cloud-peaks.

  He was the only passenger on deck. The man who’d boarded in Osaka never left his cabin. Everyone else was travelling below decks in second or third class, and none of them came up to A Deck.

  The sky had been overcast for some time, and as they went through the Kitan Strait and entered the Kii Channel, it began to rain in earnest. The drops fell hard, in dense sheets. Aki walked over to the port side facing the Kii Peninsula and squinted, trying to make out the Gulf of Tanabe and the town where he’d played as a boy, but rain and fog obscured all view of the peninsula.

  A wind sprang up and the ship began to rock slightly. Now and again a thick layer of sheer white fog wrapped itself around the bow like an enormous curtain. Still, Aki remained where he was. A deckhand heaved a big mop to and fro, looking askance at him as he did so. Finally he came over and advised Aki to go inside: they would soon be in the Pacific Ocean, he said, and the wind and waves would only get worse, making it dangerous to be out on deck.