The Garden of Evening Mists (44 page)

Like a paper rubbing of the inscriptions on an old gravestone, the memory of her face I saw that morning almost forty years ago slowly takes shape, blurry and ill-defined. ‘You were –’

‘So young then?’ The nun smiles, revealing a gap in her teeth. ‘So were you. But we didn’t feel young at all, did we?’

‘What do you mean?’ An instant later I understand.

The bracelet of jade beads on her wrist makes soft clicking noises as she rubs them. ‘I was
jugan ianfu
.’

I glance back into the house, not certain if I want to hear what she has to say.

‘There were twelve of us, captured from all over the country,’ the nun continues. ‘I was thirteen years old – the youngest there. The oldest was nineteen or twenty. The soldiers kept us in the convent in Tanah Rata – they had turned it into their base. I was there for two months.

Then one day they let me go. Just like that. I went home to Ipoh. But everyone knew what the Japanese had done to me. What man would want me to be his wife? My father was so ashamed of me, he sold me to a brothel. But I ran away. I went to another town, but somehow people knew. They always knew. One day, I heard a woman talking about a temple in Cameron Highlands. The temple had taken in a few women like me. I went up there. I’ve never left.’

Remembering how derelict and abandoned it had looked, I ask, ‘The temple – is it still there?’

‘We look after it as best we can,’ she says, then falls silent for a while before explaining the reason for her visit. ‘A few years after Mr Aritomo had gone, I found out that during the Occupation, he had been to see the regional commander to have all of the
jugan ianfu
in Tanah Rata released. The commander agreed to let four of the youngest girls go.’

Aritomo never told me.

‘I wanted to tell you this when he disappeared,’ the nun says, ‘but you had already left.

And you never came back.’

‘I’m glad you decided to come to see me.’

‘I had another reason.’

‘You want to see the garden.’

‘Garden?’ For a second she looks perplexed. ‘Oh! No-
lah
. No. But Mr Aritomo once told me that he had a painting of Lao Tzu. I would like to see it, if it is still here.’

‘It’s still here. Like your temple.’

I take her into the house, to the ink drawing painted by Aritomo’s father. The nun stands before the old sage. There is a tear in the middle of the drawing, but it has been so skilfully mended it is almost unnoticeable.

‘
When the work is done, it is time to leave
,’ the nun says softly. ‘
That is the Way of the
Tao
.’

I have read the
Tao Te Ching
many times by now, and the words are familiar to me.

‘Aritomo’s work wasn’t done when he left.’

The nun turns to me, and smiles: not at me, but at the world itself. ‘Ahhh... Can you be certain of that?’

* * *

Tidying the study after I have walked the nun and her companion out of the garden, I think of what she told me. There are still so many things I did not know about Aritomo, so many things that I never will.

Pulling out some books from a shelf, I discover a box behind them. Opening it, I find a pair of swiftlets’ nests, aged to a treacly yellow. They are the nests Aritomo gave me. I hold one up; it feels brittle when I press it. I do not remember keeping them in this box when we returned from the cave; I never made them into a soup as Aritomo suggested.

‘Judge Teoh?’ Tatsuji appears at the door. I close the box and replace it on the shelf, then beckon him in. ‘I have finished my examination of the
ukiyo-e
,’ he says.

‘Use all of them,’ I tell him. ‘You have my permission.’

It is more than he has expected. He bows to me. ‘My lawyer will send you the contract.’

‘There is one more piece of Aritomo’s work I want you to evaluate, Tatsuji.’ I wonder if I should proceed with it; it is not too late to change my mind, but this was the reason I had wanted to see him, the reason I had called him to Yugiri. ‘Aritomo
was
a tattooist.’

‘So I was right all along. He
was
a
horoshi
.’ The smile on his face broadens. ‘Do you have any photographs of the tattoos he created?’

‘He never took any photographs.’

‘Sketches?’

I shake my head.

‘Did he leave you pieces of his tattoos?’

‘Only one.’

Realisation filters the murk of excitement from his face. ‘He tattooed you?’

I nod, and Tatsuji’s eyes close briefly. Is he giving thanks to the God of Tattoos? It would not surprise me if such a deity exists.

‘Where is it? On your arm? Shoulder?’

‘On my back.’

‘Where exactly?’ he asks, growing impatient. I continue to look at him, and a sudden understanding floods into his face. ‘
So, so, so
. Not just a tattoo, but a
horimono
.’ For a while he does not speak. ‘It would be one of the most important discoveries in the Japanese art world,’ he says finally. ‘Imagine: Emperor Hirohito’s gardener; the creator of taboo artwork. On the skin of a Chinese woman, no less.’

‘There will be no mention of this, if you want to use Aritomo’s
ukiyo-e
.’

‘So why did you tell me about it?’

‘I want the
horimono
preserved after my death. I want you to handle this.’

‘That is easily done.’

‘How?’

‘A contract will be drawn up for you to bequeath your skin to me on your death, upon immediate payment now, if you wish,’ Tatsuji says. His hand draws an elegant circle in the air.

‘We can discuss the details later. But first,’ his hands come together in a silent clap, ‘
first
I have to ascertain the quality and the texture of the work on your skin. We will do it with a female assistant present, of course. We can arrange to meet in Tokyo.’

‘No. We do it here. Right here. In this room. I’ll only show it to you, no one else,’ I say.

‘There’s no need to look so embarrassed, Tatsuji. We’re both adults. We’ve seen our share of naked bodies.’

‘I would prefer to have another person present, so there can be no questions of... ahh... ’

His fingers rub his tie.

‘At our age? Surely not. Or should I be flattered that you think there’s even a possibility that I might... change your preferences?’ I give a luxuriant, voluptuous sigh, enjoying his discomfort. ‘All right, Tatsuji. I’ll find someone. A chaperone.’ I laugh; it feels good. ‘Such an old-fashioned word,
chaperone
, don’t you think?’

‘There were things which puzzled me when I was doing my research on Aritomo-sensei,’ he says.

‘What sort of things?’ My humorous mood flees, to be replaced by a sense of wariness.

‘Inconsistencies?’

‘No. Quite the opposite, in fact. Everything I discovered about his life felt natural yet...
manufactured.
It was like... well, it was like walking in a garden designed by a master
niwashi
.

Take the feud between Tominaga Noburu and him, for instance,’ he adds. ‘They had been good friends since they were boys.’

‘It’s quite common for childhood friends to quarrel when they grow up.’

Tatsuji thinks for a moment. Telling me to wait, he leaves the study and returns a few minutes later with his satchel. He opens it and takes out a small black pouch. He loosens its drawstring and picks out a shiny, metallic object. For a second I imagined him removing a hook snagged in a fish’s mouth. He drops the object onto my palm. It is a silver brooch the size of a ten-cent coin, the quality of its craftsmanship understated and exquisite.

‘A flower?’ I say, turning it over.

‘A
chrysanthemum
. These brooches were given out by the Emperor to a select group of people during the Pacific War.’

‘For what purpose?’ I sit down in one of the rosewood chairs.

‘Have you ever heard of Golden Lily?’

The brooch glints on the creases of my gloved palm. ‘No.’

‘It is the title of one of our Emperor’s poems,’ he says. ‘
Kin No Yuri
. A beautiful name, is it not, for one of my country’s worst crimes of the Pacific War? It was 1937 – after we attacked Nanjing. Officials in the palace became concerned that the army was siphoning off the spoils of war. To ensure that the Imperial General Headquarters received its share of the plunder, a plan was conceived. It was named Golden Lily.’

The operation was not under the control of the army, Tatsuji explains, but was headed by Prince Chichibu Yasuhito, the Emperor’s brother. Chichibu was assisted by some of the other princes. ‘They had accountants, financial advisers, experts in art and antiques working under the direction of these princes. Many of these experts were connected to the throne by blood or marriage,’ Tatsuji says. ‘Golden Lily sent its spies out to Asia, to gather information about the treasures that could be stolen. Anything that was worth taking was noted, the information scrupulously recorded.’

‘As though they were compiling a catalogue for an auction house,’ I say.

‘
Hai
. A very exclusive auction house.’ He shifts on his feet. ‘When the Imperial Army swept through China... Malaya and Singapore... Korea, the Philippines, Burma... Java and Sumatra, members of Golden Lily followed closely behind. They knew where to look, and they stole everything they could lay their hands on: jade and gold Buddha statues from ancient temples; cultural artefacts and antiques from museums; jewellery and gold hoarded by wealthy Chinese with their distrust of banks. Golden Lily emptied royal collections and national treasuries. It removed bullion and priceless artworks, carvings, pottery and paper currencies.’

‘They took all that back to Japan?’

Tatsuji’s eyes fix onto a point far away in time. ‘Golden Lily knew that it would be dangerous to transport these items back to Japan once the war had begun. There was also the fear that in the event we were occupied by foreign powers, Golden Lily would have no access to these treasures. It was safer not to move the loot back to Japan, but to hide it in the Philippines.

Spies were dispatched to scout for suitable hiding places in Mindanao and Luzon. Once the army took control of these islands, Golden Lily moved in.’

‘Was Golden Lily operating here, in Malaya?’

‘There were factories in Penang and Ipoh that melted down gold and silver stolen from families and banks,’ Tatsuji says. ‘They could have been run by Golden Lily.’

‘Those treasures looted in Malaya were then shipped out to the Philippines?’

‘Yes.’

‘That was a huge risk, transporting the loot across the seas.’

‘Golden Lily vessels were made to pass off as registered hospital ships,’ Tatsuji says.

‘Allied airplanes and warships coming across these ships noted the flags, cross-checked the registration numbers and left them alone.’

I am rigid with anger. ‘Thousands of civilians were evacuated from Singapore in a convoy of ships flying the Red Cross flag. Your planes sank all of them. The survivors floating in the sea were strafed or left to drown. The women were picked up, raped and then thrown back into the sea.’

Tatsuji looks away from me. ‘The plan was,’ he says, ‘that once things had settled down, once we had won the war, the hiding places in the Philippines would be opened and the treasures shipped back to Tokyo.’

‘But you
lost
the war.’

‘
Hai.
The unthinkable happened. And so everything stolen by Golden Lily could still be out there.’

I return the brooch to Tatsuji. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘When we were on Kampong Penyu, Teruzen told me that part of his duties was to fly members of the Imperial family to wherever they wanted to go, and to organise air-cover for their vessels. He refused to say anything further when I pressed him.’ He stares at the chrysanthemum brooch. ‘That last morning, after he had flown off, I returned to our hut. I found the brooch among my things.’ He falls silent. ‘I have been doing research on
Kin no yuri
over the years, just to understand what Teruzen had been doing.’

‘Was he a part of this… Golden Lily?’ I feign unfamiliarity with the term.

‘A year ago I tracked down an engineer who had worked for Golden Lily,’ Tatsuji says.

‘He was in his nineties, and he wanted to tell his story before he died. He had been sent to Luzon, to supervise gangs of POWs toiling in underground vaults built into the mountains.

Hundreds of slave-workers had worked day and night to excavate the tunnels and chambers.

Once the chambers were packed full with the treasures, a Shinto priest was brought in to conduct a blessing ceremony for the site. Ceramics experts brought in from Japan sealed the entrances to the chambers with a mixture of porcelain clay and local rocks, dyed to blend in with the local geology. Fast-growing trees and shrubs – papayas and guava trees worked best, the engineer said – were planted over the entire area to blend it into the surrounding countryside.’

‘What happened… what happened to the prisoners?’

‘They were taken to another place a short distance away – a cave or an abandoned mine prepared months in advance. Those who resisted were shot. Once they were all inside, explosives were set off to seal the entrance.’

‘Burying them alive,’ I whisper.

‘Treasure hunters have tried to locate these sites in the Philippines over the years.

Perhaps some of them have been emptied and the loot shipped back to Japan.’

‘Treasure hunters?’

My scepticism seems to amuse him. ‘They told journalists that they were searching for the gold bullion hidden by General Yamashita when he evacuated from Luzon. Or they informed the Filipino authorities that they were collecting the bones of fallen soldiers to be properly buried in Japan,’ he says. ‘And even if someone did find one of these hiding places, the vaults were armed with thousand-pound bombs and glass vials of cyanide buried in sand. Anyone who tried to open them up, anyone who did not have the proper maps...’

I pull myself from the quicksand of memories. ‘If what you’ve said really happened, someone would have spoken about it by now,’ I say. ‘Maybe one of the Japanese who had worked in one of these underground vaults – like your engineer, or one of the guards.’