Fishing for Stars (50 page)

Anna avoided looking at Konoe Akira, aware that her commentary was self-conscious and that Konoe Akira might simply be looking at the photographs in order to be polite. After all, the gift of eighty-five persimmon seeds, which he’d given her in the garden of the Dutch brewer’s mansion he’d occupied as commander at Tjilatjap in 1945, may have long since been forgotten, at the time a sentimental gesture to a young girl and no more. Although he had made specific mention of his desire to see the photographs in his earlier note sent to the Imperial Hotel, this could have been part of his planned entrapment. But now she glanced up at him to see that silent tears were rolling down his cheeks. ‘What can I say, Second Vase?’

Anna did not correct him this time. ‘The butterfly ashtray and the frangipani blossom at the Jade House . . . they tell me the blossom is replaced with a persimmon in the winter. Is that . . .’ Anna hesitated, ‘because of Tjilatjap?’

In a gesture of defeat the old general nodded, sighed, then raised and dropped his hands back onto the sheet. ‘I have thought about you most days of my life since the day I sailed from the wharf at Tjilatjap when I knew that I would never again know another creature as perfect. I have bowed and clapped at my family shrine every morning since returning to Japan, burned incense on the anniversary of my sailing away and said your name while asking the gods to take care of you if you remained alive. I later heard what Colonel Takahashi, that miserable
kempeitai
mongrel street dog, did to you before he committed suicide and then, upon later reflection, what I, no better than he, thinking myself infinitely your superior, had already done to you. Then I realised that I deserved no better myself.’

‘It was not the same,’ Anna protested. ‘You . . . he . . .’ She did not explain that she had killed Takahashi before he could deflower her.

‘Nevertheless, total power corrupts and we Japanese, more than most people, are historically guilty of abusing power, especially in recent times in China and Manchuria, and of course in the Pacific. Arrogance is the handmaiden to cruelty and I pray to the gods that Japan will not go down that path again, although both characteristics die hard with us and the hindsight that is called history turns the ignoble into the justifiable and then ultimately into the noble. At last we are learning that we are not the master race. The Emperor himself has declared that he is not a living god. You could have taken your opportunity last night to kill me without consequences, but you did not and I am grateful, if only for the opportunity to say that of the two of us you are the noble one and I am the one to be despised.’

Now that it had finally come, Anna saw that his apology was profound. ‘If I had thought in this way about you I would not have come to Japan, honourable
Konoe-san
,’ Anna said quietly. ‘While our early relationship has resulted in some difficulties, it has also produced some very good results. Life is chance and circumstance and I have suffered and benefited equally from both.’

Konoe Akira looked surprised. ‘You do not hate me,
Anna-san
? My heart was filled with terror that you had come to Japan to expose me, though not to the war tribunal – that shame is long since over – but to my family, to my daughters and my precious grandchildren, to my aged mother, although her time is now also past and she often forgets I am her son. This shame on my family name I would have found unendurable.’ He paused and looked directly at Anna. ‘That is why I sought to warn you with the foolish kidnapping arranged with those reactionaries and rightwing misfits in the Shield Society.’

‘Some stains endure but most come out in the wash,’ Anna replied in an attempt to comfort him. ‘I am glad we have talked it out. Now you must rest. Will it be convenient to visit you again tomorrow?’

‘By all means. My daughters will come and my grandchildren, but only in the afternoon when the children are home from school. Will you come in the morning?’

‘Yes, I would enjoy that. We will be leaving Japan soon and there is one more matter I would like to discuss with you,
Konoe-san
.’

‘Is it about the past?’

Anna shook her head. ‘We cannot undo the past,
Konoe-san
. But maybe we can use the future to try to heal it.’

‘What? What can I do? If it is possible I will do it, Second Vase.’

‘It is about business. I wish to talk to you about a business matter.’

‘Why, I’m intrigued.’ He grinned. ‘
Hai!
You are not a doctor or a dominatrix, you are now a businesswoman. This I can understand.’ He bowed his head. ‘Goodbye,
Anna-san
. I look forward to tomorrow.’

‘You didn’t talk about the past, the war, what he did to you, the psychological scarring?’ I asked, astonished.

Anna cocked her head and looked at me. ‘The lamentation of poor little Anna? And what possible good would that do, Nicholas?’

‘Cleared the air! The bastard owes you!’

‘Yes, I agree. He owes me. I have a business proposition I don’t believe he can refuse.’

‘Jesus, Anna, that’s crass. This is not about money! What about us?’

‘Oh there’s definitely something tangible in this for you, Nicholas,’ she said, deliberately misconstruing my meaning.

‘I
don’t
mean fucking business!’

‘Nicholas, there are no pieces to pick up, no road to Damascus, no epiphany. But there is something to gain from all this.’

I sighed, unable to believe my own ears. I’d had too many Anna versus Konoe Akira dialogues in my head for far too long and what I was hearing was definitely not one of them. ‘Christ, Anna, can’t you see? He kidnapped you, he meant to harm you and all you’ve been discussing with him for the past four days is business?’

Anna, unruffled, affected a surprised expression. ‘Why, Nicholas, you came here to buy two freighters, that’s business, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but I didn’t have a different agenda.’

‘Ah, but as soon as those two middle executives at Mitsubishi tried to cheat you, things changed?’

‘Yeah, jumped-up little pricks!’

‘But, in the end, who won the day?’

‘Yeah, we did, and mostly thanks to you, but what are you suggesting?’

Anna ignored the question. ‘In the end you got two freighters for nearly the price of the new one?’

‘Yeah . . .’

‘Why was that?’

‘We tricked them. They thought we didn’t understand Japanese.’

‘No.’

‘What then?’

‘We didn’t react predictably. We didn’t lose our cool. When the tape recording was replayed to whomever afterwards, it was obvious that Mitsubishi had lost a great deal of face and needed to make restitution. The rest you know – two ships for the price of one.’

‘Anna, this is not the same!’

‘Oh? Why not? If I’d screamed and shouted, cried, stamped my foot, accused, threatened, blamed Konoe Akira for everything, what do you think would have happened? No, don’t tell me, you know already – an hysterical woman creating a scene in a Japanese hospital room. They’d have thrown me out on my ear then given
Konoe-san
a sedative and that would have been it. I’d have had my say and he’d wake up thinking he’d endured my outburst, I’d got it all off my chest, he’d tolerated my emotional hysteria, it was just women’s stuff, a storm in a teacup, he’d repaid any debt and now he could get on with his life as usual.’

Anna looked at me questioningly, expecting a reaction. ‘C’mon, Anna, you’re not the hysterical type. You might seem to lose your temper, but you wouldn’t have lost your cool. You’d have given it to him straight between the eyes, chapter and verse, left him understanding exactly what he’d done to you.’

‘Maybe, but with exactly the same result. I’m a woman and he’s a Japanese man, that’s not an equal contest in this country. I’ve consoled myself that I’ve had
Konoe-san
at my mercy and could easily have killed him had I wished to do so. He’ll always know that, know that I could have taken the ultimate revenge but chose not to.’

‘Hell, Anna, you must have been tempted. I know I would have been.’

Anna paused and shrugged. ‘But what would that have done to me? I would have killed another person, this time in cold blood. Try convincing yourself that natural justice has been served, that you had every right to murder him.’ She looked at me directly. ‘Would you
really
have killed him?’

‘No, I suppose not, not in cold blood. I agree, scaring the shit out of him the way you did was a stroke of genius. But is that enough? One visit to the hospital the next morning to let him know you could have snuffed him out and to tell him why you did it, then forget him forever. Isn’t that why we came, to remove his power over you and, if possible, humiliate him? He told you himself, revealing the truth to his family was his greatest fear.’

‘Confronting my so-called nemesis and humiliating him isn’t going to cure me, Nicholas. I’m tired of all the bullshit, the psychological twaddle. “With Konoe Akira’s demise I pronounce you cured! Abracadabra, you’ve got your sex life back, Anna!” There isn’t going to be a miraculous cure, Nicholas. But now maybe I can put this whole thing behind me and get on with my life, knowing I had the means and the opportunity to kill him but chose not to do it.
My
choice this time!
My
decision. Maybe, just maybe, if my head is in the right place, this knowledge could eventually lead to a cure!’ Anna paused for breath before saying, ‘But I don’t know. In the meantime there may be something to gain in all of this,’ she hesitated, ‘if I keep my cool.’

I guess there wasn’t a lot I could say after all that. ‘So, okay, maybe put that way I’m forced to agree, but not with the last bit, the business . . . the something to be gained bit. Anna, you’re fraternising with the enemy. Can’t you see, having won, you’re setting yourself up all over again? Having once beaten the devil you don’t sit down and calmly negotiate another term in hell!’

‘Oh, Nicholas, don’t be so bloody melodramatic, the two things are totally separate. This is fishing for stars.’

‘What the fuck does that mean?’

‘It means an opportunity so big that you could never, under any circumstances, have achieved it without the planets aligning three ways in exactly the right configuration.’ Anna’s eyes shone with excitement. ‘I have to try and pull it off! If I don’t, then I’ll never get another chance like this again.’

I sighed. ‘You’ll have to explain.’

‘Yes, of course. While you’ve been away, Miss Sparkle and I have had a long discussion and a good look around the fish markets in Tokyo. I’ve also, as you are aware, talked at some length over the past four days with Konoe Akira.’

‘Miss Sparkle? How is she involved?’

‘Nicholas, please, let me finish. She
is
involved, and there’s an opportunity to make something out of this; yes, a
business
opportunity that virtually allows us to control Japanese fishing in the South Pacific!’

‘That’s why you’ve been talking incessantly about fish, is it? You first mentioned it when I called from Osaka. This business is about
fish
!’

‘Bravo!’ Anna replied, not without a tinge of sarcasm.

‘You’ve planned this all along, haven’t you? Like the Nauru House building site. Now I see it all. That’s why you wanted to accompany me to Japan!’

‘Don’t be an absolute bastard, Nicholas! No, I
hadn’t
planned it all along! No, it
isn’t
why I came to Japan with you,’ Anna cried. ‘That’s a
horrible
,
horrible
thing to say!’ She looked at me coldly and said, ‘You were kind enough to invite me to accompany you, and while I’ve enjoyed some aspects of being your handbag there have been other parts of your business trip I can’t say have been quite as rewarding for me.’

‘Ouch!’

Anna, having punished me, immediately calmed down. In a quiet and reasonable voice she said, ‘Nicholas, you agreed that my presence at Mitsubishi was helpful, now I need you to help me.’

‘How?’

‘Have lunch with Konoe Akira.’

Shocked, but trying not to show it, I said, ‘I’ll have to think about it.’ Then I realised I was being a deadshit and said, ‘Anna, gimme a break, will ya? I want us to get out of this bloody country! It’s been nothing but bad news from the moment we met those two pricks at Mitsubishi. You’ve seen Konoe Akira every day since his attack. Isn’t that enough fraternisation without us having to have lunch with the bastard?’

‘By the way, I have good news. I know you’ve been worried, but I’ve squared things with the
yakuza
. We’re quits, we owe them nothing.’

Anna, Tokyo

LYING IN BED THE
following morning Anna asked, ‘Nicholas, can we go home the day
after
tomorrow? It’s only one more day. Surely that’s okay?’

‘Didn’t you say you were having lunch with him today? What’s wrong with going home tomorrow?’

‘No, the lunch is tomorrow. Konoe Akira comes out of hospital today. You will come, won’t you, Nicholas?’

‘Whoa, Anna! I’ve thought about it. I’m not sure it’s such a good idea.’

‘He wants . . . he’s very anxious to meet you.’

‘We’ve already met.’

‘Nicholas, don’t be a smart arse!’

‘More like a sore arse! Still, I’m not sure. Why don’t you go alone? As you so often say, I have no head for business.’

Anna raised herself onto one elbow. ‘No, really! C’mon, Nicholas, you’re being churlish.’

I sat up, pushing the pillow into the small of my back. ‘Anna, I’ve thought about it for half the night. What you did – the way you’ve handled this whole thing – was remarkable.’ I looked over at her. ‘I
really
mean that. Bloody brilliant! But it doesn’t change how I feel personally about Konoe Akira. I can’t stop you being a part of whatever this proposition is, this fishing thing, but I don’t have to be involved. As far as I’m concerned it’s dining with the devil. You go for your life, darling, but leave me out of it.’

‘Nicholas, don’t be a bastard. It’s important you be there,’ Anna insisted.

‘Sweetheart, when I think of what he did to you, all I want to do is smash his buckteeth down his throat! This lunch – it’s your idea, isn’t it?’

‘No, honestly, it was his.’ She reached out and pushed me with the butt of her hand, ‘
And
that’s racist! He doesn’t have buckteeth!’

‘Christ, Anna, I don’t see the point! He has every reason to loathe me. I’ve got many more to despise him, including most recently a barely healed arse and bruised bollocks! Why are we having this lunch?’

‘I told you! It’s an interesting proposition. Besides, I thought you’d be curious.’

‘Curious! Jesus! I woke him up in the small hours of the morning with a pistol at his head, dressed him, frogmarched him through his own home, sat on his precious Korean vase and had the old bastard practically spitting in my face! Isn’t that up close and personal enough for one trip?’

‘He’s not like that; there’s another side to his personality,’ Anna pleaded.

‘Christ, I should hope so. What are you saying? That you’ve come to admire this arsehole?’

Anna didn’t answer. ‘Please, Nicholas, will you do it for my sake? It’s very important.’

‘Important? How? As you’ve said before, it isn’t going to lead to a miracle cure.
That
would have been important; the rest is bullshit!’

‘You can be a real bastard sometimes, Nicholas. For once it’s not personal, not about you and him. It’s a business opportunity you’d be a fool to pass up.’

‘Then count me a fool. If you lie down with a dog you’ll get up with fleas. Business? Fuck business!’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? Are you suggesting this is somehow shonky?’

‘Anna, we’ve all got to make choices in life, shonky or squeaky clean. I don’t want any part of it!’

‘Nick! Will you stop being so bloody sanctimonious! You haven’t even heard the proposition!’ Anna flicked her hair back. She now sat bolt upright, her legs crossed under her. Her use of ‘Nick’ together with her rigid body language was sufficient to warn me that she was readying for another fight. ‘At least come to the lunch, then. If you feel the same way, well, okay.’

I sighed. What we didn’t need was another row. Keeping my voice calm I said, ‘Anna, honestly, why would I want to go into business with Konoe Akira? For that matter, even have lunch with him? We’re never going to be friends.’

‘Nicholas, that’s not a reasonable thing to say! I keep telling you it’s not . . . he’s not like that. Don’t be such a drama queen! If you don’t like what he has to say, well, what have we lost?’

I shook my head. ‘Okay, I agree to stay another day in Japan. But you have your lunch with the devil and I’ll take the opportunity to see Gojo Mura.’

I could see she was suddenly furious. I’d switched tack and caught her by surprise.
Here it comes, the shit is about to hit the fan.
But just as suddenly the tears appeared and Anna looked at me appealingly, irresistibly beautiful. ‘I need you in on this, Nicholas. This lunch could change my life forever,’ she said softly. ‘Please, I beg you!’

I sighed.
Perfidious women –
 
how may a man ever hope to win?
‘Okay, we’ll have
your
lunch, but I’m not “in” on anything, understand? Assume nothing, bugger all.’ I looked at her sternly. ‘I mean it, Anna.’

Anna nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, then untangling her legs she rose to her knees and leaned forward and kissed me, then grabbed a pillow and bashed me over the head. ‘Come on, big boy, if you’re prepared to stand up for me I’ll decide if the result merits going down on you.’ She giggled.

What can you do? ‘As Uncle Joe would say, “Get ready, now, honey! Dat big one-eye snake he gonna give yoh a kiss on yoh sweet sugar lips you ain’t nevah gonna forget, baby doll!’

‘Nicholas! That’s disgusting!’ Anna smiled. ‘Did Joe really say that?’ She’d started to work her magic, using the soft pads of her unusually talented fingers and thumb.

‘How the hell would I know,’ I laughed, utterly defeated, sensing it had been no contest all along. Anna had long since perfected the means of getting her own way and, as she was now demonstrating, I was mere putty rapidly firming up in her pliant hands.

Lunch with Konoe Akira was at a restaurant that served
fugu
. Only the Japanese could come up with a culinary experience that involves a deadly poison. Let me explain. The speciality of the house was the toxic puffer fish, a species I learned to avoid as a child in New Britain, where everyone knew,
Fish him belong devil
. There is some evidence that the puffer fish contains the world’s second most deadly poison, and the Japanese, with their predisposition for dangerous thrillseeking, have made an art of challenging this toxic fish to kill them. The most poisonous variety, and therefore the most expensive, is known as
torafugu
.
Hai!
What fun. Nothing quite as exciting as knowing that your next bite might be your last. What’s more, you will not simply die, but die a horrible death, the poison causing paralysis so that you perish from asphyxiation while remaining fully conscious. Every year, several people in Japan die after eating at a
fugu
restaurant, an expensive and potentially fatal experience.

Young apprentice
fugu
chefs learn the extremely complex method of removing the poison as well as the many different ways to serve the fish. The final test of their skill couldn’t be simpler. First prepare your puffer fish, then eat it in front of the examiner. If you die, sorry you failed. Next apprentice please.

Eating puffer fish has been a traditional challenge since time out of mind and here is the paradox: it isn’t an acquired taste, it is simply a dull one – it tastes like mush. While it can be served up in dozens of different ways, it is the added ingredients that bring flavour to the dish, not the fish itself. The same ingredients added to almost any other variety of fish would give it a more agreeable taste than
fugu.

I well understood the dangers of eating
fugu –
 as usual the information came from the bishop – but I decided to say nothing to Anna and to see if Konoe Akira might drop it casually into the conversation. Perhaps he thought of it as some sort of Japanese one-upmanship, or a test of our courage?

We took a taxi to the restaurant and Anna made no comment as we passed through the door, above which hung the traditional square lantern with a puffer fish etched and illuminated on the glass. No doubt she thought it was simply the sign for a fish restaurant.

We were ushered through the busy public area to a private room where
Konoe-san
waited for us, seated not on the floor, as I had expected in a traditional Japanese restaurant, but on one of three chairs, perhaps a concession to his stiff leg, or perhaps to our stiff Western knees. He rose with some difficulty, propping himself up with his cane and bowing to Anna and then, hesitating just a moment too long, smiled and extended his hand to me. ‘Welcome,
Duncan-san
. We meet again,’ he said, nodding his head in a semblance of a bow.

‘Thank you,’ I replied smiling, then added, ‘I see you warned them to frisk me at the front door.’ It was a bad joke in poor taste, but Konoe Akira didn’t miss a beat.

‘A Browning automatic – the best,’ he chuckled. Love–fifteen to Konoe Akira as Anna’s startled look faded when he reacted positively. Love–thirty to Konoe Akira. Afterwards she castigated me, pointing out that I had risked offending him, upsetting everything only moments after we’d met.

‘It’s establishing terms, male dogs bum-sniffing,’ I’d explained.

‘Stupid little boys,’ she’d replied, unimpressed.

The Konoe Akira who now stood facing me in the
fugu
restaurant seemed very different from the confused elderly man I’d accosted in his flannel nightshirt when I’d held a pistol to his head. Somehow he seemed taller and his crew-cut steel grey hair, sharp brown eyes and straight prominent nose gave him a hawk-like appearance, the look of a man not to be taken lightly. He had the slightly gaunt face I associated with a judge, the headmaster of a famous school, a senior bureaucrat or, I suppose, the general he had once been. He was as slender as
Kinzo-san
and dressed in a similar way, in an expensive light-grey woollen pinstriped double-breasted suit, cream silk shirt and plain navy silk tie, although he hadn’t permitted himself the levity of a flamboyantly displayed breast-pocket handkerchief as had Doctor Honda, and the highly polished toecaps of his black leather shoes were straight out of the army officer’s dress manual. While he was a man in his mid-sixties, and therefore not considered old, pain had etched lines down from his mouth and from the corners of his eyes to make him look ten years older. Obviously his smashed knee and permanently straightened leg continued to trouble him and the drugs he took to assuage the constant pain had left its mark. Moreover, he’d just recovered from a severe angina attack.

He grunted when Anna impulsively took his arm as he awkwardly seated himself, whether from displeasure at being helped or in recognition of her consideration it was impossible to tell. His composed expression gave nothing away.

Anna, wearing a new navy blue Coco Chanel suit with narrow pink piping she must have bought while I was in Osaka, high-heeled black court shoes, and her diamond earrings, had barely said a word since we’d entered. Now seated, she unfolded her napkin, placed it carefully and silently on her lap, looked up and smiled, saying, ‘Well, here we are. [Sigh.] Who would have thought?’

I could sense that the perfectly poised public Anna was very nervous at the thought of her lover and the man who had managed to manipulate her young mind coming together at last.

‘I am honoured that you have arranged it so,
Anna-san
,’ Konoe Akira said, putting the lie to her claim that the luncheon was his idea.

I’m ashamed to admit that the best I could manage initially was an inane smile, but then just before my silence began to appear sullen I snatched a handful of initiative and signalled, then called to the waiter. ‘Sake, please!’ I thus indicated that we would be paying for the lunch and avoided the uncomfortable silence that had been developing.

The waiter arrived promptly and poured sake into two tiny blue porcelain cups. Japanese women don’t customarily drink alcohol, so he looked surprised when I indicated he should pour a third for Anna. As soon as he finished, I turned to Anna and then to Konoe Akira, saying, ‘May I propose a toast?’

‘Of course!’ They both smiled and the tension seemed to ease somewhat. Then taking up the tiny cups I pronounced, ‘To a future less troubled.’

We chorused, ‘
Kampai!
’ and swallowed the contents of the tiny cups in one gulp, whereupon the hovering waiter immediately began to refill them. Anna indicated that she was no longer a participant in what was to become a competition between the old bull and the young bull, and which I might be permitted to say I think I won. The practice I’d gained with the doctor who’d removed my stitches in the
ryokan
where I’d spent my last night among the mountain beeches proved invaluable. Thus, in the age-old manner of man and boy I earned my stripes, even though I hardly qualified as a boy. But I was twenty years younger than Konoe Akira and a foreigner drinking sake
in a country where one’s capacity to drink large amounts without being rendered comatose is admired. Becoming intoxicated in Japanese society is essentially a masculine pursuit and, like so much other intemperate male behaviour, is tolerated by the society. In fact drunks, provided their behaviour is not too appalling, are treated indulgently. I felt I had to earn some respect for my drinking ability at least.