James Bond Anthology (286 page)

‘About six of them, as far as I can remember. J.A.L. certainly takes good care of your stomach.’

‘Why did you choose the willow-pattern route? How was the old ruptured duck?’

‘They told me the bird was a crane. Very dainty. But efficient. Thought I might as well practise being inscrutable before plunging into all this.’ Bond waved at the cluttered shambles of the Tokyo suburbs through which they were tearing at what seemed to Bond a suicidal speed. ‘Doesn’t look the most attractive city in the world. And why are we driving on the left?’

‘God knows,’ said Henderson moodily. ‘The bloody Japs do everything the wrong way round. Read the old instruction books wrong, I daresay. Light switches go up instead of down. Taps turn to the left. Door handles likewise. Why, they even race their horses clockwise instead of anti-clockwise like civilized people. As for Tokyo, it’s bloody awful. It’s either too hot or too cold or pouring with rain. And there’s an earthquake about every day. But don’t worry about them. They just make you feel slightly drunk. The typhoons are worse. If one starts to blow, go into the stoutest bar you can see and get drunk. But the first ten years are the worst. It’s got its point when you know your way around. Bloody expensive if you live Western, but I stick to the back alleys and do all right. Really quite exhilarating. Got to know the lingo though, and when to bow and take off your shoes and so on. You’ll have to get the basic routines straight pretty quickly if you’re going to make any headway with the people you’ve come to see. Underneath the stiff collars and striped pants in the government departments, there’s still plenty of the old
samurai
tucked away. I laugh at them for it, and they laugh back because they’ve got to know my line of patter. But that doesn’t mean I don’t bow from the waist when I know it’s expected of me and when I want something. You’ll get the hang of it all right.’ Henderson fired some Japanese at the driver who had been glancing frequently in his driving mirror. The driver laughed and replied cheerfully. ‘Thought so,’ said Henderson. ‘We’ve got ourselves a tail. Typical of old Tiger. I told him you were staying at the Okura, but he wants to make sure for himself. Don’t worry. It’s just part of his crafty ways. If you find one of his men breathing down your neck in bed tonight, or a girl if you’re lucky, just talk to them politely and they’ll bow and hiss themselves out.’

But a solitary sleep had followed the serious drinking in the Bamboo Bar of the Okura, and the next day had been spent doing the sights and getting some cards printed that described Bond as Second Secretary in the Cultural Department of the Australian Embassy. ‘They know that’s our intelligence side,’ said Henderson, ‘and they know I’m the head of it and you’re my temporary assistant, so why not spell it out for them?’ And that evening they had gone for more serious drinking to Henderson’s favourite bar, Melody’s, off the Ginza, where everybody called Henderson ‘Dikko’ or ‘Dikko-san’, and where they were ushered respectfully to the quiet corner table that appeared to be his
Stammtisch
.

And now Henderson reached under the table and, with a powerful wrench, pulled out the wires and left them hanging. ‘I’ll give that black bastard Melody hell for this when I get around to it,’ he said belligerently. ‘And to think of all I’ve done for the dingo bastard! Used to be a favourite pub of the English Colony and the Press Club layabouts. Had a good restaurant attached to it. That’s gone now. The Eyteye cook trod on the cat and spilled the soup and he picked up the cat and threw it into the cooking stove. Of course that got around pretty quick, and all the animal-lovers and sanctimonious bastards got together and tried to have Melody’s licence taken away. I managed to put in squeeze in the right quarter and saved him, but everyone quit his restaurant and he had to close it. I’m the only regular who’s stuck to him. And now he goes and does this to me! Oh well, he’ll have had the squeeze put on
hi
m, I suppose. Anyway, that’s the end of the tape so far as T.T.’s concerned. I’ll give him hell too. He ought to have learned by now that me and my friends don’t want to assassinate the Emperor or blow up the Diet or something.’ Dikko glared around him as if he proposed to do both those things. ‘Now then, James, to business. I’ve fixed up for you to meet Tiger tomorrow morning at eleven. I’ll pick you up and take you there. “The Bureau of All-Asian Folkways.” I won’t describe it to you. It’d spoil it. Now, I don’t really know what you’re here for. Spate of top secret cables from Melbourne. To be deciphered by yours truly in person. Thanks very much! And my Ambassador, Jim Saunderson, good bloke, says he doesn’t want to know anything about it. Thinks it’d be even better if he didn’t meet you at all. Okay with you? No offence, but he’s a wise guy and likes to keep his hands clean. And I don’t want to know anything about your job either. That way, you’re the only one who gets the powdered bamboo in his coffee. But I gather you want to get some high-powered gen out of Tiger without the C.I.A. knowing anything about it. Right? Well that’s going to be a dicey business. Tiger’s a career man with a career mind. Although, on the surface, he’s a hundred per cent
demokorasu
, he’s a deep one – very deep indeed. The American occupation and the American influence here look like a very solid basis for a total American-Japanese alliance. But once a Jap, always a Jap. It’s the same with all the other great nations – Chinese, Russian, German, English. It’s their bones that matter, not their lying faces. And all those races have got tremendous bones. Compared with the bones, the smiles or scowls don’t mean a thing. And time means nothing for them either. Ten years is the blink of a star for the big ones. Get me? So Tiger, and his superiors, who, I suppose, are the Diet and, in the end, the Emperor, will look at your proposition principally from two angles. Is it immediately desirable, today? Or is it a long-term investment? Something that may pay off for the country in ten, twenty years. And, if I were you, I’d stick to that spiel – the long-term talk. These people, people like Tiger, who’s an absolutely top man in Japan, don’t think in terms of days or months or years. They think in terms of centuries. Quite right, when you come to think of it.’

Dikko Henderson made a wide gesture with his left hand. Bond decided that Dikko was getting cheerfully tight. He had found a Palomar pony to run with. They must be rare enough in Tokyo. They were both past the eighth flask of
saké
, but Dikko had also laid a foundation of Suntory whisky in the Okura while he’d been waiting for Bond to write out an innocuous cable to Melbourne with the prefix ‘Informationwise’, which meant that it was for Mary Goodnight, to announce his arrival and give his current address. But it was all right with Bond that Dikko should be getting plastered. He would talk better and looser and, in the end, wiser that way. And Bond wanted to pick his brains.

Bond said, ‘But what sort of a chap is this Tanaka? Is he your enemy or your friend?’

‘Both. More of a friend probably. At least I’d guess so. I amuse him. His C.I.A. pals don’t. He loosens up with me. We’ve got things in common. We share a pleasure in the delights of
samsara
 – wine and women. He’s a great cocks-man. I also have ambitions in that direction. I’ve managed to keep him out of two marriages. Trouble with Tiger is he always wants to marry ’em. He’s paying cock-tax, that’s alimony in the Australian vernacular, to three already. So he’s acquired an ON with regard to me. That’s an obligation – lmost as important in the Japanese way of life as “face”. When you have an ON, you’re not very happy until you’ve discharged it honourably, if you’ll pardon the bad pun. And if a man makes you a present of a salmon, you mustn’t repay him with a shrimp. It’s got to be with an equally large salmon – larger if possible, so that then you’ve jumped the man, and now he has an ON with regard to you, and you’re quids in morally, socially and spiritually – and the last one’s the most important. Well now. Tiger’s ON towards me is a very powerful one, very difficult to discharge. He’s paid little slices of it off with various intelligence dope. He’s paid off another big slice by accepting your presence here and giving you an interview so soon after your arrival. If you’d been an ordinary supplicant, it might have taken you weeks. He’d have given you a fat dose of
shikiri-naoshi
 – that’s making you wait, giving you the great stone face. The
sumo
wrestlers use it in the ring to make an opponent look and feel small in front of the audience. Got it? So you start with that in your favour. He would be predisposed to do what you want because that would remove all his ON towards me and, by his accounting, stick a whole packet of ON on my back towards him. But it’s not so simple as that. All Japanese have permanent ON towards their superiors, the Emperor, their ancestors and the Japanese gods. This they can only discharge by doing “the right thing”. Not easy, you’ll say. Because how can you know what the higher echelon thinks is the right thing? Well, you get out of that by doing what the bottom of the ladder thinks right – i.e. your immediate superiors. That passes the buck, psychologically, on to the Emperor, and he’s got to make his peace with ancestors and gods. But that’s all right with him, because he embodies all the echelons above him, so he can get on with dissecting fish, which is his hobby, with a clear conscience. Got it? It’s not really as mysterious as it sounds. Much the same routine as operates in big corporations, like I.C.I. or Shell, or in the Services, except with them the ladder stops at the Board of Directors or the Chiefs of Staff. It’s easier that way. You don’t have to involve the Almighty and your great-grandfather in a decision to cut the price of aspirin by a penny a bottle.’

‘It doesn’t sound very
demokorasu
to me.’

‘Of course it isn’t, you dumb bastard. For God’s sake, get it into your head that the Japanese are a separate human species. They’ve only been operating as a civilized people, in the debased sense we talk about it in the West, for fifty, at the most a hundred years. Scratch a Russian and you’ll find a Tartar. Scratch a Japanese and you’ll find a
samurai
–or what he thinks is a
samurai
. Most of this
samurai
stuff is a myth, like the Wild West bunk the Americans are brought up on, or your knights in shining armour at King Arthur’s court. Just because people play baseball and wear bowler hats doesn’t mean they’re quote civilized unquote. Just to show you I’m getting rather tight – not drunk, mark you – I’d add that the U.N. are going to reap the father and mother of a whirlwind by quote liberating unquote the colonial peoples. Give ’em a thousand years, yes. But give ’em ten, no. You’re only taking away their blow-pipes and giving them machine guns. Just you wait for the first one to start crying to high heaven for nuclear fission. Because they must have quote parity unquote with the lousy colonial powers. I’ll give you ten years for that to happen, my friend. And when it does, I’ll dig myself a deep hole in the ground and sit in it.’

Bond laughed. ‘That also doesn’t sound very
demokorasu
.’

‘“I fornicate upon thy
demokorasu
” as brother Hemingway would have said. I stand for government by an elite.’ Dikko Henderson downed his ninth pint of
saké
.

‘And voting graded by each individual’s rating in that elite. And one tenth of a vote for my government if you don’t agree with me!’

‘For God’s sake, Dikko! How in hell did we get on to politics? Let’s go and get some food. I’ll agree there’s a certain aboriginal common sense in what you say ...’

‘Don’t talk to me about the aborigines! What in hell do you think you know about the aborigines? Do you know that in my country there’s a move afoot, not afoot, at full gallop, to give the aborigines the vote? You pommy poofter. You give me any more of that liberal crap and I’ll have your balls for a bow-tie.’

Bond said mildly, ‘What’s a poofter?’

‘What you’d call a pansy. No,’ Dikko Henderson got to his feet and fired a string of what sounded like lucid Japanese at the man behind the bar, ‘before I condemn you utterly, we’ll go and eat eels – place where you can get a serious bottle of plonk to match. Then we’ll go to “The House of Total Delight”. After that, I will give you my honest verdict, honestly come by.’

Bond said, ‘You’re a no-good kangaroo bum, Dikko. But I like eels. As long as they’re not jellied. I’ll pay for them and for the later relaxation. You pay for the rice wine and the plonk, whatever that is. Take it easy. The wingy at the bar has an appraising look.’

‘I come to appraise Mr Richard Lovelace Henderson, not to bury him.’ Dikko Henderson produced a wad of thousand yen notes and began counting them out for the waiter. ‘Not yet, that is.’ He walked, with careful majesty, up to the bar and addressed himself to the large Negro in a plum-coloured coat behind it. ‘Melody, be ashamed of yourself!’ Then he led the way, with massive dignity, out of the bar.

5 | MAGIC 44

Dikko Henderson came to fetch Bond at ten o’clock next morning. He was considerably overhung. The hard blue eyes were veined with blood and he made straight for the Bamboo Bar and ordered himself a double brandy and ginger ale. Bond said mildly, ‘You shouldn’t have poured all that
saké
on top of the Suntory. I can’t believe Japanese whisky makes a good foundation for anything.’

‘You’ve got something there, sport. I’ve got myself a proper
futsukayoi
 – honourable hangover. Mouth like a vulture’s crutch. Soon as we got home from that lousy cat house, I had to go for the big spit. But you’re wrong about Suntory. It’s a good enough brew. Stick to the cheapest, the White Label, at around fifteen bob a bottle. There are two smarter brands, but the cheap one’s the best. Went up to the distillery some whiles ago and met one of the family. Told me an interesting thing about whisky. He said you can only make good whisky where you can take good photographs. Ever heard that one? Said it was something to do with the effect of clear light on the alcohol. But did I talk a lot of crap last night? Or did you? Seem to recollect that one of us did.’