The Congress of Rough Riders

by John Boyne

  Once I’d grown used to the idea, I quite enjoyed the thought of having the house to myself for a couple of days. Although I’d lived alone in Kyoto, I’d almost never had any time to myself. When I wasn’t working, I was with Hitomi or some of the friends I’d made through the newspaper or through her. I’d led a busy life. It was rare that I had the chance to just hang out on my own, watch television, read a book, and it felt nice. I wanted to know more about Isaac, of course, especially about his illness, but it could wait a couple of days. It had waited this long already.

  I phoned Adam and arranged to meet him and Justin in our local that evening and spent a long time getting ready. I was excited about seeing them again; two years was a long time to be away from my best friends and I wondered whether they would have changed much. They were the closest I had to brothers. I decided to arrive a little late in order to make an entrance; presumably they had seen a lot of each other since Adam’s return a year earlier, so I would be the guest of honour on the evening.

  I scanned the pub when I arrived, looking for them. The surroundings were exactly as I had left them. The same wallpaper on the walls, the same ratty carpet. Even the music had hardly changed; I entered to the sound of Chesney Hawkes, which was blaring from a jukebox. I’d heard that song every day for about three months the previous year because Hitomi had loved it and played it relentlessly. At first, it was hard to spot my friends as the bar was quite busy but eventually I saw them seated at a side table near the fireplace, chatting to each other happily. I was immediately dismayed to see they had brought dates with them; I knew from Justin’s brief letters that they had both been involved in relationships for quite a while now but nevertheless it hadn’t occurred to me that they would bring them along that night, as it was my first time to see them again and I thought it would just be for us. It made me want to leave instantly. They hadn’t seen me yet and I slipped into the gents quickly to take a look at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t sure why exactly, but I wanted to look my best when I met them all. Our childhood days had ended, I thought. Perhaps this was the beginning of our adult relationships.

  ‘Evening all,’ I said quietly as I finally approached the table and all four of them looked up at me, Adam and Justin’s faces breaking into a wide grin almost immediately. They stood up and we all burst out laughing in our excitement and bear-hugged each other, saying little for the moment, just taking in the fact that we were together again happily. They made their separate introductions to me, Adam introduced Kate who he had fallen in with while travelling and they had become a couple somewhere between Athens and Morocco apparently, now she lived with him just down the road; Justin introduced Mark, who I had met briefly before leaving London a couple of years earlier anyway but who I had barely got to know before leaving for Japan. I shook hands with these two strangers, not quite knowing what to say to them, and there was an awkward silence for a moment before Kate announced that it was her round and disappeared for a few moments before returning with a tray-load of lagers.

  ‘It’s good to see you both,’ I said, looking from Adam to Justin with a cheesy grin on my face. ‘I can’t believe it’s been so long. Too long. I’m sorry I’m such a crap writer.’

  ‘I thought you were a journalist,’ said Kate quickly, looking confused.

  ‘I mean I’m not much of a letter writer,’ I explained. We exchanged pleasantries in the group for a little while before naturally pairing off into two groups, my two friends and I involved in one conversation, Kate and Mark involved in another. As I glanced across at them I wished that Hitomi was there to join them. I didn’t exactly feel like a gooseberry, considering I had just returned to the city, but nevertheless I couldn’t help but notice that I was the only one of us who would be going home alone that night. The three of us had grown up together but I felt it would be a very adult thing for us to be sitting in a pub talking, while our partners chatted to each other as well. Maybe someday, I reasoned.

  ‘After the Gold Coast, I went to Thailand,’ Adam told me as we caught up. ‘Did the whole student-traveller thing there. Then on to India, where an elephant nearly killed me. I didn’t stay there long though and moved up to Turkey and Greece, then over to North Africa before coming home. Kate and I met along the way.’

  ‘Cool,’ I said, the only response that sprung to mind.

  ‘What was Japan like?’ asked Justin, another regular question but unlike when Isaac had asked me, I tried to give some semblance of an answer.

  ‘The thing about it is that from the moment I got there, I felt like an outsider,’ I explained. ‘And that never changed. Even when you grow a little more proficient in the language and you can read the street signs and so on, you never stop thinking that you’re different there, probably because physically you’re different and you’re trying to communicate in a foreign tongue. Everything was like a different world. But once you grow used to it, you learn to love it. I loved it anyway.’

  ‘Will you go back?’ Mark asked me, rejoining the conversation, and I shrugged.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘My father’s sick. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Isaac’s sick?’ asked Adam, looking at me in surprise. ‘I didn’t know that. What’s wrong with him?’

  I felt a bit embarrassed since I wasn’t quite sure how to answer him. ‘I’m not too sure, to be honest with you,’ I explained. ‘He wrote to me and told me … well he said that he wasn’t well and I should come over to see him before it was too late.’ I shrugged. ‘So here I am,’ I added.

  ‘Jesus, sorry, William,’ said Adam. ‘I didn’t know. I see him around a bit and he looks fine. I guess he’s pretty old though.’

  ‘Yeah, he said he saw you and Justin a couple of weeks back,’ I muttered.

  ‘Well we run into each other all the time around town. And Justin sees him in the bank almost every day, don’t you?’

  I turned to look at Justin who interrupted quickly. ‘Not every day,’ he said, looking down at the table. I stared at him in surprise.

  ‘In the bank?’ I asked. ‘What’s he doing in there every day?’ Justin said nothing and I looked around, sure there was something going on here that I wasn’t being told. ‘Justin?’ I said. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, looking at Adam as if he wanted to tell him off for divulging a confidence. ‘He’s in sometimes, I guess. I’m not sure what for.’

  ‘Well what could he be in there for?’ I demanded. ‘He’s not exactly got millions in his account, has he?’

  ‘William, I don’t know,’ said Justin in a firm tone of voice, placing his hand decisively on the table to indicate that he wanted to move on. ‘Tell us more about your trip, okay?’

  I stared at him and scratched my head. The whole thing appeared to be growing more and more bizarre. First the letter, then Isaac’s mysterious disappearance, and now these frequent trips to the bank. I wished it was Tuesday already as I wanted to get to the bottom of it. I considered continuing this conversation but it was obvious that they didn’t know much about it and if I pushed things, an awkwardness would only develop.

  ‘So, William,’ said Mark after the silence had grown unbearable. ‘You didn’t get married or anything over there, did you?’

  I laughed and shook my head. ‘Not quite,’ I said.

  ‘What happened to what’s-her-name?’ asked Adam. ‘You were involved in something, weren’t you?’

  I nodded. ‘Hitomi Naoyuki,’ I said in a quiet voice and for some reason my eyes went to Kate’s as I said her name. ‘Yeah, we were involved. About eighteen months altogether.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Kate. ‘Is she following you back here?’

  I thought about it; it wasn’t something I’d considered. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘She’s got some phobia about England. Thinks she’ll die if she comes here.’ They all stared at me blankly and I shrugged as if to say don’t ask me. ‘Anyway,’ I continued, hoping to explain things a little better, ‘She�
�s got her family in Kyoto. And her job.’

  ‘Maybe it was for the best you came here then,’ said Kate in an offhand tone as another tray of drinks arrived. That hit a nerve and I shot her an irritated look.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. Why do you say that?’

  She looked at me as if the speed of my response had surprised her. Well,’ she said. ‘I just mean that if you broke up because you had to come back and see your sick father, the relationship must have been ending anyway.’

  ‘No,’ I said, shaking my head furiously. ‘That’s not it. That’s not it at all. We were nowhere near to breaking up. Everything was going fine. She just didn’t want to come with me, that’s all.’

  ‘Okay, take it easy,’ she said. ‘I was only saying. I mean do you plan on going back to Japan? Is she waiting for you?’

  I didn’t know whether she was or wasn’t but felt unwilling to let Kate know that. ‘I have to play it by ear,’ I said eventually. ‘See what’s happening with Isaac and if all is well, then yes of course I want to go back.’ Although those were the words I uttered, I felt a sudden anger towards Hitomi which had not been present before. Kate was right; it had been a pretty stupid reason for us to break up and after eighteen months it was cruel of Hitomi to let me leave the country without so much as an explanation or a kiss goodbye. I clenched my fists and felt the enormity of what had happened for the first time.

  ‘We’re going on holiday ourselves soon,’ said Justin after a moment. ‘America. Taking a month off and travelling around some of the southern states.’

  I smiled. Not another one who was going to be bringing home tales of Kansas and Missouri to haunt me with. I excused myself and went to the other side of the bar, out of sight of my friends, and asked for some change. Checking my watch I calculated quickly that it would be early morning in Kyoto and that Hitomi would be getting dressed for work. Shielding myself from the noise of the bar and the music, I fed a couple of pounds into the phone and dialled her number, waiting for the connection to be made. I let it ring until it eventually cut off but no one had answered it. What surprised me was that Hitomi’s answering machine, on which I had left countless messages in the past, did not pick up as it normally did after the fourth ring. I assumed she must have unplugged it for some reason but even this surprised me, as she was paranoid about missing messages and had never even so much as switched it off in all the time I had known her. Wondering whether I had dialled the wrong number in error, I tried again but with the same result. I stood by the phone for a moment, confused by her, by Isaac, by London; for the first time in years I felt as if I was not in control of my life and that there were things going on which I just couldn’t see. I began to feel a little paranoid myself and had to shake myself out of it, blaming it on continuing jetlag which might take a couple of days to pass.

  I paid for one more round and rejoined my friends, glancing at my watch as I sat down, hoping the evening would end soon so I could go home and be alone with my thoughts. In the meantime I put up a pretence of good humour.

  When Isaac eventually returned home, he surprised me almost as much as I had him. It was four days later and I had slept fitfully during that time, anxious for him, confused by the secrets which seemed to be hovering around my head. A few nights after that evening in the pub, Justin and Mark, Adam and Kate and I went out again; having got the awkward initial meeting out of the way we were more free to enjoy ourselves and drank a lot before heading to a club for some late drinks and to dance. I had tried to phone Hitomi several times since that earlier evening but with no success and she lingered on my mind, my mood shifting between longing, confusion, a desperate sense of loss and outright anger. When I stepped inside the nightclub that evening, a single friend with two couples, I resolved to put her out of my mind and moved like a tiger from girl to girl before clicking with someone whose name I never even caught. I brought her home with me that night and we had sex, nothing more, before falling asleep on separate sides of my bed, barely aware of who the other was, neither one of us particularly caring. I was making her a cup of tea the following morning, attempting dismally to make conversation, when Isaac walked in and stared at us both with a mixture of amusement and irritation.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, extending a hand to her in a pointless gesture; both she and I knew we would most likely never see each other again once she walked out the front door. She wanted only to leave and I made no attempt to keep her there; in my head I was feeling less than the man I knew I was. In eighteen months I had never been unfaithful to Hitomi, had never wanted to be, and now that had changed. It was meaningless and had nothing to do with her, I knew that much, but nevertheless I felt guilty. The girl left, I took a shower and came back downstairs to confront my father.

  ‘You might have phoned,’ I said as we had a cup of tea together. ‘I was worried. You just disappeared off. I didn’t know where you’d gone.’

  ‘Well at least it was only for a few days and not a couple of years,’ he said irritably. ‘Don’t speak down to me, William, do you hear me?’

  ‘I’m not speaking down to you,’ I protested, feeling a little chastised. ‘It’s just that I arrived here and you immediately ran off without a word.’

  ‘Did you not get my note?’

  ‘Yes, I got your note, but it was hardly an explanation, was it?’

  ‘I had business to take care of,’ he said and for the first time it occurred to me that he was wearing a suit and tie and his hair had been recently cut. For a dying man in his mid-seventies, he looked remarkably sprightly.

  ‘What business?’ I asked in frustration. ‘What are you up to anyway? Isaac, we need to talk,’ I added in a more plaintive voice. ‘You hardly said anything in your note, only to tell me that—’

  ‘I told you I would be away for a couple of days,’ he said, his voice raised slightly. ‘What more do you—’

  ‘Not that note,’ I interrupted. ‘The one you sent me in Japan. The one that brought me home in the first place.’

  He frowned and looked as if he was trying to rack his brain to recall it. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, and I thought he looked a little shamefaced as he said it. ‘That’s right. I did write to you there, didn’t I?’

  ‘That’s why I came home,’ I continued, speaking quietly now and as I came towards my next sentence I had an urge to reach out and place my hand across his on the table. ‘You said you were sick,’ I explained. ‘That you didn’t have long to live. Tell me about it. What’s happened? What’s wrong with you?’

  He licked his lips and seemed about to speak but changed his mind and stood up instead, bringing his cup across to the sink and rinsing it out, his back turned to me as he finally spoke. ‘I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘Don’t worry about you?’ I asked, amazed by his nonchalance. ‘How can I not worry about you? You’re dying. You’re my father,’ I added. ‘I want to help you. What does your doctor say?’

  He turned now and looked at me, his eyes squinting as he took me in. ‘How old are you now, William? Twenty-two?’ I nodded. ‘Do you know that when your great-grandfather was twenty-two he was married, had built a town, burnt it to the ground, killed who knows how many thousands of buffaloes, hobnobbed with generals and presidents, brought a Russian—’

  ‘Isaac,’ I said firmly, interrupting him. ‘I know all that. What’s your point?’

  ‘My point is, William,’ he said, stating my name firmly, his tone implying for once that he would rather I didn’t use his given name. ‘My point, since you ask for it, is that he was not bumming around the world, doing nothing with his life.’

  ‘Who wasn’t?’ I asked, confused.

  ‘Your great-grandfather,’ he said. Who do you think?’

  I looked at him as if he was mad. ‘Okay,’ I said slowly. ‘Now getting back to your illness—’

  ‘William, I’ve come up with a plan,’ he said, returning to the table and sitting down with a gleam in his eyes. ‘You want to make something
of your life, don’t you?’

  I shrugged. ‘I guess,’ I said non-committally. ‘But I’m doing all right. I’ve got a career of sorts started.’

  ‘Doing what?’ he asked, as if he had never been informed of it.

  ‘Well, the writing of course,’ I said. ‘Journalism. Things are going pretty well for me in Japan. I’ve made a lot of—’

  ‘Oh that’s not worth anything,’ he said dismissively and my eyes opened a little wider in surprise, irritated by how my life and what I did with it meant so little to him. He must have sensed that feeling because he immediately sought to disabuse me of it. ‘It’s because I care about you so much, William, that I’ve come up with this plan,’ he said. ‘I’ve thought of something you can do. Something we can do together. Just hear me out, that’s all I ask.’ I sat back in my chair and folded my arms to indicate that I was prepared to listen. A sick feeling in my stomach began to form; I knew instinctively that I was not going to like what I was about to hear. ‘I’m starting a new business,’ he began.

  ‘A business,’ I said in a flat tone. ‘What do you mean? What kind of a business? You’re seventy-four, for God’s sake.’

  ‘So what if I am? That doesn’t mean I’m ready for the scrap-heap yet, you know. What do you think this country is most in need of at the moment? What do you think the people want that they just don’t have?’ I thought about it. A couple of vaguely political answers sprang to my mind but, knowing that none of them could possibly be anywhere close to where he was going on this, I held my tongue and waited for him to tell me. He held his hands in the air, the palms facing me, and pulled them away from each other slowly, as if to indicate a curtain opening at the theatre. ‘Entertainment,’ he announced with a flourish. ‘That’s what they’re missing, William. That’s what they want. Entertainment. Something to snap them out of the humdrum. Entertainment,’ he repeated for the third time.

  ‘Right,’ I said, trying to take this in. ‘Okay then. So your plan is …?’