Ransom

by Jay McInerney

  Mojo Domo was onstage. Kano was singing about a woman who had done him wrong, his face sweaty and twisted with apparent pain. The worst blues, Ransom thought, was the hurt you carried after you did someone wrong.

  A man standing near Ransom in puffy Chiang Mai hill tribe pants kept looking him over. When the set ended and Dana cleared out, he took the vacant stool. “What’s happening?” he said, then pointed at Ransom’s callused hand. “Karate, am I right?”

  Ransom said, “India, am I right?”

  The man smiled like an aspiring saint and said, yes, he’d been there. He had that look of curiosity which has been sated, a long-distance gaze which had stretched so far it finally snapped and turned back on itself. Either drugs or religion. Asia burn. He had seen things, and he would tell you all about them while leaving the impression that he was holding back something larger and more profound. And I only am escaped alone to tell thee. Sufic mysteries, corpses burning on the ghats of Benares, eternity in a grain of Thai heroin.

  “Just arrive?” Ransom said. Feeling he’d heard it all before, he was hoping to keep it short.

  “Three days. Flew into Tokyo and I mean I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. It reminded me of this dream I had in Lahore. I was inside this beehive—terrified, right? All around me these giant bees with like TV antennas on their heads. But I kept moving deeper and deeper into the beehive ’cause I was looking for something. Then it comes to me, right? That there’s no honey in the hive. I know it but the bees don’t. They kept building these wax things—cells, fucking cells, right? Think about that for a minute. But they’d forgotten the original purpose. That’s what was frightening. That’s what Tokyo was like.”

  The movement of his face and his body seemed weirdly out of sync. His hands were in constant motion and his shoulders jumped at odd intervals, but the face remained sleepy and serene. The smoke from his Indonesian clove cigarette was beginning to irritate Ransom’s eyes.

  “We’ve forgotten the original purpose,” he said. “We’ve forgotten the honey.”

  “What honey?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” He smiled at Ransom as if they were co-conspirators. “From the Zen point of view, it has no name. The Hindus have exactly one thousand names for it. In Hebrew the name is a secret that can’t be spoken and that’s only known to a few initiates at any one time. But it’s within us all.”

  “Right.” Ransom had heard enough.

  “Hey, have you ever hung out in Goa? I feel like I’ve seen you.”

  Ransom shook his head.

  “Sri Lanka?”

  “Nope.”

  “I have this like image of you on a beach.”

  “I’m not really the beach type.”

  “I’m a writer,” he said. “I try to observe everything wherever I am.”

  “What do you write?”

  “Apocrypha. The unauthorized version. You’ve probably seen some of my stuff here and there. Carl Digger’s the byline.”

  Ransom shrugged.

  “You’re thinking, what about Rolling Stone, right? In your view a hip mag, a forum for the unexpurgated stuff. Forget it. They’re government-CIA operated. Why do you think they do all those pieces on celeb interior designers and four-star restaurants? Hey, General Westmoreland doesn’t want you thinking about what he’s up to.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to like Japan,” Ransom said.

  “Why not?”

  “Lacks the landscape of Nepal and the epic spectacle of India. It’s a small-screen culture. You’ve got to be a miniaturist to appreciate it.”

  “There’s a story here,” Digger said. “A big story.” He paused. “You’re not a writer, are you?”

  “Don’t even write letters home,” Ransom said.

  Carl Digger nodded. He looked around with an air of suspicion, then leaned closer. “I was in Thailand when I heard about this monster strain of Vietnamese clap. You’ve heard about this, right? Gonzo gonorrhea. A clap that eats penicillin for breakfast. These U.S. Army doctors hit it with everything they had and it just kept on coming. So, what to do? Send the boys back home to infect our daughters and sisters? Not fucking likely. So what are the options? You could kill them. Killed, missing in action, that’s what the letters home would say. Hey, the U.S. military’s done worse things. Anyway, there were rumors to that effect. The Barb ran a piece in ’seventy-two, interview with a GI who said his buddy vanished from the infirmary. They said he was transferred to a hospital stateside. A week later, word comes down he’s officially missing in action. Like, what action? Vicious sponge bath from one of the nurses? This was not an isolated case.”

  He pulled a small vial from one of his large pockets and shook out a pill. “Lomotil,” he said. “When you do India you sacrifice your lower intestine to the gods in the water.”

  And some, Ransom thought, sacrifice their gray matter to the gods in the hash pipe. “I don’t see what your story has to do with Japan.”

  “Hey, how could you? They don’t want you to see. When I started checking into this thing, there were no end of leads, rumors, whispers, but one kept coming up. The specificity of place, the fact that unconnected people had the same story—this was something.” He leaned still closer; Ransom could feel his breath. “An island in the Inland Sea, somewhere off the coast of Shikoku. That’s where they’re keeping the boys. The island’s patrolled by U.S. Navy gunboats disguised as trawlers, no communications links with the outside world. I’ve talked to people who have talked to Japanese fishermen. Some fishing boat picked up an American in those waters, one of the clap carriers, and he’s hiding out on a farm in Shikoku.” He sat back and took a drag of clove. “I’m going to find him.”

  “Good luck,” Ransom said, holding out his hand to shake by way of ending the conversation.

  Digger shook the proffered hand as if he were out of practice. “You haven’t heard anything about this?”

  “Only rumors.”

  “Nothing specific?”

  “No. But I’ll tell you this much. One of the great things about Japan is that nobody can use that excuse about catching it from a toilet seat.”

  “Why not?”

  “No seats.”

  “Oh, right.” Digger wasn’t sure whether to laugh or not.

  Ransom excused himself for purposes of using a standard international urinal. He stood up and shook Digger’s hand one last time. “Have you ever run across a guy named Ian?” Ransom asked. “Ian Haxton. Tall guy with red hair?”

  Digger repeated the name several times, nodding his head gravely.

  “In Goa, maybe, or Katmandu?” Ransom said.

  “Hold on. Red hair, plays the sitar. Great sitar player. Scottish, right? Real heavy accent?”

  Ransom shook his head.

  “Pretty heavy accent. Maybe not so noticeable.”

  “See you around,” Ransom said. He knew it was a long shot, but he always asked.

  When he was halfway down the bar, Digger called out after him: “Kuta Beach, Bali?”

  “What?”

  “Did I see you there?”

  “Not in this life,” Ransom said.

  When Ransom returned, Digger was gone. Kano was sitting in Ransom’s seat, looking as if he had just run a marathon.

  “My man,” Kano said.

  Ransom slapped him five.

  “How was the set?” Kano asked.

  “Bad sounds, Kano.”

  “Bad?”

  “Bad as in badass. It means good.”

  Kano asked the bartender for a pencil. He scrawled a note, then looked up. “What does good mean?”

  “I don’t know. I really couldn’t tell you.”

  “But bad means good?”

  “Sometimes it does.”

  “Another question, please. We’re working up a new tune. What do you think it means? ‘Tired of Fattening Frogs for Snakes.’”

  “That’s the name of the song?”

  Kano nodded.

 
“Sounds to me like his woman has been stepping out and he’s sick of it.”

  “She’s got a back-door man?”

  “I’d say.”

  “Like, another mule’s been kicking in his stall?”

  “Same idea.”

  Kano made another note.

  “How’s it shaking in general?” Ransom said.

  “No fucking bread, man. My lady lost her job. She was, what do you say, a waitress. Person who waits out front in office.”

  “Receptionist.”

  “Right. Some asshole from office comes here one night, sees her with me and the guys. Goes back to office and says, this don’t be the kind of bitch we want working in our nice office. So that’s all she wrote.”

  “They can’t do that,” Ransom said.

  “‘Course they do that. This is Japan. That’s how it works.”

  “She should get a lawyer,” Ransom said.

  “This ain’t America, man.” Ransom knew what he meant. “What are you drinking?”

  Ransom said he was drinking tea.

  “You on the wagon train?”

  “I’m not on anything,” Ransom said.

  “Okay, sorry.”

  A schoolgirl wearing a Playboy sweatshirt approached Kano and whispered in his ear. “She wants your autograph,” Kano said, as the girl held out a small spiral-bound book. She kept her eyes fastened to her feet. The book, presumably a diary, had bunny rabbits on the cover and except for short handwritten entries was blank inside.

  Ransom signed with bold indecipherable strokes. The girl took the notebook and bobbed up and down in thanks, excusing herself over and over. From a nearby table her friends watched and giggled, covering their mouths with their hands.

  “Who am I supposed to be?” Ransom asked.

  “Keith Richards.”

  “Not bad. A few days ago I was Michael Landon—you know, Little Joe—and that really pissed me off.”

  “You gaijin all look the same, man. Have something to drink.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “Karate?”

  “Four hours tomorrow. If I’m lucky I’ll have enough energy after practice to kick-start my bike.”

  Ransom bought Kano a drink to take back for his second set. It seemed time to go home. Already he was getting tense about tomorrow’s practice. Night practice ran for a couple of hours at most, but Sunday was an endurance contest, four hours on asphalt in the sun. He should go home and sleep. As long as he stayed here, though, there was something in between him and practice. But the longer he stayed, the more practice began to infiltrate his attention, and the less sleep he would have to sustain him.

  Saturday I go out to play.

  Wake up Sunday morning, Lord,

  I get on my knees and I pray.

  Five weeks ago Sunday Ito had kicked Ransom in the balls. He lay on the asphalt doubled over, choking and gasping for breath. He left the bike in the parking lot, and Yamada gave him a ride home, where he lay down on the tatami without unrolling the futon. Then he got up and puked in the sink. For two days he was down and still felt waves of nausea the third. When he returned to practice on Wednesday night, the sensei asked where he had been. Ransom had been in the dojo long enough to feel that he did not want to say he had been hurt. He said he had had to go to Tokyo on business. The sensei asked why he hadn’t been told. He took for granted proprietorship of his disciple’s schedules. Work did not take precedence, although as an excuse it had greater validity than pain or injury, in which the sensei seemed not to believe. Fortunately, the sensei didn’t ask what business a part-time English conversation teacher would have in Tokyo.

  Miles came over from his table. “They think you’re Keith Richards.”

  “I know.”

  “I wouldn’t stand for that.”

  “Why not?”

  “That is one sorry-looking dude.”

  “Girls and boys of many ages would disagree.”

  “Do you know how ugly Keith Richards is? Keith Richards is so ugly, if he fell into a well you’d be pumping ugly for a month. Speaking of ugly, you haven’t seen DeVito?”

  “I doubt we will.”

  Miles squinted in the direction of the door. “Don’t look now but here comes the vanguard of the revolution.”

  Yukiko sat down on the stool beside Ransom’s. Her hair was cut very short, and she wore new, steel-rimmed glasses: the Trotsky look. She worked hard at being unattractive.

  “Well, howdy, Yukiko,” Miles said. “Was that you I saw on the news hijacking a 747? The stocking mask didn’t do you justice.”

  “Maybe I should wear a cowboy hat. Are you still selling them in your little shop?” she said. Miles and Yukiko had a long-standing feud. Yukiko seemed to hold Miles personally responsible for the fate of the American Indians.

  “I keep hoping you’ll come in and buy a pair of spurs or something, but I haven’t seen you around in a while,” Miles said. “Where you been—summer camp in Beirut? Outward Bound in Irkutsk?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Terrific to see you again,” Miles said, moving off.

  Yukiko turned to Ransom. “I was hoping I wouldn’t see you here. Just because I was hoping you had started to use your time constructively. Or that you had gone home.”

  “Home. What’s home? Home on the electric range? Where the buffalo roam? Where the heart is? Where you hang your hat? The buffalo are all in zoos, and nobody wears hats any more, which makes it difficult to locate this place—home.”

  “Please don’t try to entertain me.”

  They had met shortly after Ransom arrived in Japan. She worked as a clerk in a bookstore and spent the rest of her time marching, organizing and handing out leaflets. Yukiko had studied at Berkeley for three years in the late sixties, where she was big in the student movement. Their first date was a protest march against the American military presence in Japan, organized by the Red Army Faction at Kyoto University. Yukiko was mysterious about her affiliation with this group, although Ransom suspected she was not as involved as she wished to be. She was unequivocal in her views, however, advocating socialist revolution. American imperialism and the programmed complacency of the masses were the main obstacles. Ransom was not unsympathetic to this view. His vague sense of disgust with his homeland had certain identifiable political components. In the march, he held a banner which he couldn’t read. The other marchers were very polite to him. Many wanted to shake his hand. Yukiko told him later of the rumor that he was Tom Hayden.

  For three months they conducted an uneasy liaison. Yukiko could never quite forgive Ransom for being American. Ransom could not quite buy into her program, although when he first arrived in Japan he was desperate to attach himself somewhere, and would have liked to believe in a system that would relieve him of his own confusion. He had once fought for C.O. status back when Vietnam was still an issue, although the draft had already ended and everyone pointed out to him that it was just a formality. He wanted to make a stand, but no one was interested.

  Yukiko ordered a Coke and asked Ransom why it was that gaijin were inevitably attracted to all the quaint and reactionary aspects of Japanese culture. “Like the martial arts.”

  “I’m sure you have a theory.”

  “You know,” she said, “I could never understand the route you took between my place and yours. It seemed roundabout. Then I figured out that you were avoiding the McDonald’s on Kawaramachi-Imadegawa. It spoiled your idealized Japanese vista—pagodas and misty mountains.”

  Ransom didn’t choose to argue the point. “What are you doing here, anyway? This isn’t exactly your scene.”

  “I have an appointment.”

  “You mean a date?”

  “It’s none of your business what I mean.”

  She looked around significantly, then saw who she was looking for—Carl Digger, investigative journalist. He discreetly beckoned her over, and she merely nodded to Ransom as she was leaving.

  Yukiko was a thorough bo
re, but then, so was Buffalo Rome. Ransom was angry at himself for not having gone home hours before, for having had an absurd affair, and now an absurd non-conversation with this would-be Madam Mao. Everybody in this place had a shtick, himself included. Suddenly his life felt like a shabby waste, as if a paper screen had been pulled back to reveal a vast landscape of pain and regret.

  He ordered a scotch and drank it off. Without saying goodbye to anyone he headed out. The narc, at his post by the door, stopped him. “Do you know where I can buy some marijuana, man?”

  “Sure.”

  “Groovy. Where?”

  “Thailand.”

  Outside were some fifty bikes, Ransom’s Honda 350 among them. He was putting on his helmet when he heard his name called. Marilyn was walking up the street on high heels, holding her long coat closed in front to conceal her skimpy cabaret togs.

  “I was afraid I wouldn’t find you.”

  “That’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “I tried to call you.”

  “I don’t have a phone.” Ransom fingered his keys.

  “I know. Listen, we have to talk.”

  “You talk, I’ll listen.”

  “Could we go someplace for a drink? Not here.”

  “I’m tired, Marilyn. I’ve got to get home.” He threw his leg over the seat and unlocked his handlebars.

  “It’s about Miles.”

  “If you’re feeling guilty about screwing Miles, I commend you, but I am not in the mood to commiserate.”

  “It’s about his motorcycle. I think I know who did it.”