On several of his recent visits, Jansen had taken Mervyn Linkiss with him. Jansen had suggested it, and the CEO had wholeheartedly agreed. ‘We need you there, though,’ said Tony Alexadis. ‘I never feel happy about things at that end unless you’re on the spot, Hector. You’ve got the touch with those people.’ But they needed to groom someone up for the Singapore side of things. Businessmen there don’t like abrupt changes of contact, don’t respond well to a strange face over a contract. And Mervyn Linkiss was personable, intelligent and someone Jansen wanted to do well in the corporation.
On the latest trip to Singapore, Jansen felt unwell on the night of their arrival. All his life his health had been good. A passing sickness is soon forgotten, anything that doesn’t come to a threatening conclusion, although at the time it worries you. A decade ago Jansen had had evening chest pains over several weeks, which his GP couldn’t account for, so Jansen picked up pamphlets on angina and heart irregularities, the cardio-vascular benefits of exercise, and indigestion. But then while he was very busy organising middle management professional development, the pains didn’t come any more, and later he hardly remembered why the pamphlets were in his drawer. Even earlier there had been the loud ringing and sharp, spasmodic pain in his left ear while he was holidaying in the Hokianga, so that for several days he didn’t go swimming, and rang up a doctor in Whangarei for an appointment. The noises and discomfort stopped suddenly in the night, the appointment was cancelled and recently he had filled in a medical insurance form saying in all sincerity that he’d never had any trouble with his hearing. On his standing CV he described his health as excellent.
The Singapore pain was different, though: it was very central, deep-seated, located somewhere level with the lower ribs, and seeming to need some physical space of its own, so that existing organs there were displaced. When Jansen first woke he thought it was some nausea caused by the heat, but the first movement made him give a sudden cry of distress. Sweat pooled in the hollows beneath his eyes as he lay and wondered what was wrong. He was panting, and gave a small aah with each quick exhalation, which seemed somehow a comfort. With his left hand he reached cautiously, searching for the light switch in the unfamiliar room, then he forgot that in his concentration on his pain. There was enough light from the street anyway, even though the room was several storeys up. It was very early, but already there was traffic noise, particularly the waspish whine of scooters, which for Jansen was always the sound of Asian cities. The hotel was an older one, though still favoured, and the furniture was of massive hardwood. Elephants, surely, must have been needed to move the logs from which such timber originally came.
Jansen straightened himself gently in the large bed, pushed out his legs, so that his stomach had as little constriction as possible, but if anything it made it worse. He remembered the twinges he’d had on the long flight the day before: the sense of his guts being compressed by all that sitting, despite the advantages of business class. The pain flowed and ebbed. It was an acidic pain if such a thing existed. Jansen remembered Mervyn’s room number. He had that sort of mind — could still remember the seat numbers of their Singapore flights, and the names of the perfumes he was to buy for his wife, and the exchange rate of the New Zealand dollar against the Euro, the greenback and four Asian currencies.
‘Yes?’ said Mervyn, his voice husky with sleep.
‘It’s Hector. I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m feeling really crook. I’ve just woken up with it and it’s giving me absolute gyppo in the guts.’
‘I’ll come right away. Is your door unlocked?’
‘I’ll do it now,’ said Jansen.
‘Okay.’
‘Mervyn.’
‘Yes.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Half past five,’ said Mervyn.
‘Jeez, I’m sorry,’ said Jansen.
He found crawling the least painful form of progress, and pulled a face and hissed as he reached up to unsnib the door. He was on all fours back by the bed, gathering strength to climb in, when Mervyn came and helped him. The thin sheet Jansen pulled over himself was unnecessary in the heat, but even with such pain he wanted the decorum of a covering for his grey-haired chest and pale shin bones. He could feel the sweat of sickness and anxiety trickle through the hair above his ears: each pulsebeat flared an aurora around the light source windows.
‘Hell,’ said Mervyn. ‘We’re not mucking around here at all. I’m calling the desk for an ambulance.’ Jansen gave a tight nod. He didn’t say anything because he was afraid of what might come out if he tried. He concentrated on keeping the pain from taking over altogether. The last thing he remembered was his colleague talking forcefully on the telephone, and at the same time patting down his spiky hair with his free hand. Mervyn was a good guy to cope with an emergency. He did have very peculiar hair in the night, though. ‘Mr Hector Jansen, Room 453,’ said Mervyn. ‘Right away. As soon as possible. Whatever emergency procedure you have here. You understand?’ He spoke loudly and very distinctly to ensure his English was presented in the most accessible way.
The pain in Jansen’s belly was overwhelming.
They’d taken him to a Roman Catholic private hospital close to the harbour. He had his own room with recessed ceiling lights and cream walls. High on the door was a clean, square window through which staff, or visitors, could look in from the corridor. He recognised his suitcase in a corner. Mervyn sat on the only chair in the room. ‘Okay, Hector?’ he said. Jansen waited a bit to assure himself the pain was much less, and then nodded slightly. Even that movement was enough to make him aware he had a tube up his nose. Mervyn drew his chair closer: it hadn’t been seemly somehow to be peering into Jansen’s face when he was unconscious. ‘You had an emergency operation for something that burst in your stomach,’ said Mervyn. Jansen thought of a reply, opened his mouth, but couldn’t find the strength to speak. ‘I’ve told the Soong people we’ll get back to them tomorrow,’ said Mervyn.
Jansen talked to his wife by telephone when he was awake again four hours later. She had been speaking to the doctors and knew a lot more about his condition than he did himself. ‘I haven’t seen anyone at all,’ he said. ‘Just Mervyn and flowers sent from Mr Yuan-jen.’
‘The doctors have been there, but you’ve been out to it. They say you’ll be fine now, unless there’s infection from material that’s escaped into your abdominal cavities, but you’ll have to stay there several days before you can fly home. I can get tickets to fly over tomorrow, or the day after.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Thanks, but if everything’s okay it doesn’t make much sense. You’d just get here and then have to turn round again.’
His wife went on to reassure him that their adult children were fine. It didn’t seem inconsiderate to him at all. It had been their way ever since becoming parents. Whatever happened in their own lives was immediately evaluated in terms of its impact on the children. Would his acceptance of promotion disrupt their schooling, or enable them eventually to attend university without taking student loans, or both? Would his wife’s absence at the week-long on-campus fine arts course prove a trauma too much for them to bear? And now that both Greg and Samantha were quite grown up, and insistent on their parents pleasing themselves at last, it was too late to alter the focus of their lives. ‘Sam wanted to come over and stay with me until you got back,’ his wife said, ‘but I wasn’t having her driving by herself all that way while she’s pregnant.’
‘No. Quite right,’ Jansen said.
‘I don’t want her to worry in her condition.’
‘Quite right,’ said Jansen.
‘They’re both waiting to ring now you’re awake more,’ his wife said.
Tony Alexadis rang too, saying Jansen was to forget all about business, that the firm was happy to pay for his wife to fly over. He said to pull the plug on the Soong talks for now. They could tee them up again later in the year. Jansen didn’t agree. He was sitting up, supported by pillows, and the pain was reduce
d to a level that allowed him to think about other things if he concentrated. ‘Mervyn can handle it with help from Andrew Shih at the table, and me briefing him in the evenings,’ he said. ‘And Mervyn’s been up here several times now, remember. He knows the Soong team, and if we don’t get something rolling now we’re going to lose a whole year, maybe the project itself grows cold.’ The CEO wanted the meeting to go ahead, but only with Jansen’s agreement. It was a ritual to show the regard between the two of them, and after a few minutes talk it was decided to carry on, and it had the appearance of being Jansen’s decision, though both men knew what the business reality was.
When Andrew Shih came to the hospital, Jansen said the worst thing was being fed by fluids and that he wouldn’t have anything near solid for at least another twenty-four hours. Andrew had some misgivings about continuing the talks without Jansen — remember the management faction in the overseas department of Soong working through Mr Hau tong, he said — but Jansen persuaded him that Mervyn was up to it, with their assistance. ‘No one’s indispensable, Andrew. You know that.’
‘Soong like continuity of representation during a deal.’
‘So the three of us are still here,’ said Jansen. ‘It’s just that I’m not able to sit at the table.’
‘You are able to continue to call the shots though,’ said Andrew Shih, pleased with his command of the idiom.
‘Tony Alexadis and the board will call the shots. You know that, but we can do a good job at this end.’
‘I think you are right,’ said Andrew. They had known each other for more than ten years, and done business together in Singapore for several weeks in each of those years. Andrew Shih specialised in assisting overseas firms, and was a model of confidentiality. Jansen knew that Andrew also represented Bridgeport of Australia, Randra and PSR, but never had Andrew said anything to him about the business dealings of those companies, or any others he acted for. Jansen had seen Andrew drunk, heard his best jokes repeatedly, seen him naked with a Thai girl after the ’98 deal, but not once had Andrew divulged anything at all. Jansen liked that, and so did Tony Alexadis. ‘The best lawyers know when to hold their tongues,’ said the CEO.
When Andrew Shih had gone, Jansen rang Mr Yuan-jen at Soong and thanked him for the flowers. Also he apologised for being the cause of the delay in the talks, and said he and Tony Alexadis had full confidence in Mervyn. ‘Yet we have become used to your voice on behalf of your board,’ said Mr Yuan-jen solemnly.
‘Thank you,’ said Jansen.
‘I know the Catholic hospital. My wife’s father had his heart operation done there. All of the doctors are very good. Excellent in fact.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Yet we will miss your voice,’ said Mr Yuan-jen.
Mervyn was excited when Jansen asked him to represent the company at the meetings. The excitement showed itself in the rigorous calm he imposed on himself: the slightly lower and more deliberate speech. It was the response that Jansen expected from his knowledge of his colleague, and it reassured him. He gave Mervyn his own briefing papers, thick with handwritten annotations. ‘Perhaps you could spend a couple of hours looking through this,’ he said, ‘and then come back and we’ll go over it. You know it’ll all be positioning on the first day anyway. I’ll try to sleep for a while, and you come back about eight tonight.’
‘I’ll put it together with my own notes,’ said Mervyn.
‘If you can read my writing,’ said Jansen.
As he rested, aware of the minor dislocation of having no meal times to mark out his day, he tried to remember his own feelings when he had first taken charge of offshore negotiations for the company. It was unusual for him to search his memory for anything that wasn’t strictly applicable to the business needs of the present, but he found the recollection quite clear. He had been sent to Hong Kong to sit in on the preliminary two days of supermarket access talks, with the aim of being able to brief the then CEO when he arrived later. Instead of arriving, the CEO had rung and told Jansen to carry on alone; that they had full confidence in him. Jansen had hardly slept for two days, working on agenda papers until five or six o’clock in the mornings.
It’s what Mervyn would do after their talk. He’d go away and cover one hundred percent of everything just to make sure he had the five percent that would come up. That’s how a good executive begins, and then with time comes the confidence and judgement which allow selective preparation and some sleep.
When Mervyn came down, he’d read all Jansen’s notes, and he asked good questions and was attentive to Jansen’s advice. ‘Never hesitate to ask for some time to talk to Andrew Shih. Time by yourselves as an extension to lunch, for example. Andrew’s so good on the close legal stuff, but also he’s great at picking up on any change of tack. And watch Mr Hau tong: that’s where any trouble will come from.’
‘Maybe I should call in here on my way to Soong tomorrow,’ said Mervyn.
‘No, you’ll be fine. Give me a call when it’s all over, but have a cold beer and take off your tie first. And make sure Andrew doesn’t send a girl to your room. He’s a bugger for that.’
Jansen had a snooze after Mervyn left, and then met his doctors for the first time, including the surgeon who had cut into his stomach. Jansen had come to admire the intelligence and skill of the Chinese: he had no doubt he was in the best of hands. He decided to send the surgeon the company’s prestige assorted pack of cheeses. He said how much he appreciated the air-conditioning in his room, and talked with the doctors a little about the amount of snowfall in New Zealand. The Chinese doctors of Singapore found the possibility of a white and frozen landscape interesting and exotic. ‘Tomorrow,’ said the surgeon, ‘you will be able to take some mild food orally, but please don’t eat anything visitors bring in without checking with staff. In particular, no fruit. Fruit is in composition bad for you at present.’ When they left, the younger doctor looked back through the window in the door, and gave an informal wave and a smile, as if farewelling Jansen at an airport.
He slept less well that night than the one before, and guessed it was because he wasn’t so doped up. Twice he eased himself out of the high bed to use the commode, which had a motor for height adjustment. The central heating wasn’t calibrated with South Island Kiwis in mind, and even the coolest setting was barely doing the job. He lay on the cover and let his mind wander. It took him to personal things, rather than anything to do with business. The Soong talks seemed a long way from his concern, and instead he began to wonder where he and his wife should live when they retired. They hadn’t talked much about it. Jansen thought that was because both sensed that it would prove a sticking point, and in their marriage they preferred to avoid serious disagreement. She enjoyed the opportunities offered by the city; he, although a city man all his life, had a yearning to end up in a small place, by the sea perhaps, or one of the southern lakes.
He knew that it was a notion unfounded on any experience of life in such a place, and not sensible in terms of proximity to the facilities they would increasingly rely on as they got older.
Yet, lying there almost naked in the private room of the Catholic hospital in Singapore, the idea was stronger in him than ever. He told himself that it was just a reaction to the business pressures over the years, this pipedream of a village life with both simplicity and solitude. Maybe even some explicable response to his stomach pain and the operation, which would pass. In the morning common sense would thrive again.
It was a novelty to use a spoon again at breakfast, and, despite the pap, the tastes were strong after being fed intravenously. Even the sensation of food passing down his gullet was briefly unusual. The nurse who brought his tray was youthful and very small. He had a fancy he could see light through her slim hands, and in her presence he felt clumsy and stolid.
Several times during the day he remembered the meeting going on at Soong: Mervyn Linkiss and Andrew Shih working so carefully to secure the right deal. He found it surprisingly easy to move on to ot
her things, however, or just lie and think of nothing much at all. No doubt the pain, and then the operation and drugs, had broken his concentration on business. It occurred to Jansen that all over Singapore there were meetings that were crucial to those involved, but in truth had little significance. All the world was an ant-hill of industrious communication with decision piled on decision, and corporations waxing and waning like the Medes and the Persians.
Despite Jansen’s advice, Mervyn came straight from the meeting. He had about him still the whiff of battlefield powder, and went through the happenings of the day with barely suppressed eagerness. He wanted Jansen’s advice for the next day, and only just remembered at the end to ask about his health. ‘Go back to the hotel and relax for a while. Take it easy,’ said Jansen.
Andrew Shih rang soon afterwards to give a more succinct account. Mervyn did better than okay, he said. Tony Alexadis was also in touch. ‘I’ll give Mervyn a ring, of course,’ he said, ‘but I wanted to get your feel of things.’
‘Andrew Shih says Mervyn’s doing fine. And he’s been at Soong meetings with me before, remember. I reckon he’ll handle it well,’ said Jansen.
‘You’ve always been very supportive of him, Hector,’ said the CEO. ‘That reassures me a good deal.’
For his evening meal Jansen was given sweet fish rice and soft vegetables. The prospect attracted him, but part way through, his appetite left him, and he lay back, conscious of pain. The nurse said that he would probably have such discomfort for a few days, but that it was important that he have solid food passing through the digestive tract as soon as possible. She later changed the dressing on his stomach incision, sprinkling a white powder like icing sugar on the stitched wound.
Owen Marshall Selected Stories Page 46