The Ringmaster

by Morris West

  ‘This woman is very good. Whatever she promises, she delivers. Also, she knows how the town works. She explains that whores and drugs are gangster territory, as they are in Japan…So she refuses to embroil herself. She does have contacts in the police, in case any of her clients get into trouble; but she insists that she is not interested in salesmen’s antics and noisy conventions. We are using her more and more. Her performance as a hostess is old style and very polished. The staff she supplies are well trained. I have found it pays to ask her advice. Why don’t you meet her and judge for yourself?’

  So Kenji Tanaka had made his first appointment at the house in Holmby Hills. He had begun by interviewing Miko, in the condescending style of man to woman, employer to eager applicant. In the end it was he who found himself under scrutiny, asked to supply references, warned that he would be held responsible for the conduct of people he recommended. And yet in some subtle fashion his pride – the uneasy pride of every Japanese male – had been saved and he had left prickling with a young man’s desire to possess this exotic creature, so graceful and yet so aloof.

  It took nearly a year to persuade her to become his lover. Even then it was not a conquest, but a treaty. There was no talk of marriage. Tanaka already had a wife and three children, two girls and a boy. There was no way either that Miko would consent to become a traditional mistress, maintained in high style as an ornament and evidence of the great man’s success. She could not, would not, accept the role traditional to women in Japan. Her business was a success, she had money of her own. She was born American. She desired greatly to discover her ancestral roots. She reserved the right to choose the times and places of her sojourn.

  When he brought her to the valley for the first time she fell in love with the place. She wrapped it about herself, as the crater walls wrapped themselves around the lake and held it calm while the mountain storms raged high above.

  It was here that she fell pregnant, here that she stayed to recover after the stillbirth of a son. She was back now because Tanaka had sent her the same message as he had sent to me: Please come. Important things are happening. I need your support.’

  The welcome ceremony over, Miko led Tanaka to their private quarters, to prepare him for the bath in the great wooden tub that smelt still of pine-sap and upland flowers. It was expected that I join them later. It was equally expected that they be left alone for a decent interval.

  I knew that this was the kind of body service Kenji Tanaka craved – one that satisfied his deepest and most secret yearning, to float secure as an unborn child in amniotic fluid, surrounded by mother-flesh, responding to the rhythm of a maternal heartbeat. Deprived in childhood of his own mother, living in a surrogate family, urged always to male excellence by a tutor and a father, his fantasy life had focused more and more on the lost mother image, even as his career became more emphatically that of the imperious adventurer in commerce.

  The real nature of the bond between Miko and himself was expressed exactly by the Japanese verb amaeru, to presume totally on a mother’s love, to depend as a child depends. For Miko his dependence was a guarantee against domestic tyranny. He knew that her love could be instantly withdrawn, so that her every absence was an unspoken threat. Even in play there was the tiny prick of steel, the traditional threat wrapped up in love-talk. Okachan wa kirai yo: Mother does not love you any more!

  I understood these things because I had known him much longer than Miko, because he was my partner in business and we had played together in the floating world where, since I spoke its language and knew its customs, I was not wholly a stranger, but an amusing hybrid, an unexpected dash of colour in a garden of grey rocks and raked pebbles.

  When I make a statement like that – and my children tell me I make them all too often – there is usually an awkward pause while people wait for some explanation of who I am, what I do and why I find myself in odd situations: like sitting wrapped in a yukata waiting for the maid to attend me so that Tanaka and I can relax and talk business while we stew like chickens in near-boiling water.

  Who am I? I’m Gilbert Anselm Langton, fifty-odd years old and feeling much older. I’m a publisher, a major shareholder of an international group called Polyglot Press which was founded in Sydney, Australia and now has branches or affiliates all over the world. My father – God rest his scholar’s soul – had held for a quarter of a century the Chair of Comparative Languages at the university and it was he who helped me frame the plan, endowed me with enough capital to seed the enterprise, fed me all the encouragement I needed and more ideas than I could use in a lifetime.

  But before all that, he had given me the gift of tongues. My mother died very early in my life and my father devoted every moment of his leisure life to making me, as he put it, ‘apt for a gypsy life on a shrinking planet’. He buried his grief so deep that I glimpsed it only at rare moments. All he allowed me to see was the joy of things, the challenge of new places, new people, old history relived, new history in the making. A polyglot himself, he gave me the key to the Tower of Babel where the world’s languages echo in hopeless confusion. He taught me how to decipher them, remember them, turn them into the currency of daily commerce. He told me tales of the great philologers, Pallas and Bakmeister and Joseph Justin Scaliger and the greatest of them all, Joseph Caspar Cardinal Mezzofanti, who was born in Bologna in 1774 and died in Rome in 1849.

  I remember how we climbed the Janiculum hill to visit his tomb in the Church of Sant Onofrio, where my father told me that I could ‘accept with reasonable certainty’ that the little cleric had spoken and written thirty languages with ‘rare excellence’ and could ‘manage creditably in forty or fifty more’. Even today the phrases ring in my head! More importantly, he showed me the trick to it: a good visual and oral memory, an understanding of tribal and lingual families, a daily drilling with the native-born. In my own lifetime Australia had become a haven for migrants from all over the globe – Greeks, Turks, Vietnamese, Chinese, Ethiopians, the whole gamut of races – so practice partners were not hard to find.

  I am not yet a Mezzofanti, but you can trust me in twenty three major languages and be confident I won’t lead you too far astray in fifteen or twenty others. My father, however, taught me another essential lesson: a man can be a fool in as many languages as he speaks. So he insisted I read law and economics and learn business administration. That meant I had to work like a dog for nine months of every year and get my reward when he and I took off for three months of gypsy travel in Asia, Europe or the South Americas.

  He taught me more than language. He taught me a mannerly silence and the deference appropriate to a stranger who is invited to share the tribal fire. He taught me about women, too, because he loved them and courted them, and they prized his friendship.

  So as my publishing activities extended, I found myself gradually co-opted into a new role, that of consultant or mediator in international commerce. It was not a free service. I was paid well for it. But those who understood what I could offer were able to save a mint of money in lawyers’ fees and executive time. More than half the cost of international business is used up in dialogues of the deaf, between people who are totally ignorant of each other’s laws, customs and business dialect.

  Understand something: I am not a professional interpreter. They are highly skilled people with a precise function. They must translate and not comment. They must present a proposition bald and unglossed, otherwise they betray their trust. I can do that, but I have no taste for it. In fact, my function as mediator is exactly the opposite. I supply the tonalities of the dialogue. I explain the concepts which underlie the language. I say what is left unsaid, perhaps the unsayable. Not all of that is done in public assembly. Much of it is transmitted in private talk with the parties. However, in the end they must be convinced, not only of my competence but my integrity.

  And that – God love the man! – was the best lesson my father ever taught me: ‘Son, you’re not God. You’re not expected to know everyth
ing. So say what you do know loud and clear; but never refuse to confess ignorance or innocence.’

  I was already a year into my association with Kenji Tanaka before I understood the full import of that advice. The Tokyo connection was very important to us, not only because of the Japanese market for our publications, but because we could print and produce there for other markets. The quality was excellent, the prices were highly competitive. There were no labour problems.

  Then, on one of my visits, Kenji Tanaka tabled a proposition: a merger with a manufacturer of comic books and cartoon novels for which there is a huge market in Japan. The comic books are gaudy, gory and highly erotic, with emphasis on mutilation and debasement of women. Everyone reads them – commuters in trains, school children waiting for buses, typists munching sushi during their lunch breaks. It is a huge and profitable industry. I could not for the life of me see why they needed our small outfit. I could, however, see that they might want our international distribution, which was functioning better every year. I knew something else for certain: these particular comic book publishers were part owned by a Godfather of Yamaguchi-gumi, one of the biggest crime syndicates in Japan. Its connection with Tanaka was no secret. Every great corporation in Japan has a symbiotic relationship with the underworld organisations who run the entertainment, the gambling business and the woman trade. It is as traditional as the feudal system in England. Kenji Tanaka had explained it to me many times. Now he was trying to persuade me to make the deal.

  ‘It’s big money, Gil, safe money. They’ll pay a premium to come in. They’ll inject new capital whenever you need it. Why are you making such a problem?’

  ‘It’s not a problem. It’s a simple decision. I don’t like the people. I don’t like the product. I won’t handle it.’

  Kenji Tanaka took it very calmly. He even managed a regretful smile. ‘Have you not forgotten one figure in the equation: the Tanaka interest?’

  ‘I do not believe that will be served by such an association.’

  ‘But surely I am the best judge of that?’

  ‘So who arbitrates the issue?’

  ‘I think’ said Tanaka gently ‘that our interest has to prevail. We can demonstrate the large financial advantages which will accrue to all shareholders. We can require you legally to act in our common interest.’

  It was a clear threat, and no idle one. Litigation with a Japanese in a Japanese court is a fool’s pastime. Even if you win, you lose. The network of family and business relationships is so large that, if you fall out of the net, you’re finished, in business and in private life as well. So now I was under test. I could not back down, even had I wanted to do so. I could not indulge in anger or invective because that would brand me a barbarian.

  I sat for a few moments pondering the dilemma. Then I asked for paper and a calligrapher’s brush. Tanaka was nonplussed but he pushed the ink block and the paper across the table to me. I paused a moment to steady myself, then wrote in cursive hiragana an offer to sell all my stock in the Japanese company to Kenji Tanaka, at a fair price to be determined by him. I signed it and passed it back across the desk.

  He read it slowly, mouthing the syllables as if he were checking it for errors. Then he said: ‘Are you quite sure you know what this means?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘You are trusting me to set my own purchase price on all your Japanese stock.’

  ‘That’s right. You know what it’s worth. You won’t cheat me.’

  ‘How long is the offer open?’

  ‘You decide now!’

  ‘And if I decline?’

  ‘I am then entitled to offer it elsewhere. Either way, I’m out. I’ll probably talk to Sumitomo. I’m sorry Kenji. You and I have had a good run together; but I’m not going to quarrel with you. I have no hard feelings, just irreconcilable differences. I’ll be flying out of Tokyo tonight. Until then you can call me at the hotel.’

  I stood up and held out my hand. Tanaka crumpled the paper and slapped it into my palm. His tone was harsh and peremptory.

  ‘No deal! You’re right. Who needs these shits anyway? Tradition hangs them round our necks like carrion…You trust me not to cheat you. I should at least trust you to run the business you know. Cancel your flight. Tonight you and I need to get drunk together…’

  My reverie was interrupted as the door slid open and the maidservant bowed and summoned me to the bath-house, where her master awaited my company.

  Miko had already taken her bath and left. I sensed that Tanaka was too jealous of his exotic prize to expose her to another man’s appraisal.

  The servant-girl scrubbed me down. Then Tanaka and I sat in the great pinewood tub, which was fed steadily with steaming water, the overflow of which poured into runnels on the old stone floor and served to feed the ornamental stream in the garden. Through the half-opened screen we watched the last daylight fade slowly on the russet and gold of the maples and the twisted boles of the cypresses, luminous as old pewter. It was an interlude of pure physical pleasure. No words were needed to embellish it. Tanaka waited until the last light had died. Then he asked, as was his habit, a peremptory opening question.

  ‘Have you read all the material I left with you?’

  It was a style that always made my hackles rise. My answer was terse. ‘I have.’

  ‘Any comment?’

  ‘None, until I’ve heard you explain it to me.’

  He settled himself comfortably in a corner of the tub, supporting himself with arms outstretched along the rim. Why are you always such a hardhead, Gil?”

  ‘Because, my dear Kenji, every time you start talking business, you bark like a character out of the Forty Seven Ronin.’

  ‘I do not mean to offend you, Gil.’

  ‘In this matter, you do. I’m your friend, not one of your junior executives.’

  He gave me a sidelong look and just half a smile. He asked what seemed an irrelevant question. ‘Have I ever told you the story of the two monks and the young girl?’

  ‘No, but I’m sure it will be instructive.’

  ‘I hope so. I heard it first from my old master, Hiroshi Teraro. Two monks, one young, the other much older, set out from Tenryu-ji to walk to a distant shrine of the Lord Buddha. They came to a stream. Just as they were tucking up their robes to step into the water, a beautiful young woman appeared and begged them to help her across. Mindful of his vow to have no contact with women, the young monk refused. The older one, however, hoisted her on his back and, with obvious enjoyment, carried her across the water. She thanked them and left. The two monks continued their journey. The younger man, however, was in a black humour. Finally he could contain himself no longer. He demanded to know why, in defiance of all propriety, his companion had carried the young woman on his back. To which the older monk replied: “But my dear brother, what is the difference between us? you have been carrying her ever since we left the river.” ’

  It was a perfect Zen parable and, like all such tales, it demanded a moment’s reflection before its meaning was clear. In spite of the fact that I spoke and read Tanaka’s language almost as well as he did, I still could not come to terms with the conventions which were as much a part of his identity as the shape of his face and the colour of his eyes. It was a real barrier to full friendship and I was the one who, in the end, would have to overleap it.

  I made a slightly exaggerated gesture of apology and submission and told him: ‘It’s a good story. I’m sure I’ll remember it.’

  Tanaka brightened then. The awkward moment was past. Face was saved for both of us. He made a bald announcement. ‘I bring bad news, Gil. In Iraq fighting could begin at any moment. We are being pressed to contribute to the war chest of the Americans and the combined Arab forces. Our government has agreed to do that. Now we are being urged to commit armed personnel. I am against it. I believe the people are against it too. But politically…’ He gave a small despairing shrug. ‘We are hurt whatever we do. My real concern is that a war in the Mid
dle East will cut our oil supplies and put an unbearable strain on our economy. So the project for which I invited you here assumes a new urgency, a prime importance.’

  He paused for a moment, then launched into his exposition. ‘Six months ago I had a visit from Carl Albert Leibig. His firm is one of the oldest German trading companies in Japan. It was founded in 1859 just six years after the arrival of Perry and his black ships. The same family controls it still. Their headquarters are in Hamburg, and they have active branches in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, Korea and the United States. Their present specialty is what you in the West call turnkey operations. If you want a printing press, a food processing plant or a robot assembly line, they’ll design it, build it, train your operatives and even arrange your financing. They’re very solid and, in a discreet fashion, very influential in commercial politics in Europe and Asia.

  ‘Carl Leibig told me he’d had an approach from someone high in the Kremlin. Things are desperate there, as you know. The whole Soviet economy is on the verge of collapse. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is breaking up. The only hope for the leadership is to show an early and visible improvement in the standard of living. Leibig was asked to come up with a pilot plan for food processing and distribution operations which could be applied quickly to the key regions of the Eurasian landmass.

  ‘It’s a daunting project; but, based on modular constructions and standardised plants, its outlines are simple, as you have seen in the documents. Leibig and I have put together a syndicate of potential investors and contractors. We are all meeting in Bangkok next week. The Soviets will be there with a team of bankers, economists and engineers. We’ve given ourselves two weeks to hammer out an agreement.’

  ‘That’s not very long!’

  ‘We all know that. Our best hope is to act under the pressure of necessity and sort out the difficulties as they arise on the ground. That’s why we need a mediator, to damp down political debate and encourage everyone to practical action. You’re good at that, very good!’