by Morris West
‘I’m not sure. I hope so.’
‘What’s on your mind, Gil?’
‘I broke up with Marta tonight.’
‘That’s always rough. It’s worse at our age, because we know time’s running out on us. But maybe this time it’s good luck in disguise.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know whether you can accept such things in a wife or in a lover. I know I can’t. Your Marta is having an affair with Miko.’
‘How did you hear of it?’
‘Tanya told me. Miko invited her to dinner tonight, to celebrate what she called “the coming together of two hearts” which I suppose is a pretty thought in its own odd way.’
‘Did Tanya accept?’
‘I told her she should. I’d like to know what happens. It might be an enlightening experience for all of us.’
‘I can do without it, Boris. I’ve never been one for scratching at old sores. I prefer clean surgery.’
‘Which isn’t always easy to get.’ He said it without malice. ‘We’re like prisoners forced to walk in lockstep. Marta is important to Miko, Miko is important to Tanaka, Tanaka is important to all of us and what we do in Bangkok will be good or bad for millions of our people. I wish I could foresee what Cubeddu and Hoshino will decide.’
‘For what it’s worth, my guess is they’ll accept the notion of a trust on the basis that they can in the end manipulate the trustees.’
‘Could I offer you some advice, Gil?’
‘I’d welcome it.’
‘Tanaka’s your friend and your partner. You live on the Pacific rim, so you see the stretch of Japanese power and influence. You’re forgetting Europe because it’s so far away, so centred on its own concerns. But Europe is strangling you to death, with agricultural subsidies that price you Australians right out of the world market. I watched you in Nara; always you lean to Tanaka as the man of power. I think you’re making a big mistake. Now, Leibig is the man in whom power resides. All his funds are clean and in place. His policies and those of his government fit like hand into glove. He’s the one who has assembled the technicians like Leino and the big planners like Laszlo and the sound bankers like Forster. Tanaka, on the other hand, is ill, isolated and out of favour with his peers. He’s consorting with rich rogues, like those two back there. You’re the best card in his hand, not because you have power, but because you’re loyal and you’re known to be honest. Look what you’re trying to do now, the impossible. Turn a pair of international criminals into philanthropists. God knows it’s a clever move and you might just get away with it and I might just help you to do it.’
‘And how would you do that?’
He gave a small, unhappy laugh and did a series of intricate little dance steps on the pavement.
‘I’d lie. ‘I’d dazzle Moscow with documents. Tanya and I have cooked the books before; but that was harmless stuff, setting traps for the bureaucrats. This time it’s different. Your American, Max Wylie, didn’t surrender because he was scared of you, Gil. He was looking over your shoulder and seeing the red horseman of war riding across the desert and the pale horseman of hunger riding across the steppes. Hunger makes whores of us all, Gil. I’ll sign papers with the Devil himself if he’ll get us through this winter without famine and bloodshed.’
That was the essence of the report which I made to Tanaka and to Carl Leibig at noon the next day in the rooftop office in Tokyo. I confessed I had exceeded my brief. I told them I had met with Max Wylie. I told them of my encounter with Hoshino and Cubeddu in the Fuji Club. They asked very few questions. They offered no reproach. I was a good steward, trying to protect their interests.
I told them, only as a matter of record, that my brief love affair with Marta was at an end. They made murmurs of sympathy and changed the subject. They approved salary and expenses for Alex Boyko, who had accepted to run our press office in Thailand for two weeks.
And that was the end of it. We would meet in Bangkok and proceed according to plan. There was no excitement, no enthusiasm. The shadows of the apocalyptic horsemen seemed to rise up, dark against the pale autumn sky. Tanaka thanked us for attending and turned back to the pile of papers on his desk.
Carl Leibig and I rode down in the elevator together. He told me: ‘I’m sorry to hear about you and Marta; but, believe me, it would never have worked out. I speak from personal experience. I had two engagements and one attempt at marriage. Total disaster! In the end, one has to surrender to what one is.’
‘Now tell me about Miko. How do you see her?’
He shrugged and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘What can one say? She is a very clever woman who lives in two worlds. Tanaka uses her; she uses Tanaka. His dependence on her, his trust in her, raises deep resentments among his colleagues. For me, she’s the original fox-woman, a mischief-maker. But, like the fox-woman, she’ll probably turn into gold one day and all the bad things she’s done will be forgotten – provided, of course, someone doesn’t kill her beforehand. One more thing, Gil.’
‘Tell me.’
‘If the project doesn’t work out the way we want in Bangkok, I’m going alone. Not with the whole project of course, that’s impossible; but with the funding I have, I’ll take the Western territories from the Urals to the Baltic. Forster has assured me the banks will go along.’
‘Have you told Tanaka?’
‘Sure.’
‘What did he say?’
‘The same thing he said to you. “The game isn’t over until the last shot on the last hole!” What can one do with a man like that?’
Eleven
At three-thirty on Saturday afternoon, we were in a holding pattern over Don Muang airport. To the west lay the leprous sprawl of Bangkok, shrouded in a grey haze of smog. To the east were the green of rice paddies and tropic orchards, the gleam of lily pools and klongs, the brown serpent of the Chao Phraya river winding its way through the delta lands towards the sea.
I had been coming here now for more than a quarter of a century and I had watched the ravages which the Vietnam conflict, industrial progress, unrestrained tourism and the acquisitive society of the West had inflicted upon a rural civilisation. I remembered my first flight along the river, on a clear rainwashed day in the early sixties. The pinnacles of the wats, the golden cobras on their gables, were splendid in the sun. The river traffic was leisurely: great rafts of teak logs towed slowly to the down-river sawmills, the huge rice barges moving majestically in file, the market women paddling along the margins of the stream, selling their fruit and vegetables to the river people. But that, I had to remind myself, was in another time and another country, and the dear wench with whom I had shared it was dead.
Even so, some of the magic of that first arrival still survived. A pulse still stirred to the old excitement. Even in the fetid mass of modern Bangkok there remained a vestige of family and a kind of continuity. Across the river from the Oriental hotel, tucked away between the godowns of the merchants and the new blocks of high-rise apartments, was an old Thai house, lovingly restored, which housed the operations of Polyglot Press of Thailand.
It was a modest success because, for a farang, the art of living among the Thais is one of suavity and smiling courtesy and low profile. The President of the company was Khun Sirinart, widow of a princeling who had studied with my father in Australia and returned to take up a senior post at the university. Later he had invited my father to spend his sabbatical year as scholar in residence in the faculty of Arts and Letters.
During that year his patron died, quite suddenly. My father became tutelary spirit to the widow and her two children. He brought them to live in his house in Australia, taught them languages, procured scholarships for the children and, when their education was completed, suggested that I finance them into establishing Polyglot Press in Thailand.
Like most Thai women, Khun Sirinart had a genius for money management. Within ten years, I had a flourishing business, run by a very personable matriarch
who spoke four European languages and admonished me constantly about my sloppy intonations in Thai. More importantly, we were of an age to be good and companionable friends and I had the pleasure of playing foreign uncle to a pigeon pair of exotically beautiful young people.
Sirinart was there to meet me at the Customs exit and to raise an enquiring eyebrow when she saw Eiko, my secretary, trailing one pace behind to shepherd the luggage. I told her she had nothing to worry about, but I had a lot on my mind that I would share at a more opportune time.
As the driver worked his way through the traffic and Eiko gazed in wonderment at the higgledy-piggledy life of the tropic sidewalks, Siri and I talked comfortably and intimately as old friends. Her questions were always direct: who was the young woman with me, was she only a secretary, why did I not marry again? This wandering life, chasing from office to office around the world, was not civilised. My father, that inveterate gypsy, had confessed that, in the evening of his life, he was feeling more and more lonely.
‘You should think about that, Gil, before it is too late.’
I told her I had been thinking of it and that I had managed to make a sorry mess of my affair with Marta Boysen. She took my hand between her small soft palms and scolded me.
‘You forget so quickly all the good things we teach you in Thailand. Mai pen rai! It doesn’t matter. The wheel of life turns. One existence changes into another. Who knows? One day you may be reincarnated as a woman and your Marta as a man. You may be a Japanese. You may be a Burmese, or a bright bird in a tree. Everything passes. Everything changes. You cannot lose your peace of mind for one mistake. I would like to meet this Marta and judge for myself.’
‘You shall, Siri. You’ll hardly be able to avoid it. We’ll be here for two weeks.’
‘And are you going to be able to give me some time for business? There is much to talk about. We have been invited to propose a series of text books on European history and Asian geography for secondary students. The colour work we have had from Singapore lately is not the best quality … ’
‘I’ll make time for it all, Siri. I promise. But first I have to get this circus organised. Every piece of news from the Gulf or from Eastern Europe sends a new shock wave through the groundwork we have laid.’
‘And the shock waves will still be rumbling when you are in your seventh incarnation. Mai pen rai. You do what you can and rest tranquil like a petal on a pool. And if things get too bad, come across the river and sleep in my house. Your father’s room is still there, with many of his books. The children would be happy to have you. So would I.’
This, I realised, was the memory that ran deepest in my unconscious, the low pulse-beat, the sense of timelessness, of flatness, of vitality sapped by heat and damp and delta parasites, of emotions geared down to gentleness and accommodation. But there was another and darker side to this generous land and its smiling, pliant people. They had their cruelties and the cruelties were doubled by indifference. They were capable of sudden murderous rages and swift, brutal forays against any hint of insurrection. There were bandits in the hill country who attacked tourist buses. There were thieves in the city who burnt oleander leaves outside the windows of sleeping householders and robbed them when they succumbed to the toxic vapour. There were peddlers of drugs and cartels of traders who bought country girls and sold them to the brothels and bars of Patpong and Pattaya.
There was also the slow processional life of the paddy farmers and the boatbuilders and the weavers and the woodcarvers; and the yearly Festival of Lights, when all the sins of all the world were floated away down the river on boats of leaves, lit by tiny palm-oil lanterns. As if she had read my thoughts, Siri added a final admonition.
‘Your father used to say none of us can live without forgiveness; but we have to begin by forgiving ourselves. So, before I leave you, promise me you will learn at least one lesson from the Lord Buddha. Do not desire anything so much that you cannot live without it. Call me whenever you want. Good luck.’
The car drew up outside the Oriental hotel. I took Eiko’s arm and led her inside. She deserved some attention now. It was the first time she had ever been outside Japan. Suddenly all her bonds were broken. There were no rules any more. She was like a child, struck dumb with wonder.
I checked into a large corner suite on the seventh floor, while Eiko was lodged in a studio directly across the corridor, where she could set up her machine and spread her papers. I had what I needed: space and light and at least the illusion of magisterial separation from the parties who had accepted me as arbitrator.
There was a large folder, splendidly presented, which listed the members of each party, German, Japanese, Soviet, with their designated functions, their room numbers and directory extensions. There was a note of the business and tourist services provided by the hotel. There were the telephone and fax numbers of the Japanese, German, Russian and Australian embassies, with a list of doctors and dentists recommended by each. Most important of all was a schedule of the first week’s meetings: an introductory gathering on Monday morning and then a series of committees working through each day to prepare for a full general meeting on the following Friday. After that, please God, we should spend the last week preparing heads of agreement and first draft documents. If not, we might just as well pack and go home, pull down the blinds and wait for the big bang in the Gulf and the last charge of the pale horsemen across the steppes.
I had just closed the folder when the telephone rang. Sir Pavel Laszlo was on the line. He had arrived on an early morning flight from Singapore. He was on the floor above me. Would I come up and have a drink? He needed a clear picture of what had transpired in Tokyo. It took the best part of an hour to respond to his rapid-fire questions and set down the story for him. Then he gave me his own, somewhat startling, rendition of related events.
‘War in the Gulf? Fifty-fifty at this moment. If it comes, it will be a devastating event, its consequences far longer than anyone dares calculate. War is an act of violence that knows no bounds. The American offer of dialogue during the countdown period helps somewhat. It does not, because it cannot, pre-empt the gambler’s throw of a beleaguered autocrat like Hussein. So, whatever we decide here in Bangkok has to be predicated on that risk, because our negotiations will be concluded slightly less than a month before the deadline. Effectively, there will be no start-up operations during that time, because it will be taken up with documentations, surveys, all the rest… Meanwhile, let’s look at the Soviet scene. At the political level it’s a mess, secessionists and centralists are at each other’s throats. The generals are desperate to hold the army together as a force of law and order. The central distribution system simply doesn’t work any more. The KGB are now the good guys, making sure relief supplies reach the needy. In this sense, the Tanaka/Leibig project is still an affair of tomorrow. It will have no plus or minus effect on food supplies for this winter. What it will do, however, is provide an enormous boost to morale and secure the co-operation of those food-rich republics which we target as sites for our factories, and which, at this moment, are actively supporting the black market to defeat the centralists. I’ve had this reaction from the Embassy in Canberra and it tallies with what you’ve told me about your talks in Tokyo. What I’m still trying to make sense of is the Japanese position in all this. Let’s forget about Tanaka for a moment; let’s talk Japan and the Gulf, Japan and the axis of trade and power across Eurasia. I’d like to hear your version of it.’
‘OK. Japan and the Gulf? Here’s a nation totally oil-dependent, totally dependent indeed on outside supplies of all commodities to keep her industries working. She’s built the largest peacetime armament of any nation except America – aircraft, ships, weaponry – all devoted, by declared national policy, only to self-defence. Her lifeline to the Gulf is threatened. What’s her contribution? A piddling amount of money and an absolute refusal of military or quasi-military support. Personally, I’m glad, because I don’t want to see the militarists in power ever
again. They’re playing the old roulette game: straddle the numbers, à cheval, à quatre. You lower your winnings, but double or quadruple your chances. Also, they’re trading heavily with Muslim nations Malaysia and Indonesia who supply, for example, a large part of her timber and take a huge amount of her manufactured electrical and mechanical products. She can’t afford to alienate them. This is her original South-East Asia co-prosperity sphere. She’s not going to hand it back on a silver dish to Singapore, Taiwan and Korea.’
‘It’s a dry argument,’ said Laszlo with grim humour. ‘I could use another drink. You?’
‘Please.’
He crossed to the cabinet to refill the glasses, commanding me at the same time: ‘Finish what you were saying.’
‘The Japanese have built their economy on network alliances at home and aggressive acquisitions of markets and resources abroad. You yourself have been part of that process in Australia.’
‘No argument. I have.’
‘As a result, they’ve been able to make large profits, maintain a highly controlled labour force and high real estate prices, against which their entrepreneurs have borrowed to the hilt.’
‘Again, no argument.’
‘Now, with full-scale world recession, rocketing oil prices, contracting markets and real estate prices falling through the floor, the whole ball of string is beginning to unwind.’
‘Conclusion?’
‘In that context, any Japanese investment in the Soviet Union represents a very bad risk. The last thing they want is to buy a basket case.’