Fishing for Stars

by Bryce Courtenay

  Anna waited for the translation, which Bando-san modified. ‘Unfortunately there is another buyer. You must give Mr Fukuoka your decision today.’

  It was a mistake. ‘Ah, then if you have a buyer who is so careless he will buy two vessels without a current survey certificate and no idea of the cruising range of the fuel tanks, then you must let him take them.’ Anna smiled. ‘With the greatest respect, Mr Fukuoka, there is also more information we would need as well as the right to inspect the ship, possibly with our own engineer.’ Anna paused and gave the Japanese man a brilliant smile. ‘Please permit me to list the additional information required from Mitsubishi if we are to proceed.’ Whereupon Anna, not waiting for his reaction, reeled off the information we would need: ‘When was each ship launched? Who built them? What are the displacement weights, including cargo? We need to know the cubic capacity of the holds. Refrigerated cargo capacity? Draught-depth? The type of engines they have? Hours run and their maintenance history? Fuel consumption – gallons per hour at cruise? Can you tell us the number of generators on board and their respective voltages? Navigation equipment and cargo-handling equipment?’

  I admit, I was totally gob-smacked. Anna had sailed on Madam Butterfly since she was a child but in terms of a cargo vessel, she would struggle to tell the prow from the stern. She had simply memorised precisely what I had told her on the plane from Hong Kong to Tokyo.

  All this enumeration took some translating and Bando-san, obviously familiar with the nautical language from previous negotiations, made a fair fist of it. By the time he was finished, Mr Nakamura’s head was in his hands and Mr Fukuoka repeatedly banged the boardroom table with his fist. The corners of his mouth spittle flecked, he yelled, ‘No negotiation! Tell the kusatta gaijin [stinking rotten foreigners] it is over! No more talk! No inspection! Go away!’ He waved his hand towards the boardroom door.

  Mr Bando translated this as: ‘Fukuoka-san regrets we cannot continue to negotiate. Mitsubishi cannot sell you these ships.’

  Anna rose from the table and stood quietly waiting for Fukuoka-san to calm down, whereupon she said evenly in Japanese, ‘Kako o mizu ni nagasu. [Let the past float with water.]’ The consummate negotiator was giving the Mitsubishi executives a chance to begin again. Later I would realise that by remaining calm and seemingly reasonable she had exacerbated their loss of face.

  For my part, now that we’d let the cat out of the bag, I was furious. ‘Baka ga ate riko− ga hikitatsu. [In the presence of fools wise men stand out.]’ I pointed to Anna and said, ‘You are unprofessional and have insulted my honourable partner. No− aru taka wa tsume o kakusu. [The hawk with talent hides its talons.] You would do well to be less smug and more attentive. As shipping men you are a disgrace!’ I turned to face Fukuoka-san. ‘You should be more careful in future. Not all gaijin should be taken for fools, nor should all Japanese be seen as honourable men. My hope is that we have both gained from this experience.’

  Anna’s hands rested flat on the boardroom table and she raised the index finger on her right hand to indicate that I should say no more. Then leaning forward slightly she bowed her head formally and looking up at the two executives she smiled. ‘We thank you for your honourable presence and your valuable time, Fukuoka-san and Nakamura-san. We have appreciated your openness and your sentiments.’ Then turning to Mr Bando she continued, ‘Bando-san, your most honourable translation was very discreet and you are to be congratulated. Furthermore, it is customary in the West for women to sit at the same table as men, but I want you to know I respect your ways and took no offence whatsoever. Will you do us the great honour of personally escorting us to the foyer where we have a limousine waiting for us?’ Anna’s spoken Japanese was of a class above that spoken by the three Japanese men and so formal that they would have been even further humiliated.

  In the back of the limousine on our return to the Imperial, Anna apologised. ‘Nick, I am so sorry!’ she said, plainly distressed.

  ‘Sorry? What for? It wasn’t your fault. Bastards!’

  ‘I shouldn’t have been with you,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘What! And missed all that? We learned more in that hour than we might have in a week or a month.’ I smiled. ‘You were very clever, darling.’

  ‘Not clever enough; we failed.’

  ‘Ah, don’t worry. There are dozens of brokers. Besides it was probably too good to be true, getting two vessels in good shape for the price of a new one was always going to be a big ask. We’ll revert to the original plan to buy a new ship and contact Mitsui at Chiba and IHI shipyard at Yokohama. It’ll be fun to see how they go thinking we don’t understand their lingo.’

  ‘No! Not yet. We’re not through with these bastards yet.’

  ‘Don’t let it get to you, Anna. We have a lot to learn about Japan and that was lesson number one.’

  ‘I’m a good learner but a very poor loser, Nicholas,’ she said somewhat primly.

  Back at the hotel Anna made a phone call to her Japanese client who’d provided the introduction to Mitsubishi. She spoke to him for over an hour while I had a beer at the bar downstairs and then went into the dining room for lunch where she joined me halfway through my main course.

  ‘How’d you go with Kobi-san?’ I asked.

  ‘Lots of tut-tutting and glottal sounds, I imagine a fair bit of head shaking, and an abject apology every two minutes. He said all boardroom business meetings are recorded.’

  ‘Bugged?’

  ‘Yes, he explained it was for future reference if things went wrong and for review by their senior executives. When I suggested the record of our conversation might be destroyed he said that wasn’t possible, it would lead to instant dismissal. It seems paranoia is universal in Japan.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, he said he’d call head office and alert them to the meeting.’

  ‘Bit late, isn’t it? I’m not inclined to go back.’

  ‘Fine, but let’s at least wait and see.’

  Anna once explained to me that winning wasn’t always about reaching the top of the mountain; sometimes whoever clung longest to the cliff-face without falling was the ultimate winner. ‘Business seldom has a formal start and definite finish but is more like a constant cliff climb,’ she’d said. ‘After you’ve won, you keep climbing.’

  ‘Righto, we’ll wait. But as far as I’m concerned, stuff ’em. Plenty more ships in the sea.’

  The following morning just after nine the phone in the hotel suite rang. ‘Mr Duncan, the contingent from Mitsubishi has arrived,’ the concierge announced, adding, ‘We have booked a private lounge for you. Is there anything else you will need?’

  Accustomed to rising early I had dressed and had returned from a walk in the Hibiya Park that directly faced the hotel and was looking forward to breakfast. But Anna had only just bathed and was still drying her hair in the bathroom. I thanked the concierge, and replaced the phone. ‘Better hurry and get dressed, darling, we have visitors!’ I shouted above the racket the hairdryer was making.

  The hairdryer ceased and moments later Anna called, ‘What? Did I hear you say visitors?’

  ‘Yeah, Mitsubishi!’ I exclaimed.

  Anna laughed. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Who knows? They’ve booked a private lounge. How long will you take?’

  She walked into the bedroom wearing an oyster-coloured silk dressing-gown and fluffing her hair so that it appeared to fall to her shoulders in slow motion. I was reminded that even without make-up she was a beautiful woman. ‘Wait ten minutes, darling . . . then go down,’ she advised. ‘We don’t want to appear too anxious. I’ll be down soon. Order coffee, juice, whatever.’ Then as a sudden afterthought she giggled, ‘Speak Japanese, we don’t want to get off on the wrong foot.’

  Downstairs we proceeded to go through the introductions, exchanging our calling cards in the two-handed manner of the Japanese, bowing formally.

  I apologised and said that my partner Anna Til had been delayed and sent profuse apologie
s but would join us in half an hour. This was received with some warmth and it was at once obvious that the group had been well briefed.

  ‘We are honoured by her presence, Duncan-san,’ said Hashimoto-san, who appeared to be the head honcho. He was a man already slightly greying who appeared to be in his late fifties. His business card indicated that he was senior vice-president in charge of sales. Two of the others were vice-presidents, one in the shipbuilding department, the other from the engineering department. The fourth was a senior translator in English and French from customer relations who wore the thickest lenses I had ever seen in a pair of spectacles. I guess this time they weren’t taking any chances. All, with perhaps the exception of the translator, were senior to the two ingrates we’d met the previous day.

  We sat down on the two lounges facing each other, the respective business cards we’d been given laid out in front of us on the low table separating the couches. They seemed pleased that I had greeted them in Japanese and we continued to converse in their own language. Hashimoto-san congratulated me on my fluency and expressed surprise when I said that I had been born in Japan. I then explained that my father had been headmaster of the International School in Tokyo. The Japanese have great respect for scholars and as the bishop’s offspring I sensed I’d gained a little more status in their eyes.

  It was strictly small talk until Anna arrived wearing a coffee-coloured Chanel suit, sheer stockings and brown alligator-skin Charles Jourdan stiletto-heeled shoes. She wore a single diamond in each ear. Nothing more, not even a bangle or a wristwatch. Fashion wasn’t exactly my strong point, but we’d been shopping the previous afternoon at Mitsukoshi, one of the grandest department stores in Japan, where she’d bought both the suit and the shoes. When I’d exclaimed at the outrageous price she’d given me a short lecture on Coco Chanel’s famous haute couture ensemble and Mr Jourdan’s piss-elegant shoes. ‘It’s standard boardroom chic,’ she’d explained. ‘Men don’t need it and can look like a dero and get away with it. Like the proverbial book we are definitely judged by our cover. The woman who doesn’t present well in everything doesn’t get a hearing.’

  The four Japanese jumped to their feet as Anna approached. ‘Anna-sama,’ Hashimoto-san said bowing deeply, and showing by his use of the title ‘sama’ his respect for her status. There was another round of introductions and the meeting finally began.

  No apology was offered, in fact no mention was made of the previous day, for which we were both thankful. Instead Hashimoto-san said that Mitsubishi was glad to welcome us as honoured customers and that they had looked carefully at the letter of introduction stating our needs. He then ‘humbly suggested’ that the best of the freighters in the brochure be sold to us for one hundred thousand US dollars and combined in a package with a brand-new ship. He explained that a small island shipping line in Ceylon had gone bankrupt and had forfeited a twenty-five per cent deposit on a new vessel. If we wished to purchase this vessel as well, they would consider deducting the deposit they held and, as a gesture of goodwill (read, apology), another twenty-five per cent, which was the profit margin.

  I did the sums in my head and immediately accepted. It meant that I would be getting two freighters, a brand-new one and a second one in excellent condition, for close to or slightly more than the market price for the new ship. Even Kevin would be pleased.

  I signed the contract subject to an independent engineer’s inspection of both ships. Then, in the Japanese tradition of handing out gifts at the conclusion of a meeting or negotiation, we were both presented with elaborately wrapped parcels and, among copious assurances that we would remain customer friends for the future, they departed with everyone’s ‘face’ still intact and Mitsubishi’s honour restored. Anna, looking ravishing, hadn’t opened her mouth other than to greet them. The Shinto gods were in their temple and all was right with the world.

  Back in our suite we fell into each other’s arms and danced around the room, then we opened our gifts. Mine was an inlaid cherry-wood box decorated with a sprig of cherry blossom and fastened with a beautiful brass clasp that resembled a dragon. When I opened it, displayed inside were two dozen of the finest Havana cigars together with a solid silver cigar cutter. Kevin and Joe would be the recipients of the cigars and the beautiful box would remain with me as a memento of the time Anna and I had spent together in Japan.

  Anna gasped as she opened her gift. ‘Oh my God! Look, Nicholas!’ She held up a double string of Mikimoto cultured pearls. Although Anna could, or would eventually be able to, buy just about anything she wanted, that string of cultured pearls remained among her most cherished jewellery; eventually I would bury her with it.

  ‘I see what you mean by being the last to cling to the cliff. Well done, darling. If it had been left to me I would have waited outside the gates of Mitsubishi for those little Nip bastards and knocked their heads together, biffed them on the nose and sent them on their way with a kick up the arse. Bloody good thing you came along.’

  But that evening after dinner and a bottle of French champagne, Anna said to me as we retired to the lounge for coffee, ‘Nicholas, I must go out tonight and I don’t want you to come.’

  ‘Anna!’ I exclaimed, more than a tad surprised. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I need heroin,’ she said simply.

  ‘Oh shit! You didn’t bring it?’

  ‘I did, but I was too afraid of Japanese customs to bring much. I bought a pair of those ghastly platform-soled shoes and had the heel hollowed out, but now I’ve run out.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday. The last I used before going into the meeting at Mitsubishi.’

  ‘But that was, let me see, thirty-six hours ago.’

  She grimaced. ‘Don’t I know it!’

  ‘Wherever will you get it? And how? You don’t have any contacts here in Japan.’

  ‘Yes, Nicholas, I do. I have an introduction to a very exclusive bondage house in Roppongi. I will be quite safe. I’ve ordered a limousine.’

  ‘They’ll sell you heroin?’

  ‘They will know how I may obtain it.’

  ‘I’ll come. I’ll wait in the car.’

  ‘No, Nick! I go alone there!’ I noted the ‘Nick’, and Anna’s abrupt change of syntax; she was plainly upset.

  Suddenly suspicious, I asked, ‘Anna, promise me you’re not meeting Konoe Akira.’

  ‘Nick, I am not your wife! I am going now mit a driver. No, there is no Konoe-san there at that place. I am going two hours, maybe also more.’ Her battered syntax and irritable tone indicated clearly that she was undergoing withdrawal. She clasped her arms about her chest, hugging herself, rubbing the surface of her upper arms unconsciously.

  ‘Anna!’ I protested. ‘Just give me the name of the place, just in case . . .’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Nick!’ she cried in exasperation. ‘You cannot come inside that place!’

  Anna turned and left, walking rapidly across the foyer to where the limos were parked. Feeling like a weak shit, not knowing what to do, I followed and watched from the steps of the hotel as she entered a big black car. A taxi drew up and two Japanese girls in miniskirts and the now almost mandatory platform soles came up the steps laughing. ‘Taxi!’ I shouted on a sudden impulse. Halfway towards the waiting cab a young Japanese man in a black suit and sunglasses ran up and opened the rear door. ‘Excuse me, that’s my taxi!’ I shouted in Japanese, moving quickly towards him.

  The doorman stepped directly into my path. ‘No, sir, yakuza!’ he warned.

  ‘Bullshit!’ I said in English and, pushing him roughly aside, reached the cab just as the bloke in black was closing the rear door. I yanked it from his grasp, flung it wide then grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the cab. It wasn’t difficult; I was furious and twice his size. He landed sprawling on the pavement and I jumped into the taxi. ‘Roppongi!’ I shouted to the driver, then pointing to the tail lights of Anna’s limo added, ‘Follow that black one.’
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  He didn’t move. ‘Yakuza!’ he exclaimed, leapt from the cab and ran around to my side to help the doorman lift the bloke to his feet.

  I got out of the cab and stood over them. I seemed to be bigger than all three put together and suddenly I started to laugh. The bloke I’d pulled from the taxi was only a skinny kid and I could see from the scared look in his eyes that he was out of his depth, anticipating a good belting from the giant gaijin looking down at him. I stooped and picked up his sunglasses, lost in the fall. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, handing him his glasses. ‘You may take the taxi with my compliments.’ I handed the driver a handful of yen. ‘Take this kobun wherever he’s going.’ It was too late anyway. Anna’s limousine had long since disappeared into the endless flow of Ginza traffic.

  The fact that I spoke Japanese and referred to the yakuza kid as kobun (the lowest member of a yakuza ‘family’) seemed to do the trick. The kid climbed back into the taxi, vigorously brushing the sleeve of his black suit and avoiding eye contact. The driver, not knowing what to make of the big gaijin who spoke fluent Japanese and didn’t appear respectful of the yakuza, bowed and then moved quickly to the driver’s seat and pulled away.

  As I watched, the rear window of the taxi was wound down and the kid shouted, ‘Kusatta gaijin!’ It was the second time in forty-eight hours I had been called a stinking foreigner. I laughed as I returned to the hotel entrance. The kid had been flexing his muscles, assuming authority that in this instance it turned out he didn’t have.

  I handed the doorman a tip which he accepted without looking down. ‘Sir, you must be careful, the yakuza, they are not like us.’ Then, glancing at his hand and seeing the generous gratuity, he jerked his head in acknowledgement. ‘Even the young ones, they are dangerous,’ he warned.

  ‘Ah, just a cheeky kid,’ I replied.

  My knowledge of the yakuza, like so much else about Japan, was from my father, which was why I had known the term to use for the youngster. I knew I was fortunate that he hadn’t been a senior member, though I had been so preoccupied by and frustrated with Anna that had he been an oyabun I would probably have done the same thing.