Fishing for Stars

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Nicholas, he’s had an angina attack! He’s been wired to a monitor, sedated, he has a drip in his arm, and he’s a frightened old man. The first day I gave him back the fob watch and showed him the photos of the persimmon trees.’

  ‘And the other three days? What, catching up on old times?’

  ‘Yes, sort of. I’ll see him tomorrow – it’s his last day in hospital – then perhaps we can get down to business.’

  ‘Business?’

  ‘You know . . . stuff.’

  ‘Why? Why won’t you tell me?’ I begged.

  ‘It’s not how it must seem . . . it’s not like before.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He’s profoundly sorry.’

  ‘Jesus, Anna! You’re the one who is supposed to take no prisoners! The one who waits, knowing the time will always come to even the score. Remember? It’s a central tenet of your business philosophy.’ I paused, gathering steam. ‘It’s been twenty-five fucking years and all you can say is that he’s profoundly sorry!’

  ‘It’s not what you think, Nicholas. It didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to. You know . . . revenge. I’m frightened you won’t understand!’

  My heart missed a beat. Oh Jesus, was she back under his spell? ‘Try me.’

  ‘Nicholas, you may not like it,’ Anna warned, averting her eyes.

  On the morning after Konoe Akira’s ‘heart attack’ Anna woke very early, showered and put on a pair of jeans, a white cotton turtleneck sweater and knee-high stiletto boots. She did her hair in the style she’d worn as a sixteen-year-old, applied a light-coloured lipstick and a smudge of green eye shadow. At a distance she could have been mistaken for a woman no older than twenty.

  She arrived at Tokyo’s University Hospital and had to wait until eight before they would allow her into the recovery ward where Konoe Akira, still sedated, was asleep. She took the chair beside his bed and sat down to wait. Around mid-morning he eventually opened his eyes and stared at her, momentarily confused and fearful, not sure whether she was real or simply a return of the hallucination, part of the blinding pain of a severe angina attack, when she’d suddenly appeared to him out of the darkness. Then his eyes left hers and travelled slowly around the hospital room as if he were still trying to orient himself, pausing momentarily on the heart monitor, the drip bag above his bed, the tube entering the back of his hand and finally returning to her face.

  ‘Second . . . Vase?’ he asked, not yet entirely sure, clearing his throat between the two words.

  ‘Good morning, Konoe-san. Yes, it is me, Anna,’ Anna said in a cheerful voice, her insouciance deliberate.

  ‘Last night?’ Konoe Akira croaked. ‘It was you?’

  Anna laughed, then looked at him, her right eyebrow slightly raised. ‘One kidnapping deserves another . . . don’t you think?’

  Konoe Akira did not react but instead reached for the plastic cup at his bedside and swallowed several mouthfuls of water, pausing after each, his eyes fixed on Anna. He replaced the cup and when he spoke his voice had lost its gravelly, tentative quality. ‘You could have killed me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Anna answered in a cheerful voice, ‘very easily.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you? It would have appeared to be a heart attack.’

  ‘It was an angina attack. There’s a big difference,’ Anna replied, deliberately avoiding his question. ‘All it needed was a little bit of encouragement from me and it could well have been a heart attack. The sublime rope has its dark side. Is that not why you come, knowing that it can kill you as well as serve your atavistic needs?’ Although her voice was light, she was determined to maintain the initiative.

  ‘You were marvellous, Second Vase. I could not believe it was Lee-Li, but it was too good to question, to stop and find out. You have progressed remarkably since last we knew each other in Tjilatjap. I have never experienced anything quite like it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Konoe Akira smiled. ‘Come to think of it, it wouldn’t be a bad way to die. I have not galloped the celestial plains twice in ten minutes since I was a young man.’

  Despite herself Anna was forced to laugh. The fearless old soldier was back in control. ‘And nearly died as a result! You must be more careful in future whom you choose as your dominatrix.’

  Konoe Akira fell silent, thinking. ‘When I foolishly had you kidnapped . . . it was an unfortunate experience,’ he said clumsily.

  ‘For whom, you or me?’ Anna asked.

  Konoe Akira looked surprised. ‘I have learned my lesson, it was a salutary experience for me.’

  ‘Do I take that as an apology?’ Anna was speaking in the Western way with none of the courtesies that might have been affected by a Japanese woman in her speech to a man of Konoe Akira’s status.

  ‘It was remiss . . . yes, remiss of me.’

  ‘Remiss! Five men died horrible deaths, my partner was badly injured from the accident with the vase and spent two nights in a police cell . . .’ Anna was lost for further words.

  Konoe Akira appeared not to be listening. ‘The vase . . . very regrettable. The stitches will heal but the celestial beauty of a thousand years has gone forever.’

  ‘Why? Why did you do it?’ Anna asked angrily, then unable to help herself added, ‘It was not worthy of you!’

  Konoe Akira appeared to be reaching for the right words but then quite suddenly abandoned the attempt. ‘Yes, you are correct, it was the insecurity of a stupid old man. I wanted to be sure we met on my terms. I never intended that you be held for more than a few hours. I was doublecrossed by the Shield Society. We had agreed they would hold you only until the morning, but they saw an opportunity to get more money from me. I had seen the whole thing as little more than a warning not to attempt anything that might indict me, but it went horribly wrong.’

  ‘You did it to show me you were still powerful? Could still control me if you wished? Why, that’s pathetic!’

  Konoe Akira, glancing down at his hands resting on his lap, was silent for some time, but Anna held her ground, insisting on an answer. ‘Yes, it was most reprehensible, Second Vase,’ he said finally.

  ‘Anna! My name is Anna!’ She looked at him scornfully. ‘Let me see now . . . we have salutary, remiss, regrettable and reprehensible, but we still don’t have the simplest word of them all. We don’t have sorry!’

  Konoe Akira looked up and held Anna’s eyes. ‘Why did you not kill me? It would have been easy – a heart attack during kinbaku – you would not have been suspected. I am fairly certain it has happened to someone before. Instead, you had the ambulance standing by.’ He smiled tiredly. ‘I could have you arrested for deliberately causing grievous bodily harm. It would not be a difficult case to bring to the prosecutor, eh?’

  ‘Would this then be another attempt to show me how powerful you are?’ Anna said lightly, refusing to take him seriously. ‘I had no desire to see you dead but you placed me in great danger without much thought and now you know how that feels. By the way, I am told you have had angina attacks before. You may need a heart bypass operation. It is a new technique, but very successful; your heart specialist is sure to know about it. They probably perform it at this very hospital.’

  ‘Aha, I see, so you are an expert with hearts then, a doctor maybe? That is why you knew what you were doing!’

  ‘Yes, I knew, but I’m not a doctor in kinbaku. At the highest levels it is a matter of knots and pressure. I know about the heart bypass operation from a friend who also suffered from acute angina and has undergone the new procedure with great results. If the ambulance hadn’t been so prompt I’d have given you the nitroglycerin tablet myself. You were never going to die, Konoe-san.’

  ‘So, why have you come here today, Anna-san? Is it to mock me?’

  Anna flicked her hair impatiently. ‘Titch! I have brought you back your fob watch and chain and I have the photographs to show you of the twenty-four persimmon trees we have planted up to this time.’

  ‘And that is all?’r />
  ‘There is something else, but it can wait until you are feeling well again.’

  Anna opened her handbag and withdrew the gold fob watch she’d given him as a farewell gift all those years ago. It had been her father’s and before that her grandfather’s. She placed it on the bedside cupboard beside the empty plastic cup, thinking that this time he might not see it as the loving gift she had bestowed on him all those years ago. After what had transpired between them he might not even want to accept it.

  But Konoe Akira surprised her by saying softly, ‘Thank you. I have always cherished it. It has a special place in my life, more precious even than the lost vase.’ He picked up the watch and chain and laid it on the sheet covering his stomach, then closed his hand around the beautiful old chronometer.

  Next Anna took out four colour prints. Selecting the first she leaned over and showed it to him, saying, ‘This is the first one. I had to wait five years to find the perfect place on a beautiful island in the South Pacific. See, it is already a mature tree and fruits abundantly – beautiful golden orbs – even though, as you know, there is no winter in the tropics, only the dry season.’ She selected the second photograph, a depiction of a seedling no more than a few centimetres tall, standing twin-leaved against the dark soil. ‘This is the latest, number twenty-four. It was planted on my birthday last year. I always plant the seed myself and say something in Japanese, then we open a bottle of champagne.’ The third photograph showed the driveway at Beautiful Bay with all the trees in leaf in descending size, and the fourth showed the same view but with those trees large enough now in fruit, their leaves having dropped, the branches witch-broomed against a pewter-coloured sky.

  Anna avoided looking at Konoe Akira, aware that her commentary was self-conscious and that Konoe Akira might simply be looking at the photographs in order to be polite. After all, the gift of eighty-five persimmon seeds, which he’d given her in the garden of the Dutch brewer’s mansion he’d occupied as commander at Tjilatjap in 1945, may have long since been forgotten, at the time a sentimental gesture to a young girl and no more. Although he had made specific mention of his desire to see the photographs in his earlier note sent to the Imperial Hotel, this could have been part of his planned entrapment. But now she glanced up at him to see that silent tears were rolling down his cheeks. ‘What can I say, Second Vase?’

  Anna did not correct him this time. ‘The butterfly ashtray and the frangipani blossom at the Jade House . . . they tell me the blossom is replaced with a persimmon in the winter. Is that . . .’ Anna hesitated, ‘because of Tjilatjap?’

  In a gesture of defeat the old general nodded, sighed, then raised and dropped his hands back onto the sheet. ‘I have thought about you most days of my life since the day I sailed from the wharf at Tjilatjap when I knew that I would never again know another creature as perfect. I have bowed and clapped at my family shrine every morning since returning to Japan, burned incense on the anniversary of my sailing away and said your name while asking the gods to take care of you if you remained alive. I later heard what Colonel Takahashi, that miserable kempeitai mongrel street dog, did to you before he committed suicide and then, upon later reflection, what I, no better than he, thinking myself infinitely your superior, had already done to you. Then I realised that I deserved no better myself.’

  ‘It was not the same,’ Anna protested. ‘You . . . he . . .’ She did not explain that she had killed Takahashi before he could deflower her.

  ‘Nevertheless, total power corrupts and we Japanese, more than most people, are historically guilty of abusing power, especially in recent times in China and Manchuria, and of course in the Pacific. Arrogance is the handmaiden to cruelty and I pray to the gods that Japan will not go down that path again, although both characteristics die hard with us and the hindsight that is called history turns the ignoble into the justifiable and then ultimately into the noble. At last we are learning that we are not the master race. The Emperor himself has declared that he is not a living god. You could have taken your opportunity last night to kill me without consequences, but you did not and I am grateful, if only for the opportunity to say that of the two of us you are the noble one and I am the one to be despised.’

  Now that it had finally come, Anna saw that his apology was profound. ‘If I had thought in this way about you I would not have come to Japan, honourable Konoe-san,’ Anna said quietly. ‘While our early relationship has resulted in some difficulties, it has also produced some very good results. Life is chance and circumstance and I have suffered and benefited equally from both.’

  Konoe Akira looked surprised. ‘You do not hate me, Anna-san? My heart was filled with terror that you had come to Japan to expose me, though not to the war tribunal – that shame is long since over – but to my family, to my daughters and my precious grandchildren, to my aged mother, although her time is now also past and she often forgets I am her son. This shame on my family name I would have found unendurable.’ He paused and looked directly at Anna. ‘That is why I sought to warn you with the foolish kidnapping arranged with those reactionaries and rightwing misfits in the Shield Society.’

  ‘Some stains endure but most come out in the wash,’ Anna replied in an attempt to comfort him. ‘I am glad we have talked it out. Now you must rest. Will it be convenient to visit you again tomorrow?’

  ‘By all means. My daughters will come and my grandchildren, but only in the afternoon when the children are home from school. Will you come in the morning?’

  ‘Yes, I would enjoy that. We will be leaving Japan soon and there is one more matter I would like to discuss with you, Konoe-san.’

  ‘Is it about the past?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘We cannot undo the past, Konoe-san. But maybe we can use the future to try to heal it.’

  ‘What? What can I do? If it is possible I will do it, Second Vase.’

  ‘It is about business. I wish to talk to you about a business matter.’

  ‘Why, I’m intrigued.’ He grinned. ‘Hai! You are not a doctor or a dominatrix, you are now a businesswoman. This I can understand.’ He bowed his head. ‘Goodbye, Anna-san. I look forward to tomorrow.’

  ‘You didn’t talk about the past, the war, what he did to you, the psychological scarring?’ I asked, astonished.

  Anna cocked her head and looked at me. ‘The lamentation of poor little Anna? And what possible good would that do, Nicholas?’

  ‘Cleared the air! The bastard owes you!’

  ‘Yes, I agree. He owes me. I have a business proposition I don’t believe he can refuse.’

  ‘Jesus, Anna, that’s crass. This is not about money! What about us?’

  ‘Oh there’s definitely something tangible in this for you, Nicholas,’ she said, deliberately misconstruing my meaning.

  ‘I don’t mean fucking business!’

  ‘Nicholas, there are no pieces to pick up, no road to Damascus, no epiphany. But there is something to gain from all this.’

  I sighed, unable to believe my own ears. I’d had too many Anna versus Konoe Akira dialogues in my head for far too long and what I was hearing was definitely not one of them. ‘Christ, Anna, can’t you see? He kidnapped you, he meant to harm you and all you’ve been discussing with him for the past four days is business?’

  Anna, unruffled, affected a surprised expression. ‘Why, Nicholas, you came here to buy two freighters, that’s business, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t have a different agenda.’

  ‘Ah, but as soon as those two middle executives at Mitsubishi tried to cheat you, things changed?’

  ‘Yeah, jumped-up little pricks!’

  ‘But, in the end, who won the day?’

  ‘Yeah, we did, and mostly thanks to you, but what are you suggesting?’

  Anna ignored the question. ‘In the end you got two freighters for nearly the price of the new one?’

  ‘Yeah . . .’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘We tricked them. They thought w
e didn’t understand Japanese.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘We didn’t react predictably. We didn’t lose our cool. When the tape recording was replayed to whomever afterwards, it was obvious that Mitsubishi had lost a great deal of face and needed to make restitution. The rest you know – two ships for the price of one.’

  ‘Anna, this is not the same!’

  ‘Oh? Why not? If I’d screamed and shouted, cried, stamped my foot, accused, threatened, blamed Konoe Akira for everything, what do you think would have happened? No, don’t tell me, you know already – an hysterical woman creating a scene in a Japanese hospital room. They’d have thrown me out on my ear then given Konoe-san a sedative and that would have been it. I’d have had my say and he’d wake up thinking he’d endured my outburst, I’d got it all off my chest, he’d tolerated my emotional hysteria, it was just women’s stuff, a storm in a teacup, he’d repaid any debt and now he could get on with his life as usual.’

  Anna looked at me questioningly, expecting a reaction. ‘C’mon, Anna, you’re not the hysterical type. You might seem to lose your temper, but you wouldn’t have lost your cool. You’d have given it to him straight between the eyes, chapter and verse, left him understanding exactly what he’d done to you.’

  ‘Maybe, but with exactly the same result. I’m a woman and he’s a Japanese man, that’s not an equal contest in this country. I’ve consoled myself that I’ve had Konoe-san at my mercy and could easily have killed him had I wished to do so. He’ll always know that, know that I could have taken the ultimate revenge but chose not to.’

  ‘Hell, Anna, you must have been tempted. I know I would have been.’

  Anna paused and shrugged. ‘But what would that have done to me? I would have killed another person, this time in cold blood. Try convincing yourself that natural justice has been served, that you had every right to murder him.’ She looked at me directly. ‘Would you really have killed him?’