Fishing for Stars

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘No, I suppose not, not in cold blood. I agree, scaring the shit out of him the way you did was a stroke of genius. But is that enough? One visit to the hospital the next morning to let him know you could have snuffed him out and to tell him why you did it, then forget him forever. Isn’t that why we came, to remove his power over you and, if possible, humiliate him? He told you himself, revealing the truth to his family was his greatest fear.’

  ‘Confronting my so-called nemesis and humiliating him isn’t going to cure me, Nicholas. I’m tired of all the bullshit, the psychological twaddle. “With Konoe Akira’s demise I pronounce you cured! Abracadabra, you’ve got your sex life back, Anna!” There isn’t going to be a miraculous cure, Nicholas. But now maybe I can put this whole thing behind me and get on with my life, knowing I had the means and the opportunity to kill him but chose not to do it. My choice this time! My decision. Maybe, just maybe, if my head is in the right place, this knowledge could eventually lead to a cure!’ Anna paused for breath before saying, ‘But I don’t know. In the meantime there may be something to gain in all of this,’ she hesitated, ‘if I keep my cool.’

  I guess there wasn’t a lot I could say after all that. ‘So, okay, maybe put that way I’m forced to agree, but not with the last bit, the business . . . the something to be gained bit. Anna, you’re fraternising with the enemy. Can’t you see, having won, you’re setting yourself up all over again? Having once beaten the devil you don’t sit down and calmly negotiate another term in hell!’

  ‘Oh, Nicholas, don’t be so bloody melodramatic, the two things are totally separate. This is fishing for stars.’

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

  ‘It means an opportunity so big that you could never, under any circumstances, have achieved it without the planets aligning three ways in exactly the right configuration.’ Anna’s eyes shone with excitement. ‘I have to try and pull it off! If I don’t, then I’ll never get another chance like this again.’

  I sighed. ‘You’ll have to explain.’

  ‘Yes, of course. While you’ve been away, Miss Sparkle and I have had a long discussion and a good look around the fish markets in Tokyo. I’ve also, as you are aware, talked at some length over the past four days with Konoe Akira.’

  ‘Miss Sparkle? How is she involved?’

  ‘Nicholas, please, let me finish. She is involved, and there’s an opportunity to make something out of this; yes, a business opportunity that virtually allows us to control Japanese fishing in the South Pacific!’

  ‘That’s why you’ve been talking incessantly about fish, is it? You first mentioned it when I called from Osaka. This business is about fish!’

  ‘Bravo!’ Anna replied, not without a tinge of sarcasm.

  ‘You’ve planned this all along, haven’t you? Like the Nauru House building site. Now I see it all. That’s why you wanted to accompany me to Japan!’

  ‘Don’t be an absolute bastard, Nicholas! No, I hadn’t planned it all along! No, it isn’t why I came to Japan with you,’ Anna cried. ‘That’s a horrible, horrible thing to say!’ She looked at me coldly and said, ‘You were kind enough to invite me to accompany you, and while I’ve enjoyed some aspects of being your handbag there have been other parts of your business trip I can’t say have been quite as rewarding for me.’

  ‘Ouch!’

  Anna, having punished me, immediately calmed down. In a quiet and reasonable voice she said, ‘Nicholas, you agreed that my presence at Mitsubishi was helpful, now I need you to help me.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Have lunch with Konoe Akira.’

  Shocked, but trying not to show it, I said, ‘I’ll have to think about it.’ Then I realised I was being a deadshit and said, ‘Anna, gimme a break, will ya? I want us to get out of this bloody country! It’s been nothing but bad news from the moment we met those two pricks at Mitsubishi. You’ve seen Konoe Akira every day since his attack. Isn’t that enough fraternisation without us having to have lunch with the bastard?’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘By the way, I have good news. I know you’ve been worried, but I’ve squared things with the yakuza. We’re quits, we owe them nothing.’

  Anna, Tokyo

  LYING IN BED THE following morning Anna asked, ‘Nicholas, can we go home the day after tomorrow? It’s only one more day. Surely that’s okay?’

  ‘Didn’t you say you were having lunch with him today? What’s wrong with going home tomorrow?’

  ‘No, the lunch is tomorrow. Konoe Akira comes out of hospital today. You will come, won’t you, Nicholas?’

  ‘Whoa, Anna! I’ve thought about it. I’m not sure it’s such a good idea.’

  ‘He wants . . . he’s very anxious to meet you.’

  ‘We’ve already met.’

  ‘Nicholas, don’t be a smart arse!’

  ‘More like a sore arse! Still, I’m not sure. Why don’t you go alone? As you so often say, I have no head for business.’

  Anna raised herself onto one elbow. ‘No, really! C’mon, Nicholas, you’re being churlish.’

  I sat up, pushing the pillow into the small of my back. ‘Anna, I’ve thought about it for half the night. What you did – the way you’ve handled this whole thing – was remarkable.’ I looked over at her. ‘I really mean that. Bloody brilliant! But it doesn’t change how I feel personally about Konoe Akira. I can’t stop you being a part of whatever this proposition is, this fishing thing, but I don’t have to be involved. As far as I’m concerned it’s dining with the devil. You go for your life, darling, but leave me out of it.’

  ‘Nicholas, don’t be a bastard. It’s important you be there,’ Anna insisted.

  ‘Sweetheart, when I think of what he did to you, all I want to do is smash his buckteeth down his throat! This lunch – it’s your idea, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, honestly, it was his.’ She reached out and pushed me with the butt of her hand, ‘And that’s racist! He doesn’t have buckteeth!’

  ‘Christ, Anna, I don’t see the point! He has every reason to loathe me. I’ve got many more to despise him, including most recently a barely healed arse and bruised bollocks! Why are we having this lunch?’

  ‘I told you! It’s an interesting proposition. Besides, I thought you’d be curious.’

  ‘Curious! Jesus! I woke him up in the small hours of the morning with a pistol at his head, dressed him, frogmarched him through his own home, sat on his precious Korean vase and had the old bastard practically spitting in my face! Isn’t that up close and personal enough for one trip?’

  ‘He’s not like that; there’s another side to his personality,’ Anna pleaded.

  ‘Christ, I should hope so. What are you saying? That you’ve come to admire this arsehole?’

  Anna didn’t answer. ‘Please, Nicholas, will you do it for my sake? It’s very important.’

  ‘Important? How? As you’ve said before, it isn’t going to lead to a miracle cure. That would have been important; the rest is bullshit!’

  ‘You can be a real bastard sometimes, Nicholas. For once it’s not personal, not about you and him. It’s a business opportunity you’d be a fool to pass up.’

  ‘Then count me a fool. If you lie down with a dog you’ll get up with fleas. Business? Fuck business!’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Are you suggesting this is somehow shonky?’

  ‘Anna, we’ve all got to make choices in life, shonky or squeaky clean. I don’t want any part of it!’

  ‘Nick! Will you stop being so bloody sanctimonious! You haven’t even heard the proposition!’ Anna flicked her hair back. She now sat bolt upright, her legs crossed under her. Her use of ‘Nick’ together with her rigid body language was sufficient to warn me that she was readying for another fight. ‘At least come to the lunch, then. If you feel the same way, well, okay.’

  I sighed. What we didn’t need was another row. Keeping my voice calm I said, ‘Anna, honestly, why would I want to go into business with Konoe Akira? For that
matter, even have lunch with him? We’re never going to be friends.’

  ‘Nicholas, that’s not a reasonable thing to say! I keep telling you it’s not . . . he’s not like that. Don’t be such a drama queen! If you don’t like what he has to say, well, what have we lost?’

  I shook my head. ‘Okay, I agree to stay another day in Japan. But you have your lunch with the devil and I’ll take the opportunity to see Gojo Mura.’

  I could see she was suddenly furious. I’d switched tack and caught her by surprise. Here it comes, the shit is about to hit the fan. But just as suddenly the tears appeared and Anna looked at me appealingly, irresistibly beautiful. ‘I need you in on this, Nicholas. This lunch could change my life forever,’ she said softly. ‘Please, I beg you!’

  I sighed. Perfidious women – how may a man ever hope to win? ‘Okay, we’ll have your lunch, but I’m not “in” on anything, understand? Assume nothing, bugger all.’ I looked at her sternly. ‘I mean it, Anna.’

  Anna nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, then untangling her legs she rose to her knees and leaned forward and kissed me, then grabbed a pillow and bashed me over the head. ‘Come on, big boy, if you’re prepared to stand up for me I’ll decide if the result merits going down on you.’ She giggled.

  What can you do? ‘As Uncle Joe would say, “Get ready, now, honey! Dat big one-eye snake he gonna give yoh a kiss on yoh sweet sugar lips you ain’t nevah gonna forget, baby doll!’

  ‘Nicholas! That’s disgusting!’ Anna smiled. ‘Did Joe really say that?’ She’d started to work her magic, using the soft pads of her unusually talented fingers and thumb.

  ‘How the hell would I know,’ I laughed, utterly defeated, sensing it had been no contest all along. Anna had long since perfected the means of getting her own way and, as she was now demonstrating, I was mere putty rapidly firming up in her pliant hands.

  Lunch with Konoe Akira was at a restaurant that served fugu. Only the Japanese could come up with a culinary experience that involves a deadly poison. Let me explain. The speciality of the house was the toxic puffer fish, a species I learned to avoid as a child in New Britain, where everyone knew, Fish him belong devil. There is some evidence that the puffer fish contains the world’s second most deadly poison, and the Japanese, with their predisposition for dangerous thrillseeking, have made an art of challenging this toxic fish to kill them. The most poisonous variety, and therefore the most expensive, is known as torafugu. Hai! What fun. Nothing quite as exciting as knowing that your next bite might be your last. What’s more, you will not simply die, but die a horrible death, the poison causing paralysis so that you perish from asphyxiation while remaining fully conscious. Every year, several people in Japan die after eating at a fugu restaurant, an expensive and potentially fatal experience.

  Young apprentice fugu chefs learn the extremely complex method of removing the poison as well as the many different ways to serve the fish. The final test of their skill couldn’t be simpler. First prepare your puffer fish, then eat it in front of the examiner. If you die, sorry you failed. Next apprentice please.

  Eating puffer fish has been a traditional challenge since time out of mind and here is the paradox: it isn’t an acquired taste, it is simply a dull one – it tastes like mush. While it can be served up in dozens of different ways, it is the added ingredients that bring flavour to the dish, not the fish itself. The same ingredients added to almost any other variety of fish would give it a more agreeable taste than fugu.

  I well understood the dangers of eating fugu – as usual the information came from the bishop – but I decided to say nothing to Anna and to see if Konoe Akira might drop it casually into the conversation. Perhaps he thought of it as some sort of Japanese one-upmanship, or a test of our courage?

  We took a taxi to the restaurant and Anna made no comment as we passed through the door, above which hung the traditional square lantern with a puffer fish etched and illuminated on the glass. No doubt she thought it was simply the sign for a fish restaurant.

  We were ushered through the busy public area to a private room where Konoe-san waited for us, seated not on the floor, as I had expected in a traditional Japanese restaurant, but on one of three chairs, perhaps a concession to his stiff leg, or perhaps to our stiff Western knees. He rose with some difficulty, propping himself up with his cane and bowing to Anna and then, hesitating just a moment too long, smiled and extended his hand to me. ‘Welcome, Duncan-san. We meet again,’ he said, nodding his head in a semblance of a bow.

  ‘Thank you,’ I replied smiling, then added, ‘I see you warned them to frisk me at the front door.’ It was a bad joke in poor taste, but Konoe Akira didn’t miss a beat.

  ‘A Browning automatic – the best,’ he chuckled. Love–fifteen to Konoe Akira as Anna’s startled look faded when he reacted positively. Love–thirty to Konoe Akira. Afterwards she castigated me, pointing out that I had risked offending him, upsetting everything only moments after we’d met.

  ‘It’s establishing terms, male dogs bum-sniffing,’ I’d explained.

  ‘Stupid little boys,’ she’d replied, unimpressed.

  The Konoe Akira who now stood facing me in the fugu restaurant seemed very different from the confused elderly man I’d accosted in his flannel nightshirt when I’d held a pistol to his head. Somehow he seemed taller and his crew-cut steel grey hair, sharp brown eyes and straight prominent nose gave him a hawk-like appearance, the look of a man not to be taken lightly. He had the slightly gaunt face I associated with a judge, the headmaster of a famous school, a senior bureaucrat or, I suppose, the general he had once been. He was as slender as Kinzo-san and dressed in a similar way, in an expensive light-grey woollen pinstriped double-breasted suit, cream silk shirt and plain navy silk tie, although he hadn’t permitted himself the levity of a flamboyantly displayed breast-pocket handkerchief as had Doctor Honda, and the highly polished toecaps of his black leather shoes were straight out of the army officer’s dress manual. While he was a man in his mid-sixties, and therefore not considered old, pain had etched lines down from his mouth and from the corners of his eyes to make him look ten years older. Obviously his smashed knee and permanently straightened leg continued to trouble him and the drugs he took to assuage the constant pain had left its mark. Moreover, he’d just recovered from a severe angina attack.

  He grunted when Anna impulsively took his arm as he awkwardly seated himself, whether from displeasure at being helped or in recognition of her consideration it was impossible to tell. His composed expression gave nothing away.

  Anna, wearing a new navy blue Coco Chanel suit with narrow pink piping she must have bought while I was in Osaka, high-heeled black court shoes, and her diamond earrings, had barely said a word since we’d entered. Now seated, she unfolded her napkin, placed it carefully and silently on her lap, looked up and smiled, saying, ‘Well, here we are. [Sigh.] Who would have thought?’

  I could sense that the perfectly poised public Anna was very nervous at the thought of her lover and the man who had managed to manipulate her young mind coming together at last.

  ‘I am honoured that you have arranged it so, Anna-san,’ Konoe Akira said, putting the lie to her claim that the luncheon was his idea.

  I’m ashamed to admit that the best I could manage initially was an inane smile, but then just before my silence began to appear sullen I snatched a handful of initiative and signalled, then called to the waiter. ‘Sake, please!’ I thus indicated that we would be paying for the lunch and avoided the uncomfortable silence that had been developing.

  The waiter arrived promptly and poured sake into two tiny blue porcelain cups. Japanese women don’t customarily drink alcohol, so he looked surprised when I indicated he should pour a third for Anna. As soon as he finished, I turned to Anna and then to Konoe Akira, saying, ‘May I propose a toast?’

  ‘Of course!’ They both smiled and the tension seemed to ease somewhat. Then taking up the tiny cups I pronounced, ‘To a future less troubled.’
/>
  We chorused, ‘Kampai!’ and swallowed the contents of the tiny cups in one gulp, whereupon the hovering waiter immediately began to refill them. Anna indicated that she was no longer a participant in what was to become a competition between the old bull and the young bull, and which I might be permitted to say I think I won. The practice I’d gained with the doctor who’d removed my stitches in the ryokan where I’d spent my last night among the mountain beeches proved invaluable. Thus, in the age-old manner of man and boy I earned my stripes, even though I hardly qualified as a boy. But I was twenty years younger than Konoe Akira and a foreigner drinking sake in a country where one’s capacity to drink large amounts without being rendered comatose is admired. Becoming intoxicated in Japanese society is essentially a masculine pursuit and, like so much other intemperate male behaviour, is tolerated by the society. In fact drunks, provided their behaviour is not too appalling, are treated indulgently. I felt I had to earn some respect for my drinking ability at least.

  The multiple courses began to arrive, all of them simply different ways of serving the potentially poisonous fish. With the first, Konoe-san asked, ‘Do you know this fish? It is called fugu.’

  ‘Puffer fish,’ I replied. ‘In the islands it is known to contain a deadly poison. Is it the same fish?’ I replied, knowing of course that it was.

  Anna looked down at the serving in front of her and then at me, her expression perplexed, chopsticks poised hesitantly.

  ‘It is the same here; one mouthful can kill you,’ Konoe-san grinned.

  Anna put down her chopsticks and looked in turn at each of us. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

  Konoe Akira seemed genuinely amused. ‘It is the reason I brought you here,’ he explained, his eyes suddenly alight.

  ‘What? To poison us?’ Anna asked tentatively, then as quickly realised that this couldn’t be true or he would have let her partake of the poisoned fish before alerting her. ‘It’s a joke? A dare?’ she suggested with a second questioning smile.