Fishing for Stars

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘No, it is a symbolic gesture I wish to make.’ Noticing Anna’s cast-aside chopsticks he indicated her plate. ‘Please eat. It is quite safe. It has been thirty years since anyone perished in this restaurant.’ Then resuming he said, ‘A symbolic gesture of loyalty, friendship and mutual benefit.’

  It’s a bit early for that, mate, I thought to myself. You’ve single-handedly fucked up Anna’s life and indirectly much of my own. Friendship? Ha! You can kiss my arse! But I was here at Anna’s behest and told myself this wasn’t an appropriate time to be deliberately recalcitrant or even churlish. On the other hand I certainly wasn’t going to go out of my way to be charming. Fuck him! I’ll play my part, no more. Knowing the chances of being poisoned by eating fugu were pretty bloody slim I picked up my chopsticks and tasted the fish while waiting for Konoe Akira to continue.

  ‘Please, if you will indulge an old man, perhaps I may explain?’ Konoe Akira indicated to the hovering waiter to fill my sake cup yet again and then his own, continuing to talk while the waiter completed the task. ‘When I was a young man at the Tokyo Military Academy,’ he began, ‘at the end of every month I, together with six of my closest friends, fellow trainee officers, would go to a cooking school close to the academy where they trained the young fugu apprentices.’ He lifted his sake cup and waited for me to do the same. We downed the contents and the waiter immediately refilled the cups as Konoe Akira continued. ‘We would each select a first-year apprentice and have him prepare a particular fugu dish for each of us. Then our personally chosen apprentice, who would remain our choice until we graduated one year and seven months later, would bring in his dish and place it in front of whoever had selected him, so that seven variations of fugu arrived at the same time. As you see on your plate, each fugu variation is divided into seven pieces and arranged in the shape of a chrysanthemum in honour of our emperor and the chrysanthemum throne. Each of us would then keep one section of our fish and the other six would be placed on the plates of each of my six comrades who would do the same until we each had a chrysanthemum consisting of seven different variations of fugu fish, a portion of everyone’s chosen dish on our plates.’

  ‘The opposite to Russian roulette!’ I smiled, the sake beginning to work its magic.

  ‘Exactly! If one of us died, we all died.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ Anna exclaimed, then, regaining her composure said, ‘Why are boys so stupid?’

  ‘Well, I guess none of you died or you wouldn’t be here, Konoe-san,’ I said, unimpressed.

  Konoe Akira chuckled, acknowledging my point, then said, ‘I imagine the supervising chef watched the apprentices very, very closely.’ He smiled wryly. ‘To lose seven young officer recruits from noble families would most assuredly have closed down the cooking school. Food is important in Japan, but the military at that time was paramount. Notwithstanding all that, having survived and believing we’d undergone a critical test of courage, we felt like heroes in the tradition of the Samurai.’

  ‘Like the three musketeers, one for all and all for one,’ I quoted in my newly acquired sake-charged voice. By this time we’d downed our sixth sake and our third portion of the world’s dullest-tasting fish.

  ‘Exactly,’ Konoe Akira said and, without turning to face the waiter who stood no more than three feet away, commanded in a loud voice, ‘Waiter! More sake! At once!’ I was comforted by the thought that the rice wine was getting to him as well.

  We waited for him to continue, but while we were being subjected to another round he seemed to have temporarily lost his train of thought. Hardly surprising. It was probably insanity for him to drink the day after leaving hospital after an angina attack, another example of foolish masculine derring-do.

  ‘You were saying, you brought us to a fugu restaurant as a symbol?’ Anna prompted.

  ‘Yes, that’s right, of loyalty and friendship,’ he said, suddenly recollecting himself. ‘It is what I hoped might develop between the three of us today.’

  Anna, grabbing the opportunity, now said, ‘We, you and I, discussed a business proposition while Nicholas was away, Konoe-san. Perhaps you might care to outline its main features to Duncan-san?’

  Konoe-san turned to me. ‘I congratulate you, Duncan-san. Second Vase . . . er . . . Anna-san has an excellent grasp of business.’

  Only in Japan would a man be congratulated for his female partner’s business prowess or intelligence. ‘Her grasp of business is well beyond my own,’ I replied.

  Konoe Akira looked at me as if I were being deliberately modest. ‘Anna-san tells me you have a shipping line in the South Seas?’

  ‘Yes, the South Pacific.’

  ‘But that is a very significant business achievement, Duncan-san,’ he said. ‘I think you are being too humble.’

  Don’t patronise me, you bastard! The sake was overcoming my willingness to restrain myself and I had to make a real effort. ‘We are small. Anna calls it “Boys playing with boats”. She is a remarkable businesswoman; I am not in her class.’ I grinned, then somewhat ambiguously said, ‘You are fortunate she is in charge. If you were dealing with me you wouldn’t get too far.’

  Whether Konoe Akira sensed my hostility I couldn’t say.

  ‘So! Let me tell you about us, Duncan-san. We are in fishing. It has been a family concern for five hundred years, but of course, now we are a zaibatsu, a group. After Mitsubishi, we are the second largest fleet in Japan. We have eighty deep-sea fishing boats, and many smaller ones that operate in the shallow waters off the Southern Kuril Islands.’

  ‘But don’t those islands belong to Russia?’ I asked.

  Konoe Akira sighed. ‘They belong to Japan, but were stolen by Russia at the end of the war.’

  ‘And you still fish their waters?’

  ‘It is by arrangement.’

  ‘With the Russian government?’

  ‘It is an arrangement,’ Konoe Akira persisted. ‘Water must find its own way from the mountains to the sea.’

  ‘Japanese proverb?’

  ‘No, commonsense. Sometimes arrangements work better than treaties. Governments must consider lots of extraneous factors. Wisely they sometimes allow things to take a natural course.’ He paused, looking directly at me. ‘Now that many of the Pacific Islands are becoming independent, we would like to make a contribution to their future welfare, Duncan-san.’

  ‘Contribution?’ I knew what was coming but wasn’t willing to acknowledge it too readily. ‘That can be done through your government as foreign aid without the river having to change its course.’

  ‘Yes . . . that is also possible,’ he said, hesitating slightly. ‘As chairman of my zaibatsu I am honoured to sit on various government boards that control the fishing industry and am not without influence in matters of foreign aid.’ He called for another round of sake. ‘But what I am suggesting is perhaps something more direct, like the Southern Kuril Islands.’

  I had forced him to come out into the open and say it. ‘What form would this contribution take?’ I asked.

  ‘Konoe-san is suggesting a joint venture,’ Anna interjected quickly.

  Despite myself, I laughed. ‘We have eight freighters,’ then remembering the two we’d just purchased from Mitsubishi I amended it, ‘ten . . . ten freighters. They are all used for cargo and passenger transport – two are mainland vessels, strictly cargo, most are pretty old and none are equipped for deep-sea fishing . . . any kind of fishing for that matter.’

  ‘Konoe-san’s zaibatsu is interested in establishing three tuna-processing plants,’ Anna continued. ‘The South Pacific is the next big fishing opportunity – tuna and shark fins. They won’t require your freighters. Understand, Nicholas, this is an entirely new joint venture. They want the sole licence to fish within the coastal areas of each of the island nations.’

  ‘But we know nothing about processing fish.’

  ‘You knew nothing about scrap metal, or running an inter-island shipping fleet either.’

  ‘Yeah, true, but we were a
lot younger then. I’m not sure we’d be comfortable —’

  ‘Comfortable? Business is seldom comfortable unless you possess a monopoly.’ Anna flicked her hair back in a gesture of impatience. ‘Don’t you see, Nicholas, that’s virtually what this would be, a three-way agreement: Konoe-san’s zaibatsu, the island government concerned and yourselves. You wouldn’t have to know anything about processing fish; Konoe-san’s people will do that. They will run the fish factories – I mean, processing plants.’

  ‘And we’d do what?’

  ‘Build the infrastructure, the port facilities, and operate them, run the local labour force, the things Joe Popkin does on his ear, and your job would be to liaise with the government, be responsible for labour relations, keep in touch with both sides on the ground.’

  ‘And all this will result in a profit for the three of us?’

  ‘Of course. If Konoe-san’s zaibatsu has an exclusive fishing licence for the fishing zones it will be very profitable for all concerned.’

  ‘And I would be the one required to kick open the doors?’

  ‘Not kick, Nicholas, facilitate,’ Anna said, giving me a reproving look.

  ‘I know nothing about “facilitating”, as you so nicely put it, Anna. We’ve always been upfront, what you see is what you get,’ I replied pompously.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! You do it all the time. Isn’t that the point? It’s open, it’s honest, they trust you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t begin to know how to negotiate a deal such as this one.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have to, I will do the negotiating.’

  I looked at her, surprised. ‘But you said you’d never go into business with me . . . with us?’

  Anna laughed, obviously amused. ‘Certainly not. I love you too much, Nicholas.’ She turned and smiled at Konoe Akira. ‘I will be the independent go-between, negotiate the licences, agreements, protocol between Japan and the governments of the countries involved. All you will do is open the doors for me, make the necessary introductions. Remember, these are new island governments, still wet behind the ears. They’ll need guidance and expertise. You’ve known all the main players involved since they were schoolboys; you and Joe can help enormously.’

  ‘To see they don’t get ripped off?’

  ‘No, Nicholas, nobody gets ripped off! The whole idea is to create a sound business relationship between Japan and the island nations.’

  ‘I’m not at all sure about this. It sounds like a monopoly, and it seems to me most monopolies end up as greedopolies, taking more than they ever return to any economy. Witness the British Phosphate Commission in Nauru, for instance.’

  Konoe Akira suddenly cut in. ‘If all the other fishing zaibatsu are allowed in, there will be no control, then soon, no fish.’ He gave an exaggerated hand gesture and then a shrug. ‘We will fish the resources carefully, Duncan-san. That way there is always a business for you, for the government and for us.’

  I turned to Anna and switched to speaking English. Rude perhaps, but the Japanese do it all the time when they’re negotiating through a translator. ‘I’m a bit pissed,’ I said, ‘but I don’t know, I’m not at all sure we could finance our third of the business. It looks like a bloody big undertaking. I’ll have to speak with Joe and Kevin.’

  ‘No, no, you don’t understand, Nicholas,’ Anna protested. ‘The Japanese must have a majority – fifty-one per cent, or at the very least fifty per cent. In return they’ll finance the whole deal, down to the last nail in the processing plant, the cost of building the private harbours, slips, cranes, winches, refrigeration, the lot. The local government gets the other forty-nine per cent or, if I can’t swing it, fifty per cent.’

  ‘Hey, wait on. I’m not that shickered! And our share is what? Zilch?’

  ‘Nothing of the sort. As I said, you get to supply all the raw material for the factory, all the transport contracts, build the roads and have an agreement to supply local labour. This alone should show you a decent ongoing profit. In addition you also get an overall management contract.’

  ‘I thought you said they would staff and manage it themselves.’

  ‘Nicholas, I thought you understood,’ she said a trifle impatiently. ‘Only the interior of the processing plant, you get the rest.’

  ‘I should think the local politicians would want a share of that too,’ I remarked.

  Anna nodded. ‘Maybe. That’s your territory, nothing new for you there, Nicholas. But the big money for them is in the renewable tuna and shark-fin licences and their share of the overall profits from the processing and packing plants. Compared to these, anything they could rake off from the factory and infrastructure would be peanuts.’

  I grinned. ‘In my experience there are plenty of political monkeys scurrying around looking for peanuts. Or, tell me, Anna, is it us – Kevin, Joe and me – who are getting the peanuts?’ The sake that kept being poured was turning me decidedly nasty.

  ‘That’s not fair!’ Anna cried, patently hurt. ‘I don’t like it when you’re drunk, Nicholas. The fish-processing plants are going to make you a damn sight more money than you’ve ever made lugging people and coconuts from island to island!’

  I pulled my addled wits together. ‘If the Japanese run the fish factory with their own personnel, who keeps the books?’ I asked, glancing at Konoe-san who, to my surprise, appeared to have quite inexplicably fallen asleep. Then again, he’d just come out of hospital where they’d probably filled him with all sorts of drugs for which alcohol was contraindicated. I glanced at Anna. ‘Should we call someone?’ But at that moment he began to snore softly and his breathing seemed normal. Falling asleep in a meeting wasn’t considered bad manners in Japan. I knew that older Japanese senior executives frequently nodded off, an accepted and not uncommon practice.

  With my concern for Konoe Akira I had forgotten my question, but Anna now answered it in a somewhat trenchant manner. ‘Why the hell would the bookkeeping concern you, Nicholas? Kevin will send in your bill and if I know him it will be plumped up nicely. I won’t question it unless he’s dreaming fairies when it’s raining frogs. It will be paid promptly. Your management contract would be fee-driven. Konoe-san’s zaibatsu isn’t going to go broke . . . or hasn’t for the last five hundred years. Any profits from the joint venture between them and any of the island governments won’t ever be your concern.’

  ‘C’mon, Anna, you know better than that. Joe and I have to live in the islands. If the local governments get ripped off they won’t be catching the next plane to Japan, they’ll come looking for us. After all, as you say, it’s me who has to open the doors.’

  Anna looked at me scornfully. ‘Nicholas, I’m trying to make a deal that includes you, one that isn’t going to cost you a penny and will make you all very wealthy. All you are required to do is facilitate. What are you trying to say?’

  Pissed as I was, I knew this to be true. Anna wasn’t asking me to do anything I didn’t already do, or hadn’t done practically every month our company had been in the islands. It was money for jam, but I felt out of control, unprincipled, caught in a web of possibilities, and so I wanted to be difficult. ‘Yeah, but we’ve been in charge of the situation and kept our noses clean for twenty years,’ I protested.

  Anna sighed. ‘Work it out for yourself. Nicholas. Why would the Japanese want to alienate a local government and stand to lose their fishing licences when they come up for review? Anyway, I’ll set up an independent audit as part of my negotiations. The Japanese are not going to —’

  ‘Piss on their own doorstep?’ I finished for her.

  ‘Oh, charming, but yes, that’s about it.’ Anna seemed to realise that I was perhaps a little more pie-eyed than I appeared and was spoiling for a fight. She was handing us a business on a plate and I was being recalcitrant. But she sensed she’d pretty well won the day. Glancing across to see that Konoe-san was still asleep she abruptly changed the subject. ‘By the way, I have good news. I know you’ve been worried, but I’ve squared th
ings with the yakuza. We’re quits, we owe them nothing.’

  I was taken by surprise. ‘How? What?’ I guess one of the reasons why Anna was so successful is that she was astute enough to know when to leave off. I was grateful. I’d been heading towards being stupidly obstinate, the Japanese firewater doing the talking.

  ‘Konoe-san needs some heavy muscle at several large city fish markets. So I introduced him to the oyabun.’ Anna knew of my concern that at some future time Fuchida-san might call in a favour that would compromise one or both of us.

  ‘Fuchida-san will be pleased; that’s right up his alley.’

  ‘Well, actually, it was Miss Sparkle’s doing. It seems the yakuza are responsible for negotiating the bribes for the local Russian authorities. Very little money changes hands. Payment is with Japanese prostitutes, electronic consumer goods, processed food and all the myriad luxury items the Russians can’t obtain. There is a flourishing underground economy run by the island’s Russian bigwigs. In return they allow the Japanese fishing boats to use their harbours and fish the local waters.

  ‘But, of course, there is the usual quid pro quo. The Japanese government turns a blind eye to all the mischief going on, because the fishing-boat crews spy for them. In fact, the boats are known as rupo-sen [report boats]. Miss Sparkle said that the yakuza used their considerable influence with the Russians to set up their own fishing fleet in the Kuril Islands but have a great deal of catching up to do as they are comparatively small players compared to the big zaibatsu, and simply lack the clout they need in the big local fish markets to achieve the best prices for their own catch. Miss Sparkle was delighted when I suggested she meet Konoe-san.’

  ‘Yeah, but why Miss Sparkle? I would have thought this was an important enough issue for Fuchida-san himself to be involved, or at least one of his important oyabun, rather than delegate it to his mama-san.’

  Anna looked at me wide-eyed, unbelieving. ‘Nicholas! You mean you haven’t twigged yet?’