Fishing for Stars

by Bryce Courtenay

‘Twigged?’ I shrugged. ‘What’s to twig?’

  ‘Miss Sparkle is the boss of the Tokyo yakuza. She is the top oyabun!’

  ‘Christ no!’ I gaped. ‘I always had a suspicion she wasn’t quite the humble mama-san she claimed to be, but head honcho! Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course. I thought you knew the set-up, how it works with Fuchida-san being homosexual, or gay as they say now.’

  ‘No! C’mon, you’re pulling my leg. Gay? Jesus! Fair dinkum?’

  Anna laughed. ‘Don’t worry, he hasn’t got his eye on you.’

  ‘Bugger!’ I said, trying to regain the initiative.

  ‘It’s what prevents him being the top dog. The yakuza simply won’t accept a homosexual at the helm. It would completely overturn the Samurai tradition.’

  ‘Well what about a woman?’

  ‘As long as she doesn’t appear to be making the decisions, nobody minds.’

  ‘But that’s crazy! That means Fuchida-san appears to be making the decisions, which is unacceptable because he’s gay, and a woman is really making the decisions, which again is unacceptable because she’s a woman?’

  Anna shrugged. ‘That’s Japan, I guess. As long as the public don’t know and the yakuza do, but nobody admits they know, it’s okay.’

  With Konoe-san asleep I stopped drinking. The sake competition had caused me to consume far too much alcohol. The fugu variations on a theme kept coming and, as I’d been led to expect, I had a distinct tingling sensation in my tongue which hadn’t yet reached my fingers, apparently the next destination for the poison. This tingling of the tongue and the fingers was meant to reassure the diner that the poison still exists in the fish but is no longer present in lethal quantities – a bit like giving yourself a hard backhand then feeling good that while your hand and mouth hurt you haven’t broken any teeth. The sensation was supposed to be similar to mild intoxication, but give me alcohol any day.

  Anna went on to explain the relationship between Fuchida-san and Miss Sparkle. ‘She is the strength and makes the hard decisions. He is an organisational genius, obsessed with detail. Between them they’re a combination that is hard to match, even though there are always challengers. The loyalty of Saito-san is yet another factor – none of the contenders want him to come looking for them, and whoever tried to kill a national icon would create a public scandal throughout Japan and almost certainly lose any chance of becoming the top oyabun.’

  ‘And Miss Sparkle told you all this?’

  ‘Women talk to each other, Nicholas! Besides I’ve known and trusted her for a long time, twenty-five years in fact, and she feels the same. It never does any harm to have the same skeletons in the closet and share part of a common history. She is quite remarkable, in fact exceptional. In Japan, for a woman, let alone a geisha, to achieve the status of top oyabun is almost beyond comprehension. In fact it can’t happen, but it has.’

  ‘She’d have to be pretty ruthless to survive on the way to the top,’ I observed.

  ‘More than simply ruthless, that would be the minimum requirement. It must have taken enormous intellect, courage and determination.’ Anna laughed. ‘She credits me with starting it all for her,’ then she quickly added, ‘which is nonsense, of course.’

  ‘Oh? What did she say?’

  Anna looked up at me, her expression serious. ‘It’s not stuff I care to remember, but according to Korin-san, it was the thing that happened at the Nest of the Swallows.’

  ‘The kempeitai colonel?’ I refrained from adding the words – Takahashi, the one you murdered.

  ‘Yes, him.’ Anna then began to relate the conversation between Miss Sparkle and herself at their reunion luncheon. Miss Sparkle had picked her up at the hotel and taken her to a small inn, part of a traditional marketplace, for lunch. It was obvious that Miss Sparkle was a regular patron and an important guest as they were immediately ushered to a small private room. The meal was ordered and when it came the waiter was instructed that they were not under any circumstances to be disturbed.

  It was here that between them they hatched Konoe Akira’s comeuppance and also where the following conversation took place. Miss Sparkle, after sampling several dishes and sending one back, put down her chopsticks and looked directly at Anna. ‘Anna-san, when the odious kempeitai Lieutenant Ito brought you to the Nest of the Swallows covered with scrapes, cuts and bruises we were amazed to hear how you had fought, on your own, the six kempeitai soldier thugs sent to bring you to Colonel Takahashi. “How can a single woman do this?” all the okami-san asked. It was beyond the possibility of our imagination.’

  ‘Korin-san, they had murdered my beautiful friend, Til the trishaw driver, and placed his head on the front gatepost. I was beyond fury, beyond shock. If I had had a machine gun I would have killed them all.’

  ‘But you fought them with your bare hands and we heard later that their cuts and bruises were worse than yours.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so, but they were caught by surprise.’

  ‘Ah, surprise. That was the first lesson you taught me,’ Miss Sparkle said. ‘Then came patience and then sudden and swift punishment. I have used these three in combination many times in the yakuza.’

  ‘No, no!’ Anna protested. ‘It was you who made it all possible, your instruction; you must take the credit, Korin-san, not me!’

  Miss Sparkle shook her head, having none of it. ‘Anna-san, I was trained as a geisha. All I could do was teach you submission, the power of pleasing a man and therefore the power to earn some privileges and remain safe, even gain a little power yourself. You used this instruction in a new way. This was a new purpose for patience, one that a Japanese woman would not have considered.’

  ‘I was protecting my womanhood,’ Anna explained.

  ‘Ah, yes, the precious pearl. Every Japanese woman knows that it is hers to keep for as long as she wishes.’ She chuckled at this observation. ‘But she also knows that the cost is much too great, in fact, impossible. In the end it is worthless; she would end up as neither geisha nor wife nor concubine and her own family would banish her; she would have nowhere to go. She would become a slave, a rag picker. To risk your life to remain a virgin, that, to us, was unthinkable. Men are too strong. They will take the pearl, one way or another. That is what I prepared you for at the Nest of the Swallows. How to accept and survive the rape of Colonel Takahashi.’

  ‘The need to maintain my virginity was too strong in my mind to overcome,’ Anna said, not explaining any further.

  ‘When you killed him, knowing that you would die as a consequence, I learned the lesson of ultimate strength,’ Miss Sparkle replied. ‘It is taking a risk that defies and confuses the imagination of men and confounds them with the power of its unthinkable audacity. In a Japanese woman it was impossible.’ Miss Sparkle looked directly into Anna’s eyes. ‘You have been the template for my subsequent life. When I was fortunate enough to be rescued from the American prison in order to open soldier brothels for American troops I knew that I would never get another such chance in life. I decided I would emulate the woman I most admired in the world.’ Miss Sparkle leaned forward and took Anna’s hand. ‘There you have it, honourable Anna-san. If not for you I would be an old woman in rags selling my body to fish-market drunks for a bowl of noodles.’

  Anna started to sob. ‘You were right, Korin-san, I should have listened to you. Keeping the pearl intact has ruined so much of what it means to be a woman.’ Anna then began to tell Miss Sparkle of the result of Konoe Akira’s complete dominance and the effects of his brainwashing, with the result that she had never been able to give herself to a man, even to me, whom she confessed to love more than her own life.

  The old woman listened silently and when Anna had completed the whole sorry tale, surprisingly she hadn’t attempted to comfort her. ‘So now when you have him in the Jade House you will kill him, yes? It will not be hard. I will help you. It will look like a heart attack. I know you have maintained your skill with the kinbaku rope. Do you know
how to induce a heart attack?’

  ‘Yes, I know the method,’ Anna replied. ‘But I have not attempted it.’

  ‘I will show you tomorrow when we go to practise with Lee-Li,’ Miss Sparkle said.

  ‘No, I do not wish to kill him, Korin-san.’

  Miss Sparkle looked bemused. ‘But he must be properly punished.’

  ‘I will humiliate him, that is sufficient.’

  ‘What do you mean? Anna-san, Konoe Akira is a man! It is not possible for a woman to humiliate a Japanese man. This one, he was also a general. They recover from humiliation by a woman without blinking. It is a second-rate humiliation; he will not remember it when he goes to bed that night.’

  ‘I think he will remember me,’ Anna said quietly. ‘I can bring on an angina attack. In a man of sixty it should not be difficult. But I think we should have an ambulance standing by, just in case.’

  Miss Sparkle looked doubtful, even unhappy, but then reluctantly agreed that this could be arranged. ‘How will you humiliate him?’ she asked.

  ‘If he realises I could have taken his life, but then decided to spare him, will he not be humiliated?’

  ‘Hai! He will think you a fool, a woman. Only a woman would lack the courage to go the whole way. A fool, a coward and a woman are all the same thing in his mind.’

  ‘But it still proves that I am stronger than him.’

  ‘True. But is that enough? Surely not, when you consider what he has done to you. He is a Japanese man. The thought of your strength of character will not linger beyond his next bowl of noodles.’

  ‘I don’t care, I have satisfied my own pride!’ Anna exclaimed.

  Miss Sparkle cackled heartily at this. ‘Ah, yes, very commendable, like satisfying yourself with your finger – it does no harm and makes you feel good. But, ask yourself, please, Anna-san, will this satisfaction now allow Duncan-san to possess the precious pearl?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Anna said softly, confused and close to tears.

  ‘Then you will have nothing to show for the years you have suffered,’ Miss Sparkle said, not relenting. ‘You will have shown Konoe Akira that you have character, strength, patience, determination and perseverance, even the ability to kill, all the things you claim he was responsible for teaching you. How then is this going to humiliate him? All it proves is that he still possesses your mind and has every right to be proud of his honourable pupil. What sort of humiliation is that? What revenge? What satisfaction?’

  Anna, sipping green tea, thought for a while. She was not used to a woman who had a stronger mind and more determination than herself and who forced her to examine her own motives. ‘You are right, Korin-san,’ she admitted finally. ‘But short of killing him, what else can I do?’

  Miss Sparkle chuckled. ‘We will cover for you if you wish to kill him. But I think perhaps you are right. You must frighten him out of his wits; he must know you planned and possessed the power to kill him, then spared his life. If you do this properly, show no emotion, behave like a man, the gift of his life can involve his code of honour. It will create an obligation he cannot avoid. There has to be a price for sparing his life; this is the time-honoured way. Konoe Akira is from a Samurai family, he cannot escape this obligation. Then you must put a proposal to him that is big enough to cancel the debt he owes you for sparing his life.’ She paused. ‘Since your kidnapping we have researched him. He is a very powerful man, the chairman and major shareholder in a fishing zaibatsu, the second in Japan. Tomorrow we will go to the fish markets and you will see for yourself.’

  Anna spread her arms. ‘I guess that’s why we’re here, Nicholas. This is the payback.’ She laughed. ‘Though I must say Miss Sparkle has taught me a lesson in both opportunism and business acumen.’

  ‘How is that?’

  ‘Well, work it out for yourself. I get the opportunity to liaise, to be the agent, call it what you may, for Japanese fishing licences with the Pacific Island nations with a whopping great initial fee attached and another every time they need to renew; you get what promises to be a very lucrative business opportunity without it costing you a bean; Miss Sparkle gets a chance to extend yakuza influence into the local fish markets; and finally, Konoe-san, the ultimate control freak, loses control and potentially loses face. He is forced to do as I say in this deal, which is anathema to someone like him, but face is everything. I will be humiliating him by bringing uncertainty into his decisions, undermining his control. Nothing upsets a large Japanese corporation more than uncertainty. Look what happened with Mitsubishi and the two freighters – they lost face and opened themselves up to criticism. They would have done just about anything to regain control. In fact, they ended up virtually giving us an extra ship.’

  I glanced over at the quietly snoring Konoe-san. The tiny dose of poison from the fugu fish, the sake and no doubt the drugs he’d been given in hospital had knocked him for six. There was no way he was feigning sleep, and anyway, he’d have had trouble following our conversation in English. ‘You’ve learned all this since we came to Japan?’ I asked.

  ‘No, of course not. A bit – the deal with Mitsubishi helped – but most of it comes from Miss Sparkle. Remember, she’s spent her entire life understanding what goes on in the head of a Japanese man, especially one who is autocratic and powerful.’

  ‘Japanese mind games; I’m impressed,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not that hard and it’s not that Japanese, Nick. If you were a Western corporation about to invest roughly a billion dollars US in a long-term fishing venture, you’d want to be pretty certain that your exclusive licences were secure and under your own control.’ She nodded her head at the sleeping Japanese man. ‘I have that control, renewable every five years for the next twenty years.’

  ‘You mean you can dictate the terms of the contract?’

  ‘Well, yes, in conjunction with the island governments who grant the licences. I will suggest that they demand a percentage of the gross profits from the catch and the new fish factories to build schools, hospitals, sports facilities, regional medical clinics, that sort of thing.’

  ‘And they’ll agree to that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why? They’re not going to tell you their gross profits.’

  ‘They won’t have to.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘We’ll simply audit the catch and estimate a figure that’s around ten per cent of the market price for wholesale fish on the Japanese stock exchange. They won’t care. It’s not their money.’

  ‘But you said it was a percentage of their profit.’

  Anna laughed. ‘They’ll simply apply to the Japanese government to grant the amount in foreign aid instead of granting it to some other third-world nation. It’s a way of jumping the queue and not having to go cap in hand to the Japanese government for aid. Konoe Akira’s zaibatsu will do that for us. Because it’s infrastructure and not money their government is supplying it will be difficult for the locals to extract bribes. Besides, the contracts to build the schools, hospitals and other infrastructure will naturally go to your company and so prevent corruption on the ground.’

  I was filled with admiration. ‘Wow! That’s nice work, Anna. I can see now that the Mitsubishi business was just a warm-up session. To think I very nearly didn’t come to this lunch. We have to have a drink to celebrate, but not bloody sake! A Kirin beer for me and for you, what will it be, darling?’

  ‘I don’t suppose they’d have a gin and tonic? This isn’t the sort of place where Westerners would come to die of fish poisoning. I guess it will have to be a sake. I’ve never tried Japanese whisky.’

  ‘Hey, wait on! This is a pretty posh joint. I’ll bet they have French champagne. The Japanese are at heart awful snobs.’ So we ordered a bottle of Cristal that cost damn near as much as the fugu itself.

  I fondly believed the champagne would sober me up. Can’t think why. Some deeply held racist belief that the European alcohol would somehow subdue the Asian. I’d somewhat recovered from t
he earlier effects of the sake but in the recesses of my skull I could feel a headache creeping like a cat stalking a lizard. We’d finished all seven fugu dishes, the number Konoe Akira had ordered in memory of the derring-do with his mates as an officer cadet. I could feel the result – slight dizziness, tingling of the tongue and fingers – but it was nothing a couple of glasses of French bubbly wouldn’t chase away with a Gallic flourish, I decided.

  Konoe Akira was still asleep, his rigid leg straight out and his head resting on his shoulder and the back of his chair. He was snoring fairly loudly. I guess you could say that at least I’d won the little boy doggy bum-sniffing stuff.

  A glass and a half each of champagne later the food waiter came in to say that Konoe-san’s chauffeur was waiting outside. I paid the bill and tipped him and the sake waiter, both over-generously, then asked for Konoe-san to be allowed to continue his afternoon nap. We remained another twenty minutes to finish the bottle before leaving.

  Almost the moment we walked out of the restaurant and hit what passes for fresh air in Tokyo, I was gone, done like a dog’s dinner. The effect of the rice booze combined with the champagne went straight to my legs, as well as whacking me on the back of the head with an invisible sledgehammer. Ignoring Anna I focused on the big American car and walked unsteadily up to Staff Sergeant Goto who stood at the door of the gigantic and outrageous powder-blue Cadillac. Drunk language doesn’t come easily off the page so I’ll stick to what I said rather than how it was delivered, which was with much slurring of words and frequent hiccupping. ‘The honourable Konoe-san is sleeping (hic),’ I informed Staff Sergeant Goto. ‘I did not wish to wake him up (hic). The last time I did so (hic) led to the most regrettable consequences.’ I paused and, closing one eye, gave him a withering look, or so I imagined, then, almost losing my balance, I stabbed a blunt and belligerent forefinger in the direction of his brass-buttoned Norman Rockwell chauffeur’s tunic. ‘One of them,’ I pronounced, ‘being that yours truly was karate-kicked and landed (hic) on a very . . . valuable vase (hic). So, what do you say to that, my good man?’ I demanded.