Fishing for Stars

by Bryce Courtenay

  We emerged from the hotel lift into the lobby and proceeded up the grand stairs leading to the mezzanine floor. It was packed with guests arriving for a wedding reception in the major conference room next door to the restaurant. There was a palpable gasp when the women, and I guess the men also, saw Anna, then there was a discernable hush as every eye followed our progress up the stairs and into the restaurant.

  There have been few moments in my life when I know I have witnessed perfection, of time, place and appearance, but this was one such moment. Here was an object of desire, of such stunning beauty that a hundred and fifty people were likely to carry an image in their minds forever of that rarest of all types of beauty in a mature woman, one that transcends race, colour or conventional perceptions. I couldn’t help but wonder what they might have thought had they known the circumstances of Anna’s life.

  We ordered a good bottle of her favourite champagne and I broached the subject slowly. ‘Anna, this is not only our last night in Japan but probably the last time I shall ever bring up the subject of your vaginismus. While you may wish to do so and I will always be happy to listen, after this I will never mention it again.’

  ‘Oh, Nicholas, must it be tonight, on our last evening in Japan?’ she asked, her expression alarmed.

  ‘Darling, I’ve always loved you, but in the time we’ve been here I’ve learned to love you even more than I ever thought possible. I want to put this thing between us to rest forever.’

  ‘I’m so glad!’ she exclaimed. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you didn’t love me, Nicholas. You do know, from the very beginning, from the age of sixteen, I’ve never wanted another man – the butterfly collector is the only one.’

  ‘In a roundabout way, that’s what I want to talk about. I have given our problem a great deal of thought.’

  Anna reached out and took my hand. ‘No, Nicholas, it is my problem, it is only our problem because you have suffered as a result of it.’

  ‘Nevertheless, after coming here and meeting Konoe Akira, I now know that things are not going to change, that there will never be an instant cure, an epiphany, and I think I know why it may never be cured.’

  ‘Nicholas, I want more than anything —’

  ‘No, stop there, Anna. Let me speak. You don’t need to explain. When I’m finished you may comment, although I expect you won’t agree with me.’

  ‘I will try, darling.’

  I laughed. ‘Shush! It will be quite understandable if you don’t. Besides, you never try to agree with me; you either do or you don’t, you never prevaricate. So, just hear me out, darling.’

  I topped up her champagne and then, hesitating an instant, said, ‘Anna, I’ve been thinking about myself and Konoe Akira. How both of us have been present in your life since you were sixteen.’

  ‘Well yes, I suppose that’s true,’ Anna replied. ‘I’ve never thought about it in that way.’

  ‘But I think you have, if only subconsciously.’

  ‘And what might you mean by that?’ Anna said in a slightly defensive voice.

  ‘Well, to fully complement your personality you need us both, that is, the influences both of us exert or have in the past exerted on you, to make you what you have become.’

  ‘What are you trying to say, that I don’t have a mind of my own?’

  ‘Good lord, no! You’re about the most original person I’ve ever known, darling.’ I grinned. ‘For the most part I don’t even pretend to understand what’s going on in your mind. But one of us is about loving you and the other is about discipline and success, one is emotion and the other is intellect. You crave both and you’re terrified that if you obey the instinct to love completely you will lose the ability to think in an original and disciplined way. Moreover, if you choose not to have love in your life then that will be equally disastrous. We are creatures of both emotion and intellect; take either away and we’re totally unbalanced. Perhaps refraining from physical love, yet loving in every other way, is the compromise that allows you to balance both of us in your life. You need Konoe Akira’s psychological presence as much as you need my actual presence. We are both a necessary part of your life, and rather than resolve your problem with Konoe Akira, you have, in the last two weeks, gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the trinity intact. Konoe Akira and I are the two parts that make a whole in your life and you have no intention of losing either.’

  Nearly ten minutes had passed and Anna hadn’t touched her champagne; now she was weeping quietly. I reached for her hand and kissed it. ‘Darling, I will always love you, and whether you agree or disagree with what I’ve said, it’s not going to make me feel any differently about you.’

  ‘Oh, Nicholas, I don’t know if what you think is right. I just don’t know!’ she sobbed. ‘Perhaps you are right.’ She dabbed her tears with her table napkin then, looking at me directly, said, ‘There is something I haven’t told you about Konoe Akira.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘About meeting him again, you know, confronting him, hoping it might solve the problem. Nicholas, your conclusion is right, at least the first part. I had every reason to hate him – my kidnapping, my revenge . . . When I knew and he knew that I held his life in my hands, just as he had done mine in Java, in Tjilatjap, all the ingredients were there to resolve the psychological hold he’d had on me all this time. As you put it, I’d turned the tables. It should have worked, but it didn’t.’

  ‘You mean he still holds the same power over you?’ I asked, deeply shocked.

  ‘Oh, God no! That’s the whole point. That part worked perfectly! I’m not in the least in his thrall or power.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘The vaginismus, it’s not of his making. He’s not the cause.’

  ‘Oh, bullshit!’ I burst out. ‘Every psychiatrist you’ve ever seen has strongly suggested . . .’

  ‘I know!’ Anna said urgently. ‘But it isn’t, I just know it isn’t.’

  ‘But can you say what it is, what’s caused it?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Great. You know it isn’t Konoe Akira, but you don’t know who or what caused it?’ I thought for a moment. ‘Okay, what about the kempeitai colonel you . . . ’ I recovered just in time and changed direction. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Takahashi. No, I had it before him. Definitely.’

  ‘How could you know that? After all, you were a virgin.’

  ‘Because every time I thought of you and tried to use my finger it happened.’

  ‘Anna, why didn’t you tell me this before? When did it first happen? Try to think. The very first time . . . ’

  ‘It was in Tjilatjap.’

  ‘Before Konoe Akira or after?’

  ‘That’s the problem, I can’t remember. Can you remember the first time you masturbated?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. I was six, my Japanese nanny did it to me. I can still remember her cackle.’

  Anna didn’t even smile. ‘It was a difficult time, my stepmother had committed suicide, my father was drinking himself to death, the boat was stuck in Tjilatjap. I was effectively a Japanese prisoner of war and Konoe Akira had possibly already taken possession of my life.’

  ‘Anna, it’s terribly important, can’t you think? Before or after?’

  ‘Nicholas, I knew nothing about sex. I thought the spasm was natural, a sort of protection before you married. I’d heard girls at school say your virginity had to be broken, something to do with the hymen. The cramping when I tried was, I thought, just something like that. You know, natural, it hadn’t been broken so my finger couldn’t get in and if I rubbed my clitoris it started to cramp. I can even remember that some of the girls had said it was a sin and I thought perhaps it was God punishing me.’

  ‘But it happened round Konoe Akira’s time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you can’t swear?’

  ‘No. But I still feel certain he had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘How long have you thought this?’

  ‘Si
nce the morning I visited him in hospital.’

  ‘So we’re no nearer the truth than before,’ I said.

  ‘Yes we are, Nicholas. All that clever stuff about the three of us being intimately bound together in a psychological knot can be dismissed.’

  ‘I’m not at all sure about that, but you know more about knots than me, Anna.’

  ‘That crack was entirely unnecessary, Nicholas!’

  I grinned. ‘Couldn’t resist it.’

  ‘Bastard!’ she laughed.

  ‘More champagne?’

  ‘Maybe later. I too have something to say to you.’

  ‘Well at least our Japanese sojourn ends with a bang not a whimper.’

  ‘Is that another snide crack?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ends with a bang?’

  ‘Oh, I see, that sort of bang. No, it’s T.S. Eliot misquoted. What was it you wanted to say, darling?’

  Anna took a sip of champagne – more than a sip, half the glass. ‘Nicholas, can you remember the terrible row we had at Beautiful Bay fifteen or sixteen years ago?’

  ‘Guilty as usual. I started it.’ I pointed to the bottle. ‘We were drinking.’

  ‘It was the worst two months of my life, worse than the Japanese, worse than anything,’ Anna confessed.

  ‘Can’t say I enjoyed it myself. I was drunk most of the time, slept around with any moll I could pick up. “Hello, who are you?” I’d ask in the morning.’

  ‘Then Joe came to the rescue.’

  ‘Thank Christ for Joe,’ I said, trying to keep the conversation light. Anna’s confession that it was the worst time of her life, especially given the events of her life, was a fairly startling admission, even if perhaps not entirely true.

  ‘After we got together were you faithful to me?’ Anna asked.

  ‘No, not until just before this trip.’

  ‘Good. That is the correct answer.’

  ‘What, you’ve been checking on me?’

  ‘I asked Joe.’

  I laughed. ‘How do you know you can trust him?’

  ‘Joe never lies.’

  It was true.

  ‘So what does all this mean?’

  ‘You have permission.’

  ‘Permission for what?’

  ‘To sleep with Marg.’ Anna burst into tears.

  I was too shocked to respond except to take a deep breath and exhale, then to exclaim, ‘Oh.’

  Anna wiped her tears away and was quickly back in control. ‘Since her husband’s death she has called you every week. I know you loved her very much, Nicholas. It was her or me and if she hadn’t chosen someone else I think I would have lost.’

  ‘Oh, Anna, Anna, what am I expected to say?’

  ‘Expected? You’re expected to say, “Thanks, but no thanks,” but no, I don’t really want you to say that. Nicholas, we have tried everything now, and provided we can continue our relationship, because I can’t bear to think I will lose you, then I want you to make up your mind. Whatever you decide I will honour it.’

  ‘Phew! It should be easy, but somehow it isn’t,’ I said, knowing that Anna had read me like an open book. I knew that I still cared deeply for Marg. Knew I wanted her. If ever anything should happen to Anna, I would go knocking on her door. But now, of course, there was that awkward conversation we’d had, just before I left for Japan, where I’d turned down Marg’s generous offer. She might well see herself as a woman scorned, and when I came grovelling back be unlikely to welcome me into her forgiving arms. ‘How much time have I got?’ I asked.

  Anna glanced down at her watch. ‘One minute, starting now.’

  ‘Hang on, what if Marg says go to buggery?’

  ‘Fifty seconds! She won’t.’

  ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘Forty-three seconds! Because I’m a woman.’

  ‘How can it be made to work?’

  ‘Thirty-four seconds.’

  ‘What if I can’t make up my mind?’

  ‘Twenty-four seconds! You already have.’

  ‘Anna, I don’t want to lose you!’

  ‘Fifteen seconds! You won’t.’

  ‘Help!’

  ‘Five seconds!’

  ‘Yes!’

  Anna turned and signalled to the waiter. ‘Another bottle of Cristal, please, garçon,’ she said. She turned back to me. ‘Now we work out the rules.’

  Okay, now somewhere around this time I should have been acting like the stronger sex, being a little assertive, maybe making a few conditions of my own. But, what would they be? I would have felt noble, strong, in control, if I’d said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks, Anna. It’s lovely of you, darling. Makes me love you even more,’ but I would also have been a hypocrite.

  I was forty-six years old, and my sexual drive was still strong. Anna was wonderful in bed but men always hanker for what they can’t have. I confess to feeling sorry for myself on more than one occasion, even telling myself I had the best excuse in the world to play up behind Anna’s back. And I’d tried it, and found that it was just bonking – nice bonking, because the regular women in my life were nice people and I’d be a hypocrite if I said anything else. But sex is sex and love is love, and sex with love is quite a different matter. If what I had with Anna was unconsummated it was still a relationship filled with love and I feel sure, if I’d been forced to choose, it would have been Anna every time.

  Now she was offering me her love as well as the opportunity to have sex with the other woman I loved. It was generous almost beyond comprehension. I suppose I should have been quietly joyous at the thought that I could have the two women I loved for myself, that is, of course, if Anna was right and Marg accepted, but suddenly I felt very scared. ‘Rules? Maybe Marg won’t accept your rules, Anna,’ I said, attempting to assert myself, if only a little.

  ‘She will. It’s called “The Calendar of Nick’s Joy”. The first week of the month is mine, the second is yours, the third is Marg’s and the last is yours again. For two weeks a month you’re celibate.’

  ‘Rule accepted!’ I replied, thinking that with two such strong women in my life, a week in between each visit was probably a sound idea.

  ‘The second rule. While we may talk about each other, you may not talk about us to each other. When we’re with you it’s one on one. Always.’

  ‘Hey, that’s a bit unfair. What if Marg says something nasty about you? Am I not supposed to defend you? Or the other way around?’

  ‘Don’t worry, she will and I will, but if you start taking sides we’re all in trouble.’

  ‘Any more rules?’

  ‘No, but Marg’s bound to have a few of her own.’ Anna lifted her glass. ‘Shall we drink to “The Calendar of Nick’s Joy”?’

  ‘Wait on, you only call me Nick when you’re mad at me.’

  ‘I am mad at you, Nicholas, but I’ll learn to live with it. The Calendar!’ Anna said, touching my glass.

  And so ended our last evening in Japan, one of the more surprising and unexpected, I admit, of my life.

  The following morning we found ourselves on the way to Haneda Airport in a cavalcade of six cars, two Toyotas in front filled with yakuza troops, the big black Mercedes containing Miss Sparkle, Fuchida-san and Gojo-san, then two more Toyotas behind. Then came the chrome monster, the powder-blue Cadillac driven by Staff Sergeant Goto, where, in the immaculate white leather back seat, thick as thieves, sat Konoe Akira, our new business partner in the South Pacific, Anna and myself.

  All the trouble and strife and the one delight (Gojo Mura) of our visit to Japan had come to farewell us. We had arrived weeks previously knowing little and eager to experience everything and we were leaving Japan having experienced too much and eager to depart quickly and quietly.

  But I must say, it was a strange and unique experience to watch as the head of the Tokyo yakuza, weeping copious tears, clung to Anna, reluctant to let her go, despite final calls for passengers. Miss Sparkle may have been as tough as old boot leather, but it wa
s obvious she loved that girl to bits.

  I couldn’t help but feel, not without a certain sense of foreboding, that with Miss Sparkle and Konoe Akira once again her bedfellows, Anna was entering a different world, one that, for better or worse, would launch her into the real big time, but which could also possibly return her to the dark shadows she’d experienced in their company so very long ago on a different island. But I also knew that this was a different Anna, stronger than the one who had arrived nearly a month earlier when her ghosts had not yet been laid to rest.

  We’d come to Japan ostensibly to buy a freighter, and thanks to Anna’s skill and diplomacy I’d ended up with two. But, more importantly, our secret shared purpose – to attempt to assuage the pain of her past by confronting her nemesis, Konoe Akira – had strangely been achieved despite my bull-in-the-china-shop clumsiness over her kidnapping, which had added God knows how much to the sum of her distress.

  Anna had obtained her pound of flesh by scaring the living daylights out of her dark angel and, as a consequence, she had gained both his immense admiration and respect and perhaps even deepened his undoubted love for her. She’d also set herself up to profit hugely from a business association with him in the future.

  In addition to all this, Kevin, Joe and I stood to become rich men as a result of her brains, guts, effort and, yes, additional suffering. We were all about to get a free ride on Anna’s golden goose with me clinging, so to speak, to its tail feathers.

  Not a bad outcome when all was said and done, not forgetting that if you hang on to a set of tail feathers too long they’re likely to come away in your hands.

  But of all of these outcomes, one mattered more to me than all the rest. By the time I’d strapped myself into the seat of the Qantas jet, there was no doubt in my mind that Anna was free of Konoe Akira’s influence. If she hadn’t been cured of her vaginismus and if its source lay elsewhere in her damaged past, perhaps never to be discovered, most of the other ghosts of the past had been put to rest. Her vaginismus was not due to his influence and had no bearing on the disciplines he had taught her all those years ago. It was this knowledge that allowed her to make the ultimate loving gesture, to share the man she loved with someone else.