Foreign Exchange (The Tony Cassella Mysteries)

by Beinhart, Larry

  “Why is success important to any man? It is a matter of ambition, respect. Honor. Duty. These words sound very strange in English. In Japanese I would say taimen, giri.”

  “Yeah, they don’t use words like that much anymore. Everyone is too cool. But when you think about it, who did?”

  “What do you mean, who did?” he asked.

  “Gunga Din? Rudyard Kipling? Don Corleone? The Light Brigade? Somebody said, ‘England expects every man to do his duty’—I remember that from somewhere.”

  “Lord Horatio Nelson,” Hayakawa said. “He sent that message by signal flag at the Battle of Trafalgar when England was a great island empire.”

  “That meant they should either kill somebody for a bigger empire or die for one. Same when Don Corleone said it. In World War I, I bet they used duty and honor a lot. Kamikaze pilots—they believed in duty and honor.”

  “The will to kill. Ready to die. Without that, no greatness,” he said. I couldn’t tell if the voice he was speaking from was that of a college sophomore drunk on a Japanese version of Nietzsche or the standard credo of economists at Musashi Trading Company or the rattling tail of a psychopath.

  “Maybe,” I said, “honor is to die when it won’t help and duty is to kill without mercy. Maybe we’re better off without them.”

  “That is very sad,” he said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “That,” he said, “is the real tragedy of America.”

  “I’ve always wondered what the real tragedy of America is.”

  “It is not that you have become a debtor nation or that you have fallen behind in technology and are declining in your place in the world. That is not the tragedy. The tragedy is that you have lost your sense of mission, of honor, of purpose. To die for what you believe in—that is purity, that is chuhgi.”

  “How did you like Berkeley?”

  “Japanese work very hard in grade school and in high school. That is where the competition takes place. College we … fuck off!” He giggled. “If you get into the right college you are set. It doesn’t matter what you do there. That is the myth anyway. It’s not quite true. Sure, if you go to Tokyo University you will be on the fast track. Nissan, Toyota, Musashi, Mitsubishi, Fuji, Hitachi—you will be with an A-l top-level corporation. But if you impress the right professors and make the right connections, you will be on the inside lane of the fast track.”

  “So did you fuck off at Berkeley?”

  “Not as much as I wanted, and I have to tell you that fucking off at an American college is a fuck of a lot more fun than at a Japanese one.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Japanese girls are not as liberal as gaijin. American women are much more … experimental.” He giggled again. “There are no drugs in Japan. The rock and roll is all from the States. College was very tough—I was a stranger in a strange land. How do you like being a stranger in a strange land, Tony, my friend?”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “But you are a sportsman. And you have Marie Laure.” He had even more trouble pronouncing it than I used to have. “And you are not Japanese. We Japanese are a unique people. We are. We think differently, feel differently than anyone else. All this is proven scientifically. To be away from family—from the company, which is like family, away from Japan—is hard.”

  “How does your wife feel about you being away.”

  “She is very good. She is taking care of the children.”

  “What does she feel about you seeing other women while you’re out and around the world.”

  “She is a Japanese wife. She understands these things.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Wow?”

  “I’ve never met a woman who understands these things.”

  “Japan is a much simpler place than the West,” he said. “Women have their place. But a man does not expect as much from a wife. We have our duty to provide. She has her duty to run the home. We are to have children, she to raise them. The woman has the home, the man has the world. American women expect much more. When they are young, in college, that’s great. It is overwhelming for a Japanese man, but it’s great. When she grows older, I think the American girl grows unhappy because she cannot have all she wants for as little as she wants to pay. Which is the American disease. To have everything and have it at a discount.”

  “You think so?”

  “You know more about America than me. Do you know any happy American women?”

  I thought about that. It was a three-Scotch question without a doubt. The answer was “No.”

  “Ah-hah! I case my rest.”

  “You are drunk,” I said.

  “Yes. I case my rest,” he said again, heard it, and laughed.

  “Do you know any happy Japanese women?” I asked him.

  “Happy? I am not sure. But I know something even better. I know many Japanese women who do not complain.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” I said. “As one sexist pig to another.”

  “Ah, sexist pig. So nice to hear you say that—such memories it brings back of Berkeley. Do you know, Tony, my friend, that I used to know one girl who was very politically correct. American girl—she used to like it from behind. She used to yell, ‘Fuck me, you sexist pig. Your prick is a tool of oppression. Fuck me.’ Ah, Berkeley—there was nothing like it.”

  “Is that a true story?”

  “I don’t know,” he said sadly. “I read it in Penthouse. You know—the letters that people send in about their great sexual experiences? Mostly they start by saying ‘I never thought that I would write to Penthouse, but …”

  “I bet,” I said, “that they have writers who write those letters.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes.”

  “That would be very sad,” he said.

  “What’s a source code?” I said.

  “Your mother is a very extraordinary woman. Isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve never heard of a source code.”

  “She’s intellectual, understanding, broad-minded.”

  “A very civilized woman,” I said.

  “Where is your father?”

  “He’s dead,” I said. “And yours?”

  “Dead. Cancer. Probably from radiation poisoning. From Nagasaki. But he didn’t die until nineteen fifty-five.”

  By the time I reached our suite I was very drunk. Thereupon more noise was made than was strictly required in such an inhospitable setting. No one had informed me that my daughter had been making a difficult night of it, full of sounds and short of sleep, reducing Marie Laure to a state both raw and fragile. She accused me of being inebriated and thoughtless. I accused her of being something equally vile—sober and censorious. She said that she was carrying the burden alone. I said that she carried exactly as much as she wanted and not to lay that shit on me. The baby woke and started to cry. Marie Laure said I had done that, when clearly it was she. “You wake her, you take her,” she said in what used to be a very charming French accent. She placed the squalling brat in my arms. I rocked her and made coo-coo noise that left her less than impressed. Poor tyke—she turned and gnawed at my bosom. It lacked both sustenance and comfort. I made an announcement to that effect and thrust her back upon her mother, who enunciated very clearly a revisionist view of our relationship in which she hated me.

  Having slept with hatred more than once in states ranging from sober to drunk to stoned, I know that a couch with its lumps brings more rest and comfort than a mattress shared with a woman and rage. I blessed my Oriental friend’s expense account that had provided us with a living room. Far better than sleeping in the bath. But the fight followed my flight.

  It woke my mother, who emerged, as old women will, with a robe wrapped around worried pajamas. My mother, like many Americans, defies her age in looks, in vigor, in interests. But in the middle of the night, rheumy-eyed, without her teeth, worried and wrinkled, she was cronelike. There stood the triad of women—infant, frui
tful, and ancient. I was certain I was faced with female solidarity and that my mother would take Marie Laure’s part.

  “What’s going on?” my mother asked.

  “ ’E’s drunk,” Marie said.

  “I had to be. It was business.”

  “You are a liar,” Marie said. “No one ’as to drink.”

  “The Japanese guy thinks I’m his friend. He thinks I saved his butt. I have to cement that. I have to make him sure that I’m his friend. That means drinking with him tonight. I’m sorry. But that’s what it meant.”

  “You are just wishing you didn’t have to be responsible for us,” Marie Laure said.

  That wasn’t true, but it was just true enough to make me shut up for a moment.

  My mother fixed Marie with her gaze and spoke as if in judgment. My mother, as Mike Hayakawa and others have noted, is normally a broad-minded, intellectual, literate, and very rational person. Civilized. Somewhere in her genes or infantile memory there must have been a crone, a hill woman full of folk wisdom and Sicilian doom who spoke through her now. She said, in a vendetta voice, “My son is behaving correctly. Keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer. How else will you know when to strike?”

  In the morning I apologized. She did too. But I had a headache and hangover and it didn’t make me smile. She was tired and had evidence that my mother had allied with me against her. So Marie didn’t grin either. Which was a damn shame because we both knew that we were in love, with each other as well as with the baby. Something truly stupid was going on and I wasn’t bright enough to stop it. After breakfast and coffee it hadn’t gotten any better. Nonetheless we agreed to sightsee and shop for at least the morning before going back to St. Anton, since, it appeared, my business in Vienna was unsuccessfully concluded.

  She took an awfully long time getting ready. How long can a woman take dressing and hairing and making up? The answer, as every man knows, is twenty minutes longer than we would possibly imagine and ten minutes more than we can stand. Knowing that this is sex-role typing or the sexist equivalent of racist thinking doesn’t stop it from happening exactly that way.

  “How the fuck do you take so long?”

  “If you have such a rush, you can leave without me.”

  “I want to be with you—that is the point.”

  One of us carried the baby and two of us carried the attitude as we emerged from the hotel.

  “What is your problem?” I said.

  “It is your problem,” she said.

  Mike Hayakawa, who was coming toward us, realized what he was walking into. He politely stood aside, as if by seeming to ignore us our privacy was guaranteed.

  “I am not a plaything. Like all of your others.”

  “No, you’re not. And I treat you differently too.”

  “You have no commitment.”

  “I put the laundries in your name. Two great Laundromats. Come the nineteen ninety-two Winter Olympics, the one in Tignes alone will make your fortune.”

  “Is it money we are talking about?” she asked. “It is not money we are talking about,” she answered.

  “Well, it’s certainly not sex that we are talking about. We haven’t talked about sex since the baby was born.”

  “You want to have sex? Do you care if it is ’urting me?”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean I am totally faithful to you even though we don’t have sex. And sex is not a matter of intercourse, is it?”

  “You want le pipe? Would you like me to suck you while I am nursing? Or while I am changing ’er diapers?”

  “How about just treating me like a decent human being.”

  “Because you are not a decent human being and I cannot trust you.”

  We were deep in fear, angst, and rage. Truth didn’t matter anymore. Or love. Or caring. I don’t know what did matter. Scoring points. Venting tension. Exposing pain.

  “Okay, you don’t trust me. Maybe I should give you something not to trust me about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like maybe I should get some affection from somewhere.”

  “Fuck you, Anthony Cassella.” In her rage she turned from me. I wasn’t having any of that. We were going to have it out. So I grabbed her arm. She wasn’t having any of that. So she tore herself away from me. Without looking or realizing where she was going. Then she was off the curb. She stumbled and in trying to keep her balance her feet went out in front of her so that she was stepping out into the street.

  Austrians are very Germanic. That is to say, orderly. Cars stop at red lights. People cross when the light says WALK, and only at the crosswalk. Drivers depend on this obedience and proceed as if traffic rules were laws of nature. On the positive side, it means street traffic really moves. On the negative side, it means that if someone does break a rule, the cars are usually going too fast to stop. So perhaps the driver who hit Marie should not be blamed. He put on his brakes as soon as he could. The skid marks were there afterward to prove his effort. Nor is Marie to blame, for running from me, or tripping. Perhaps I should be as generous with myself. Perhaps I should embrace some guilt. Who knows?

  When the car struck her, she was already turning around—she saw it coming.

  When the car struck her, the impact traveled through her. The kind of thing they demonstrate in high school physics by striking one pool ball through another. The same thing that happens when your croquet ball is against your opponent’s and you put your foot on yours to hold it in place, then hammer it in order to make the other ball fly.

  It was a law of physics that sent Anna Geneviève flying out of her mother’s arms. All I could do was watch and wish I were dying instead.

  Mike Hayakawa, who was not involved, started moving as soon as Marie stumbled. Not expecting what was to happen, but to help her. So he was already in motion. He changed course. Like the most glorious receiver in the history of American football, he was running, reaching for my daughter, his arms outstretched in front of him.

  But she was out of his reach. Falling toward the street. Car coming.

  Mike dove for her. In his perfect Japanese businessman’s suit, he slid on the Viennese pavement. He caught her as gently as could be. Rolled over away from the oncoming car and held her to his chest.

  Marie was alive. She’d been knocked against a parked car, then fallen to her knees. She staggered over to her baby. And to Mike. I ran to them. She held her baby tight.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said over and over.

  “No, no, it’s my fault,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  The driver of the car rushed up. “You were not crossing in the crosswalk,” he said. “All was correct. I am not responsible.”

  “Yes,” Marie said to me. “Is my baby okay?”

  The driver said, “You should not be crossing when cars have the green light.”

  “She’s fine,” I said to Marie. “Are you okay, Mike?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re a hero,” I said.

  “You bet,” he said, as happy and proud as he deserved to be.

  PHOTOGRAPHS & MEMORIES

  WHEN WE ARRIVED IN St. Anton there was an ancient Citroën CV6 parked in front of the pension where we have our apartment. It was classic black and red. Inside was an irate grand-mère.

  The conversation that ensued was in very fast, very colloquial French. The gist of it was that she was angry that her daughter and granddaughter had not been there to greet her. It did not matter that they had not known she was coming. Her granddaughter was beautiful. Her granddaughter had all her parts. Her granddaughter was not as well looked after as she ought to be, but now that would be rectified. Oh, this was the father of her granddaughter—not a terribly interesting piece of information. And this was the other grandmother—far more interesting. Negotiations would ensue. How come the father of her granddaughter had not yet taken her bags inside, and wh
ich room was hers?

  The politics of government are actually more rational than the politics of people. Yet it is governments who employ officers of protocol to decide who sits next to whom at dinner and who gets to sleep where, because experience has taught them that even diplomats grow undiplomatic when they think another occupies a more advantageous piece of furniture. We had no professional assistance and war seemed imminent.

  The final accommodation was to rent two additional rooms in the pension, one for each grandmother. That gave us our apartment back, but not, somehow, our privacy or peace.

  People of a certain age—and we were all of a certain age since we were either below puberty or parents—have a certain rigidity of needs. Best hours for dealing with others, for eating, for being alone. Favorite foods, favorite irritations, a variety of required noise levels and silences, necessary television programs, sources of news and forms of entertainment, tasks they need to do and tasks they cannot bear. The variety of different coffees alone was enough to destroy harmony. I prefer German coffee, which is similar to American coffee in the way that a Mercedes is to a Buick. It’s exactly the same except that it costs twice as much and it’s a lot better. Geneviève, la grand-mère, preferred French coffee. It had taken me years to wean Marie Laure to the Teutonic format and now suddenly we were back to that black and bitter brew, much like espresso but not quite as extreme a statement, relieved only by heated, not steamed, milk. Anna, the elder, wanted decaf, instant preferred. But if she had real coffee her preference was the Italian style—that is to say, cappuccino, with the milk steamed, not heated. Marie Laure, as pure as any California girl, had forsworn coffee altogether for the sake of caffeine-free breast milk and was drinking only herbal tea.

  Not that I had a great deal of time to contemplate this.

  As I carried Geneviève’s bags in from the Citroën the phone rang.

  “Hi, guy,” Chip Sheen said.

  “Be careful what you say,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “You’re tapping the phone, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “See what I mean?”

  “I thought Mr. Lime had a word with you,” he said, very irritated.