Ransom

by Jay McInerney

  Ransom’s first college roommate was from Rochester; it turned out that the Constables knew the family. They filled him in on the recent history of his classmate, who had just finished an internship at St. Vincent’s in New York. The talk turned to the city: crime, restaurants, gentrification. The Constables went down from Rochester twice a year for a weekend, to do museums and theater. Summers they had a cottage in the Thousand Islands. While Mrs. Constable talked about an annual lilac festival, Ransom wondered how Ron Connors, former roommate and nerd, managed life or death decisions in the operating room. Ransom would just as soon operate on himself.

  It was almost six o’clock, with no sign of Marilyn, when the Constables excused themselves to get ready for dinner.

  “We’re here for three more days,” Liz said. “That’s if we last it out at this hotel. There’s some rock group staying on the floor above us and last night they practically tore the place down.”

  Ransom tried to imagine the country as they saw it: temples, gardens, exquisitely polite natives. They would welcome the inexplicable details—they had paid for some strangeness—although they probably wouldn’t like the Kentucky Fried Chicken shacks. This was more or less how it had been for him when he arrived, except that he wasn’t planning to get back on a plane at the end of the week. He was sick with Pakistani dysentery and guilt, having travelled three-quarters of the way around the world only to discover that everything he knew and believed was hideously inadequate to the task of living.

  His ship from Hong Kong docked at Osaka. He took the train to Kyoto and found a room in a hostel. Three days later he met Miles in a coffee shop. Ransom had staggered into the place hoping to find a seat before he fainted, suddenly stricken with an attack of the cyclical fever he’d been fighting since India. He passed out just inside the door and when he came to he was looking up at a cowboy. Miles had taken Ransom home and Akiko had nursed him. Eventually they helped him find a teaching job and a place of his own. A Japanese doctor shot Ransom full of antibiotics and the fever stopped coming back. He enrolled in a language class, explored the streets of the city, and considered joining a Zen temple, until the day he wandered into a karate dojo.

  Ransom began to wonder if something had happened to Marilyn. More likely, she had stood him up. He had given her more than an hour. The thing to do was make sure Miles was all right. He briefly imagined himself dispatching tattooed, heavily armed yakuza with his bare hands, and almost immediately realized that he was casting this scenario out of the kind of television fantasy that had made his father rich.

  In the lobby a flash bulb went off in his face. A girl no older than twelve was pointing a camera at him and screeching. He pushed through the door and found himself looking at a hundred quizzical faces, all belonging to teenage girls. For a moment, nothing happened; he looked at them and they looked at him. Then someone screamed. Other voices joined in. The crowd pressed forward, hands outstretched.

  Reflexively, he swept his arm in a mid-level block, clearing away several hands. The blazer slung over his shoulder was tugged down into the crowd. Then his shirt was torn at from all directions. He was pressed back against the glass door, which had swung closed behind him. The screaming pitched even higher when the shirt ripped and came clear of his chest. Hands were all over him, and he felt lips pressed to his arm. He watched his shirt dissipating in the mob, being torn into smaller and smaller pieces as it moved back. He was beginning to panic.

  Fingers groped at his belt buckle, as Ransom spotted two policemen wading through the crowd, whistles in their mouths and clubs raised above their heads. Then he felt the door move behind him. A girl with pimples and pigtails seemed determined to write something on his chest with a ball-point pen, and another flourished a pair of scissors. He felt his shoes go; then, lips on his feet.

  He was being pulled back into the hotel. Two girls made it through the door with him, but they were prised loose and whisked away. A hotel employee stood in front of the door; and while the crowd still leaped and screamed, no one attempted to rush indoors.

  A man in a blue suit was bowing repeatedly to Ransom. “I am so sorry for this misfortune. We did not know you would be using main entrance. Please accept my deep apology on behalf of hotel. Our security was at fault.”

  A knot of hotel guests gawked from the inner lobby at the half-naked gaijin. A woman in a hotel uniform appeared with a kimono which Ransom quickly put on. The man in the blue suit kept apologizing. Outside, the school girls began singing choruses of a song Ransom eventually recognized as “Satisfaction.”

  A limousine was placed at his disposal. Since his shoes were gone, he decided to pick up the bike later, and was escorted out the back entrance to a waiting car.

  The driver had a broad face and drinker’s complexion. He kept looking at Ransom in the rear view. “You Charrie Watts, desu ne?”

  Ransom said that he was not a Rolling Stone.

  “You know Mr. Kirk Douglas?”

  “Not personally.”

  The driver reached inside his jacket and handed back a pocket photo album. The first picture showed him standing at the gate of Yasaka shrine with his arm around a man who appeared to be Kirk Douglas. The next one was similar, except that it was signed Best wishes Lloyd Bridges. Standing beside the car, Lloyd looked dried-out, not a spear gun in sight.

  “I drive Jack Kneecross last year,” he said.

  “Say who?”

  A crowd of schoolboys in uniforms had found their way into the Nicklaus picture. The proud driver naturally had his arm around Jack, a baby-faced god and credit to his race.

  Because he didn’t want the neighbors asking questions, Ransom asked to be dropped a street away from his house. He had to stand next to the car while the driver found a pedestrian to take their picture.

  He saw a shadow cross his as he approached the corner. He ducked, rolled on his shoulder and sprang back to his feet, but not quickly enough to dodge the second kick, which caught him on the chest and knocked him over.

  Better, the sensei said. But not very good.

  9

  En route to Osaka, ancient headquarters of fish peddlers and sake traders, Ransom felt that perhaps the country had begun to go awry when it relaxed the four-tier caste system in which merchants and businessmen occupied the lowest rung, beneath farmers, warriors, and nobility. Kyoto was a museum; Osaka, once reduced to rubble by American bombing, was a collaboration of accountants and engineers. The commute between the two was forty minutes by train. Ransom went to Osaka, like everyone else, to make money.

  Avoiding the rush, he caught a ten-thirty train, his fellow passengers women and children. He felt right at home with his book, a collection of historical tales for children written in childish hiragana, the phonetic system of writing. Though Ransom knew Americans and Europeans who were as devoted to the study of the language as he was to karate, he himself was content to dabble. He wanted to preserve the strangeness of his environment, keep himself just slightly off-balance.

  For several days he had been working on one of the tales; his translation-in-progress was folded into the book:

  The Lord Michizane lost favor in the court through the slander of his enemies and was banished. Not content with this, his enemies required the extermination of his family.

  Spies from court searched the countryside and discovered Michizane’s son and heir hidden in a small town. The son had been entrusted to Genzo, a former retainer of the Michizane family, now a provincial schoolmaster. An edict from the court arrived, commanding Genzo to present the head of the young heir to an envoy from the court.

  Genzo was in despair. He could not disobey an order from the court. Nor could he kill his former lord’s son, entrusted to his protection. A scheme occurred to him. He searched the classroom for a face that resembled the young prince. He would substitute another boy. But the others were rough peasant boys. None resembled the young lord.

  Ransom’s sleeve was tugged. When he looked up he was face to face with a boy
standing in the aisle; he examined him for princely features. Meantime, the boy scrutinized Ransom before arriving at his verdict: “Gaijin.”

  Two seats back, his mother gestured frantically.

  Who are you? the boy demanded.

  I am a spy, Ransom said.

  The boy nodded gravely. This seemed to be just what he had suspected. The mother came forward, apologizing and blushing, and the kid bolted for the next car.

  * * *

  The envoy from the court arrived on the specified day. Genzo presented him with the head of a young boy. The boy’s features were noble and aristocratic. The envoy took the head in his hands and examined it closely as if he were checking a persimmon for bruises. Genzo kept his hand on his sword. At last the envoy pronounced the head to be truly that of the young prince.

  A final paragraph remained. Ransom wanted to know how it turned out. As the train emerged aboveground at Katsura, he took out his pocket dictionary and set to work; by the time the prerecorded female voice informed him that the train was coming up on Ibaraki, he had roughed it out.

  Not far off, the mother of the dead youth waited. When she heard a sound at the gate she knew that it was not her son. She knew that she would never see her son again. The sliding door of the cottage was pulled back and a man entered. It was Genzo. He said, “Rejoice, my wife, for our son has been of service to his lord Michizane.”

  This was the stuff, Ransom thought, that turned brats like his little inquisitor into loyal salary men like those who had packed the train a few hours earlier. It might not be so bad to know where your loyalties lay, to have a distinct place in a chain of obligation and command. He wondered which was worse: having a master for whom you would cut off your child’s head, or not having a master at all.

  Outside the window a thin green fuzz showed on the rice paddies, lately flooded. Old women stooped, ankle-deep in mud, weeding and thinning the shoots.

  At Umeda Station Ransom descended to the subway, a cheerful android voice welcoming him aboard and naming the stops. He arrived at the office a little after eleven-thirty, where the receptionist, Keiko, greeted him elaborately. Honda, his boss, president and director of the A-OK Advertising Agency and English Language Conversation School, was less effusive.

  “Ransom-san,” he called from his desk, as Ransom unloaded at his own. “Please to speak with me a moment.” Desmond Caldwell, Ransom’s British colleague, was hunched over in such a manner as to appear to be writing with one end of a pencil and picking his nose with the other.

  Ransom wished Honda-sama good morning and performed a perfunctory bow before taking the seat in front of his desk.

  “What happened to your face?” Honda said, indicating the scratches. “Karate?”

  “Rock and roll,” Ransom said.

  Honda lit a Seven Star and asked how the weather was in Kyoto. For him this was a subject of genuine concern. Kyoto weather was notorious, the ring of mountains surrounding the city allegedly kept the good weather out and the bad weather in. Honda lived in Osaka, and couldn’t understand why Ransom didn’t. He claimed only gaijin and native Kyoto-jin could stand to live in the inclement ancient capital.

  Ransom’s report of partial clouds did not seem to satisfy him. “It’s sunny here,” he said, in case Ransom hadn’t noticed, but he was clearly thinking of something else. He took a long drag on his cigarette and said, “I have had complaint from Mitsubishi.”

  “What kind of complaint?”

  “They say you attack the Japanese family.”

  “How did I do that?”

  Honda consulted a piece of paper. “They say you say there is ‘double standard’ in Japan.”

  Now he remembered. The phrase “double standard” had come up in the lesson. Perhaps because they were accustomed to multiple standards, they couldn’t really get hold of the concept.

  “I must to remind you that we teach English conversation. We do not teach ethics, American or otherwise.”

  “Language is shot through with values,” Ransom said.

  “Say again?”

  “If I want to use Japanese correctly, I have to buy into the hierarchy. Talk to my boss one way and the receptionist another.”

  “I know nothing about that. I know that Mitsubishi account is very important to us. No more ethics. Ethics get you in trouble. Stick to business.”

  Ransom spent what was left of the morning rewriting a brochure for an air conditioner manufactured by their largest advertising account. Honda had written the original copy, which explained and extolled the air conditioner to Australian purchasers. Now the unit was being exported to the U.S. Across the top, Honda had written, “Does this need slight revision for American market?”

  The excellent thermal output machine of MODEL K-500 TAKYO INTERNATIONAL as Superb AIR CONDITIONING UNIT for your cooling pleasure, and permitting wonderful co-existence such as: “high quality against low cost,” “energy efficient with high performance approx 55 BTUs,” “being efficient in mechanism plus operating under noises being extremely suppressed,” for cool relaxation feeling of fulfillment, “easy listening” in your beautiful home.

  At the bottom he had written, “How about American theme headline: FOR YOUR LIFE, LIBERTY AND PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.” Ransom edited the copy as best he could, knowing that in the end Honda—who liked to say that Carlyle was his model in English prose—would take one or two of Ransom’s changes, if any, and send it back to the client, who would never know the difference. Ransom had learned that he could not hold Honda to a rigorous standard of English grammar and usage. The boss grew testy if corrected too often. After all, Honda was the author of the Honda A-OK Business English Conversation textbook series. Ransom had to teach two classes a week ostensibly based on these texts, which were not as dreadful as they might have been, the actual author being an aspiring Great American Novelist who had been Honda’s first employee. Honda, however, having interfered with the manuscripts just enough to insert several howlers in each chapter, had come to believe that he wrote the books himself, and consequently to consider himself an expert. Ransom had no great desire to disabuse him. He did the best he could under the circumstances, figuring that a misplaced modifier probably wasn’t going to kill anyone. Ransom had developed a tolerance for bad English when he worked for his father as a script reader the year he graduated from college.

  Desmond Caldwell looked up from his desk. “‘Ave you ’eard the Stones are in town?” Ransom nodded. Had he been in Japan too long, or did Desmond actually look like Keith Richards? Maybe it was just the snaggle teeth.

  Ransom penned Ave you eard about the Boston Strangler? across the scratch pad, and Desmond hunched over his desk again in earnest labor.

  At twelve-thirty he got a phone call from Rachel Coughlin, now a corporate something-or-other for a large American bank, and stationed in Tokyo.

  “I’m in Osaka for two days. My lunch got cancelled. Have you eaten?”

  “That depends,” Ransom said.

  “Don’t worry—it’s on the company,” she said.

  “I mean it depends on whether you’re lunching as a friend or as my father’s emissary abroad.”

  “Hey, come on. I was just trying to help. But I’m through being a go-between. Promise.” She gave Ransom an address and said she would meet him there in twenty minutes. Honda wasn’t around, so he left the edited air-conditioner copy on his desk and told Keiko he would be back by two-thirty.

  The sidewalks were jammed with blue-suited businessmen, and Ransom was immediately caught up in the flow of the crowd. A brightly painted sound truck passed slowly, hawking a live sex show.

  Rachel had befriended Ransom when he moved into her Bel Air neighborhood, and they had kept in touch after he went east to prep school. A year ago she had written to say she was working in Tokyo, and they had met for lunch several times since then. The last time he saw her, some six months ago, she was keen to know what Ransom’s plans were, even insistent. She was going back to California for Christ
mas and she had a story about a special arrangement between the bank and an airline whereby she could bring a companion at no extra cost. It would be like the old days; he could spend Christmas at home and then join her at her family’s cabin in Tahoe for skiing.

  To Ransom it was clear that she’d been charged with this mission by his father. The free airfare story was made for TV. He had been getting letters from his father; impatient, fatherly letters: What was he doing with his life, what was he running from, when was he coming back to settle down, start a career? Ransom sympathized—the old man was fifty-something—but was nevertheless angry with him and Rachel alike for their manipulating. The improbably free Christmas trip was his father’s idea; and, as Ransom suspected, his father planned to pay for the ticket on the sly. He had told Rachel that Ransom had clearly lost his faculties and sense to drugs in India, that he would not listen to reason.

  In Yodoyobashi he passed a coffee shop with the name, written in English over the door, Persistent Pursuit of Dainty. Waiting for a light, he found himself beside a businessman carrying a GROOVY CAT shopping bag, a relative of the FUNKY BABE:

  GROOVY CAT: Let’s call a groovy guy a “Groovy Cat.” Guys tough, check out the scene, love to dancing with Funky Babes. Let’s all strive to be Groovy Cats.

  Surrounded by so much twisted English—in advertising, embedded in Japanese sentences, in conversation with non-native speakers like Honda and Kano—Ransom sometimes felt a kind of aphasia setting in: a student or client would present him with a crippled English sentence and he would be at a loss to fix it.

  He turned into a covered alley lined with noodle and yakitori stands. A boy in a white uniform dodged through the crowd on his bicycle, three trays of noodles balanced in his left palm. He seemed headed for disaster but kept threading the openings, one-handed, between pedestrians and finally turned the corner. Farther up, in front of the tobacco stand, a man talking on the red pay telephone bowed repeatedly to his invisible confidant.