Gai-Jin

by James Clavell

  “Jolly good game, Thomas, what?” Sir William said.

  “Clearly that wasn’t a goal, the Referee’s a—”

  “Poppycock! Five guineas says the Navy will win.”

  The General’s neck had gone a darker shade of red and this pleased Sir William and helped to get him out of his ill humor. Nothing but quarrels in the Settlement and Drunk Town, irritating letters and complaints from the Bakufu and Customs House, and he had not forgotten the General’s stupidity at the riot.

  Added to these woes, the last mails had brought more foul news and forecasts from the Foreign Office that lack of financial support in Parliament would herald major cutbacks of Diplomatic personnel: “even though the coffers of the Empire are overflowing, there will be no salary increases this year. The American war promises to be the most savage in history because of the newly invented shell, bronze cartridge, breech-loading rifle, machine gun and breech-loading cannon; with the defeat of Union forces at Shiloh and the Second Battle of Bull Run the war is presently expected to be won by the Confederates, most pundits in the City having written off President Lincoln as weak and ineffectual, but, dear Willie, H.M.’s policy remains the same: to back both sides, keep our heads down and stay to hell out of this one …”

  European news was also bad: Russian Cossack troops had again massacred thousands of Poles in Warsaw demonstrating against Russian rule; Prince von Bismarck had been made Minister President of Prussia and was rumored to be preparing for war against expansionist France; Austria-Hungary and Russia appeared to be on the verge of war again; inevitably more fighting in the Balkans …

  And so on, ad nauseam, Sir William thought with a scowl. Nothing changes! And I’m damned if I believe the Bakufu will do what they’ve promised, which means I will have to show the Flag here. I’ll have to teach the Japanners that a promise is a promise if it’s made to the British Raj, by God, and to remind Zergeyev, Seratard and others the same thing.

  Bombard Yedo would be the simplest and easiest solution, that’d bring them to heel quick enough. But then there’s Ketterer—perhaps his foray into history books will have changed him. Ugh! What a hope …

  “A ruble for your thoughts, Sir William,” Count Zergeyev said with a smile, offering a silver flask embossed with his family crest in gold. “Vodka is good for thoughts.”

  “Thanks.” Sir William took a swallow and felt the fire slide down his gullet, reminding him of all the wonderful times at the Embassy in St. Petersburg when he was in his twenties, a center of power, not an outpost like Yokohama, drinking and carousing, balls and ballet and dachas, night life and luxury—for the few—excitement and intrigues and marvelous dinners and Vertinskya, never far from his thoughts.

  For five of his seven years there she had been his mistress, youngest daughter of a favored goldsmith to the Court, an artist like her father, her father benign about their liaison, William’s own Russian mother doting on the girl and wanting him to marry her. “Sorry, Mama dear, no chance of that at all, much as I’d like it, the Service would never approve. It’s Sir Roger’s daughter Daphne. Sorry …”

  He drank again, the misery of their parting still with him. “I was thinking about Vertinskya,” he said in Russian.

  “Ah! Yes, the girls of Mother Russia are very special,” Zergeyev replied compassionately in the same language. “Their love, if you are so blessed, is forever and then forever again.” The affair had been smiled at in diplomatic circles and well documented by the Cheka, the Tsar’s secret police, therefore part of Sir William’s dossier that of course Zergeyev had read. Stupid of the girl to kill herself, he thought, never quite sure if William was aware of her suicide shortly after he had returned to London. That was never part of the plan, nor his duty to tell him. Why did she do it? Over this boor? Surely that’s not possible, but for whatever reason, a pity, her usefulness, to both of us, would have lasted for many more years. “Perhaps your Foreign Office will post you there again—there are other Vertinskyas.”

  “Not much chance of that, I’m afraid.”

  “Let’s hope. Another hope, mon ami, that your Lord Palmerston will see the logic that we should have the Kuriles. Like the Dardanelles—both should surely be Russian.”

  Sir William saw the glitter in his strange sloe eyes. “Not much chance of that, I’m afraid.”

  The halftime whistle sounded, the score still two all, to be swallowed by a roar of recriminations and praises and promises of dire punishment for the losers. At once Marlowe moved over to Jamie. “Do you think Mr. Struan and, er, and Miss Angelique would like to join me aboard Pearl for tiffin and a day’s sail?” he asked, simulating a sudden thought. “Have to do some trials soon as the fleet’s back and I’d be glad to have them aboard.”

  “I think they’d enjoy it, why don’t you ask him?”

  “When would be a good time?”

  “Any day around eleven—or just before dinner.”

  “Thanks, thanks very much.” Marlowe beamed, then noticed Jamie’s pallor. “Oh, are you all right?”

  “Yes, thanks.” Jamie forced a smile and moved away.

  He had been considering his future. Some weeks ago he had written to Maureen Ross, his fiancée, in Scotland, telling her to wait no longer for him—almost three years since he had last seen her, five years engaged—that he was sorry, he knew he had been abominable to keep her waiting so long but he was absolutely, finally convinced the East was positively no place for a lady, and equally certain Asia was his home, Yokohama, Hong Kong, Shanghai, anywhere but there, and he had no intention of leaving. Yes, he knew he had been unfair to her but their engagement was at an end. This was to be his last letter.

  For days he had felt nauseated, before he wrote it, after having written it and after he had seen the mail ship put to sea. But he was sure. That chapter was ended. And now the Struan chapter that was so rosy, promotion next year for certain, will also end. God Almighty! No way Malcolm will go back, so I’ve only a few more weeks to decide what to do—and don’t forget Norbert will be back before then. Then what? Will they really duel? If they do that’s joss, but you’ve still got to protect Malcolm as best you can.

  So a new job! Where? I’d like to stay here, there’s Nemi, it’s a good life with a wide-open future to build. Hong Kong and Shanghai are mostly built, the old-boy structure strong in place—great if you’re a Struan or Brock or Cooper and so on but difficult to break through.

  First choice would be here. With whom? With Dmitri in Cooper-Tillman? Could they use me? Yes, but not as top man. Brock’s? Oh, yes, I considered that in the depths of her unfairness, but no chance of top man with Norbert—but if Malcolm killed him what a coup that would be, what revenge! Lunkchurch? Yes, definitely, but who’d want to work for that uncouth bugger? What about on your own? That’d be best, but the riskiest and who’d sponsor you? I’d need money—I’ve some put away but not enough. I’d need lots to begin, lots to cover the time agrowing, for letters of credit and insurances, time to arrange agents in London, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Shanghai and all over Asia, Paris—and St. Petersburg. Don’t forget Russians are huge buyers of tea and will trade sables and other furs to great profit and there are all your contacts in Russian Alaska, and their trading posts on the American west coast south. A good idea but risky, such a long time between buying and selling and profit, too many hazards for the ships, too many lost at sea or to piracy …

  A little farther away Phillip Tyrer was also staring into the distance. He was thinking about Fujiko and almost groaned aloud. Yesterday evening, with his friend Nakama—Hiraga—to help him, he had tried to begin negotiations for her exclusivity. Mama-san Raiko’s eyes had soared and she shook her head, saying, Oh, so sorry, I doubt if it is possible, the girl so valuable and wanted by so many important gai-jin, important gai-jin, implying that even Sir William was an occasional client though never mentioning him by name, which had unsettled Tyrer and made him even more anxious.

  Raiko said that, even before discussing financial an
d other details, first she would ask Fujiko if she would consider it, adding to his shock that it would be best for him not to see her again until and unless a contract had been agreed. It had taken him another hour to reach a compromise that Nakama had suggested: in the interim period, when seeing Fujiko, he would never mention the matter or discuss it directly with her, that was the mama-san’s responsibility.

  Thank God for Nakama, he told himself in another sweat, I nearly messed up everything. But for him …

  His eyes focused and he saw Seratard and André Poncin deep in private conversation, and not far away from them, Erlicher, the Swiss Minister, was equally private with Johann, who was concentrating on every word.

  What’s so important and urgent to those men, he asked himself, that they would discuss it at a football match, reminding himself not to daydream, to be adult and aware that all was not well in Japan, to do his duty to the Crown and Sir William—Fujiko could wait until tonight when he might get an answer.

  Damn Johann! Now that the wily Swiss was leaving his post as interpreter it had put a further burden on him, leaving him little time to sleep or to play. Only this morning Sir William had flared, unfairly, he thought bitterly, “For God’s sake, Phillip, put in more hours. The sooner you’re fluent the better for the Crown, the sooner Nakama is fluent in English the better for the Crown. Earn your daily bread, stop slacking, lean on Nakama, make him earn his daily bread too or out he goes!”

  Hiraga was in the Legation reading a letter aloud that Tyrer had written for Sir William which he had helped translate, that was to be delivered tomorrow to the Bakufu. Though he did not understand many of the words his reading was improving rapidly: “You’ve an aptitude for English, Nakama, old boy,” Tyrer had said several times. This had pleased him, even though, normally, praise or criticism from a gai-jin was meaningless. Over the weeks most of his waking hours had been spent cramming words and phrases, repeating them over and over, so much so that the language of his dreams was mixed up.

  “Why bash your head, Cousin?” Akimoto asked him.

  “I must learn English as quickly as possible. There is so little time, this gai-jin leader is rude and ill-tempered and I have no idea how long I can stay. But Akimoto, if I could read who knows what information I could get. You cannot believe how stupid they are about their secrets. Hundreds of books and pamphlets and documents lie around everywhere. I have access to everything, can read anything, and this Taira person answers my most obvious questions.”

  This was said last night in their safe house in the village and he had had a cold towel around his aching head. He was no longer confined to the Legation. Now he could stay in the village if he wanted to though many nights he was too tired to leave, and he would stay and sleep on a spare bunk in the cottage Tyrer shared with Babcott. Of necessity George Babcott had had to know about him. “Marvelous! Nakama can help me with my Japanese too and my dictionary! Marvelous, I’ll organize lessons and a cram course!”

  Babcott’s approach was quite radical. Learning was to be enjoyed and soon it had almost developed into a game, a hilarious game to see who could learn faster, an entirely new style for Hiraga and Tyrer, for whom schooling was serious, and education implanted by rote, repetition and the birch.

  “How fast the lessons go, Akimoto. It becomes easier every day—we shall do the same in our schools when sonno-joi is supreme.”

  Akimoto laughed. “Teachers gentle and kind? No bashing or stick? Never! More important, what about the frigate?”

  He had told Akimoto that Tyrer had promised he would ask a captain friend for permission to take the two of them aboard, explaining Akimoto as the son of a wealthy Choshu shipbuilding family, come to visit him for a few days, and a valuable friend in the future.

  From the open window Hiraga heard cheering from the football match. He sighed, then reverently picked up Babcott’s handwritten dictionary. It was the first dictionary he had ever seen, and the first English-Japanese, Japanese-English ever. Babcott had built on lists of words and phrases gathered by himself, traders and priests, both Catholic and Protestant, with others translated from Dutch-Japanese equivalents. At the moment the book was short. But daily it grew and it fascinated him.

  Folklore had it that, two centuries or so ago, a Jesuit priest called Tsukku-san had written out a form of Portuguese-Japanese dictionary. Before that no dictionary of any sort had ever existed. In time, a few Dutch-Japanese ones appeared, to be zealously guarded. “No need to lock this up, Nakama,” Babcott had said yesterday to his astonishment. “That’s not the British way. Spread the word, let everyone learn, the more educated everyone is the better the country.” He had smiled. “Of course, not everyone agrees with me. In any event, next week with the help of our printing presses, I’ll—”

  “Printing press, so sorry?”

  Babcott had explained. “Soon we’ll start printing and if you promise to write a history of Choshu I will promise to give you a copy of my dictionary for yourself alone.”

  A week or so ago, in wonder, Hiraga had shown Akimoto a copy of the Yokohama Guardian. “It is the news of the day, from all over the world, and they prepare a new version every day, as many copies as they like—thousands if necessary …”

  “Impossible!” Akimoto said. “Our best block printers can’t poss—”

  “I’ve seen them do it! Machines do it, Akimoto. They showed me their machines! They set all the words in what they call type in lines, they read left to right, the opposite to us, right to left and down our columns of characters, column by column. Unbelievable. I saw the machine man make words out of individual symbols, called ‘roman rett’rs’—they say that all words in any language can be written with only twenty-six of these symbols an—”

  “Impossible.”

  “Listen! Each rett’r or symbol always has the same sound so another person can read individual letters, or words made out of them. To make this ‘newspaper,’ the printer uses combinations of little pieces of iron with the symbol cut into the end of it—sorry, not iron but a kind of iron called ‘stee’r,’ some name like that. This man put the rett’rs in a box that somehow was inked, paper run over it and here was a new printed page that contained something I had written a moment ago. Taira read it out exactly! A miracle.”

  “Eeee, but how can we do that with our language, each word is a special character with as many as five or seven different ways of saying it and our writing’s different an—”

  “The Doctor Giant listens when I say a Japanese word, he writes it down in their roman rett’rs then Taira says the word just by reading them!”

  It had taken Hiraga much more explanation to convince Akimoto. “Eeee,” he said, exhausted, “so many new things, new ideas, so difficult for me to understand myself, let alone explain. Ori was such a fool not to want to learn.”

  “Good for us he’s dead, buried and forgotten by the gai-jin. For days I thought we were lost.”

  “So did I.”

  Hiraga found the English word he sought, “reparations.” The Japanese translation was: “money to be paid for an agreed crime.” This puzzled him. The Bakufu had committed no crime. Two Satsumas, Ori and Shorin, had merely killed a gai-jin, both were now dead, two for the death of one gai-jin was certainly fair. Why should they demand “re-par-at-eeons,” he said aloud, the nearest his tongue could get to the word.

  He got up from the desk to ease his knees, difficult to sit like a gai-jin all day long, and went to the window. He was wearing Western clothes but soft tabi on his feet, English boots still very uncomfortable for him. The day was still good, the ships at anchor, fishing boats and other vessels moving back and forth. The frigate beckoned. His excitement grew. Soon they would see into its bowels, see the great steam machines Taira had told him about. He caught sight of a reproduced photograph cut out of a magazine and stuck on the wall, of the Great Ship, an enormous iron ship being built in the British capital city, London, the biggest that had ever been, twenty times bigger than the frigate in the
bay. Too enormous to conceive—even “fo-to-gr-aff” for him impossible to understand, eerie, almost a form of evil magic. He shuddered, then noticed the door to the corridor was ajar and across from it Sir William’s door. As far as he knew there was no one in the Legation, everyone at the football match and not expected until later this afternoon.

  Soundlessly he opened Sir William’s door. The elaborate desk had many papers on it, half a hundred books on untidy shelves, a portrait of their Queen and other paintings on the walls. Something new on a sideboard. A photograph in a silver frame. He saw only ugliness, a curiously dressed gai-jin woman with three children, and realized it must be Sir William’s family. Tyrer had mentioned they were expected soon.

  How lucky I am to be Japanese, and civilized, with a handsome father and mother and brothers and sisters and Sumomo to marry if it is my karma to marry. Thinking about her safe at home warmed him, but then, standing there in front of the desk, the good feeling quickly turned sour. He remembered all the sickening, uneasy times he had stood there before the seated gai-jin leader, answering questions about the Choshu, Satsuma, Bakufu, Toranagas, the questions inquiring into every aspect of his life and Nippon’s life, now almost a daily occurrence, the fish eyes scouring the truth out of him, much as he would have preferred to lie and confuse.

  He was careful not to touch anything, presuming a trap had been laid for him as he would certainly have done if he had left a gai-jin alone in such an important place. His ears caught an angry voice outside and he scurried back to peer out of Tyrer’s window. To his astonishment Akimoto was at the gate, bowing to the sentry who had him covered with his bayoneted rifle and was shouting at him. His cousin wore gai-jin laborer’s clothes and was clearly very nervous.

  Hastily he went outside, put a smile on his face, and raised his hat. “Good day, sir sentry, this my friend.”

  The sentry knew Hiraga by sight, that he was some sort of interpreter, also that he had a permanent Legation pass. He replied caustically with incomprehensible words, waving Akimoto away, ordering Hiraga to tell “th’s ere monkey t’pushawf or’e’ll g’t’is bloody ’ead shot awf.”