Love and the Art of War

by Dinah Lee Küng

  ‘Me getting a leg over Rachel? For God’s sake, as if I had the time.’

  ‘How reassuring to know fidelity hangs on scheduling. At least you could leave me the dignity of not letting me be the last in all of London to know.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Rachel’s a nincompoop, a twit. Bella only keeps her on staff so she can bully her.’

  Jane waited for him to say more, but real reassurance lay lifeless on the floor between them, refusing to do its traditional turn in the cabaret of mated life. Lorraine King’s daughter was quick to spot a missed cue.

  ‘Joe?’

  ‘Gimme a break, Jane. Don’t I have enough problems on my plate?’

  ‘At Ma Maison? You wouldn’t spend money like that on Fergus. Sort of fits in with the new shirt you’re saving for something special and the late hours . . . ’

  Joe finally rose and took her in his arms. ‘I’ve been distracted. I’ve got to get things back on track.’ He kissed her.

  The pistachio silk began to fall away. She kissed Joe back with all her passion and then—the BlackBerry chirped from the kitchen table. To Jane’s dismay, Joe gave her forehead a kiss and took the call.

  ‘Oh, that’s great! Yes, that works fine. Ciao.’

  ‘Drunken Grannies lurched on to Camille’s shooting schedule at last?’ Red-faced, Jane refastened her kimono belt.

  ‘No, that was Bella. God, I’m bushed.’ He headed off to bed—without Jane.

  How that terse exchange with Bella had brightened his mood! Still, he exuded a new wariness. Jane had made her Noise in the East, so to speak, without him knowing where or how she’d opened her Western front. Now he’d be careful around the studio, especially around poor Rachel who innocently adored him, but the most Jane could hope for was that he’d warn Bella to back off, that Jane suspected something—in this case, the wrong thing.

  She retreated to her side of the bed, crumpling her flimsy kimono with Joe’s dismissive peck burning her worried brow.

  In her dreams, the green silk crêpe stiffened, its hem lengthened to the ground like a tent, and the sleeves spread into embroidered wings. She took flight, like something between a kung fu movie star and that painter’s blond avenging angel.

  She soared back and forth past the house facades of French blue, dove grey and pale yellow. She jumped lightly from post to post along the railing. A ‘dream’ Bella wearing her trademark apron watched from the far side of the square. Jane sailed around the trees, which had mysteriously changed from sturdy plane trees into supple bamboo. With Strategy Six, she’d slowed things down, perhaps even gained the upper hand—with a little humiliation but without a battle, just as Baldwin had promised.

  Chapter Seven, Wu Zhong, Sheng You

  (Create Something Out of Nothing)

  On the night devoted to Stratagems Seven and Eight, furious gusts blew Baldwin’s shivering students straggling into the classroom. Nigel secured his charcoal cashmere overcoat at a safe distance from Kevin’s clownish ways with coffee cups. Winston scurried in, soaked to the skin in a flimsy athletic jacket, and blew on his hands to warm them. Dan strode in late, with no apology for either his tardiness nor for the neon-green anorak that made him look like a giant lime on steroids.

  Compared to his soggy, raw-faced students, Baldwin looked sprightlier than ever. Thanks to the old-fashioned heaters, his lank hair floated in a static aura around his temples. A crimson tie hung down his white shirt like a bright exclamation mark. He stroked it now and then to check it was still centred on his chest. Perhaps the silky adornment was new.

  He opened class with the cryptic: ‘Things in the world arise from existence. Existence arises from non-existence.’

  ‘Whoah,’ said Kevin, ‘Spacey, what?’

  ‘Yes, Kevin. Spacey.’

  Keith burst out laughing, ‘Got you there, mate!’

  Baldwin resumed, ‘Space. Emptiness. Nothingness. Before anything came into existence, it was non-existent. That is, it came from nothingness, the basic premise of Laozi, sixth century BC.’

  ‘Daoism,’ Winston nodded. ‘Dad’s a Daoist. I think. Sort of a capitalist Daoist. Well, maybe just a capitalist with a naff Daoist shrine in his shop.’

  ‘Even in the West, we think of Laozi’s work as more than interior decorating, Winston. He’s profoundly philosophical. However, in China, Laozi’s Tao-te-ching is read as a military tract. And as you will see, Nigel, it offers ample uses for business.’

  At which point, Nigel Deloitte finally uncapped his tortoise-shell Dupont.

  ‘Strategies One through Six were the Winning strategies. The next six are the Enemy Dealing Strategies. Number Seven is about lying. What some of you,’ he fixed on Dan, ‘might term disinformation. Sun Tzu uses Number Seven when destroying the enemy’s reputation. I’ll let you ponder that while I hear last week’s homework. Any Noises in the East?’

  ‘Supposing you were watching a, uh, competitor?’ Dan began. Everyone leaned forward. At long last Dan was offering something besides a stale historical anecdote.

  ‘You don’t want this competitor to know you’re watching his business, or in contact with one of his employees?’ The American chose his words with care. ‘So you make it really obvious you’re following the activities of another one of his employees.’

  Nigel picked up Dan’s thread. ‘You might arrange to be seen lunching with one of his staff? Or send him indiscreet communications through the office systems?’

  ‘You got it, Deloitte. Incriminate the wrong guy.’

  ‘A perfect example of Noise in the East, Attack in the West,’ Baldwin nodded.

  ‘Exactly what kind of business are we talking about, Dan?’ With his perky pink spikes, Winston looked like a parrot poking his little beak out the bars of his cage.

  ‘Religious publishing,’ said Dan, not missing a beat. ‘It’s more competitive than you might think, Chu. Important to know what’s being pushed into the market.’

  ‘I never took him for a spiritual guy,’ Winston whispered to Jane. ‘I mean, a Gulf vet and all—’

  ‘And your homework, Mr Chu?’

  Winston’s glance dropped to his purple Converses. ‘Well, Professor Baldwin, it went all wrong.’

  ‘As usual,’ Nigel sniffed.

  ‘I tried to distract a customer with such a dazzling array of print options, they wouldn’t see how I doubled their page run, but when they went to sign the order, they did notice and complained to my father. So the Noise in the East became a roar in my face, if you see what I mean.’

  Kevin and Keith grimaced as one.

  ‘But,’ Winston rallied, ‘I’ve got a story that makes up for it. I don’t know if it counts as homework—’

  ‘Have a go, Winnie,’ Kevin cheered. Of course, nobody had heard any homework from Kev yet.

  ‘It’s about three of my grandmothers—’

  ‘Hold on, mate,’ Keith said. ‘You can’t have three grandmothers, just not on. Or at least, don’t try taking out insurance on the third!’

  ‘My grandfather was a very wealthy Hong Kong manufacturer of a camphor balm to ward off colds,’ Winston said, eyeballing Keith. ‘My own grandmother was a concubine or Number Four, actually, the youngest and prettiest. Our whole clan lived in a big villa on Peak Road. Each woman had a floor for herself and her children. My grandfather got the ground floor.’

  ‘Five floors?’ Kevin asked.

  ‘Six. He was the kind of man who planned ahead,’ Winston said.

  Kevin jibed. ‘Hardly likely to get Zelda to sign on for that! I’m just going upstairs, dear, for a week or two.’

  ‘Perfectly normal and legal in Hong Kong then,’ Winston insisted. ‘Well, Grandma Number One was terribly jealous of Grandma Two—not that either gave a toss about the old boy. When he took on my grandmother, he gave Grandma Two a brilliant racehorse. She was crazy for animals.’

  ‘Kind of a golden handshake?’ Nigel asked.

  ‘What about Mrs Three?’ Kevin blurted out.

  W
inston shook his head. ‘She was never the same after a tram accident in Wan Chai. Lived on opium after that.’

  ‘Was that legal too?’ leered Kevin.

  ‘Grandma One didn’t get any presents, so she hated Grandma Two even more. She threatened to pay somebody to break the horse’s leg or give him spoiled feed. The more races he won, the more Grandma Two worried. She even hired an extra boy to sleep in Waterloo’s stall.’

  ‘Waterloo being the steed in question?’ Nigel rapped his pen on his desk.

  ‘One day Grandma One invited Grandma Two to a dinner. And served her a very special dish of brains in the old Manchu Imperial style.’

  ‘Not Waterloo?’ Jane panicked.

  ‘Worse. Grandma Two’s beloved pet monkey. All covered in scallions and black bean sauce.’

  Kevin exploded and Nigel looked about to gag, but Baldwin was thrilled: ‘Perfect Stratagem Six, Winston! Grandma One distracted her rival with threats to Waterloo just long enough to kidnap—?’

  ‘Wellington. An evil creature, always pulling my hair.’

  Nigel broke off Winston’s reminiscence. ‘My homework was rather complicated, so I printed it out.’ He outlined his bank’s indirect attack on a private company by first staging a direct acquisition of shares, ‘That was my Noise in the East.’ Nigel cleared his throat. ‘And the bid for shares prompted the target’s board into defensive action, ruling no shareholder could have more than five per cent of the total shares outstanding. Meanwhile, I took on partners who bought up shares in three different lots, giving us indirect control of fifteen per cent.’ He looked down his nose at Winston. ‘My Attack in the West.’

  ‘In just one week?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Finance moves a little faster than library management, Mrs Gilchrist.’

  ‘You swallowed up a company that didn’t want anything to do with you?’ Jane asked. Nigel seemed a pinstriped roach who shouldn’t be armed with an automatic pencil, much less Sun Tzu.

  ‘Well, they don’t have to deal with us. Yesterday, we sold our shares and we’re walking away with double our investment.’

  Jane protested. ‘But you didn’t produce or improve anything. You just moved shares and people around like chess pieces. Didn’t you learn anything from Jacob Marley?’

  ‘A City bloke?’ Keith asked.

  ‘There were two of them, Keith,’ Winston said. ‘Jacob and Robert Marley.’

  Jane sighed, ‘Oh, Winston, don’t you read books? There were two Marleys only in the Muppet version.’

  ‘You mean Bob Marley?’ Kevin asked. He hummed a reggae beat.

  Dan sighed. ‘You’re all jerks. Jane meant the greedy ghost in A Christmas Carol.’

  Nigel had understood Jane only too well. He said with the gratitude of an ice cube, ‘If I find myself turning into a door knocker anytime soon, Jane, I’ll let you know.’

  Jane appealed to Baldwin. ‘Aren’t we bound by some Confucian ethic or Daoist principle to use these tactics for good, not unmitigated profiteering? She shuffled through her handouts. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with Number Seven, this creating something out of nothing . . . ’ She read, ‘The four stages of rumour against an enemy: blacken his name politically, attack him as financially dishonest, allege he conducts an immoral life, accuse him of excessive pride. In short, Professor Baldwin, play dirty. Lie.’

  ‘Jane raises an important question. I’ll give credit on the final exam to the ethical implications or otherwise of strategic exploitation. It’s not a moral judgement on my part, but a strategic consideration; later in the course we’ll discuss the risks of putting these tactics to immoral use.’

  Winston groaned; none of his homework had worked so far. The idea of extra credit was beyond him. It seemed unfair, he whined to Jane and Kevin during the break, that even though he was the only Chinese in the class, he couldn’t make the Sages work for him.

  ‘Chinese? Winston, you’re one-hundred-percent-NW3,’ Kevin chided. ‘Hey, maybe Seven could solve my belt problem.’

  Jane saw nothing wrong with Kevin’s belt.

  ‘I over-ordered canvas belts for spring. So, I’ll create a demand for canvas belts out of nothing. Get our stylist to put them in the ads, on all the mannequins, and get some B-list celebrity to wrap them around her tits. What’d’ya think, Chu? Hey, Chu! Wassup, bro?’

  ‘Nelson’s sales figures, that’s what’s up.’ Winston crumpled his Styrofoam cup. ‘Last week my cousin sold twenty-two office computer set-ups, at least half with peripherals the customer didn’t know he didn’t need. You know how many print orders I took? Three.’

  ‘Cousin Nelson probably had these strategies drummed into him in his high chair,’ Jane said. ‘Now concentrate, Winston. How can you make something out of nothing?’

  The three of them brainstormed over uses of Nothingness. Finally, Jane had an inspiration: ‘How about I come into the shop and order save-the-date cards for my mother’s eightieth birthday party next February?’

  ‘Am I invited?’

  ‘No, Kevin, you are not.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be Something out of Something? I mean, you really do need cards, don’t you? Why would that impress Dad?’

  ‘Well, Winston, I do need invitations, but the save-the-date cards are a new thought. I come into your shop just before closing time. Of course, I toss a really foul look in Nelson’s direction. I’m hysterical. I have to have these gold-edged, embossed cards on heavy paper as of yesterday because another shop did a cheap and nasty job on their computer. I throw an absolute fit.’

  ‘Until Dad comes out of the back room to see what’s wrong.’

  ‘That’s what’s so brilliant. You tell him, “I can take care of this she-bat from hell.” You work a miracle—say, produce these cards in ten minutes. I write a slobbery thank you to your father saying your shop offers the best old-fashioned service in London, that Smythson’s had better lock up their client lists,’ Jane beamed, ‘And you get all the credit.’

  ‘How do I produce this Buckingham Palace order in ten minutes?’

  ‘I place the order now, silly. You run them off when nobody’s looking and tuck them out of sight.’

  Winston sucked in his breath. ‘That’s brilliant.’

  It was easier than working up some outrage over the nothing of Rachel Murty and Joe in a non-affair. How could she step up her mock jealousy of Bella’s personal assistant? Joe was amazed, not dismayed, that Jane suspected him of cavorting with a girl with a Ronald McDonald hairdo.

  Only one thing assisted her ploy: Rachel had nursed a crush on Joe for years. Jane and Joe had more than once shook their heads over Rachel’s ability to botch a simple task, her penchant for sweet cocktails at lunch, and the ‘before’ outfits that only a makeover artist could love. Joe took to calling her the What-Not-to-Wear-Girl, and, after Rachel lost the scrambled eggs with sea-urchin butter recipe stolen off Gordon Ramsay, she became the I-Don’t-Know-How-She-Doesn’t-Do-It-Girl.

  Next morning, while Lorraine finished her Saturday morning buttermilk pancakes, Jane squirreled away in her mother’s bathroom to meditate. She concentrated very hard on Number Seven: Something out of Nothing. Sitting cross-legged on the turquoise shag next to Lorraine’s marabou bed slippers wasn’t as Zen as a Shaolin temple. Still, before Lorraine had slurped up the last of the Aunt Jemima, Jane had worked herself up to quite an artificial pitch of poisonous rage. Gentle librarian indeed! She was channelling the incarnation of a jealous consort of the Ming dynasty. Surging with sufficiently vengeful vibes worthy of Winston’s Grandma One, she marched downstairs.

  Joe grunted such a miserable good-morning that Jane’s resolve was shaken. Then she thought of cowardly Winston and supercilious Nigel at next Friday’s class, and taking courage in hand, started the tongue-lashing: ‘What’s on for you today? More beating up a dead story idea with Fergus or just whinging into the mobile with Rachel about your hard lot?’

  Joe’s hollowed eyes peered at her through swollen bags
of sleeplessness, ‘Don’t start up again.’

  So she kept at Joe, nagging like a shrew after her Saturday shift at the library. Playing the wrong wicket about Rachel started to feel like fun. How was Rachel these days? Any boyfriends, she asked, besides Joe, of course? Had she taken to wearing Joe’s favourite colour? Did she settle for lunch and tea breaks with him the entire week?

  Saturday night, the four of them took in a movie at the Curzon Soho and then stopped for a bite. Halfway through, Jane murmured, all saccharine understanding into Joe’s scorched ear, ‘If you want to step out to make a phone call, we won’t mind. I can’t imagine Rachel’s doing anything special if you’re here with us.’ Sammie and Lorraine looked at her in bewilderment. Joe scowled at his fish and chips.

  Jane’s battle plan flagged Sunday morning because, in a way, it was working. Joe tried to soothe her with affection, but her objective was to wear him down on a false front, not to sue for peace. So she crawled away from him and by the dawn of a winter Sunday rising over the square, murmured chants to sustain her inner Warrior Woman, I am, who am I? I am, let’s see, I am the White Snake Lady, all-powerful. No, I don’t want to be a reptile. I’m the Lotus of Revenge.

  And as the Lotus of Revenge, Jane tortured Joe on Sunday over a rain-soaked tennis net in Regent’s Park. It was obviously the last game of the season, and rightly so: they spent more time missing and chasing balls in a sulk than rallying. After one of Jane’s backhands landed with a sucking thud in Joe’s stomach, he bellowed from the backcourt, ‘Give it a rest, Jane. I’m not shagging Rachel. Whoever fed you a story that I fancy that whitewashed bag of bones is giving you a load of crap. Why don’t you believe me?’

  It was odd to see Joe’s expression shift, from battered to indignant to bewildered, as she sank her Rachel-sharpened teeth in his ankle. Sunday evening, Jane jested one minute, hissed the next. Stratagem Seven emboldened her; it wasn’t Jane tormenting Joe, it was a sinewy court beauty with almond-shaped nails dipped in venom, for whom intrigues and histrionics were daily fare. It was downright cathartic for Jane to create something out nothing, especially as Joe turned cowed and defensive.