Fishing for Stars

by Bryce Courtenay

  For years to come the yakuza boss would tell how he meekly climbed the stairs and retrieved her bag and shoes. Anna thanked him briskly, made him hold the bag while she slipped into her shoes, then strode off, click click click across the yard, towards the front gate in her scuffed Charles Jourdan six-inch heels, her Coco Chanel suit soaked and filthy, her face splattered and her hair matted with blood. ‘She still managed to look beautiful,’ he would always conclude.

  Of course, it didn’t end quite so neatly. Anna would suffer for years, reliving the kidnapping in recurrent nightmares, often waking in the middle of the night crying out. I would hold her in my arms at Beautiful Bay, where she’d lie, sobbing and shaking like a leaf, until dawn.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘She is suffering from shock, her pulse rate is too high, she has a fever. This is not normal trauma; it is acute stress reaction.’

  Dr Honda, Tokyo

  I HAVE BEEN INVOLVED with the sea and boats since I was a child. At sea you learn that you must be constantly alert to any change in circumstances, otherwise the ocean can overwhelm you. Some storms are so severe that all you can do is lower the sails, batten the hatches and hope like hell you can ride them out. Your boat is a bobbing cork and you are a tiny insect, an ant, clinging to it for dear life. When the outcome is beyond anyone’s control or influence, good sailors try to find something to occupy themselves, knowing that whether they live or die is no longer up to them. At such times it is the waiting that is the worst part.

  Of course Anna’s situation was different. I had been assured by Fuchida-san that her rescue was a formality – pay the money and fetch the girl; there wasn’t any danger. Nevertheless, to extend the marine metaphor, you can be sailing on course in a perfect breeze on a calm sea and run into a whale. Nothing is ever guaranteed where there are possible dangers and, like the sailor sitting out the storm, waiting is the worst part. So I attempted to do what I could to prepare for Anna’s return and to take my mind off potential disasters.

  First I obtained a square of foil about the size of my hand, heated to melt the thin layer of wax that covered its surface; a drinking straw; a disposable cigarette lighter; and, of course, the heroin – all the necessities for ‘chasing the dragon’. At least I hoped I had all of them. I had never been present when Anna had prepared or smoked heroin, and she had only once, years previously, described the equipment she needed when I’d asked her why she didn’t use a needle like most addicts were reputed to do. She’d explained that injecting the dissolved heroin directly into a vein with a hypodermic syringe was the Western way of obtaining a more intense rush. Inhalation, while less efficient, is the Asian way, absorbing the drug into the bloodstream via the lungs and nasal passages. I guess it’s a natural progression from the opium pipe and has the advantage of requiring no specialised equipment. I recall her explaining that needles often lead to infection, collapsed veins and blatant evidence of heroin usage. ‘Nicholas, when you inhale, the hit is perhaps not as immediate, but there is no chance of infection, no evidence and, more importantly, if the heroin isn’t pure you have an early-warning system. You know from the first tiny intake of smoke if it is good quality.’ Heroin, I’d learned, can be pure or mixed. To make it go further, dealers often cut the heroin with various other powders: dextrose, talcum powder, quinine, even castor sugar, but it could be almost anything and it is the ‘almost anything’ that can often do more harm to the user than the junk itself.

  The wakagashira who had delivered the heroin had assured me it was purest quality, referring to it as ‘China White’, then looking up to see if I was impressed.

  Because Anna’s rescue was a covert operation in which the yakuza could not be seen to be openly involved, Fuchida-san was reluctant to return Anna and me directly to the hotel. Furthermore, Konoe Akira, the wily bastard, wanted to cover his arse, and so it was decided that Anna would be brought to Kinzo-san’s office for a debriefing where she would sign an affidavit in the presence of his legal representative that there had been no attempt to molest or harm her, indemnifying him from any future legal action.

  I knew one thing for sure: no matter how distressed she might be, Anna would never allow herself to appear bedraggled in front of Konoe Akira’s lawyer. In her mind this would signify defeat, and Anna would wish to convey her contempt, I felt sure. So the second thing I did was to go shopping. Anna would obviously be in need of a good scrub-down as well as a change of clothes and undies.

  In this last matter I had appealed to one of the secretaries at Kinzo-san’s office, a delightful young lady named Muzi-san, who was clearly the office extrovert. Muzi-san appeared to be the only one of the eight young women in the firm permitted to wear Western clothes and also, it seemed to me, granted permission to laugh. All the others were required to wear kimonos in deference to Kinzo-san’s largely establishment clientele and do a lot of serious formal bowing with lowered eyes.

  Muzi-san, always polite but never obsequious, was a thoroughly modern young lady with a quick smile, not in the least afraid to meet my eyes. Therefore it came as something of a surprise when she immediately indicated her reluctance to visit Mitsukoshi Department Store to purchase a spring dress, a pair of sandals and, of course, all the necessary underwear.

  Her chin dropped to her chest and her eyes were downcast. ‘I do not have the courage, Duncan-san,’ she said softly.

  ‘Courage? What, to go shopping for someone else? It shouldn’t be too difficult, Muzi-san. Anna is perhaps one size larger than you. What size are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Eight,’ she replied.

  ‘Ah, then Anna is a size ten. I also have her shoe size.’ I spread my hands. ‘But I have one problem. I can purchase a ship, a crane, a freezer or an automobile, but I have no idea how to shop for a dress and shoes.’ I paused, affecting a thoroughly helpless expression. ‘As for underwear . . .’ I left the sentence incomplete, hoping to appeal to her better nature.

  She glanced up. ‘It is not the shopping, Duncan-san, it is the shop. I do not have the status to enter such a place as Mitsukoshi. It is the grandest shop in all of Japan, some say even the whole world. I am too young and not worthy.’

  I laughed, relieved. ‘C’mon, Muzi-san, it’s only a shop.’

  But clearly it wasn’t. ‘No, it is not for someone like me,’ she said, shaking her head vehemently. ‘They will not allow me to enter. I am not correctly dressed.’

  ‘Would you like to?’ I asked.

  ‘Like to what?’ she asked, clearly not sure what I meant.

  ‘Go into that shop, into Mitsukoshi.’

  She looked down at her plain black jacket and the matching skirt that ended just above her knees, the white blouse and black flat-heeled shoes. Heels, while not openly forbidden, were frowned on by height-obsessed and insecure Japanese males. ‘They are cheap, my clothes. They will know immediately that I am only a humble office worker,’ she said, clearly embarrassed at having to make the admission.

  I glanced down at my own gear. ‘Hai! Look at me! I’m not exactly dressed for showing off either.’ I was still wearing the now somewhat rumpled clobber that had been produced for me the previous day at police headquarters and my shoes were scuffed and in need of a shine. I glanced at my watch. I had arrived at Kinzo-san’s chambers early, having been dropped off by Fuchida-san who had business in the city to attend to. At that time, Kinzo-san had not yet received the call to tell him where Anna was being held, so at the very least I would have two hours, the time it would take to journey to the hostage location and return. ‘Come, let’s go together.’ I laughed. ‘Then they can kick us both out.’

  ‘No!’ Muzi-san cried, horrified. ‘Then you will lose face!’

  ‘Hai!’ I grinned. ‘I will have gained so much face from having a pretty girl like you accompanying me that whatever face I lose will not be sufficient to remove my smile.’ I was not sure whether such blatant flirting was permitted in Japanese society, but Muzi-san seemed to like it.

  She smiled. ‘Do a
ll gaijin have such nice ways?’ she asked shyly, giving me back some of my own medicine. She appeared to be thinking. ‘I will come,’ she decided suddenly. ‘When I tell of this to my girlfriends and my honourable parents they will not believe me.’

  ‘I am most relieved and grateful,’ I said sincerely. ‘I truly know nothing of women’s dresses and shoes. Once in the islands I attempted to shop for Anna-san – just shorts and tops – and a kind lady helped me with underwear.’ I shrugged and laughed. ‘As it turned out I made an awful hash of it. Without you I would have found myself in heaps of trouble,’ I grinned, ‘especially when it comes to the little things worn underneath!’

  It was a glorious, warm late-spring day, and as the Ginza branch of the three-hundred-year-old grand emporium was nearby, we walked, which was probably quicker than taking a taxi. As we approached the entrance to Mitsukoshi I saw the doorman hesitate momentarily. ‘Take my arm and stick your nose in the air,’ I instructed out of the corner of my mouth. ‘Swing your hips; try not to laugh.’ This caused her to bring both hands to her mouth in a highly unsuccessful attempt to smother a giggle.

  I guess a slightly dishevelled six-foot three-inch Caucasian in rolled-up shirtsleeves wearing an insouciant expression forced the diminutive doorman to decide that discretion was perhaps the better part of valour. He swept off his top hat and bowed deeply as we sailed through the glass and polished brass doorway to the grandest department store in Asia.

  When Anna and I had last visited the grand emporium, she had asked to be taken to the haute couture department, but I wasn’t sure whether spring dresses were regarded as high fashion or whether Mr Charles Jourdan made sandals, high-heeled or not. I try to understand these nuances of women’s shopping, but after nearly fifty years of sitting outside changing rooms clutching Anna’s handbag, and twenty-something years of Marg’s, feeling like a right ponce, I’m still not sure how it all works, except that there’s a great deal of getting dressed and undressed and a fair bit of parading in front of me with gear that has labels attached with at least three zeros after the first number. The only certainty in all of this is that if I express the slightest preference for an outfit, shoes, jacket, skirt, dress, jeans (‘Do they make my bum look big?’), whatever, this is a definite sign to either woman that they are headed entirely in the wrong direction. My job, sitting outside changing rooms clutching a handbag, is simply to indicate what doesn’t work. If I like it, then that becomes the benchmark of bad taste. God cannot dwell in this garment, even if it is made from superfine Australian merino wool. The two women in my life opposed each other in everything except their certain knowledge that Nicholas or Nick Duncan’s taste in female attire ended roughly with the lap-lap on a hula dancer. I recall once hearing Marg say to a girlfriend, ‘I never buy anything to wear without Nick being present.’ There wasn’t a hint of sarcasm in her voice. She was simply acknowledging the fact that being consistently wrong is just as good an indicator as being consistently right. Anna, who never accepted my advice on anything involving the making or spending of money, was more direct. ‘Nicholas, it is very reassuring to know that you are always wrong; that’s why you must always come with me, so I can buy the right thing.’ It must have worked, because although they dressed somewhat differently, I always thought they looked great. Now I needed Muzi-san to play Anna’s role to give me half a chance of buying something Anna might like.

  We had hardly entered the temple-like atrium that formed a part of the ground floor when an elegantly dressed assistant rushed towards us. ‘Smile,’ I whispered to Muzi-san, but it wasn’t necessary. We found ourselves being welcomed with a bow and then a pleasant formal greeting followed by the universal enquiry, ‘May I accompany you? And how may I help?’ Put like this I wasn’t quite sure how to begin.

  ‘Pret a porter, please, Miss. We’d like to see the spring range,’ Muzi-san instructed in a completely assured voice. Then turning to me she inquired about Anna’s age. We were duly escorted to the right department where Muzi-san selected a teal-blue pure silk spring dress. ‘It’s a shirtmaker, for day wear, but it can be worn formally or informally,’ she said, holding it against her body. I had assumed my usual handbag position seated on a large chair hurriedly brought by two female assistants and placed close to the changing rooms. I guess Japanese husbands don’t do a lot of shopping for women’s apparel in the company of their wives.

  ‘I can’t tell,’ I confessed. ‘You’ll have to put it on, Muzi-san.’

  ‘It is a ten, Duncan-san. I am an eight.’

  ‘Do you personally like it?’

  ‘Oh, it’s gorgeous, very sophisticated.’

  ‘Yes, but would you wear it . . . I mean, personally?’

  She pouted. ‘For me, it is a bit too sophisticated. When I am older . . . but then, I will never possess such a beautiful dress.’

  I hesitated. My universally rejected opinion was always formed about a piece of apparel that was being worn. I had no way of judging a garment on the rack or held against the body as Muzi-san was now doing. ‘I don’t know . . . Can you get a size eight and try it on? It’s the only way I can tell,’ I didn’t add the words, ‘if I like it and therefore Anna won’t’.

  Muzi-san appeared in the shirtmaker and I thought it looked rather dull, although the colour would suit Anna’s skin tone and dark hair. Muzi-san was right – it was a bit too sophisticated for someone in her early twenties but probably right for Anna. What’s more, I definitely didn’t like the dress. ‘Okay, that’s the one. Can we have it in a size ten?’ I said to the assistant. Then addressing Muzi-san, ‘This time I want you to choose the spring dress you would like above all others. I feel sure that is the one Anna would like. Get a size eight and try it on. Maybe a party dress or a cocktail dress to wear in the evening, something glamorous, eh?’

  Muzi-san looked pleased and returned wearing an off-the-shoulder silk dress with ballerina skirt festooned with tiny pink roses set against a cream background. She had nice legs and it looked terrific, a knockout, making it absolutely worthless for Anna. ‘Wonderful!’ I said. ‘We’ll take it!’

  Muzi-san looked slightly doubtful. ‘Perhaps it is not wise, Duncan-san. You asked me to choose what I personally most liked, but I am a younger woman, maybe it is too . . .’

  ‘Nonsense, you have wonderful taste!’ I interjected, nodding to the assistant to confirm that we would take the dress. When Muzi-san had returned to the changing room I instructed the sales assistant to select a size eight and not a ten.

  The next stop was the lingerie department and here Muzi-san hesitated. ‘Lingerie, it is a very personal thing, Duncan-san. How can I choose?’ Then she brightened. ‘But, of course, you will know yourself.’

  But, of course, I didn’t. I guess I’d seen Anna in her underwear literally hundreds, maybe a thousand times, but like all men my mind was always on something else and all I’d ever registered was lace and semi-transparency in black, pink or white. Or was that Marg? Come to think of it, it probably was Marg. Moreover, off the body it simply looked like a handful of satin and lace and I hadn’t a clue what to choose or even what to look for. I shrugged. ‘Muzi-san, pick what you would wear on your wedding night,’ I suggested.

  She blushed furiously then giggled. ‘That is for taking off, not for putting on. Maybe something more practical?’

  ‘No! Anna has been through a tough time, she will want to look pretty. The wedding night ones will be perfect.’

  Our final stop was at the shoe department where it turned out the two women wore the same shoe size. Muzi-san selected a pair of strappy Italian sandals for the teal blue shirtmaker and a pair of impossibly high-heeled cream French courts to match the background of the party dress.

  The five separate parcels were then elaborately wrapped, and with the congratulations of our personal shop assistant and much bowing we departed.

  We were back in the office in slightly over the hour, and I had scarcely thanked an astonished and overwhelmed Muzi-san by presenting her
with the party dress and court shoes, when to my surprise Fuchida-san’s phone call came to tell me Anna was safe, though covered in blood.

  Perhaps you think me insensitive, and wonder how I could go out shopping with one of the girls from the legal firm when things were so very fraught. Of course, I knew nothing of the yakuza plan to ‘take out’ the Shield Society guards, and if I had, I would have rejected it as much too dangerous.

  Fuchida-san, probably sensing this and knowing that I was overwrought, had wisely kept me in the dark, assuring me that Kinzo-san would hand over the ransom money and Anna would be released into the custody of Saito-san without incident. This assurance had, to a large degree, kept me moderately calm, and without it I feel sure I would have completely flipped. I recalled the wartime words of Sergeant Wainwright: ‘Boyo, in times of crisis, if we allow our imagination to dictate the state of our disposition it becomes a one-way street to a crack-up.’ So, rather than sit on my hands biting my bottom lip, I had kept myself busy procuring the heroin and buying new apparel for Anna. It felt as if I were doing something for her.

  The four nights and days that had passed since she’d left the Imperial Hotel in high dudgeon had been, to say the least, bizarre. Anna’s kidnapping, my abortive attempt with the aid of the yakuza to rescue her, the debacle at Konoe Akira’s home, the accident with the vase, my arrest, the apparently necessary torture during my interrogation and my extremely fortunate but nevertheless harrowing session in front of the state prosecutor – what an unholy fuck-up, and most of it of my own creation.

  Shopping with the cheerful and intelligent Muzi-san was almost the first bit of normality since we’d stepped off the Qantas jet at Haneda Airport. To my mind, the small gift of snazzy shoes and a pretty dress didn’t begin to thank her.

  Fuchida-san phoned from the heliport to tell Kinzo-san it would not be necessary to pay the ransom, then asked to talk to me. ‘Hai! Duncan-san, your junkie is safe.’ He giggled excitedly. ‘But she will need a good wash; she is covered in blood.’