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 further 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 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 and 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 Andr`e Poncin deep in private conversation, and not far away from them, Erlicher, the Swiss Minister, was equally private with Johann, Johann 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 Portugese-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 "news paper," 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 letters 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!"