"Saaaaah," Mrs. Fujitani said, shaking her head.
\\\\\ 5 /////
"Lookslike a grocer," the Commissaris thought, when he sat down opposite the ambassador at a comer table in what was probably the most expensive restaurant in The Hague. The room was quiet, and the waiters, impeccably dressed in dress coats and starched shirts and flowing striped trousers, glided around them, anxiously peering at the guests, and almost falling forward in their eagerness to serve. They were old men; one of them seemed to totter under the weight of a small silver tray loaded with two tulip-shaped glasses on high stems and holding jenever that was so cold that it was frosting the glass into opaqueness. Graybeards, the commissaris thought, dying out. Soon there will be a new generation of waiters who won't come when you call them and who'll point at the self-service counter and inquire if there is anything wrong with your legs when you insist.
He sighed and looked at the ambassador, who was raising his glass. He mumbled, the ambassador mumbled, and they both nipped and set the glasses down. The ambassador was a big man with a bald head and goldrimmed glasses. His face looked bland, but there seemed to be some intelligence in the calm green eyes that were studying the commissaris.
They approached each other carefully, finishing their drinks and calling for more and studying the menu, which ran into some twelve pages of handwritten specialties. There were no prices on the menu which the commissaris was holding, but he glanced at the ambassador's copy and his back quivered. They would spend more on this meal than the commissaris' youngest son was taking to France that day and the boy was planning to stay away for three weeks. To eat, the commissaris thought, an old man's pleasure, but he shrugged imperceptibly.
He had always doubted the value of money, and neither wealth nor poverty had impressed him much. He had known both. The war years had taught him how it feels to starve, and an uncle's inheritance had once given him some bizarre weeks in Paris where he drove a rented white sports car and lived in a hotel suite where the lavatory was bigger than his apartment in Amsterdam at that time. He had willfully wasted the money, blowing it all in three weeks' leave. His brother, who had inherited the same amount, had invested the money wisely and was now a rich man, living in a large house in Switzerland, worrying about his health and drinking too much wine.
"Your health," the commissaris said, and smiled at the ambassador. "Your very good health."
The eyes behind the gold-rimmed spectacles twinkled. "Thank you. Same to you. So we have a Japanese corpse, it seems, and the death is tied up with the yakusa and stolen art and maybe drugs. Your case interests me; we might use it to create some good will."
"Good will?" the commissaris asked, while he indicated his choice on the menu and acknowledged the servile bowing of the waiter.
"Exactly. You will solve the case, of course, I have no doubt about it. The killer or killers will be apprehended and taken to court. But there is more to it. This case will give us a chance to repay favors which the Japanese bestowed on us. Many years ago. The exact year was 1635, I believe, or 1636, I forget now."
"That's a little while back," the commissaris said.
The ambassador gestured. "What is time? 1635 was 'now' once, wasn't it? And the year 2000 will be 'now' soon, if we ever make it. You and I won't make it, of course, but other people, I mean. People in general. But maybe the planet will have exploded by then, or been devastated by uranium fires and throwouts, and a little napalm and laser beams gone wild, on the side. Wouldn't be a bad idea."
"You think so?" the commissaris asked politely.
"Wonderful idea," the ambassador said, warming up to the subject and vigorously stirring his soup with a minute spoon. "Just imagine, a dead ball of stone continuing its course around the sun for a billion years or so, or better even, no ball at all. Just empty space which the Earth once filled. Emptiness has always fascinated me, maybe because of my many years in the Far East. All the philosophies of the Chinese, except Confucianism, of course, which isn't a philosophy but a set of rules, seem to center on emptiness."
"Chinese philosophy?" the commissaris asked. "I thought you lived in Japan."
"Used to live in China, you know, for twenty-five years off and on. I've only been in Japan for the last three years. But the Japanese got their ideas from China and they are keeping them alive. Beautiful ideas. I am a Taoist myself but I have always been interested in Buddhism. Same thing maybe when you get down to it."
The commissaris slurped the dregs from his cup and chewed the shreds of turtle meat. "Yes," he said, "when you get down to it there is nothing left. The thought has often occurred to me, in jail. In jail there is a lot of time, and time can be used to reflect."
"Did the Germans get you?" the ambassador asked, looking interested.
"Yes."
"Nasty fellows. But the Japanese could be pretty nasty too during the war. They killed two of my brothers, captured in the former Dutch Indies and taken to Burma. They were officers and were beaten to death because they refused to work on some railway. I wonder if they would have beaten me too. I speak Japanese and I know their customs. I might have got away with it. They are really extremely polite and often very advanced people, but they can behave strangely when you rattle them."
"You speak Japanese?" the commissaris asked, and looked up. The ambassador still reminded him of a grocer, a successful grocer who owns a big store with a large assortment of food and who stands behind the counter, beaming at his clients and pouring sugar or flour into brown paper bags.
"Yes. I studied Chinese before I went to the East, but I learned some Japanese as well. When I was transferred to Japan the language came quickly to me. They use the same script as the Chinese, of course, but they also have their own script in addition, and the spoken language is very different. I managed, but I had some help." The ambassador giggled. "They say that the best way to learn a language is on the pillow. I hired a high-class call girl, a very educated lady, and together we read a lot of their literature. Beautiful literature; a pity that only a little is translated. We could learn much more from them, but there is such a shortage of intelligent translators."
"A geisha?" the commissaris asked, smiling eagerly.
"No. Geishas aren't prostitutes. They dance and sing and excel in intelligent conversation. A geisha may have lovers, but she chooses them herself. No, mine was a whore, I am afraid. Not that I have anything against whores; on the contrary. Do you?"
"Not at all," the commissaris said quickly. "No, not at all. And they are very useful in police work. I don't think we would ever get anywhere without them. You mentioned the year 1635. What happened in 1635?"
The ambassador sprinkled mint sauce on a lamb chop.
"1635," he repeated. "The island if Deshima was given to the Dutch. Four hundred feet long, two hundred and forty feet wide, connected to the city of Nagasaki by a little bridge. An island the size of a ship. But it was ours and we were the only Western nation allowed to trade with Japan in those days. The Japanese figured that we weren't going to convert them to anything, but were only there for the money. And so we were; we are simple people after all, always ready to make a silver dollar. The island had a chief and the chief had to go to Edo, or Tokyo as it is called now, once a year, to pay his respects. A trip of several hundreds of miles, and he was carried to the capital in a palanquin, in style. We had some Africans on our island and they did the carrying and the chief would have Javanese servants marching ahead and behind. A white man surrounded by black and brown men. What a sight that must have been. Most Japanese had never seen a foreigner and here they were in three colors, like some fancy ice cream."