Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

38. The Kakemono of Kwashin Koji

Now I’ll never know what Mr Rinyo-Clacton wanted to talk about that Thursday. Had he had a change of heart? Was he going to call the whole thing off? Was he perhaps terminally ill and wanted to die with a clear conscience? Or had he in fact been writing a novel and had decided to abandon his researches and perhaps the writing as well? Had he meant this meeting to be our last conversation and he would then step out of my life or was it to be the last time for us to talk and our only meeting after that would be at the time of my death?

When I finally did go around to his flat there was a new occupant and no forwarding address for Desmond; he probably wouldn’t have told me anything anyhow. And actually I don’t need to know more of Mr Rinyo-Clacton’s personal history than I do now.

My mind sometimes makes up little rhymes that it sings to itself; it’s singing one now that seems to have reached the top of the mental charts:

No more action

with Rinyo-Claction.

Which is not strictly true; Mr Rinyo-Clacton has departed the scene but the action continues: everything that happened between us replays itself on a loop of memory but I’m not as tortured by it as I used to be; I know now how fragile are the walls that keep out chaos — there are many weak spots and there will always be something or someone waiting to break in. Maybe I can reinforce those weak spots with the rock I’m leaving behind as I carve myself out and shape my destiny.

Having written this, I found that I wanted it to go out into the world. I sent it to Derek Engel with a note recalling our telephone conversation and I was surprised to receive from him, after a two-month wait, an offer to publish. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘You may well have backed into a new career.’ The advance was modest but so am I, and I’m hanging on to my day job yet awhile.

Katerina insisted on returning the money I’d given her; she simply wanted no part of it. ‘I have had enough’, she said, ‘of the father and the son.’ So the million remained mostly intact, less the expenses of the trip to Paris and various incidentals.

Serafina and I both tested negative for HIV at the John Hunter Clinic and the future lay before us, more or less. All of a sudden, like a rug being pulled out from under us, the drama was gone from our lives and we’ve had to deal with the ordinary business of getting from one day to the next.

When I mentioned the restaurant idea again Serafina fixed me with her bleakest northern-strand stare. ‘Jonathan,’ she said, ‘do you mean to tell me that you expect to build some kind of a future on money from that man?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘a good thing can come out of a bad thing. Can’t it?’

‘Jonathan, as far as I am concerned, that money is the fruit of the poison tree, and if we’re going to go on together it will have to be without that million.’

‘That’s twice you’ve called me Jonathan instead of Jonno. Do you want to go on together?’

The phone rang. ‘Hello, Jonathan, this is Jim Reilly at Morgenstern. I hope you’re well?’

‘Yes, I’m all right, thanks. You?’

‘Very well, thank you. I haven’t heard from you for a while and I was wondering if we should meet so we can go on to the next stage of your financial planning and your restaurant thoughts.’

Listening numbly to the worods, the woordos coming out of my mouth, I told Jim that my situation had changed and I was no longer in a position to go ahead with those plans. He said, well of course these things happened; he knew how it was and would be delighted to meet with me again whenever the time seemed right. I rang off, wondering, now that I was back in the real world, what Morgenstern’s note of charges would be for my brief fling as a man with enough money to require financial advice. Serafina hadn’t answered my question. I looked at her and said wordlessly, with my hands, ‘Well?’

‘Oh, all right. You’re rotten but I suppose most men are, and I’ve already put a substantial amount of time into you, so I guess we might as well stay together.’

‘With that kind of positive thinking we can’t lose.’ We drank to that, one thing led to another, and we made the most of our HIV-negativity.

Nowadays I’m writing copy at Pottley & Trewe; I’m on HERO Men’s Toiletries, doing print ads for Mon Brave aftershave. The latest has a black-and-white photo with that pearly, high-fashion nudity one sees so much of these days — a close-up of a young man in bed — mostly his bare upper torso and a bit of chin and smile, with a woman’s arm thrown across his body. ‘THE SMELL OF SUCCESS’ is the line and the product is shown with it. Everybody liked it but I find myself wondering about the words I wrote. The success, one assumes, is that, assisted by Mon Brave, he got a woman into bed. If he were alone would the line have to be ‘THE SMELL OF FAILURE’? Well, if his object was to find someone to help him make it through the night, sleeping alone would have to be a considered a non-result, wouldn’t it. But of course if he were sleeping alone he wouldn’t have been in the ad. Sometimes I wonder what the fictional people in our ads are doing when they’re not in the photo or on the screen. Do they hang out with Hendryk in unseen rooms of Van Hoogstraten’s peep-show?

I was hired by Gary Willoughby, the Copy Supervisor. He tends to brush against me in places where there’s plenty of room to pass. Lots of interesting women go into advertising, and a fair number of them can be found at Pottley & Trewe and at the Serpent & Apple where the agency crowd gather at lunchtime and after work. Eye contacts; body language; a hand on your arm while talking; pheromones zinging back and forth — sometimes the certainty that something can be made to happen exerts pressure to make it happen but I’ve restrained myself.

I replaced the money I spent and gave the full one million pounds to the Terence Higgins Trust, which impressed me even more than it did them. Serafina and I have settled into a comfortable routine and life is pretty good. As good as it used to be?

Well, there comes to mind ‘The Story of Kwashin Koji’, translated from the Japanese by Lafcadio Hearn. Kwashin Koji is an old man who earns his living by busking with a wonderful Buddhist scroll painting, a kakemono. There are several attempts to get this picture from him by foul means and fair, and after some astonishing twists and turns in the story he agrees to sell the painting to Lord Nobunaga, the ruler of the province, for one hundred ryo of gold. The scroll is then unrolled for its new owner but the picture, which had been magically vivid and full of life before, now looks a bit dim. Nobunaga wants to know why. Kwashin Koji explains that formerly the picture was beyond price, but since a price has been put on it, it has become just one hundred ryo’s worth of painting.

What I have now is what I’ve bought with my actions. I think I love Serafina more than I did before; I’m now mindful of the value of what I almost lost for ever. She loves me too, I think, although she doesn’t use the L-word any more and neither of us has mentioned the oasis dream since we’ve been back together. She kicks me a lot in her sleep but at least she doesn’t do it when she’s awake.