Booty is in the eye of the beholder
Miranda Seymour
THE NEXT BEST THING by John Ralston Saul Grafton Books, f9.95
You can't read a book by looking at its cover but you do hope to get some clue as to its contents. Here, the clues seem designed expressly to mislead. The front depicts a buddha whose singularly grumpy expression could be attributed to the fact that he is being forcefully embraced by a giant cobra or to an aesthetic distaste for the clouds of pink and green smoke which the designer has provided as a backdrop. The review quotes on the back hail Saul as the Voltaire of our day. So what's on offer, a grisly piece of science fiction or an essay on the state of man? Not having read the author's two previous novels, I was in no Position to guess. Cobras don't get much of a look-in and references to smoke are of a non- Pyrotechnical kind in what turns out to be a masterly adventure-story with a sharp mor- al edge. The prose is lucid and strong, bar an occasional lapse into the thrillerese of growls, punches and snarls. The plot drives forward at a pace which kept me turning the pages to the beat of an imaginary Metronome and the Asian background is presented in rich and evocative detail. Mr Saul obviously knows and understands his subject and area very well. His skill lies in conveying complicated information in such a Palatable form. James Spenser, the chief protagonist, is a kshrewd young expert on far eastern art W`inseethics have been corrupted by his obsessive pursuit of beautiful things. (To go to bed with a photograph of a rare ostatue excites him more than the presence f .a compliant woman). His response to art ts instinctive and almost supernatural: What was the love of flesh next to this? Not something to which he was insensible. Not something he would refuse or avoid chasing. Yet neither would he sacrifice his other love In its name, no matter what he lost. He could not imagine the pain of this loss lasting so very long; at worst only so long as he himself xvas alive. What was that, next to his love of these sculptures and the divine service they rendered to beauty? a Spenser's criminal career commences in thModest way when, as a deputy keeper at e V & A, he starts using his remarkable acumen to begin quietly buying on the side for his own pleasure and profit. His de- fence, now and later, is that his rare understanding of beauty gives him a moral right to ownership, a view which is not shared by his colleagues at the museum. When he hears about the fabulous Ananda statues, worth a million dollars each to the man who can get them away from their neglected temple in a Burmese jungle, Spenser is prepared to argue theft into being an act of salvation.
Setting up the delicate operations for his robbery from Bangkok, notoriously the pillage capital of the east, Spenser is rapidly sucked into a whirlpool of personal and political vendettas. His colleagues are Field, an alcoholic Canadian whose claim to know every crook in town is swiftly substantiated, and Blake, 'a third- generation Lahu god who happens to hold an American passport.' Field is a perfectly acceptable stereotype, rather thinly con- ceived. But in Blake, an American baptist minister with a reputation for having once been the best guerrilla leader in Asia, Saul has created a subtle and complex character and one well-suited to the job of leading Spenser safely through the Shan States, 'a gigantic rich vacuum inhabited by a lot of clever men who fight with each other for little victories and money on ground they can't control for more than one hour over a hundred yards.' No amount of warning has prepared Spenser for the treacherous network of opium dealers, spies and warring guerrilla leaders into which he is drawn on what even he is finally to see as his own ignoble crusade. At the Ananda temple, he can still make a passionate defence of his planned sacrilege:
You're not stealing them. I am. And you're not selling them. I am. It's my responsibility. What's your right to judge me? I have more love for these buddhas than this place could ever give them. Even the people I sell them to will want the buddhas for their beauty. Here they are dying.
As with all Spenser's arguments, it's a neat piece of casuistry and it is robbed of all credibility when the horde of treasures is lost on the journey home. In the temple, the buddhas had been neglected but safe. Under Spenser's care, they are lost forever to the rivers and gulleys of the jungle. The responsibility, as he has said, is all his.
The looting of the Ananda temple is the main plot and a very good one. Underpin- ning and enhancing it are the stories of the book's secondary characters, of Blake's Hong Kong mistress Marea, a woman with a hidden past, of Shirley Chu, the tough Americanised lawyer daughter of one of the old guerrilla leaders, of Santana, a religious fanatic who ends his days itemis- ing his innards on a funeral pyre — not my favourite scene — and of Eddie, an old Shan who sees the world in terms of the picture magazines which come his way and who is consequently never short of a topic of conversation. Limping back from Anan- da with leeches on his legs and enemy soldiers all around, Eddy is still ready to discuss Lady Di, 'such a pure example for everyone to imitate' — and the unappeal- ing appearance of Jane Fonda's muscles. In a novel which seldom glosses over a grue- some moment, characters like Eddy are more than usually welcome for the light relief they provide.
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