The interpreter eased a handful of coins into the scales. He stroked a fistful of notes and let them flutter down one by one on top of the coins.
Snow, he whispered. Gently falling snow that covers the path to the castle.
Much snow must fall, whispered the cashier, to obscure the footprints of the stranger who attempts to sneak up on the castle under cover of darkness.
The interpreter pulled more notes from Quin’s money roll and let them fall into the scales.
Might it be, he whispered, that one must be careful because the lord of this castle is so powerful?
He has power beyond power. No one equals him in power.
No one? That is a difficult claim to make. We have our Emperor, after all.
The Emperor has been powerless since the thirteenth century.
True enough. He has been only a figurehead, a god. Real power has long been in the hands of the warlords. Is it not so?
The cashier shrugged. Of remote eras, he whispered, I know nothing.
But do you mean to say then, whispered the interpreter, that the power of this lord in the castle compares to that of the warlords of more recent eras? That it compares to those warriors who a few short decades ago were our leaders in the conquest of China and the Pacific? Could his empire really compare to their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere?
Greater Asia what? whispered the cashier. China, you say? The Pacific? East Asia? Spheres of spheres and prosperity? No, this empire does not compare to that one because it is much larger. And it is real, unlike that other one that was only a dream, so flimsy it collapsed in a day or two under the weight of one bomb. No, this empire exists, I tell you.
Then the man who rules it must be a mighty emperor indeed. When does he hold court in his castle, this emperor of emperors?
The cashier scooped up the money in the scales and rang up a small sum on the cash register. He stopped whispering and spoke in a normal voice.
Fifty grams, he said. That would be a very good whitefish, short and round, but also too powerful a swimmer for any fisherman to catch. I’m afraid we don’t have what you’re looking for.
The interpreter hiccupped. The cashier sucked air through his teeth. They staggered out of the restaurant and down the street through crowds of men lurching back and forth, spraying each other. At last the interpreter found an unoccupied telephone pole, where he unzipped his trousers in the glare of a streetlight.
That’s it, he whispered, we have it all now. First, he said fifty grams and that’s half a hundred or half the night. Midnight. That’s when this emperor among gangsters shows up at his houseboat. Second, he’s a short rotund man. Third, the rackets he controls make up an empire larger than the Japanese empire during the Second World War. Fourth, the rackets aren’t confined to the Orient but operate all over the world. Fifth, he is more powerful than General Tojo was twenty years ago. Sixth, I don’t know what the cashier meant by calling him white. The Japanese language is very imprecise. Is it possible this gangster is a Westerner? Partly Western?
I suppose so, said Quin. But anyway, where is this houseboat?
Right behind the restaurant we were just in, that’s why we went there of course. Most of the canals in Tokyo are sewers today, one of the few that isn’t is behind that restaurant. Clean water. Just what you’d want if you lived on a houseboat. I thought of sewers while we were in the coffee shop, which is why we went there of course, then I thought of clean water while we were looking at the clean lines of Fuji-san at sunset, which is why we went down to the bay of course. But it has been a long day and now I think we must be going. Shall we?
Quin took out his money.
Impossible, said the interpreter. I wouldn’t think of it. After all, I’ve done practically nothing for you. And let me thank you for the sushi and the sake and the Mozart. It was a very relaxing day.
He waved through the back window of the taxi as he drove away, leaving Quin astonished at the ease with which he had uncovered the information. But of course Quin had no way of knowing that he had just spent the day with a former corporal who had once been the chauffeur of a man who was a great master spy and double agent at the time of that other empire, who had observed ten thousand clandestine techniques as he drove the most feared man in the Kempeitai, the little Baron with the glass eye that never closed, through the dangerous streets of Mukden and the intricate alleys of Shanghai, the bewildering plots and deceptions of a Tokyo that had disappeared with the war.
Generally Big Gobi moved around and around the apartment while he was watching television. If he saw a clogged sink on the screen he went out to the kitchen to examine their sink. If he saw a clogged stomach he went into the bathroom to see if he could move his bowels.
Late one afternoon Quin went over to the set and turned it off. A minute or two later Big Gobi moaned.
Hey Quin. Hey what’s that all about? I was right in the middle of something.
What?
I don’t know. Something.
You haven’t moved in days.
Haven’t I?
Now listen, Gobes, the tube’s been out of focus since yesterday. You lost the picture and you didn’t even know it. There’s been nothing but a hum coming out.
Well hey, maybe I was in the middle of that.
No good, Gobes. Tell me what’s bothering you.
Nothing.
Come on.
Do I have to?
Yes.
Big Gobi twisted his hands. He wrung them, pretended to wash them, pretended to dry them.
It’s just this. I can’t think straight anymore.
What’s the matter?
Everything’s upside down, that’s what’s the matter.
Why?
Because everything’s changed. I mean all my life there’s always been one thing I could trust. I didn’t have much else and it was terribly important, but now it’s just gone, I mean just like that. How can you lose something that used to be the whole world to you?
Maybe you don’t, Gobes, maybe you don’t really lose it. What was it?
Big Gobi went through the ritual of washing his hands again. He rubbed the dent in his shoulder.
What do you want to know for?
Because I care about you.
I know, I know you do, I know that’s why you want to know, but what difference does it make when nothing can be done about it anyway? I mean some things are hard to talk about.
What, Gobes?
Well you know what I mean, don’t you, I mean you know me, I don’t have to come right out and say it.
All right. It’s television, isn’t it?
Sure.
It doesn’t mean as much to you as it used to.
As much? Doesn’t mean as much? It means nothing at all, that’s what it means. After all these years it’s just gone, just as if it had never been there. And it was my family, Quin, it was my home and my friends and you know, everything. It was just plain me and now it’s nothing at all.
Maybe not.
But it is, I mean I know it is. I look at the set now and I don’t feel a thing. I mean I remember how I used to feel, but that’s all. I used to feel I couldn’t live without it and now I don’t even care. It frightens me. How can things just be gone? How can you just lose them?
I don’t know that you can. New things happen though. Something else comes along. What’s the new thing, Gobes?
You know. You must know.
Tell me.
All right I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you tomorrow.
No, now.
Right now?
Yes.
Like that?
Like that.
All right, Quin, I will. I’ll tell you just like that.
Well?
Jigglies.
What?
Jigglies. I can’t think about anything but jigglies. I look at the set and I see jigglies. The picture goes off and I still see jigglies. When I try to go to sleep I’m thinking of jigglies and that keeps me awak
e. I think about jigglies when I’m trying to eat and the silly food won’t go down. I mean I know that night wasn’t anything special to you, I know that, but it was to me and I feel just awful now. It’s driving me crazy.
Big Gobi washed and dried his hands. He buried himself in his chair. Quin was thinking of the bar in Yokohama, of Big Gobi marching away from the colored lights of the jukebox behind an aging, shapeless whore, a scarred admiral of a whore who had commanded fleets of Japanese battleships during the war, who had captained half the freighters in the world since then.
Listen, said Quin. I know a place that’s supposed to be the best in Asia for girls. How about it?
Where?
Right here.
Tokyo?
Right.
A kind of palace?
Exactly.
With a princess?
She’ll be a princess. We’ll make sure of it.
When?
Tonight. Right now.
Really?
Sure. You change and we’ll be on our way.
Change?
Big Gobi looked down at himself. He was wearing bathing trunks.
Why was he wearing bathing trunks? He tried to remember. It was because he had had them on that night. He had been in a hurry to leave the beach, the dull one for swimming, to get to the other beach where there were tattoo parlors and jukeboxes and jigglies. He had been in such a hurry he hadn’t changed, so that was the way he walked into the bar in Yokohama.
Bare feet. No shirt. Bathing trunks.
A life preserver over his shoulder.
But the aging, shapeless admiral standing in the colored lights of the jukebox hadn’t laughed at him. In her long career she had scuttled too many battleships and seen too many shipwrecked sailors to be surprised when a man staggered through the door stripped nearly naked, grinning, gripping his life preserver.
Big Gobi smiled shyly.
Sorry, Quin, I’ll change right now. As I told you, I’ve had this one thing on my mind.
They passed a sandlot where barefoot boys in white pajamas were beating their hands against trees.
Why, Quin?
Karate. Smash your hand against a tree for three or four years and you have calluses an inch thick. Smash it into a keg of sand for another three or four years and all the fingers are the same length.
Why?
So your hand’s shaped like a hoe.
Big Gobi looked at his hands. He saw a woman carrying pieces of chicken wrapped in broad wood shavings. Why didn’t they use paper? Girls in short skirts were going to work, and men with towels around their necks were coming from work after stopping at the public bath. Why didn’t they bathe at home? Why didn’t the girls go to work in the morning?
It was silly. The whole country was silly. He didn’t want his hand to look like a hoe.
He felt for the eye in his pocket, the eye he had bought after the accident with the tuna fish in Boston, the weekend the foreman slipped in the freezer locker and was crushed under a load of thawing fish. The whole episode had started with an eye, Big Gobi knew that and he didn’t want it to happen again. So a few days later when he had chanced to pass a store that sold surgical supplies and had seen a glass eye in the window he had gone in and bought it. Now he kept it with him always, never playing with it or taking it out except when he had to, saving it for emergencies. Even Quin didn’t know about the glass eye. No one knew about it because it had to do with the tuna fish and the foreman’s accident.
They went down a long spiral staircase, passed a huge man with a mallet, kept on descending.
Hey, said Big Gobi. Hey what’s the name of this palace?
The Living Room.
It was silly. Nothing made any sense anymore. Palaces didn’t have living rooms. Palaces were supposed to be up in the sky.
He was even more disappointed when they went into a small, dark room, smaller than the one in Yokohama, lacking a jukebox. They sat down in an alcove hidden behind palm trees. A bucket of ice was brought with a bottle in it. Big Gobi tasted the bubbly ginger ale and found it bitter. The tall, flat glasses held only a mouthful.
He was lonely. An old woman with a silly green jewel in the middle of her forehead came and sat down beside Quin. Was that Quin’s idea of a princess? While they talked he peeked between the palm trees. It was dark out there. Where was everyone?
The old woman left and Quin went with her, saying he would be back in a few minutes. Big Gobi shrugged. He didn’t care.
He finished the bottle of ginger ale thinking about the girl in Yokohama who had jewels on her slippers, not on her forehead. He tried washing and drying his hands, but that didn’t help either. Another bottle came. He drank some more.
All at once a beautiful girl was sitting down beside him, a young girl with black hair to her waist, a princess. She was wearing an evening dress and stroking his arm. The only girl who had ever done that before was the nurse in the army when she gave him water injections. Instinctively he jerked his arm away.
Her hand fell on his knee. She giggled and went on stroking him.
Whatever you want, said her lovely eyes. I love your knee. I love all of you.
Big Gobi suddenly laughed. He was happy. This princess was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen and she was smiling at him, admiring him, loving him.
He began to talk, he couldn’t help it. He told her about the orphanage and oysters and the army and the bus trip and the seagull soup on the freighter and running away from the seagulls through a blizzard. He confessed his secrets, all but one of them, and still she smiled at him, loved him, urged him to go on.
Her hand slipped up to his thigh.
Big Gobi was smiling too, giggling, pouring himself more ginger ale. The princess was beautiful, life in the palace was beautiful. She loved him, why not tell her everything? She would understand about the accident in the freezer locker.
She blew in his ear. Her hand moved over and touched him right there, stroked him right there. Big Gobi took the eye out of his pocket so that he wouldn’t lose control.
It all happened quickly. She pulled her hand away, her smile was gone, her face a mixture of wonder and doubt. She was staring at his hand on the table, at the eye buried in his palm. The eye was staring back at her, reflecting the dim light in the alcove. Big Gobi didn’t want her to take her hand away and he didn’t want to stop talking. He wanted to tell her about the tuna fish and the accident with the foreman before it was too late.
He pulled her toward him, she pulled away. She said something he didn’t understand and her dress ripped. She screamed.
The jukebox in Yokohama, the jewels, the beach, oysters. Colored lights went off in Big Gobi’s head. What was that eye doing in his hand? Was it really an eye or was it an oyster?
He pushed it into his mouth. Swallowed it.
The girl shrieked. He pulled her again and her dress tore, the jigglies were right in front of him. He squeezed the jigglies, squeezed himself, got his trousers down as the two of them crashed backward through the palm trees into the middle of the room. Waiters tried to hold his arms and legs, the sumo wrestler’s mallet landed on his head but Big Gobi went on pumping. The mallet rose in the air a second time.
There was no way of knowing whether the second blow from that heavy weapon, by itself, would have stopped him. In any case his orgasm had already begun before the mallet fell. By the time it struck him he was spent, limp, relaxed. The mallet grazed his ear and he rolled over on his back, snoring, a smile on his face, one arm tucked underneath the naked girl.
He awoke on a landing near the street, his ear bandaged, Quin standing over him. He wanted to tell Quin that it had been nobody’s fault. Not hers for touching him right there where a princess touches you when she loves you. Not his for taking out the eye because he loved her and didn’t want an accident to happen at the table. No one was to blame. Everything had happened out of love.
Big Gobi thought of all the things he wanted to say, but only the same s
illy words kept coming out.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry, Quin.
Sorry.
Terribly sorry.
He tried to say more and couldn’t, stammered, repeated himself. And then Quin turned on him.
Hold your tongue, he said.
Big Gobi closed his eyes. He didn’t say anything after that because he had heard that voice before. It was the kind of voice a cook on a freighter used, or a nurse in the army, or a bus driver when he took your ticket and tore it up.
Just destroyed it, just like that, and threw it away not caring that you were all alone and had nowhere to go without a ticket.
It was wrong, Big Gobi knew it was wrong. Quin was like a brother to him, but even Quin got angry because he could never say what he wanted to say, could never open his heart and love people the way he wanted to love them, touch them the way he wanted to touch them without some terrible accident happening. Perhaps if he’d told Quin long ago about the mistake with the foreman and the tuna fish, he might have understood this time. But he hadn’t told him then and now it was too late. It was all wrong and no one was to blame, but it was too late.
Hold your tongue.
Big Gobi closed his eyes. Those were the last words that would ever cause him pain for when they sank into him a gate clanged shut behind them, a palace gate that would never open again. He tried to live in a world that was strange and frightening, tried to call it silly, tried to pretend he could live the way other people lived. But the gestures had always been clumsy, the acting artless, a jester with a serious face, a buffoon without a smile. Although he was as kind and lonely as a clown, in the end no one laughed.
Thereafter he might walk after Quin, the brother, down this street or that from the past, through the mythical lost cities of Shanghai and Tokyo and there find his mother or father without knowing it, answering questions that went unheard because the dream was gone, because the child within him had fled to the safety of that changeless inner kingdom where neither pain nor insult could be found, nothing in fact but the silent palace where the prince who might have been sat alone in his cell, beyond hope or sadness, patiently waiting for death.
Each morning they had the same conversation when Big Gobi came into the living room and sat down with his hands in his lap, there to remain for the rest of the day.
Quin?s Shanghai Circus Page 18