Royce, Royce, the People's Choice

by Peter Hawes

  ‘Who are these people, Amos?’

  ‘They’re called the Yakusa, Royce. There’s various clans of them, but the one you want is out there in the countryside, on the side of that beautiful mountain. Now when you get to Fujinomiya, find your way to the Bad Bar. That’s all you gotta ask for: the Bad Bar. In the Bad Bar ask for Minikui. It means ugly in English, but don’t worry, you won’t be offending him, they give themselves these names as a mark of solidarity. You got a tattoo by any chance?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Yakusa are the only ones who wear them in Japan – might have taken offence. Hey, now I think on it, you can do me a favour. Might just give you a little parcel to deliver to Minikui from me.’ He slapped Royce’s knee. ‘See how much I trust you, Royce? That’s how much you gotta trust me, friend. Forget Tsukiji; it’s a dead end for you. Get to Fujinomiya.’

  ‘How?’ said Royce. He felt suddenly calm in chaos – he was going to trust the first person he’d met in Tokyo.

  ‘Two-hour train ride. Lovely views. Come on down the Metro, I’ll get you jacked up with a ticket.’ He scrunched his can and threw it down beside him. Royce did the same – when in Rome …

  ‘You got 13,000 yen?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Right, gimme 150 for the Metro. That’ll get you to Tokyo Station. Get off there, follow the crowd up to Yaesu … ah, damn it, come on.’

  The steps had led them down to a tiled cavern full of people, shops and noise. Amos glided around obstacles like a one-man shoal to a bank of dials and words and buttons. The ceiling of the cavern was metal and about four storeys above them. They were in one of those monstrous underground master control rooms that James Bond was always blowing up single-handed. Amos put coins in a slot and took two firm cardboard tickets out. ‘Over here.’ He wove through crowds, down escalators, across platforms. He stopped three minutes later. ‘We’re here.’

  A thousand people stood facing this way; behind them, a thousand people stood facing that way. The people behind them won: a silver train roared from a tunnel, ingested them and roared out again.

  ‘Are you coming too, Amos?’

  ‘Yeah. Nothing else to do – may as well see you to Tokyo Station.’

  Jeepers, was everyone in Tokyo this kind? Was it just the Kenyans? Kenyans – he had a sudden thought: ‘You ever know a woman called Betty, Amos? Spent a lot of time in love hotels.’

  ‘Musta been in the one next door; don’t remember no Betty.’

  Maybe Betty had been lying. But then in a city the size of half the world, the chances of meeting a Kenyan she’d ‘serviced’ were kind of remote, he supposed.

  A rumble, red lights, a blast of air, a clatter. Heads at lighted windows went past him at 100 miles an hour, then the silver train stopped. Old passengers surged out; new passengers surged in. He was one of them. He was on the Metro.

  Slightly rocking people on seats lined the sides of the carriage. Here and there someone standing, although there were empty seats. Beside him was a woman reading. She was on page one. She read it, then closed the book. Mustn’t have liked it. Straps hung down from the ceiling. They reminded him of dogfish stickers hanging from the side of the net.

  Seven or eight stations later, as they burst from the tunnel, Amos stood up. ‘Come on.’

  Escaltators, staircases. At one time, on a really wide staircase a waterfall of people came over the top, hurled down towards him, drenched him, engulfed him and he drowned. People in numbers were a force of Nature. He was dazed and instinctual.

  ‘Okay, gimme thirteen grand. You’re on the Tokaido line and you’re going to Fujinomiya. There’s a couple of train changes, I forget where, but you’ll be fine.’

  ‘Yeah? How will I know when to change?’

  ‘Ever heard of akshara, Royce?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sorta mental witchcraft. There’s a lot of it about.’ He handed Royce some change and a ticket that could’ve looked a bit more impressive for the price. ‘Now, Bad Bar, Minikui – okay?’ He was whispering when he said this.

  ‘Yeah, I remember,’ replied Royce. He was whispering too, then realised how silly it was.

  ‘That’s your vehicle over there, friend. I’ve got things to do, won’t wait. Good luck. I hope we meet again.’

  ‘So do I. Amos, I want you to know how grateful I am that I met the only person in Tokyo that could have put me on the right track.’

  Amos gave a goofy smile. ‘Shucks, friend,’ he said, ‘modesty compels me to tell you that mosta Tokyo coulda told you the same thing.’

  They shook hands and Royce stood and waved his new friend back to the escalator. Then, against all instinct, he turned his back on Tsukiji and boarded the train to Fujinomiya.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  IT WAS UNDERGROUND for miles and miles, then they burst out into the same old factories and rectangular fields. Little concrete riverbeds, almost dry. A valleyful of houses, jumbled and heaped as if they’d been left there by a flash flood. Then the houses thickened and became almost walls – vast, endless apartment blocks – sometimes with tunnels embedded in them, into which Royce’s train rockingly dived. There must be bedrooms and kitchens just on the other side of this tunnel.

  ‘Change, Atami,’ said a voice. It was nothing more than voice at first, because he had no idea where it had come from – and hadn’t excluded his own head as the source. But where did he get an accent like that?

  They stopped at a station. A bloke across the aisle nodded and waved to the door. ‘Go under line and to train over there.’ He pointed to a train across a cobweb of empty tracks.

  Numbly Royce disembarked, made his way down the tunnel under the lines and into the waiting train.

  ‘To Fujinomiya?’ he asked a woman.

  She nodded; said nothing.

  He sat. His previous train – his lifeline – departed. His new train lay inert. Few people entered. Eventually an engine rumbled; in ten seconds the train was uncomfortably full. They set off.

  Between apartments and tunnels he sometimes now glimpsed the sea.

  Beside them as they pulled into Numazu stood another train.

  ‘This train for you,’ said a man who had been sitting beside him only for two stops.

  Without hesitation Royce changed trains.

  And again at Fuji when a man tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to an empty platform. ‘Your train come there.’

  He waited some confident minutes until a neat little silver train – rather like a Metro that had surfaced – wobbled into view and bore him off to Fujinomiya.

  Powerful stuff this akshara – and male-oriented too. He hadn’t been train-changed by any women at all.

  They burst clear of an infinity of refineries – and into the presence of Mount Egmont! It was incomparably bigger. Jesus, look at that. It was sort of shimmering in the sky above him as if either the atoms it was made of, or the atoms his sight was made of, couldn’t make up their mind whether it was there or not.

  ‘Fujinomiya means shrine of Fuji,’ said a light voice. At last, he’d been akshara’d by a woman.

  She was a pretty version of the standard model – because, let’s face it, they all looked the same to him – with a solemn baby and two lustrously beautiful little daughters. ‘The shrine is Sengen taisha, which means top shrine because it is on the side of Fuji and so is top shrine in Japan. If you go there, drink its water.’

  ‘Right, I will, thanks.’

  ‘Every year the goddess of Fuji leaves the mountain and travels to the sea. She travels down the river and so it is blessed.’

  She was the first Japanese woman who’d spoken to him.

  ‘You speak very good English.’ Come to think of it, by international standards his own English probably wasn’t that wonderful.

  ‘Thank you. We learnt at school and then my father sent me for two years to Seattle.’

  He was fairly sure that was in America somewhere, but she didn’t have an American accent. She was
a very nice person. And really helpful. ‘Look, I wonder if you can help me, when we get to Fujinomiya I need to find the Bad Bar …’

  She gasped, just like heroines did in old-fashioned movies. Then without another word she packed up her family and moved down the carriage. Jesus, Royce, use a bit of nouse – whadda ya think it’s called the Bad Bar for, you nong?

  FUJINOMIYA. THE GIGANTISM of Tokyo is nowhere in evidence – the buildings are maybe shamed into shrinkage by the massiveness of the mountain. Nothing is over two, sometimes three storeys and none of it very classy. Snappiest building in the area was striped red and white with golden arches and a ‘Bigu Maku’ sign.

  In the absence of direction he headed towards the mountain – ‘when in Fuji …’

  The tilted, uneven footpaths were blessedly shoal free – and the streets no more populous than Palmerston St, Westport, on an unimportant Friday night. Tiny cars and small buses bustled down the bumpy grey roadways, politely deferring to iron-faced cyclists. Never in his life had Royce seen bell-ringing cyclists wreak such tyranny upon motorists and pedestrians.

  He was a major curiosity as he walked along. Every furtive eye was upon him, though only the kids stared openly. But cripes, they were goggle-eyed. Hadn’t they seen a white man before? He was a bit of a giant, too. With a slight jump he could have touched the sills of second-storey windows, and you had to reach slightly further down to touch a tomato in a greengrocer’s than was normal. He was in a town one size too small for him.

  He passed a small, stooped man – still identifiably Japanese under a balaclava – sporting sunglasses, yellow jacket, black backpack … and one ski pole.

  ‘Reinkoto,’ the small, stooped man greeted him.

  ‘Yeah – reinkoto,’ said Royce, he had learnt a traditional greeting.

  A cross-roads; on the other side of it a bridge – over the most amazing water he’d ever seen. Well, was it water? It was so clear that you couldn’t see it – you could only see the effects of it. Fronds of clean green weed undulated in perfect crystal nothingness – great big ten-pound gold fish shimmered beside them. Further up the stream there was proof of water in the shape of glassy rapids. The stream was narrowed by perspective to a thread that wound its way towards the ghostly mountain. To the left of the stream, behind big red-trunked trees, was a massive wooden temple with a roof made of about a million cedar slates, and spouting made of dragons. This’d be the shrine the nice woman had told him about before he’d scared her off.

  ‘Good day,’ said a sing-song voice.

  ‘Oh, reinkoto,’ he replied.

  ‘You are iteki … aah … visitor to our town?’

  ‘Yes.’ He was talking to a thin, semi-bearded man, wearing history’s worst haircut. ‘Yes, it’s very beautiful.’

  ‘Very beautiful town, very beautiful shrine. Sengen taisha. River called Kusa kawa – to you mean Glass river. See? Glass waving in water.’ He pointed to the weeds.

  ‘Oh. Yeah. Grass River?’

  ‘Yes. Here grand festivar every years. Goddess of Fuji return from sea. We cereblate. Big wooden stage carry by men. On stage big fire and beautiful young womans. Virgins. Very small clothes. White. Fire is volcano – Fuji. People throw water at fire, try to put out. Young womans stop water with body, protect Fuji. Water make clothe heavy. Fall down. See chest, see fanny. “Wahoi, washoi!” people say – “More, more.” Velly good festivar.’

  ‘Yeah, sounds great,’ murmured Royce, still reeling from the miasma of mangled ars and els. ‘Look, I wonder if you could tell me …’

  ‘Japan have many festivar.’

  ‘Yes. Look …’

  ‘Japan have many volcano.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Mount Aso – biggest crater in world. Mount Sakurajima elupt every day – children wear hard hat to school.’

  ‘I’m looking for the Bad Bar,’ blurted Royce.

  The guy’s expression changed no more than did his bad haircut. ‘You know what mean Yakusa?’

  ‘… No.’

  ‘Yakusa gambling game of dice. Very old. “Yakusa” worst score. You understand?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘Yakusa worst.’

  You knew the man was about fifty, yet he looked about twenty. Probably because his skin was so clear. His thick black hair was shaped in its awful basin cut and under his lip he had a tuft of about five long black hairs. Whether they grew there or were stuck on, Royce wasn’t sure.

  ‘Okay … I’ll bear that in mind.’

  The man nodded his basin. ‘Good. You only iteki … aah … foreigner in Fujinomiya.’

  ‘I am? The only?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, thanks for letting me in.’

  ‘No. You let you in. Yakusa let you out.’

  ‘Do you know why I am here?’

  ‘Good day.’ He pushed off from the wooden railing of the bridge and walked away.

  Bad Bar. Christ. Couldn’t they have called it the Pig and Whistle or the Fuji Hilton or something? This was impossible: ‘Excuse me, could you incriminate yourself by telling me you know where the Mafia hang out in this town?’ Sheesh. He glared down into the pellucid water. Golden carp. There was more gold down there than in Glover’s Horology. A monster came to the surface to have a chat to him. Gulp gulp gulp went the big round mouth. Probably telling him where the frigging Bad Bar was.

  How did they all know that’s what he wanted? Were they all Akshara specialists? Something Amos had said came back to him: ‘Most of Tokyo coulda told you the same thing.’ With a little shiver he saw himself from the outside: the only foreigner in the town. Every midget in Toytown knew why he was here. The Yakusa was the only reason to come here.

  The little guy with the bad haircut had crossed the street. Then, without turning back, he raised his left hand, index finger out. He was pointing. Pointing up the street that ran beside the glassy liver … river … to the Bad Bar.

  The nutter with the balaclava and one ski pole walked by.

  ‘Reinkoto,’ said Royce.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  THE FIRST THING you saw as you entered the Bad Bar was a fat young barman in a pink sweatshirt. Your attention moved immediately to two nice-looking young girls in fur-lined tight clothes on bar stools. Then to a couple of groups of people – one old, one young – sitting cross-legged at low tables on a platform behind.

  The Bad Bar was on the second floor. Under it was the reeking, condom-ridden, concrete-smelling skeleton of a house that might get finished some day. The Japanese seem to construct from the top down. You went up wooden steps, through a paper door and past a glowing aquarium of silver upright fish, a Coke stand, then into this tight, half circular bar. Wooden walls with paper-glass windows were crossed by two-ply battens. Between them, bamboo baskets of soil spewed twisted lattices of wisteria roots – with nice leaves and complicated flowers on the end. A purple stem from one of the baskets was growing into the water of the aquarium, trailing pink papery flowers. Sheesh, Japanese bad guys like flowers? Behind the bar were shelves of saki bottles, the size of those magnums of Chandon they sold at the Westport Tavern. On the bar, slabs of tear-off chopsticks.

  Talk came to a stand-still as he entered. He had obviously influenced the social hierarchy of the place, because the dozen or so patrons at the bar looked at themselves, then looked at him, then all moved barstools one way or another to make an opening into which he was to fit. Which was one down from the fur-lined girls at the left-hand end of the bar. The only person between them and him was a dorky-looking guy in black glasses, of about Royce’s own age. Royce sat. God knows what his status was – but this was it.

  Talk started again with the abruptness of a needle hitting a vinyl disc. A middle-aged man three down the row on Royce’s right took out a cigarette and plugged it in. One of the fur-lined girls – with tight shiny blue on the rest of her – got up and lit it for him. Her skirt was very short. Her legs were not. There was a race between her skirt and her thighs to get t
o her crotch first – which the skirt just won.

  The huge young barman had gone out into a kitchen and was cooking something on a one-flame stove. He faced away from Royce – you could see him through this wide serving hatch. His back was in blocks of fat, with indentations at his ribs and his waist as if he was a bale, trussed with binder twine. Anyway, his attention sure as hell wasn’t on Royce. How you got served in this bar was way beyond Royce’s ken.

  There was a fraças from the low platform behind them. One of the guys at the young table had been pinioned and half stripped by his mates, and invites were going out – in shouts and gutturals – to the two girls to come and … do … God knows what. All eyes turned to the elders’ table on the platform. A pause, then all eyes from the elders’ table moved to the dork between the young girls and Royce. A nod. The dork had been selected by the Entertainment Committee of elders. He got up, marched up the two flat steps to the platform and whacked the pinioned guy loudly in the belly. Sumo stuff. A pandemonium of merriment from all quarters of the bar. Japan at play, eh?

  Royce turned away from the scene. Christ! Hovering over him, propped on sagging biceps of a size Royce had never dreamed of, was the young, pink-shirted barman – a sort of semi-melted sumo. Designer stubble dappled his big, floury cheeks – with shiny gaps where hairs hadn’t grown yet. Creases of strain quivered at the sides of the shirt buttonholes above his belly, and there was faint sweat cooling on his temples and hairless upper lip. He waited behind the bar, with lips pressed into a Wendy Darling kiss, for Royce to make his move.

  ‘How much is a big bottle of that saki up there?’

  ‘Fifty thousand yen.’

  ‘Could I have a Coke, please.’

  HE SPENT TEN minutes – all in alienation – rolling the word ‘Minikui’ round in his mouth as he plucked up the courage to say it. Then he did:

  ‘Could I speak to Minikui, please?’

  The expression on the big face of the barman didn’t change – well, let’s be honest, there hadn’t been much expression on it in the first place. He studied Royce for several explosive seconds then said: ‘More Coke?’