Royce, Royce, the People's Choice

by Peter Hawes

  ‘Mochi,’ said Ugly-san. ‘It’s the traditional food of the Dondoyaki. Rice and colouring.’

  ‘Green colouring.’

  ‘Very good, try some.’ He hauled a yielding hunk of the stuff from the stick, handed it over.

  Christ, same as the bread rolls but green. Faintly pleasant putty. He chewed. His teeth felt like they were feet trudging through waist-high snow.

  ‘Thirty people a year die on Dondoyaki. Choke on mochi,’ explained Minikui amiably. He yelled something to a fireman, who scurried to the base of the cliff and returned with a vacuum cleaner. It was presumably battery powered or plugged into the fire engine because it worked. As it roared, the fireman opened his mouth and mimed the act of shoving the nozzle in.

  ‘The unchoking mechanism,’ said Minikui.

  The fireman had left his mouth open to let some more hilarity out.

  AN HOUR OR so passed. Marja and Lisa were darting through the crowd at the rim of the flames like sparks. The firemen were paralytic. One had fallen into minor flames and had to be thrown in the river. They weren’t the only ones off their faces – so were most of the crowd. To lower the boom, so to speak, of the mochi rods, you either had to walk backwards from the receiver of your gift, until they could clutch it – or you just lowered and presented it to whoever was nearest. Royce had been hit on the head twice so far by hot, sticky mochi gifts. Several people had backed into the fire in the mochi gifting and singed their backsides.

  The fire brigade was deemed unfit for further duty. Another fire brigade was summoned and arrived in an even more old-fashioned machine. The disgraced lot were banished. They slouched to their engine, climbed aboard and drove without hesitation into a ditch in the field, about halfway to the road. Nothing could be done so they returned to the party and had soon regained their hilarity.

  The new fire brigade soon gained a hilarity of their own.

  And not a damn thing was being done about his fish. Royce’s thoughts had turned so often to the fish that he began to piss himself off. Shut up about the damn fish! he admonished himself. There’s nothing you can do till this lot are ready, so forget it and enjoy yourself!

  And even as he said it he was assailed by a wave of remorse that shook him as much as the day in the Doo Duk Inn. I’m sorry, fish, he whispered, distraught and thickly grieving for several minutes.

  CAN YOU BELIEVE it? This guy was a reporter! He was from the Daily Yomiuri and he was here to interview Royce – because there had never been a foreigner in the district before! Royce Rowland, the town’s first tourist.

  ‘He wants to know what you think of Shiba Kawa,’ said Ugly-san.

  ‘I haven’t seen it because it’s dark,’ growled Royce. ‘But tell him I think it’s got a nice riverbed.’

  There was a funny side to all this – laced now and then with flashes of dangerous irritation. He hauled moodily on his saki – perhaps his tenth.

  ‘My father wishes you to eat with him,’ said Ugly.

  ‘Oh, when? Now?’

  ‘When you are ready.’

  ‘Well, if it’s got anything to do with my fish I’m ready now.’

  ‘My father does not issue explanations, he issues invitations.’

  Half an hour later they left. From the top of the little cliff Royce looked down on the scene. Mad elves – many of them in firemen’s uniforms – dashed amidst exploding flames, rolling across stones, cavorting in the shadowed river. Pinks and whites glowed dimly from the flesh of both sexes – they were sporting naked over there, it seemed. Shrieks and cackles joined the crash of super-heated bamboo. It was comic, surreal, demonic.

  Minikui-san drove them away, the car lights sliding across the hulk of a capsised fire engine.

  AT THE STANDARD low table sat a dozen or so fairly old men. It was the Bad Bar scenario with a new cast. On the table itself was about a thousand bucks worth of seafood. You name it – and then there was the other stuff that he couldn’t have named in a million years.

  How long had they been sitting there like anorexic Buddhas? Nothing looked like it’d been touched. It was at least an hour since the invitation – had they sat here since then? Inscrutability, of course, is a two-edged sword – if they were pissed off, their bland little faces sure as hell didn’t show it.

  Minikui-san had come to sit cross-legged at the table with Royce. Marja and Lisa had slunk into the kitchen where they suffered the banquet in chastened anonymity. When they appeared it was to bring more baskets of fish or to pour sake.

  ‘Have they done something wrong?’ whispered Royce to Minikuisan.

  ‘No. They must stay with my mother. They don’t mind.’

  ‘Well, why doesn’t she come to the party?’

  ‘The word for wife in Japanese is oku-san – it means back-of-the-house person.’

  Minikui-san’s mother stayed out the back of the house all night. MEANWHILE, AT THE front of the house, male life went on.

  It was dawningly apparent that no one else at the table spoke English. As they guzzled on, a gaze would sometimes meet Royce’s. The two gazes would then transform the two faces into delirious smiles and nods, ending in knee-slapping laughter. Sheesh, what a talk-fest.

  More sake, more lobster, prawn, clam, snapper … Then a request from out of the blue: ‘My father wishes you to make a toast,’ said Minikui-san.

  The request had filtered to the old guys because they all shouted ‘Hai!’ and lifted their glasses in a ring.

  Jesus. Never mind lifting glasses – just lifting his head sent a column of dizziness from the base of his brain to the top.

  His lifted head took in this little square pantheon of uncannily unwrinkled old Japanese blokes, all holding their glasses of sake to their chins like microphones.

  … And those hands, clutching those glasses. Those hands … all missing the first joint of the little finger.

  ‘To West Coast sawmen!’ he toasted.

  ‘Tou oueskos oma!’ they mirrored him in speech. And lifted their glasses – clenched in mutilated digits – in a toast to the unfingered sawyers of rimu and birch.

  It was nearly midnight. It was impossible to know whether they had replenished the seafood or if he was just seeing double.

  He was having an hilarious time. These old guys were really cheerful drunks. They’d got to the stage now that when they got up for a pee they invariably fell over. Then they’d get mobbed and tickled by their mates, rolling around on the floor in helpless laughter. One guy had burst his boiler and pissed himself, which had just increased the entertainment. He was led away by the girls, unrepentant, unashamed and still collapsing with mirth. The Yakusa sure knew how to have fun.

  ‘PLEASE. I AM sorry. I did this only for a friend,’ said Mikio … ‘Yes, yes, yes, it is in good condition. Perfect condition. Well iced. I have looked after it carefully … No, I cannot do this. Take back the sword; I am not worthy. Only the Samurai deserve such a death. Please, take back the sword … Yes, I understand. Of that death I am worthy, yes.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  ONE OF THEM had been lying on the floor behind the table for a quarter of an hour. Royce had been watching him for movement. Not a sausage. The guy was dead.

  ‘My father says you have come a long way on behalf of your fish. You must have loved that fish?’ said Minikui.

  ‘Yeah. Yeah.’ He shook his head rather too vehemently; it was a hard action to stop. ‘I did, yeah. I know that now.’

  The words were conveyed; the answer came: ‘My father asks – if you know that now, did you not know it then?’

  ‘When we caught it? I can’t answer that.’ His thoughts had been slightly distracted by the dead guy getting up and heading for the toilet. He screwed up his brow to focus on an answer. ‘See, at that time I sorta didn’t see fish in terms of love. People don’t generally love fish where I come from. It’s not the way they think about them. See?’

  This answer was conveyed; the riposte returned: ‘No, sadly, my father does not see. He would
like an answer to his question.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Nodding was as hard to stop as shaking. ‘Yeah, I did. I saw that big fish and I loved it. It was hard to see it as love back then, because what you wanted to do was catch it – which means kill it. You loved it and killed it. And that’s still strange to me.’

  Across the table the old man smiled when he heard this.

  ‘My father says you loved the fish before its death and you love it after. So death is surrounded by love.’

  And that was the last that was said about the fish, actually. And thank God for that – it was all getting pretty deep and Oriental.

  AT 1.30 THE tallest and ugliest Japanese guy Royce had so far seen came in, and after a couple of sakes told Royce in not bad English that his name was Mr Miyamoto and he was taking him and the girls back to Tokyo.

  When they left, the whole lot of the old guys got to their feet and made a toast in Japanese to him, which was just a big guttural roar with lots of clashing glasses. So he just roared and clashed glasses as well, at which stage some of the old Yakusa codgers toppled over backwards onto the tatami mats behind them. So happy, so open, so filled with a love of life. They bowed and he waved – and in emulation they waved back. A dozen small hands weaving like reeds in the lantern light at the door – each with four and three-quarter fingers.

  Miyamoto-san was a puzzle for a while. For a start he’d brought on an outbreak of vivacity from Marja and Lisa when he turned up, and it transpired he was their grandfather. He was Minikui-san’s father’s brother … Come to think of it, part of the puzzle was, Royce still didn’t know what Minikui’s father’s name was.

  Hey! The vehicle they were to head back to Tokyo in was a limo! A stretch limo! He’d seen them in movies – cars with smoked windows and an extention welded into the middle so you could party in there. To his disappointment Miyamoto-san had gently invited him up front with him rather than down the back with the party girls.

  But he was an interesting guy. He’d trained to get to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics in the karate team and his family had helped him out so he could train full time. Well, evidently the experts reckoned he could do moves that no one else had ever done and that he was a sure-fire gold medal certainty in the heavyweight division. But at the 1963 national championships, where all the Olympians were going to be selected, no one would fight him because they were too scared. So he never got on the team. In the end he retired without ever knowing whether he was any good or not.

  That was his story, anyway.

  He had a big bony face and one eye that sort of sagged into the skin of his cheek. He must have been in some awful accident. And he was one of those people who stoop, to stop being so much taller than everyone else. Royce knew people back in Westport who did that, so it must have been much worse for Miyamoto, in a country where everyone was size eight.

  He drove beautifully, whistling them effortlessly through blackness, then through increasing neon electricity. Heading into Tokyo was like being on an aerial highway through one of those graphs made of increasing sticks. This was a major ride.

  Just to compound it, a slide window behind Royce opened and an arm gave him sake in a silver goblet. Cheers.

  They swirled, ten storeys up, above a cemetery he seemed to recognise. He was looking down on a highway – still above the church – that he seemed to recognise also. Then they were amidst mile-high stooks of neon light and bewildering traffic that sure as hell didn’t bewilder Miyamoto.

  Then they landed – well, came down to ground level.

  Thousands of young girls like Marja and Lisa filled the footpaths; so did a thousand Elvis impersonators. Here and there good-suited drunks – either laughing or dead. Lines of blazingly bright, identical electronics stores; trains rushing by overhead; higher up, cars; above them aeroplanes – slowest of the lot.

  At a streetlight a woman holding a plucked chicken waved to him from the footpath. She wanted him to buy it. Off she set. Traffic was coming at her like tracer bullets but by cripes she was gonna get to his window to show you that chook. She did, and hey, there it was, dangling at the smoked window. Bit scrawny, well plucked, giblets obviously still in, but – save me! – it curled up and pecked her hand! Pre-plucked chooks! Was anything dead before you processed it in this country? Who were these people?

  A big plaza, a football field-sized movie screen at the end. Car and neon light in such abundance that oxygen had been replaced by photons.

  ‘Here one Christmas they have neon statue of Santa Claus – crucified,’ chuckled Miyamoto-san. ‘Cultural mix-up: early days. This Dogenzaka-To, many love hotel here. Many century before, Owada Dogen live here. This was wild valley. Hinin honour Owada Dogen – he from Hinin class, but begin alliance which still we have today. In Dai-Roku – alliance of business and bureaucracy – honourable successors of Owada Dogen are warrior class. So have taken mantle of Samurai. Samurai highest class, only they have surname – yet mantle carried by the lowest class – Hinin. Contradiction, no? But for you, Royce-kun, no contradiciton. Same with Robin Hood, no? Robin of Locksley, noblemen who gather band of low outcasts to rob from rich and give to poor …’

  ‘I think you’re talking about the Yakusa, Miyamoto-san – am I right?’

  Miyamoto was negotiating a traffic jam of empty taxis – probably waiting for clients to come out of the love hotels. He said quietly: ‘Best not to use that word.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He had another question: ‘What is Minikui-san’s father’s name?’

  ‘Best not use his name either, Royce-kun. All I can say is – you kun, I san and he sama. Sama very rare. He is oya bun – leader.’

  They stopped under a waterfall of neon lights. The chemical clock on the limo dashboard said 02:40.

  Two bits of jailbait called Marja and Linda got out – in thigh-high, fur-lined, arse-chilling, come-on wisps of metallic nothing – and sway-bummed into a maelstrom of rapists, cut-throats, pornographers and pro-heroin-chic catwalk agents. They waved a sweet nighty-night to their untroubled grandpop, then headed off into the stews of Roppongi – the baddest bar district in Japan.

  ‘Bye, gramps,’ they shrilled in English – maybe for Royce.

  ‘Bye, girls,’ he replied … ‘Dance only with tusutus.’

  They drove off.

  ‘What’s a tusutu?’ asked Royce.

  ‘Ah, English name for rich executive – two-suit man.’

  AHEAD, AMIDST THE square bulks of yet more skyscrapers with their blinking red anti-aircraft lights glowed the soda-lit frame of a massive bridge. With an ability Royce’d thought possessed only by ghosts, Miyamoto-san eased the limo across dense lanes to the right-hand side of the highway.

  ‘Father of Minikui-san impressed with your dedication and devotion, Royce-kun,’ he murmured, against an outside cacophony of horns and shudders. ‘Qualities very important to Japan – but not so important in West, I think? So you show him example of values he admire – West can be good. So, he has help you. Father of Minikui-san does not like Tsukiji to have bad reputation in eyes of West. Does not want theft to be part of dealings of market. He grateful you tell him of your theft. We able now to stamp it out.’

  ‘Not a problem, Miyamoto-san, it was my pleasure. I’m really grateful.’

  They had curled off the motorway, just before the bridge. A big black river shone on their left, imprints of a million lighted windows on its waves.

  To their right a three-storey cliff of concrete, roofed in tin or worse, stretching in a curve for – oh – a mile.

  They went over a small rickety iron bridge.

  Jesus! Okay, so he was pissed, but the little river under that bridge came out of the building! There were boats on it! There were boats on a river that came out from under a building!

  Trucks, in densities he’d never seen – big high-sided trucks – with forklifts and little fast-moving motor trolleys servicing them. Polystyrene boxes stacked three storeys high. And people – fish-focused –thousands upon thousands of them …<
br />
  Tsukiji.

  ‘Your fish in there,’ said Miyamoto gently.

  You got the idea that he said it gently because he knew how much the words were going to mean, and didn’t want to heighten them.

  Then he was silent, but Royce knew he didn’t want him to go yet. ‘I leave you with paradox, Royce-kun. Big, big paradox. Okay?’

  ‘Yes, a paradox; what is it?’

  ‘It is this: Person who steal your fish do you one big favour.’

  ‘Eh?’ Royce’s surprise swung his head through ninety degrees and back, like an ill-controlled marionette.

  ‘Without stolen, there is no entry to Tsukiji for your fish. For this, two reason. One – you not have export certificate, eh? He he he. Bad boy, Royce-kun. Fish get to Narita – stop! say Custom – never to Tsukiji. But you ensure fish get to market – very crever. Use Yakusa who need no certificate, eh? He he.’ He lay back in his seat, and against the luminescence of the river you could see the silhouette of a jawy snicker. He sat up. ‘Second reason – you not have agent. Must have one of Big Seven. No Big Seven agent, no Tsukiji. President Carter – no, Queen Elizabeth of England – no, Premier Barre of France – no can to bring fish here without agency of Big Seven. Royce-kun? Yes! He use Yakusa who need no Big Seven agent. Great cleverness, no? Ha ha!’ His snicker broke into a bray. ‘Hai, Royce-kun, eh? Hai! First time Japan market – and pay no Customs, no trucking, no bank charges, no commissions – no export certificate, no Big Seven agent! Hai! Genius! Nobody from West ever do this. Nobody from East either! He he he he!’

  He chortled himself onwards, upwards, then chuffingly down into silence. Then together they stared through smoked windows at the early morning chaos of the biggest market in the world.

  ‘You have used old ways Royce-kun,’ said Miyamoto. ‘Today in Japan no Samurai – long time Meiji government destroy Samurai. MacArthur destroy Shinto. Today LDP government make law against old way – Hinin. But old way carry on in Tsukiji. Fish markets belong to Hinin – old way belong here. Hinin find you fish, because you respect Hinin way. You not use ways of West, eh? You use ways of Westport. Ha ha!’