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 awake. 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?