The Dick Gibson Show (20 page)

“‘The Emperor Shobuta—whose very name means compassion— was himself an animal fancier, no hunter but a lover of beasts. Perhaps he saw that they had qualities which he himself lacked. It is often the way. We have an expression: “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” At any rate, it is well known that fish and birds are the most fascinating animals to man for that the one can live in the sea and the other in the air. Be that as it may, it was Shobuta who had decreed that there
be
a 200—for the two hundred distinct animal types; the
z
in the word “zoo” is a corruption of the
2
—and every day he would visit there, consoling himself with the mysteries of creation.

“‘No sooner was the bird returned to its pen in the 200—as I’ve said, the curator did not know how to classify it and had ordered that it should be put in with the hogs—’

“‘But hogs—’ I said.

“‘Yes,’ the ornithologist said. ‘Exactly. No sooner was the bird returned to the 200 than the emperor, who had been away at his summer palace when the bird was first discovered, saw the dodo and was furious—as much as it was possible within the terms of his sweet nature for him to
be
furious—that it had been classified with the animals. He had recognized it immediately for what it was. Oh, I don’t mean he knew that it was Raphidae Didus, but he saw that it was a bird. He was, as I say, furious. His exact words were: “What iniquity is this? To break off the wings of a bird”—for that is what he thought had happened— “merely to indulge the crowd’s appetite for the grotesque! I will not have this! A nation which stoops to the barbarity of a Zamue the samurai does not
deserve
to be sustained. What, are not wings marvelous enough?” We have an expression in Japan: “to gild the lily.” It is to situations like this that such an expression applies.”

“‘It was the first time anyone had ever seen the emperor so angry, and though it was explained to him that no one had tampered with the bird, he would not believe it. He ordered the bird released and brought it back with him to the palace. There he anointed the nub of its wings with precious balms and unguents. I said before that man admires and loves those qualities which he does not himself possess, but he loves also to recognize in other species those which he
does.
Both things are true. Perhaps the emperor’s heart responded to something like his own winglessness in the bird’s; at any rate, it is known that he cherished the bird as he had cherished nothing before it, and that he kept it with him always.

“‘Now something must be said of the warrior Zamue. Remarkable as it may seem for one so successful, he had no followers. He permitted himself none. The fact is, he was not so much warlord, or even samurai, as he was assassin. He was a man of a thousand disguises and wreaked his havoc through the art of murder, which he had perfected. He had murdered men by drowning them and murdered them with poisons. He’d done murders with knives and murders with clubs. He murdered them awake and he murdered them asleep, and he murdered the sick as well as the well. He had great strength and murdered them by lifting heavy objects and then letting them fall on the tops of their heads. He shoved men off cliffs and lured them from the sea to the rocks with false signal lights. He murdered by loosing beasts and by cruel degrees of torture. He pushed them against walls and squeezed them to death. He murdered with gunpowder and murdered with strangling, by forcing sand up their noses and holding their mouths. He murdered them by repeatedly kicking them hard.

“‘Zamue preempted whole kingdoms by killing the leaders, and had worked his wicked way up the chain of proprietorship till all that stood between himself and the sandal—we say sandal instead of crown in Japan—was the life of Shobuta the Tender. Him he had saved for last, just as one reserves the sweetest morsel of a feast.

“‘Shobuta knew Zamue was coming. He doubled his guards, tripled them, but in his heart he had no faith that he could escape the assassin’s depredations. Zamue, as has been said, was a master of disguise. The chances were excellent—better than excellent—that one of his own men was Zamue, and so he reasoned that by increasing their number he had correspondingly increased the chances of Zamue’s being among them. He reduced the guard by a third, by a half, by three-quarters. In the end he relieved all but his most trusted attendant and made him his entire guard. I know what you’re thinking.

“‘Zamue was a fate—in our country we have a saying: “What will be will be”—and all that the emperor could do in these last days was care for the bird, minister to his new pet’s winglessness. “I will be your wings,” Shobuta whispered to it. “Surely you are not so high as once you soared,” he would tell it—he carried the dodo everywhere—and then add, thinking perhaps of his own circumstances, “We all come down.” In this wise the emperor continued for months. Each night as he laid his head on his pillow he could not but wonder if he should ever see the morning.

“‘It is well known that birds tuck their heads under their wings when they sleep, but what of wingless birds? Shobuta took the poor dodo to his bed with him. “I told you I would be your wings,” he reminded it softly, and raised his elbow. With an uncanny instinct, the bird nuzzled up to Shobuta’s armpit, and the emperor put his arm gently down over the dodo’s head. In this wise they remained all night.

“‘As the great feast days approached, Shobuta thought that Zamue would soon make his move. In our country, as in most, there is the old saying: “Strike before the feast days if you would have victory.” Each day now he peered outside the door of the imperial apartments and glared accusingly into the face of his most trusted lieutenant. Should not the suspicion that has occurred to you occur also to the greatest scholar of his time? Every afternoon at exactly the same time Shobuta the Tender would step out just as the circle of his tour brought the man before the doors to the imperial apartments and, at the precise moment when the eyes of the “trusted lieutenant” met his own, he would whisper softly, “When, ‘Lieutenant?’ How?” In my country we have the expression “battle of nerves.” That’s what this was. The man never answered, of course, for that is against the basic rule of guard duty.’

“‘Why didn’t the emperor—?’

“‘Discharge the lieutenant? Zamue was a master of disguise. Sergeant, a master. With his great strength and fabulous muscle control he could alter not only his size but even the actual features of his face. If only he had used his powers for good …

“‘The feast days came and the feast days went and still Zamue had not put in his appearance. “So,” the emperor thought, “he did not abide by the venerable saying. How clever the fellow is! How clever
and
how wicked!” Yet troubled as he was … Oh. I forgot to mention something. The emperor had little feeling for his personal safety, but very delicate negotiations were going on in Japan at this time, negotiations which the emperor himself had initiated and that required his leadership if they were to succeed. Also, he was disturbed by what would happen to the dodo when he was no longer there to care for it … As I started to say, troubled as Shobuta was, he never let on to the dodo bird that he was concerned with anything more serious than the dodo’s winglessness. No. With the dodo he was always careful to seem gay. He took up singing and sang for the voiceless bird with apparently unflagging spirits. If the dodo appeared to tire of a particular song Shobuta the Tender immediately removed it from his repertoire and learned two new ones for the one he had discarded. He noted which songs appeared to give the dodo especial pleasure and had the court musicians compose new ones along the lines of these. Only during that brief moment during the day when he went outside to confront his lieutenant did his anxiety surface—and this, thank God, was a moment the bird was not permitted to share.

“‘Things continued in this wise till the next feast days, and
still
nothing happened. Then, one day, after completing a new song that the dodo had never heard before, Shobuta walked down the hallway at the other end of which stood the huge double-thick ivory entrance doors to the imperial apartments, first, of course, setting down the bird and giving his customary admonition that it remain there until he returned.

“‘The emperor went down the long hallway, his tender anger building as he thought of the duplicities and treasons of him who had so long kept him waiting for what he still thought of as his fatality. But then the knowledge that he had recently completed the delicate negotiations softened his heart toward his malefactor. Indeed, by the time he arrived at the enormous doors it was all this tender, gentle man could do to fix his features in a scowl. Though he was now quite empty of hostility, he felt he owed it to his enemy to present a scowling face—since he knew, you see, that the cruelty of a Zamue thrived on such gestures and the tender Shobuta did not have it in him to disappoint even Zamue.

“‘What was his surprise, then, when he opened the door and saw his “trusted lieutenant” laying dead at his feet, his neck broken and his chest struck quite through with a sword! His first words were typically Shobutian. “Hurrah!” he exclaimed. “The bird was spared seeing this!” Then he began to grieve that his “lieutenant” had come to such a dreadful end. He kneeled by the man’s prostrate body, his eyes misting over with tears. Only then did he see that he was not alone. He found himself staring at a pair of the largest feet he had ever seen. Horned they were, and scaly. He looked at the grayish shins, hard as broadswords, and up the cutting edge of the thighs, and all the way up the rest of the long, thick body until he was staring directly into the face of—the assassin Zamue!

“‘ “But—” the emperor said.

“‘ “It is I. I come undisguised.”

“‘It was the
real
face of Zamue, the powerful muscles relaxed for once, collapsed in the fierce pile that was his natural aspect. It could be no one else.
Aiiiee,
the emperor thought, he means to kill me with his ugliness. I must not look.

“‘Zamue reached down, pulled the emperor to his feet, and was just about to kill him by biting his jugular in two when suddenly he released him and began to laugh uncontrollably.

“‘ “Ho haw hoo hoo haw ho ha!” laughed the assassin, pointing to something behind the emperor’s back. Shobuta had forgotten to close the door behind him, and when he turned he saw that what Zamue had been laughing at was the wingless, ungainly dodo waddling down the corridor toward them. Shobuta—he did not want the bird to see what Zamue was about to do to him—immediately made to close the doors, but Zamue restrained him. “No, let him come,” he roared. “I have never seen anything so ridiculous. Look. He has no wings. A bird with no ho haw hoo hoo wings!”

“‘The bird continued to approach them, his waddle more graceless than ever. In his haste to be reunited with his friend he appeared to stumble, to fall, to pitch, to buckle, to drop to one knee. Zamue thought he had never seen anything so comical as this fat bird, bigger than a turkey, with its glazed, bulging eyes that made it seem so stupid. “Hoo haw haw hoo. Just look at that booby, will you? If you want to know, I think it’s drunk.”

“‘But when the bird had reached our emperor and was nuzzling against his knees, Zamue recovered himself. He drew the sword from the lieutenant’s chest and raised it high above his head. “Say your farewells to your clumsy friend, Shobuta, for now I am going to split you two in two!” Zamue shouted. So saying, he raised himself up on the powerful balls of his enormous feet and made to chop with his sword on the emperor’s crown—we say crown and not sandal when we are referring to the head—when suddenly the bird appeared to float up into the air. The wingless bird had
risen!

“‘Zamue’s eyes widened in horror.
“Yeeeeeghch!”
he screamed, and still stretching for leverage with the sword above his head, his fright and his imbalance and the weight of his weapon toppled him backward. Moving quickly and almost without thinking, Shobuta recovered the sword and plunged it into the assassin’s heart. The giant writhed and thrashed. His throes were terrible, but it was all up with him; in minutes he was dead. Interestingly enough—so evil are some men—he had actually lied to Shobuta when he said he had come undisguised, for his features changed still another time, and as death relaxed them his muscles flowed like currents to create a final tidal wave of horror beneath his skin. Only now was he undisguised.

“‘In the excitement Shobuta had lost track of the bird. Now he looked around and found it some yards away, squatting in a corner. It seemed clumsy and stupid as ever. It had flown but one moment— in the instant of its dear friend’s need—and now it was as it had been before.’

“‘That’s quite a story,’ Collins said after a while.

“‘It isn’t finished,’ the Japanese said.

“‘Keep talking,’ I said.

“‘The news of Zamue’s end spread throughout the empire, and all at once, in the vacuum created by the death of the assassin, many vicious men began to struggle for power. This was a terrible disappointment for Shobuta and for all those others in the empire whose paths were peace. But—the Japanese have an expression: “First one thing, then another—” terrible as it must have been for him, Shobuta knew that he could no longer sit idly by while the empire was being torn to shreds by contending forces. He was a changed man. From Shobuta the Tender he became Shobuta the Jealous; wherever there was insurrection, there too was Shobuta. He met each challenge forthrightly and with all the force at his command. And this force was now considerable. Reports of the bird’s miraculous flight had traveled the length and breadth of the empire, and bit by bit its strange powers were transferred to the emperor. Shobuta had become irresistible,
rosichicho
—invincible. His enemies, and there were many, fell back before him as grain before the wind. Before long almost every pocket of resistance had either been defeated or else dissolved of its own accord. Only one man, the shogun Korogachi, the most powerful of all Shobuta’s enemies, held out. A wily warrior, he pretended to encourage a belief among the people in the emperor’s new powers. In this way he thought to let the emperor do his work for him, and to inherit a docile Japan once he and the emperor—you say “locked assholes”?