Stanley Elkin - The Dick Gibson Show

“‘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”?