The Pink Panther doesn’t love me. I’ve done everything I can think of to make her love me, but nothing works. I launder and press her costume (pink rhinestone leotards). I go to the corner every lunch time for her favorite udon noodles, the best in Tokyo. I massage her lovely tired muscles every Tuesday through Sunday midnight after the show. “Thanks, Joe,” she tells me with a kind kind of a smile, and I glow from the inside out.
Then the Pink Panther runs her long fingers through her thick blond hair, her sad blue eyes settling on the stage door of the theater, and I am again outside the perimeter of her glowing, loving attention.
“It will never work,” my mother tells me. “She will never love you. You are too short.”
“I am three foot nine,” I tell her, proudly. “Father was only three foot five. I am only sixteen years old and already, I am taller than my father ever grew to be.”
“She will never love you,” mother repeats. But what does she know? Mother is only a stupid woman, sold to the circus at three years old and raised cleaning up after elephants in two-bit travelling circuses on the Japanese countryside. It wasn’t until I came along, with my super-human strength and my sub-normal height that we made it to the big time.
And now we are in Tokyo, and my act, “Little Strong Man,” shares a bill with “Six Brawny Babes,” the American women’s wrestling act, at the Golden Turtle, Tokyo’s fourth largest venue. The name is odd, because only five brawny babes perform in the act. Perhaps the slightly exaggerated name is what the Americans call showmanship. Or perhaps Americans just can’t count. But it doesn’t matter. I love the Pink Panther. She is what I want most in the world.
♥♥♥
From the day I was born, it was clear I would be a little person, like my father, but in 1960s Japan my parents knew they had only two choices for me: a life in the circus or a drowning in the river.
My parents hiked the five miles to the river nearest the small town in which their flea-bitten circus was stationed. I was swaddled in a brightly colored patchwork shirt that had been stolen from the most minor of the circus’s terrible clowns. Mother handed me to father. He held me over the river and they took one final look at each other, and then at me.
“He is just a puny little rat of a human being,” father said, by way of justification for what he was about to do. Mother reached her finger out and the baby me grabbed it tightly.
“And yet,” she said, looking down at father, “he has such strength. Still,” mother reasoned, “at his size, he’ll never make a comfortable living. After all, have you ever seen a midget rich man?”
“That is true,” father said. His arms were beginning to tire from holding me out above the rushing river currents. “And yet,” father contended, “Money isn’t everything.”
“You have a point,” Mother agreed.
“Then again,” Father said, remembering his own sad youth, “he will live his life all alone, tortured and scorned by the beautiful and rich, as well as by the poor and ugly. What kind of an existence is that for a child?”
“Still,” mother said with a slight smile, envisioning my possible future, “You will love him because you will understand him. I will love him because I am his mother and I was born to love him. And, perhaps, if he is lucky, (and he was born under a lucky sign,) then when he is older, he will find a woman to love him with all her soul, as you found me and as I love you. And the circus isn’t such a bad life.”
“My wife is a wise woman,” Father said, looking up at her, his forearms shaking, his biceps throbbing, while I giggled and gurgled and looked up into the cloudless, limitless Japanese sky.
Before that evening’s show, the circus’s most minor clown was reunited with his shirt and I was reunited with the circus. Everyone was surprised that my parents had decided not to drown me in the river. The minor clown had expected he would never see his shirt again.
“Well,” said the circus ticket taker to the monkey trainer, “there is no accounting for love.”
That is a true story. I know it is true because my father told it to me on the night he died.
♥♥♥
As I grew older, my unusual strength became evident. When I was just four, I could wrestle the circus weasel into its cage. When I was merely seven, I could hammer a tent stake into the ground. When I was only twelve I lifted one end of a Datsun pickup truck over my shoulders.
Every night in our tiny circus train car, Mother cooked me dinner on a battery operated hot plate: tofu for endurance and octopus for strength. Father trained me twice a day. We borrowed barbells from the Strongman, a former Hungarian Olympian with a lisp. My parents believed in me. I was little, but I was always strong.
Slowly, word spread about the tiny boy with the tremendous muscles and our circus bookings improved. Then, last April, a telegram arrived announcing that we had been booked for eighteen weeks at the Golden Turtle in Tokyo. It was no small feat. Mother packed our things while father and I drank Saki and toasted my brilliant future. Inebriated and elated, Father told me the story of the day my fate was decided by the bank of the river. That night, he died in his sleep; a dull end to a sharp life.
♥♥♥
I tell mother that I am going to declare my love to the Pink Panther. “Don’t do it, Joe,” she pleads with me. Why doesn’t she want me to be happy? Perhaps with Father gone, she is afraid the Pink Panther and I will not want her in our home.
I assure her “Even after the Pink Panther and I are married, you will be welcomed to live with us. You can take care of the children while the Pink Panther and I are on tour. Don’t worry. There will be plenty of money for servants. The Pink Panther and I will be a famous couple. Photographers will take our pictures outside of discotheques and film premiers. All the world will know us as that brilliant, beautiful, and unusual couple: she, tall, strong, and stunning; he, short, strong, and handsome.”
“Don’t do it, Joe. She will not love you back,” Mother cries.
“Mother!” I yell at her, “You are just an ignorant fool! All you know is elephant shit and peanut shells. You know nothing about the ways of the world and of love! And if you will not love the woman I love, then I cannot love you.”
Mother stops crying. She looks at me calmly and says “It doesn’t matter if you love me or you do not. It doesn’t matter if you stay or go or walk or run or fly. I love you because I was born to love you, and when you need me I will be here. Remember that.” With a look of resolve on her face, she turns and walks away. I go looking for the Pink Panther.
♥♥♥
She sits on a metal folding chair by the stage door, depressed and staring out into space. I can make her happy, I think. She is lonely and needs a respectable, virtuous man. I will promise to love her. I will promise to take care of her. She is what I want more than anything in the world, and I am what she needs more than anything in the world.
“Pink Panther,” my trembling voice breaks the silence, but not the steady gaze of my love’s sad eyes. I take a deep breath. “Pink Panther,” I repeat, anticipating the love, the hope, the happiness we are about to share.
It is as though she is hungry and holds a pea pod. “Here, my love,” I imagine myself telling her, “allow me to pull apart this pod and nourish you with the sweet peas within.”
“Pink Panther,” I repeat, and I realize I don’t know her real name. So silly! Thirty years from now, as we blow out the candles on our anniversary cake, I will tell my grandchildren (short and tall), “I loved your grandmother before I even knew her name.”
“Pink Panther,” I say, “Your love has arrived.”
The Pink Panther looks up at me. Her brow furrows. Her cheeks flush. Her eyes sparkle and well up with tears. It is then I possess everything I have ever wanted. It was I who broke open the pea pod, but it was she who placed the pea on my hungry, wet, red tongue.
“Your love is here,” I say again, my heart exploding in ecstasy.
“Brenda?” the Pink Panther says. “Brenda is here? Where is she?” The Pink Panther leaps out of her chair and dashes to the stage door. I feel two feet tall.
♥♥♥
I stand on the bank of the Sumida River. I have stolen the strongman’s barbells and tied them to my ankles. Not the Hungarian Strongman with a lisp. Another strongman. There is always a strongman. It was not hard to carry the barbells all the way from the Golden Turtle to the river bank. They were heavy, but, I am, after all, strong for my size.
It was always my fate to die in the river. This is where I belong. My parents just made a mistake. They thought I was strong. They thought I was special. They thought I would find love. Anyone can make a mistake.
My hands hold the barbells over the river, tied to my ankles. My toes hang over the edge of the bank. The cold Tokyo wind makes my nose wet and cold. I think about what will happen once I drop the barbells into the river…
“Don’t do it, Joe,” comes a voice from behind me.
“I am just a puny rat of a human being,” I tell my mother.
“But you have incredible strength,” she says.
“I will never be rich and famous and beautiful,” I tell her. “Photographers will never snap my picture in front of discotheques and film premiers.” I continue to hold the barbells above the river. My arms begin to tire.
“The circus is not such a bad life,” mother says, and something about her words sounds familiar.
“But no one will ever love me,” I say, my forearms shaking and my biceps throbbing.
“I love you,” she says. “I love you because I was born to love you. And your father loved you because he understood you. And perhaps, one day, if you are lucky, (and you were born under a lucky sign,) then you will find a woman who will love you with all her soul, as your father found me and as I loved him.
♥♥♥
The strongman thanks me for returning his barbells. “I-I-I’m e-e-ever so glad you’ve b-b-brought them b-b-b-back,” he tells me in a stuttering British accent. No one at the theater had expected me to return.
“Well, I suppose,” I overhear the carnival barker saying to the bearded lady, “there is no accounting for love.”
