Next I should probably tell you how, after the sun came up, I woke up aching from head to toe, how I was taken to the casino, how I got squeezed in with a bunch of people who had blood pouring out of their bodies, and had another string of endless bad luck. But first I’ll tell you a story. This is a story my dad told me when I was a kid—he told me many stories, and sometimes he’d even tell me two or three in a single day. I don’t recall the majority of them, I just remember Dad becoming a bit cross-eyed as he told them. The reason I remember this special tale is that after he finished the story, my dad played a kind of game with me, one we would often play later. Every time I missed my father because he went on a business trip, was working overtime, or was out fucking around with some wild woman, I would play this game by myself. And even though I didn’t really play the game, I would always run through the story. This is how it went:
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there was a prince who roamed all over the world. All this prince knew was that he was a prince, but he didn’t know where his kingdom was, nor did he know what his palace was like or what had happened between his father, the king, and his mother, the queen. And so each time the roaming prince arrived somewhere he would ask the people of that place, “Do you know of a kingdom that has lost a prince?” Normally people would take him for a madman, and never did anyone provide him with an answer to his question. And so the prince had no choice but to continue his vagrant life. Then one day he came upon a smart man. After the smart man heard the prince’s question, he came back with another question: “What kind of prince did they lose?” The prince replied, “One just like me.” The smart man said, “What kind are you?” The prince replied, “The one I am right now!” The smart man then said, “But when you were lost, you were not the way you are now! Only if you tell me what you were like when you were lost will I be able to determine which kingdom lost a prince like that!” The prince pondered this for a moment and responded, “I remember that I used to be very small, but I can’t recall just how small.” The smart man then asked again, “I don’t want to know how small you were, I just want to know, what were you smaller than?” Once again the prince pondered before replying, “I remember being smaller than a cradle, but I don’t remember what the cradle looked like.” The smart man laughed and said, “I don’t want to know what the cradle looked like; what I do want to know is where the cradle was kept.” This time the prince thought for a long while before answering, “I remember the cradle was in a garden, but I can’t recall where the garden was.” The smart man said, “Very good, very good. But I don’t want to know where the garden was, I want to know what was outside the garden.” Again, the prince pondered for a long time before he finally responded, “I remember there being a forest beyond the garden, but I can’t remember what was within the forest.” The smart man said, “I don’t want to know what was within the forest, I just want to know what sounds came from the forest.” The prince suddenly screamed aloud, “I remember! I remember! The sound that came from the forest was ‘Hoo—bong! Hoo—bong!’ But I don’t remember what animal makes that sound.”
The smart man patted the prince on the shoulder and said, “Child, your kingdom is in the north. Your palace is beside the forest. I am certain that your father, the king, and your mother, the queen, often used to let you play in the garden. That means that the sunlight in the garden must be precious and rare.” The prince could barely control his excitement and impatiently implored the smart man, “Please tell me more! Tell me more!” The smart man again laughed and said, “But I haven’t told you anything! You are the one who has told me all of this!” From then on, when the roaming prince wandered to a new place he wouldn’t ask, “Do you know a kingdom that has lost a prince?” Instead, he would say, “I remember a place to the north where the sunlight is rare and precious, where lies a kingdom. There is a garden within the palace walls that is just beside a forest, but I can’t remember how to get there.” People would then respond to the roaming prince like so: “Is it that palace on the mountaintop?” “Is it the garden made from stone bricks?” Once someone even asked, “Is it the kingdom that was once ruled by a red-bearded king?” The roaming prince’s happiness brought him to tears, and he cried out, “Yes! That’s it! I remember now! I remember!”
The story, however, did not have a very happy ending. Although the roaming prince never really made it back to his palace and garden, he and so many other people that he met all remembered those events that happened once upon a time, long, long ago. My father later told me the story of the red-bearded king, the story of the great fire in the black forest, and the story of the walking cradle. The conclusion to all those stories was the same. The endings always became hazy, so hazy that you could make up whatever you wanted and it would still be okay. But my dad told me that within this story there was a meaning.
“This isn’t a nice story. Tell me another,” I demanded.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s not fun. Tell me a fun one.”
“I don’t have any fun ones.”
“But I want to hear a fun story!”
“Okay, here is what we’ll do, we’ll play the game of the ‘roaming prince’ and the ‘smart man.’”
Just like the characters in the story, this game was a bit repetitive; the “roaming prince” had to say, “I remember something, but I don’t remember something else.” Then the “smart man” has to say, “I don’t want to know something, I want to know something else.” The first time we played this game, Dad was the “roaming prince” and I was the “smart man.”
“I remember leaving home when I was a child, but I don’t remember where I went.”
“So did you end up going back home?”
“That’s not how you play! You should say, ‘I don’t want to know where you went, I want to know something else.’”
“What do I want to know?”
“Anything you want! Whatever you want to know, that’s what you ask. Remember, you’re the ‘smart man’!”
“I want to know if you returned home.”
“I remember I returned home, but I don’t recall when I went back home.”
“I don’t want to know when you returned home, I just want to know whether or not your dad spanked you.”
“I remember my dad spanking me, but I don’t remember what he used to hit me with.”
“Did it hurt?”
“That’s not how you play!”
“Okay, right, right, right! I don’t want to know what your dad used to hit you with, I want to know, umm, I still want to know what your dad used to hit you with.”
“I think he used a feather duster.” My dad knit his brow and thought for a long time before he finally confirmed, “Yeah, that’s right! It was a feather duster!”
I don’t think Grandpa did a good job bringing up my dad. Otherwise I wouldn’t be in a van that reeked of cigarettes, liquor, betel nuts, sweat, and maybe even piss, saying to myself, “I remember that there were once three people in my family, but I don’t remember how many centuries ago that was. I don’t want to know how many centuries ago that was, I just want to know if other people’s families are like this too.”
