еще рассказ
(От мыслей о свадьбе она перешла к грустному)
Когда я из обычной Британии приехала к будущему мужу в город Белфаст, то испытала настоящий шок. Там не было ни одного суси бара. Даже плохого.
Гламурные девушки, выросшие в Москве, меня поймут. Делать самой можно гораздо лучше, но готовить суси для себя - это не то. Все есть, не хватает момента расслабления.
Причем свежей рыбы и морепродуктов вокруг было навалом, и дешево. Только их, казалось, никто, кроме немногочисленных китайцев, не покупал и не ел. Местные питались консервами, заморозкой, бройлерами, пиццей, фиш энд чипс на заказ. В лучшем случае - переваренными мясо-овощными похлебками. Мамина домашняя еда, ага-ага.
Про сегрегацию я узнала чуть позже. Когда на моей свадьбе нельзя было петь "республиканскую" (hello, W!) песню Only Our Rivers Run free, - только играть мелодию. Когда увидела первую "стену мира" - мы жили в хорошем цветуечном районе, там до этого дела было дальше, чем до зоопарка, и я долго ничего не знала.
Когда начала снимать североирландские военно-религиозные парады (ежегодная советская демонстрация в ознаменование победы над шведами в Ледовом побоище была бы аналогом в отечественной практике) и писать политические репортажи.
Когда разбили каждое из восьми стекол в моем Вагончике за то, что я не из местных и могу говорить не только на одном языке.
Когда я поняла, что провинциальный город не может быть "милым", и "в деревню, в глушь, к тетке в Саратов" на самом деле - страшная, смертельная угроза.
Но главное - не было суси баров. Их отсутствие, а также другие детали окружающей действительности сподвигли меня на написание этого рассказа.
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Greg and Pat grew up on the opposite sides of the same street in South Belfast. They knew about each other’s existence, but never were friends. Greg’s Protestant and Pat’s Catholic families perfectly hated each other, yet considered themselves too intelligent and civilized to throw stones at each other’s windows. Nevertheless, their mothers not only went to different churches but also made sure that they bought meat from different butchers and got milk from different milkmen. When Tesco came to their street, this carefully built system was depersonalised. The shop was so big that a chance of meeting your enemy - or a friend - became rather small.
After graduating from school, Greg went to study in London and Pat went to California. Greg got trained in IT, Pat did some carpentry. What made them both come back to Belfast, was the burst of the IT bubble in late nineties. Pat’s IT shares, in which he (like many other Californians) put a lot of trust, went down and ruined all his finances, so the poor lad had to go home penniless. Greg lost his job and (like many other workless IT specialists at that time) could not find another one quickly, so he decided to go home for a while, have a break and think about his future.
They did not know that besides hating Bill Gates they shared one more passion: they loved sushi.
Simple Japanese cuisine was on the rise those days: sushi-bars opened on every corner not only on the East and West Coast but also in any self-respecting European town. Most of them were small chains, full of Chinese waitresses and chefs (stupid white man wouldn’t be able to distinguish a Chinese from a Japanese, owners thought and were right). Sushi takeaways were flourishing. Ability to make your own sushi became a fashion, and big Asian markets had to compete with tiny health food shops selling nori, vasabi, marinated ginger and chopsticks. Desperate housewives attended sushi-making two-day courses, unaware of the fact that a real sushi-maker in Japan has to spend five years studying to make rice balls before he can start learning how to cut the fish. Psychologists wondered how a small overpopulated island managed to hook the whole world on eating raw fish.
The only nation that could not catch up with this fashion were the Irish. Despite living on an island themselves and being seamen and fishermen, they liked their food fat and overcooked with no vitamins left. As a result there were hardly any sushi-bars in Ireland and ‘The Ginger Tree’, the only straight Japanese restaurant in Belfast, was barely doing any business, surviving on selling noodles with fried fish. There were sushi on the menu, too, it’s just nobody wanted them (“we quickly skipped the raw fish part of the menu to move to the proper food,” wrote the restaurant critic in the local paper).
One day Pat, who has fallen in love with sushi in California and missed his favourite food in Belfast, decided to go to ‘The Ginger Tree’. He would have been the only customer, but for some strange reason the Japanese trade delegation was visiting Belfast this particular day and of course they wanted to try the local sushi - like Finn would go to the sauna anywhere abroad to declare it was built all wrong, Italian would go to an Italian restaurant in Germany or Iceland to tell the staff that the pizza wasn’t properly baked and a Russian would try any kinds of foreign vodka he could lay his hands on - only to declare it is all poison.
Greg, who fell in love with sushi in London and, like Pat, missed his favourite food in Belfast, decided to go to the same restaurant the very same evening. He was surprised to find it full. The waiter asked him if he wished to be seated at the table with the other single person. Greg agreed, hoping to dine with a sweet young sushi-loving Irish lady. When he approached his table, he saw Pat, but it was too late.
Two old foes sat in front of each other in silence and concentrated on studying the menu. By the time they reread it three times the waiter approached and asked what the gentlemen would like to drink. The gentlemen ordered sake. The waiter asked if they would like their sake warm or cold.
Pat and Greg gave each other a look for the first time after they got the menus. This was a look of two people in trouble.
‘Hot,’ said Greg with a strange expression on his face.
‘Sake must always be served warm, don’t you know this? Is this a Japanese restaurant or what?’ Pat resented.
The waiter scribbled something into his notebook and left.
Two foes sat there in silence again, but it was a warmer silence now.
‘They must be really bad here, won’t even know that sake should be served warm.’ Pat said finally.
‘In London, the cheapest sushi places pour hot sake from the thermos,’ said Greg. ‘The most sophisticated Japanese restaurants do serve sake cool, the temperature that white wine should be served at, but this is the very latest fashion and I doubt they know about it here in Belfast.’
‘Do they also say “sushi” there in London?’ Pat got interested. ‘Because the right way to say is “susi”, you know, Japanese do not pronounce “sh”’.
Greg’s expression got colder again.
‘Everybody knows this. Yet everybody keeps pronouncing “sushi”, even in London,’ he said.
The waiter brought them sake in tiny jars with narrow neck (at least the jars were right) and asked if they were ready to order.
‘How fresh is your tuna?’ asked Pat with a threat in his voice. The tuna was the sensitive spot of all sushi-bars: its extra-tender, bright-red meat was getting more and more rare, there were a few trials in Japan on fishermen who were fishing tuna illegally, so when there was a break in supplies some sushi chefs were actually painting cheap salmon with red food colouring and serving it as tuna. In any proper sushi-bar the question “how fresh is your tuna” would be a code for “don’t you even dare to try and serve me false tuna”, and any waiter would know it - any one, except for the Belfast one. He simply assured Pat the tuna was fresh.
Pat ordered maguro - tuna sashimi, temaki with shrimps, and asked for additional vasabi.
Greg went for rolls with salmon and with tuna and then added double portion of unaki nigiri to his order - sushi with smoked eel. He asked for two extra portions of vasabi. Pat gave him a respectful look.
Japanese delegation was eating and laughing. Pat told Greg he really wanted to go to their tables and ask how they found the food.
“Let’s taste the food ourselves first,” said Greg. He poured hot sake into the tiny cup. Pat followed; they drank. The hot alcohol warmed them from inside. The endless Belfast rain did not seem that depressing any more.
The waiter brought the food. Greg was surprised to find out that his sushi and rolls were served not on one wooden tray - as it should be - and not even at one plate but on four different ones, each supplied with the double portion of vasabi and a portion of ginger.
Pat had fewer problems - only two plates - but altogether six plates covered all the free space of their table.
‘It looks like they make some profit out of washing extra crockery!’ said Pat cheerfully.
‘I think they did it because we ordered sushi by our own choice,’ mentioned Greg, ‘nobody’s doing it here, I bet.’ He poured soy sauce into the saucer, melted some vasabi in it and started to eat.
Surprisingly the food was not bad: nori on the rolls was glued properly, rice in nigiri wasn’t falling apart, and the fish was fresh. The waiter came to their table to ask if everything was all right and Pat asked him back if he was from China. The waiter said yes, he was, but the chef was Japanese.
‘This explains a lot,’ said Greg.
They ordered more sake.
‘Do you think there’s any chance for the sushi culture to be ever introduced to Belfast properly?’ asked Pat.
‘The chance is very slim. Have you ever told anybody here that you like Japanese cuisine?’ said Greg.
‘Not really, why?’
‘I told my mom. She got very scared that I eat raw fish. I didn’t tell her I was going to eat sushi today - she would be very offended that I preferred raw fish to her overcooked stews.’
‘There’s no way you can make a proper Ulster mother change her mind about food,’ said Pat. ‘If I was promoting sushi in Belfast, I’d start with more progressive people than my own parents.’
‘Like whom?’
‘Health food maniacs.’ Pat saw a lot of health food maniacs in California; some of them were eating nothing but rotten apples from the ground. He decided Irish health food people must be much milder, so sushi would be good enough for them.
‘I’d go for the students and young professionals as a target audience,’ said Greg. ‘In London, all the sushi-places are aimed at them. Take-aways, cheap restaurants, that kind.’
They finished with the food and ordered some green tea. Tea-drinking ritual (from the tiny cups with no handles) passed in satisfactory silence. Both Pat and Greg seemed to be dreaming. The waiter broke their mood by asking if they wanted anything else. They paid and ordered a taxi.
Outside, it was raining. A few wet policemen in their motorcycles were hanging on the corner; another few were shivering from cold and wet further down the street. The armoured police Land Rover was moving as slowly as possible, followed by ten or so men in black suits, one of them with the wet drum. There was the Orange Order parading. Men were soaking: one could actually see the streams of water coming down their suits. Not each of them was carrying an umbrella - some soaked proudly without any. Their shoes must be squelching.
Pat wanted to make a comment about complete uselessness of a parade in such weather but contained himself. It was Greg who commented: ‘If I ever supervise a parade in this town, I’ll make sure at least the weather is sunny.’
A week after the sushi dinner in ‘The Ginger Tree’, Pat was walking his dog Rover and spotted Greg’s mother leaving the house. She drove off in her car, and then Pat saw Greg going out. Rover pulled his leash towards Greg, Pat followed. They walked like that for a few minutes, and Greg never noticed he was stalked. Pat and Rover followed Greg to the front of the Tesco store, then Pat tied Rover’s leash to the pole, grabbed a cart and followed Greg into the store.
Greg noticed Pat at the tills. He gave his neighbour a nod, and it was a friendly one. Their queues were moving with more or less at the same speed, so the two men ended up getting out of the shop with their bags together.
‘Greg, I wanted to talk to you,’ said Pat. ‘It’s about sushi.’
‘Did you get sick after that dinner?’ Greg asked.
‘No, no, it’s ok, the sushi were alright. It’s just we need to persuade more people to eat them here in Belfast,’ said Pat. ‘Can you wait for me to unleash my dog?’
Greg waited, and after a proper greeting ritual from Rover (including sniffing, an attempt to put his paws on Greg’s shoulders and final friendly jumps around him) three of them walked back to their street.
‘I’m afraid I don’t have any money to open a sushi restaurant in Belfast, and this will be a loss-making enterprise, too,’ said Greg.
‘No, no, it’s not the restaurant; I propose to have a demonstration.’
Rover was dancing on his leash, pulling his owner to go and play in the park, but the owner was persistent.
‘What do you mean - a demonstration? We aren’t sushi chefs to demonstrate how to cook them.’
‘No, no, it’s not this kind of a demonstration, it’s more like a march,’ Pat was doing everything to avoid the word “parade”. ‘This would be the only way to persuade Irish and Ulster Scots to eat sushi. One of the slogans would be “You don’t need to emigrate to eat healthy.” And we will make a big poster with all the explanations, and some smaller posters, and…’
They reached Greg’s house.
‘Come in.’ Greg interrupted Pat. ‘I don’t want the neighbours to see us on the threshold having a discussion.’
Rover’s dreams for a walk in the park were broken, but instead he got whole new surroundings to explore - Greg brought Pat and the dog to the garden shed which was his workshop (skeletons of old system blocks sitting one on top of another and a laptop monitor without a corpse but still working). They got cans out of their shopping bags, took a sit and opened the beer.
‘So what march are you talking about?’ Greg asked.
‘The first Belfast sushi-eaters march,’ answered Pat.
Greg sneered. ‘That would be the first sushi-eaters march in the world, I suppose. A little practical question - who do you think will march?’
The little practical question perplexed Pat. His dog, on the contrary, started jumping and barking like mad, as if trying to say: ‘Me! Me! Me!’
‘Well,’ said Pat, ‘I will, and maybe I can ask Mom…’
‘Don’t even think of it, remember what you told me about Ulster mothers? Mine says a prayer whenever I mention sushi, so I just stopped mentioning.’
‘Well, that’s you and me and Rover then,’ said Pat after a little thought.
‘Your dog eats sushi?’
‘No, I mean, I don’t know, I never tried to feed him any, but he could be a passive supporter, can carry a poster or something.’
‘Pat, do you want to know the truth?’
Pat did.
‘The truth is this march of yours would be the most hopeless and the most pathetic show in the whole history of Belfast. I don’t know any other sushi-eaters in this town except for you and me and I’m not patrolling ‘The Ginger Tree’ every night to find any.’
‘So you support my idea?’
‘I do. But before painting any posters I’m going to go and get the official permission.’
‘A free man does not need a permission to walk on the street!’
‘In the town of troubles, he does.’
And that was it. Pat went home to create the slogans and Greg went to the nearest police department. The first question the policewoman behind the counter asked him was where exactly he was going to march. Greg said in the centre of the town.
‘Or, better,’ he added, ‘the University area.’
‘So do you want to march through the centre or through the University area?’ asked the policewoman strictly.
‘Botanic Avenue,’ said Greg quickly. It happened that neither Pat not himself had a chance to raise the question about where exactly they were going to march, so he just named the most crowded area he knew. A minute after, he was regretting about the long way from their homes they would have to take before parading. Should they take a bus or a taxi? Is there a straight bus line to the Botanic Avenue these days? Will they be able to squeeze all the posters in the car without damaging any? Will the taxi driver take Rover aboard?
The policewoman’s voice distracted him from those thoughts.
‘Botanic Avenue is a mixed area,’ she said. ‘I’ll direct your application to the chief of the station and he will supply a few officers to guard you during your march. What are you marching for?’
‘Sushi.’
‘What?’
‘It’s a Japanese hors d'œuvre.
‘What???’
‘It’s fish on a rice ball. Raw fish.’
‘You are marching for the raw fish on a rice ball?’
‘Yes. To promote it.’
The policewoman looked at him and said:
‘I’m afraid I have to redirect your application to the Parade Commission. They issue special permissions on extra sensitive parade matters in this city.’
By the time Greg got the appointment at the Parades Commission Pat created and deselected about three hundred slogans, among which were “Decent people eat their fish raw” and “Vote for your stomach, not for your MP.” Greg said the latter was too much of an anarchist idea for a modern society. After two days of debates Greg and Pat headed to the Parades Commission armed with the two slogans: “Irish! Eat Raw Fish!” and “Sushi means civilization”. Pat was pretty much against going to commissions of any sort but after meeting with an Authorised Officer Greg was sure that if he would go there by himself again with his Protestant looks and his Protestant “h” he won’t stand much chance.
On the day named Greg with Pat appeared before the Commission. Greg made a long speech which included statistics about national health in Ulster and the descriptions of traditions of Ulster fisheries. Pat stood there silently holding a tray with sushi. When Greg finished his speech, Pat said “faigh blas as an beile seo!” and placed the tray on the table in front of the commission, atop of all the papers. Two youngest members of the commission (who haven’t had their lunch yet) hesitated for a moment but then took a Dublin Bay shrimp nigiri each, struggling with the chopsticks. The rest of the commission did not even touch the food.
‘How come you are so sure that your parade isn’t contentious?’ asked one of the oldest Commission members, eyeing the eel in front of him suspiciously.
‘Because we don’t promote any food for soul. We march for people’s stomachs,’ said Greg meekly.
They were told to wait. They were also told that the Commission’s impression was positive and five days before the date of the supposed parade they would receive a paper with the final decision.
The next week Pat walked around all covered in ready paint mix. He was painting the posters while Greg was checking BBC forecast for Belfast every two hours. He went to the church his mother was always going to and asked God to make weather nice and sunny at the day of the demonstration.
Sometimes Greg would visit Pat to see how the posters were going and to offer help, a proposal that was always politely refused. Once, when BBC changed the forecast for the parade day yet again, Greg looked at the Pat’s sloping lines
(Pat created a special poster cart for Rover which the dog would have to pull, and was writing a slogan on it) and said:
‘This entire parade thing looks terribly amateur to me.’
‘Never afraid to be an amateur,’ answered Pat weightily. ‘An amateur built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic.’
‘Whoever created this phrase was not from Belfast,’ replied Greg, whose Protestant ancestors all worked in the docks. ‘Don’t you think we’d better go to the printing house and make the posters look more presentable?’
‘Don’t you think we’d better go and get ourselves a job instead of parading?’ said Pat.
He was right - both were short of cash, so even a visit to ‘The Ginger Tree’ was a luxury now.
The parade was due to start at four o’clock, but Pat and Greg were up at dawn to do the final preparations. Pat was giving the posters and Rover’s cart a final check, making sure that nothing would fall apart. Everything was in perfect order - the posters were fixed on good hard frames with the strong and easy to hold handles; Rover’s cart’s wheels were rolling easily and noiselessly, and the two posters that the dog had to carry on his back (that was apart from the cart that he had to pull behind him) were tied together in a sandwich man manner. When Greg first saw the whole construction, he said that Pat might not be a great painter but he was clearly a very good carpenter.
Greg nearly finished putting together a Sushi Parade web-site - the idea of the name came into his mind five days ago when they finally received a permission paper from the Parade Commission. Greg and Pat were never hundred percent sure that their march would be permitted, but things got real after the paper arrived.
The site represented the Sushi Parade as a new, modern social gathering in a society where everything else was old-fashioned, provincial and based on religious hate. Besides the front article, the web-site contained some sushi recipes, a few pictures of sushi which Greg picked up from the free photo banks on the internet, pictures of Pat making posters and pictures of Rover from all angles. Rover was a very photogenic dog and Greg knew that people would accept any idea much better if you show images of children and animals around it.
At three o’clock, the taxi came. They loaded all the posters inside, persuaded the driver to put Rover in the boot and headed to the Shaftsbury square where the Sushi Parade was to start.
Three police officers, one on the motorcycle, were waiting for them there.
‘You are lucky with the weather, guys,’ the policewoman greeted Pat and Greg while they were unloading their stuff out of the taxi. She was skinny and lithesome; with shiny black hair and cunning dark-green eyes she slightly resembled Lara Croft The Tomb Raider. The policeman beside her was a quiet guy in his early thirties, with plump pink cheeks of a milk-drinker and a spark of mind in his blue eyes. He wasn’t fat, his breath was fresh and his teeth were white and healthy.
‘We are lucky with the officers, too!’ answered Greg.
Pat said nothing: he was busy putting Rover on a leash, unloading the last poster and trying to pay the driver, all at the same time.
Finally the taxi went off. Pat and Greg were left to stand surrounded with the piles of paper, timber and with Rover dancing on his leash, and with the three police officers around. People on the square were slowing down to look what’s going on. The motorcycled policeman murmured something from under his helmet and rode off.
‘Dick said he’s gone to check the traffic ahead. He is ready to go when you are. I’ll walk first and John will be the last in the column. He’ll hold the cars behind us, and I’ll make sure that no one will ride over you from the sides. There are a few other officers helping to secure your parade, you’ll see them further up the street,’ explained Lara Croft.
Pat fixed the poster with a big picture of fish on Rover’s back. The other side of the poster said “Sushi-eating peaceful demonstration.”
‘We should have got some sushi and give them away to the people on the street,’ said Greg apprehensively.
‘Too late,’ answered Pat. ‘Besides, there’s neither time nor money for that.’
Rover was yoked into the cart with two posters containing information on healthiness of fish and rice. There were very many healthy issues and Pat wanted to squeeze them all in, so the letters ended up being quite small and nobody of those who stood on the pavement had a chance to read what was actually written on the poster. But it didn’t matter that much. The parade was not a mad idea any more, it was a reality, and that was the most important thing.
Pat and Greg picked up their posters and lined up behind Lara Croft. Rover faltered behind Pat on his leash, and pink John the policeman faltered behind Rover, signalling to the faltering traffic. Greg pressed the “Play” button on the small stereo system which he carried on his shoulder and the joyful rock on unknown language spread out on the Shaftsbury square. The parade started.
‘What’s this music is all about?’ Pat shouted to Greg. ‘Never heard this one before!’
‘It’s Champloose, a Japanese group. Crazy punk-folk-rockers! Shintoists!’ shouted Greg back. ‘Found their MP3s online!’
He couldn’t provide more information because Champloose’s singing ended up in mad shouting, and another loud joyful song started immediately after that.
They walked slowly. The sun was shining, people smiled at their procession, teens laughed, young mothers with prams put special attention on the healthy food information on the posters and old ladies searched their bags for their spectacles to check out who was marching and what for. Grumpy old men grumbled something into the procession’s back. Adults and little children pointed their fingers and waived their hands at Rover: the dog was clearly the most popular member of the Parade.
‘Doing OK, guys!’ Lara Croft turned to them and, walking backwards, gave thumbs up. Greg imagined how she would look like without the uniform behind the table of the Ginger Tree. She would look all right, but he liked her in the uniform even better. Women in militarized uniform were very, very sexy, he thought.
They marched safely up past the Mount Charles when a white pussy with the pink collar walked out of the door, posed on the pavement in the most sexual manner and froze like this. Rover, who usually never missed his chance to chase a cat, made a terrible effort to keep marching and pulling his cart. A hollow gnarl came out of his chest, and Pat said something to him in Irish very strictly.
The poor dog’s temptations were not over with the pussy. Another white creature walked out of the same door - this time it was fat, lazy, curly yellowish-white lap-dog jiggling on her short legs, unable to perform a run. This parody on a free animal walked towards the edge of the pavement and positioned herself beside the pussy, staring at the procession with stupid curiosity.
Rover could stand the cat alone, but the pussy with the old hooker by her side was too much for an honest dog like him. He gnarled, barked, gnarled again and finally started barking madly, boggling and straining his leash to the breaking point. The sushi posters on his back sagged, the cart made a mad zigzag and was about to overturn. Pat pulled the leash and said something to Rover very calmly and in a very low voice, but this voice promised absolutely nothing good. The dog looked at his master as if saying “but just look at those two!” The master responded in an even more calm voice, and the dog, ashamed, went back into his place. Pat straightened the posters on Rover’s back, and the parade proceeded. A few toddlers were supporting Rover enthusiastically from their buggies, but the street in general did not put much attention upon the accident because the loud shouts of the Japanese rock-group had covered Rover’s barking completely.
Finally the Champloose finished their shouting session and raised a tender folk-song. The procession passed the University Street. A narrow-eyed man (a Japanese or a Chinese, maybe) stepped off the walkway, approached the Sushi Parade, bowed and introduced himself.
‘My name is Kenjo Takada, I am a staff writer from the Yomiouri Simboon. May I ask you why you are marching for sushi in a place where no one eats them?’ and he produced a tape recorder which could easily be qualified as spy ware, so tiny it was.
Lara Croft inspected the man who waved his card towards her, decided he was harmless, turned off but did not slow down. The journalist, used to interview people on the run, kept on with the parade and repeated his question.
‘Precisely because of the fact that the sushi culture is not on the rise in Ulster, we decided to carry this parade out,’ answered Greg. ‘For us, the replacement of the old culture of hate and confrontation with the tolerance and gastronomical education of people is essential.’
‘After a delicious dinner, you don’t feel like fighting any more, it’s as simple as that,’ Pat added. The journalist murmured some personal comments into his spy ware tape recorder.
Rover put in his five cents with a loud ‘bow-wow’.
‘You can find more information about us on www.rawfishparade.org. For now I can say that my friend Patrick and I, we both grew up in Belfast and travelled the world enough to learn to appreciate sushi,’ Greg continued. ‘Now we are back to tell people that there is a reasonable and a healthy alternative to an Ulster fry.’ And he went on with the lecture about omega-3 oils in fish. The journalist marched along.
People sitting outside the coffee shops smiled and waved. Everything was perfect. The journalist ran ahead the procession and made a few photographs with the camera even smaller than his tape recorder. Greg noticed that Lara Croft was moving her hips like a model now.
They marched two more quarters, passed the College Park and ended up at the Botanic Gardens enter.
‘That’s it, guys,’ said Lara Croft, ‘well done. I thought you would be more trouble.’
‘Ha-ha,’ said Pat.
‘Have you ever tried sushi?’ asked Greg.
‘Raw fish?’ Lara Croft was a bit surprised. ‘No, but John and Dick and me and the whole department was really curious why would you march for it. So maybe I’ll give it a go.’
‘Surprise-surprise!’ said Pat, producing a sushi lunch box somewhere from underneath the Rover’s poster construction. The box contained some maki with cucumbers and nigiri with salmon. He gave pink John and Lara Croft a set of chopsticks each and asked them to try. John looked scared, Lara Croft smiled and said that was very nice indeed but unfortunately they would not accept any treats while on duty. The moment of awkwardness was broken when Dick arrived on his motorcycle. The police officers helped Pat and Greg to fold their posters, wished them all the best and left.
Once they were out of sight, Pat produced the second lunch box and two cans of beer. They left Rover to guard the posters and sat on the grass on the meadow in the Botanic Garden.
‘You see, even the bloody peelers don’t want to eat sushi. We are a fail,’ said Pat.
‘Where did you get those lunchboxes from?’ asked Greg to distract his friend’s attention off the parade topic.
‘From Marks and Spenser’s. I recently discovered they do sushi. Mostly cooked, of course. And no chopsticks.’
‘I heard Zen restaurant serves sushi as well,’ Greg said.
‘I’ve been there. The rice balls of their nigiri fall apart. This poky hole of a place will never learn to appreciate nice food. I’d better go back to California.’
Pat drank the rest of his beer in one go and threw the empty can into the shrubs with the sudden rage. A scared little birdie flew out of the bush.
‘Yeah, I was thinking about returning to London, too,’ said Greg.
They finished their lunch, picked up Rover and the posters and walked to the bus stop. One of the posters slid off the cart and was gathering the road dust but this did not worry Pat and Greg any more. Their thoughts were in the pub, where they planned to get drunk as skunks. G8 and world poverty protesters would probably feel the same after their marches.
The next day while Pat and Greg were nursing their hangover, Yomiouri Simboon published a report about the parade with the picture on the front page. The whole thing was meant to represent the triumph of the Japanese spirit in the bear corners of the world like Northern Ireland. The Guardian Tokyo correspondent saw it, bought the paper, read the article, called his editorial in London and before Pat and Greg’s hangover was cured (that was a proper two-day one, if you know what I mean) they were in The Guardian. Not on the first page, but still. The next day BBC Northern Ireland called Pat’s house to ask if there were any footage of the parade left. Pat’s mother, who was not a Guardian reader at all and never found out where her son spent that Wednesday afternoon, answered the phone and informed the BBC that Pat was a good boy who ate properly, not participated in any parades and the whole thing was a nonsense.
Greg, meanwhile, received an e-mail from a Scottish salmon production company proposing to sponsor general expenses for the next parade (taxi, the cost of timber cuts and paper for the posters as well as Rover’s dry food supply for one day, M&S sushi lunch not included). In exchange the company wanted its logo on the posters. Another e-mail was from a Japanese rice exporter who wanted to sell sushi rice in Northern Ireland in bulk quantities. There were no e-mails from The Ginger Tree.
Everyone forgot about the Raw Fish Parade in a week except for the people from the Parade Commission - they sent a letter that for the next year Pat and Greg were free to parade in the same area without notifying them.
‘Do you want to march next year?’ Pat asked Greg.
‘I’ll be in London by then, hopefully,’ was the answer.
‘I myself will be in California,’ said Pat. ‘Have had enough of those rains.’
‘Got the money to go?’
‘The neighbour asked me to fix his house, that’ll be enough for the ticket and for the first month. I’ll find the job soon.’
In two months, Pat and Greg were off. It would be the end of the story of the Raw Fish Parades in Belfast if not the web-site: it became quite a popular resource for all the sushi-lovers. They exchanged recipes, techniques, restaurant reviews and addresses of the places to buy vasabi and nori. Greg moderated it, but soon passed the moderation to the three most active participants of the forum - he himself hasn’t had much time those days, working during the day and spending evenings and sometimes nights chatting on ICQ with a lady he met via the Raw Fish Parade web site.
Couple of months before the Parade anniversary the web forum users consolidated and decided they want to parade this year, too. Greg was one of the last ones to find this out. He wrote to Pat. Pat responded he had no time to fly back but would be happy to send Rover as a participant - the dog was staying in Belfast with Pat’s mum. Greg wasn’t planning to participate himself, but his ICQ lady friend wanted them to meet in Belfast. She refused to send her picture and insisted on a blind date.
About 150 people planned to take part, and about 400 guests were expected from the UK mainland and the other countries. The sponsors were the local salmon farm, the Scottish Salmon production company, the Ginger Tree restaurant (it took them half a year to find out about the Belfast Raw Fish movement), the angling club, and for some strange reason the Association of Martial Arts of Northern Ireland. Letters were sent to all the local papers, The Guardian, The Independent and to the BBC. The Vacuum, the local city paper, was preparing a special issue with all the articles dedicated to fish.
“I can’t believe our humble project got so many followers and so much response. You should remember that even the Belfast police did not want to eat sushi, and now everyone seems to march for raw fish!” Greg wrote to Pat.
Pat wrote back and told him to stop kidding.
Nevertheless, when Greg came to Belfast, he found out that the Ginger Tree was reasonably full even without a Japanese delegation in town. He got a table and waited for his mysterious ICQ lady friend to arrive.
You have certainly guessed that Greg’s blind date was Lara Croft the policewoman. She was in perfect shape and looked so healthy and flourishing that no one would suspect her working in the police forces. After dinner, she kissed Greg in the lips. Next day, fully uniformed and gorgeous, she was stepping ahead of the procession on the Botanic Avenue. People stopped to stare at her beauty. Specially employed children were sneaking around the parade with the little lunch boxes offering sushi to the pedestrians and to the drivers in the parked cars. Greg felt a little bit lost - there were so many people, and most of them he met for the first time. Himself and Pat were the sole organizers and ideologists of the Raw Fish movement in Belfast, but those people, it seemed, did not need them very much - the project seemed to florish without any support from those who started it. ‘Raw Fish Parade veteran,’ Greg thought bitterly about himself, marching together with others and patting Rover, who was walking by his side with a poster on his back saying ‘I’m the original Raw Fish Parade dog’.
What else can I say? The Raw Fish Parade became a tradition in Belfast. It did not stop the tradition of other parades and the following fights, but at least set a standard of a more peaceful marching. About ten new sushi-bars opened in town and about twenty-five sushi take-away places, which made Belfast the sushi capital of Ireland. Smaller towns both in north and south picked up the fashion. Dublin was persistent, refusing to admit that this time Belfast was, for a change, ahead with something progressive, but capitulated soon and started selling Dublin Bay prawn sushi and rolls as pub grubs.
Greg found himself a job in Belfast, married Lara Croft the policewoman and settled down. They adopted old Rover and produced two little boys, both of them are studying karate now. Pat lives in California; he opened a cheap and funky sushi bar with his own design of wooden seats and tables. The place is great success; he already patented the furniture design and thinks of starting a restaurant chain.
Greg’s mum gave up on his son’s sushi passion but still tries to force-feed her grandchildren stews; they sometimes eat it, sometimes don’t.
Pat’s mum passed away in peace. She never found out that her son was a raw fish eater.
Когда я из обычной Британии приехала к будущему мужу в город Белфаст, то испытала настоящий шок. Там не было ни одного суси бара. Даже плохого.
Гламурные девушки, выросшие в Москве, меня поймут. Делать самой можно гораздо лучше, но готовить суси для себя - это не то. Все есть, не хватает момента расслабления.
Причем свежей рыбы и морепродуктов вокруг было навалом, и дешево. Только их, казалось, никто, кроме немногочисленных китайцев, не покупал и не ел. Местные питались консервами, заморозкой, бройлерами, пиццей, фиш энд чипс на заказ. В лучшем случае - переваренными мясо-овощными похлебками. Мамина домашняя еда, ага-ага.
Про сегрегацию я узнала чуть позже. Когда на моей свадьбе нельзя было петь "республиканскую" (hello, W!) песню Only Our Rivers Run free, - только играть мелодию. Когда увидела первую "стену мира" - мы жили в хорошем цветуечном районе, там до этого дела было дальше, чем до зоопарка, и я долго ничего не знала.
Когда начала снимать североирландские военно-религиозные парады (ежегодная советская демонстрация в ознаменование победы над шведами в Ледовом побоище была бы аналогом в отечественной практике) и писать политические репортажи.
Когда разбили каждое из восьми стекол в моем Вагончике за то, что я не из местных и могу говорить не только на одном языке.
Когда я поняла, что провинциальный город не может быть "милым", и "в деревню, в глушь, к тетке в Саратов" на самом деле - страшная, смертельная угроза.
Но главное - не было суси баров. Их отсутствие, а также другие детали окружающей действительности сподвигли меня на написание этого рассказа.
.
Greg and Pat grew up on the opposite sides of the same street in South Belfast. They knew about each other’s existence, but never were friends. Greg’s Protestant and Pat’s Catholic families perfectly hated each other, yet considered themselves too intelligent and civilized to throw stones at each other’s windows. Nevertheless, their mothers not only went to different churches but also made sure that they bought meat from different butchers and got milk from different milkmen. When Tesco came to their street, this carefully built system was depersonalised. The shop was so big that a chance of meeting your enemy - or a friend - became rather small.
After graduating from school, Greg went to study in London and Pat went to California. Greg got trained in IT, Pat did some carpentry. What made them both come back to Belfast, was the burst of the IT bubble in late nineties. Pat’s IT shares, in which he (like many other Californians) put a lot of trust, went down and ruined all his finances, so the poor lad had to go home penniless. Greg lost his job and (like many other workless IT specialists at that time) could not find another one quickly, so he decided to go home for a while, have a break and think about his future.
They did not know that besides hating Bill Gates they shared one more passion: they loved sushi.
Simple Japanese cuisine was on the rise those days: sushi-bars opened on every corner not only on the East and West Coast but also in any self-respecting European town. Most of them were small chains, full of Chinese waitresses and chefs (stupid white man wouldn’t be able to distinguish a Chinese from a Japanese, owners thought and were right). Sushi takeaways were flourishing. Ability to make your own sushi became a fashion, and big Asian markets had to compete with tiny health food shops selling nori, vasabi, marinated ginger and chopsticks. Desperate housewives attended sushi-making two-day courses, unaware of the fact that a real sushi-maker in Japan has to spend five years studying to make rice balls before he can start learning how to cut the fish. Psychologists wondered how a small overpopulated island managed to hook the whole world on eating raw fish.
The only nation that could not catch up with this fashion were the Irish. Despite living on an island themselves and being seamen and fishermen, they liked their food fat and overcooked with no vitamins left. As a result there were hardly any sushi-bars in Ireland and ‘The Ginger Tree’, the only straight Japanese restaurant in Belfast, was barely doing any business, surviving on selling noodles with fried fish. There were sushi on the menu, too, it’s just nobody wanted them (“we quickly skipped the raw fish part of the menu to move to the proper food,” wrote the restaurant critic in the local paper).
One day Pat, who has fallen in love with sushi in California and missed his favourite food in Belfast, decided to go to ‘The Ginger Tree’. He would have been the only customer, but for some strange reason the Japanese trade delegation was visiting Belfast this particular day and of course they wanted to try the local sushi - like Finn would go to the sauna anywhere abroad to declare it was built all wrong, Italian would go to an Italian restaurant in Germany or Iceland to tell the staff that the pizza wasn’t properly baked and a Russian would try any kinds of foreign vodka he could lay his hands on - only to declare it is all poison.
Greg, who fell in love with sushi in London and, like Pat, missed his favourite food in Belfast, decided to go to the same restaurant the very same evening. He was surprised to find it full. The waiter asked him if he wished to be seated at the table with the other single person. Greg agreed, hoping to dine with a sweet young sushi-loving Irish lady. When he approached his table, he saw Pat, but it was too late.
Two old foes sat in front of each other in silence and concentrated on studying the menu. By the time they reread it three times the waiter approached and asked what the gentlemen would like to drink. The gentlemen ordered sake. The waiter asked if they would like their sake warm or cold.
Pat and Greg gave each other a look for the first time after they got the menus. This was a look of two people in trouble.
‘Hot,’ said Greg with a strange expression on his face.
‘Sake must always be served warm, don’t you know this? Is this a Japanese restaurant or what?’ Pat resented.
The waiter scribbled something into his notebook and left.
Two foes sat there in silence again, but it was a warmer silence now.
‘They must be really bad here, won’t even know that sake should be served warm.’ Pat said finally.
‘In London, the cheapest sushi places pour hot sake from the thermos,’ said Greg. ‘The most sophisticated Japanese restaurants do serve sake cool, the temperature that white wine should be served at, but this is the very latest fashion and I doubt they know about it here in Belfast.’
‘Do they also say “sushi” there in London?’ Pat got interested. ‘Because the right way to say is “susi”, you know, Japanese do not pronounce “sh”’.
Greg’s expression got colder again.
‘Everybody knows this. Yet everybody keeps pronouncing “sushi”, even in London,’ he said.
The waiter brought them sake in tiny jars with narrow neck (at least the jars were right) and asked if they were ready to order.
‘How fresh is your tuna?’ asked Pat with a threat in his voice. The tuna was the sensitive spot of all sushi-bars: its extra-tender, bright-red meat was getting more and more rare, there were a few trials in Japan on fishermen who were fishing tuna illegally, so when there was a break in supplies some sushi chefs were actually painting cheap salmon with red food colouring and serving it as tuna. In any proper sushi-bar the question “how fresh is your tuna” would be a code for “don’t you even dare to try and serve me false tuna”, and any waiter would know it - any one, except for the Belfast one. He simply assured Pat the tuna was fresh.
Pat ordered maguro - tuna sashimi, temaki with shrimps, and asked for additional vasabi.
Greg went for rolls with salmon and with tuna and then added double portion of unaki nigiri to his order - sushi with smoked eel. He asked for two extra portions of vasabi. Pat gave him a respectful look.
Japanese delegation was eating and laughing. Pat told Greg he really wanted to go to their tables and ask how they found the food.
“Let’s taste the food ourselves first,” said Greg. He poured hot sake into the tiny cup. Pat followed; they drank. The hot alcohol warmed them from inside. The endless Belfast rain did not seem that depressing any more.
The waiter brought the food. Greg was surprised to find out that his sushi and rolls were served not on one wooden tray - as it should be - and not even at one plate but on four different ones, each supplied with the double portion of vasabi and a portion of ginger.
Pat had fewer problems - only two plates - but altogether six plates covered all the free space of their table.
‘It looks like they make some profit out of washing extra crockery!’ said Pat cheerfully.
‘I think they did it because we ordered sushi by our own choice,’ mentioned Greg, ‘nobody’s doing it here, I bet.’ He poured soy sauce into the saucer, melted some vasabi in it and started to eat.
Surprisingly the food was not bad: nori on the rolls was glued properly, rice in nigiri wasn’t falling apart, and the fish was fresh. The waiter came to their table to ask if everything was all right and Pat asked him back if he was from China. The waiter said yes, he was, but the chef was Japanese.
‘This explains a lot,’ said Greg.
They ordered more sake.
‘Do you think there’s any chance for the sushi culture to be ever introduced to Belfast properly?’ asked Pat.
‘The chance is very slim. Have you ever told anybody here that you like Japanese cuisine?’ said Greg.
‘Not really, why?’
‘I told my mom. She got very scared that I eat raw fish. I didn’t tell her I was going to eat sushi today - she would be very offended that I preferred raw fish to her overcooked stews.’
‘There’s no way you can make a proper Ulster mother change her mind about food,’ said Pat. ‘If I was promoting sushi in Belfast, I’d start with more progressive people than my own parents.’
‘Like whom?’
‘Health food maniacs.’ Pat saw a lot of health food maniacs in California; some of them were eating nothing but rotten apples from the ground. He decided Irish health food people must be much milder, so sushi would be good enough for them.
‘I’d go for the students and young professionals as a target audience,’ said Greg. ‘In London, all the sushi-places are aimed at them. Take-aways, cheap restaurants, that kind.’
They finished with the food and ordered some green tea. Tea-drinking ritual (from the tiny cups with no handles) passed in satisfactory silence. Both Pat and Greg seemed to be dreaming. The waiter broke their mood by asking if they wanted anything else. They paid and ordered a taxi.
Outside, it was raining. A few wet policemen in their motorcycles were hanging on the corner; another few were shivering from cold and wet further down the street. The armoured police Land Rover was moving as slowly as possible, followed by ten or so men in black suits, one of them with the wet drum. There was the Orange Order parading. Men were soaking: one could actually see the streams of water coming down their suits. Not each of them was carrying an umbrella - some soaked proudly without any. Their shoes must be squelching.
Pat wanted to make a comment about complete uselessness of a parade in such weather but contained himself. It was Greg who commented: ‘If I ever supervise a parade in this town, I’ll make sure at least the weather is sunny.’
A week after the sushi dinner in ‘The Ginger Tree’, Pat was walking his dog Rover and spotted Greg’s mother leaving the house. She drove off in her car, and then Pat saw Greg going out. Rover pulled his leash towards Greg, Pat followed. They walked like that for a few minutes, and Greg never noticed he was stalked. Pat and Rover followed Greg to the front of the Tesco store, then Pat tied Rover’s leash to the pole, grabbed a cart and followed Greg into the store.
Greg noticed Pat at the tills. He gave his neighbour a nod, and it was a friendly one. Their queues were moving with more or less at the same speed, so the two men ended up getting out of the shop with their bags together.
‘Greg, I wanted to talk to you,’ said Pat. ‘It’s about sushi.’
‘Did you get sick after that dinner?’ Greg asked.
‘No, no, it’s ok, the sushi were alright. It’s just we need to persuade more people to eat them here in Belfast,’ said Pat. ‘Can you wait for me to unleash my dog?’
Greg waited, and after a proper greeting ritual from Rover (including sniffing, an attempt to put his paws on Greg’s shoulders and final friendly jumps around him) three of them walked back to their street.
‘I’m afraid I don’t have any money to open a sushi restaurant in Belfast, and this will be a loss-making enterprise, too,’ said Greg.
‘No, no, it’s not the restaurant; I propose to have a demonstration.’
Rover was dancing on his leash, pulling his owner to go and play in the park, but the owner was persistent.
‘What do you mean - a demonstration? We aren’t sushi chefs to demonstrate how to cook them.’
‘No, no, it’s not this kind of a demonstration, it’s more like a march,’ Pat was doing everything to avoid the word “parade”. ‘This would be the only way to persuade Irish and Ulster Scots to eat sushi. One of the slogans would be “You don’t need to emigrate to eat healthy.” And we will make a big poster with all the explanations, and some smaller posters, and…’
They reached Greg’s house.
‘Come in.’ Greg interrupted Pat. ‘I don’t want the neighbours to see us on the threshold having a discussion.’
Rover’s dreams for a walk in the park were broken, but instead he got whole new surroundings to explore - Greg brought Pat and the dog to the garden shed which was his workshop (skeletons of old system blocks sitting one on top of another and a laptop monitor without a corpse but still working). They got cans out of their shopping bags, took a sit and opened the beer.
‘So what march are you talking about?’ Greg asked.
‘The first Belfast sushi-eaters march,’ answered Pat.
Greg sneered. ‘That would be the first sushi-eaters march in the world, I suppose. A little practical question - who do you think will march?’
The little practical question perplexed Pat. His dog, on the contrary, started jumping and barking like mad, as if trying to say: ‘Me! Me! Me!’
‘Well,’ said Pat, ‘I will, and maybe I can ask Mom…’
‘Don’t even think of it, remember what you told me about Ulster mothers? Mine says a prayer whenever I mention sushi, so I just stopped mentioning.’
‘Well, that’s you and me and Rover then,’ said Pat after a little thought.
‘Your dog eats sushi?’
‘No, I mean, I don’t know, I never tried to feed him any, but he could be a passive supporter, can carry a poster or something.’
‘Pat, do you want to know the truth?’
Pat did.
‘The truth is this march of yours would be the most hopeless and the most pathetic show in the whole history of Belfast. I don’t know any other sushi-eaters in this town except for you and me and I’m not patrolling ‘The Ginger Tree’ every night to find any.’
‘So you support my idea?’
‘I do. But before painting any posters I’m going to go and get the official permission.’
‘A free man does not need a permission to walk on the street!’
‘In the town of troubles, he does.’
And that was it. Pat went home to create the slogans and Greg went to the nearest police department. The first question the policewoman behind the counter asked him was where exactly he was going to march. Greg said in the centre of the town.
‘Or, better,’ he added, ‘the University area.’
‘So do you want to march through the centre or through the University area?’ asked the policewoman strictly.
‘Botanic Avenue,’ said Greg quickly. It happened that neither Pat not himself had a chance to raise the question about where exactly they were going to march, so he just named the most crowded area he knew. A minute after, he was regretting about the long way from their homes they would have to take before parading. Should they take a bus or a taxi? Is there a straight bus line to the Botanic Avenue these days? Will they be able to squeeze all the posters in the car without damaging any? Will the taxi driver take Rover aboard?
The policewoman’s voice distracted him from those thoughts.
‘Botanic Avenue is a mixed area,’ she said. ‘I’ll direct your application to the chief of the station and he will supply a few officers to guard you during your march. What are you marching for?’
‘Sushi.’
‘What?’
‘It’s a Japanese hors d'œuvre.
‘What???’
‘It’s fish on a rice ball. Raw fish.’
‘You are marching for the raw fish on a rice ball?’
‘Yes. To promote it.’
The policewoman looked at him and said:
‘I’m afraid I have to redirect your application to the Parade Commission. They issue special permissions on extra sensitive parade matters in this city.’
By the time Greg got the appointment at the Parades Commission Pat created and deselected about three hundred slogans, among which were “Decent people eat their fish raw” and “Vote for your stomach, not for your MP.” Greg said the latter was too much of an anarchist idea for a modern society. After two days of debates Greg and Pat headed to the Parades Commission armed with the two slogans: “Irish! Eat Raw Fish!” and “Sushi means civilization”. Pat was pretty much against going to commissions of any sort but after meeting with an Authorised Officer Greg was sure that if he would go there by himself again with his Protestant looks and his Protestant “h” he won’t stand much chance.
On the day named Greg with Pat appeared before the Commission. Greg made a long speech which included statistics about national health in Ulster and the descriptions of traditions of Ulster fisheries. Pat stood there silently holding a tray with sushi. When Greg finished his speech, Pat said “faigh blas as an beile seo!” and placed the tray on the table in front of the commission, atop of all the papers. Two youngest members of the commission (who haven’t had their lunch yet) hesitated for a moment but then took a Dublin Bay shrimp nigiri each, struggling with the chopsticks. The rest of the commission did not even touch the food.
‘How come you are so sure that your parade isn’t contentious?’ asked one of the oldest Commission members, eyeing the eel in front of him suspiciously.
‘Because we don’t promote any food for soul. We march for people’s stomachs,’ said Greg meekly.
They were told to wait. They were also told that the Commission’s impression was positive and five days before the date of the supposed parade they would receive a paper with the final decision.
The next week Pat walked around all covered in ready paint mix. He was painting the posters while Greg was checking BBC forecast for Belfast every two hours. He went to the church his mother was always going to and asked God to make weather nice and sunny at the day of the demonstration.
Sometimes Greg would visit Pat to see how the posters were going and to offer help, a proposal that was always politely refused. Once, when BBC changed the forecast for the parade day yet again, Greg looked at the Pat’s sloping lines
(Pat created a special poster cart for Rover which the dog would have to pull, and was writing a slogan on it) and said:
‘This entire parade thing looks terribly amateur to me.’
‘Never afraid to be an amateur,’ answered Pat weightily. ‘An amateur built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic.’
‘Whoever created this phrase was not from Belfast,’ replied Greg, whose Protestant ancestors all worked in the docks. ‘Don’t you think we’d better go to the printing house and make the posters look more presentable?’
‘Don’t you think we’d better go and get ourselves a job instead of parading?’ said Pat.
He was right - both were short of cash, so even a visit to ‘The Ginger Tree’ was a luxury now.
The parade was due to start at four o’clock, but Pat and Greg were up at dawn to do the final preparations. Pat was giving the posters and Rover’s cart a final check, making sure that nothing would fall apart. Everything was in perfect order - the posters were fixed on good hard frames with the strong and easy to hold handles; Rover’s cart’s wheels were rolling easily and noiselessly, and the two posters that the dog had to carry on his back (that was apart from the cart that he had to pull behind him) were tied together in a sandwich man manner. When Greg first saw the whole construction, he said that Pat might not be a great painter but he was clearly a very good carpenter.
Greg nearly finished putting together a Sushi Parade web-site - the idea of the name came into his mind five days ago when they finally received a permission paper from the Parade Commission. Greg and Pat were never hundred percent sure that their march would be permitted, but things got real after the paper arrived.
The site represented the Sushi Parade as a new, modern social gathering in a society where everything else was old-fashioned, provincial and based on religious hate. Besides the front article, the web-site contained some sushi recipes, a few pictures of sushi which Greg picked up from the free photo banks on the internet, pictures of Pat making posters and pictures of Rover from all angles. Rover was a very photogenic dog and Greg knew that people would accept any idea much better if you show images of children and animals around it.
At three o’clock, the taxi came. They loaded all the posters inside, persuaded the driver to put Rover in the boot and headed to the Shaftsbury square where the Sushi Parade was to start.
Three police officers, one on the motorcycle, were waiting for them there.
‘You are lucky with the weather, guys,’ the policewoman greeted Pat and Greg while they were unloading their stuff out of the taxi. She was skinny and lithesome; with shiny black hair and cunning dark-green eyes she slightly resembled Lara Croft The Tomb Raider. The policeman beside her was a quiet guy in his early thirties, with plump pink cheeks of a milk-drinker and a spark of mind in his blue eyes. He wasn’t fat, his breath was fresh and his teeth were white and healthy.
‘We are lucky with the officers, too!’ answered Greg.
Pat said nothing: he was busy putting Rover on a leash, unloading the last poster and trying to pay the driver, all at the same time.
Finally the taxi went off. Pat and Greg were left to stand surrounded with the piles of paper, timber and with Rover dancing on his leash, and with the three police officers around. People on the square were slowing down to look what’s going on. The motorcycled policeman murmured something from under his helmet and rode off.
‘Dick said he’s gone to check the traffic ahead. He is ready to go when you are. I’ll walk first and John will be the last in the column. He’ll hold the cars behind us, and I’ll make sure that no one will ride over you from the sides. There are a few other officers helping to secure your parade, you’ll see them further up the street,’ explained Lara Croft.
Pat fixed the poster with a big picture of fish on Rover’s back. The other side of the poster said “Sushi-eating peaceful demonstration.”
‘We should have got some sushi and give them away to the people on the street,’ said Greg apprehensively.
‘Too late,’ answered Pat. ‘Besides, there’s neither time nor money for that.’
Rover was yoked into the cart with two posters containing information on healthiness of fish and rice. There were very many healthy issues and Pat wanted to squeeze them all in, so the letters ended up being quite small and nobody of those who stood on the pavement had a chance to read what was actually written on the poster. But it didn’t matter that much. The parade was not a mad idea any more, it was a reality, and that was the most important thing.
Pat and Greg picked up their posters and lined up behind Lara Croft. Rover faltered behind Pat on his leash, and pink John the policeman faltered behind Rover, signalling to the faltering traffic. Greg pressed the “Play” button on the small stereo system which he carried on his shoulder and the joyful rock on unknown language spread out on the Shaftsbury square. The parade started.
‘What’s this music is all about?’ Pat shouted to Greg. ‘Never heard this one before!’
‘It’s Champloose, a Japanese group. Crazy punk-folk-rockers! Shintoists!’ shouted Greg back. ‘Found their MP3s online!’
He couldn’t provide more information because Champloose’s singing ended up in mad shouting, and another loud joyful song started immediately after that.
They walked slowly. The sun was shining, people smiled at their procession, teens laughed, young mothers with prams put special attention on the healthy food information on the posters and old ladies searched their bags for their spectacles to check out who was marching and what for. Grumpy old men grumbled something into the procession’s back. Adults and little children pointed their fingers and waived their hands at Rover: the dog was clearly the most popular member of the Parade.
‘Doing OK, guys!’ Lara Croft turned to them and, walking backwards, gave thumbs up. Greg imagined how she would look like without the uniform behind the table of the Ginger Tree. She would look all right, but he liked her in the uniform even better. Women in militarized uniform were very, very sexy, he thought.
They marched safely up past the Mount Charles when a white pussy with the pink collar walked out of the door, posed on the pavement in the most sexual manner and froze like this. Rover, who usually never missed his chance to chase a cat, made a terrible effort to keep marching and pulling his cart. A hollow gnarl came out of his chest, and Pat said something to him in Irish very strictly.
The poor dog’s temptations were not over with the pussy. Another white creature walked out of the same door - this time it was fat, lazy, curly yellowish-white lap-dog jiggling on her short legs, unable to perform a run. This parody on a free animal walked towards the edge of the pavement and positioned herself beside the pussy, staring at the procession with stupid curiosity.
Rover could stand the cat alone, but the pussy with the old hooker by her side was too much for an honest dog like him. He gnarled, barked, gnarled again and finally started barking madly, boggling and straining his leash to the breaking point. The sushi posters on his back sagged, the cart made a mad zigzag and was about to overturn. Pat pulled the leash and said something to Rover very calmly and in a very low voice, but this voice promised absolutely nothing good. The dog looked at his master as if saying “but just look at those two!” The master responded in an even more calm voice, and the dog, ashamed, went back into his place. Pat straightened the posters on Rover’s back, and the parade proceeded. A few toddlers were supporting Rover enthusiastically from their buggies, but the street in general did not put much attention upon the accident because the loud shouts of the Japanese rock-group had covered Rover’s barking completely.
Finally the Champloose finished their shouting session and raised a tender folk-song. The procession passed the University Street. A narrow-eyed man (a Japanese or a Chinese, maybe) stepped off the walkway, approached the Sushi Parade, bowed and introduced himself.
‘My name is Kenjo Takada, I am a staff writer from the Yomiouri Simboon. May I ask you why you are marching for sushi in a place where no one eats them?’ and he produced a tape recorder which could easily be qualified as spy ware, so tiny it was.
Lara Croft inspected the man who waved his card towards her, decided he was harmless, turned off but did not slow down. The journalist, used to interview people on the run, kept on with the parade and repeated his question.
‘Precisely because of the fact that the sushi culture is not on the rise in Ulster, we decided to carry this parade out,’ answered Greg. ‘For us, the replacement of the old culture of hate and confrontation with the tolerance and gastronomical education of people is essential.’
‘After a delicious dinner, you don’t feel like fighting any more, it’s as simple as that,’ Pat added. The journalist murmured some personal comments into his spy ware tape recorder.
Rover put in his five cents with a loud ‘bow-wow’.
‘You can find more information about us on www.rawfishparade.org. For now I can say that my friend Patrick and I, we both grew up in Belfast and travelled the world enough to learn to appreciate sushi,’ Greg continued. ‘Now we are back to tell people that there is a reasonable and a healthy alternative to an Ulster fry.’ And he went on with the lecture about omega-3 oils in fish. The journalist marched along.
People sitting outside the coffee shops smiled and waved. Everything was perfect. The journalist ran ahead the procession and made a few photographs with the camera even smaller than his tape recorder. Greg noticed that Lara Croft was moving her hips like a model now.
They marched two more quarters, passed the College Park and ended up at the Botanic Gardens enter.
‘That’s it, guys,’ said Lara Croft, ‘well done. I thought you would be more trouble.’
‘Ha-ha,’ said Pat.
‘Have you ever tried sushi?’ asked Greg.
‘Raw fish?’ Lara Croft was a bit surprised. ‘No, but John and Dick and me and the whole department was really curious why would you march for it. So maybe I’ll give it a go.’
‘Surprise-surprise!’ said Pat, producing a sushi lunch box somewhere from underneath the Rover’s poster construction. The box contained some maki with cucumbers and nigiri with salmon. He gave pink John and Lara Croft a set of chopsticks each and asked them to try. John looked scared, Lara Croft smiled and said that was very nice indeed but unfortunately they would not accept any treats while on duty. The moment of awkwardness was broken when Dick arrived on his motorcycle. The police officers helped Pat and Greg to fold their posters, wished them all the best and left.
Once they were out of sight, Pat produced the second lunch box and two cans of beer. They left Rover to guard the posters and sat on the grass on the meadow in the Botanic Garden.
‘You see, even the bloody peelers don’t want to eat sushi. We are a fail,’ said Pat.
‘Where did you get those lunchboxes from?’ asked Greg to distract his friend’s attention off the parade topic.
‘From Marks and Spenser’s. I recently discovered they do sushi. Mostly cooked, of course. And no chopsticks.’
‘I heard Zen restaurant serves sushi as well,’ Greg said.
‘I’ve been there. The rice balls of their nigiri fall apart. This poky hole of a place will never learn to appreciate nice food. I’d better go back to California.’
Pat drank the rest of his beer in one go and threw the empty can into the shrubs with the sudden rage. A scared little birdie flew out of the bush.
‘Yeah, I was thinking about returning to London, too,’ said Greg.
They finished their lunch, picked up Rover and the posters and walked to the bus stop. One of the posters slid off the cart and was gathering the road dust but this did not worry Pat and Greg any more. Their thoughts were in the pub, where they planned to get drunk as skunks. G8 and world poverty protesters would probably feel the same after their marches.
The next day while Pat and Greg were nursing their hangover, Yomiouri Simboon published a report about the parade with the picture on the front page. The whole thing was meant to represent the triumph of the Japanese spirit in the bear corners of the world like Northern Ireland. The Guardian Tokyo correspondent saw it, bought the paper, read the article, called his editorial in London and before Pat and Greg’s hangover was cured (that was a proper two-day one, if you know what I mean) they were in The Guardian. Not on the first page, but still. The next day BBC Northern Ireland called Pat’s house to ask if there were any footage of the parade left. Pat’s mother, who was not a Guardian reader at all and never found out where her son spent that Wednesday afternoon, answered the phone and informed the BBC that Pat was a good boy who ate properly, not participated in any parades and the whole thing was a nonsense.
Greg, meanwhile, received an e-mail from a Scottish salmon production company proposing to sponsor general expenses for the next parade (taxi, the cost of timber cuts and paper for the posters as well as Rover’s dry food supply for one day, M&S sushi lunch not included). In exchange the company wanted its logo on the posters. Another e-mail was from a Japanese rice exporter who wanted to sell sushi rice in Northern Ireland in bulk quantities. There were no e-mails from The Ginger Tree.
Everyone forgot about the Raw Fish Parade in a week except for the people from the Parade Commission - they sent a letter that for the next year Pat and Greg were free to parade in the same area without notifying them.
‘Do you want to march next year?’ Pat asked Greg.
‘I’ll be in London by then, hopefully,’ was the answer.
‘I myself will be in California,’ said Pat. ‘Have had enough of those rains.’
‘Got the money to go?’
‘The neighbour asked me to fix his house, that’ll be enough for the ticket and for the first month. I’ll find the job soon.’
In two months, Pat and Greg were off. It would be the end of the story of the Raw Fish Parades in Belfast if not the web-site: it became quite a popular resource for all the sushi-lovers. They exchanged recipes, techniques, restaurant reviews and addresses of the places to buy vasabi and nori. Greg moderated it, but soon passed the moderation to the three most active participants of the forum - he himself hasn’t had much time those days, working during the day and spending evenings and sometimes nights chatting on ICQ with a lady he met via the Raw Fish Parade web site.
Couple of months before the Parade anniversary the web forum users consolidated and decided they want to parade this year, too. Greg was one of the last ones to find this out. He wrote to Pat. Pat responded he had no time to fly back but would be happy to send Rover as a participant - the dog was staying in Belfast with Pat’s mum. Greg wasn’t planning to participate himself, but his ICQ lady friend wanted them to meet in Belfast. She refused to send her picture and insisted on a blind date.
About 150 people planned to take part, and about 400 guests were expected from the UK mainland and the other countries. The sponsors were the local salmon farm, the Scottish Salmon production company, the Ginger Tree restaurant (it took them half a year to find out about the Belfast Raw Fish movement), the angling club, and for some strange reason the Association of Martial Arts of Northern Ireland. Letters were sent to all the local papers, The Guardian, The Independent and to the BBC. The Vacuum, the local city paper, was preparing a special issue with all the articles dedicated to fish.
“I can’t believe our humble project got so many followers and so much response. You should remember that even the Belfast police did not want to eat sushi, and now everyone seems to march for raw fish!” Greg wrote to Pat.
Pat wrote back and told him to stop kidding.
Nevertheless, when Greg came to Belfast, he found out that the Ginger Tree was reasonably full even without a Japanese delegation in town. He got a table and waited for his mysterious ICQ lady friend to arrive.
You have certainly guessed that Greg’s blind date was Lara Croft the policewoman. She was in perfect shape and looked so healthy and flourishing that no one would suspect her working in the police forces. After dinner, she kissed Greg in the lips. Next day, fully uniformed and gorgeous, she was stepping ahead of the procession on the Botanic Avenue. People stopped to stare at her beauty. Specially employed children were sneaking around the parade with the little lunch boxes offering sushi to the pedestrians and to the drivers in the parked cars. Greg felt a little bit lost - there were so many people, and most of them he met for the first time. Himself and Pat were the sole organizers and ideologists of the Raw Fish movement in Belfast, but those people, it seemed, did not need them very much - the project seemed to florish without any support from those who started it. ‘Raw Fish Parade veteran,’ Greg thought bitterly about himself, marching together with others and patting Rover, who was walking by his side with a poster on his back saying ‘I’m the original Raw Fish Parade dog’.
What else can I say? The Raw Fish Parade became a tradition in Belfast. It did not stop the tradition of other parades and the following fights, but at least set a standard of a more peaceful marching. About ten new sushi-bars opened in town and about twenty-five sushi take-away places, which made Belfast the sushi capital of Ireland. Smaller towns both in north and south picked up the fashion. Dublin was persistent, refusing to admit that this time Belfast was, for a change, ahead with something progressive, but capitulated soon and started selling Dublin Bay prawn sushi and rolls as pub grubs.
Greg found himself a job in Belfast, married Lara Croft the policewoman and settled down. They adopted old Rover and produced two little boys, both of them are studying karate now. Pat lives in California; he opened a cheap and funky sushi bar with his own design of wooden seats and tables. The place is great success; he already patented the furniture design and thinks of starting a restaurant chain.
Greg’s mum gave up on his son’s sushi passion but still tries to force-feed her grandchildren stews; they sometimes eat it, sometimes don’t.
Pat’s mum passed away in peace. She never found out that her son was a raw fish eater.