Cryptonomicon

The third order looked different: laid over the top of the raw fish were thin translucent sheets of some kind of moist, glistening material. It looked sort of like butcher paper soaked in oil. Shaftoe gawked at it for a while, trying to identify it, but it looked like no foodstuff he knew of. He glanced left and right, hoping that one of the Nips had ordered the same stuff, so that he could watch and learn the right way to eat it. No luck.

Hell, they were officers. Maybe one of them spoke a little English. " 'Scuse me. What's this?" Shaftoe said, peeling up one corner of the eerie membrane.

The chef looked up at him nervously, then scanned the bar, polling the customers. Discussion ensued. Finally, a Nip officer at the end of the bar, a naval lieutenant, stood up and spoke to Bobby Shaftoe.

"Seaweed."

Shaftoe did not particularly like the lieutenant's tone of voice--hostile and sullen. This, combined with the look on his face, seemed to say, You'll never understand it, you farmer, so why don't you just think of it as seaweed.

Shaftoe folded his hands primly in his lap, regarded the seaweed for a few moments, and then looked up at the lieutenant, who was still gazing at him expressionlessly. "What kindof seaweed, sir?" he said.

Significant glances began flying around the restaurant, like semaphores before a naval engagement. The poetry reading seemed to have stopped, and a migration of enlisted men had begun from the back of the room. Meanwhile the lieutenant translated Shaftoe's inquiry to the others, who discussed it in some detail, as if it were a major policy initiative from Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The lieutenant and the chef exchanged words. Then the lieutenant looked at Shaftoe again. "He say, you pay now." The chef held up one hand and rubbed his fingers and thumb together.

A year of working the Yangtze River Patrol had given Bobby Shaftoe nerves of titanium, and unlimited faith in his comrades, and so he resisted the impulse to turn his head and look out the window. He already knew exactly what he would see: Marines, shoulder to shoulder, ready to die for him. He scratched the new tattoo on his forearm: a dragon. His dirty fingernails, passing over the fresh scabs, made a rasping sound in the utterly silent restaurant.

"You didn't answer my question," Shaftoe said, pronouncing the words with a drunk's precision.

The lieutenant translated this into Nipponese. More discussion. But this time it was curt and decisive. Shaftoe could tell that they were about to bounce him. He squared his shoulders.

The Nips were good; they mounted an organized charge out the door, onto the sidewalk, and engaged the Marines, before anyone actually laid a hand on Shaftoe. This spoiling attack prevented the Marines from invading the restaurant proper, which would have disturbed the officers' meal and, with any luck, led to untold property damage. Shaftoe then felt himself being grabbed from behind by at least three people and hoisted into the air. He made eye contact with the lieutenant while this was happening, and shouted: "Are you bullshitting me about the seaweed?"

As brawls went, the only remarkable part of this one was the way he was carried out to the street before he could actually get started. Then it was like all the other street fights he'd been in with Nip soldiers in Shanghai. These all came down to American brawn (you didn't get picked for the Fourth Regiment unless you were an impressive-looking six-footer) versus that Nipponese chop-socky.

Shaftoe wasn't a boxer. He was a wrestler. This was to his advantage. The other Marines would put up their dukes and try to fight it out--Marquis of Queensberry style--no match for chop-socky. Shaftoe had no illusions about his boxing, so he would just put his head down and charge like a bull, take a few blows to the face on his way in, but usually get a solid hold on his opponent and slam him into the cobblestones. Usually that shook the Nip up enough that Shaftoe could get him in a full-nelson or a hammerlock and get him to cry uncle.