Dadaoism (An Anthology)

by Oliver, Reggie

  She must have asked me what I had been doing. I told her in my precocious way that I was like the robin who had arranged stones and shells in the story.

  “I don’t know that story,” she said. “D’you want to tell it to me?”

  So I told her how all the birds had been fighting over the shells on the beach, but while they were fighting, the robin had arranged them all into a pattern, and all the birds had stopped and stared.

  “You like stories, don’t you?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “I mean not just like any kid likes stories. You really like stories, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, what do you think you’ll do when you grow up?”

  “Maybe I’ll write stories.”

  “Maybe you will. What will you write about?”

  “I’ll write about you.”

  “Really? Well, that’ll be nice. What kinds of things will I be doing in these stories?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you’ll be riding a pink unicorn.”

  “A pink unicorn, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that does sound kinda fun.”

  And then, this is what I meant earlier when I told you that these memories won’t stay in their proper place in my life. Because, well, I’ll just tell it to you how I remember it. She was asking me about how I’ve developed the business, the expansion to Osaka, the links with the Ishikawa group. The crackdowns. And we were talking about this for some time and I mentioned Ran-chan, whom I met when she was working as a hostess in one of my clubs.

  “How can I explain Ran to you?” I asked.

  “Is she pretty?” she asked.

  “Quite pretty,” I had to admit.

  And I attempted to tell her about Ran-chan. How can I explain Ran-chan? She’s like Faye Wong in Chungking Express, if you’re familiar with the films of Wong Kar-Wai. But she’s also much, much more than that, it goes without saying.

  “I really want to introduce you to Ran,” I said. “I really want to. More than anything else, I want to introduce you to Ran. She’s been a great comfort to me. I love Ran.”

  And I love you, Kuu. I love you. That’s what I meant, but, of course, I didn’t say it.

  Anyway, the conversation went on for a very, very long time, but eventually Kuu started to settle back into her sunbathing. That sad languor came over everything that was the presage of evening. I gazed at Kuu’s arms, longingly. I saw her lips moving. Her eyes were closed. Was she talking to me? It seems she was.

  “Even if you don’t write any stories,” she said, “it’ll be okay.”

  Eventually, of course, Kuu had to leave us again. Looking back on the days leading up to her departure—what you might call the evening of her stay—they seem more terrible to me now than they did then, since I know now that I was never to see her again, and, things being what they are, I suppose I never will. Even now I feel that heartache. It is perhaps only now that I realise the heartache in full. It’s not just a memory, it’s an ache that lives and grows and evolves. It’s here like a rain-charged cloud in my chest and throat.

  Anyway, it was certainly bad enough at the time, too, despite the fact that I hoped and believed Kuu would come again someday. I knew that there was nothing I could do to stop her leaving, but, worse than that, I felt this strange, mute panic because I knew I wanted to say something to her before she went, but was too young to understand what it was I wanted to say. Also, something strange had happened to me during those two weeks. When Kuu had first arrived, I had cried and begged her never to leave again. But in a matter of days, Kuu’s presence had somehow made me older in many, many ways, and I had come to understand, by words heard here and there, by subtle, indefinable signs and intuitions, by looking and seeing, that Kuu surely would go, and something in that certainly poisoned and killed any power I had once had to cry and beg and make a scene. I knew, with a terrible, squeezing wordlessness within my throat, that I would simply let her go. It was a suffocating feeling.

  I remember those last two or three days as very hot—much hotter than the summer usually got at that time—so that I was sweltering, even in a T-shirt. We went to the beach as normal, but I got quite sunburnt, and was peeling, and everyone decided shade was a good idea, and found indoor things to do.

  There are two things in particular I recall about that time. The first was that Uncle Toru and Kuu took me to the amusement arcade that I mentioned before. Looking back on it, I’m sure there were things going on that I didn’t understand. Uncle Toru and Kuu had had some kind of argument. I knew this, although I had only seen the edges of it, and not the argument itself. Piecing things together now, my guess is that Kuu didn’t approve of Uncle Toru playing pachinko so much, or at least, she didn’t approve of him taking me along with him. Given the nature of the business, this might seem like a lost cause, but I would like to think that Kuu was thinking of me. I do have my reasons for believing this to be the cause of their argument, though it’s quite possible that I’m entirely wrong, or that, even if they did argue about this, it was only really a secondary quarrel set off by other, larger differences.

  Whatever the cause, that they had argued was unignorable fact, and the air seemed black with it as they barely maintained their civility to each other. The arcade was a small, dingy building, which, in that poisonous heat, was far from a comfortable place to be. It was also noisy and grimy, and, though it didn’t occur to me at the time, hardly the kind of place a considerate person should have taken someone like Kuu. Uncle Toru, of course, said that it was for my sake, and, sure enough, the arcade excited me, with all the various flashing, warbling machines that would swallow your money and come to life for a while, like guardians animated to riddle you and test you to see if you were worthy to claim some secret or treasure that, in fact, you were never quite good enough to claim. I should point out that, even by the standards of the time, most of the machines there were pretty unsophisticated. There were some old Street Fighter II cabinets, a few flight sims and claw cranes. But mostly there were slot machines. This is partly what leads me to think the argument had something to do with gambling. I think that, on that particular day, Kuu had managed to persuade Uncle Toru not to play pachinko, only to have him take us both along to a cheap arcade full of one-armed bandits, where he quickly became entirely absorbed in putting one coin after another into the machines and watching the wheels spin.

  Kuu had no interest in this activity and sat at a table in the corner with a drink. I can picture her, in her pink and white one-piece dress and black boots, with her bag on the table, and her legs crossed. If only I had a camera that could go back in time, I could take a photograph of her as she was then and it would be a timeless image of cinematic iconography. Or, perhaps not timeless, exactly, since for me it evokes a very specific time, with very deep and particular feelings attached. Perhaps I simply mean something like ‘classic’. I do remember looking at her, as she sat at that table, and feeling a kind of anguish. I could hear the words of her own song as I looked at her shoulders and upper arms, and her now serious, slightly downcast face:

  Itsu ka mata dokoka de

  Deatta toshita naraba

  Egao de hanaseru you ni

  Ii koi wo shite...

  Someday, somewhere

  If we could meet again

  Smiling, I’d talk to you

  And love you right...

  I wished I could approach her, but on that day it seemed impossible. Uncle Toru, however, kept giving me money to put in the arcade machines myself. On the one hand I was glad of this, because it meant I had something to distract me from Kuu, whose aloofness was torture to me, and also because I wanted to play on the machines, anyway. But on the other hand, this, too, was a torture, since all the while I was imagining that Kuu must think I was a fickle, shallow boy who had forgotten entirely about her just because of some machines in an amusement arcade. In the sticky heat of that day, I felt a weird hollow chill inside as I moved from
machine to machine, occasionally going back to the oblivious Uncle Toru for more money. All three of us were alone there.

  Eventually, Uncle Toru got fed up with me asking him for money, and told me I had had enough, even though he himself went on playing on the machine that now absorbed all his attention. I felt sullen and frustrated. Somehow, though, this gave me the impetus to go over to Kuu. Finally to walk in her direction was a wonderful feeling, though there was still something of the dribbling hollowness I had felt throughout our time in the arcade.

  She looked up at me, and smiled a gentle, wan smile that made me want to cry.

  “Kuu,” I said, in a questioning sort of way.

  “Yes?” she said, in a tired voice.

  “Would it be okay to have some money for the machines?”

  “Why don’t you go ask your uncle?”

  I didn’t really want the money, but now I felt unable to explain that he had stopped giving me any, or that I only wanted to be with her, to hold her hand, maybe, but anyway to talk, and see her smile.

  “Okay,” I said, apologetically, and walked back over to my uncle.

  Of course, I didn’t ask him for any money. I just stood there, watching him hold this wheel or that as he tried for the jackpot, and feeling utterly sick with the world. After a while, watching with a resentful intentness, I began to understand Uncle Toru’s strategy and how the game worked. There was a horizontal lever halfway up the machine, like a metal propeller, which would remove the holds he had put in place. I made my decision and at the right time I pressed down firmly on the lever. The stuck wheels came unstuck. There was the sound of an internal metal avalanche. Uncle Toru had lost all the money he had banked. He turned to me.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” he shouted, unable to contain his anger. I felt the back of his hand strike my face.

  That had been a scowling, nasty sort of day, and it had broken my heart that, from morning till night, there was the blackness of not being able to spend time with Kuu. Of course, I was physically in her presence much of the time, but the sunny hours were obscured by greasy, angry clouds. The lovely afternoon I wished to bask in was nowhere to be found.

  However, the next day the atmosphere was to change from stifling to sombre. Uncle Toru got up early, just after me, shaved in his unbuttoned shirt, and polished his shoes silently. He was not himself, and the house seemed to sober up to the change in him. Thankfully, the heat had eased up a little. The shoji had been pulled back, opening onto the veranda and the garden, and I looked out, feeling the cold breezes on my forehead like a sad and gentle absolution, turning me back to who I was when I had nothing but myself. The only sound came from the shoe brush and the cicadas in the garden. I had awoken early, too, not deliberately, but nonetheless because I realised that Kuu would soon be gone. I said nothing because I was waiting for her to rise, and this waiting took all that I had to give. It was a very long wait. When she did emerge, dressed, in the living room, I felt for a moment a surge of the simple and wonderful knowledge that it was Kuu. Her mood had softened since yesterday, but I was saddened to find she was still a little distant. She put on the kettle to make tea for herself and Uncle Toru.

  “Do you want miso, too?” she asked.

  “Yes, please,” said Uncle Toru, a note of conciliation in his voice.

  He said no more, however, and continued shining his shoes.

  Kuu looked at him keenly.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He shrugged.

  “There is something wrong, isn’t there?”

  He looked over at me and then back at Kuu.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked at me again.

  “Why don’t you go out and play in the garden for a minute? Be a good boy.”

  I followed his suggestion without a word, stepping down from the porch into the garden, and following the dusty driveway to the gate. I suppose Uncle Toru must have heard my footsteps and thought I was out of earshot. In fact, I rested my crossed arms on the wall around the garden, and my head dreamily on my arms, closed my tired, gritty eyes, and listened to his voice almost in the same way I had watched sunlight and shadow on the paper panels of the shoji earlier. When I opened them for a fraction of a second, I saw a dragonfly resting on my arm, its wings a blur of sunlight.

  “I had a dream,” came Uncle Toru’s voice, rough as geta scraping on the cobbles of a tired seaside town whose once-bright awnings have faded.

  “A dream? I don’t understand. Is everything okay?”

  “I don’t think it is.”

  “Toru, will you tell me what you’re talking about? You’re worrying me.”

  “There’s no use in worrying. There’s nothing to be done.”

  “Toru! Just tell me.”

  There was a silence.

  “All right then,” he said. “I had a dream last night. About my brother. I saw him going home to Kyoto on an aeroplane. And… He was in a coffin.”

  He paused.

  “I was on the plane, too.”

  “What?”

  There was another silence.

  “Toru, you know, that’s just a dream.”

  “No, not this one. There was something about it. The Yoshifuji-kai finally got to him, I know it. I know I’m going to be on that plane. I’ve got to get ready.”

  “Toru…”

  “I know it. I know it, here.”

  At that point I wandered further up the garden, perhaps afraid I would be caught listening. The whole world had become as strangely distant and dreaming and sad as a faint shadow stirring on the shoji, wincing from sharp to dull focus.

  Later that day, in the evening, there was a telephone call for Uncle Toru. His brother had been found dead of a gunshot wound.

  Uncle Toru was indeed on that aeroplane, just as he had dreamed, in attendance on the coffin containing his brother’s remains. Kuu accompanied him as far as Tokyo, and, as I remember, this meant she actually left a day earlier than planned. This was a shock to me. The death was, of course, a solemn sort of business, but I had never met the uncle in question. What really affected me, and what, in the circumstances, no one even spoke about, was Kuu’s sudden departure, with her mind so occupied by other things there was no time for decent goodbyes. I can still feel it now, that cold amputation. It’s like… This will sound curious, but like having my heart sliced in half by jagged, rained-on greenhouse glass. It was so sudden, I was not even sure I was sad. I simply had to take a sharp intake of breath. And then I felt the curious sensation of a glass cut, something like vertigo, all chill and thrilling and lonely.

  Uncle Toru ended up staying on in Kyoto after his brother’s funeral, and I suppose it was he who had been Kuu’s main link with the family. In any case, I never saw either of them again.

  That’s pretty much the end of the story. Of course, in later life I made the connection between the Kuu I remembered and the famous Koda Kumi, but the curious thing was, my realisation was not, at first, a revelation. It was a quiet, respectful, half-buried knowledge, as if I were privately visiting the grave of someone only I could remember. Part of me, I suppose, had simply known all along, and was unsurprised—a part of me buried as deep as the memories had been. It’s really been your presence here, though, and your questions, that have made all the difference, and in the past few days I have had this wonderful revelation, epiphany or whatever, of the blindingly obvious.

  Ran-chan and I were watching that television special about Kuu’s life, and at the end, you know, there’s a part where the actress playing Kuu is walking out on stage. You see the audience from her perspective, from behind, and then the next time you see Kuu, from the front, it’s the real Kuu. There she is. And she introduces herself to the crowd...

  I think that’s when it became clear to me. I suppose I’ve been laying the groundwork for years, but with everything in place, it just happened, like it was the easiest thing on Earth. It was like seeing
fireworks in the sky over a Disney castle, like the one in Tokyo where I went with Ran-chan, and where everyone must have thought she was my daughter. Anyway, you know how the fireworks turn the sky all different colours, as if it’s blushing pink, green, blue and gold.

  I thought back to that time on the beach, in the blue of the sunlight.

  “Even if you don’t write any stories, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to write them.”

  That’s what she said to me. And it’s only now, all these years later, thanks to you, that I am beginning to understand her meaning. I thought, all this time, she had said it doesn’t matter because she didn’t believe in me. But now I understand the truth.

  She said it because she loved me. She already knew and understood everything. I didn’t have to explain anything to her. This moment in the blue heart of the sun would always be ours. She loved me.

  And now here I am, all these years later. I’ve never written anything, and I’ve killed so many people. And I haven’t been allowed to regret any of it.

  And would she have forgiven me everything? I can’t say for sure. But I feel like she’d understand. Somehow.