Kappa Quartet

by Daryl Qilin Yam

  He said nothing for about a minute.

  “You’re a human?”

  “Yes.”

  A pause.

  “Where did you say you live again? Yamanashi, am I right?”

  “That’s right, Yamanashi prefecture.”

  “Okay, I understand,” the voice said. “Could I crash at your place tonight? I can go home, grab my things, and take the first train to Yamanashi. That okay with you?”

  I was taken aback. “Yes,” I said. “I don’t see why not.” He then asked for the boy’s name, and I told him.

  “That’s my father’s name,” the voice said. “I can’t believe she named the kid after him.” He then asked after his sister. “Where is she? Why isn’t she calling me instead?”

  I told him about the car by the forest, four years ago.

  “And the father?”

  “Nobody knows.”

  “Damn it,” the voice said. “Shit. God damn it.” There was another, longer pause. I bent my head over my knees and waited, with the phone in my hand. I thought I was going to throw up. Finally he spoke: he said it was all right. “She’s been dead to me a long time, anyway.”

  Before we hung up he asked about my job. “You said you’re a researcher, right? Local terrain and stuff like that?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Interesting,” the voice said. “I’m a musician.”

  “A musician?”

  “Yeah,” said the voice. “I play the sax. Name’s Takao.”

  It was nearly ten o’ clock when I picked him up from the station. Takao turned out to be big and tall, and seemed to be in his late thirties. It was only two degrees Celsius that night, but he somehow seemed warm enough, wearing nothing but a baseball jacket over a white T-shirt. He had a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

  “I’ve only packed for a day or two,” Takao said, as he got into the passenger seat. He had to adjust it back to make room for his knees. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  He took off his cap. There, at the back of his head, was a hole no larger than a five-hundred yen coin. Goro’s was probably three or four times bigger. I stepped on the pedal and began driving to my friend’s place.

  “Why’s he there again?” Takao asked. “He thinks your place is haunted?”

  “Something like that,” I said. “It’s hard to explain… I was hoping you might have a better idea, actually. You could try asking him about it, when the boy wakes up tomorrow morning.”

  “Now’s his bedtime?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  He shook his head, and began biting on a nail. He then burst out in a spate of cursing. “Fuck!” he said. “Shit!” He placed a hand over his mouth. He started pounding his fist against the window. “Shit, shit, shit, shit!” Takao then leant back against the seat to collect himself. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m going nuts.”

  “I understand,” I told him.

  Later, I stood in front of my friend’s guest room, as Takao pushed the door open by a crack. My friend kept himself busy in the kitchen, washing up the dishes, as Takao looked inside,

  “He’s eight, yeah?” Takao asked.

  “That’s right.”

  He kept quiet as he continued to look. The boy didn’t stir.

  “You said somebody hit him at school?” He mimed the act out, with that big hand of his. “’Cos of the hole in his head?”

  “Yes.”

  Takao looked for a few more seconds, before closing the door shut. We moved towards the living area. Takao noticed my friend’s LP collection, mounted beside the stereo equipment, and began looking through the titles.

  “You’ve got some great stuff here,” Takao said. My friend thanked him from the kitchen. “You like music as well, Sugimura?”

  I shrugged. “Sure… Music isn’t hard to like.”

  Takao smiled. “I’m glad,” he said. It was sometimes hard to remember that a guy in a baseball jacket was a sax player in an orchestra. “Does the kiddo listen to any of this stuff when he’s here?”

  “Most of the time he doesn’t have a choice,” my friend said. He’d returned from washing the dishes, wiping his hands on his apron. “But he’s taken a liking to Sarah Vaughan, methinks.”

  He smiled. “That’s awesome,” Takao said. “That’s nice to know.”

  When we were back in the car, on the way to my place, Takao told me about how music had run in his family. “My father used to frequent a jazz bar, ever since he turned legal. He’d go there whenever he had nights free. It was located in the basement of a sukiyaki restaurant, I believe, right in the heart of the bay area. My father loved that bar because that’s where he met all his friends, he said. It was also where he met my mother.”

  Takao fell quiet for a bit. The radio was still tuned to the classical FM broadcast.

  “We barely had any mirrors in the house,” he said. “My mother was quite sensitive about those things. She said she didn’t like them very much.”

  I asked him why. Takao said he had a hunch.

  “She wanted to be a singer. That’s why my father found her at the jazz bar. She wanted to sing but she didn’t have the voice.”

  “What does that have to do with mirrors…?”

  “A reflection in a mirror can’t sing,” he said. “I think that’s why.”

  I said that was sad. Takao nodded.

  “It’s a kappa thing,” he said. “Kappas generally hate what they see in themselves. They also hate what they see in one another.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Is that why they tend to be alone, all the time?”

  He nodded again.

  “There are instances, of course. When kappas manage to form groups with one another. I find that admirable. And I think that’s what my father tried to do, with a family as big as ours. That was his aim. And my mother did her best to support him.”

  I slowed the car down; the traffic light had turned red. There were barely any vehicles before us, in the long stretch of road ahead. There were hardly any behind us either. Soon we left the city behind as we travelled down the highway.

  “Is that why you and your sisters parted ways?” I asked. “Because the three of you preferred to be alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Even now?”

  He shook his head. “Now I’m not so lonely,” he said. “I’ve got friends. And I’m in an orchestra as well, which is about seventy members strong. Eighty, possibly. I’ve got friends there too.”

  “Are there are… other kappas in the orchestra?”

  “Just three others,” he said. “We talk from time to time.” Takao then looked out of the window. There was nothing to see.

  “Which forest did my sister go to?” He turned towards me. “Was it Aokigahara?”

  I nodded. “It’s where I found Goro, in the car that she'd left behind.”

  “Okay,” said Takao. He took his cap off, and then put it back on again. He adjusted it to the side. “She left a letter behind as well?”

  I nodded again. “I’ll show it to you later, when we’re back at my place. I have it in one of my drawers.” I switched gear again, signalled to the right. “Shouldn’t be long now.”

  It was a little past midnight when Takao was done reading the thing. He handed it back to me, and watched as I put it back where I normally kept it. He said, “It was the mirror in the toilet, wasn’t it? Where Goro saw the Blue Room.”

  The both of us went inside. It was a simple toilet, with a sink and a bathtub, and a floor that dried easily. At the corner were a stool and a washing basin, as well as the basket where the bottles were stored. Towels hung on the rack. Takao and I stood before the mirror nailed above the sink; I asked him if he saw anything special in it, and he said he didn’t see anything.

  Another minute or two we stood there, watching ourselves in the mirror. We waited. Time passed and Takao asked, a little sheepishly, if he could possibly run a bath.

  “I know it’s a bit sudden,” he said. “Sorry.”
/>
  I told him it was okay. He could take as long as he liked. The towels were his to use.

  “Thanks,” said Takao. He turned the taps, and the tub started to fill. “You can stay, you know—if you’re not feeling sleepy. We could still chat.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I can stay up a while longer.”

  I sat on the stool and watched as he took off his clothes. He stepped gingerly into the bathtub. Steam filled the room as hot water poured steadily from the tap, while I folded his clothes and set them aside. “This is great,” he said. He closed his eyes. “I haven’t had a proper bath in ages.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “You’re a kappa, aren’t you?”

  He made a face. “Something’s wrong with my tub, back home. Makes a weird noise whenever I turn the tap.”

  “Have you called somebody to fix it?”

  “I told the landlord,” he said. “He says he’ll send someone to check it out in a few days’ time. I’ll have to be home for that.”

  “You live alone?” I asked.

  He said that was right.

  “You have a girlfriend, though?”

  The guy smirked. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s complicated.”

  “How so?” I asked. Takao opened his eyes and turned his head towards me.

  “I care a lot about this girl,” he said. “But sometimes I confuse that with love.”

  “Do you want to have sex with her?” I asked.

  “Sometimes,” he said.

  “Is she kappa or human?”

  “Human. Early twenties. The kind of girl who should have nothing to do with me.” He placed a hand over his eyes. “She said something to me once, out of the blue. First time we ever met. Spoke to me as though she’d known me her whole life. Her friends were all waiting outside then, standing around the restaurant. She asked me why I was eating nabe all by myself.”

  I smiled. “You had nabe all by yourself?” I asked. Takao waved his hand in the air, like it was no big deal to him.

  “I’ve always been a loner,” he said.

  A while later he asked what my life was like before Goro came along, and I told him I had lived on my own as well. “For about three years, I think… I got divorced in 2006.”

  “You had a wife?” Takao asked.

  “Two sons as well,” I said. “Twins. They should be in high school by now.”

  “Why did she leave?”

  “My job,” I said. “Too much bad luck all over it…”

  Takao said nothing for a bit. “You know, all my life, I never really knew what it meant to be close to somebody. I had no real idea of what a family was supposed to be like.”

  I nodded. I knew his pain. I said to him, “There are all kinds of families, Takao.”

  Takao looked at me. He had the saddest eyes I had ever seen.

  “There’s a custom we have,” Takao said. “Whenever a kappa shares a bath with another. Do you know it?”

  “I think I do…”

  Takao smiled.

  “Could you do it for me?”

  I got up from my stool. Takao moved in the tub.

  “I scoop the water with my hands, yes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then I pour it over the hole in your head?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Like this?” I asked, and he said yes. Yes. “Thank you.”

  •

  The concert was over, and the three of us stepped out of the hall. The foyer was crowded with concertgoers, and we stood amongst them in a rosy haze of feeling. The New Year was upon us, and I could almost feel it, like a warm draft passing through.

  We spotted Takao at a distance, talking to a young woman. Her hair was tied up into a bun, and her smile was open and friendly. Behind her stood an even younger man, a teenager, perhaps. Goro turned towards me, and I placed a hand behind his back. “Go ahead,” I said to him and my friend.

  “Where you off to?” my friend asked.

  “The washroom… I’ll find you when I’m done.”

  The washroom I went into was located at a fairly quiet corner of the building. When I went inside I noticed, immediately, how there was no one else aside from myself. There were no urinals either; just a sink and two unoccupied stalls. I went into one of them. Seconds passed as I went about my business, which was probably when I felt it. I can’t explain how, but it was a feeling that began slowly, and then quickly, all at once: it was the undeniable presence of another person, here in this small, walled-off space. I shuddered. I grew cold, and nervous. Was this what my friend had felt, back then? This paranoia? This anxiety? This great silence, this caving in of the ears? I felt the hair on my arms stand as a nagging, persistent realisation dogged me to no end: that there was a second person in this washroom, a person I hadn’t noticed before, standing right outside my stall—and I had no idea when he or she had come in. Or maybe, just maybe, that person had always been there, waiting for me to be done.

  I zipped up my pants. I flushed. And then I heard it—the sound of the automatic tap, releasing water into the sink outside. I opened the door.

  “Ah, Mr Sugimura. We meet again.”

  Mr Five had a comb in his hand, its teeth wet from the tap’s water. He proceeded to brush it through his hair.

  “I hope you found the concert enjoyable,” he added.

  “I did,” I said. “And you?”

  “To a degree, yes. What a terrific finale. To be utterly frank, I have never heard anything by Johann Strauss the Second before.”

  I nodded. I didn’t exactly know how to respond. I was uneasy, to say the least, and my breath had turned shallow. Mr Five continued to comb his hair, with a movement both slow and careful. I stood behind him and watched.

  “Are you going back to Yamanashi prefecture by any chance, Mr Sugimura?”

  I stammered out a reply. “N-not tonight, I’m afraid… The three of us have a room booked in a hotel… We’ll be spending a couple of days in Tokyo.”

  “I see,” said Mr Five. “Would you be needing a ride?”

  I told him it was fine. “I have my car parked somewhere.”

  The kappa smiled. He ran his comb beneath the tap once more.

  “You remind me of someone I once met,” he said. “A woman I came across six months ago, in the lobby of a hotel I frequent. It is an uncanny resemblance: the way you walk, the way you stand, your overall mood. Even the way you look at things. I have been thinking about this ever since the intermission.”

  “And where is this woman now?” I asked

  “Gone,” he said. “She was just a tourist, after all. She was only there for a couple of days.”

  There was a pause. I ventured another question.

  “Is there anything else to this woman?”

  “She is a mother,” said Mr Five. “And a wife. But all of these things have been taken away from her. Loss after loss. Now she is searching for a way to overcome this.”

  I nodded. I could feel an old ache, stirring in my chest. I could call it back like an old friend. “I would like to meet this woman one day,” I said.

  “You would, Mr Sugimura?”

  I nodded again. “There aren’t a lot of people like me, I think.”

  “And what makes you say that?” he asked. I balled my hands into tight fists.

  “Everything I do now, I do in light of what I’ve done before... And there aren’t a lot of people who’ve gone down the path that I have. That this woman and I both have.”

  Mr Five smiled once more. Done with his hair, he stashed his comb in an inner pocket of his jacket. But he remained in the same position, standing firmly before the sink and the mirror. His eyes were now entirely focused on me.

  “Is this a path you have come back from? Or have you gone past the point of no return?”

  I didn’t exactly know how to answer his question. “We can’t go back to the past, Mr Five... it’s not a hallway in which you or I can walk however we want. There’s only one way forward for all of
us.” I looked back into his gaze. “It’s cruel, but… it gives me hope, for some reason.”

  His smile softened. An ambivalent look remained in his eyes.

  “Death is a clock with no hands, Mr Sugimura. You would do well to remember this.” He turned towards the door. “It was a pleasure talking to you tonight. Goodbye.”

  I watched him go. I placed a hand on my chest. I could feel my heart, beating through my ribs.

  Takao was saying something about music to Goro, in the back seat of the car, and my friend and I laughed. Takao was still learning how to talk to an eight-year-old, and he’d been treating Goro as though he were a depository, rattling off the names of various musicians: Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner. “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Goro said to Takao. “But it sounds cool.”

  We were about halfway to the hotel, where the four of us had booked a room: the plan was to stay up all night and watch the New Year’s Eve programmes together. I took a quick glance at Takao in the rear-view mirror and managed to catch his eye.

  “I have a question… You know of any sax players in your orchestra trying to form a quintet?”

  “Like a small band?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Jazz music. Group of five players and everything.”

  “I haven’t, sorry. Not as far as I’ve heard of.” The guy was sprawled all over the backseat of my car, and Goro fit just right beneath his arm. “It’d be nice though, if something like that were to happen. I’d love to play jazz with a few other guys.”

  “You would?”

  “Sure I would,” said Takao. “But not in a quintet, I think.” He shook his head. “A quartet would do better.”

  “With four people?” my friend asked.

  “Yeah,” said Takao. Looking at him once more in the rear view mirror, I could see the amber of the streetlights in thick lines, passing over his face; he was looking at the boy, who was looking out of the window. “Four people would be perfect,” he said. I looked away, and kept on driving.

  6

  KITCHEN TOWN