Kappa Quartet

by Daryl Qilin Yam

  “Something will happen,” he said, “on the day that you die.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You will meet with four important people,” he said. “Four important individuals. And each one of those individuals will help you move on.”

  “Move on to what?”

  My father shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about my father, lately, and what he said about the four people I would meet. It’d been years since he passed away, and I had dismissed it as ramblings at the time. And yet these days, as I inch closer and closer to my own death, I find myself wondering if there is any truth to his claim.

  According to my father, it runs in the family. When his grandaunt died, her four children surrounded her, each one with a hand on her body. The night before his second cousin died in her sleep, she said she’d been dreaming of lovers past: Wei Kiat, Navin, Boon, and Ah Xiang. And on the day my grandfather died, he said he had seen his wife, holding hands with his childhood friend, a man he hadn’t seen in thirty-six years. Later he had a vision—a hallucinatory fit of some sort—in which he saw his older brother, dragged out of the house by a Japanese soldier. The soldier didn’t shoot him: he’d just wanted to hear a man plead for his life. And then my grandfather had his stroke.

  I don’t know whom my father saw on the day he passed away. My mother and I were home that morning, silently watching the news. We were still waiting for the cab to come round.

  •

  Alvin and I went to the bookstore, earlier today. The dusk had settled over Nakameguro, over its bare trees and neat hedges—over the river itself, lying low and waiting in the canal. On the opposite side stood a block of flats, its east-facing windows and balconies thrown open to the breeze. Alvin asked if I had found the right place, and I told him that I had. It was just different now.

  I looked through the windows. The café was warm, and bright, and I could see the counter, stocked with cakes and pastries on display. Placed at the back was a coffee machine, all coppery and brass in the honey light. A bell rang as the door swung open—and I could hear music, coming from inside the café. It spilled out the same way light does, in sharp swathes across the sidewalk.

  Holding the door open was a waitress. She had a wide forehead, and was pleasant looking, and seemed to be about the same age as I was. A slight frown had creased her forehead as I asked, in English, if we were at the right place for the address.

  “Yes,” she said, haltingly. “This is café.”

  “Okay,” I said. The word Lisa was printed across her nametag. I asked Lisa if this café used to be a bookstore. She bit her lip.

  “I’m so sorry. I don’t—I don’t know…”

  There was a pause. I looked at Alvin, and Alvin looked back at me. During that pause, neither Alvin nor I did anything, unsure as to what our next step should be. Lisa then asked if we would like to come in anyway. Alvin smiled, and said that we would like to. “It’ll be nice,” he said, with a hand on my back. “Let’s do this.”

  Lisa brought us to a table, situated in a far corner of the café. Alvin and I took our seats. There was an empty space in the centre, in which stood a piano, a drum set and a double bass. Lisa walked away and returned with the English menu, followed by a poster of two men and two women. The four of them stood under a headline, typed out in bold: The Kappa Quartet.

  “Playing soon,” Lisa said. She placed her finger on the taller of the two men, the one holding a saxophone. She said the guy was her friend. She giggled. “This is my friend,” she said again.

  Fifteen minutes later, the Kappa Quartet began to play. The four members had been seated beside the piano the whole time, chatting to one another, warming up for the upcoming set; when it was time they rose and took their positions, to a smattering round of applause. Lisa came back with our orders just then, placing our drinks on the table.

  “My friend,” said Lisa for the third time. She held the tray close to her chest. “That is my friend.”

  Their first song was a slow tune, soft and easy: it was an atmosphere, I realised—an ambience they sought to enhance. You could slip in and out of the music, whenever you chose to, and yet you found yourself changed by it somehow, little by little over time. It was that kind of song. When I looked over at Lisa, I saw how an unknown yet delicate quality had smoothed over her features, lending her a softness, a comfort I had never seen in a person before. I found myself staring at her, for as long as I could, until she walked away again, off to serve another table. Her friend continued to play.

  I kept my eye on her for the rest of the evening. In my head, we had entire conversations, in languages neither of us understood. When she came by again she attended to an elderly couple, seated two tables away, and the three of them murmured amongst themselves, out of respect for the players. I turned my attention to Alvin. Alvin looked the same as he had the last time; he hadn’t changed at all over the past two years. Earlier he’d ordered a flat white, and said he wanted nothing else.

  “I’m not hungry,” he’d said to me. “I don’t want to eat anything.”

  There was a round of applause. Thank you, the pianist said, speaking into a microphone. Domo arigatou. The café was getting full now, crowded even, as dinnertime approached its peak. According to the poster, the band would play again at nine, for their second set of the evening: John Coltrane, it was written on the poster. A Love Supreme. But the ongoing first set, it seemed to me, featured the Quartet’s original compositions.

  The band started their next song. First, the piano played a series of chords; the drummer then joined in, gentle on the snare; Lisa’s friend, the saxophonist, remained quiet as the double bassist started to strum. His turn would come soon, undoubtedly, but for now their music reverberated, along a single, rippling, unified plane.

  “Do you listen to jazz?” I asked Alvin. He said he didn’t.

  “Do you?”

  I shook my head.

  “They’re good though, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “They’re very good.”

  I spied one final look at Lisa. She was now at a fair distance, looking at the Kappa Quartet play, from her place behind the counter. She seemed comfortable, somehow, hiding in the shadows. And yet her face had a way of catching the light, in a way I couldn’t explain. At that moment I realised that there are people out there who look like love, and then there are others for which love looks just like them. The difference was unmistakeable. Alvin asked what I was looking at, about halfway through the third song—and I said I was looking at something, but not particularly anything. He said okay.

  Mr Five arrived a while later. The band had disappeared after their first set was over: they’d left their instruments and scores behind, and made a quick exit behind the counter. A burst of applause had escaped from the kitchen, just seconds before the door swung shut, and the café filled up once more with banter, with conversation, as waiters and waitresses went round to every table, placing a lighted candle on each.

  A bright yellow orb flickered in every flame. At the front of the café was a large window, with a wide view of the street outside, but the scenery was barely visible at night: all I could see instead was another café, a ghostly café just like this one, with the tables arranged around a clearing in the middle. The people in that café floated above the river, amongst the branches of the trees, their smiling faces hovering over the canal. And everywhere in that window was a dark fog, pressing on all sides, framing the lovely scene. And then the bell rang—the door swung open—and the vision of that café disappeared. It was all just an illusion.

  A man walked into the café. Lisa followed closely behind him. He wore an ivory-coloured three-piece suit, and a wine-coloured tie to match. Alvin and I watched as he made his way towards us, in a manner both slow and purposeful. He moved as though time hardly mattered to him at all.

  “Good evening,” said Mr Five, coming to a s
top beside our table. “The both of you look very lost.”

  Alvin and I got into the backseat of his car. Mr Five had parked in the basement lot of a nearby building complex, and he had to follow the signs, pointing the way to the exit: he turned and turned, until he got us on the road. It was the same silver Lexus as before, roomy and yet somehow nondescript. Alvin said something about boxes, and Mr Five merely smiled.

  “Do you have everything?” he said. “Everything you need?” He then paused: he was waiting for an answer. I took a quick glance at Alvin’s bag, placed between his knees.

  “We do,” said Alvin. “Everything’s with us.”

  “That is good,” said Mr Five. He made a turn to the right. “Would either of you mind if I played music from the radio?”

  “I don’t mind,” said Alvin.

  “And you?”

  I told him me neither. “It’s your car, Mr Five,” I said.

  Mr Five smiled once again. He kept his eyes on the road before him. “It is my car, indeed. But tonight I am merely the driver.”

  Alvin and I remained quiet. The both of us knew what he meant. With one hand still on the wheel, Mr Five reached an arm out, and slowly adjusted a dial. The music started and stopped, as he scrolled past the various stations: a split second of a pop song—a split second of a commercial—a split second of laughter, over what I would never know. Finally, he let go of the dial. Classical music started to play.

  “Do you recognise this?” he asked.

  There was no reply.

  “It’s Wagner,” he said. “Tristan und Isolde.”

  A few minutes passed. The car sped down the expressway, with hardly a moment for pause. All was silent in the car, except for the music: the music rose and swelled, as the drama began to climb. Nothing seemed capable of stopping the music from growing—it surged, richer and clearer from the radio, demanding more and more from the listener, from the players, from life. I wanted to thank Mr Five, for planning the music somehow, even though I knew there was no way he could have timed it so perfectly. But the words left my mouth. According to Mr Five, what we’d heard was only just the prelude.

  “The rest of the opera is five hours long,” he said. “So this is only just the beginning.”

  I nodded. “Do you remember how we met, Mr Five?”

  “I do,” he said. “At the corner of a bookshop.”

  I smiled.

  “And tonight we meet again.”

  Two hours later, I saw the hotel. At first I saw a small light, then a bigger light, and eventually an entire building, the Hotel Koryu, as the car coursed its way down the road, in and out of the tunnel. It stood brilliantly against the night, amidst the trees of the hillside: you could see every single one of its windows, casting light onto the roadbed. A coach bus was parked on the other side of the car park, from which a group of tourists alighted. They clambered onto the gravel, one by one, and made their way to the hotel.

  In the corner of the lounge was the fireplace, burning quietly on its own. A number of guests ambled about, to and from the dining hall, the public baths. Alvin and I stood behind Mr Five as he spoke to the manager, explaining to her the situation. He then turned around.

  “You have a room on the fourth floor,” he said. “These are the keys that you will be needing.”

  Alvin took hold of them.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You are welcome, Mr Alvin.”

  Alvin then thanked the manager, standing behind the front desk. The manager merely smiled, and bowed towards us both. Mr Five chuckled.

  “A moment ago she told me a very curious thing. Apparently it is the first time my acquaintances have ever returned to this hotel.”

  “Really?” said Alvin.

  “Yes,” said Mr Five. He appeared wistful. “It has never happened before, according to her memory. Usually they leave and never come back.”

  There was a pause. Mr Five then turned towards me, and extended a hand.

  “This will be the last time you and I will ever meet, Mr Kevin.”

  I took his hand. I looked straight into his eyes as I shook it.

  “Thank you, Mr Five.”

  The man smiled. He didn’t let go of my hand, but instead continued to hold on to it.

  “I will remember you. Always. Farewell, my friend.”

  Our room was a small one, with just enough space for the two of us. Alvin set his bag down beside the television, and started laying out the futon. I went over to the closet and slid open the door. There were two sets of yukatas, hanging on the rack.

  “Look at this,” I said, taking them out. “One for each of us.”

  Alvin and I changed out of our clothes, and put on the robes. They were both yellow, patterned with morning glories.

  “You look nice,” Alvin said. I smiled at him.

  “You look nice too,” I said.

  The two of us stepped out of our room. We locked the door behind us. We were on the top floor of the hotel, its hallway both long and spacious. There were only rooms up here. A window stood at either end, through which you could see nothing but black. How familiar. Alvin turned towards me.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked.

  “Let’s take our time,” I said.

  He smiled.

  “Let’s do that.”

  Alvin and I walked down the hallway, from one end to the next, from the fourth floor to the first. I ran my hand across the walls as we did so, over every door we passed by. I told myself to remember every touch, every sensation, every change in feeling. I told myself to take in every detail, every scene, every moment to carry over.

  We were down on the first floor when Alvin said that he wanted to use the baths.

  “You don’t mind, do you?”

  I shook my head.

  “How long will you take?”

  He said he wouldn’t be long. “What will you do while I’m away?” he asked.

  I gestured towards the resting area.

  “I’ll be here waiting,” I said.

  I stood and watched him go. The curtain swayed as he disappeared. I then turned around, and made my way towards the vending machines. There were six of them, big ones, standing in one long row. There was a sign towards my right, and I saw a woman standing there with her arms crossed.

  “I can’t decide,” she said.

  I turned back to the vending machines.

  “Me too,” I replied.

  The woman shook her head. She was olive-skinned, with long and curly hair, which she had tied in a large bun over her head. She had large breasts, as well as wide hips, and so her yukata didn’t fit her properly. I guessed she must have been part of the tour group I’d just seen, earlier from inside Mr Five’s car.

  “I think I’ll go with coffee,” she said.

  “That’s nice.”

  She turned towards me.

  “And what will you have?”

  I looked at the vending machine before me.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  The woman grew silent. She then tilted her to head to the side, as she tapped her lip with a finger. “Maybe I won’t go with coffee after all,” she said in a soft murmur.

  For the next minute or so, neither one of us said a word. And neither one of us made a move. Eventually I said, “I think I’ll go with milk.”

  The woman grinned.

  “Me too.”

  I popped a few coins into the vending machine, and watched as my bottle fell down with a clang. The woman followed suit, ordering a bottle from the exact same brand. The two of us then made our way towards a large sofa in the middle of the resting area, and popped open the caps. We took our first sips together.

  “I’m Kevin, by the way.”

  “Hi, Kevin,” the woman said. “Where are you from?”

  “Singapore.”

  “Ah,” she said. “My friends and I spent quite a while there, when we were younger.” She paused, briefly. “My name’s Ana.”

  “Hi, A
na.”

  She smiled.

  “It’s spelt A-N-A, in case you were wondering. There’s only one N.”

  I asked her why. Ana shrugged.

  “My parents were hippies,” she said. “They actually lived in a commune, for a significant period of time. They only time my mother didn’t smoke pot was when I was in her belly. After she gave birth to me, the commune collectively decided that I should be named after an artist.”

  “Wow.”

  Ana shrugged again. “Do you know Ana Mendieta?”

  I shook my head.

  “She died,” she said. “Fell from the window of her apartment. This happened about a week before I was born.”

  Both of us drank again.

  “What kind of art did she do?” I asked.

  “She was a performance and conceptual artist,” Ana replied. “She’d use dirt to make these amazing, life-like sculptures. She used blood as well, animal carcasses too. She was obsessed with that kind of thing. With mortality. With Mother Nature. She’d burn these objects made in her likeness, and then film the entire process.”

  “And are you an artist as well?”

  She smiled, somewhat sadly.

  “I’m not, I’m afraid. Sorry to disappoint. I tried to be, in the past, but I’m just not cut out for it.”

  “Why not?”

  She laughed.

  “Don’t make me answer that question, young man.”

  “All right. It must be strange,” I said, “to be named after something you’re not.”

  Ana’s smile grew sadder.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what they were thinking, to be honest. Naming me after someone who had just died.”

  There was a pause. We stared at the bottles of milk in our hands.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Ana shook her head.

  “You did nothing, young man. I’ve been hurt before.”

  There was another pause. For a moment we simply watched the television screens before us, each one tuned to a different channel. There was an animal documentary on one. On another was a news item of some sort, of a car that had crashed into a tree.