Spark

by Naoki Matayoshi

  “Even tougher.”

  All the while I could hear this background noise of talking and laughing and now bursts of applause. I bet Kamiya was sitting in front of the television with a drink, shooting the crap with me.

  I hung up and went back to Yamashita, regretting having stayed away so long. But I was much calmer now. Yamashita was sitting on the bench with his legs crossed, waving one grubby Jack Purcell sneaker-clad foot in the air and staring at the screen of his mobile phone.

  “I’m gonna apologize for three things,” he said abruptly.

  This was new. He’d never apologized for anything before. Naturally I’d never apologized to him either. That’s how it is in a comedy duo, you have this special kind of relationship, kind of hard to explain, but it doesn’t include saying sorry for being rude. Not to mention that we’d known each other since junior high and weren’t in the habit of saying sorry over each little thing.

  “First, I want to apologize for saying I had something more important to do than practise.”

  It looked like he really was going to apologize for three things.

  “Next is for criticizing your material when I never write any myself.”

  He really was doing this apology thing properly. All of a sudden I felt embarrassed.

  “And the last one—” He broke off and went silent.

  At first I thought maybe he was too choked with emotion to speak, but it didn’t look that way from the expression on his face. He kept spitting on the ground, aiming at the same spot, which was something he always did when he didn’t know what to do. Maybe he forgot the third thing he was going to apologize for. He was an idiot in some ways too.

  People on their way home brought the bustle of the shopping street with them as they crossed the park. We left it at that and stayed sitting on the bench as if nothing had happened, our words dissolving in the night air.

  * * *

  From the window of the train going to Shibuya, I saw cherry trees in full bloom everywhere I looked. So pink-white they were almost blinding. I don’t remember when it was I started to hate spring. I turned my attention to the inside of the train packed with students and company employees. The sight irritated me no end.

  My life was going nowhere. I spent all day every day practising, but the effort wasn’t translating into income. I got by on what I made from working late-night shifts in convenience stores. The nights when I wasn’t working I went drinking with Kamiya. It was only the theatre gigs that Yamashita and I did several times a month which made my life worthwhile. I depended on them to get me through the days.

  At Shibuya, I made my way through the crowds around the station and walked up Center Street to a building that housed, besides business offices, a small theatre that seated less than a hundred. Theatre D was an important venue for young comedians in Tokyo, where many got their first experience onstage. There used to be a regular live event held here called the Shibuya All-Stars Festival. The agencies would send their up-and-coming comedians along to it, but I never saw anybody who seemed like star material appear here, us included. The only hopefuls to ever enter the cramped dressing room were those young wannabes who had crawled through the streets of Shibuya, dressed in dirty clothing, until they finally got in the door here. I was intrigued by how they all wore different smiles. Some really were smiling with enjoyment. Others smiled uncertainly, not knowing what expression to wear going into the dressing room. Still others had obsequious smiles. And some didn’t even notice they were smiling. Not wanting my own face to be observed, I always opened the door quietly and looked down when I entered.

  Today the dressing room was a fug of man smell and cigarette smoke. I searched for Sparks on the list of performers and saw we were scheduled third in the first group. Then I saw the Doofuses listed as well, somewhere in the middle. So Kamiya was here today, too.

  “Valued customer.” I heard the voice and felt a tap on my shoulder simultaneously, and swung around. It was Kamiya.

  “Good morning,” I said, in the backstage greeting used no matter what time of day or night. “So we’re both on today.”

  Since we worked for different agencies, I almost never ran into Kamiya at shows.

  “Yes, we are,” he replied with an expression I couldn’t read.

  We talked, and continued whatever we were talking about as we headed out on to the emergency stairwell where Kamiya smoked a cigarette. He seemed a bit subdued. We chatted right up until it was time for rehearsals to start, and it wasn’t until I was on the train going home that evening that the thought occurred to me. A man in a business suit vomited in the railway car I was in, so everyone, including me, got off at the next stop and went into the next carriage. In the mass of people escaping the smell, I was pushed down the centre aisle, pressed tight against other passengers. I twisted my torso so I could breathe better, and did what people do when they find themselves in real tight quarters: look up at the ceiling. And there, hanging in an ad banner, were the words valued customer. Suddenly it hit me: that was Kamiya’s greeting in the theatre. I had made a major blunder! I hadn’t processed the innocence of those two words, “valued customer”—they were the perfect opening—and I hadn’t responded at all. “Aaagh,” I groaned aloud, wanting to kick myself.

  At the first opportunity I composed a text and zipped it off: Thanks for today. Just remembered you said Valued Customer when we met in the dressing room. Very sorry I gave a straight answer and blew a unique entrance line opportunity from my sensei. Singing sutras a la Pachelbel

  I got a reply right away: if u r really sorry please forget. its kindest. thought u didn’t hear so decided tomorrow is another day. the messiah of suburbia

  This was tricky. I wanted to know what kind of flow Kamiya had anticipated after that intro, but the moment was lost, it’d be dumb to ask now. Although I sort of knew how Kamiya’s mind worked, that didn’t mean I knew his actual thoughts. You can’t imagine what’s in the mind of someone whose talent is greater than your own. Just like it’s pointless to look at stab wounds in your flesh and crow over the fact you can tell whose swordsmanship it is. I couldn’t give anybody the same kind of stab wounds. I felt like an idiot.

  Our ranges of expression were vastly different. Kamiya didn’t hesitate to use violent or sexual language for the sake of being funny, while I was afraid of being misunderstood and offending somebody if I did. He didn’t have that limitation. He wasn’t deliberately trying to be a renegade by talking dirty regardless of who heard it. For him it was purely a process of deciding what was funny and what was not, and not seeing any need to exclude obscenity—if it happened to come up. I had other considerations and tended to weed out the slightest suggestion of anything lewd. If I was trying to paint a picture of a particular scene I had in mind and there happened to be potential for explicit language along the way, I’d turn back from any path leading up to it. Kamiya saw through me and said I wasn’t true to myself, that it was a fault. Kamiya kept consistently to his philosophy of using no other benchmark than whether or not something was funny. When I avoided dirty jokes, it was because the part of me that didn’t want to be mean or offensive won out over the part that wanted to be funny. That was the part of me that Kamiya said was defective. It’s also why Kamiya was the only person I had no objection to using coarse language in front of.

  My mobile phone vibrated again: another message from Kamiya. With trepidation I opened it. tell the truth, we changed our material last minute cos you were there and i wanted to look good. but we didnt win so what was the point. will win next time. crunching tackle by mother teresa

  Reading that brought back more memories of the day, just as I’d been trying to forget it. The Doofuses had taken fourth place and Sparks sixth. These results were decided by audience vote, which meant that already-popular duos and acts who’d invited friends to be in the audience had an advantage, but Kamiya maintained that, apart from family, all votes were up for grabs. Popular duos had once been strangers to their fans and had w
orked hard to win them over, so it was only fair that they could invite them along. But if a duo didn’t perform well one day and their fans voted for someone else, and that duo happened to be eliminated, no matter what their potential, those same fans might be the ones to end their careers. As far as Kamiya was concerned, it took skill to make people think you had potential. Like a guy with no money who convinces his girlfriend he’s going to be rich someday, so she’s happy to keep supporting him. Still, I thought we should be evaluated based on our performance on the given day. Besides, while Kamiya might have sounded like he was obsessed with winning, he had principles on how go about it to which he appeared to adhere.

  Today’s winner had been a solo comedian called Shikatani, a rookie in his first year. He had clean-cut features but an unusually long upper lip gave his face an unbalanced appearance, so that all he had to do was to try and look serious and the audience exploded with laughter. His act had been in the form of a lecture on the coolest use of certain words and phrases, which he’d pasted on a flip chart. But he’d overdone it with the glue and the pages kept sticking every time he tried to turn them. Whenever this happened he yelled angrily at the flip chart, “You gotta be kidding, this is bullshit! I was up all night making this!” The audience loved it: his bumbling misfortune coupled with a human vulnerability was a winning combination. He also didn’t appear to grasp what was happening, and was half in tears as he vented his frustration at the flip chart, saying over and over, “You gotta be kidding, this is bullshit! People are paying money to see this!” In the end he finished up in a sulk and went offstage.

  He’s a strange guy. The first time I met him, he came up to shake my hand and said, without even introducing himself, “I like you, Tokunaga. Good meeting ya.” Another time he said, casual as anything, “Tokunaga, how about joining the Shikatani Corps as my strategist. Let’s rule the country.” That’s the kind of guy he was. The type I was least comfortable with. After being announced as today’s winner, he didn’t look pleased in the least; all he did was shout at the audience: “You’re joking, this is bullshit! They’re all gonna hate me in the dressing room for this.” Everybody in the theatre broke down in laughter.

  I could’ve gone on forever obsessing over today’s event, but decided to text Kamiya a reply and go to sleep. The Doofuses were really funny today. From a drainpipe who’s the dead spit of your girlfriend. It wasn’t my place to pass judgement on a sempai’s act, but it was what I honestly thought. What about Sparks? I suddenly got anxious. The Doofuses had style. Did we? Thinking about this brought on another wave of anxiety. After I got under the covers, another message arrived from Kamiya: sorry about the time. would a future great come 4th in that place? shouldnt ask a person who was 10th. edison invented darkness

  Here was the thing I was most trying to avoid thinking about. Getting depressed when things don’t go well onstage is a gut reaction. It can’t be helped. The only way to chase away the blues is to get laughs at the next gig. On a night like this even Kamiya was jarring. In Tokyo, there are nights when everyone is a stranger.

  6th. We came 6th. Edison’s invention was a dark basement. I pressed send and forced myself to close my eyes. But all night my chest felt like it was weighed down with lead.

  For a stretch I saw Kamiya every day, but there were other periods when we never met. It was during one of those times when a girl I knew from a previous part-time job asked me if I’d be a guinea pig for her to practise dyeing hair. I said yes without really thinking, but there might have been an element of wanting to change myself in it. My long hair was cut short and dyed silver. Then I changed my clothes to all black, to go with the hair. Since I never made any distinction between ordinary clothes and stage clothes, I dressed like this all the time.

  I hadn’t seen Kamiya for a while. Then one night I received a text from him around ten: you eat already? I didn’t know what to answer at that hour. Did he really want to eat with me, or did he just want to talk about something? I should’ve just answered honestly, I suppose, but it was possible Kamiya had already eaten.

  I composed a reply: Sorry, already eaten, but can I join you? The holy pickpocket. The response was immediate: hey man, u being polite with me? rice cake

  We met at Kichijoji. Kamiya uttered an uncertain exclamation of surprise when he saw my changed appearance. We walked to Inokashira Park, down the stairs alongside the yakitori restaurant Iseya and through trees shrouded in mist, and when we saw a dazzlingly bright vending machine, our feet naturally made for it. After putting several coins in the slot, Kamiya dug through the purse in his wallet for more. I pulled out a ten-yen coin and stepped up to insert it.

  “Leave it!” Kamiya yelled. He continued poking about angrily in his wallet. The coins he’d already inserted came tumbling back out because too much time had passed. Still he kept searching through his wallet.

  “That’s not going to make any coins appear,” I said.

  “Think I don’t know?! But if you pay ten yen, it’s splitting the bill,” he said, in a tone that suggested nothing could be worse.

  “Kamiya, I just want a bottle of tea. And you only need thirty yen more. I can afford it.”

  “Are you thick? That’s enough!” With a look of resignation he pulled a thousand-yen note from his wallet and put it in the slot to be swallowed up.

  We took our drinks to Nanai Bridge and sipped them while we gazed at the lights of large condominium buildings on the other side of the lake.

  “Taste good?” Kamiya whispered, peering into my face.

  “Yep. If I had a time machine, I’d take this tea back so the grand tea-master Sen no Rikyu could try it.”

  “Hideyoshi’d probably poke his nose in for a taste too.” Kamiya narrowed his eyes in a smile.

  “How’s your coffee?”

  “Delicious. I take back all the times I said ‘mighty delicious’ at the local noodle shop I went to when I was a kid.”

  We heard the call of what sounded like a large bird coming from the western side of the park, where there was a zoo.

  “Can’t that local shop be delicious in your memory too?”

  “Nah, nowhere near, compared to this canned coffee. Apologies to the dear old lady.”

  “That’s so sad. They’re not even the same thing. They could both be delicious.”

  The wind lifted the fringe of my hair and ruffled it. Somewhere, a dog barked in concert with the bird.

  Kamiya always insisted on paying for me no matter how little money he had or how small or big the cost. That might have been the custom in the entertainment business—the sempai paying for the kohai—but for someone like Kamiya who didn’t make much as a comedian, and even worked occasionally as a day labourer, it wasn’t easy. We never went to expensive restaurants, but wherever we were he always urged me to order my favourite foods. Which made it all the more shocking when I saw the pile of empty containers of Cup Noodles on the sink in Maki’s kitchen. Was that what he was eating at home? When he didn’t have money, he borrowed from quick-loan outlets and took me out drinking on that. He called credit cards magic. We went out a lot on money that Maki gave him. He was completely guileless, never pretending, always just saying, “It’s Maki’s money.” I felt terrible when I thought about how hard Maki had to work for the money, but it was also hard seeing Kamiya like that. I didn’t understand why it was even necessary for us to go out drinking. I suspected that money—or the lack of it—was behind those periods when he disappeared from sight. So I decided to try and stop him spending so much on me.

  Kamiya asked me questions about my silver hair and new look. Black clothes, I said, looked cool with the silver of my hair. He seemed to accept that. Fashion was beyond his ken, but he objected to the idea of fashion trends being expressions of individuality. Even if a look was different or eccentric, that didn’t make it solely that person’s individual style. It was only the individual style of the person who invented it, and everybody else was just copying. But there were exceptions, for exam
ple, like wearing a Pierrot costume all year round. A Pierrot costume might have been created by someone else, but wearing it on a daily basis was original.

  “But say that person doesn’t want to wear the Pierrot costume in summer because it’s too hot but feels they have to, that’s when they become an imitation of themselves. Anyone who decides they should look a certain way and lives according to those rules is basically just impersonating themselves, no? That’s why I can’t get into creating a persona.”

  This was vintage Kamiya—way out there, pure and exacting, and probably masochistic too. I wouldn’t have cared so much, I suppose, if he said all this in his goofy, crazy way, but he sounded like he was on a mission.

  “You know what,” I began, “I like corduroy trousers, but I won’t wear beige corduroy trousers.”

  “Why?”

  “Corduroy trousers have lots of vertical lines in them, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, beige is the kind of colour that makes you look big, you know, but it clashes with vertical lines that are supposed to make you look slim. People who wear beige corduroy trousers may like to wear corduroy, but they get the bigger picture wrong.”

  “Man, you are dee-tailed. Here I am, thinking we’re sort of saying the same thing, but you’re on a totally different page,” Kamiya laughed.

  My thing with beige corduroy trousers had started in high school. Our Japanese teacher had been mocked for wearing them, but I thought they were cool. I liked the texture, and bought a pair of second-hand navy corduroy trousers that I wore often. So then my classmates made fun of me too. But later when the retro style came into fashion, everybody who’d ridiculed me also started wearing corduroy trousers. I couldn’t believe it. Try as I might I could never get over my antipathy for them.

  “Enough about beige corduroy trousers. You’re just getting off on saying the words.”

  With this, Kamiya threw his empty coffee can into a rubbish bin. “Drum-drum, drummer boy! Drummer boy in a red cap!” he suddenly burst out singing. “Wake up, dragon! To the beat of the drum!” The eerie melody, if you could call it that, resounded through the night in the park.