Spark

by Naoki Matayoshi

  “Whatever you want.”

  “I don’t want to look sad and pathetic, so when we get inside, I need you to get your dick hard and I need you to keep it up the whole time. If I get start to get emotional, I’ll just look at your trousers.”

  “Get my dick hard? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The thought of you getting your dick hard in the service of your sempai during his hour of need will make me laugh, and then I can be cool about it.” Kamiya was actually serious about this.

  “Isn’t that risky for me? What if the guy notices? He’ll beat me to a pulp, no questions asked.”

  “True. But it’s such an unusual reason to get beaten up. Think how you can show off the scars on a variety show one day.”

  “No way. And I know this is not good timing, Kamiya, but I really don’t like dirty jokes.”

  “Didn’t hurt when you hung out with me. I’m begging you, man. Just give it a try.”

  “All right, damn it. I’ll do it.”

  I couldn’t believe I was going to do it. I was really going to play the faithful kohai nobly defending his sempai by getting a hard-on. So what did I do? I pulled out my mobile phone to search the Internet for photos of naked women, saving the best for when I was going to need it.

  We arrived at Maki’s apartment, knocked and stood there nervously, waiting to be let in. Everything looked the same on this side of the grimy blue door, but it was hard even to breathe. Then the door opened.

  “Oh, Tokunaga. Thank you for coming,” Maki said, greeting us with her usual smile.

  Inside the warm apartment my jacket gave off a damp, wintry smell. At the other end of the room—in the spot usually occupied by Kamiya—sat a solid-looking man with a moustache, in workman’s clothes. He gave off an air of quiet menace, and didn’t bother to look at us as he sat there cross-legged staring at the TV, which had on a rerun of an episode of some drama. Maki would have told him that Kamiya was coming to get his things, but he couldn’t have known there would be two of us.

  “Excuse us,” I said, after clearing my throat.

  The man now glanced at us, still without speaking. But in that moment I saw in him a readiness to knife us if necessary. This was a man you could depend on.

  Kamiya started throwing his belongings into a bag, making frequent apologies to Maki as he did so. I stood between Kamiya and the man. Maybe I was trying to block Kamiya from the man’s sight, or maybe it was the other way round—I don’t know. All I know is I felt helpless to do anything else. Maki started to prepare tea for us, but Kamiya stopped her.

  “That’s everything I need. Sorry to trouble you, but can you throw out the rest, please?” he said to Maki.

  I wanted to weep. Kamiya speaking kindly always undid me.

  “Sure. I’ll tidy up and I can send you anything I think you might want. Let me know where.”

  Maki’s hair looked longer, but that might have been because she was wearing it loose.

  How was Kamiya doing? I looked at him. He was looking at my crotch. The guy truly was a fool. Pulling my mobile phone from my pocket, I searched for the grainy photos of naked women I’d saved earlier, and concentrated my best on getting hard. But these were just anonymous nude women who couldn’t compete with this drama I was witnessing here, where the complex web of human lives was playing out. Kamiya was still staring at my trousers. That guy’s crazy determination… memories of Maki… Kamiya’s hopeless kindness… It was up to me to destroy this beautiful world. I don’t know where the urge came from but I felt a hardening in my crotch. When Kamiya saw it happening, he burst out laughing.

  “We’re off then,” Kamiya said to Maki, as he slipped on his white All-Star sneakers.

  “Sorry to barge in on you,” I said, rushing to get out before him.

  “Sorry for everything,” Kamiya said. “And thanks, eh.”

  Maki made a face and stuck out her tongue.

  Kamiya laughed. “What’s that for?” he said and let go of the door.

  Smiling, Maki caught the door before it closed. “Take care of yourself,” she said. She made one last face, and the door gently clicked shut.

  “We’re done,” Kamiya said.

  Back on the street, with wintry wind whipping us, it felt as if we’d been cast out into the world. As we set off, Kamiya clutched his stomach in laughter.

  “Oh, man, how can you cry and get a hard-on at the same time? What are you—an oversexed baby?”

  “You’re the one who told me to.”

  I would probably never go back to that apartment again. Maybe never go back to Kami-Shakujii either. I wanted to etch this scene in my memory.

  “I saw you touching yourself in there. That was cheating!”

  “I had to. It was the sayonara of my respected sempai from his kind, generous girlfriend. A naked girl off the Internet wasn’t good enough.”

  Had I been useful to Kamiya?

  It was over ten years before I saw Maki again. One day she appeared in Inokashira Park, walking hand in hand with a young boy. Instinctively I hid from her sight. Although a little plumper, she looked much the same as always—truly beautiful, with that stunning smile, the one that made everyone around her happy. I watched as she walked slowly across Nanai Bridge, matching her steps to the boy’s. Maybe he was the child of the man in the workman’s clothes we saw in her apartment that day—no way I could tell. But just a glimpse of Maki smiling put me in seventh heaven. People can say what they like, but I will never belittle Maki. Maki’s life was beautiful. She always smiled at Kamiya and me with her whole heart, dirty and damaged as we were, and in spite of her own wounds. Nobody can ever take that beauty away from Maki. The boy who held her hand will be the happiest boy in the world. He’ll always see her face up closer than anyone else. I envy him.

  Rays of early summer sun were reflecting off the surface of Nanai Pond, scattering into beads of light. Kamiya would say I should’ve jumped into the pond to make Maki laugh. But I didn’t want to do anything that could destroy this lovely scene. Whatever anyone says: Maki’s life was beautiful. That boy will be the happiest person in the world.

  * * *

  After Kamiya left Maki’s, he couch-surfed at various acquaintances’ for the next six months. I went with him everywhere, looking for a place to live, but even in far and inconvenient locations, it was difficult to find anything halfway OK. Finally, he found an apartment in Mishuku, between Ikejiri-Ohashi and Sangenjaya, which was cheap and not too far from Shibuya.

  I felt pain from the loss of Maki too, and neither of us was our self at that time. We did things like buying matching table-tennis outfits and playing all night at a table-tennis joint in Shibuya. Or going drinking, when Kamiya would pay the bill of some guy we hadn’t even talked to, then watch his bewildered expression as we left. Or going to karaoke places and belting out heartfelt macho songs by Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi and Takuro Yoshida. Or getting bento lunches and picnicking in the Showa Memorial Park in Tachikawa. Kamiya got into the habit of dropping his trousers and mooning me in public, somersaulting and singing, “Young man, young man, young man—your gateway to success!”

  His debts ballooned. But seeing how Kamiya lived while I kept working late-night shifts at a convenience store in Koenji made me feel small and disgusted with myself. I was earning the minimum necessary to live in Tokyo, but even with the little I made as a comedian on top of that, I was a long way off the average income for my age. Sometimes I thought Kamiya was on the nobler path, being an artist 24/7. But that took a lot of guts and determination.

  We were on our way to the Futako-Tamagawa river flats with some cheap prepared food from the Marusho store in Ikejiri-Ohashi for our dinner. We had walked for nearly two hours, me holding on to a can of coffee all the way.

  “Attaboy,” Kamiya said, “carry around canned coffee like that every day and your right hand will morph into a coffee holder.”

  “Yeah, that’d be handy, but I’d only be able to write with a pen the size of a can,
” I replied.

  The food was in my backpack, and I worried the fried chicken was making my bag stink, so I suggested we find somewhere close to stop and eat. Kamiya rejected the idea outright.

  “Fried chicken is supposed to get you drooling, but the second you smell it in your backpack, you think it stinks. You’re choosing to delude yourself.”

  I was not convinced.

  “Much ado-doo, much ado-doo,” he said annoyingly.

  What could I say to that? That childish retort had such perfect pitch that any response was futile. Kamiya probably invented the nonsensical phrase—on the spot!

  Whenever I was with Kamiya, all the brain cells I never used in ordinary daily life got a workout, which was exhausting, but Kamiya was so wild and unpredictable that I could forget life’s hassles for a while. Even if he didn’t know any limits, I could talk with Kamiya. I couldn’t with other people. A part of me must have been convinced he had all the answers.

  “You don’t you care what people think, do you, Kamiya?” I asked, as we trudged along, now passing Komazawa-Daigaku Station. The question wasn’t entirely out of the blue. It was something we’d talked about before, but now that Sparks was starting to get theatre gigs, I was hearing more stuff about our act and thinking about it more.

  “I don’t like it when people sound off, but I don’t really care.”

  “Yeah, but what about the Internet? Don’t you care when you get trashed there?”

  “Ah, those motherfuckers. Do I look cool about it to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, there’s a lotta lies out there. But I check them out when I don’t have anything better to do.”

  I was nervous continuing this line of talk. I’d been trolled lately—something other comedians told me was par for the course—and I wanted Kamiya to blow it all off for me, make me feel better. But he wasn’t doing that, seemed to be holding back. Could I take what he had to say?

  “Some people say you shouldn’t fight back because it puts you on the same level as the fuckers who write all that shit,” he began. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I was probably one of those people.

  “What the hell does ‘level’ mean anyway?” he went on. “We’re all supposed to be human, right? If someone makes a mistake, just tell ’em. I learnt in kindergarten you shouldn’t do things other people don’t like. Fact is, kindergarten taught me a lot. Not everything, maybe. But how to say thank you, and sorry. And be grateful for your food. Decent shit. The people that diss me are kind of like kindergarten dropouts.”

  I was on his side there.

  “Those trolls who trash people on the Internet. Well, if they say something legitimate—about, like, your artistry or delivery—it can’t be helped. It’s OK, it’s the way it is. But if you let it get to you, not good. When people throw their knives, it can draw blood—I’d rather be punched. Whatever, you’re supposed to put up with it. Even though you’re bleeding. Even if you might wanna kill yourself.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know how to handle it.”

  “But this is how I see it. If trolling’s the only thing the troll’s got going for him, if he needs it to get through the night, well, OK, bring it on, I say. Go ahead, slag my character and treat me like I’m subhuman. I won’t like it, but I’ll survive. Say the shittiest, most hurtful thing you can think of—great! I’ll be fucking furious. But I really believe when you get trolled, you gotta get that anger out of your system. Don’t just let it all roll off you—take that malicious bullshit head-on and call it out for what it is: malicious bullshit. Don’t be hypocritical and say you get where the troll’s coming from, don’t offer cheap sympathy and pretend they got a point, so they’ll forgive you not being the way they want you to be. But it’s frigging exhausting to argue. Some people love to argue, but it only wears you out.

  “Say you’re a troll, you hurt someone, the satisfaction only lasts a moment. One brief moment. And while you’re feeling satisfied, nothing changes. For sure, nothing changes for the better. You put people down only to make yourself feel better, or important, or whatever. But in the meantime you don’t mature. You’re stuck as a troll. That’s pitiful. You’re a victim. Committing slow suicide, in my opinion. Trolls are in the same category as drug addicts. No way you should do drugs, but if a person’s an addict, someone has to help them quit. So you have to tell them: trolling’s the easy way out, but you’re wasting your time. Give it up while you still have a life.”

  Well and good, even brilliant, but there was nothing to be gained for me in standing up like that.

  “Does what they say bother you?” Kamiya asked.

  “The responses on the questionnaires get to me a lot.”

  “Ah, those surveys they hand out to audiences at the theatres. What about the Net?”

  “Yeah, that too.”

  I got into manzai because I wanted to do comedy, so when I hear I’m not funny, it cuts pretty close to the heart.

  “If you care too much about what people say, you’ll only get tired. Does it make you change what you do?”

  “Nah.”

  “See. We’re not that slick. Do what you want. If you’re good, you can eat; if you’re not, you get dumped. That’s all it is, right?”

  That’s all it was supposed to be. Is that all it was for Kamiya? For me, I wasn’t sure.

  By the time we arrived at the river flats, the reddening in the western sky had reached the clouds above our heads. We sat side by side, eating potato salad and cold, tough fried chicken. I brought my backpack up to Kamiya’s face with the zipper slightly open and he thrust his nose in.

  “Whoah,” he exclaimed, backing away.

  Though Kamiya revelled in his bad boy image to a certain degree, he was friendly in the extreme to people he liked. Especially towards anyone who once got close to him. That didn’t mean I was any less wary of him, though. No matter how kind he was, his ideas about humour often left me feeling small.

  We were walking in Setagaya Park. All around us the leaves were turning the colours of autumn, all but one tree, a maple, which remained stubbornly green.

  “Master, why is this tree the only tree with green leaves?”

  “Because the new guy forgot to paint it,” Kamiya promptly replied.

  “Does God have a department for that?” I asked.

  “No. It’s the guy in work clothes. The one with a holey sock and a missing front tooth,” Kamiya said, with an undertone of sudden irritation.

  I just let it hang there.

  “You know, Tokunaga,” he said, “if I say something that makes no sense, you always try to make it make sense by filling in the gaps. That’s a talent too, but you’re nuts if you have to make everything neat. I say something strange but you can’t let it be—it’s all gotta be real, right? The person who paints the leaves is a man with a hole in one sock and missing a front tooth. His daughter wants to go to an expensive private school with a big brass band, so he’s working his butt off to make the tuition, but the daughter can’t stand the smell of his sweat or his hair in the bathtub. Right?”

  “Yes, that’s right.” How else could I answer?

  “So if a rookie god forgot to paint the maple or a dirty worker forgot to paint the maple, whose fault is it? Who’s more likely to be real?”

  “The man, of course.”

  “Fucking right!”

  “Why’re you so mad all of a sudden?”

  Kamiya proceeded to put on a show of being angry now, making out like he hadn’t been from the start, but I think what really upset Kamiya was that his gag had got twisted halfway through and he was frustrated. Moments like this were a real bummer. Kamiya could tell on a gut level if something was funny—as opposed to wild or outrageous, or a question of technique that allowed the audience to get it. My gut was nowhere near so advanced. I could never get to his level.

  I could smell fresh earth rising from the roots of the maples. The trees swaying in the wind cast their shadows on our path. I stro
ked my face with both hands, as it threatened to twitch.

  My mobile phone rang, from a number I didn’t recognize. I didn’t pick up, but listened to the recorded message: “Obayashi here. Call me when you get this.”

  Obayashi was Kamiya’s partner. What did he want? The unwritten rule of manzai was that members of a duo kept away from younger comedians their partner was friendly with. It wasn’t a hard-and-fast rule or anything, just an understanding to keep things simple.

  Obayashi and I met near Koenji Station and went to a nearby yakitori shop. Inside, a variety entertainment programme blared from the old television, the screen darkened by smoke from the grill and grease.

  “You doing all right?” Obayashi asked.

  He downed his beer in one gulp and immediately ordered another. Kamiya had told me about this habit. “He thinks he’s Popeye or something,” Kamiya had said. I didn’t know if Popeye drank beer.

  “Yeah, same old same old,” I said. “But hey, you’re not wearing your wooden clogs today.”

  “Never worn clogs in my life!”

  Fact is, Obayashi always wore heavy work boots.

  “Did you leave the dog tied up to a utility pole?”

  “You’re thinking of someone else!”

  Obayashi’s voice, unlike Kamiya’s, was naturally loud.

  “Is it OK for you to be out in public?”

  “Hey, who’d recognize me!”

  I had this thing with Obayashi that whenever we met, I always spoke to him as if he was Saigo Takamori, the last samurai. We’d been doing this shit for over five years, even if Obayashi still hadn’t figured out he was Saigo Takamori. I liked him a lot, but we kept our distance. He could be insensitive sometimes.

  After he finished his second beer, Obayashi got to the point. “Listen, in case you don’t know, Kamiya’s up to his neck in debt.” He looked pained, and he made no effort to lower his voice.

  “Yeah, I know.”