Four Seasons in Japan, page 11
Sweating from the afternoon sun, Flo left the shrine and carried on her way around the lake. She stopped at the Thai restaurant in the park for lunch, and it was while she was eating that she saw the email notification on her phone.
She opened it up and read.
FROM: Grant Cassidy
TO: Flo Dunthorpe
SUBJECT: Sound of Water
Dear Flo,
I am interested – do you have any more to share?
G
Flo let out a whoop of excitement. Had the prayer actually worked? And that quickly? But then she put her hand over her open mouth almost immediately.
What an idiot she’d been, impulsively sending that sample to Grant. She didn’t have more to share. She hadn’t even contacted the Japanese publisher yet.
She didn’t even know who the author was.
Summer
* * *
Drops dripped. The sound of the rain was all that could be heard in the house.
‘What are you drawing?’
Both Kyo and Ayako had been sitting in silence for some time, enjoying the peace and quiet of an idle Sunday.
Kyo was just outside the open screen doors, seated on the wooden veranda looking out into the small garden, sketching in his notebook. He leant against a wooden doorframe, sheltered from the rain by the eaves with Coltrane curled up on the floor, resting against his leg. Ayako was at the low table in the dining room, drinking a cup of green tea and looking out at the rain falling steadily. She had been studying the garden with its carefully clipped trees, watching the koi carp swimming together in the little pond beneath the Japanese maple tree – its green leaves slick with rain. But occasionally her eyes flicked to the boy, watching him working away on his drawing. Coltrane had taken to visiting the house more, ever since the boy had come. This both irked Ayako and pleased her. She was mildly jealous at the bond they’d formed, but also, it spoke highly of the boy – Coltrane was a good judge of character.
The rainy season was upon them, and now they were faced with its constant downpour, but also a muggy, sweaty feeling that clung to the skin. Temperatures were slowly rising as summer neared, but they didn’t yet have the blue skies and sunny days. Instead, dark rain clouds mooched ominously over the town, and the days were sticky, grey and forlorn.
‘Oh,’ replied Kyo, looking up from his sketch in the direction of Ayako, sitting not so far away. ‘Nothing much, just this cartoon strip.’
‘Let me see,’ said Ayako, holding out her hand to receive the book.
Kyo passed her his sketch, bracing himself for Ayako’s harsh criticism.
He’d drawn a four-panel manga: a pastiche of the Basho haiku hanging in his bedroom. He’d not been able to get its words from his head since finding out his father had drawn the calligraphic scroll, and his interest and interpretation of the haiku itself had been sparked. The cartoon he’d been working on had played around with the imagery of the poem. In the first frame, he’d drawn his signature cartoon Frog visiting the sento. In the second, Frog had entered the bathhouse, taken off his clothes and then gone into the bathing area. There were a few other customers in the large communal bath, and one frame showed their shock at a human-sized frog coming through the doorway. In the third, Frog was depicted leaping high into the air, bombing and splashing the other customers, all of whom left in disgust in the following panel. In the final panel of the cartoon, Frog was relaxing peacefully with a towel draped over his head, the entire bath to himself – the waters rippling smoothly around him.
Underneath the strip he had written the haiku out in full.
‘Hmm,’ said Ayako, studying the comic strip carefully, tapping her lip with her finger.
‘What is it, Grandmother?’ asked Kyo nervously.
‘It’s good,’ said Ayako. ‘Very good. I do like it, but …’ She paused.
Kyo waited. ‘But?’
‘But it’s missing something.’
Kyo sighed, pushing the air from his lungs through clenched teeth.
Ayako scowled at him. ‘Hey, I’m just giving my opinion. Do you want to hear what I have to say or not?’ She began to pass the notebook back to him. ‘Because if you think you know everything already, then that’s fine, just keep doing what you’re doing and forget about the rest of the world. Enjoy yourself.’
Kyo shook his head.
‘If you listen to other people now and again, you might learn something.’
‘Yes, Grandmother.’ He hid the irritation he was feeling from his voice. ‘Please go on.’
She looked once again at the cartoon and continued. ‘As I was saying, I like your style. The drawing is lovely. This Frog character is great – extremely good. But the only thing I think the strip is missing is, well, it’s missing a sense of the artist. A sense of you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you.’ She scratched her nose. ‘You’ve taken the Basho poem, and you’ve reinterpreted it, and that’s fine and everything. But wouldn’t it be better to base your work more on your own life? Because you don’t want to be just retelling what Basho already told, do you? You want to tell something new.’ She looked up at Kyo. ‘You see what I mean?’
‘I think so,’ said Kyo.
‘What do you mean, you think so?’ she snapped. ‘You either do or you don’t.’
She passed the sketchbook back to Kyo. He studied it again, eyes downcast. Now that he looked at it again, it immediately felt wrong. A waste of time. Not good. Not worth it. Even the Frog caricature of his father sitting in the bath looked back at him mockingly. He shook his head angrily, and part of his mind urged him to tear out the page, screw it into a ball and throw it in the bin. Another failure. Better not to have drawn it at all.
But he resisted the strong impulse to be destructive.
Instead he muttered under his breath in the direction of the garden, ‘I still don’t understand that stupid poem.’
‘What?’ said Ayako, cupping her hand around her ear. ‘Speak up. Can’t hear you.’
Kyo, faced with a fresh opportunity to avoid the wrath of Ayako, made his words a little milder. He turned to face her, and spoke in a calmer voice. ‘Oh, I just said I don’t understand the poem.’
‘What do you mean you don’t understand it?’
‘Well, I don’t understand why it’s so famous, you know?’ He looked at Ayako sincerely. ‘Why does everyone make such a big deal of it?’
‘Well, I don’t know much about these things, but,’ Ayako raised an eyebrow, ‘I suppose it’s famous because it did something a bit different.’
‘Different?’
‘Yes. Different to everything that came before it.’
‘How was it different?’
Ayako, despite her usual prickliness, now seemed calm and pensive. She looked out at the rain falling in steady vertical lines, listening to the drum of the water hitting the roof – gurgling and swirling in the gutters – streaming down the hillside in the storm drains. Coltrane stretched out fully, his long, sharp claws extending and retracting before he settled back into a snooze.
‘Well, what’s the seasonal word in the poem?’ she asked patiently, looking back at Kyo.
‘Frog.’
‘Correct,’ she said. ‘And what season does that represent?’
‘Spring.’
‘Right again.’
‘What makes Basho’s frog so special? I still don’t get it.’
‘Well.’ Ayako placed her chin in her hand, resting her elbow on the table. ‘Before this poem, every haiku with a frog in it involved singing. Frogs make a racket every year in spring, and everyone knows that. So the frog got to have a reputation as a noisy fellow, who sings like a musician all the time in poetry and art. That’s why you get those lovely old paintings of frogs playing musical instruments together, with their mouths open, singing.’
‘I see,’ said Kyo, breathing out gently.
‘But Basho’s frog doesn’t sing, does he?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘So when we hear the frog in the poem in the second line, the audience is waiting for the frog to sing. But Basho doesn’t let that happen – he subverts the expectations of the listener. Before you know it, the frog has leapt straight into the pond, and all we are left with is the quiet sound of the water. No frog song, just the cool ripples in the old pond.’
‘So, Basho broke the rules?’
‘You could say that. He did something different. Every other poet was making their frogs sing, but Basho made his silent. Sometimes, it’s just as important what’s left unsaid, as said.’
Kyo was silent for a minute. ‘That is clever.’
‘It is. And that final line, “sound of water”, puts into your mind the ripples in the silent pond, and how even that sound, or that image, lasts only a few seconds. The ripples too will fade away gradually over time.’
They both looked out into the garden, the crackling sound of the rain enveloping them. The raindrops hit the small pond in multitudes. Coltrane yawned. Ayako sighed.
‘As will we all.’
‘Come on. Let’s go.’
Once again they were looking out at the rain, this time from inside the café.
Kyo packed up his backpack and looked outside uncertainly. ‘Really?’
Ayako put down a stack of coffee cups. ‘What do you mean, really?’
Kyo sucked in a deep breath. ‘It’s just …’
‘Just what?’
‘Well, I looked at the weather app on my phone,’ he said, showing the screen of rain clouds to Ayako, ‘and it says it’s going to rain until midnight.’
‘Pffft, app. Do you do everything that thing tells you to?’
‘No, but …’
‘So? What? You want us to stay here until midnight?’
‘No, I’m not saying that,’ said Kyo, putting his phone back in his pocket. ‘But I thought it might be a good idea to skip the walk today? Perhaps we can go straight home?’
Ayako tittered, shook her head and carried on tidying away. ‘Because of a little rain?’
‘We’ll be soaked in this.’
‘Oooh, and Little Lord Kyo can’t get his itsy bitsy feetsies wet, can he?’ she said mockingly. ‘What on earth will we do if the imperial socks get sodden?’
‘Well, the walk won’t be any fun if we’re out in torrential rain, will it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ayako shot back. ‘Won’t it? You seem to have already made up your mind without having even been outside. And who says everything has to be fun, anyway?’
Ayako undid the strings of her apron, and hung it up on a hook behind the door, taking down an old-fashioned tonbi overcoat to cover her kimono. She also took two umbrellas from the stand at random.
Outside the shop, she rolled down the metal shutter and Kyo took out a plastic cagoule from his backpack and put it on. The rain was crashing down on the Perspex roof that covered the shopping street, and when Kyo looked up above, he saw the blasts of droplets exploding against it. He winced at the thought of being out in the open.
Once more, he pulled his phone from his pocket, fired up the weather app and looked in dismay at the endless row of rain icons. ‘Hmmm.’
‘Put that blasted thing away and walk,’ said Ayako.
They turned left out of the café, and headed along the covered street in the direction of the train station, before turning right at the small opening which led to a bridge that passed over the railway tracks. Kyo had noticed that recently Ayako had changed the route. Instead of the winding alleyways that led through the mountainside, they now went straight up behind the station, up the steep path that took them directly to the top of the mountain, past the old castle on the left and the View Hotel just to its right. The steep pathway was cobbled, with steps, a sturdy handrail to hold on to, and antiquated iron gas lamps to light the way in the dark.
Umbrellas out, rain pounding down, they made their way up the path.
Kyo’s muscles burnt as he pushed his way up the slope. The first few times she’d taken him this way they’d had to stop for a while, and he gripped the handrail as he got out of breath. Today, while he fared better in terms of physical fitness, keeping pace with Ayako, the water was streaming down the concrete, and his socks were already soaked. The view from under the umbrella was grey and miserable, and mostly he looked at the ground, not enjoying the walk at all.
They made it to the top of the mountain, and walked slowly along the path that cut through Senkoji Park, towards the observation point. All the food stalls from the hanami season were boarded up, or gone, along with the blossoms, and the park was completely empty. Only Ayako was mad enough to come up here in this awful weather.
At the top of the observation tower, they paused for a couple of minutes. Kyo bent over to catch his breath. His trainers and socks were soaked, and underneath the cagoule his t-shirt was drenched in sweat. What use had the umbrella been? At least it had kept half of his shorts dry.
‘See,’ came the voice of Ayako beside him. ‘Look.’
He straightened himself up, and looked at Ayako. She was pointing out somewhere on the horizon.
The rain had eased, and Kyo followed the direction of her finger. In the distance, he saw a gap in the clouds and the sun peeking out. Beams of sunlight leaked from behind the dark rainclouds, and the rays shone down at patches of the sea, making them sparkle, swirl and glisten in the shimmering light.
‘Without losing to the rain,’ Ayako quoted the Miyazawa Kenji poem. ‘Without losing to the wind.’
And as they both leant against the wet handrail, they began to see a double rainbow forming in the sky over the town. The rain had subsided completely now, and the wind was still. Kyo reached into his pocket for his phone to take a photo, but Ayako sensed his action, speaking to him without breaking her gaze at the scenery.
‘No need for that, Kyo-kun,’ said Ayako softly. ‘It can’t capture this feeling in here.’
She rapped a fist against her breast.
Kyo let the phone fall back into the damp pocket of his shorts, placed his hands on the wet handrail and studied the scenery intently, in the same manner as Ayako.
They stood there in silence for a few minutes, the gentle breeze blowing, and the soft golden light of the sunset brushing against their cheeks.
‘Ah …’ Ayako sighed.
Kyo watched the boats drifting slowly across the calm waters, lost in thought.
‘Shall we go?’
Back at the house that evening, after they’d taken their baths, Kyo had left his sketchbook open on a drawing he’d been working on since they’d taken their walk in the rain. While he was using the outdoor toilet Ayako snuck into his room to take a look.
She picked up the sketchbook and studied the single cartoon frame he’d drawn.
It depicted Frog sitting in a chair with his back to the window, a miserable expression on his face, studying his smartphone intently. On the screen of the phone was a weather application, telling him it was raining outside. But behind Frog, out of his line of sight, through the window there was a rainbow visible, which Kyo had depicted in colour. The scene was entirely black and white, apart from the rainbow, which made it stand out all the more.
Ayako smiled. It was perfect.
Kyo came back into the room. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I was looking at your drawing, Kyo-kun,’ said Ayako sunnily. ‘Oh, it’s wonderful.’
‘It’s private.’ Kyo took the book from her roughly. ‘You shouldn’t just go through my stuff like that.’
‘Now then.’ Ayako adjusted her stance for war. ‘This is my house. Don’t talk to me like that. Who do you think you are?’
‘Am I not allowed my own private thoughts or property?’
Ayako wasn’t sure what to do or say; this wasn’t how she meant for the exchange to go. She was genuinely impressed with his drawing, and had wanted to tell him how much she liked it. But the boy was being insubordinate now. She had to make a choice: either hit hard or back down.
But she was not going to back down. That wasn’t Ayako’s style. No one spoke to her like that and got away with it. She had control, at all times.
She shook a finger at him. ‘Insolence!’
Kyo was shocked: not only had a temper risen quickly through his body the moment he saw Ayako looking at his sketchbook, but also, what shocked him even more was the swiftness with which Ayako had transformed from good humour to rage. Her whole body shook. Her face was like stone. What had he done? He was no match for her. But now he was locked into the principle of the matter. She shouldn’t have gone through his private belongings without asking him. But how could he get her to acknowledge that?
‘Apologize, at once,’ she said.
Kyo remained silent. He couldn’t bring himself to speak, so he looked at the floor.
‘No? You don’t have anything to say for yourself?’ Ayako lowered her finger, and placed her hand over her chest instead, eyes like ice axes. ‘You miserable child. Your mother has spoiled you rotten, but we’re having none of that nonsense here. This is my house, do you hear me? My house. My rules. No one talks to me like that. Anywhere.’
Ayako was shaking. Kyo let her torrent wash over him.
They were being swept away. Ayako continued, unable to stop.
‘You and your selfishness. Your childishness. You expect everyone to bend over backwards for you, and what do you do? Nothing. You just idle your way through life like a dull loafer. Daydreaming your life away while others work themselves to the bone to support you. And what thanks or courtesy do you show them?’
Kyo saw her gaze fall on the toy frog carving sitting on his table; it enraged her further. Infantile boy! She had seen him holding the frog at night before bed. She continued.
