Child Peering into Goldfish Bowl (Part 1)

First published in the September 2004 issue of Shōsetsu Shinchō by Shinchōsha.

Over the Obon break I decided to visit a friend of mine who lived in Kyoto.

We were pretty good buddies in high school, and usually walked to school together in the morning, but once we hit college we completely stopped talking, as though we’d never been friends at all. Two years ago I heard he dropped out; apparently he'd apprenticed to a potter, of all things, somewhere around Iwakura. I’d learned this all second-hand from my old classmates, whom I met up with maybe once a year. It was all just ghostly rumors floating around, the kind that no one really bothers to double check for themselves.

During the summer rainy season, my parents received an invitation addressed to me, which they forwarded to my company dorm in Tokushima. It was for a small solo exhibition my old friend was holding at a gallery in Shijō. Obviously I didn’t exactly have the time on my hands to be traveling all the way to Kyoto for an art exhibition. But seeing the proof in my hands that he was out there somewhere making something of himself made me a little misty for the old days, so I sent him a postcard congratulating him and telling him what I’d been up to. Then I forgot about the whole thing.

In August I got a reply from him, saying how glad he was to get my postcard and inviting me to come visit over Obon. He was living by the Takase River at the foot of a small mountain in Takaragaike. No need to be shy, he said, he was renting a little house all to himself. He seemed very anxious that I come.

I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to stay for one night and then swing by to see my parents.

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In the morning I rode the ferry to Osaka and then took the train to Kyoto.

It was past noon when I arrived in Demachiyanagi, where I transferred to the Eizan Railway going up towards Kurama. Houses began to fill the windows as the train entered the residential parts of town. As I gazed out the window, a sort of melancholy came over me; it felt as though I was going to visit someone I had never met in my life. Maybe that feeling had to do with the phone call this morning.

I hadn’t seen him once since graduation, and though it didn’t feel quite satisfactory for our first conversation in such a long time to be over the phone, I gave him a call before I departed from Tokushima. But as we talked the conversation started to feel suffocating, and I let him know when I’d be arriving before quickly hanging up. I was quite taken aback, but the cause of it seemed to be that his voice had changed. I’d been expecting him to sound the way he had in high school, so it was a shock for me hearing the huskiness of age in his voice. Perhaps he felt the same way. I told myself that was what had made things feel so disjointed.

I disembarked the train at a deserted station with three platforms. The other people who got off the train departed into the bright afternoon sunlight. I remained on the platform, listening to the cicadas trill in the trees at the edge of the station, which for some reason put me in a traveling mood.

I sat on a bench and called my friend, but he didn’t pick up. It was a little surprising since I’d been expecting him to come meet me at the station. I knew where his house was, but wandering aimlessly around town looking for it in this scorching heat was not an idea that appealed to me.

After sitting there for a while just looking at the shimmering heat haze rising from the tracks, I tried calling him again. But the phone just kept ringing. For some reason this conjured up the image of the dark interior of an old house in my mind. It was probably from when I’d visited his grandpa’s house in high school. I imagined him standing in the corner, standing there motionlessly listening to the phone ring again and again, yet making no move to pick it up. I don’t know why I thought about that.

I gave up and left the station.

Walking through the dusty summer air felt like walking through a sauna. The station opened up to a broad thoroughfare, with a pedestrian bridge spanning above the cars zooming by below. The sound of water rushing over steps filled the air, which I assumed must have been coming from the Takano River. Across the river was a lush forest, and though the cries of cicadas pierced the air, that only made it seem even more quiet. The sun was going down in the west behind the trees, and the instant I entered their shade the air became cool.

Maybe he’d just gone out to buy ingredients for dinner. There wasn’t any point in ruining this long-awaited reunion just because I was feeling vexed at the heat. I decided I’d wander around the mountain a little longer, letting my feet take me where they would, and call him again later.

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My friend lived in a quiet residential neighbourhood. It was a long way from the tourist spots, but that was probably perfect for someone who had lived in Kyoto as long as he had. There wasn’t much point living in a tourist hotbed if you weren’t going to do any sightseeing, something I knew well from my time living in Nara. I didn’t know much about making pottery, but I imagined that living in these serene surroundings nearby flowing water and trees probably helped him focus on his craft.

The neighbourhood wrapped around the base of the mountain, in the shadow of which I made my way through the quiet streets. The narrow path threaded between timeworn residence walls and waterways. A cool, damp breeze flowed from the woods to the right. There was hardly anyone else around; the only sound was the trilling of the cicadas.

As I wandered down the road I encountered a girl, who wore a bright red yukata which shimmered like the scales of a goldfish. Perhaps there was a festival nearby. But I found it strange that anyone would change into a yukata this early in the afternoon when the sun was still beating down so intensely.

She was sitting in front of the gate of an old, apparently abandoned house, swinging a wind chime from her hand, seemingly having nothing better to do. She glared at me intently as I passed by wiping sweat from my forehead. I had intended to ask her the way to my friend’s house, but the fierce look in her eye made me think better of it.

A little further on I came across a vending machine by the road, from which I bought a can of iced coffee. As I stood there drinking I glanced back down the road. The girl was standing in the middle of the path staring at me, the wind chime still dangling from her hand. I found her doggedness somehow irritating, and taking another gulp of coffee I looked away deliberately and walked on.

The houses gave way to green fields, and across them was a row of gravestones that seemed to hold up the forest. I called my friend again, but as I’d expected the phone just kept ringing.

At the foot of the mountain I saw the entrance to a shrine, surrounded by a number of worn crimson banners. The path into the shrine went through a copse of cedar trees and ascended leftwards on a slope, before being swallowed up by darkness. Thinking that I might be able to sit down and rest at the shrine, I followed the path through the trees.

As I walked towards the shrine, I suddenly had the feeling there was something behind me; wildly I wondered whether that creepy girl had followed me. I nonchalantly turned around, but there was no one there.

The shrine appeared to be dedicated to the god Daikoku. Here the trees were sparse and the sun shone brightly, a haven of light amidst the gloom of the forest. I tried calling once more, but of course there was no answer.

In high school my friend had been a little uptight, which the rest of our otherwise irresponsible, devil-may-care circle found slightly off-putting. I’d let him know that I’d be arriving in Kyoto sometime in the morning, and I’d even told him that I’d call once I reached the station. It didn’t seem like him at all to leave me hanging like this.

As I stared at a statue of Daikoku and pondered the situation, I heard the sound of light footsteps on gravel behind me, and turned around to find him standing there.

“Don’t scare me like that!” I said.

One corner of his mouth curled upwards in a smile.

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We made sporadic small talk as we walked towards his house.

I’d thought the awkwardness of our conversation in the morning had been because it was over the phone, but even now that we were talking face to face the odd stiffness remained. His lopsided smile was the same as I remembered, but where it had once been bashful, now it seemed somehow insincere. Once his face had been pale and thin, and now it was podgy and tinged with an unhealthy yellow; his laboured breathing was rather alarming.

“You can’t expect someone to stay the same for a decade,” he said, wiping his sweaty face with a handkerchief.

“Most of the guys at the alumni meetups haven’t changed too much.”

“Well, that’s them.”

We retraced the path that I had earlier taken alone. Maybe it was the fact that we’d just met up, but I found it frustratingly difficult to find things to talk about.

When I asked him what he’d been doing at the shrine he claimed that he was simply out for a walk. That seemed strange to me, considering that I’d let him know when I’d be coming, and also because it was the hottest time of the day. But I decided not to pursue the matter further. He began to babble on about the Obon dance that had been held at the nearby shrine the other day, and how the temple we’d just leftーMatsugasaki Daikokutenーwas part of the Seven Lucky Gods pilgrimage, and so on, as if to fill in the silence between us.

We walked down that narrow path in the shade of the trees, between the walls and the waterway. Apparently I’d walked right past his house. We eventually came to a halt right in front of the old house which I’d previously assumed was abandoned. The girl was nowhere in sight.

“What a charming residence,” I said politely.

“Yep,” he grunted, sliding open the door.

A sudden uneasiness came over me as I watched the back of his sweat-stained shirt disappear inside, and regretting having accepted his invitation to stay here, I started to think up excuses I could use to return to Nara tonight.

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It was a small house with two floors. On the right side of the hallway that led in from the door was the dining room, and on the left was a spacious tatami room.There was an acrid scent in the air that reminded me of incense.

“Make yourself comfy,” he said, beckoning me into the tatami room and opening a large glass-paneled door that faced out onto a garden before returning into the hallway. I listened to his footsteps recede deeper into the house, towards what I would later learn was a room that he’d remodeled into a pottery studio.

The trees in the garden pressed in threateningly as if they were about to swallow up the house, and the air buzzed with the chirruping of cicadas outside. Perhaps it was only the shade that made the narrow garden feel so dreary. The only saving grace was how cool it was here, making it seem as though I had only hallucinated the burning afternoon sun. You probably don’t even need an air conditioner, I mused.

Setting my luggage to the side I sat down on the floor, gazing out into the shaded garden. A few small trees were scattered around, from the looks of them rarely trimmed, and a large blue pot sat out exposed to the elements.

My friend returned with teacups which looked like he’d made them himself, then went into the dining room across the hall and clattered around for some time before coming back with a plate of watermelon and cold barley tea.

“It’s so nice and cool here,” I commented, but that was all I could think of to say. We sat there eating watermelon in silence.

“What do you think?” he suddenly asked, indicating the teacups on the tray.

“I don’t really know how to judge pottery,” I answered.

“I suppose you wouldn’t,” he said with a wry smile.

“Where do you make your pottery?”

“I remodeled the room at the end of the hall into a studio.”

“Why’d you start making pottery anyways?”

“It’s complicated. It’s a long story; I’d rather not get into it.”

“Alright, if that’s how you feel.”

Out of nowhere he asked a question I found rather cryptic. “How did you know I was making pottery here?”

“What do you mean? I got your invitation.”

“My invitation?”

“Yeah, the one about your solo exhibit at the gallery in Shijō. I’m sorry I couldn’t attend.”

He exhaled through his nose, then sat there silently. I couldn’t tell whether or not he believed me. The room was cool, and yet he was constantly taking out a white handkerchief to dab away his sweat. The topic of pottery seemed to be a dead end, so I decided to change the subject.

“Remember how we used to walk home together in high school?”

“Did we do that?”

“What do you mean, did we do that? We used to go around to the temple, killing time talking about all sorts of stupid stuff. I don’t even remember what we used to chat about anymore.”

“Right, we used to talk about all sorts of things. Those were good times.”

“I miss those days.”

“Sure do.”

HIs responses were so tepid that there really was no continuing the conversation, and for a while I sat there in silence eating watermelon.

“It must feel a little uncomfortable with the forest so close,” I ventured at last as I spit out watermelon seeds, settling on what seemed to me a bland topic. “What with all of the bugs.”

“Yep. There are creatures around here, too. They’re quite noisy,” he said, gazing aimlessly out over the veranda.

“Creatures?”

“Weird little things. And long, extraordinarily long.”

“What do you mean, long?”

“I mean their bodies, their torsos. They come slipping in and out from the garden as they please.”

“Weasels, maybe?”

“Sometimes they run around below the flooring. I can’t stand the noise.”

“Huh.”

The conversation died again. Things just weren’t flowing like they used to in the old days. More to the point, it felt like I was trying to talk to him just like we used to, but he wasn’t putting any effort into doing the same.

“You’ve worked up a sweat, why don’t you take a shower?” he suggested. “I’ll go out and buy dinner while you’re in there, ”

“That’s alright, I think I’ll just head home for the night.”

“Don’t be like that. Come on, just go rinse yourself off. The bathroom’s right in front of the studio. Use any towel you like. I’ve already prepared a yukata for you to change into,” he said, suddenly quite insistent.

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He showed me to the bathroom.

“There’s the yukata. Do make sure not to let any strange people in while I’m out,” he said, before hastening out of the bathroom.

This all seemed very odd to me, but for the present I decided to shower off the sweat.

The bathroom was covered in old-fashioned tiles. I opened the small frosted glass window only to see, as I had been expecting to see, the dark trees outside. As I stared out from that chilly bathroom into the depths of the forest, I was reminded of the long creatures I had just heard about. I imagined it must be rather unsettling to go to bed in an ancient house like this with those things creeping around.

I didn’t feel like lounging around in a yukata, but when I looked on the floor in front of the sink my clothes were no longer there. I swear I’d put them right there, and I hadn’t been in the shower for much more than ten minutes. It didn’t make sense.

Covering my privates with a washcloth, I peeked into the hallway, but all was quiet, and there was no sign of my clothes on the long floorboards. “Damn,” I said out loud, and with no other choice I put on the yukata.

“Hello?” I called as I padded down the hallway, thinking he might still be in the house, but there was no reply from any of the rooms. I supposed he must really have gone out shopping.

I returned to the tatami room and sat down cross-legged on the floor again. Fickle as it was, wearing that cool, comfortable yukata I felt myself getting into a traveling mood again. Just a moment ago I’d been so eager to go back, but now I began to feel there was no need to be in such a hurry. Even if the conversation was a slog, I’d only be there for one night, and a bit of alcohol might loosen his tongue. I wondered if he could hold his liquor.

In the room there was a wooden bookshelf and a traditional Japanese cabinet. On top of the cabinet were many figurines of the Seven Gods of Fortune. I found the scrutiny of that miniature multitude slightly unnerving. Come to think of it, the shrine on the mountain was dedicated to one of the seven gods, Daikoku, as my friend had been quite thorough in explaining. The bookshelf was lined with a large assortment of old books; I flipped through a few of them, but none of them were terribly interesting, and I soon grew bored.

I lay down on my back and was staring at the ceiling, when suddenly I heard quite close to me a fluttering sound, as if something was skittering about right next to my ear. The sound seemed to be coming from below the floorboards. Perhaps one of those creatures he had been talking about had come in from the forest, gotten stuck beneath the floor, and was thrashing about. It would certainly be difficult to fall asleep hearing things go bump in the night.

I slid open the screen door into the garden, leaned my torso over the wooden floor, and peered beneath the veranda. But it was pitch black and impossible for me to make anything out.

I stood up and looked into the garden. There was a cool breeze, and a narrow white object fluttered above me. It reminded me of some sort of long white parasitic worm, and I instinctively recoiled. But on second glance, it was just a white string hanging from the eaves. I frowned at it for some time, deciding in the end that it must once have held a wind chime which had fallen off.

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In my boredom I decided to sneak into the pottery studio for a look around, but the door was locked, and the doorknob wouldn’t turn. I couldn’t blame him for being cautious, seeing as it was where he did all his work, but having my mischief foiled so brazenly made me a bit annoyed. The new-looking door was fitted with a frosted glass pane.

As I returned to the tatami room in defeat, I turned around halfway down the hallway for no particular reason, and fancied that I saw a flicker of movement, a flash of reddish colour, on the other side of the frosted glass.

Curious, I approached the door once more and rapped upon it. “Are you in there?” I pressed my ear to the door, but there was no reply. From within I could hear a faint sound like fingernails tapping on metal, but it must have been some kind of machine.

I waited for some sort of sign, but as none was forthcoming I resigned myself to returning to the tatami room. Whatever had been thrashing about beneath the floorboards had become still.

Lying down once more on the tatami I looked at the ceiling.

I searched my memories in an attempt to recall how we had become friends, but came up with nothing. He had been the dependable, quiet type, and his grades had been on the higher side, though not enough to make him stand out. As a student I had been much the same, so to an impartial observer perhaps we seemed rather alike.

At some point we’d become inseparable, and I’d always considered us to be close friends, though when I thought about it I didn’t really know him that well at all. Perhaps it had only been coincidence that we had spent so much time together; perhaps we weren’t really friends at all. Maybe that was why we’d completely lost contact after we graduated, and why we seemed to be on such different wavelengths now. It was an extreme possibility, but thinking about it made me rather sad.

Rolling over on my side, I breathed in the nostalgic scent of the tatami mats and banished those painful thoughts out of my head. Maybe once he returned, we’d have a calmer conversation, and this feeling of being out of sync would go away.

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After over two hours with nary a sign of him, I was starting to get fed up. I hadn’t the slightest idea where he was or what he was up to. It was getting dark, but the fluorescent light must have been broken because it wouldn’t light up when I pulled the cord.

I took out a pack of cigarettes, and as there wasn’t an ashtray inside I went out to the veranda to have a smoke. Above the mountains the sky was still smeared with the bright hues of sunset, but dusk had already claimed the narrow garden down below.

As I stood there puffing away with my hands in my pockets, I suddenly realized that the girl in the yukata I had passed in the afternoon was standing in a corner of the garden. She must have come around from the front. The colour of her yukata was so dazzling, like a sudden blossom of flame, that I almost cried out. Even assuming she lived in the neighbourhood, it was disquieting to see her suddenly appearing in someone else’s garden unannounced.

This time she wasn’t glaring at me. She was peering intently into the blue pot that was sitting in the garden, the wind chime still dangling from one hand. Her gently swaying hair was so neatly trimmed it made her look like a doll. Her lips were puckered as if she was sucking on something in her mouth.

“What’s the matter?” I called, feeling rather uncomfortable just standing there watching her. She looked up from the bucket at me, her cheeks bulging. I had the strongest feeling that I had seen this exact sight somewhere before, but I couldn’t pin down where. It felt like breathing in the mire of dusk.

“It’s late, you ought to go home now,” I said.

The girl stared at me for a moment, then without any warning approached me coquettishly as if she was leaning in for a kiss. As I stood there taken aback, she suddenly spat out whatever was in her mouth as if it was a watermelon seed. I scrambled out of the way as what appeared to be a bright red gumdrop came flying at me, tumbling down to the floor in the middle of the room.

“Hey!” I exclaimed angrily, but she whirled around, her red yukata fluttering, and fled the gloomy garden. I heard the windchime tinkling faintly. It was all so bizarre that for some time I could only stand there in shock.

When I went back into the room, the wet red thing that the girl had spat out was flopping around weakly on the tatami like a living thing. On closer inspection that was only natural, for the thing turned out to be a small goldfish. I couldn’t just leave the poor thing there, so I scooped it into my hand, and looking for some water to put it in went out into the garden. I looked into the large blue pot and, discovering that it was full of water, tossed the goldfish in for the time being. The scarlet blob began to drift through the murky depths.

It all felt as though I was in a dream.