Kappa Quartet

by Daryl Qilin Yam

  “I’ll turn twenty-two soon. And you?”

  “I’m thirty-one,” I said. “No, thirty-two. That’s not too old, is it?”

  Kevin shrugged. He then took a handful of water and splashed it over the top of his head. I watched as the water streamed down Kevin’s face, in thin, branching rivulets. He had his eyes closed, and seemed to savour the moment.

  “Can I ask you a question?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  He opened his eyes, and looked towards me. “You’re married, aren’t you? You have a wife and kids and everything.”

  I was surprised. “You can tell?” I smiled. “Just one kid, though. Michelle. She’s four and a half.”

  He asked if I was planning for a second child. I told him I didn’t know. I told him my wife and I didn’t even plan for the first. Michelle just happened—a heat of the moment sort of thing. Kevin kept quiet, and continued staring into the distance. He then asked if marriage was easy. I told him I didn’t know.

  “Is it hard?” he asked.

  “I don’t know either.”

  A pause.

  “Does it make you happy?”

  I tried not to flinch. “Yes,” I said to him. “I’m the happiest man I know.”

  I looked down towards the water. I then followed what he did: I took a handful of water, and splashed it on my face. I could feel the same rivulets of water, finding paths of least resistance across my face. But none of the heat entered my head. Kevin leant back against the side of the bath, and rested his head on the edge.

  “It’s strange,” he said. I asked him what was. He said, “I don’t know why Mr Five would want us both to meet.” He rolled his head to the side and looked at me. “We’re such different people, you and me.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. “Are we really?” I asked. Kevin leant forward again.

  “Let me ask you another thing.” He looked into my eyes, as intently as he could muster. “What do you see, when you look into the mirror?”

  I tried to imagine. I tried to recall the last time I had consciously looked into one, and thought back to that time in my room, when I had wondered if I’d lost weight or not. “I don’t know,” I said to him. “I never really think about this kind of thing.”

  “Not at all?”

  “More or less. If I were to look in the mirror—and I mean like, really, really look—I wouldn’t know what I’d see, to be honest.”

  Kevin paused for a few seconds. “That sounds worrying,” he said. “Sounds like the onset of a mid-life crisis, Mr Alvin. Then again, thirty-two’s a bit young for that.” He gave me a smile. “You’ve still got time.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Whatever that means.” I took a second look at myself in the bathwater. I watched the bottom half of myself shimmy and turn in all sorts of directions. “What do you see, Kevin? When you look in the mirror?”

  “You want to know?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I want to know.”

  His smile grew tight over his face. “I try not to look in them,” he said to me.

  “Why not?”

  The young man didn’t answer for a while. I waited. Finally, he said, “Whenever I look into the mirror, I see a lot of people. Lots and lots of people. And they are all trying to squeeze into that same frame of glass, and that makes me sick.” He then paused for a few more seconds, before looking towards the lake beyond. “What do you see?” he asked. “Out there?”

  I strained my eyes. I had been looking this whole time, but not really looking. “Not much, really. Just darkness, I suppose.”

  “Lots of it?”

  “Definitely,” I said. “Lots and lots of it.”

  “That’s nice,” said Kevin. I looked at him again. His eyes felt especially far away now; they were fixed onto something else, something beyond reach for either of us. Eventually he spoke again, and softer this time.

  “Sometimes I feel so empty, Mr Alvin.”

  I turned away from him. I then rested my head on the edge of the bath. I could see why Kevin had earlier assumed that position. I could feel my entire body stretch across the onsen, the current of water lapping itself between my thighs. I could feel my body floating.

  “Do you feel empty? Really?”

  Kevin didn’t move. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

  I smiled.

  “That’s nice.”

  I returned to Singapore the following day. At the front desk I left a note for Mr Five, expressing my thanks for his help. I took a train back to Tokyo, and then another to Narita. When I touched down at Changi Airport, I took a taxi straight home. It was raining.

  My Blackberry buzzed, repeatedly, non-stop during the ride. Work e-mails, I saw. I watched as my inbox grew bigger and bigger, the messages stacking on top of one another. I ignored them and set the Blackberry aside.

  Back home, I took out my keys. I unlocked the front gate, followed by the front door. I stepped inside. It was dark both outdoors and indoors: it was night, and yet all of the lights were still off. My hand groped along the wall, fumbling for the switch. No one’s home, I thought to myself, until I heard a faint sound coming from the bedroom. I walked in.

  It was my wife. She was on her knees, seated before the stereo. Her eyes were closed. Music was playing: “People” by Shirley Bassey. I could tell now. “Do you know Barbara Streisand first recorded this song?” my wife said to me. “The song was originally hers. There was a musical called Funny Girl, made ages ago. But Shirley Bassey sings it much better, I think. She did a much better job.”

  I knelt beside her on the floor. I told her I was glad she felt that way. We were so very close. A part of me wondered where Michelle was, but another part of me didn’t care. She let out a gasp—oh—as I felt my way into her panties. Su Lin was so wet I couldn’t believe it, and I slid a finger inside. I got hard in no time at all.

  “You know that feeling you talked about? The feeling that you said was so strange?”

  Oh. Oh. “Of course I remember.” Oh.

  I put a second finger inside her. Su Lin grabbed my wrist and forced my hand even deeper between her thighs.

  “I’m letting go now,” I said to her. “I’m letting that feeling go.”

  “You’re letting it go,” she said.

  I nuzzled her neck. “I’m letting it go.”

  The next morning, I got out of bed and went straight to the office. It was a Sunday, and so nobody was in. I packed my things and typed a quick e-mail, detailing my resignation. I then left the office and dumped the box in a trash bin outside.

  Everything had been cleared out by the time I got back home. There was nothing left: nothing in the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom. Even Michelle’s things were gone. Everything I had touched, she took away from me. It’s not that she’d disappeared again, nor do I think she ran away. But I knew she wasn’t coming back.

  •

  We headed down to the public baths, because that’s where the vending machines were. They were lined up in one long row, in the resting area on the first floor. It was a lounge much bigger than the one in the reception: there were sofas and armchairs and coffee tables; plenty of people walking about in robes, stretching their arms and legs out after their long baths.

  Along the wall were several television sets, airing whatever channel was on: on one of the screens there was Bill Murray in one shot and Scarlett Johansson in the next. She was wearing a pink wig over her hair. They were singing karaoke, the two of them; Japanese subtitles flashed across the bottom of the screen as they gave one another fleeting, meaningful looks. Behind them stood the city of Tokyo, shrouded in bokeh. Kevin took a seat beside me with a bottle of milk in his hand. For a while, we said nothing but watched what was on TV.

  “I have a dream sometimes,” he said.

  “A dream?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s this one particular dream, and it recurs from time to time. I don’t exactly know why. I dream I am in the middle of a pool, and there’s
no one around me. Nobody whatsoever. It’s just me in the middle of a pool, and I am floating on the surface, half in and half out of the water like I’m supposed to. I can feel the water in my ears, hear it block out all the sound—and all I can hear is that fine line, you know? The line that’s supposed to be pure silence, but isn’t.” He took a sip of milk. “That’s the kind of dream I have.”

  2

  THE ANUS IS THE CENTRE OF THE SOUL

  MAY 2012

  HARUHITO DAISUKE

  “A taxi burst into flames that morning,” the young man said. “It burst into flames in the middle of a tunnel.”

  I didn’t say a word. I just looked into his eyes and nodded twice. As he paused, I stole a glance at the fish tank, standing in the corner of his bedroom. It was a fairly large one, about a metre long and half a metre wide, and in it swam a single catfish. Its skin was of the pearly white variety, but its fins and whiskers appeared to be dotted by flecks of black ink. It lay motionless at the bottom of the tank, gazing out of the glass. I had wanted one of my own once, but my daughter Kawako objected to the idea. Think of the space, she’d said.

  The young man continued. “It was a terrible accident. But it was kind of awesome, you know?”

  I crossed and re-crossed my legs, and clicked on my ballpoint pen. I flipped open my memo pad, turned to a fresh page, and wrote down the young man’s name.

  “What morning is this again?” I asked.

  “On the twenty-fourth of April,” he replied.

  A month ago, I noted to myself, as I wrote down the date on my pad: 24 April 2012.

  “Thank you,” I said to him. “You appear to be very good with dates, Mr Lim.”

  “Am I?”

  I nodded again. “Whenever I ask my clients to recollect the precise date of events, they usually can’t recall as quickly as you have demonstrated. Most of the time they end up scrolling through the calendars on their phones.”

  “I guess that can be quite troublesome,” the young man remarked.

  “Occasionally,” I said. “Do taxis burst into flames very often?”

  “What,” the young man said, “in Singapore?”

  I didn’t say a word.

  “Well, no,” said the young man. “Nah. That’s the first time such a thing has ever happened.” He then leant forward on his chair. “Why do you ask? Do you think it might have something to do with…”

  I looked up from my memo pad. “With?”

  “You know,” he said. “My condition.”

  I gave him a smile. “It might, or it might not. As of now I’m not entirely sure. But if you promise to tell me everything that happened to you on the twenty-fourth of April, from start to finish, I might just be able to give you an answer.”

  The young man nodded. “Okay,” he said. He then looked down towards his feet. “I guess you must see a lot of people like me.”

  I shifted in my seat. “To tell you the truth, Mr Lim: quite rarely.”

  •

  There are not many names for the kind of people in my line of work. Over the past thirty years or so, I’d been referred to as many things: an investigator, a private eye, some say a therapist; a relative of mine once called me “the fortune-teller” during a family gathering, which I found to be a far cry from anything that I actually did. I didn’t even pretend to tell fortunes. I would stress that I am an ordinary man with no extraordinary talents; I merely have a keen eye for detail, and a penchant for the English language. If I were thus compelled to give a title to my profession—anything along the lines of doctor, banker, or lawyer for example—I would call myself a specialist. People in my line of work tend to refer to one another as such.

  On the night I was informed of Mr Lim’s situation, my daughter was paying me a visit in the Tokyo office. Her name, Kawako, means “a child of the river”. In many senses I find it appropriate. She seems to spill, continually, towards the sea, while her worries stem from an unknown point, from a place beyond what I can detect. She brought me dinner that evening, and watched as I opened my bento box. She often reminded me of her mother, especially with her long, curly hair. But her height, her lankiness and the pointedness of her ears—all of those came from me.

  Kawako smiled as I picked up a radish with my chopsticks.

  “I don’t know how I ended up like this,” she said to me.

  I chewed on my food. I swallowed.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Like I have nothing to say anymore.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. And then the call came—from a fellow specialist based in Singapore. My secretary said that it was an urgent matter. I looked at Kawako.

  “Go on,” she said. “Take it.”

  I picked up the call. The specialist at the other end of the line was a woman named Ms Neo. She had a friend of a friend whose son was suffering from a particular problem.

  “What kind of problem?” I asked in English.

  “It’s very hard to explain,” she said to me. “I don’t exactly know how to put it.”

  “In the simplest of words, then,” I said to her.

  She laughed. “Sure,” she said. Ms Neo then said nothing else over the next several seconds. On my end, I watched as Kawako turned her head, first towards the ceiling, and then towards a wall.

  “You must understand that this is an unusual situation—it’s a case I’ve never seen or heard of before,” began Ms Neo. “I spoke to another colleague about it; his name is Ahab, and he confessed to being unable to help at all. He then recommended I speak directly to you, Mr Haruhito.”

  “I see,” I said in reply. I knew the name: Ahab. “I must say you’ve made me very curious.”

  Ms Neo laughed again. “Thank goodness, then,” she said, although I could sense the tone in her voice beginning to harden. “I believe this young man—this son of a friend of a friend—might have lost something very important to him. Something so important, so crucial to his very nature, that he didn’t even sense its loss.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “What exactly did this man lose?”

  I imagined her shaking her head, rubbing a finger along her temple. “I think he might have lost his soul,” she said.

  I couldn’t believe it. “His soul, you say? That’s something nobody should be losing.” Kawako remained blank, unmoving. “How did you arrive at this conclusion, Ms Neo? Did you personally see this young man?”

  “I did,” came the voice from the receiver, as Kawako got up from her chair. I kept my eye on her. “The thing is, the young man is completely fine. He acts as though nothing in his life is out of place, one hundred per cent functional.” Kawako walked towards the centre of my office, slowly, her arms raised above her head—I didn’t know what she was doing. “I asked him the other day, how he felt about the piece of news, and he told me he was okay.” Kawako moved her hips. She snapped her head to the side. She moved her hips again. “But he’s not, Mr Haruhito: if you know where to look, and if you look at that spot hard enough, you can see it for yourself.” Kawako was dancing, I realised; she danced as though she were in pain. “The young man has lost his soul.”

  •

  Mr Lim lived along Sixth Avenue in Singapore, in a small two-storey terrace house off the main road. His bedroom was located on the second floor. The air-conditioning unit hummed softly as it blew a soft breeze around the room, and cooled the parquet tiles beneath my feet.

  His room seemed ordinary enough: a queen-sized bed in one corner, and a few movie posters along the wall. There was a study desk, placed below the window; a sliding-door wardrobe, just across from the bed; a tall bookshelf, sparsely littered with books and DVDs. Aside from the door that led to the corridor, there was one that led to an en-suite bathroom, and another to a balcony. And then there was the fish tank, and its quiet, scaleless inhabitant. The whiskers of the catfish probed the walls of the tank, like the feelers of a large insect.

  In another sheet on my memo pad, I jotted down all the
other details concerning Mr Lim that his mother could supply. His first name was Kevin, and his Chinese name was Wenlong; an only child, he was born on 16 January 1990 in KK Women’s Hospital. His was a natural birth, but the doctor had to extract him via vacuum, because his mother had become too tired to push in her fourth hour of labour. For the next three months, while his skull was still soft, his father would put a hand over Mr Lim’s head and rub it in a circular motion, just to coax the shape of his skull back into a perfect, round shape.

  His father passed away from late-stage colon cancer in 2009, when Kevin was repeating his second year at Hwa Chong Junior College. He and his mother had visited the man many times at the hospital, adjusting their schedules around his visiting hours. It was on his father’s deathbed that Kevin confessed to his parents that he was a homosexual; they felt glad and relieved, to a point: like most parents, it was something they had always known. From 2010 to 2011, Mr Lim fulfilled his National Service, and moved on to an internship at Singapore Press Holdings, as a journalist for one of their local dailies.

  “Is he currently in a relationship?” I’d asked his mother.

  “Not to my knowledge,” she replied.

  “Did he have any in the past?”

  “None that I know of.”

  I looked up from my pad. “Why do you say so?” I asked. “Do you think he might be hiding them from you?”

  His mother shrugged. Madam Lim was a senior financial planner in her late forties, and she possessed a natural poise and demeanour, a refinement that arose from a life of class. Her hair was long, straight, and well-maintained. Under the afternoon light streaming in from the veranda, I identified a rather prominent mole in the space between her neck and right shoulder, which I particularly admired. But Madam Lim was under a significant amount of stress; that alone seemed obvious enough.

  “Kevin has no reason to hide them from me,” she replied. “It’s been three years since he came out to me and my late husband, and I’ve never had any issues with it. He of all people should know that.”