“If I told you I was going to die tonight, would you believe me?”
Ana looked at me.
“I would. But does it have to be tonight?”
“I suppose so,” I said.
“Hmm. Why not wait till the dawn?” asked Ana.
“The dawn?”
“Yes,” she said. “The dawn.”
“But why?” I asked.
“Well, I’d hate to die in the dark,” she said. “Call me strange… but I believe that whatever you see last you will continue to see, forever and always, for the rest of eternity. The last thing you do will determine how you’ll spend it.”
“You believe in eternity?” I asked.
She smiled again.
“Young man,” she said. “Death is a clock with no hands.”
Ana took another drink from her bottle. I did the same with mine.
“I’ve attempted suicide before,” she said. “Multiple times. I tried once, when I lived in Singapore, but that didn’t work. Nothing ever seems to work, no matter how carefully I plan it. I guess it’s just nature’s way of saying that my time has yet to come.” She then stared once more at her bottle of milk, its contents now half-empty. “Do you think it’s your time, Kevin?”
I nodded.
“You’re my third person, today.”
She looked up from her bottle.
“Your third person?”
“Yes,” I said. “‘On the day you die, you will come across four important individuals.’ My father said that to me.”
“Who was the first?”
“A waitress named Lisa.”
“And the second?”
“A man with a silver Lexus.”
Ana gave me a look.
“That’s impressive.”
I laughed.
“I suppose,” I said. “It’s a nice car.”
Ana smile slowly returned.
“So who’s your fourth?” she asked.
“My friend,” I said. “He’s taking his bath right now.”
“I see,” said Ana. “And how do you know he’s your fourth?”
“He’ll help me,” I said. “He’s the only one who can do it.”
“I see,” said Ana. “I believe you.” She took a deep breath, and exhaled through her nose. “You will both wait, won’t you? You and your Mr Four?”
“I will.”
“Do you promise?”
“Yes,” I said. “I promise.”
Ana and I raised our bottles to our lips once more. This time we finished the remainder of our milk. We then set the bottles aside.
“Where are you from, by the way?”
She didn’t answer me straightaway. She had a distant look in her eyes.
“Somewhere far away,” said Ana. “Farther than you can imagine.”
•
There is a smaller car park, located on the other side of the main road; a gravel path extends from a corner, leading the way down to the lake. There are no sounds here, no stirring, no rustling. No waves lapping. Alvin and I sat on the shore, watching the water, as the pebbles crunched and buckled beneath our weight.
“Thank you for doing this,” I said.
Alvin maintained his silence.
“You know, I’ve been reading this book, and it has this face on the cover. But on the face there’s a cavity, like”—I pointed to my forehead—“right here.”
He didn’t even nod. Alvin simply watched the water. I tried to watch it as well, but then I realised—I couldn’t. There was no light.
“I killed a man once,” I said.
He sniffed. “You did?”
“Yes. Though he didn’t die right away.”
He asked me how. I looked at my hands.
“I reached into him. Deep inside. And then I took out his soul.”
Alvin said nothing more for a while. I could barely see him in the night, huddled against his knees. All I can see was a gleam, a glimmer, the wet light in his eyes. In the darkness he asked me, softly, how it had felt back then—to hold a soul in my own hands—and I said I didn’t know. I said I couldn’t tell. A soul was something I could feel, but couldn’t see. It was something I could hold, but would never have.
I asked him if he still remembered that dream I once had, and Alvin said yes, he did. He hadn’t forgotten a thing: the pool, the floating. The silence. “That’s where I shall be,” I said to him. “That’s where I’m going to next.” Into the company of love I shall return.
•
I lower myself into the lake. Alvin asks if I am ready, and I tell him to wait. “Just wait,” I say. “Just wait.”
This is the part where waking turns to sleeping. The light changes. Things wane, and then brighten. I can see the water now, and how blue it has become. I see the sky too, watch it change before my eyes. I see the low stretch of cloud, spanning over my head. Surrounding me are the low-lying mountains, tinged by a wash of pale fire.
Alvin lifts my head. He wraps my neck with cling film, layering the plastic over my gills. He twines it, repeatedly, until the film is finished. It’s excessive, but I don’t blame him. A while passes before I begin thrashing, but he is holding me still. He’s holding me still with both of his arms, and he’s telling me it’s okay. “It’s okay,” he keeps saying. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” And then the light changes again, just one more time—and at first I see nothing; I see everything; I see nothing at all.
NOTES & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The epigraph was taken from the album liner notes to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.
“There is this world, and then there is another … the way by which you came, baby”: Su Lin’s words to Alvin were paraphrased from Akutagawa Ryunusuke’s novel Kappa.
“… there’s Bill Murray in one shot and Scarlett Johansson in the next”: this is a scene from Sofia Coppola’s film Lost in Translation.
The idea of the specialist (or “senmon-ka”) is taken from Nisio Ishin’s light novel series Monogatari.
The teenager’s dream in Chapter 3 references Kinji Fukusaku’s film Battle Royale.
“I saw the summer come once…I won’t ever forget it”, “I’ve only ever seen the spring once, and I would never forget it”: this refrain originates from the opening line of Marjorie Barnard’s short story, “The Persimmon Tree”.
The poster in Perdido boasts a direct lyric from the song of the same name. The hotel Takao later mentions to Lisa is the Furusato Kanko Hotel, which filed for bankruptcy in October 2012.
The “Blue Room” is a reference to David Hare’s play, The Blue Room.
Kitchen Town is known as “Kappa-Bashi”; while it is not known what the “Kappa” actually refers to, the street has taken advantage of the homophone, and officially adopted the mythical creature as its mascot.
The manga Ahab describes throughout Chapter 6 is “The Enigma of Amigara Fault”, a one-shot collected in Ito Junji’s Gyo.
The paperback Kevin reads in Chapter 7 (and which he later mentions in Chapter 8 to Alvin) is Oscar Kiss Maerth’s The Beginning Was the End.
“Into the company of love I shall return”: a paraphrase of the final line of Robert Creeley’s poem, “For Love”.
•
I would like to acknowledge and thank the following people for reading my novel, at its various stages of development: the novelists David Peace and Ian Sansom; friends from Warwick University; members of the Image-Symbol Department, in particular Tse Hao Guang and Prabu Daveraj; Amanda Lee Koe and Samuel Caleb Wee of the Sunday Snooker Girl Gang, whose detailed feedback and support I have found utterly invaluable; and of course Daryl WJ Lim, Sophia Schoepfer and Wong Yiping, the precious three who’d been there when I only had the first half of the novel written down, and needed a push to carry on with the second. I can’t thank you guys enough.
Finally, I would like to thank the team at Epigram Books—to my editor (and mentor), Jason Erik Lundberg; my designer, Allan Siew; and my publisher, Edmund Wee—for putting their faith in a manu
script like Kappa Quartet.
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
Daryl Qilin Yam is a co-editor of the SingPoWriMo anthology series, a director at Sing Lit Station, and a stageplay producer at Take Off Productions. He holds a BA (Hons) in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Warwick, and spent a year studying at the University of Tokyo. His prose and poetry have been published in a number of anthologies and literary journals. Kappa Quartet is his first novel.
ALSO FROM THE 2015 EPIGRAM BOOKS FICTION PRIZE
WINNER
Now That It’s Over by O Thiam Chin
FINALISTS
Let’s Give It Up for Gimme Lao! by Sebastian Sim
Death of a Perm Sec by Wong Souk Yee
Sugarbread by Balli Kaur Jaswal
LONGLISTED
Annabelle Thong by Imran Hashim
Altered Straits by Kevin Martens Wong
NOW THAT IT’S OVER
O THIAM CHIN
During the Christmas holidays in 2004, an earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggers a tsunami that devastates fourteen countries. Two couples from Singapore are vacationing in Phuket when the tsunami strikes. Now That It’s Over weaves a tapestry of causality and regret, and chronicles the physical and emotional wreckage wrought by natural and manmade disasters.
Available online at www.epigrambooks.sg
LET’S GIVE IT UP FOR GIMME LAO!
SEBASTIAN SIM
Born in the early morning of the nation’s independence, Gimme Lao is cheated of the honour of being Singapore’s firstborn son by a vindictive nurse. This forms the first of three things Gimme never knows about himself, the second being the circumstances surrounding his parents’ marriage, and the third being the profound (but often unintentional) impact he has on other people’s lives. This humorous novel uses Gimme as a hapless centre to expose all of Singapore’s ambitions, dirty linen and secret moments of tender humanity.
DEATH OF A PERM SEC
WONG SOUK YEE
Death of a Perm Sec is a mystery about the demise of the permanent secretary of the housing ministry, Chow Sze Teck, accused of accepting millions of dollars in bribes over his career. Set in 1980’s Singapore, the novel examines the civil servant’s death, which first appears to be suicide by a cocktail of alcohol, morphine and Valium. But upon investigation by a CID inspector who might not be what he seems, the family discovers there may be far more sinister circumstances behind his death that reach to the very top of government.
SUGARBREAD
BALLI KAUR JASWAL
Pin must not become like her mother, but nobody will tell her why. She seeks clues in Ma’s cooking when she’s not fighting other battles—being a bursary girl at an elite school and facing racial taunts from the bus uncle. Then her meddlesome grandmother moves in, installing a portrait of a watchful Sikh guru and a new set of house rules. Old secrets begin to surface but can Pin handle learning the truth?
The Epigram Books Fiction Prize promotes contemporary creative writing and rewards excellence in Singaporean literature. The richest literary prize in Singapore is awarded to the Singaporean, permanent resident or Singapore-born author for the best manuscript of a full-length, original and unpublished novel written in the English language.
This year’s winner will be announced in November 2016 and have his or her novel published by Epigram Books.
For more information, please visit EBFP.EPIGRAMBOOKS.SG
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