River, Diverted by Jamie Tennant

Author:Jamie Tennant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palimpsest Press
Published: 2022-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

Hanami

“It’s a secret.”

“Right. Why is the kappa secret?”

Sora scrunched her face towards her nose, so teacher could see how much thought was going into answering the question. “Because people are scared of kappa,” she answered. “And if people knew that there was a kappa on the mountain, they would be afraid.” Sora paused and tilted her head. “Actually, I think this is aregorii.”

Allegory! I shouldn’t have laughed out loud at that, but c’mon. I knew people who really were thirty, and they wouldn’t have come up with that one.

“How so?” I asked.

“I think Kenichi and the kappa are repenting something else.”

“Representing something else.”

“Yes.”

Was Kenichi and the Kappa an allegory? Absolutely. Was it something Sora could understand? Not likely. Daniel didn’t really discuss the themes in his work. As far as I knew, it was just something he was doing for a lark. No, no. Not a lark. A distraction. Though he never mentioned it, his health had destabilized. His hands were growing worse, low oxygen purpling his skin like dye from within. His breath came in shorter, shallower gasps. He moved as though surrounded by glass figurines. He no longer came along after work to ride the bourbon boat straight into the sunrise. He went home and slept, and when he couldn’t sleep, he wrote.

The way I saw it was this: Kenichi was Daniel, and Soba was Daniel’s illness. Kenichi kept the kappa at bay; Daniel tried to do the same with his ill health. I did not know if this allegory was conscious. I should have asked him.

It was spring of 1997, a spring that didn’t announce itself but simply sauntered into our apartment one morning as a mild breeze, languid and snuggly-warm. We opened the sliding doors all across Sanyō, hoping it would sweep away a winter’s worth of cold and kerosene fumes. Jamiroquai and Pavement were at odds with one another—and with Babette—on my portable CD player. The walk to work grew brighter as the days lengthened and we jettisoned winter boots and coats in favour of spring jackets. The crusted brown on top of the mountains cracked to expose forest green. Business at J.J.’s picked up, and new staff began to cycle through. Nicolle left for a month, returning to Auckland to visit family. Allie, too, left for most of the spring, to travel in Thailand, Taiwan, and Hong Kong before its reversion to Chinese territory. Even Reiko took a short trip home to Fukuoka for three days.

Babette and I joked that we were the true Lifers, proving our worth while the others fell around us. I think we may have made several terrible Highlander jokes: “there can be only one” and whatnot. Meanwhile, Nagano sprang to life around us. Cherry-blossom season fell over the city like a fragrant pink snowfall on the trees, the gentle smell settling like a sweet-scented invisible fog. Cherry-blossom viewing is a national pastime and, naturally, an excuse for the consumption of beer, shōchū, and sake, so when Masa “suggested” an afternoon of it, we were not likely to argue.

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