Spark by Naoki Matayoshi

Author:Naoki Matayoshi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2020-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Steam rose from the gyoza we’d bought at Iseya, mixing with the white breath escaping from our mouths. In the mild winter sunshine, the trees in Inokashira Park looked bleak, as if they needed all the warmth for themselves.

“The season sure makes a difference to the atmosphere here,” Kamiya muttered.

We bought cans of coffee and sat on a park bench looking out at the lake. This place had a good feel about it, as if all the accumulated toxins stored in our bodies could be filtered out just by being here. We both preferred the quiet flow of time in this park to Shinjuku or Shibuya.

A young mother pushing a baby carriage sat on the bench next to us. The baby was wailing loudly, and the mother seemed tired and frustrated.

Kamiya stood up and slowly approached the carriage. “Cute baby,” he said to the mother.

She smiled sweetly at the infant, as if reporting Kamiya’s words, but it gave no indication of stopping crying.

Kamiya peered at its face. “Two flies settled on a nun’s right eye,” he said to the baby.

Huh? What was this? Before I could ask, he said in a hammy sing-song voice, “It’s some funny haiku about flies I thought up yesterday.”

“That’s not going to make the baby laugh,” I said.

His response was to keep staring at the baby. “Two flies sitting on the grave of a benefactor,” he said, smiling.

Evidently he was completely serious about thinking his haiku could be calming, that is. The mother’s face began to stiffen in alarm.

“You’ve got such a healthy baby here,” he said to her gently, then continued reciting his fly haiku. The ordinary kindness of his words only seemed to make the fly haiku more bizarre, even scary.

“I am a fly, you are a cricket, that is the sea.”

“The flies are the antithesis of Parisiennes.”

“A melon from my mother covered in flies.”

With each new haiku he recited, he’d cock his head enquiringly at the baby, as if gauging its reaction.

“The baby doesn’t think your fly haiku are funny,” I said.

He looked mystified. “You try,” he said coolly.

I didn’t have any experience with babies, but I had a strong feeling that fly haiku were not the right approach. I felt self-conscious in front of Kamiya and the mother—I wished they weren’t watching—but I understood that it was silly to be embarrassed in front of a baby.

“Peek-a-boo!” I said in my best baby talk.

The baby kept crying. Kamiya eyed me frostily, but unfazed I tried a few more peek-a-boos.

The mother edged away from me. She stooped down to pick up the baby, and in her arms the baby stopped crying at last. Kamiya did not seem pleased.

“What’s with the fly haiku?” I said after the mother had wheeled the carriage away. “A baby’s not going to laugh at that.”

“Your effort was so not funny,” he replied.

“But that’s what people always say to babies. Funny doesn’t come into it.”

“Nope. Definitely not funny.”

Maybe Kamiya didn’t understand peek-a-boo. How many artists, no matter how pushy,

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