Tsuyu

[hillwalker]

梅雨の物語* (A Tale of the Rainy Season)

It is tsuyu. The rainy season of debilitating humidity and belligerent mosquitoes. The tiresome buzz of young girls flitting past the window; a monochrome of check skirts, tank tops, sweat towels and tiny paper fans.
I am sipping my ice-cold barley tea. I have come to say goodbye to my daughter if she shows. After two hours…..
…..there are six other people inside the onsen. Three middle-aged men wearing the grey pallor of office; a fourth in his mid-twenties, bronzed with an athletic build. He is accompanied by two much younger women who are brazen enough to expose their breasts to whoever cares to look…..
…..as I drink in the high gloss of their slick skin, and nipples the colour of ripening plums. It is tsuyu; the season of plum rains. Slowly I let the hot spring waters absorb my molecules. My hand towel is folded on the edge of the pool with the blade.
Kyoko would never be allowed in here, of course. Not with that tattoo of a swallow on her left thigh. The only time I ever saw it when I was asked to identify the body. Her breasts still no bigger than a child’s. Her hips knobbly and white but her belly flat as a boy’s. Her eyelids were stitched closed but I imagined, had her eyes still been in place, her gaze would have flattened itself upon my face as she whispered…..
…..her voice like the gentle wing-beat of a moth.

“You never told me about Seattle.”

Have you ever inhaled butane until the back of your throat is raw with the bite of unnatural cold, and your lungs find a new melting point and your eyes…..? Your eyes scorch with blurring images?
The suffocating rush of Teen Spirit. Pink Crush. Berry Blossom. Sweet hydrocarbons. A mix of sensations that makes you want to float up closer to the sky-high advertising flicker so you can kiss the throbbing neon tubes, or caress the metallic electrodes of the street lights with your tongue…..
…..which was also pierced. I cannot imagine the pain she inflicted upon herself. Dried blood on her bitten-through lips and the corrosion in her throat…..
…..like the sudden swallow of frostbite that night in Seattle.
That night I saw its grin.

“Your suicide gene. You knew back then, and yet you still go ahead and breed.”

Despite her blindness Kyoko is able to reach for the blade. I gladly take it from her. There is little sensation as I become one with the water.

H

[Jack of Hearts]

This seems to owe something to the idea of a haiku. It's a story about a man reflecting upon his daughter's death, apparently as he's sitting in a hotspring and preparing to commit suicide (there are suggestions of allegory or metaphor but these are lost due to this reader's illiteracy of the context).

When a person uses the words 'Teen Spirit' and 'Seattle' so close together it invokes a reference to early 1990's grunge.

The parent feels responsible for his child's death, the shame of which (combined with his own 'gene') factor into the story's conclusion. The subtlety and facility define this piece as outstanding and very near poetry.




J

[sweety]

Its great reading your work Hill. Thanks!

[hillwalker]

Thanks @sweety for your kind comment...

and @Jack - this was an attempt to capture the nature of the Japanese horror story as much as the elegance of the haiku... and I'm glad you spotted the Nirvana reference (though not intentional when I first chose the deodorant spray in question)

H

[Delta40]

I'm a bit slow off the mark here. I wondered about the many .....'s in the story and was absolutely baffled by the last line

Despite her blindness Kyoko is able to reach for the blade. I gladly take it from her. There is little sensation as I become one with the water.

And he is waiting for her to show...

I can only imagine him sitting in a hot spring waiting for the spirit of his daughter to show but even then I'm confused.

It is 5.00am here though and your writing has a wonderful flow of imagery without bogging one down too much in detail.

[hillwalker]

I can only imagine him sitting in a hot spring waiting for the spirit of his daughter to show but even then I'm confused.


Well, I'm not going to blame it on the time difference between Oz and here.....

the .....s represent a shift from the immediate present to either some time later - or some time in the past (depending on whether we are following the character or his train of thought)

And his guilt is tricking him into believing the spirit of his dead daughter (who killed herself presumably) will show before he commits seppuku (ritual disembowelment if you must know). Suicide in Japanese culture is often a point of honour or obligation rather than an act of desperation.

An experiment in flash fiction - on the theme of a Japanese ghost story. Thanks for reading and sharing your bafflement.

H

[Jack of Hearts]

One supposes the basis of failing one's progeny is quite effective for a Japanese horror story (as per films like 'Ikiru'). This piece reminded the reader both of a scene in that film and the prose-to-haiku style of the English translation of Kawabata's "Snow Country."



J

[Dark Passenger]

I love this. You made the excellent choice of not sounding like a writer (my pet hate), using clean prose and a strong voice to drag me in. I've read it three times.

:cheers2:

[AuntShecky]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the substance of this story, technically a "short-short" story. It has a poignant theme and an exotic setting, contrasted with the flashback to Seattle.

The best thing about it is a quality it's difficult not to notice in your writing in general and especially your poetry, in that you remember to "show" not "tell." When it comes to subtlety, Hillwalker "gets it."

Still, the execution of the story detracts from its undeniable power. I agree with Delta about the ellipsis ". . ." Generally speaking, this is a rare type of punctuation specifically used to denote where something has been left out, such as straight news stories which delete the extraneous words from direct quotes. Evidently, you wanted to depict a pause, in which case the appropriate punctuation would be a comma.

Secondly, I know you don't want your narrator to sound pretenstious and you don't want your prose to have an and overly-earnest, self-conscious tone. So I'd consider reworking the string of simple declarative sentences (and include some verbs in the sentence fragments.)

I wonder if you could rethink the use of the present tense. It's difficult to keep up the present tense all the way through the piece, especially when introducing a flashback, without making awkward constructions. I only say this because after undergoing an epidemic of faux Hemingway and Raymond Carver-style prose in the 1980s and 90s, editors soon grew sick of it. I only say this in case if somewhere down the line you might be thinking about submitting your work for possible publication.

[hillwalker]

Thanks @Aunty for your feedback - and practical advice. I shall have a rethink as I felt it worked well up to a point..... but (there we go again).
It was originally formatted so that the end of one foreshortened sentence continued one line down - the ellipsis signifying a break in time as you say. But formatting on LitNet is a dark art for which I have not the powers.

And @DP - glad you enjoyed the read and thanks also for your generous comments.

[AuntShecky]

With subject matter similar to that of your story, here's an overview of an extremely intriguing author of whom I'm sure you're already familiar, but one whose name should be better known:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafcadio_Hearn[/

[hillwalker]

Thanks again - and no, this is a new one on me. But I shall investigate further as I'm intrigued.

h

[Jack of Hearts]

Some are worth coming back to revisit. 'Tsuyu' is still a great read and is perhaps this reader's... second favorite... hillwalker offering.









J