Mysterious Setting

There was a period, ages ago now, when I used to go play in this park a lot with my friends. I’d say I must have been about ten or so at the time.
      I call it a park, but really it was just a field. No slide, no swings, no jungle gym.
      There were these long rows of old stones, chipped and crumbling, like markers of some sort, but that was it. Large stones, small stones. Wherever you looked, that’s all there was.
      The park was neither attractive nor nice, but it was big. Actually, it was huge. My friends and I had more space there than we could ever need.
      The park was kind of far away—it took over an hour to bike there from where we lived—but we liked making the trip together, and we went all the time.
      Basically, we had nowhere else to play.
      The group I was in had five or six kids in it, so we couldn’t stay indoors for long. All our houses were pretty cramped, and the adults were always getting after us. And we were too poor to afford any sort of entertainment we had to pay for.
      So we would head out to that spacious park where we could horse around to our heart’s content without worrying that anyone would complain. To that vast field of rubble.
      And what did we do when we got there?
      We listened to the old man.
      In the beginning, when we first discovered the park, we used to play chicken on our bikes or leap from one crumbling block to the next, getting off on proving how brave we were. All that stopped when we met the old man. From then on, we just went and listened.
      His stories weren’t all that interesting—they were a bit tedious, in fact. Yet something in the way he recounted them drew us in, mesmerized us.
     Maybe we were just desperate for something to do. Anything, whatever. It still amazes me, though, looking back, that we stuck with him as long as we did. That we never got fed up with the old guy and his silly tales.
      There was something in the air, I think. Some peculiar feeling you couldn’t quite put your finger on that kept calling us back, time and again. Yes, the park was like that. It had a special magnetism that lured you in and held you—that wouldn’t let you go.
      Why else would kids hungry for action have gone so far to a place so desolate?
      And we weren’t the only ones. The park was surprisingly crowded, full of people doing ordinary park things. Housewives walking dogs, couples lounging in the shade of a tree, old men playing shōgi, shirtless young men sunbathing. High-school girls practicing dance moves, boys kicking soccer balls. Everything was ordinary except the park itself, which seemed too dreary to be so popular. Or rather, it seemed too popular given how dreary it was.
      So there must have been something special about it.
      Something that called us all there, irresistibly.
      To that park.
 
•
 
      I’ve forgotten the old man’s stories. All that has remained with me is the sense that, by and large, they were pretty dull. I don’t regret having forgotten them, not really, though there is a certain frustration in being unable to call them up.
      One thing I can remember very clearly is how we met the man.
      With the park as crowded as it was, no one would have struck you as being out of place. There were people who came up and tried to sell you stuff, and simply wouldn’t let you alone; a priest who was there day after day intoning his eerie spells; a steady stream of officials and researchers who claimed to be doing environmental surveys; scientists conducting obscure experiments with outlandish equipment. Every so often, a group of volunteers planted trees.
      I figure all those people who gathered in the park to enjoy themselves are what brought the old man there. He needed the human contact. None of us ever went back home with him, but we got the impression he lived alone.
      I’m not saying the park was just a stop on his daily walk or something, though. He was there on a mission. Not like he had some ambition he was trying to achieve—that’s not the sort of mission I mean. It was about trying to help. He was engaged in a very private sort of volunteering. He performed for the children in the park.
      Kamishibai, as it’s called. Paper theater.
      That, at least, was his plan. The world, however, planted an obstacle in his path. No one paid any attention to the shows he staged in a corner of that vast park, showing hand-drawn pictures as he narrated the story they depicted. No one, young or old, had any interest at all in experiencing that sort of old-fashioned entertainment.
      I can’t say how long he kept putting on those sad performances.
      Over time, though, even as the park’s visitors ignored him, they must have begun to notice that he was there, standing in the same spot day after day, cycling through the pictures as he recounted his stories to a non-existent audience.
      One day, a boy in my group suggested we go tease him. You can imagine it, I’m sure—a bunch of ten-year-olds going to harass an old man and becoming friendly with him instead. That was how we ended up opening the gate to his invisible amphitheater.
      I see only one possible explanation for our subsequent transformation, as we morphed from a gaggle of hecklers into a well-behaved audience.
      That same magnetism.
      The stories themselves were so tedious, as I said, that it was no surprise no one ever came to watch, and the old man had none of the charm or charisma that enables certain people to exercise a deep fascination over others. Could this very lack of charisma have been the thing that drew us back? Maybe we were just being nice?
      No, I don’t think so. None of us was so generous, and besides, I wouldn’t say we felt sorry for him. Certainly I don’t recall ever feeling that way about him. He had a sense of purpose, after all, and he didn’t seem particularly lonely.
      Eventually, after we began meeting the old man on a regular basis and had even spoken with him a few times, he introduced himself to us. He was a teacher, he said. One of us asked what school he taught at, and he said he wasn’t really working anymore—he was retired. He still thought of himself as a teacher, though, even if he no longer had a classroom. That was why he came to perform at the park every day: his storytelling was a way of teaching. Finding students had turned out to be more difficult than he expected, but he didn’t let that worry him; he kept at it, offering his free classes to the public.
      That was the sort of man he was. And it’s true, there was something vaguely classroom-like in our interactions with him. At least that’s how it seems now, looking back. Not that we disliked him, as we did some of our teachers at school—though here, too, it may have been that some of the park’s special magnetism had rubbed off on him.
      I said I’ve forgotten the old man’s stories, but the truth is that I do remember one very clearly. There is one story of his that will stay with me forever.
      Indeed, this story is the reason I can still recall the old man so vividly.
      Which is exactly how he wanted it.
      He was determined that we should hold on to that story no matter what might happen to us in our lives, no matter how many years passed. He told us so himself repeatedly, so often it got annoying. That we remember it was his one and only desire, the whole reason he had continued teaching even now that he was retired.
      The story wasn’t wildly funny, or even amusing. It had no marvelously fantastic elements, and it didn’t leave you feeling energized. The plot had its share of ups and downs, I suppose, but I certainly wouldn’t say it was the sort of thing anyone could possibly enjoy.
      What else can I say? And say with confidence?
      That everyone who heard it felt a little sad, I guess.
      Maybe “everyone” is going too far.
      But in a group of five or six, at least one or two would be touched.
      And so they would remember the story, and then eventually the day would come when they would find themselves wanting to tell that same story to someone else.
      Now that the old man had found his students, he quit kamishibai. We were good enough listeners, he said, that he didn’t need the pictures. He could tell the story better without them, because then he could really dive into the details.
      From then on, he would call us over to a corner of the park, sit himself down on the soft earth, and lean back against the fence. And then the performance would begin.
      Each story began with the same set phrase. Every tale has a main character or two, he would declaim, and of course the one I’m about to tell you is no exception.
      This was how the story began.
      And it continued . . .
 
•
 
      I’m going to call the protagonist of this story Shiori.
      Shiori moved to Tokyo at eighteen, but they say she was originally from the Northeast.
      We’re talking ancient history, here—back when I was in my teens.
      Shiori doesn’t seem to have had a very happy life. She tended to be unlucky, I mean. But she was an optimist, and seldom let things get her down. More importantly, she had a dream. She had come to Tokyo to become a lyricist.
      Shiori never gave up, no matter what happened. That’s the kind of person she was. She could endure any sort of agony, physical or mental, as long as she could tell herself that doing so would help her make her dream come true. She couldn’t escape the pain outright, but she could numb herself to it by picturing herself sometime in the future, hard at work on a song. Not that she was writing anything at the moment, but she could see herself—a sparkling and glamorous version of herself—deep in conversation with the singers with whom she would eventually become acquainted. That vision was always with her, projected in high definition in the recesses of her mind.
      She had decided to become a lyricist because she was tone deaf.
      Yes, Shiori was tone deaf. And yet she loved music, and so from the time she was young, whenever a song touched her in some way she would begin singing along.
      People invariably became annoyed with her when she did this, so she would try to sing as quietly as she could. As a child, she thought the problem was that she was too loud.
      In any event, Shiori was constantly singing. And so she knew, she just knew, that she was destined to live with music.
      She asked her mother about this once, and her mother agreed she might be right. During her pregnancy, Shiori’s mother had gone to stay with her parents so they could look after her, and she spent a lot of time playing their piano. She meant for it to be a sort of prenatal training, but since she had never taken piano lessons and couldn’t read music, few of the chords she produced were what you might call beautiful harmonies. Shiori’s aunt was the one who had grown up playing the piano, not Shiori’s mother.
      Later on, Shiori would come to the conclusion that her mother’s terrible piano playing was responsible for her tone deafness, but she never resented her mother for it.
      Shortly after she entered middle school, Shiori learned the word troubadour. It caught her eye while she was flipping through a book at the library.
      She didn’t really like to read, so she still wasn’t entirely sure what it meant when she put the book down, but just seeing the word on the page and repeating it to herself in her mind made her feel all tingly inside. When she got home, she went straight to her room and started a troubadour notebook. It wasn’t for poems; it was for pictures. She covered page after page with drawings of fantasy troubadours—figures that grew gradually more and more wondrous, less and less human. She wasn’t very skilled at drawing, either.
      From that day on, Shiori knew she would live as a troubadour. The next time she sat down with her teacher for guidance counseling, she announced that she had decided not to go to high school. It wasn’t necessary, she said, because she was a troubadour. There was a phone call home and her mother was summoned, but Shiori didn’t get in trouble. Her mother loved the idea. Her father bawled her out, though, and in the end she did go to high school.
      The troubadour suffered a good deal of persecution.
      In middle school she had been the subject of numerous “witch hunts” by her classmates, to which she had responded by being very careful never to sing in anyone else’s presence, and simply waiting, whenever the storm came, for it to blow over.
      Things weren’t so bad in high school, though a few unfortunate experiences revealed to her how awesome the power of music was.
      The worst was when, three times in quick succession, she happened to sing very softly at school, and on each occasion a fellow student had died the next day. One was killed in an car crash; one committed suicide; the third was stabbed by a boy from another school. All three students were girls.
      Shiori couldn’t begin to imagine how her singing might be connected to these tragedies, but the link terrified her all the same, and she felt a profound sense of guilt, and she was more careful than ever before not to sing in public.
      Even before the three deaths, those middle-school witch hunts had made it clear to Shiori that she had to conceal her troubadour identity from her high-school classmates. Whenever possible, she would beg off singing in music class or in the karaoke booth, and if she couldn’t refuse outright she would fain shyness, singing so faintly no one could hear.
      Still, whenever something moved her deeply, the song would come. Her voice would burst from her, all on its own, revealing her troubadour nature. Everyone present, from her closest friends to random students she hardly knew, would stand frozen to the spot, stunned, a look tinged with disgust on their faces.
      Each time this happened, Shiori would remember something her society teacher had said to her in middle-school.
      All poets are alone.
      It made Shiori sad to think that poets, even singing poets, were so isolated and disliked. Though it also explained why they spent so much time with their verses.