Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Tales from the Café

Three years ago, Yukio, still in training to become a potter, received an offer for funding if he opened a studio. To own a studio is every aspiring potter’s dream. Naturally, he longed to have his own studio in Kyoto someday. The offer of funding came from the owner of a wholesale company, newly established in Kyoto, which bought from the potter Yukio was working for.

In the seventeen years since he’d left Tokyo, he had been living in a bathroom-less ten-square-metre apartment to save money. Without any luxuries, he was simply focused on his dream.

His overriding motivation was to realize his goal of becoming a studio potter quickly, so that he could show Kinuyo. Upon reaching his late thirties, his impatience had only grown. Accepting the offer, he borrowed the rest of the money from a personal finance company, gave it to the wholesale company owner along with all his savings, and proceeded to prepare to open his studio. All did not end well, however, as the owner of the wholesale company ran off with the money that Yukio had entrusted to him.

He had been cheated, and the result was devastating. Not only did he still not have his pottery studio, but he was now also in enormous debt. It felt like he had fallen into a deep crevasse of financial hell from which he didn’t think he could escape. It was mental torture.

Every day, worry over making repayments overwhelmed his brain, leaving no room for other things, like the future. The only thing he could think of was, How can I raise the money? What can I do tomorrow to raise the money…?

Would I be better off dead?

Many times, this thought entered his mind. But if he died, the burden of repayment would fall to his mother, Kinuyo, and that was something he wanted to avoid at any cost. That possibility alone stood between him and his desperate thoughts of suicide.

This precarious tension was what Yukio was going through when one month earlier he learned of her death. At the news, he heard a tautly stretched string snapping inside his head.

When Kazu was out of sight, Yukio calmly plucked his mobile phone from his jacket pocket, checked the screen and sighed in annoyance.

‘No signal…’ he muttered, looking over at the woman in the dress. A moment later, his eyes shone as if he had suddenly thought of something. He stood up and, quickly assessing that the woman in the dress was not going to the toilet just yet, briskly left the cafe.

The bell rang, and soon after…

Flap!

The sound of the woman’s novel shutting resonated throughout the room. Perhaps Yukio had just left his seat to ring someone, but it was such terrible timing. The woman in the dress tucked her novel under her arm, silently rose from her seat and began walking towards the toilet.

The cafe had a large wooden door at the entrance. On the right was the toilet. Walking slowly, the woman in the dress passed through the entrance arch and turned right.

Clunk.

Just after the toilet door closed softly, Kazu entered the empty room from the kitchen.

Yukio was missing. If it had been Nagare in Kazu’s shoes at this moment, he would have searched for him frantically. Now was the time – the once-daily chance to travel back in time. But it was Kazu.

Far from growing frantic, she stayed completely cool as if the customer’s absence was no big deal. She started clearing away the woman in the dress’s used cup, behaving as if Yukio had never existed. She didn’t seem to have the slightest interest in why he had gone out or whether he was coming back. She wiped the table with a cloth and then disappeared back into the kitchen to wash the cup. The doorbell rang.

Yukio re-entered the room empty-handed, his mobile phone now stowed in his pocket. He sat down at the counter, which meant his back was to the chair. Lifting the glass in front of him, he sipped his water and exhaled a deep sigh, unaware the woman in the dress was gone.

Kazu appeared from the kitchen carrying a silver kettle and a bright white coffee cup upon a tray. Noticing Kazu, Yukio said, ‘I just contacted my sister,’ explaining why he had left his seat. His voice no longer sounded as defensive as it had when he had responded to Kazu’s question about why he didn’t attend the funeral.

‘Oh, really?’ Kazu replied quietly.

Yukio looked up at Kazu standing there and gulped. She seemed to be haloed by dim pale blue flames, and he sensed an unworldly and mysterious atmosphere hanging in the room.

‘The chair’s vacant…’ began Kazu.

He finally noticed that the woman in the dress was no longer there and gasped, ‘Ah!’

Walking up to the now unoccupied chair, Kazu asked him, ‘Will you be sitting down?’

Yukio stared vacantly for a moment, as if still shocked that he had not noticed the woman’s absence. But conscious of Kazu’s patient gaze, with some effort he replied, ‘Yeah, I will.’

He walked over, silently closed his eyes, and after taking a deep breath, he slid between the table and the chair.

Kazu placed the pure white cup in front of him.

‘I shall now pour the coffee,’ she said softly. Her calm voice had a sombre gravitas.

‘The time you can spend in the past will begin from the time the cup is filled, and it must end before the coffee gets cold…’

Although she had explained this rule to him earlier, Yukio didn’t immediately respond. After closing his eyes as if deep in thought, ‘OK, I understand,’ he replied, more to himself than to Kazu. His voice sounded different now, its pitch ever so subtly lower.

Kazu nodded, and she picked up from the tray a ten-centimetre-long silver implement that looked like a stirring stick and slipped it into the cup.

Yukio looked at it curiously. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, cocking his head to one side.

‘Please use this instead of a spoon,’ she explained simply.

Why doesn’t she just give me a spoon? he wondered. But he was conscious that listening to the explanation alone was taking up valuable time.

‘OK, got it,’ he merely replied.

Having finished her explanation, Kazu asked, ‘Shall we begin?’

‘Yes,’ Yukio answered. He downed his glass of water and took a deep breath.

‘Let’s begin now, please,’ he added softly.

Kazu nodded and slowly lifted the silver kettle in her right hand.

‘Pass on my regards to Kinuyo sensei,’ she said and added…

‘Remember, before the coffee gets cold…’

Moving as if in slow motion, Kazu began pouring the coffee into the cup. While still maintaining a casual demeanour, her movements were beautiful, flowing seamlessly like those of a ballerina. The entire cafe around them seemed pregnant with tension, as if a solemn ceremony was underway.

A very thin column of coffee poured from the silver kettle’s spout, resembling a narrow black line. There was no gurgling sound of coffee pouring as one might hear from the wide rim of a carafe. Instead, the coffee flowed silently into the brilliant white cup. As Yukio stared at the striking contrast of black coffee and white cup, a single plume of steam began to rise. Just at that moment, his surroundings began to shimmer and ripple.

In a panic, he tried to rub both his eyes but found he was unable to. As he lifted his hands to his face, they still felt like hands, but they were now vapour. It wasn’t just his hands, it was his body, his legs – all of him.

What’s going on?

At first, he was shocked by the unexpected events, but after considering what would follow, nothing seemed to matter any more. He slowly closed his eyes as his surroundings gradually began falling past him.