Dark Water (20 page)

The third floor of the building was roughly parallel to the Metropolitan Expressway. Every time a truck drove past, the building would vibrate. The roar of traffic did penetrate the building and could be heard by the audience, but not enough to distract attention from the performance.

As director, Kiyohara always sat among the audience, scrutinizing the stage from their perspective. He would mercilessly point out any mistakes he noted in the performance to cast members once the curtain came down. Accused cast members would have to rethink their roles and make proper adjustments by the next day. Thus, their theatrical production underwent a transformation even after opening night, right through to the final performance. A play honed to perfection over two months of rehearsal would often be turned upside down after the first performance. It was Kiyohara's practice to use feedback from the audience to refine the production.

As he briefly scanned the audience gathered to watch the first performance, he noticed that there were no empty seats in the house. The floor space once used for the disco was flat, and seating had to be provided by stacking boards to form tiers, which involved a great deal of exertion. The effort was more than rewarded, however, when spectators filled the seating to capacity. If the audience continued to pour in as they were doing on this opening night, the troupe should easily exceed their target of two thousand over the fifteen scheduled performances. Kiyohara looked away from the stage and drew a long breath of relief.

A telephone was ringing onstage. The young woman played by Noriko Kikuchi reached to answer it.

She wore a running outfit with a scarf wrapped around her head, the kind of look she'd never have permitted herself back in her disco days. Before her outstretched hand could lift the receiver, she heard a man's voice behind her and started to turn around. That very instant, Kiyohara noticed something that had definitely not been there in rehearsal: Noriko and the actor behind her seemed to lose their concentration. Noriko brought her hand up to her cheek, and glanced up toward some point on the ceiling. Reacting to this, the actor behind her also looked up at the ceiling. Kiyohara, shocked, almost stood up from his seat. Water was dripping from the ceiling. Drops of water were dripping down, wetting Noriko's cheek. This accident had diverted the actors' concentration from their roles.

Yuichi Kamiya in the sound effects booth was pissed off. Having voiced to Kiyohara a difference of opinion, he'd been replaced at the last minute. He was still unhappy about being relegated to the non-acting staff. On the face of it, he had voluntarily stepped down from the role and the part was given to a junior actor who'd been his understudy. But that was only the story put forth to cover his dismissal. Everyone in the troupe knew the truth. Kamiya was simply the latest proof that going against Kiyohara, autocratic director-manager, meant losing your part.

To have rehearsed for all of two months to perfect a role only to see the effort go to waste was the worst thing that could happen to an actor. Once relegated to the non-acting staff, you no longer had a ticket quota to fill and you also got paid, though a mere pittance. Comforting himself that by losing the part he was at least better off financially, Kamiya tried to come to terms with the blow. But now, in the sound effects box, he was thoroughly fed up with just sitting there at loose ends as a mixing assistant.

Kamiya gazed lethargically out from the booth, which was up behind where the audience sat. Set higher than the surroundings, sound effects commanded a good view of the stage and the audience. He could thus see Kiyohara's back as he sat there in the audience. Well over six feet tall and with the broad chest of a wrestler, Kiyohara had long, bleached hair that he tied back at the nape of his neck. Even in the dim stage lighting, Kamiya had been able to pick out Kiyohara instantly. As he looked down at the man, Kamiya's gaze began to radiate hatred -hatred for the man who'd snatched away his part, who'd left his self-respect in tatters. Yet Kamiya was unlikely to break away from the man's spell.

What Kamiya felt toward Kiyohara were the dual emotions of hatred and awe. Had he been able to dismiss Kiyohara's talent as a director, Kamiya would have left the troupe long ago. Kiyohara's overbearing and inhuman attitude was more than intolerable. Kamiya stayed with him because he possessed an almost tangible talent.

The disgraced actor had joined the
Kairin Maru
five years ago, soon after it formed. Air the current troupe members recognized him as a mainstay member of the group. Were he to leave the troupe and join another company, he would have to start all over again from scratch as a lowly trainee. His reluctance to leave was even greater now that the
Kairin Maru
was just one step away from making its Kinokuniya Hall debut. Kiyohara may have bawled him out and taken his part, but there was little Kamiya could do but grin and bear it and anything else that came his way. But this did nothing to curb his resentment from mounting by the hour.

Reacting to an instruction from the mixing engineer sitting beside him, Kamiya pressed a switch in front of him. The telephone onstage began ringing. In response to the ringing, Noriko stopped what she was doing and went to answer the phone. She succeeded in conveying through her expression and gestures her character's mixed feelings of anxiety and hope. Kamiya was fascinated by the, delicate nuance of her motions. She was a petite woman with a pale complexion and coquettish features. The running outfit she was wearing now concealed the contours of her body, but in the past she'd played roles that required her to undress onstage and reveal her splendidly proportioned physique.

Kamiya had never imagined that Noriko would develop into such a successful actress, though he was instrumental in getting her into
Kairin Maru.
Having met her at the disco
Mephisto,
he was the one who introduced her to Kiyohara. When
Mephisto
closed, Noriko found herself without a stage; recognizing her plight, Kamiya casually suggested to her that she might like his troupe. The invitation was really nothing more than a pick-up line he dropped to any girl he fancied. Little did he imagine then that in a mere two years she'd become the troupe's leading actress. He now regarded her with conflicting emotions, for she knew her own worth and asserted her importance in the company to the point of eclipsing him. There was a time when Kamiya seriously thought he was falling in love with Noriko. He hit the brakes when he learned that Kiyohara and Noriko were bound with more than platonic ties.

Kiyohara was not impartial in the way he handled members of the company. Some could give a poor performance without being criticized, while others would be yelled at after the best of performances. Kiyohara was a law unto himself, and no one else understood the distinctions he drew and the criteria he applied. It was obviously not simply a question of favoritism. But Noriko was special. During rehearsal he treated Noriko as someone special. That was not to say that he was easier on her. He was horrendously brutal.

Although tongue-lashings were dispensed universally, he had never directed physical violence toward any member of the company. There had been times, however, when he subjected Noriko to the most appalling outbursts of violence, as he screamed at her:

'Oh bitch, what the hell are you doing? You're no actress and never will be! Quit and save the profession a lot of grief! That's no good for God's sake! How many times do I have to tell you? Strip, you whore, it's all you're good for! Forget yourself now, you've got no place in the part!'

Not content with unleashing a hail of abuse, he would rush over to where she was, kick her legs out from under her, and slap her in the face. She'd fall to the floor, shed a silent tear or two, but never cry out loud. Fixing him with a determined look, she'd redo the scene, altering the nuance, and he'd shout that it was no good and knock her down again… So violent was the treatment that it pained the onlookers. Slow to catch on though Kamiya was, even he began to understand the nature of their relationship after seeing them go at this for six months. There was no way they could keep this up unless they were bound by carnal ties and strong bonds of trust. The violence that bound the two signalled the strength of a union both spiritual and carnal.

There was further proof. With the end of rehearsal, all resentment disappeared from between them and they'd engage in rapt conversation, the very image of peace and harmony. The woman who had just a moment ago been the victim of Kiyohara's cudgeling and kicking would now be falling about in entranced laughter at his remarks and hanging on his every word as he spouted his theories on the art of performance. Everyone knew what they were about, it was an unspoken understanding. The members of the company did not gossip about Kiyohara and Noriko because they understood and accepted their peculiar relationship.

Kiyohara had honed Noriko for that opening night's performance, and now she was showing the audience the result. It hadn't escaped the notice of Kamiya, either, that Noriko's expression had frozen for an instant. From the elevated position of the sound effects booth, the ceiling directly above the stage was not visible. Nonetheless, Noriko's gestures told Kamiya what was going on. He knew that water was dripping from the ceiling and that some drops had landed on her cheek.

Kamiya immediately caught sight of Kiyohara's hefty frame as he stooped up from his seat. Kiyohara cast a furtive glance behind him towards the sound effects booth. Despite the distance, Kamiya and Kiyohara's eyes met through the booth's glass partition. Unnoticed by other members of the audience, Kiyohara managed to communicate to Kamiya through deft gestures of his hand and facial expressions that something was wrong with the stage ceiling or thereabouts. Having noticed the problem already, Kamiya immediately understood what Kiyohara was trying to tell him and pointed to the ceiling. Seeing Kamiya's gesture, Kiyohara gave a big nod and slowly turned his face back toward the stage, still looking quite irritated. Kamiya was confident that he had correctly interpreted Kiyohara's gestured instruction.

Since the sound effects booth was closest to the floor above, Kamiya would be the natural choice to deal with a leak from the ceiling centre stage. 'Go up to the floor above, find the leak, and take care of it' - that must have been the meaning of Kiyohara's charade.

There was not a moment to lose. Every member of a small theatrical company, actor or not, must be prepared to assume lighting and stage duties. Kamiya recognized the seriousness of the situation. The hazards of water in such a place could not be underestimated. Wiring for the lights, though not visible to the audience, ran all about the stage. Should one of the connector sections become wet with water, everything on that circuit would short out. They could even be unlucky enough to have the whole stage plunge into darkness, wreaking havoc with the production.

Kamiya quickly exited the sound effects booth, only to stop dead in his tracks once out of the door. He didn't know how to reach the next floor. They had entered the building two days ago to prepare the stage sets, put up seating for the audience, and wire the lighting and acoustics. Although Kamiya had assisted in all of these operations, it had never once been necessary to go up to the next floor. He hadn't even seen the route up. The nearest door led to the outside of the building, with one passage leading to a fire escape. Kamiya opened the heavy iron door and ventured out onto one of the stairway landings. The moment he opened the door, he felt a blast of wind from the trucks driving nearby down the Metropolitan Expressway. It was like a different dimension. Traffic along the expressway a little after eight at night could slow to a congested halt one moment and resume at a high pitch just a few seconds later. Kamiya was amazed at how close the headlights streamed past. It seemed like he could reach out and actually touch the traffic. He'd been steeped in that alien dimension again, the one called the stage.

Adorned with coloured lights, the Rainbow Bridge arched upwards over Tokyo Bay, with more of the aura of a Tokyo Tower than a bridge. The dark waters of the bay under the bridge were not visible from the fire escape landing, but the smell carried on the strong winds blowing off the bay.

Kamiya rushed up the fire escape to the next floor, where he tried the doorknob. Unlocked, the door yielded easily to his hand. It was pitch dark inside. The feeble light that came through the open door allowed him to just make out the vague contours of a corridor. Yet, to make his way along this corridor, he had to release the hand that was propping the door open. There had to be a light switch somewhere. As long as the power hadn't been shut off, the wall switch should still turn on the lights. Kamiya strained his eyes at a likely spot.

No sooner had he begun to move forward than he heard a heavy thud from behind as the door slammed shut, throwing him into complete darkness. He extended his hands and felt his way along the wall, nervously putting one foot in front of the other. There was little fear in his heart, however, so intent was he on getting the job done for his colleagues. Had he not been on such a mission, his progress would no doubt have been much more hesitant.

His hand felt something projecting from the wall, something that felt like plastic. Convinced that it was a light switch, Kamiya flicked it. There was a momentary pause before fluorescent lighting filled the corridor.

At the end of the long corridor, he could see an entrance that resembled a cave. He somehow remembered having seen something very much like it before. He was about to attribute this sensation to deja vu when he realized that he had completely forgotten that this place had once been a disco. He muttered audibly as if to chastise himself for his foolishness. This was
Mephisto,
the disco he'd frequented, the one where he'd first met Noriko Kikuchi. No wonder he remembered seeing the entrance. What looked like the opening of a cave was in fact the entrance to a disco.