“Takeshi Suzuki Goes For A Walk”
Tony Malone
Copyright 2010 – Tony Malone
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Takeshi Suzuki looked up from his newspaper and glared at his wife. His wife gave him a cold look in return, a stare honed by five years of marriage into a dagger sharper and harder than any knife could ever be, and walked over to comfort the source of his annoyance. His daughter had started bawling because her breakfast bowl had (somewhat mysteriously) ended up on the carpet of the small living area of the tiny two-bedroom apartment, the grains of rice slowly starting to stick to the surface and add to the stains of breakfasts past. The tears ran down her little cheeks as she wailed her frustration out, devastated by the unfairness of the universe (and cruelly betrayed by gravity). Her mother picked her up and, without saying a word to the man of the house, took her into the back bedroom, flicking the door closed behind her with a deft, practiced motion. The sound of crying lessened slightly, but Takeshi Suzuki could still hear sobbing from the other side of the thin dividing wall separating the living room and kitchen from the rest of the apartment. With a deep sigh, he folded up his newspaper, drained the last dregs of coffee from his cup and stood up to leave, picking up a few scattered belongings from the table (monthly pass, I.D. card, driver’s licence, credit card). After putting on his jacket and picking up his leather briefcase, battered and scratched with the scars of a thousand work days, he walked to the door and went to leave, calling out “I’ll see you later” as he opened the door. As expected, there was no reply.
He walked slowly down the corridor to the lift, past the identical metal doors of his neighbours, differentiated only by numbers, scratches and the odd name plate, advertising the presence of a family whose spirit had not yet been sapped by living in the dark, damp heap of mould-green concrete and rust. Avoiding the rickety bicycle chained to the railing standing between him and a five storey plunge onto the hard, unforgiving floor, Takeshi Suzuki shuffled his way over to the lift. Where he stopped. Read a notice attached to the door. Sighed, deeply and uncontrollably. Turned around.
Takeshi Suzuki started to make his weary way down the stairs.
*****
The driver was screaming, feet rooted to the spot, hands shaking uncontrollably in front of him, forming regular, repetitive figures in the air. “I couldn’t stop! I couldn’t stop! I had no chance! He jumped! He jumped!”. The screams were raw and primal, looping over and over again, at first pleading, then rising to an anguished yell, crashing into the crowd of curious onlookers. The passengers walked up, attracted involuntarily by the inhuman clamour, murmured among themselves, picking up rumours of rumours and passing on rumours of rumours of rumours, before shaking their heads and trudging off to other platforms. Crowds blocked the dark narrow walkways between the platforms, and newcomers wondered, asking strangers what was happening, peering out of the small grimy windows onto the tracks below.
A pair of paramedics stood close by the driver. They talked to him calmly, trying to get him to sit down on the steps down to the platform, but he continued to howl, staring down at the track, not seeing anything but the vision in his head, a relentless, continuous cut of a man appearing from the corner of his eye and falling into the path of the train. A split-second of eye contact. An expression of fear, realisation, horror. The scene started again, playing itself in exactly the same way. And again. And again. And over and over. Overandoverandoverandovernadover…
*****
Takeshi Suzuki pushed open the main entrance to his apartment building and walked through the door (which should have been, but was not, locked electronically). Outside, a sea of standard grey rubbish bags, stuffed to bursting with the refuse of sixty families, flowed from its concrete holding pen, spilling over into the street. Carefully avoiding the waste of his apartment block, he stumbled, catching hold of a telegraph pole to right himself and thus avoiding toppling into the deep, open drain at the side of the road. He swore, once, briefly, strongly, under his breath, and set off down the long lane out of his estate.
The road was deserted as he strolled towards the station. Too narrow to support two cars coming in opposite directions, the road was avoided by anyone not needing to enter the block. Small two-storey houses lined both sides of the lane, except for one plot, where thin wooden lines on a concrete base showed where the walls of the next little house would be erected. As Takeshi Suzuki walked past, he glanced at the building site, wondering at how small the rooms looked in their nascent state. Surely his own rooms weren’t that small? He stopped for a moment. He looked around and, not seeing anyone else in the street, stepped across the drain into the building site. He walked around the small plot, moving in and out of the rooms, comparing them in size in his mind with the rooms of his small apartment. Favourably.
Stepping back across the odiferous trench separating the unfinished house from the road, he turned left and walked to the end of the lane. The road finished abruptly at an old, waist-height wire fence with a narrow gap in the middle for passers-by to navigate. Behind the fence was what was laughingly referred to in the neighbourhood as ‘the park’, a sandy wasteland, about fifty yards square, with some rusting climbing frames at one end and an old, half-dead cherry tree at the other. The only person he could see as he traversed the drab, eerily quiet recreational area was an old man sitting on the park’s sole bench, next to the cherry tree. On passing by the bench on his way to the entrance on the other side, Takeshi Suzuki noticed that the man was drinking from a can of beer (the brand was unknown, but it certainly was not one Takeshi Suzuki had ever tried, or was ever likely to). The man looked up as Takeshi Suzuki shuffled past, examining him and classifying him, before dropping his gaze and returning to his beer. Takeshi Suzuki kept on walking.
*****
“I saw him, rushing like a lunatic, straight in front of the train”.
The old woman, gesticulating wildly with her hands (so much so that one of her friends was forced to lean back a little to avoid having her hairstyle rearranged), leaned forward, giving her words extra emphasis.
“Like a bullet, he was, didn’t even look, and then…”, she smashed the heel of her right hand into the palm of her left, leaving none of the listeners in any doubt as to the outcome of the event she had witnessed. A second woman, sitting to the left of the first speaker, nodded her head in agreement. “But what a shame,” she sighed, “such a young man as well.”
“Not so young,” said the first woman, seemingly annoyed that her thunder had been stolen, “thirty, thirty-five maybe, just a salaryman.”
The third woman leaned forward with a sly grin on her face and poked the first woman on her shoulder with a bony, wrinkled finger. “A lot younger than any of us though!” she blurted out, and she and the second woman burst out into a peal of high-pitched laughter which echoed around the station coffee shop. The first woman, initially offended, soon joined in, her drill-like screech adding to the cacophony of sound which was already making people at other tables look slightly uneasy.
The three women quietened down, returning to their paper cups of tea, happy to put off their daily routines in the light of the u
nexpected, though tragic, occurrence.
“So why do you think he did it?” said the second woman. “He must have been crazy to jump in front of a train…”. A pause. “Plenty of easier ways to do it.” Her two companions nodded in agreement.
“And if he did want to do it at a train station, he should have walked down the road to the Sanyo line. Everyone knows that it’s cheaper to do it there than here. JR charges your family twice as much!” More nods. The first woman sighed. “And his poor wife, and kids maybe. A disgrace, it is, a husband, a father who killed himself. Awful.”
“Maybe that’s why he did it,” suggested the first woman, “couldn’t take life at home. Maybe he had an argument with his wife this morning. Maybe she cheated on him, maybe he cheated on her.”
The second woman snorted. “Well, in that case I don’t feel so sorry for him.”
*****
Takeshi Suzuki trudged along the side street towards the main road leading to the station. With every step, the noise grew louder and louder, waves of engine roars and human voices blending into an increasingly intrusive and unwelcome wall of sound. He reached the corner and turned right, passing the old bakery with boarded up windows, where he used to stop off and buy a light snack to ward off hunger pangs during the long train ride into the city. Walking down the long street, still partially lit by street lights, fighting against the heavy clouds and the slowly retreating night, Takeshi Suzuki slowed his pace. He concentrated on each step, putting one foot carefully in front of the other; left before right, right before left, then left before right again. Now that he had slowed his pace, he noticed people overtaking him, rushing past to make it to the station in time for the train. Some turned briefly to look at him as they passed, quick curious glances, gone in a second; some brushed past his coat, a mumbled apology trailing off into nothing as they moved relentlessly onward. Most just kept on walking.
Takeshi Suzuki continued his slow march towards the station. To his right, he noticed the businesses lining his side of the street. A convenience store, bright, sterile, threatening, a bored teenager standing behind the counter, a smile ever ready in his pocket for when it was required. A comic store which (Takeshi Suzuki was fairly certain) was primarily frequented for the large collection of pornographic comics and magazines kept at the back of the shop. A noodle shop, steam wafting out into the street through gaps in the poorly fitting windows (“Who wants noodles at this time of the morning?” thought Takeshi Suzuki). A coffee shop.
Takeshi Suzuki stopped and looked at the coffee shop. It was a cheerful little place with fake wood veneer, giving one the impression of a rustic European ski lodge (provided one had never actually seen a rustic European ski lodge). A chalked menu rested on a wooden stand, above which a stern looking wooden cuckoo peered out of a little wooden hut, staring at Takeshi Suzuki, measuring the man in front of him. Takeshi Suzuki stared at the menu. The cuckoo stared at Takeshi Suzuki. There was a hint of indecision, a half step, a slight move towards the door…
Takeshi Suzuki sighed and continued on his walk down the street. The cuckoo went back to protecting his menu.
*****
“Give me a cigarette, I’m dying for a smoke.”
A tall thin man reached into his shirt pocket, took out a pack of cigarettes and passed it to a shorter, fatter man, who took one out and skillfully lit it, seemingly without the use of any implement other than his fingers. He leaned back against the wall, inhaled, let the smoke make its dark, leaden way though every corner of his body, and then blew it back out into the street.
“Have you seen Suzuki today?” said the taller man as he took the pack back and pulled out a cigarette for himself. He took out a lighter and carefully lit the end, the tiny glowing dot seeming to temporarily brighten up the dull morning.
“No.” The short man sucked greedily on his cigarette again, turning half the white paper into ash in a matter of milliseconds. Tiny specks broke off from the cigarette, twisting in the wind, quickly blending in amongst the grey sky overhead. “Wasn’t he at the meeting this morning?”
“I wouldn’t have asked you if he had been there, would I?” said the tall man, showing impeccable logic. The short man grinned. “I heard there was an accident down his way this morning, a jumper.”
“A jumper?”
“You know, on the train line. The trains are probably backed up a bit, Suzuki will probably be in soon.” Another grin. “Or perhaps it was him…”
“What was him?”
“The jumper.”
The tall man puffed gently on his cigarette. The end glowed gently for a second before returning to a duller amber colour. “Wouldn’t surprise me”, he said.
*****
Takeshi Suzuki stopped at the crossroads. The repetitive low-pitched drone of the crossing machine could be heard, intermittently, over the roars of the cars speeding past. Takeshi Suzuki pushed the button. Then he pushed it again. And again. Andagainandagainandagainandagain…
“What am I doing?’ he thought to himself. “Why am I going to work? I don’t want to go to work. Nobody wants me to go to work. Will the company struggle if I don’t go to work? Will the country suffer if I don’t go to work? Will the seas rise, the air boil, the animals die?”
He continued to press the button, methodically pushing it in, releasing it, then pushing it in again.
“But what do I want to do? Where do I want to go?” he thought. No answer came to mind.
Then he thought back to the coffee shop and the cuckoo, guarding the menu. Wouldn’t it be nice to take some time out, to sit down, sip some coffee, real coffee (not the cheap rubbish they consumed at home), just sit and watch the world go by, watch the people outside the window, see the faces as they rushed past, just relax for once in his life, just relax…
The drone suddenly changed to a high-pitched beeping sound, penetrating Takeshi Suzuki’s skull and banishing all thought, rousing him from his deliberations and bringing him back to the real world. Slowly, he stepped onto the road and walked across to the station.
*****
Takeshi Suzuki’s wife started as she heard a heavy bang on the metal front door. After checking that her daughter was up to no mischief, she went to the door, wondering why the visitor hadn’t opened it themself. She opened the door and saw two police officers. “How young they look”, she thought to herself, wondering nervously what they could want. Then a thought crossed her mind, and she began to shake slightly, staring at the young man in front of her. She tried to say something, but the words refused to come out, sticking in her throat, choking her with their sharpness, their danger. The first policeman bowed politely. “Sorry for the disturbance, madam”, he said, his eyes nervously flicking from Takeshi Suzuki’s wife to his daughter, seated cross-legged on the carpet in front of a television set. “We would like… we just need to ask you a few questions. About your husband.”
Takeshi Suzuki’s wife invited the two men into the apartment. Her legs wobbled beneath her as she asked them to sit down on the old, battered chairs at the small dining table, and she picked up her daughter and took her into one of the bedrooms, giving her a long hug before placing her on the floor (where the child began playing with a doll) and returning to the living area. She closed the door behind her.
“When did you last hear from your husband?” asked the first policeman. His colleague sat by the window with his legs crossed, his gaze flicking around the room, landing on the table, the decorative scrolls on the wall, the worn, stained carpet - anywhere but at Takeshi Suzuki’s wife.
Takeshi Suzuki’s wife breathed deeply and looked the first policeman in the face.
“He left for work about three hours ago. Sometimes he calls me, but I haven’t…”
She began to sob, gently.
The first policeman shifted in his chair. “About two hours ago, there was an incident at the station.” A pause. “A man fell in front of an express train.”
Another pause. “We have reason to believe that this man may be your husband…”
A cry of anguish, a primal heart-rending scream, echoed around the small apartment. Takeshi Suzuki’s daughter started shouting and banging on the bedroom door, scrambling to get out and run to her mother. A telephone, placed on a small table near the front door, began to ring, shrilly, loudly. The noises combined, blended, changed.
*****
Takeshi Suzuki walked slowly across the car park in front of the station, seemingly oblivious to the light drizzle which had just started to fall. Having reached the other side, he stopped to look at the posters displayed in the window of a travel agency in the shopping centre on the ground floor of the station building. Guam, Saipan, Hawaii… pictures of beautiful women cavorting in the sunshine against a backdrop of almost unbearably blue skies. Escape. One train, one plane, and he could be there, on the beach, soaking up the sun. Takeshi Suzuki stood gazing at the posters for a while, then turned and began to climb the flight of steps to the station entrance. Once, half way up the steps, he turned briefly and looked back at the window. Regretfully, he turned back and continued climbing.
As Takeshi Suzuki got closer to the turnstiles dividing the ticket area from the platform section, he heard music getting louder and louder, typical syrupy J-Pop filtered through speakers in the ceiling. He took his monthly pass out of his pocket and stood in front of the turnstile, waiting. His face suddenly contorted into a brief spasm which, to any onlooker, could have been either a sob or a laugh. Takeshi Suzuki appeared to have come to a decision. With a sudden, unexpectedly energetic movement he thrust his pass into the machine, stepped forward (catching the pass as it slipped back out on the other side) and walked briskly down the corridor towards the platform stairs.