Source of Inspiration
by Martin Westlake
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Table of Contents, parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
part 2
The introverts, including Ha-joon, left soon after the formal meal had ended. Giulia, Barbara and Jacek stayed on. Alruna joined them from the far end of the table, and the second part of the evening began. This was much more of a bonding exercise, punctuated by Alruna’s giggles and Barbara’s raucous laugh. No doubt Kage represented new and interesting company to those Fellows who had already been at the Foundation for a while.
Giulia took Ha-joon’s place beside Kage and was very tactile, with little touches to his arm and, occasionally, to his hand. She looked at him sympathetically, and Kage was even more convinced that Alruna had told the Fellows about Syuuto.
At an appropriate moment, Kage told them about his experience with his backpack. Had anybody else had similar experiences?
Alruna giggled again. ‘The place is full of ghosts,’ she said.
‘Ah!’ said Kage. ‘In Japan we have many spirits. Has anybody else had a similar experience, I wonder?’
‘Well...’ Giulia began, but faltered.
‘Go on,’ said Alruna.
‘Well,’ Giulia continued. ‘I get the impression things move in my room.’
‘Move?’ asked Barbara.
‘Yes, they do!’ Giulia insisted. ‘For example, the other evening the book I am reading had disappeared from my bedside table. I found it under the desk, against the wall, the pages open, as though it had been thrown there. It wasn’t the first time something like that happened.’
‘And you, Jacek?’ Kage asked, noticing how he had fallen silent.
‘I’ve heard strange noises,’ he said. ‘Or, at least, I think I have heard strange noises, but it’s so difficult to know for certain with that constant roar of water in the background.’
‘What sort of noises?’ Barbara asked.
‘Well, voices, I think. People in conversation. Sometimes the voices seem to be raised, as though there might be an argument going on.’
‘When do you hear the voices?’ Giulia asked.
‘It’s generally at night,’ said Jacek. ‘When I’m in my room.’
‘What about you, Alruna?’ Kage asked.
Alruna giggled again. The giggle and the sunglasses gave her a strange air. ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘The place is full of ghosts and spirits and phantoms and poltergeists. They don’t do any harm. We don’t put anything in the brochure or the instructions, because we don’t want to scare people and, besides, not everybody sees or hears something. Like you, Barbara. You haven’t seen or heard anything, have you?
‘No,’ said Barbara, shaking her head. ‘No, I haven’t, and I’m beginning to get jealous.’
‘You don’t feel anything at all?’ asked Jacek.
‘No, nothing.’
‘Listen,’ said Alruna, ‘whether you do or you don’t experience something, they’re harmless. I regard them as companions of a sort.’
‘Do you see stuff, then?’ asked Giulia.
Alruna gazed out over the tops of her sunglasses so they could see the strange pink-blue of her eyes, and she giggled. ‘All the time,’ she said. ‘Take my advice and ignore them. And if you can’t, then the best thing to do is to introduce yourself and explain politely that you’d like to be left alone. That usually works.’
* * *
Kage found it difficult to get to sleep. He was an early riser and, in Tokyo, he would have just been getting up about the time he went to bed in Airns. When he did sleep, he was troubled by visions of Syuuto. She was smiling at him, that beautiful smile he so adored. But then she began to weep. She got up, waved, and started to walk away.
‘Don’t go!’ he pleaded.
She turned, looked back at him and smiled sadly, then turned away again.
‘Don’t go!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t—’
He was awake. The Inn roared outside. He heard a car passing on the road. And he heard voices. He looked at his watch. It was half-past-three in the morning. He got up and crossed the room. Syuuto smiled at him from the framed photograph he had placed on the desk. He smiled back and wiped the tears from his eyes. ‘You are so beautiful, my love,’ he said.
The voices were louder now. He opened his door, and the hall lights came on automatically. As he crossed the corridor, he saw a movement to his right. It was Alruna. She was standing at the end of the corridor. She still had her red dress on. She had her back to him and seemed to be deep in conversation. She was gesticulating passionately, if not angrily.
He opened the bathroom door and went in. Before he turned on the light, he saw the Buvetta on the other side of the river. And then he saw a light glowing inside the Buvetta. It moved slowly along the colonnade, from window to window. Finally, it reached one of the two domes, then disappeared.
He waited several minutes then turned on the light and peed in the toilet. The flush made a great clattering noise. When he came out, the corridor was empty. Alruna was gone.
* * *
The next morning, Kage went for a short walk before breakfast. The river’s roar no longer surprised him, and he realised he was indeed getting used to the noise. The air was crisp and fresh. He left by the Foundation’s main entrance and walked around the building, following a road that had once led to the bridge and thence to the other side of the river and the Buvetta.
He walked as far as the bridge and studied the brick wall that had been erected to stop people crossing to the far bank. It was well over two meters tall, with barbed wire festooned on the top and around the edges. He leaned over the parapet and tracked the old road where it disappeared under the landslide. He crossed to the other side of the bridge and looked out over the parapet towards the Buvetta.
‘It’s such a shame, isn’t it?’ said a familiar voice. It was Alruna. The floppy hat had given way to a baseball cap. She was once again wearing a flowing dress. This one was strikingly sky blue.
‘I saw you from my office and thought I’d join you. I hope you don’t mind.’
Kage shook his head.
‘The Buvetta’s even more picturesque in the winter, when there’s snow on the rooftop and on the pine trees behind it,’ she said. ‘By the way, if you look at the pictures in the brochure, you’ll see that the bridge used to be roofed.’
‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you last night, Al,’ said Kage.
‘You didn’t disturb me,’ said Alruna, shaking her head.
Was her answer deliberately ambiguous? he wondered. He decided not to pursue the matter. ‘I saw a light in the Buvetta during the night,’ he told her.
‘Really?’ She looked at him over her sunglasses. He shivered inwardly, involuntarily.
‘Yes, it was a sort of glow. It started at one end and went all the way to the other.’
‘It was almost certainly a teenager, or a bunch of them,’ she said.
‘A teenager?’
‘Yes, it’s a dare. It happens every year. The Buvetta’s supposed to be haunted, you see? The local teens see it as a dare, to get in and walk through the Buvetta. They dare each other.’
‘Really?’ said Kage. ‘How do they get over there?’
Alruna shrugged, then giggled.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They used to just climb over the wall or around it. That’s why they put all that barbed wire up. Maybe they walk up the far bank from Airns, but it’s a long trek, particularly at night.’
* * *
The river roared as they walked back to the Foundation together.
After a small coffee and a piece of fruit for breakfast, Kage took the stairs down to the basement and walked to his studio. He had brought down another framed photograph of Syuuto, and this he placed carefully on the working desk. He crossed the room to the storeroom door and opened it. His empty backpack was back on the shelf where he had initially placed it.
Remembering Alruna’s advice, he bowed and then spoke: ‘Hello, my name is Kage. I am a pianist and a composer. I am from Japan. I wish I could know your name.’
He bowed again, then shut the door and walked to the piano. The river roared still, although the triple glazing kept the noise down to more bearable levels. The piano was a beautiful black polished Bechstein. He opened the keyboard, sat down at the stool and flexed his fingers. He played some scales to warm up and then played a Chopin piece that was always in his fingers, the Opus 28, N° 15, ‘The Raindrop Prelude.’ So very appropriate!
At the end, he sat silently at the piano. His shoulders shook and he waited for the tears to stop. So beautiful. So sad. A dull thud came from the storeroom door. His backpack was on the floor again. Kage bowed. ‘I am glad of your company,’ he said. ‘I hope you like the music.’
He left the backpack where it was and walked to the windows. Outside, the waters of the Inn tumbled endlessly. He opened a window, and the roar rushed in. He closed the window, walked to his desk, and opened his laptop. He had a symphony to compose!
By lunchtime, he had thought a lot, but he had written nothing. He had smiled frequently at Syuuto and she had smiled back encouragingly, but nothing had come. Absolutely nothing. He ate just a yoghurt from the refrigerator for his lunch. He took it into the garden and stared out at the mountains on the opposite side of the valley.
Afterwards, he went up to his bedroom, bowed to Syuuto and slept for a while. When he woke up, he had an idea. He took an exercise pad and a felt marker pen back down to his studio. There, he wrote out the letters of the English alphabet, one per page. Then he walked to the storeroom and opened the door. His backpack was once more on the shelf. He bowed. Then he placed the twenty-six sheets of paper separately on the floorboards. He bowed again.
‘I do not know your language,’ he said, ‘but I would like to know your name. Please, what is your name?’
He closed the door and walked back to his desk. He did not have to wait long before a dull thud sounded. He went back to the storeroom. His pack was once more on the floor by the door. But there alongside it was the sheet of paper with the letter ‘V’. He bowed and put his pack back on the shelf and the sheet of paper back in its place on the floor.
‘So,’ he said. ‘your name begins with V. Thank you.’
He repeated the process five times. The sixth time he heard the thud there was no letter beside his pack.
‘Vaida,’ he said. ‘Your name is Vaida? I am happy to meet you, Vaida. I am grateful for your company.’
He gathered up the 26 sheets of paper, closed the door and went back to his desk. He looked up Vaida on the internet. It was a woman’s name, from Lithuania. He separated out the ‘Y’ and the ‘N’ from the letters and took them back to the storeroom. He bowed and lay them down on the floorboards, then bowed.
‘Are you a woman?’ he asked, before closing the door and walking back to his desk. When, after the now familiar thud, he went back to the room, the Y was lying near the backpack. He placed the ‘Y’ back in its place.
‘And are you from Vilnius?’ he asked, before retreating again. And so he learned that Vaida was from Vilnius.
By then it was the early evening. He apologetically explained to Vaida that he had to try and work a little before closing the door and returning to his desk. He smiled at Syuuto.
‘We’ve made progress,’ he said. But in the dying light, his wife seemed not to be smiling anymore.
* * *
That evening, the seating arrangement at the dinner table had changed slightly. Ha-joon had eaten early and already left. Sisay Sekani, a good-humoured Nigerian with a ready grin, sat at his place. He was an artist and a sculptor who, as he explained to Kage, sought to reproduce the landscapes he witnessed through local materials: dirt, sand, dust, twigs, and suchlike.
The evening’s conversation followed a familiar form, with polite talk about each other’s work and about any significant progress that had been made. When it came to Kage’s turn, he confessed that he had made no progress with his composition but had, rather, faced the compositional equivalent of the writer’s blank page for most of the day.
‘But,’ he added, ‘I made progress with the spirit in the storeroom.’
Sisay’s eyes opened wide. ‘You have a spirit?’ he asked. ‘In your storeroom?’
‘Yes,’ Kage confirmed. ‘She’s a Lithuanian called Vaida.’
Barbara let out a low whistle. ‘How did you work that out?’ she said.
He told them about his simple spelling mechanism.
Alruna, who clearly had a good nose for when interesting conversations were occurring, joined them in a sky-blue flash, as he was speaking. This time, though, she didn’t giggle; she pouted angrily. ‘I don’t like it,’ she said. ‘You should leave it alone, whatever it is. No good will come of this.’
‘She’s right, you know,’ said Sisay. ‘Where I come from, you don’t mess with the spirits.’
‘But there’s no harm in knowing her name,’ said Kage. ‘Is there?’
He looked quizzically at Jacek, but it was Giulia who spoke: ‘Poor Kage is lonely, aren’t you? That’s what this is about, isn’t it?’
Kage bowed his head.
‘Well,’ said Alruna. ‘be careful, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ She glared at him over her sunglasses.
* * *
Copyright © 2026 by Martin Westlake
