There are so many toys. We find them everywhere: beneath the stairs and under the beds, in the bottom of trunks and behind the doors, up in the attic and looking through holes. You never know where they’re going to show up. Most of the time you have to wait for them to come to you. And sometimes you can only hear them moving about. Mama thought we had mice in the house and Papa put traps down. Maho was angry when she showed me the traps in the kitchen and in the cellar. Toys don’t eat coloured seeds, she said, pointing at the blue poisonous oats, but sometimes they dance too close to the snapping traps. Twice we had to rescue them before the morning. A dolly with a china face got one of her long arms stuck in a trap in the pantry. She was squealing and the thin arm covered in black hair had snapped. When we freed her, Maho picked her up and kissed her cold face. When she put the dolly down the dolly ran behind some bottles and we didn’t see her again for three nights. Then the old thing with the black face and whitish beard got his pinky tail all smashed in the trap by the mop and dustpan in the cellar. When we let him loose, he showed us teeth as thin as needles and then he crawled away.
Three nights back, when Mama and Papa were supposed to be sleeping, I know Papa saw a toy. There were plenty of them out that night, skipping mostly. The first of them came out of the fireplace. ‘Hello,’ a little voice said to me. I was only dozing because I was too excited about the playing, so I wound Maho’s silky hair off my face – it goes in my ears and up my nose too – and I sat up in bed. ‘Hello,’ I said to the little thing down on the rug. They don’t like lights, so you only see them properly when they get real close, but even in the shadows I knew I’d seen this one before. He was the one with the top hat and little suit. His shirt is white, but his face is all red and his eyes are black and shiny like marbles. He went round and round in a circle on skipping feet and in the room I could smell sneezes and old clothes. But Maho’s right: you get used to the smell of the toys.
She sat up beside me and said, ‘Hello.’
The toy stopped his dancing and said, ‘Hello.’
Then we heard the drum, but we couldn’t see the musician. He was in the room with us. Under the bed, I think, and playing his leather drum. He shines like the brown shoes that I once saw made from alligator and he creaks like old gloves when he moves. As usual, when he played the drum, the clown in the dirty blue and white pyjamas came out to dance also. All around the bed he went with his shabby arms thrown up towards the ceiling and his head flopping back. His mouth is all stitched up and his eyes are white and bobble on his cloth face.
I leaned over the bed to get a better look.
‘Best not to touch him,’ Maho whispered into my ear and her coldish breath made me shiver inside. ‘He’s very old. He once belonged to a boy whom he loved very much, but he was taken away from the boy by parents. So he climbed inside the boy’s mouth to fix the broken heart.’
I wanted to ask what happened to the boy, but Maho turned her head to the door so that I couldn’t see her face. ‘Your papa is coming.’ But I couldn’t hear a thing. I looked at her and frowned. ‘Listen,’ she said, and she took hold of my hands. Then I heard a floorboard moan. Papa was outside in the hallway, going to the toilet. Papa was not well at that time. That’s why we came here, so that he could rest his head. He never slept very much at night and we had to be careful when we played with the toys. ‘Some toys are out there,’ Maho whispered. ‘He might see them again.’ She was smiling through her hair when she said this, but I didn’t know why.
The man with the top hat skipped back inside the chimney. Under the bed the drumming stopped.
The next morning my family sat at the kitchen table. We never ate in the dining room because Mama couldn’t get rid of the smell. She tried to find cheerful music on the radio, but it sounded all fuzzy so she turned it off. Her mouth was very tight so I knew she was angry and worried too. She gave up on the radio and pointed at my bowl. ‘Eat up, Yuki,’ she said, then looked at the window. Rain smacked against the glass. Watching the water run down made me feel all cold inside.
Papa said nothing. He just looked at the table next to his bowl. His eyes were red and his chin was bristly. When he kissed me that morning I shouted out for him to stop. All night I’d been wrapped in soft black hair and his chin felt like it was covered in pins. And he still wasn’t looking any better, even though he didn’t have to go to work any more.
‘Taichi,’ Mama said. She was upset with him. Slowly, Papa lifted his head and looked at her.
‘Eat or it will go cold,’ Mama had said. She had fried the rice with eggs the way that he liked, with salmon on top that gets warm from the steam. Papa tried to smile but he was just too tired. He looked at me instead. ‘Finished?’ he asked.
As my spoon clunked in the empty bowl his eyelids flickered. I nodded.
‘You can go.’
I climbed down from my chair and ran into the hall.
‘Sit still for a while,’ Mama cried out. ‘Or you’ll be sick.’
I walked down the hall, then took my shoes off and sneaked back to the kitchen door that Mama closed behind me. My parents wanted to talk. First thing in the morning they would talk to each other, but they would stay in different rooms for the rest of the day. Papa would mostly sit in a chair and stare at nothing, while Mama kept busy with washing and cooking and cleaning. One day she was crying in the kitchen by the cookbooks, which made me cry too. She stopped when she saw me and said that she was ‘just being silly’. But at night I often heard Mama shouting at Papa. When this happened Maho always held me tighter and put her silky hair over my ears until I fell asleep.
‘What is it? Tell me, Taichi. I can’t help if you don’t tell me,’ Mama said in the kitchen that morning, and in a voice that was quiet but also sharp enough for me to hear through the door.
‘Nothing.’
‘It can’t be nothing. You haven’t slept again.’