The second story in the Dark Water collection is a lesser tale — perhaps the weakest in the collection — but there is a sense that there is perhaps something underneath.
For an explanation, see 7 Days of [Koji Suzuki’s] Dark Water.
“Solitary Isle”
Kensuke is burned out with being a teacher. He thinks a summer vacation will do him some good to recharge his batteries. Right in the middle of this emotional downturn, he gets contacted by an old mentor — Sasaki — and asked to come along on a survey to Battery no. 6. The artificial island was once built to bolster defense versus foreign invaders and is now rumored to be haunted and is definitely forbidden to be visited except on official business.
Only Kensuke has a different association with the island. Years ago, a friend claimed to have done something terrible on the island. The visit will enable Kensuke to finally find out the truth.
The story is split a bit between the past-Kensuke and present-Kensuke and while you could derive a sense of haunting from the point where the two men meet, the final twist to explain the truth of what happened on the island is quite different and odd. It could have worked, but it seems Suzuki did not want it to work and so left it more as a trick of dislocation. Answering a question with another question.
In the themes of this collection — water, debris, and storytelling — it has all three, but a story must be good to earn its metaphors and this one largely fails for a number of reasons.
DEEPER DIVE: “Solitary Isle”
HERE BE SPOILERS!
NOTE: Spoilers will not obfuscated.
To give someone who might have scrolled a bit too far a few seconds to look away before the twist is revealed, I will start with an oddity that takes me back to the speculation vs intention of “Floating Water.” Early on in “Solitary Isle,” a trio of numbers appears frequently: 4, 6, and 9.
Four, shi (also related to “death”), is a regularly known numerological entity when discussed in the context of some Eastern Asian languages. In some takes, an unlucky number. Nine, ku, can sometimes be thought of as similarly unlucky because of its relation to words for “suffering.” In perhaps the most famous depiction of hell, Dante’s Inferno, we also have nine concentric rings. As for six, it is a frequent “devil’s number” in Western symbolism.
Cross four bridges to get to Battery No. 6. Nine years ago was when Kensuke heard the confession, his fourth year of schooling. He lives on the “fourth floor” [counting the ground floor as unnumbered]. Yuraki’s depiction of heaven is on a sheet of paper folded into four pieces. Six people on the expedition.
A similar number-game was played with “Floating Water,” where Yoshimi lived on the fourth floor. We also have a reference to “Floating Water” in “Solitary Isle”: when Kensuke meets the strange Yuraki, she is carrying a red bag. There is no mention of “Kitty” on it but it is noted to be infantile.
Across the sea of regularly repeated numbers, we have the core horror of the story. Aso, Kensuke’s friend and Yuraki’s abusive lover, tells Kensuke that he has abandoned Yuraki nude upon the forbidden-to-enter Battery No. 6. She was pregnant and refused to get an abortion due to her strong beliefs — while her cultish religion is not discussed, it seems to be something like a strict version of Christianity — and Aso seems disturbed by her “juvenile” depiction of paradise as a wild place where people live with the animals.
Kensuke disbelieves his friend. No one would go so far as to actually leave someone to die. Even when it turns out that Aso is dying from fairly aggressive cancer and Kensuke gets a deathbed confession that the story is true, Kensuke barely accepts it.
This moment is where we are left with another question of Suzuki’s intent. Is Kensuke’s refusal to try to help meant to be something like a logical choice — surely the story is too outlandish and wasting police time to alert any authorities — or a condemnation of our main protagonist? One who only seems to care for Yuraki’s plight because he had a fascination with her legs. He has erotic dreams of trees and snakes shaped like her legs — I do not know if the homoerotic undertones of an otherwise heterosexual fantasy was intended — but he worries more about his teaching job, a job he later hates, than helping potentially save someone’s life and risking looking like a fool.
Then, the cleverness begins. Assuming the reader has not completely bailed out on the story due to the ridiculousness of a man abandoning a woman due to societal politeness, we get to see what Kensuke finds. To reinforce the story’s theme of men-behaving-badly, Sasaki turns out to be a liar and a bit of a letch. Again, Kensuke more mildly rebukes than actually criticizes a friend’s sexual disasters. Sasaki has a strong desire to return to the island, and has been lying about the particulars of the trip. Does he know something on the island. Something a lecherous man might desire?
When they get to the island, under the Rainbow Bridge for goodness sake (like Suzuki is painting a massive map saying “Hell or Heaven, afterlife this way!”), we quickly see that the island is changed. New vegetation is upon it. A lot of new vegetation. The dream where trees and animals sprout up out of or perhaps into Yuraki’s legs seems to be prophetic. We are primed for a Liggoti- or Ito-esque reveal that her body has been transfigured into strange and terrible flora.
Only, there’s a hint that this is not the case: the numbers of changed. The six-member party has split into three groups. And three is a holy number in the way that six is not. In fact, they find signs that a garden is maintained and there is blissful life on the island…and a grave. With three tablets. Frustratingly, we do not get to see what is on the tablets, the story merely says, literally, “what you’d expect on a tablet.”
A few paragraphs later they encounter a young boy — “seven or eight years old” again showing a shift to luckier and holier numbers — and the Kensuke almost immediately realizes this feral child is Aso and Yuraki’s kid. Turns out rather than outright abandon her, Aso had actually taken her to a spot that matched her vision of heaven. Perhaps knowing that he was going to die, he wanted her to be closer to the afterlife. At least her version of it.
And “perhaps” is all we get because the story ends with an inane note about how “the force that aided the seedling from afar doesn’t work for plants alone” and no shit. People have babies. I get that Suzuki is tying this to early on the in the story where it was mentioned that seeds drift up on the island but whatever.
A story has to be written well enough to earn its poignance, and this one fails.
There’s a pedestrian bridge that goes right over the island and people can look down at it. We have a kid so feral he cannot speak but he’s been raising crops on his own? Was able, perhaps at the age of four or five, to bury his mom and set up tablets?
Nonsense stuff, through and through. Unless, and this is a big and very generous unless, we are to take the island as being transfigured into Heaven so that the feral child had help with these tasks.
The story is only interesting when it seems to be about a failure of a human being reckoning, but not fixing, his failure (and there it is interesting because it is all so easy to hate Kensuke for wasting our time). And when it deeps into the edge of natural awe akin to how Machen might play at the concepts.
Otherwise, it is too badly fitting halves failing to make a whole.