Number9Dream Read online

  ‘Quick,’ calls my waitress, but barbed teeth mesh my right foot and yank me under. I pound the crocodile but I might as well be attacking a cedar. Down, down, down, I kick and struggle, but only succeed in thickening the clouds of blood spewing from my punctured calf. We reach the floor of the Pacific. It is heavily urbanized – then I realize the crocodile has chosen to drown me outside Jupiter Café, proving that amphibians have a sense of irony. The customers and refugees look on in helpless terror. The storm must have passed, because everywhere is swimming-pool blue and tap-dancing light and I swear I can hear ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’. The crocodile watches me with Akiko Kato eyes, suggesting I see the funny side of having my bloated corpse stowed in a lair and being snacked on over the upcoming weeks. I lighten as I weaken. I watch Lao Tzu help himself to my final Carlton and doff my cap. Then he mimes stabbing himself in the eye and points to the crocodile. A thought unsilts itself. Yesterday my landlord gave me my keys – the one for the shopfront shutter is three inches long and might serve as a mini-dagger. Twisting into striking range is no easy feat, but the crocodile is taking a nap, so he doesn’t notice me fit the key between its eyelids and ram the sharp point home. Squeeze, squelch, squirt. Crocodiles scream, even underwater. The jaws unscissor and the monster thrashes off in spirals. Lao Tzu mimes applause, but I have already gone three minutes without air and the surface is impossibly distant. I kick feebly upwards. Nitrogen fizzes in my brain. Sluggishly I fly, and the ocean sings. Face submerged, searching for me from the stone whale, is my waitress, loyal to the last, hair streaming in the shallows. Our eyes meet for a final time, and then, overcome by the beauty of my own death, I sink in slow, sad circles.

  As the first red ray of light picks the lock of dawn, the priests of Yasukuni shrine light my sandalwood funeral pyre. My funeral is the most majestic within living memory, and the whole nation is united in mourning. Traffic is diverted around Kudanshita to allow the tens of thousands to come and pay their respects. The flames lick my body. Ambassadors, various relatives, heads of state, Yoko Ono in black. My body blazes as the sun cracks the day wide open. His Imperial Majesty wished to thank my parents, so they are reunited for the first time in nearly twenty years. The journalists ask them how they feel, but they are both too choked with emotion to reply. I never wanted such an ostentatious ceremony, but, well, heroism is heroism. My soul rises with my ashes and hovers among the television helicopters and pigeons. I rest on the giant tori gate, wide enough to drive a battleship under, enjoying the new perspective of human hearts that death grants.

  ‘I should never have abandoned those two,’ thinks my mother.

  ‘I should never have abandoned those three,’ thinks my father.

  ‘I wonder if I can keep his deposit,’ thinks Buntaro Ogiso.

  ‘I never even asked him his name,’ thinks my waitress.

  ‘I wish John were here today,’ thinks Yoko Ono. ‘He would write a requiem.’

  ‘Brat,’ thinks Akiko Kato. ‘A lifelong earner comes to a premature end.’

  Lao Tzu chuckles, chokes, and gasps for air. ‘My, my, it ain’t rained like this since 1971. Must be the end of the world. I seen it coming on the telly.’ But no sooner has he spoken than the downpour turns itself off. The pregnant women laugh. I think about their babies. During those nine pouched-up months, what do babies imagine? Gills, swamps, battlefields? To people in wombs, what is imagined and what is real must be one and the same. Outside, pedestrians peer upwards suspiciously, testing the rain with the flats of their hands. Umbrellas close. Theatre-backdrop clouds unscroll. Jupiter Café’s doors grind open and my waitress comes back, swinging a bag. ‘Took your time,’ grumbles Dowager. My waitress puts the box of filters on the counter. ‘Queues in the supermarket. It took for ever.’ ‘Did you hear the thunder?’ asks Donkey, and I suspect that she is not such a bad person, just a weak one under the influence of Dowager. ‘Of course she heard it!’ snorts Dowager. ‘My Aunt Otane heard that thunder, and she’s been dead for nine years.’ My money says Dowager tampered with the will and shoved Aunt Otane down the stairs. ‘Receipt and change, if you please. I am known by head office as an exemplary bookkeeper, and I intend to keep my reputation untarnished.’ My waitress gives her the receipt and a pile of coins. Indifference is a powerful weapon in her hands. The clock says two-thirty. I draw pentagrams in my ashtray with a toothpick. The thought occurs to me that I should at least check that Akiko Kato is in the PanOpticon before I go up to her office – if I barge past her secretary only to find a ‘Back Thursday’ Post-It sticker on her computer screen I will look a total fool. I carry Ms Kato’s name card in my wallet. I borrowed it from my grandmother’s fireproof box when I was eleven, intending to study voodoo and use it as a totem. AKIKO KATO . ATTORNEY. OSUGI & BOSUGI. This Shinjuku address and telephone number. My heartbeat is already quickening. I make a deal with myself – one iced coffee, one last Carlton, then I call. I wait until my waitress is at the counter and go up to receive my coffee and her blessings. ‘Glasses!’ calls Dowager so sharply I mistakenly believe she’s talking to me. Donkey comes to the counter and my girl goes back to the sink. I’m in danger of ODing on caffeine, but I’ll look stupid if I change my mind now. ‘One iced coffee, please.’ I wait until Lao Tzu gets rekilled by the bioborgs and swap a Carlton for another match. I try to bisect an almond flake, but it wedges itself up my fingernail.

  ‘Good afternoon. Osugi and Bosugi.’

  I try to inject a shot of authority into my voice. ‘Ye-es—’ My voice squeaks as though my balls are still in puberty freefall. I blush, fake a cough, and restart five octaves down. ‘Is Akiko Kato working today, please?’

  ‘Do you want to speak with her?’

  ‘No. I want to know if . . . yes. Yes, please.’

  ‘Yes what, sir?’

  ‘Could you please put me through to Ms Akiko Kato. Please.’

  ‘And may I ask who’s calling, sir?’

  ‘Is she, uh, in the office, then?’

  ‘May I ask who’s calling, sir?’

  ‘This is a’ – disaster – ‘confidential call.’

  ‘You can count on the utmost confidence, sir, but I must ask who is calling.’

  ‘My name, uh, is Taro Tanaka.’ The duddest of dud names. Idiot.

  ‘Mr Taro Tanaka. I see. May I ask what your call is concerning?’

  ‘Certain legal, uh, matters.’

  ‘You can’t be any more specific, Mr Tanaka?’

  ‘Uh. No. Actually.’

  A slow sigh. ‘Ms Kato is in a meeting with the senior partners at the moment, so I can’t ask her to speak with you right now. But if I could ask for your number and company, and some outline of your business, I could ask her to return your call later today.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘So, your company, Mr Tanaka?’

  ‘Uh . . .’

  ‘Mr Tanaka?’

  I drown and hang up.

  A D-minus for style. But now I know that Akiko Kato lurks in her web. I count twenty-seven floors up the PanOpticon before touching cloud. I blow smoke at you, Akiko Kato. You have less than thirty minutes to live with Eiji Miyake as nothing but a foggy memory from a foggy mountain island off the southern foot of Kyushu. Do you ever daydream about meeting me? Or am I just a name on certain documents? The icebergs in my coffee fuse and chink. I pour in the juglets of syrup and cream and watch the liquids swirl and bleed. The pregnant women are comparing baby magazines. My girl is going from table to table emptying ashtrays into a bucket. Come this way, empty mine. She doesn’t. Dowager is on the telephone, all smiles. A man crossing Kita Street catches my attention: I swear I saw this same man cross this same street a minute ago. I focus on him, tracking his progress among the puddle-hopping masses. He crosses over, then waits for the man to turn green. He crosses over Omekaido Avenue, waits for the man to turn green. Then he crosses back over Kita Street. He waits, and crosses back over Omekaido Avenue. I watch him complete one, two, three circuits. A private detect
ive, a bioborg, a lunatic? The sun will rub through the cloud cover any minute now. I prod my straw down through the ice, and suck. My bladder will no longer be ignored. I get up, walk to the toilet door, turn the handle – locked. I scratch the back of my head and go back to my seat, embarrassed. When the occupant leaves – an office lady – I avert my gaze so she doesn’t suspect me of rattling her toilet knob, and so lose my turn to a demure high-school girl in uniform, who emerges fifteen minutes later as a boob-banded, candy-striped, miniskirted wet dream. I get up, but this time a mother and her little kid dash in ahead of me. ‘Emergency!’ giggles the mother at me, and I smile understandingly. Am I in one of those dreams where the closer you get the farther away you are? ‘Look,’ shrieks my bladder, ‘get your act together, and soon, or I won’t be held responsible!’ I stand by the door and try to think of sand dunes. Another of Tokyo’s vicious circles – to use a toilet you have to buy a drink that fills your bladder. On Yakushima I just find a tree to piss behind. Finally the mother and kid come out and I get to go in. I hold my breath and fight the lock shut. I lift the lid and piss three coffees. I run out of breath and have to breathe in – not too smelly, considering. Urine, margarine, chemical lavender. I think better of wiping the rim. A sink, a mirror, an empty soap canister. I squeeze a couple of blackheads, and try on my reflection from various angles: I, Eiji Miyake, Tokyoite. Do I fool anybody, or is every laugh, meeow and muffled stare directed at me, as I suspect? A good acne day. Is my Kyushu tan pasting over already? My reflection plays the staring game. It wins and I look away first. I start work on a volcanic chain of blackheads. Somebody on the outside knocks and turns the toilet handle. I ruffle back my gelled hair, and fumble the door open.

  It is Lao Tzu. I mutter an apology for making him wait, and decide to attack the PanOpticon without further delay. Then, cutting across the foreground, strides Akiko Kato. In the flesh, right here, right now, only five millimetres of glass and a metre of air, max, between us. My wished-for coincidence has come about just as I have given up hope. In slo-mo she turns her head, looks straight at me, and carries on walking. Temporary disbelief catches me off balance. Akiko Kato strides to the intersection where the men turn green on her approach. In my fantasy she hadn’t aged; in reality she has, but my memory is surprisingly accurate. Lidded cunning, aquiline nose, wintry beauty. Go! I wait for the doors to grind open, run out, and—

  Baseball cap, you idiot!

  I dart back into Jupiter Café, get my cap, and race over to the crossing, where the green men are already flashing. After two hours in air-con I can feel my skin crackle and pop in the afternoon heat. Akiko Kato has already reached the far shore – I risk it and run, leaping over the stripes and puddles. The donorcycles rev and nudge forward, the traffic-crossing man is red, I get an angry blast from a bus, but I leap to the far bank without bouncing off a bonnet. My quarry is already at the PanOpticon steps. I dodge upstream through the crowd, clipping insults out of people and scattering apologies – if she gets inside I’ll lose my chance to meet her on neutral territory. But Akiko Kato does not enter PanOpticon. She carries on walking towards Shinjuku station – I should catch her up and detain her, but I suddenly feel that accosting her on the street would make her less sympathetic, not more, to my cause. After all, I am asking her the favour. She would think I was stalking her – she would be right. What if she misunderstands before I can explain? What if she starts screaming ‘Rapist!’? However, I can’t just let her melt into the crowds either. So I follow her at a safe distance, reminding myself that she doesn’t know the face of the adult Eiji Miyake. She never turns around, not once – why should she? We pass under a row of scraggy trees dripping dry. Akiko Kato flicks her long hair and puts on sunglasses. An underpass takes us beneath rail tracks, and we emerge into strong sunshine down traffic-and-people-crammed Yasukuni Street, lined with bistros and mobile phone shops blaring guitar riffs. Following people is difficult in real life. I clang my shin on a bicycle. The sun steam-irons the street through its rain-washed lens. Sweat gums my T-shirt to my skin. Past a shop that sells ninety-nine different flavours of ice cream, Akiko Kato turns and ducks down a side street. I hack through a jungle of women outside a boutique, and follow her. No sun, bins on wheels, fire escapes. A Chicago film set. She stops outside what appears to be a cinema, and turns around to make sure she isn’t being followed – I increase my stride, as if in a tearing hurry. I avoid her eyes and swivel my baseball cap as I pass to hide my face. When I double back, Akiko Kato has vanished into the Ganymede Cinema. The place has seen much better days. Today’s presentation is a movie called PanOpticon. The poster – a row of screaming Russian dolls – tells me nothing about the movie. I hesitate. I want a cigarette, but I left my packet at Jupiter Café, so I make do with a champagne candy. The film starts in under ten minutes. I go in, at first pulling the door instead of pushing. The deserted lobby swarms with psychedelic carpet. I don’t notice the step, trip and nearly twist my ankle. All is tatty glitz and putty-odoured. A sorry chandelier glows brownly. A woman in the ticket box puts down her needlepoint embroidery with obvious annoyance. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is this the, uh, cinema?’

  ‘No. This is the Battleship Yamato.’

  ‘I’m a customer.’

  ‘How pleasant for you.’

  ‘Uh. The film? What is it, uh, about?’

  She feeds a thread through a needle’s eye. ‘Do you see a sign on my desk that reads “Plot Synopses Sold Here”?’

  ‘I only—’

  She sighs, as if dealing with a moron. ‘Do you, or do you not, see a sign on my desk that reads “Plot Synopses Sold Here”?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And why, pray tell, do you suppose no such sign exists?’

  I would shoot her but I left my Walther PK in my last fantasy. I would walk out but I know Akiko Kato is somewhere in this building. ‘One ticket, please.’

  ‘One thousand yen.’

  There goes my budget for the day. She gives me a raffle ticket. Lumps of plaster lie here and there. By rights this place should have gone out of business decades ago. She returns to her embroidery, leaving me to the tender mercies of a sign reading SCREEN THIS WAY – THE MANAGEMENT ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ACCIDENTS ON THE STAIRWELL . The steep stairs descend at right angles. Posters of films line the glossed walls. I don’t recognize a single one. Each flight of stairs I expect to be the last, but it never is. In the event of fire, the audience is kindly requested to blacken quietly. Is it getting warmer? Suddenly I have got to the bottom. I smell bitter almonds. A woman with the shaven, bruised skull of a chemotherapy patient blocks my way. When I meet her eyes I see that her sockets are perfect voids. I clear my throat. She doesn’t move. I try to squeeze past her, but her hand shoots out. Her fore and middle fingers and her ring and little fingers have fused into trotters. I try not to look. She takes my ticket and shreds it. ‘Popcorn?’