Number9Dream (11 page)

Fujifilm is pushing four o’clock. What is the proper way to react to the news that your mother wanted to kill you? After three years of non-communication. I’m used to my mother being out there, somewhere; but not too near. Things are painless that way. If I move anything, I’m afraid it will all start all over again. The only plan I can think of is Do Nothing. If this is a cop-out then, okay, a rubber-stamped ‘Cop-Out’ is my official response. It is my father’s ‘nowhere’ that I can’t handle, not my mother’s ‘somewhere’. I know what I mean even if I can’t put it into words. Cockroach is still struggling. I want to see it. I crawl over to the fridge – so humid tonight. The motel starts vibrating as I pick it up. Cockroach panics. A part of me wants to free it, a part of me wishes it instant death. I force myself to peer in. Bicycling feelers and furious wings! So revolting I drop the motel – it lands on its roof. Now Cockroach is dying upside down, poor shiny bastard, but I don’t want to touch the motel. I look for something to flip it over. I fish in the bin – gingerly, in case Brother of Cockroach is in there – and find the squashed box Cat’s biscuits came in. On Thursday, after I read the letter, I put it down and did nothing for I don’t know how long. I’m about to re-read it when Cat appears. She jumps on my lap and shows me her shoulder. Clotted blood and soft skin shows where a gobbet of fur has been gouged off. ‘You’ve been fighting?’ I forget about the letter for a moment. I don’t know anything about first aid, especially cat first aid, but I think I should disinfect the wound. Of course, I don’t have anything as practical as antiseptic fluid, so I go downstairs and ask Buntaro.

Buntaro pauses the video at the moment the
Titanic
up-ends and people fall down the mile-long deck. He takes a cigarette from his box of Caster and lights it without offering me one. ‘Don’t tell me. Upon receiving another letter from his mysterious lawyer lady, telling our hero it was all over, he becomes so depressed that he decides to disembowel himself, but all he has is a pair of nail scissors, so—’

‘I have a wounded cat on my hands.’

Buntaro clouds over. ‘A what, lad?’

‘A wounded cat.’

‘You’re keeping pets in my apartment?’

‘No. It just wanders in when it’s hungry.’

‘Or when it wants medical attention?’

‘It’s just a scratch. I want to dab some disinfectant on it.’

‘Eiji Miyake, animal doctor.’

‘Please, Buntaro.’

He grumbles and sifts under the till for a while. He pulls out a dusty red box, causing a landslide of junk around his feet, and hands it to me. ‘It better not be bleeding on my tatami.’

‘You tight-arsed, whinging parasite, you’ve fleeced every outgoing tenant for replacement tatami, but you haven’t actually replaced it since 1969, have you?’ is not how I respond to my landlord and job benefactor. Instead I just shake my head meekly. ‘She isn’t bleeding now. She just has this sort of gammy place that needs seeing to.’

‘What’s this cat look like? My wife might know the owner.’

‘Black, white paws and tail, and a tartan collar with a silver bell.’

‘No owner, no name?’

I shake my head. ‘Thanks for this.’ I tap the box and begin my getaway.

‘Don’t get too attached,’ Buntaro calls up the stairs after me. ‘Remember the “Thou shalt not have pets except cactuses” clause in your contract.’

I turn around and peer down at him. ‘What contract?’

Buntaro grins sort of nastily and taps his forehead.

I seal up my capsule and attend to Cat. The witch-hazel must sting her – it always stung me and Anju when Wheatie doused our cuts with it – but Cat doesn’t even flinch. ‘Girls shouldn’t get into fights,’ I tell her. I chuck the cotton wool away and return the first-aid box to Buntaro. Cat makes herself comfortable in my yukata. Weird. Cat trusts me to look after her, me of all people.

A head appears on the claims counter. Its owner is a spindly girl of maybe eleven, in a Mickey and Donald jogging suit with red ribbons in her hair. Her eyes are enormous. ‘Good afternoon,’ she says. ‘I followed the signs. Is this the lost property office?’

‘Yes,’ I answer. ‘Have you lost anything?’

‘Mummy,’ she says. ‘She forever wanders off without my permission.’

I tut. ‘I can relate to that.’ What do I do? Suga skipped the ‘lost child’ chapter, and now he is collecting the trolley from Ueno annexe. Mrs Sasaki is on her lunch-hour. Somewhere a mummy is running around in hysterics, imagining train wheels and organ-harvesting child kidnappers. I flap. ‘Why don’t you sit on the counter,’ I tell the girl. She clambers up. Right. What do I do? ‘Aren’t you going to ask me my name?’ asks the girl.

‘Of course I am. What’s your name?’

‘Yuki Chiyo. Aren’t you going to call Mummy on the big speaker?’

‘Of course I am.’

I go into the side office. Mrs Sasaki mentioned the PA system on my first day, but Suga never showed me how to use it. Turn this key, flick this switch. I hope. A green light flashes under ‘Speak’. I clear my throat and lean into the microphone. The sound of me clearing my throat fills Ueno. When Yuki Chiyo hears her name she hugs herself.

I’m broiling with embarrassment. Yuki Chiyo studies me.

‘So, Yuki. How old are you?’

‘Ten. But Mummy tells me not to speak to strangers.’

‘You already spoke to me.’

‘Only because I needed you to call Mummy.’

‘You ungrateful tadpole.’

I hear Aoyama marching this way before I see him. His shoes, his keys. ‘You! Miyake!’

Obviously I am in deep shit. ‘Good afternoon—’

‘Do
not
“Good afternoon” me! Since when have you had the authority to make a general override announcement?’

My throat is dry. ‘I didn’t realize that—’

‘Suppose a train were hurtling into Ueno with a snapped brake cable!’ His eyes froth. ‘Suppose I were making an evacuation announcement!’ Veins bulge. ‘Suppose we receive a bomb warning!’ Is he going to fire me? ‘And you,
you
, blanket out my warning with a request for a lost girl’s mother to proceed to the lost property office on the second floor!’ He pauses to restock air. ‘You,
you
, pollute the order with your teenage chaos!’

‘Tra-la-la!’ A leopardskinned woman pads up to the counter.

‘Mummy!’ Yuki Chiyo waves.

‘Dearest, you know it upsets Mummy when you go off like this! Have you been making trouble for this handsome young stripling?’ She nudges Aoyama aside and deposits her designer bags on the counter. A perky vixen smile. ‘I am so frightfully sorry, young man. What can I say? Yuki plays this little game whenever we go shopping, don’t you, dearest? My husband says it’s just a stage she’s going through. Do I have to sign anywhere?’

‘No, madam.’

Aoyama smoulders.

‘Let me give you a little something for your trouble.’

‘Really, madam, no need.’

‘You are a darling.’ She turns to Aoyama. ‘Jolly good! A porter!’

I kill my snicker a fraction too late. Aoyama radiates nuclear fury. ‘No, madam, I am the assistant station-master.’

‘Oh. Well, you look like a porter in that get-up. Come on, Yuki.’

Yuki turns to me as her mother leads her away. ‘Sorry I got you bollocked.’

Aoyama is too furious to bollock me further. ‘You, Miyake,
you
, Iam
not
going to forget this! I am going to file a report about this
outrage
to the disciplinary committee this very afternoon!’ Off he storms. I wonder if I still have a job. Suga steps out from the back office. ‘Quite a talent you have there for annoying people, Miyake.’

‘You were there all along?’

‘You seemed in control of the situation.’

I want to kill Suga so I say nothing.

I am on the ferry! So many times Anju and I have watched it; now I am actually on it! The deck slopes side to side, and the wind is strong enough to lean back into. Yakushima, the enormous country I live in, is slowly but surely growing smaller. Mr Ikeda is scanning the shoreline with his army binoculars. Seabirds follow the boat, just hanging there. The second-graders are arguing about what will happen when the ferry sinks and we have to fight for the lifeboats. Others are watching the TV, or being chucked out of places you’re not allowed. One kid is vomming in the toilets. The engine booms. I smell engine fumes. I watch the hull slice through the spray-chopped waves. If I hadn’t already decided on being a soccer star I would become a sailor. I look for the shrine of the thunder god, but it is already hidden in the morning haze. I wish Anju were here. I wonder what she’ll do today. I try to remember the last day we weren’t together. I go back as far as I can, but no such day ever was. Yakushima is now the size of a barn. I watch new islands rise ahead and fall behind. I can fit Yakushima inside the ‘O’ of my thumb and first finger. A tooth is wobbling loose. Mr Ikeda is on the deck too. ‘Sakurajima,’ he shouts at me above the wind and the engine, pointing ahead. I watch the volcano grow and take up a third of the sky. The torn crater belches graceful solid clouds of smoke over another third. ‘You can taste the ash,’ shouts Mr Ikeda, ‘on your tongue! And over there, that’s Kagoshima!’ Already? The voyage is supposed to take three hours. I consult my Zax Omega watch and find that nearly three hours have passed. Here comes Kagoshima. Huge! You could fit the whole of Anbo, our village, between two jetties in the harbour. Enormous buildings, vast cranes, huge freighters marked with place names I mostly haven’t heard of. I guess when I was here last my memory was switched off. Or maybe it was night? This is the where the world starts. Wait until I tell Anju. She’ll be amazed. Amazed.

According to Fujifilm, four o’clock slipped by fifteen minutes ago. The best I can hope for now is a couple of hours of sleep, so I can be dead at work instead of buried. Yesterday was the last day of Suga, so I’ll be on my own all afternoon. I can still see the body falling. Cockroach is quiet. Has he escaped? Is he plotting revenge? Is he asleep, dreaming of nubile cockroach thighs and stewing garbage? They say that for every single cockroach you see, there are ninety relatives out of sight. Under the floor, in cavities, behind cupboards. Under futons. ‘Poor Mum,’ she is hoping I’ll think. ‘Okay, she dumped us at our uncle’s when we were three, but let bygones be bygones. I’ll phone her this very morning.’ No
way
! Forget it! I imagine I can hear Tokyo stir. My neck itches. I scratch. My back itches. I scratch. My crotch itches. I scratch. Once Tokyo itself wakes, all hope of sleep is doomed. The fan stirs the heat. How dare she write me a letter like that. I was tired when I went to bed. What happened?

‘My final Friday,’ says Suga. ‘Deep joy. Tomorrow, freedom. Imho, you should go back to college, Miyake. It beats earning a living for a living.’ I am not really listening – this is the morning after I discover that when I was three years old my mother decided to throw me off a ninth-floor balcony – but when he says that word again I give in. ‘Why do you keep using that word?’

Suga acts puzzled. ‘What word?’

‘“Imho”.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ Suga says, not sounding at all sorry, ‘I forgot.’

‘Forgot what?’

‘Most of my friends are e-friends. Other hackers. We use our own language, right. “Imho” stands for the English “in my humble opinion”. Like, “
I
think that . . .” Cool word, or what?’

The telephone rings. Suga looks – I answer.

‘Pleased with ourselves, Miyake?’ A voice I know, simmering with malice.

‘Mr Aoyama?’

‘You work for them, don’t you?’

‘For Ueno station, you mean, sir?’

‘Drop the act! I mean what I mean! I know you work for the consultants!’

‘Which consultants, sir?’

‘I told you to drop it! I see right through you! You were in my office to snoop. To filch. To assess. I know your little game. Then there was your provocation the day before yesterday. That was to get me out of my office, while my files were copied. It all adds up now. Oh yes. Deny it! I dare you to deny it!’

‘I swear, Mr Aoyama, there has been some mistake here . . .’

‘A mistake?’ Aoyama shouts. ‘How right you are! The biggest mistake of your treacherous life! I have served Ueno since before you were born! I have friends at the transport ministry! I went to an influential university!’ I can’t believe his voice can get any louder, but it does. ‘If your masters believe
I
can be “restructured” to an end-of-the-line deep freeze in Akita with two platforms and a company dormitory made of paper, they are greviously mistaken! My lackey years are long behind me!’ He breaks, pants, and launches his final assault. ‘Ueno has standards! Ueno has systems! Your scumbag parasite know-nothing poking masters want war, I will give them war and you, you,
you
, will get blasted by crossfire!’

He hangs up.

Suga looks at me. ‘What was that about?’

Why me? Why is it always me? ‘I have no idea.’

‘How can I say this tactfully?’ Mr Ikeda paces to and fro during our half-time peptalk. ‘Boys. You are utterly, utterly crap. Shambolic. Subhuman. In fact, submammalian. A disgrace. A sickening waste of shipping fuel. A non-team of myopic crippled sloths. We have a
miracle
to thank that the enemy are not nine goals up, and the name of this miracle is Mitsui.’ Mitsui chews gum, enjoying the taste of despotic favour. He is a gifted and aggressive goalkeeper – it is lucky he lacks the imagination to expand into playground bullying. Mitsui’s father is Yakushima’s most notorious alcoholic, so our goalkeeper has been calculating the flight paths of projectiles from an early age. Ikeda goes on. ‘In a more civillized century, I could have insisted that the rest of you commit seppuku. You will, however, shave your heads in shame if we lose. Defenders. Despite Mr Mitsui’s valiant work, how many times have the enemy hit the crossbar? Nakamori?’

‘Three times, sir.’

‘And the post?’