Number9Dream (30 page)

The Mongolian disappeared into thin air. The burning Cadillacs broke into fresh applause. My senses struggled back from wherever, and I knew I had to get away from that place as soon as possible. I started jogging down the bridge. Not running, I knew I had a long night in front of me. I did not look over the parapet again, and I did not look over my shoulder. I was not even tempted. The thick smoke spun with plutonium fumes. I willed myself to become a machine whose product was distance. I jogged a hundred paces, and walked a hundred, over and over, along the perimeter road, scanning the moonlit distance for cars. I could hide down the embankment if anything came – the slope was built of those shorefront prefabricated concrete blocks with big hollows. Horror, shock, guilt, relief: all the predictable things, I felt none of them. All I could feel was this urge to put distance between me and everything I had seen. Stars weakened. The fear that I would be caught and nailed to the crimes on the reclaimed land shook open emergency seams of stamina, and I kept my hundred-hundred regime up until the perimeter road curved through the roadblock and on to the main coastal road that led back to Xanadu. The dawn was scorching the horizon and the traffic on the main thoroughfare towards Tokyo was thickening. The aspirin moon was dissolving in the lukewarm morning. Drivers and passengers stared at me. Nobody walks out there, there was no pavement, just a sort of bulldozed-up ridge of ground – they assumed I had escaped from a mental hospital. I thought about hitch-hiking, but figured this could attract attention to me. How would I explain what I was doing there? I heard a fleet of police sirens approach. Luckily I was passing a family restaurant, so I could hide in the entrance and pretend to make a phone call. I was wrong – no police cars, only two ambulances. What should I do? My fever was taiko-drumming my brain. I had no plan of action beyond calling Buntaro and begging for help, but he wouldn’t be at Shooting Star until eleven and I didn’t have his home number, and I was afraid he would dump my stuff on the pavement when he found out what sort of company I kept. ‘Are you okay, lovie?’ asked a waitress behind the till. ‘Do you need anything for that eye?’ She looked at me so kindly that the only way I could stop myself blubbing was leaving rudely without answering. I envy her son. The route passed an industrial estate – at least I had a pavement to walk on. Every streetlight switched itself off simultaneously. The factory units went on for ever. They all made things for other factory units: stacking shelves, packing products, fork-lift gearboxes. The drumming was subsiding, but the fever was now steaming the contents of my skull. I had used everything up. I should try to get back to the family restaurant, I thought, and collapse in the lap of the angel of mercy. Collapse? Hospitals, doctors, questions? Twenty-year-olds don’t collapse. The restaurant was too far behind me. There was a bench in front of a tiling sealant factory. I don’t know why anyone put a bench there, but I sat down gratefully, in the shade of a giant Nike trainer. I hate this world.
NIKE. THERE IS NO FINISHING LINE.
Across a weed-strewn wasteland I could see Xanadu and Valhalla. One great circle. A firing pistol went off somewhere, and the sun sprang up, running. A bird was singing – a long, human whistling note, then a starburst of bird code at the end. Over and over. Same bird lives on Yakushima, I swear. I willed myself to get up, and make it as far as Xanadu, where I could find some air-conditioning and a place to sleep until I could phone Shooting Star. I willed myself, but my body wouldn’t move. A white car slowed down. Beep, beep. Beepy white car. Go away. The door opened from the inside, and the driver leaned over the passenger seat. ‘Look, lad, I’m not Zizzi Hikaru but unless you know of a better offer coming along, I suggest you climb in.’ An uncoupled moment as I realized the driver was actually Buntaro. A haggard, stressed Buntaro. I was too drained to even wonder how, who, when, why. I was asleep in thirty seconds.

The market town was a razed maze of clubbed rubble and treeless scree. The mosque on the hill had taken a direct hit, its innards lobotomized and its windows blasted out. The building gazed blankly over the town. Trams lay toppled and stripped. Abandoned children lay by the roadside, skin shrink-wrapped around protruding bones. Flies drank from their tear ducts. Vultures circled near enough to hear the wind in their feathers, and hyenas skulked in the gutters. A white Jeep from a peacekeeping organization drove past, nearly running Mrs Comb over, taking lots of photographs and news footage. Mrs Comb came to an enormous statue reigning over the ruin.
The Beloved Commander
, read the plaque. In his shadow, a gaunt man sizzled worms over a fire for his family. The ballasted, bombastic, brassy, beetle-browed, bulging dictator on the plinth was the very opposite of the gaunt man beneath, whose skeleton seemed to have been twisted out of coat hangers. ‘Excuse me,’ said Mrs Comb, ‘I’m looking for the marketplace.’

He glowered at her. ‘You’re standing in it.’

Mrs Comb realized he was quite serious. ‘This wasteland?’

‘There is a war on, lady, in case you haven’t noticed!’

‘But surely people still need to eat?’

‘Eat what? We are under siege.’

‘Siege?’

The gaunt man dangled a worm over the mouth of his son, who delicately took it from the chopsticks, and chewed without expression. ‘Well, they call a “siege” “sanctions” these days. It is an easier word to swallow.’

‘Fancy . . . who is the war between, exactly?’

‘Sssh!’ The man looked around. ‘That’s classified! You’ll be arrested for asking questions like that!’

‘Surely you know, when the soldiers fight each other?’

‘The soldiers? They never fight each other! They might get hurt! They have a gentleman’s agreement – never fire at a uniform. The purpose of war is to kill as many civilians as possible.’

‘Shocking!’ Then Mrs Comb said something rather unwise. ‘Looks like I won’t be able to sell my eggs, after all.’

A fertilizer bag flapped open and the gaunt man’s wife crawled out. ‘Eggs?’ The gaunt man tried to shush her, but she shrieked, ‘Eggs!’ The still noon shook as the word spread like shockwaves. ‘Eggs!’ Orphans without forearms emerged from drains. ‘Eggs!’ Old women tapped their canes. ‘Eggs!’ Men appeared in doorless doorways, eye sockets hollow with hunger. ‘Eggs!’ A menacing mob encircled the statue. Mrs Comb tried to calm the situation. ‘Now, now, no need to—’ The mob surged – a hurricane huckus of hoohah, hubbub and hounding hands broke over Mrs Comb and swept her basket away. The mob roared. Mrs Comb squawked in terror as her eggs rolled away and were pounded to shell-spatted yolk and white underfoot. Mrs Comb flapped and rose above the crowds – she hadn’t flown since she was a spring chicken, and couldn’t stay airborne for more than a few seconds. The only nearby roosting place was the handlebar moustache of the beloved commander. The crowd watched her, awestruck. ‘She flew! The lady flew!’ Only a tiny fraction of the mob was near enough to fight for the gobs of crushed egg. The rest looked at Mrs Comb. A little kid said it first. ‘She ain’t no lady!’

‘I most certainly am a lady!’ retorted Mrs Comb. ‘My father ruled the roost!’

‘Ladies don’t fly! She’s a
hen
!’

‘I am a
lady!
’

The word devoured the hungry town as wildfire devours thornbush thickets of Thales. Not ‘lady’, not ‘hen’ but: ‘Chicken! Chicken! Chicken!’

Mrs Sasaki ladles my miso soup from the pan into a lacquer bowl. Koiwashi fish and cubes of tofu. Anju loved koiwashi – our grandmother used to serve it this way. The miso paste swirls at the bottom, deep-sea sludge. Yellow daikon pickles, salmon rice-balls wrapped in seaweed. Sheer comfort food. I exist on toast and yoghurt in my capsule, assuming I get up early enough: this is too much hassle to make. I know I should be ravenous, but my appetite is still in hiding. I eat to please Mrs Sasaki. When my grandmother’s dog Caesar was dying, he ate just to please her. ‘Mrs Sasaki, I have some questions.’

‘I imagine you do.’

‘Where am I?’

She passes me the bowl. ‘You didn’t ask Buntaro?’

‘Yesterday was weird all day, I wasn’t thinking straight. At all.’

‘Well, you are staying in the house of my sister and brother-in-law.’

‘Are they the couple in the seashell photo above the fax?’

‘Yes. I took that photograph myself.’

‘Where are they now?’

‘In Germany. Her books sell very well there, so her publisher flew her over for a literary tour. Her husband is a scholar of European languages, so he burrows in university libraries while she does her writerly duties.’

I slurp my soup. ‘This is good. A writer? Does your sister work in the attic?’

‘She prefers “fabulist”. I was wondering if you would find the study.’

‘I hope it was okay to go up there. I, uh, even began reading some stories I found on the writing desk.’

‘I don’t think my sister would object. Unread stories aren’t stories.’

‘She must be a special person, your sister.’

‘Finish those rice-balls. Why do you say that?’

‘This house. In Tokyo, but it could be in a forest during the Kofun period. No telephones, no TV, no computer.’

Mrs Sasaki purses her lips when she smiles. ‘I must tell her that. She’ll love it. My sister doesn’t need a telephone – she was born deaf, you see. And my brother-in-law says the world needs less communication, not more.’ Mrs Sasaki slices an orange on the chopping board, and zest spray-leaks. She sits down. ‘Miyake-kun, I don’t think you should come back to Ueno. We have no proof those people or their associates want to find you, but nor do we have any proof that they don’t. I vote that we shouldn’t take any risks. They knew where to find you on Friday. As a precaution I ensured your Ueno records were misfiled. I think you should sit tight here, until the end of the week – if anybody comes asking for you at Shooting Star, Buntaro will tell them you skipped town. If not, the coast is clear enough.’

This makes sense. ‘Okay.’

‘Worry about the future from next week.’ Mrs Sasaki pours the tea. ‘In the meantime, rest. You don’t so much solve problems as live through them.’

Green tea with barley grains. ‘Why are you and Buntaro helping me?’

‘“Who” matters more than “Why”. Eat.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘No matter, Eiji.’

Later, the same day. The doorbell chimes and my heart coils up again. I put the manuscript down. Not Buntaro, not Mrs Sasaki, so who? I am up in the attic study, but I hear a key turned in the front door. I am learning the silences that fill this house, and I know what is in my head and what is not – there, the door swings open, feet in the entrance hall. The books are straining to hear, too. ‘Miyake! Relax! This is Yuzu Daimon! Come out, come out, wherever you are! Your landlord gave me the key.’ We meet on the stairs. ‘You look better than when I last saw you,’ I say. ‘Most road-kills look better than me last Friday,’ he replies. ‘But you look worse. Sheesh! They did that to your eye?’ His T-shirt reads
Whoever dies with the most stuff wins
. ‘I came to bring you my apology. I thought I could chop off my little finger.’

‘What would I do with your little finger?’

‘Whatever. Pickle it, keep it in an enamelled casket: ideal for picking your nose in polite society. What a conversation piece: “It formerly belonged to the notorious Yuzu Daimon, you know.”’

‘I’d rather use my own finger, thanks. And’ – I wave my hand, vaguely – ‘going back was my decision, not yours.’

‘Oh well, I bought you ten boxes of cigarettes to tide you over,’ he says. I see he is still unsure whether or not I want to murder him. ‘If I had to cut off a finger every time I needed to apologize, I’d be up to my shoulder blade by now. Marlboro. I remembered you smoked Marlboro in the pool hall on the fateful night. And your landlord thought you might like your guitar to keep you company, so I brought it over. I left it down in the entrance hall. How do you feel?’ How do I feel? Weird, but not angry. ‘Thanks,’ I say. He shrugs. ‘Well, considering . . .’ I shrug. ‘The garden is good for smoking.’

Once I begin – from the point where I loaded him into the taxi – I cannot stop until the end – the point where Buntaro loaded me into his car. I can’t remember talking so long, ever. Daimon never interrupts, except to light our cigarettes and to get a beer from the fridge. I even tell him about my father and why I came to Tokyo in the first place. When I finally finish the sun has gone. ‘What amazes me,’ I say, ‘is that none of what happened has been reported. How can forty people get killed – not quietly, either, but action-movie deaths – and it not be reported?’

Bees peruse swaying lavender. ‘Yakuza wars make the police look crap and the politicos look bent. Which, as everybody knows, is true. But by admitting it, the voters of Tokyo may be prompted to wonder why they bother paying taxes. So it gets kept off TV.’

‘But the newspapers?’

‘Journalists are fed reports of battles already won and lost higher up the mountainside. Original, story-sniffing journalists get blacklisted from news conferences, so newspapers can’t keep them on. Subtle, isn’t it?

‘Then why bother with the news at all?’

‘People want their comic books and bedtime stories. Look! A dragonfly! The old poet-monks used to know what week of what month it was, just by the colour and the sheen of dragonflies’ – whatd’yacall’em? – fuselages.’ He plays with his lighter. ‘Did you tell your landlord the uncensored version of what happened to you?’

‘I toned down the violence. I also left out the death threats to his wife, since the man who made them is . . . dead. I still don’t know what is right, and what will give him nightmares and paranoia.’

Daimon nods. ‘Sometimes there isn’t a right thing to do, and the best you can hope for is the least worst. Do you dream about it?’

‘I don’t sleep much.’ I open a can of beer. ‘What are your plans?’

‘My dad thinks I should disappear for a while, and for once we agree. I’m going back to the States in the morning. With my wife.’