Paprika

by Yasutaka Tsutsui

  Shima had given him some tablets. After their meeting, Noda had started taking them surreptitiously, mixed with vitamin pills to disguise them. For a while, the attacks had seemed a thing of the past. But two days after the tablets ran out, Noda suffered a third, more violent attack while on his way home late one night. This time he could bear it no longer, and asked the taxi driver to take him to the nearest hospital. The symptoms had subsided before the taxi could reach the hospital, so Noda diverted the driver to Shima’s residence instead. Shima seemed to understand the gravity of Noda’s condition, and promised to set up a course of treatment immediately. And now, about a week later, Noda was to meet the therapist called Paprika. Her name sounded like something out of a fairy tale, but, as Shima had assured him, she was “the very best dream detective.”

  At five past eleven, the music changed to “Satin Doll.”

  The heavy oak door opened and a girl wearing a red shirt and jeans walked in. Naturally, she looked quite out of place in the bar. Kuga met her with a greeting that sounded more like a challenge. She whispered something to him. Kuga started to twitch nervously on realizing that she was Noda’s assignation. Noda shared his surprise. Jinnai widened his eyes.

  Kuga led the girl to Noda’s booth, and there she stood with head tilted slightly to one side. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Paprika.”

  Noda woke from his reverie and rose hurriedly. “Why … Hello!”

  “And … You’re Tatsuo Noda, right?”

  “That’s right. That’s right.” With growing surprise at the girl’s helpless appearance, Noda pointed to the sofa opposite him. “Take a seat.”

  She was an attractive girl with a cutely shaped face and freckles around her eyes. In the dim half-light of the bar, Noda thought her skin looked quite tanned. Evidently feeling as incongruous as she looked, Paprika fidgeted restlessly for a while and cast uncertain glances around the bar.

  Am I old enough to be her father? Noda wondered with some apprehension. Eventually he spoke: “Well … Miss …”

  “Call me Paprika,” she said coquettishly.

  In fact, she was deliberately using that tone to help Noda feel more relaxed. Now the name slipped effortlessly from his lips. “All right – Paprika. What will you have to drink?”

  “I’ll have the same as you.”

  Noda nodded to Kuga, who still stood beside their table. Kuga cast a questioning look that only Noda could see –“Surely you’re not going to let her drink the very best whisky?!” – then bowed in resignation and walked off.

  Noda suddenly realized that Paprika had come empty-handed. Had Shima given her the case records? Would he have to explain his symptoms all over again?

  It was as if Paprika had read Noda’s thoughts. Until then she’d appeared tense, but now she suddenly smiled. “I hear you’ve developed a zero-emissions vehicle? That sounds cool.”

  She may speak plainly but at least she knows her manners, thought Noda. She must be exceptionally clever. Even her air of helplessness seemed designed to put him at his ease.

  “Well, yes. Of course, there are already low-emission vehicles, like the LNG-powered ones.” Now feeling more relaxed, Noda started to explain the project as if he were teaching a pupil about it. That seemed to be what Paprika wanted, anyway. “But even they emit nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide in their exhaust fumes. So we’re developing a zero-pollution vehicle that won’t have any of those either. Well, I say developing. Actually, we’ve already made one.”

  “So you’re actually producing them? Wow. I bet there are people who want to stop you.”

  “Ah yes, but of course. And it’s not just the competitors. I even have opposition within my own company. They’re all jealous, of course,” Noda said with a laugh. “But naturally, that was no more than I’d expected,” he added more seriously, lest it be considered the cause of his illness.

  “Yeah, I bet they’re just jealous,” said Paprika. She spoke casually, suggesting not only that she understood Noda’s concern but also that she wouldn’t mention anything to do with his work again. She took a sip of the whisky brought by Kuga, who again stood beside their table. “Aah! Usquaebach!” she breathed quietly.

  Kuga started to twitch again. At length he bowed solemnly. “Glad you like it.”

  4

  From her hairstyle and dress sense, Paprika seemed a rather simple girl. But the more she spoke, the more her intelligence seemed to shine through, like the gleam in her eye.

  “Um … Would you mind if I had another?” asked Noda.

  “Sure. Go ahead,” Paprika said at first, then suddenly added, donning her therapist’s hat, “Wait a minute. How many have you had? This is your second, right? Well, OK. If it’s only your second. Go ahead.”

  Paprika’s funny little flurry made Noda feel even more relaxed. “Mind you, I’d better not, if you’re going to start the treatment soon,” he said. “They say it’s best if you don’t drink.”

  Paprika smiled precociously before looking hard at her client. “You’re a gentleman, Mr. Noda. I’ll stop here too. Though I’d love to continue.”

  “I’ll treat you some other time,” Noda said, then lowered his voice. “Speaking of which, where do you do the treatment? Shima didn’t say …”

  Paprika looked around the bar again. They were still the only customers. But even so, perhaps this wasn’t quite the place to discuss the ins and outs of psychoanalysis. She emptied her glass in one gulp, then nodded. “I’ll show you. Come on!”

  “P.S. I Love You” was playing again as they got up to go. Paprika went straight outside, leaving Noda to settle up at the counter.

  “Are you feeling all right, Mr. Noda?” Jinnai asked in a tone of concern, having caught snatches of their conversation.

  “Why?” asked Noda, taken aback.

  “Well, the girl’s a nurse, isn’t she?”

  Noda stepped outside to find Paprika sitting in a taxi by the curbside. She must have stated her destination already, for the driver headed off toward Akasaka the moment Noda settled into his seat. The road was lined with high-rise buildings, most of which had apartments on their upper floors – investments for the filthy rich, or company housing for the top brass of large corporations.

  “I’ll scan your dreams in my apartment,” said Paprika. “I’ve got all the equipment there.” Her breath smelt sweet. It was the breath of a mature woman. Startled, Noda once again wondered how old she was.

  “Do you think the treatment will take time, in my case?” he asked, raising the issue that concerned him most.

  Paprika donned her therapist’s hat again. “Anxiety is an integral part of being human. Heidegger saw it as a necessary evil. If you could tame your anxiety and find a way of living with it, or even make use of it, you would no longer need treatment. And then you could discover what caused your anxiety.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t got time for that.”

  “Sure, understood. You’ve got your work, after all. You’ve got your family. But you need to relax. Don’t be so impatient. In principle, you’ll definitely be cured, provided we can locate the cause. In a way, your condition is like a coin falling into a pocket. Pockets have bottoms, don’t they. The coin will always be found. It’s rare for the condition to get any worse than that.”

  Noda was relieved. Perhaps he could avoid going schizophrenic after all!

  The taxi stopped in front of a multistory apartment block in Shinanomachi. It was where Shima lived, and the directors of the Institute for Psychiatric Research. The Foundation owned rooms on several floors of the building. In that case, this “Paprika” must also be one the Institute’s directors. The apartments were far too expensive to be owned by ordinary individuals, that was for sure. There was so much that Noda wanted to ask. But he held himself back, and concentrated instead on following Paprika’s dance through the spacious lobby of the apartment building toward the lift. After all, Shima had strictly forbidden him to ask her true identity or her real name.

  He
was soon to discover her surname, though. As they reached the door to her apartment at the eastern end of the sixteenth floor, it was written in bold capitals on a metal nameplate fixed to the wall: Apt. 1604 CHIBA.

  The apartment was on a grand scale that could only have been designed for a senior executive. An eight-paneled glass door led out from a sumptuously furnished living room onto a veranda, with a panoramic night view of Shinjuku visible beyond.

  “You must be some kind of VIP!” Noda exclaimed with unbridled admiration, but Paprika remained cool. Besides the kitchen and other facilities, this living room seemed to be where Paprika spent her time when not asleep. She beckoned Noda toward another room at the far end. It was dark and appeared to be a treatment room – the patient’s bed suggested as much. The room also contained other furnishings, including another bed and a wardrobe that must have been Paprika’s. Various devices lined the wall next to the crude pipe-assembled patient’s bed. Monitor screens gleamed with motionless graphics. They were the only source of light, as the room had no windows.

  “You don’t suffer from claustrophobia, I hope?”

  “No. Fear of heights, if anything.”

  “I’ll remember that. Will you be able to sleep straightaway?”

  “I’m always tired. I never have any problem getting to sleep,” said Noda, feeling at a loss in such unusual surroundings. “But I wonder whether I could fall asleep under the eye of one as pretty as you?”

  “Just relax. Would you get undressed now?”

  Noda first took off his jacket and handed it to Paprika. She placed it on a hanger, which she hung in the wardrobe. Next came the tie, then the shirt. Paprika tidied Noda’s clothes with the dexterity and professional attention of a nurse. Reassured, Noda had no hesitation in taking off his trousers.

  “What great dress sense you have. Such high quality,” Paprika said, smiling at last, as Noda lay on the bed in his underwear. “Do you always sleep like that?”

  “I can’t stand pajamas,” he replied. “They make me sweat. I usually wear as little as possible.”

  “You could take your vest off as well, if you liked.”

  “No, thanks. This will do fine,” Noda laughed. He put his feet under the cold, pure-white sheet at the foot of the bed. The room felt cool. The pillow was hard and smelt of starch.

  As he watched Paprika busily moving about and preparing something in the ghostly light of the monitor screens, Noda began to feel a sense of déjà vu. He could hear music. It was Rameau’s “Sommeil de Dardanus.”

  Paprika put what looked like a shower cap over Noda’s head. It was transparent, but had an electronic circuit pattern resembling a street map printed on its surface. A single cable trailed away from the back of the cap. Noda felt rather relieved at that; he’d expected it to be more of a hard helmet-like contraption.

  “Is this what you call the gorgon?”

  “I can see you’ve done your homework. Yes, it’s the gorgon, named of course after the Greek myth. But now, rather than having cables all over the place, it just has the one. Soon we won’t even need the cap.”

  “Is it a kind of sensor?”

  “You could say that. You could also see it as a combination of interfaces between a highly sensitive brain-wave detector and the central processor. In the old days, they had to embed electrodes under the skull just to investigate brain waves in the cerebral cortex. Now all you have to do is wear this. Aren’t you lucky?!”

  “And none of these devices have been commercialized yet?”

  “No, they’re still being developed. That’s why it’s so untidy in here …”

  So who was developing them? If not Paprika herself, then whoever it was must have assembled the equipment there. In that case, since the devices were still being developed, it would have to be that scientist at the Institute for Psychiatric Research, the one who was up for the Nobel Prize or something. Would such a person really come all this way to a private residence just to assemble the devices? Noda was beginning to feel anxious again. “So it’s cutting-edge technology, you might say?” he asked with a hint of irony.

  “Sure,” Paprika replied as if “cutting edge” were perfectly normal. That at last put Noda’s mind at ease. He allowed his head to sink back onto the pillow.

  “Aaah … No electrodes embedded under my skull … I shouldn’t have any trouble falling asleep at all.”

  “Good. And you’ve had a drink, so I hope you won’t be needing any hypnosis or medication.” Paprika sat on the chair next to Noda, then started talking to him in her relaxed bedside manner. “Do you often have dreams, Mr. Noda?”

  “Yes, strange dreams. Often.”

  “It’s better to dream a lot, actually. It’s good for the brain. Interesting people have interesting dreams. Dull people only have dull ones. I’m looking forward to seeing yours.”

  “And you actually appear in people’s dreams?”

  “Well, I won’t tonight, as it’s the first time. I’m not familiar with your dreams, and anyway we’ve only just met. It would be too much of a shock to your system.”

  “Oh well. But I must say, I never thought psychotherapy could be so enjoyable!”

  “You say that because your condition is only mild. There are people who really hate seeing the dream detective. Right. I’d better not be here. You’ll fall asleep more easily on your own, won’t you.”

  “Probably, but I’d far rather you stayed.” Yes, Paprika was young enough to be his own daughter, but Noda had started to feel as if he could indulge himself a little with her.

  Paprika laughed and rose from her chair. “No, you should sleep now. And anyway, I’m famished. I’m going to get something from the kitchen.” It sounded like a deliberate ploy to make him sleep. Paprika left the room.

  What an excellent therapist – as I expected, thought Noda. She made him feel relaxed just by talking to him. They’d never met before, but her posture and expression made her seem somehow familiar, almost as if they were related. She made him feel it was all right to talk about anything he wanted. And while she tended to speak childishly, she never said anything that made Noda feel uncomfortable – unlike most young women these days. Yes, she was young and beautiful, but at the same time she had a motherly quality that served to restrain a man’s baser urges, surrounding him instead with warm, reassuring sensations. Noda breathed a huge sigh of satisfaction. There would certainly be no anxiety attacks occurring here tonight.

  Several times a month, Noda would arrive home at four or five in the morning. His wife, preoccupied as she was with their son’s education, had never shown undue concern; Noda knew she wouldn’t be particularly perturbed, even if he turned up at seven o’clock. And Noda’s wife must have known, more perhaps than Noda himself, that having an affair was simply not in his nature.

  “Your condition is only mild,” Paprika had said. Maybe, to a therapist, his condition seemed unspectacular. But Noda himself found no comfort in that at all. It mattered little that the symptoms were not yet affecting his daily life. Now was the most crucial time. Above all, his enemies must never know of his illness; he had to be cured before they could hear about it.

  In the old days, thinking about his enemies both inside and outside the company would have been enough to keep him awake until the small hours. But now he’d grown accustomed to the struggle. Now, planning cunning strategies in his head would send him off to the land of nod with a satisfying degree of mental fatigue; he almost enjoyed it. He felt sure he would fall asleep quickly tonight. As his consciousness started to fragment and crack, meaningless images started to cavort through the crevices of his mind.

  5

  Noda woke naturally. Or perhaps he only thought as much; perhaps Paprika had roused him with some kind of device. Paprika sat in a position where they could see each other if Noda turned his head slightly to the right. She was looking at the console monitor with a helmet-like apparatus on her head. Noda thought it must be the “collector” he’d heard about. The light from t
he monitor screen lent Paprika’s face an ethereal glow.

  “What time is it?” asked Noda.

  Paprika removed the collector and smiled. “Not yet two o’clock. You’ve just finished your first REM sleep. Do you always wake up around this time?”

  “No. I thought perhaps you’d woken me deliberately.”

  “No, I wouldn’t do that. It must have been this dream that woke you. You remember it, of course?”

  “Yes, I do.” Noda sat up. “But how do you know that?”

  “When we’re woken during REM sleep, we usually remember what we were dreaming at the time. So, shall we just analyze this dream tonight?” Paprika took Noda’s clothes from the wardrobe and placed them at the foot of the bed. “Although morning dreams are actually much more interesting.”

  “It was a very short dream. Can you really learn anything by analyzing that?” Noda said as he dressed himself.

  “Of course! Dreams in this phase of sleep are usually short, but the information they contain is condensed. It’s like watching an experimental short film. Morning dreams can sometimes last an hour or so. They’re more like epic feature films.”

  “Really? You have statistics of that sort? How interesting.”

  “Let’s watch an experimental short then, shall we? Come on, sit here,” Paprika said, patting the foot of the bed invitingly. Now fully dressed, Noda sat next to Paprika. He looked at the monitor. The screen was motionless for now, frozen in an alternating pattern of gray and black waves.