Paprika

by Yasutaka Tsutsui

  Konakawa left Paprika’s apartment, seen off by a gorgeous smile he’d probably find hard to forget. She said she would enter his dreams, but what would she do then? He thought about it as he walked along the corridor toward the elevator hall. Each word uttered by that sweet girl started to return to him. She suggested that the swaying jumbo jet represented the Metropolitan Police Department. She was right. The Department was veering out of control. It was only he, the only one who didn’t belong to any clique, who could see that.

  Paprika had said that dreams often provide clues to solving criminal cases. Maybe he’d received a clue to the Hachioji murder case in his dream that very morning. Yes, now he remembered – there had been a fire near the crime scene shortly after the murder, just when he was investigating it. Could the two perhaps have been connected? He would check it out.

  As these and other thoughts flitted through Konakawa’s mind, he stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor. The elevator moved off, then stopped immediately at the fifteenth floor.

  A young man stepped in. Konakawa was taken aback when he saw him. It had been a long time since he’d been overcome with such a nebulous feeling of guilt. The man had the classic good looks of a Grecian statue. The look in his eyes, the shape of his mouth reminded Konakawa uncannily of the man who’d appeared in his dream that night, the man whose picture he had in his jacket pocket – what was his name, Inui or something – except that he didn’t have a beard. He must also be an employee at the Institute, thought Konakawa. He might even be the son of the man in the dream.

  The young man gave him a dubious look. Perhaps this building was out of bounds to all but the senior executives of the Institute and their families. Konakawa was again overcome by pangs of guilt. Yet he felt no need to explain his business here, or his identity. And in any case, the young man looked decidedly nervous whenever their eyes met.

  24

  Osanai’s first thought when he saw the man in the lift was that he must be a detective. He had that same look in his eyes as certain police officers who sometimes came to the Institute with neuroses caused by fatigue. But so much about this man suggested otherwise – his suit, with its fabric and cut of the very highest quality. His diffident manner. And his lack of expression, coupled with a certain nervousness when he saw Osanai.

  He could have been a relative of someone on the sixteenth floor. Atsuko Chiba, perhaps, or Torataro Shima. No, no. More like Atsuko’s secret lover, judging from his dress sense and virile good looks. Atsuko Chiba’s secret lover, going home after a night of passion. Osanai wanted to ignore the man and stare resolutely at the floor indicator until he got out. But his interest was aroused. He turned to look at the man, who had retreated to the back of the elevator.

  The man was staring at Osanai with a look of interest. Osanai was struck by the piercing glint in the man’s eye. Who was nervous now?

  If he could confirm that the man really was Atsuko’s lover, and if he could catch him entering the building again, he would phone Matsukane of the Morning News and get him to lurk around the main entrance with a photographer. So thought Osanai after the man had got out of the elevator at the ground floor. It was his revenge for being made to feel so nervous.

  Osanai went to fetch his car from the basement garage. As expected, Atsuko Chiba’s Marginal was still squatting at the back of the garage, proof that she hadn’t left for work yet. But then again, Osanai was on the early shift that day.

  As he drove toward the Institute, Osanai started to feel just a little tired. He must have overdone things with Inui in his dreams that night.

  The Inui Clinic faced onto a back road only four blocks from Osanai’s apartment. Inui’s bachelor pad was on the fourth and uppermost floor of the building, and Osanai was in the habit of visiting him there. Ever since they’d got their hands on the DC Mini – dubbed “the seed of the Devil” by Inui – the two of them had enjoyed attaching the device to their heads and falling asleep together after their lovemaking. The more they played with it, the more the functions of the device had become manifest. Tokita and Chiba must have developed the functions of other PT devices by playing erotic games with them, thought Osanai. As he drove on, he thought back over the unbelievable experience of the previous night. It didn’t take too much to banish his fatigue.

  Osanai braked hard.

  Oy! Get out of the road! What do you think this is, a stroll in the park? You’re in the city now, woman! Sad shabby trollop from the back of beyond! Moron! People like you aren’t even worthy to lick my boots!

  Oy, oy! You in the two-bit taxi, you think you can cut in front of me? How dare you! Don’t you know who I am? I’m Morio Osanai, ten times your superior in status and intellect, that’s who! Oh yes, don’t look so surprised! I’m a leading Doctor of Psychiatry, winner of the Nobel Prize in the not-too-distant future! Kneel down before me! Cretin! Imbecile! The sun shines behind me, don’t you know? And the sun’s name is Doctor Seijiro Inui. He’s a god! He’s at the center of the solar system, yes, he shines like the sun! Compared to him, who are Tokita and Chiba? Nothing but shooting stars that fly toward the sun and fizzle out as they burn! And me, I’m his right-hand man, his number one disciple. When he becomes President of the Institute for Psychiatric Research, and it won’t be long now, he’s going to make me a director! Oh yes he is!

  Whenever Osanai used the DC Mini to enter Inui’s dreams, his mentor gave him a new education in love. For these were no ordinary dreams. These were dreams that revealed the breadth of Inui’s cultivation, exposed his deep aesthetic sentiment, underscored the sheer strength of his will. Osanai was simply overwhelmed by them. They brought him sheer unbounded rapture.

  The power of Inui’s massive intellect had led Osanai to a different world, an unknown world where he experienced wonders. And as they explored this new world together, they developed immune hypersensitivity to the DC Mini; the effective range of the device continued to expand. Osanai didn’t even have to go to Inui’s apartment anymore. With the DC Mini, he could enter his master’s dreams while sleeping in his own apartment only a few hundred meters away. And Inui could enter his.

  Inui had warned that, if there were any PT devices in the vicinity, the images could be intercepted. But most of the PT devices were in the Institute five kilometers away, and anyway, no one would still be doing research at that late hour of the night. Even if Tokita or Chiba had the devices in their apartments, Inui and Osanai would be safe as long as they only used the DC Mini in the small hours of the morning.

  On arriving at the Institute, Osanai paid a peremptory visit to his research lab, then went straight to the fifth floor of the hospital. There, he gathered up the students and nurses who waited in a gaggle by the nurses’ station, and led them on his rounds of the wards. Nobue Kakimoto’s condition had gradually grown worse, just as intended. Osanai still felt some fatigue, but while he was examining a schizophrenic patient, the patient’s grotesque condition had the effect of stimulating his libido in a dark and menacing way. He gave a signal to Misako Sayama, who was staring at him wide-eyed over the heads of the student researchers. Come to my lab at break this afternoon.

  During the lunch break, Osanai put in a rare appearance at the Junior Staff Room. It irritated him greatly that his desk had been placed there, not in the Senior Staff Room. That was why he handled most of his day-to-day work in his research lab. But now Inui had ordered him to spy on Tokita and Atsuko. Osanai’s desk was closest to the Senior Staff Room, next to the glass door that was always left open. That gave him the perfect opportunity to watch the pair, since they usually had their lunch in the Senior Staff Room.

  Tokita was sitting there alone, cramming food from a lunch box into his mouth. Osanai exchanged a few words with Hashimoto, who sat opposite him, and was looking over the afternoon’s work schedule when Atsuko Chiba came in with sandwiches and coffee clasped in her hands. She took them to her desk and sat there. Then she noticed Osanai and appeared unduly taken aback. />
  “Oh! You gave me a fright,” she said, immediately adjusting her expression to a smile. “For a moment there, I thought you were Doctor Inui. You’re beginning to look more and more like him.”

  “Surely not,” Osanai quipped back. “I’ve heard of infective influence, but that would be ridiculous.”

  Though each perceived the other as an enemy, there was no need to draw swords in front of the other employees quite yet.

  Perhaps I am beginning to look like him, thought Osanai. They say couples start to look alike, after all. It was indeed possible that his dream-world intimacy with Inui over the last few nights, a veritable honeymoon of passion, was having a profoundly infectious influence on him.

  “What’s that??” Atsuko suddenly shrieked. “A lunch box from a lunch-box shop?!”

  “My mum’s away,” Tokita explained mournfully. “A relative in the country has died. She’s gone to the funeral and won’t be back for a week.”

  “Poor thing!”

  “Funerals in the country go on for ages.”

  “Where did you buy the lunch box?”

  “Yuraku-cho. They sell good ones there. But you have to queue for ages.”

  “Poor you.”

  They weren’t speaking very loudly, but Osanai could hear every word without even straining his ears. The problem was that they spoke nothing but banalities. And since they hadn’t yet mentioned the subject, Himuro’s disappearance and the loss of the devices were not being discussed in the Junior Staff Room either.

  I’ll have to do something about those two, and quick, thought Osanai. Things couldn’t be left as they were. Maybe it had been a mistake to start with small fry like Tsumura, Himuro, and Kakimoto. That had merely succeeded in raising the alarm and unveiling their intentions. But no other opportunity had presented itself; the enemy had been too vigilant. There had been no choice but to deal with Tsumura, Himuro, and Kakimoto first, especially as they’d been acting as shields. And now, Torataro Shima.

  Osanai felt a smack on the top of his head. His ears whistled and his eyesight went fuzzy. Opposite him, Hashimoto was looking with some surprise at the space above Osanai’s head.

  Momentarily dazed, Osanai shook his head two or three times, then turned to see the Institute Administrator standing behind him. Shima had slapped the top of Osanai’s head from behind with the palm of his hand. A slight expression of contrition played over Shima’s features, but Osanai interpreted his faint smile as a look of self-satisfaction. As if he was saying “Got you!” As if he knew all about the subliminal projections and was now taking his revenge. But his grand gesture was surely too infantile for that. Perhaps he’d meant to perform his usual trick of going up to employees from behind and suddenly tapping them on the shoulder, but his hand had accidentally slapped the top of Osanai’s head instead. Most of the staff evidently thought so; a few of them were laughing aloud.

  Tokita and Chiba were not laughing. They were watching Shima with intense concern, as they could see that something was wrong. Osanai pulled a comic face and rubbed the top of his head.

  “Ouch!” he joked.

  Shima didn’t appear amused. He did not mock Osanai, nor yet apologize, but simply turned and walked out of the Junior Staff Room while humming a little tune to himself.

  Osanai was well aware that Shima had started to lose his mind. But the other employees didn’t seem to have noticed, for as soon as Shima had left the room they burst into laughter and asked Osanai what he’d done to deserve such a fate. In the Senior Staff Room, meanwhile, Tokita and Atsuko exchanged glances. They were now sure that something was seriously amiss.

  Had Shima been aware of Osanai’s treachery, even though on the way to losing his sanity? Had he hit him over the head out of a hazy malevolence, a half-crazed sense of animosity? Osanai initially thought so, but immediately rejected the idea. No, no. Shima couldn’t possibly have realized he’d been subliminally projected by the Devil’s seed. Osanai had always attached the device just after Shima had fallen asleep, and he couldn’t have noticed it then. If he had, he would obviously have removed it from his head. And as soon as the subliminal projection had started, he would have fallen into REM sleep and wouldn’t have woken for some time. Osanai always went in and removed the device after an hour, but even then, Shima would still be sleeping like a baby.

  Tokita and Atsuko were discussing something with voices lowered. It was too dangerous for Osanai to go to Shima’s office that day. If they used the key to get in and discovered what was going on, all hell would break loose. Never mind. Torataro Shima? I can make mincemeat of him, anytime. Osanai got up.

  He remained in thought as he walked along the connecting passage. Did Tokita and Atsuko know that, because the device had no protective code, it could affect any PT collectors being used in the vicinity? Probably not. They surely hadn’t found time to experiment on the functions of the device. But in fact, it had a lot of different functions. Undeveloped functions that even Kosaku Tokita, the device’s creator, probably knew nothing about. The “Devil’s seed” really had limitless potential. The development of this potential will one day be attributed to me! Osanai’s heartbeat surged when he considered that possibility.

  After eating a lunch of tasteless soba noodles in the staff canteen and briefly showing his face in the General Treatment Room, Osanai returned to his lab. He shared it with Tsumura and Hashimoto, but the former was “indisposed” and the latter was on afternoon duty in the General Treatment Room.

  Osanai made some coffee and drank it while he waited for Misako Sayama to arrive. As he waited, his anticipation grew. He always felt immensely aroused after seeing Atsuko Chiba, particularly when he’d clapped eyes on her alluring figure from close quarters. It usually ended in an act of self-abuse, but today, as luck would have it, he was expecting a visit from Senior Nurse Sayama. He could use her body to relieve his physical arousal.

  There was a knock on the door. Sayama walked in with a bashful grin on her face. She was not pushy like other women, but still retained an old-fashioned coyness. Osanai liked that. With her, sex was as easy as masturbating – no need for tiresome foreplay, certainly no bothersome conversation. Osanai locked the door and led her straight to the sofa. He always liked to have her in her lab coat.

  “Oh!” she gasped.

  Osanai lay the coyly hesitating Senior Nurse Sayama down on the sofa, gave her two or three peremptory kisses, then put his hand up her skirt and pulled down her tights.

  “No, no, no!”

  She was asking him to take all her clothes off first, but Osanai had no care for that. Little knowing that she was wearing several layers of unsightly old-fashioned underwear due to her hypersensitivity to cold, Osanai hitched up her skirt and had a look. Sayama groaned in despair and covered her face with her hands.

  25

  Konakawa had always hated his dreams. They caused a suffocating sensation that disturbed his sleep. The feeling of discomfort would remain for an hour or two after waking, enough to put him off his breakfast. He simply refused to believe that a dream could ever be pleasant.

  But now he steeped himself in his dreams with a spirit free of cares. It may have been because he knew they were dreams, or because Paprika had explained their function. Tonight, he felt as though he’d been dreaming for quite a long time already, which was unusual in itself. Now he was in a place that seemed somehow familiar. The exact location wasn’t clear, but he felt himself immersed in the dream like a fetus in amniotic fluid. For good measure, he was relaxing in a steaming-hot bath.

  It looked like a public bathhouse. On the tiled wall was an advertisement for bath salts. A beautiful woman smiled down at him from the poster, a film star with the glamorous looks of a bygone age. Suddenly she turned into Paprika. Well, well! There you are. I knew you’d be joining me, but not quite like that!

  “Be careful though!” warned the Paprika in the poster, winking cutely but raising a finger of admonition. She had evidently read the murmurings of his mind.
“Dreams aren’t always this much fun, you know. You do know that, don’t you?”

  “I do. Bad dreams are also important, yes?” said Konakawa, a little disappointed. “But anyway. I’ll be all right with you here.”

  Konakawa remembered how he’d thought of nothing but Paprika while waiting impatiently for the second session. Was it all right for a patient to be so fond of his therapist? Of course, the reality was that he’d fallen in love with her. Was it all right for a patient to fall in love with his therapist? Was it all right for a therapist to be so attractive in the first place? To the extent that her patients fell madly in love with her? And if they did, could she still give them proper treatment? These and other thoughts coursed through Konakawa’s mind in his dream.

  “Maybe it’s the other way round,” said Paprika’s voice.

  The scene had changed; now it looked very much like a hotel room. Paprika was nowhere to be seen. Where is she?

  “Actually, I’m not really that great a therapist. I just use my looks to help the treatment along. Maybe that’s why I’m so successful. It shouldn’t be allowed, should it.”

  Paprika’s voice came from the radio next to the bed.

  “So you even understand what I’m thinking?” said Konakawa. It didn’t seem that surprising, actually. He was dreaming, after all.

  A woman was sleeping next to him on the bed. He didn’t know who it was. It wasn’t Paprika; it certainly wasn’t his wife.

  He touched the woman with his hand. She turned to look at him. She was the man he’d seen in his previous dream. Seijiro Inui.

  “What are you doing here?!” Paprika called out angrily. Inui looked genuinely shocked, then vanished.