by Zoe Drake
Weiss tried to understand what he was looking at. It was a mockery of life. A conjuring trick, a bas-relief in the shape of a man.
No: it was Mendelson. Fused with the cloister wall. Standing upright, his face twisted to one side so that one dead eye was staring back at Weiss. Flesh almost as discolored and pockmarked as the stone the head was embedded in. At his feet was the Book of the Veils, lying where he had dropped it, its pages open.
Struck dumb, Weiss stared back at the body of his friend, embedded in the center of an incomprehensible alphabet.
Chapter Two
Rituals
The Buddhist altar of the Yoshida household was an elegant and finely crafted cabinet of copper and black lacquered wood. Within its shadowy exterior gleamed a gold-plated image of the Buddha surrounded by candles, cut flowers, and tiny glasses of rice wine. At the altar’s center was a photograph of a smiling Japanese girl in school uniform. Bordered in black.
David Keall watched intently as Saori Yoshida, wearing an identical school uniform of grey waistcoat, white blouse and pleated grey skirt, knelt in front of the altar and slipped a stick of incense from its packet. After lighting it from one of the candles, she put out the flame by fanning her hand back and forth, and placed it carefully in the brass censer.
With careful movements, David followed suit. With the two incense sticks burning side by side, the heavy odor of sandalwood seeping into the room, Saori Yoshida picked up the brass-edged stick on the lower shelf of the altar and struck the cup. A clear, high-pitched note rang through the air of the small study room.
“Ayano,” Saori said, her eyes closed tightly, “We pray for you.”
This was how David Keall had finished his private lessons with Saori Yoshida for the past eight weeks: his weekly English conversation lesson, conducted in the Yoshida family’s study room. She now stood up, turned to David and smiled, her serious mood beginning to soften. “Are you hungry?”
David returned the smile. “Hey, you know me, I’m always hungry.”
Saori had a face that was fascinating to look at. She wasn’t classically beautiful in the Japanese sense; her nose was slightly too large, her lips were too full, but her features combined with her delicately lifted eyes and single eyelids to command attention. Her round-to-oval face was framed with glossy black hair that cascaded past her shoulders, a heavy fringe cut in the Kappa style across her forehead.
“My mother’s cooked tempura for you again,” she said.
“I keep telling her I’d be OK with something healthier…”
“She thinks that everyone who’s British has a craving to eat fish and chips. Well, anything deep-fried. Deep-fried potato, deep-fried pumpkin, deep-fried chicken…”
“I’ll have to draw the line at the deep-fried cod’s milt, I’m afraid.”
“Ah, shirako? You should try it some time. You never know because you don’t try it.”
David laughed. “Yeah, but…no.”
In a kitchen two rooms away, filled with the smells and sounds of crackling oil and the thundering roar of the ventilator fan directly above the stove, Mrs. Yoshida was busy gauging the temperature of the oil and the condition of the ingredients, every few minutes walking through into the living room to bring more plates of food and to refill the beer in her husband’s glass. David and Saori entered and seated themselves on cushions around the low table. Mr. Yoshida greeted them with a wave of his hand.
Mr. Yoshida wore the standard off-duty look of the Japanese businessman – cream polo shirt, black and white check cotton ‘house slacks’. He had a full head of grey hair with a slight natural curl, and a healthy-looking face with bright, eager eyes. His wife had also aged well, fifty-something with features obviously attractive in her youth. David could see where Saori had got their looks; the nose and mouth from her father, the shape of the head from her mother.
David knocked glasses with Mr. Yoshida and took a deep gulp of crispy Japanese lager. He leaned back, trying not to look like the typical clumsy foreigner; the compact size of the house made him aware of his lanky frame – almost six foot. Rimless steel frame glasses he had in common with most Japanese, but despite his being only twenty-five, his blond hair was already beginning to work backwards across his temples and leave him with a distinct widow’s peak.
“Now then, David-san,” Saori’s father said with a childlike grin on his face, “Can you remember our lesson?”
“I think so, Mr. Yoshida.”
“Well then.” He took another swig of beer, and laughed in that way that David had thought first to be condescending, but he now knew was a simple show of pleasure. “What’s my name?”
“Mitsunori.” David took the given pen and paper, and proceeded to write it. His hand followed the sequences of strokes he saw in his mind’s eye. The first two syllables were easy; they were both represented by the character for ‘bright’. The next character was the unusual one. Under the three crowning stokes, he wrote the characters for ‘one’, ‘day’, and then ‘one’ again. Top to bottom, left to right. He handed back the pen and paper to Mr. Yoshida, who laughed again. “O-jozu desu ne,” he said. You’re very skillful.
The Yoshida household, David thought – full of rituals, some big, some small.
With the food finally served, Mrs. Yoshida sat down next to her husband, sipped delicately at a glass of shochu vodka with lemon juice and motioned to David. “Please eat!”
David started work on the heaped pile of deep-fried fish and vegetables taking pride of place on the table. He picked out several golden slices of sweet potato, lotus root, eggplant and sillago, placing the dish next to the plate of tiny fillets of raw tuna and mackerel. A bowl of tentsuyu sauce swimming with grated white radish lay in front of him, but David had found before that the tempura tasted better with a sprinkling of salt and a drizzling of lemon juice.
“And now,” Mrs. Yoshida announced in English, “I have some news. Exciting news. If you don’t mind, David-san, I would like to invite you to go on trip!”
“Really? That’s very kind of you. When is it?”
“This weekend. The family are going on trip, and we would like you to come.”
“Well, I’ll have to check, but…where are you going?”
“This is very special trip.” Mrs. Yoshida bent forward, her eyes behind her tinted spectacles looking intently at David’s face. “We are going to Osorezan.”
David stopped chewing, his chopsticks hovering above the bowl of sauce. Saori bowed her head, her fringe falling over her eyes.
David had learned quite a bit about Japanese customs before he’d arrived. Taking off his shoes in the parlor, habitually being modest and vague, using different levels of politeness in his speech according to whom he was speaking to; all of those, he felt comfortable with.
But for the first time in maybe a year, he didn’t know how to react.
“Osorezan?” he finally came out with. “Um…yes. I’ve heard of it.”
“It is very famous place, yes, it is very special place for we Japanese. And this weekend is most special time. Please come, David-san! It is long drive. Long weekend. Saori would be very happy if you could talk to her and be company for her – desho?”
“Well, if it’s all right with Saori,” David said, looking in her direction. Saori’s head went up, looking once more at David, and she smiled. Her eyes held David’s gaze. Then she shrugged, as if to say, what can we do? I don’t want to go either.
“OK,” David decided. “I’ll be happy to join you.”
“Arigato! Thank you very much! It is decided, then,” smiled Mrs. Yoshida, and her husband turned to David and gave him the most peculiar look – as if in that moment a secret had passed between them, a secret that David had been supposed to understand and share.
“Goodnight, Saori.”
“Oyasuminasai. Goodnight and take care, David. And thank you very much – I mean, about this weekend. Is it really no trouble for you?”
“Hey look, it’s no probl
em.” They stood at the door to the Yoshida household, a short path leading around the side of the house to the modest walled garden. Bugs fluttered above their heads, maddened by the solitary lamp illuminating the porch.
“Saori…I think Osorezan is that weird place, isn’t it? I’ve heard some people talk…”
“Un. That’s right.”
“Doesn’t the name mean…the Mountain of Fear?” he said with a smile, as if he could lighten the words with laughter.
“David, I really appreciate your coming with us. Osorezan is a scary place, scary to most Japanese people, and my parents are being very serious about it. Do you mind?”
“Hey, it’s OK, I’m coming. But, um…could you tell me a little more about it? I mean, what should I expect?”
Saori pursed her lips, blinking a few times as she searched for the English words to express herself.
“It’s a place like Heaven,” she said finally, “and also like Hell.”
Chapter Three
Official Visitors
Tetsuo Nozaki straightened himself, wiped his brow once more with his handkerchief, and then returned it to his back pocket. It wouldn’t be acceptable to be seen perspiring during the presentation, he knew. The sponsors might think it was an attack of nerves.
“Japan,” he commenced, “is a nation that – to put it bluntly – is asleep at the wheel.”
He pressed a key on the laptop, and a selection of images sprang into life on the wall-size monitor screen behind him. Images mainly taken from the Tokyo and Osaka subway systems. Businessmen and secretaries riding the trains in various states of unconsciousness. Heads lolling onto other people’s shoulders, or thrown back with open mouths exposing crooked and nicotine-stained teeth. Eyes screwed shut. Hands loosely gripping cell phones, newspapers, pornographic comics. An everyday jamboree of public sleepiness.
“A recent study by the National Hygiene Institute found that over forty-five percent of Japanese people manage less than six hours of sleep per night. One person in four suffers from sleep-deficiency syndrome. We live in a twenty-four seven society, with many shops and services open around the clock, brilliantly illuminated urban nights, and an Internet that never sleeps. Our business community says that it can’t be helped, that restructuring has forced office workers to work unusually long hours. But let’s not forget that sleep deprivation, throughout history, has been a form of torture – and this particular torture is costing Japan trillions of yen in terms of productivity.”
In the dimly lit meeting room, the sixteen members of the audience looked expectantly at Nozaki, sagely nodding their heads. He pressed another key on the laptop, and the image on the monitors changed. A schematic of the human brain, its complex, tightly furled chambers neatly color-coded.
“I’d like to explain more fully what happens to the brain in normal states of sleep. In waking life, the human brain functions in the Beta brainwave state during concentration, and the Alpha state when relaxed. In sleep, there are five recurring stages; stage one sleep is the transition period from wakefulness to unconsciousness. In stage two, the heart rate slows, body temperature decreases, and there are periods of muscle tension and relaxation. The body is preparing to enter deep sleep.”
A monitor screen at the top right corner began to display wave patterns, illustrating Nozaki’s words.
“What concerns us most are stages three, four and five. Stages three and four are known as slow-wave sleep. The brain here is in the Delta wave state, waves that are the slowest in frequency, cycling at around one to four hertz. Following this cycle from stages one to four, which usually lasts ninety minutes, is stage five – REM sleep, standing for Rapid Eye Movement. This is a period of intense cerebral activity, with the brain operating at the Theta frequency of four to eight hertz, accompanied by muscular paralysis. This, gentlemen, is when most dreaming takes place. At the end of a period of REM sleep, usually lasting ten minutes, stages one to five then repeat themselves throughout the night.”
The image of the brain clicked off, throwing Nozaki momentarily into darkness. The monitors lit up again showing graphics and charts regarding normal and abnormal sleep patterns.
“These findings here show what matters is not how many hours the individual sleeps during the night, but the quality of the sleep itself. Research has proven that a lack of REM sleep and slow-wave sleep leaves a person feeling tired and unwell. What concerns us is how to improve the quality of our sleep – and to that end, I would like to show you the current status of our project. Gentlemen, if you would like to follow me…”
At a sign from Nozaki, the secretary switched on the lights. The dozen august members of the audience got to their feet, talking quietly to themselves. Even in the summer heat, they were wearing formal dark suits and neckties, and they brushed out the creases from their pants self-consciously as they followed Nozaki to the exit.
Nozaki mopped his brow discreetly as he led the audience to the elevators. He was a large man for a Japanese, something that was particularly inconvenient in the summer, his gut pushing out his necktie and his freshly laundered white shirt. His oval face was a smooth mask of puppy fat beneath glossy black hair parted in the middle and teased up in what his wife said was the most fashionable style. He bowed respectfully as the sponsors filed one by one into the elevator, and then rode up with them to the eleventh level of Tsugaru University Hospital – the crucial area where the sponsors’ money was being spent.
“Gentlemen, would you mind touching the frame of the door as you walk through it? This is to discharge the static electricity from your clothing. Thank you, yes, like that, sir. Thank you.”
The double doors from the corridor opened onto the control room, a small working space where two PCs and a bank of video monitors stood upon the desk where Nozaki worked. From the large window facing them, the assembled audience looked down onto the Sleep Research Laboratory. The whole chamber was bathed in a soft bluish glow from the tinted lamps overhead. Hushed music flowed from hidden speakers – a muted piano and distant birdsong, ambient healing music from the hospital’s CD collection.
The floor beneath them was filled by over fifty beds, half of them occupied – although “bed” was by no means an adequate description. The top part of each ‘sleep research platform’ was covered by a semi-circular arch of dark plastic that shielded the faces of the sleepers. Circuitry glittered and lights winked on the outside of the arches. White-coated assistants slowly patrolled the aisles between the beds, checking readings on the arches and making notes on the clipboards they carried.
The white lab coats were Nozaki’s touch. Totally unnecessary, of course – the assistants were student volunteers who usually wore jeans and T-shirts, but today Nozaki had ordered something more scientific-looking from the hospital laundry.
“Gentlemen,” Nozaki announced, “Let me introduce the Kageyama Treatment.”
He led the sponsors down the steps from the monitor room to a wheeled gurney nearby, where an assistant was waiting. On the gurney was an instrument that looked like a miniature laptop computer connected to a futuristic pair of goggles and a net of fine plastic mesh.
“This is the instrument that we have developed with your kind support, and are currently testing on volunteers. The Sleep Modulator.”
He led them down the aisle between the sleeping volunteers, their bodies covered with thin quilts. At the end of the chamber was a small presentation area holding a desk and another screen, a much smaller one, but again showing schematic maps of the brain.
“I’ve already demonstrated how a good night’s rest involving ample time for deep-wave and REM sleep is beneficial – in fact, essential for health. The new discoveries we’ve made in magnetic resonance imaging and other brain-scanning technologies mean that we can now step in and heal the damage that sleep disorders cause. The mesh cap attached to the Sleep Modulator is a net of over two hundred SQUID electrodes – Super-conducting Quantum Interference Devices. The innovative feature is that it uses pu
lsed electrical waves to accelerate stage one and stage two sleep. This means that the subjects who wear the cap will be spending more time in Delta wave and REM activity. These results are fed back to the lab’s monitors, so we can see in real-time which areas of the sleeping brain are being activated. After approximately two hours of sleep, the subject will wake up feeling fully refreshed, and the body physically rejuvenated.”
“Let me get this straight,” one of the suited men suddenly interjected. “You’re saying our tired business population won’t be sleeping more, but they’ll be dreaming more?”
“Essentially, yes. Taking a nap is an investment with the greatest return for the least amount of time and effort. A nap of sixty to ninety minutes, which will include both slow-wave sleep and REM sleep, is sufficient to make the subject awake feeling rejuvenated and with increased perceptual processing. In the future, with the Sleep Modulator, we hope to compress a full night’s worth of dreaming into a power nap of between twenty to thirty minutes.”
There was a general wave of murmured comments from the crowd. Nozaki permitted himself a smile. “I think now you can appreciate the device’s potential.”
The sponsors looked around the chamber, seeming suitably impressed. One of them held up a hand for attention. “Mr. Nozaki,” the fellow began, “have you changed the requirements for volunteers at all?”
“Yes, we have. We are recruiting people from all over Aomori prefecture, not just the University. We need to test both sexes, and all ages, all manner of occupations, people with both active and sedentary lifestyles. Our health checks, however, are completely comprehensive and stringent, I can assure you.”
“I have a question.” This came from the Toshiba delegate. Nozaki had been expecting trouble from him all day; he had a sharp, weaselly face and a reputation for asking improper questions. “It’s what all of us here are thinking, but nobody wants to say. What about the Yoshida case? Can you honestly tell us something like that won’t happen again?”
