Mrs. Polonski sips her broth. “Is Belgium a type of cheese?”
“Belgium the country. Between France and Holland. Belgium.”
Mrs. Polonski is puzzled. “An island?”
The doctor smiles to cover his annoyance. “Bel-gi-um.”
“Is this a joke, dear?”
“You know I never joke about my patients.”
“Belgium.” Mrs. Polonski dislikes the word’s taste. “A shire of Luxembourg?”
Her husband sighs. “I cannot believe I married a woman who . . . look, bring me my atlas.” The doctor turns to the general map of Europe and his face freezes. Between France and Holland is a polygon of blue called the Walloon Lagoon. Polonski’s lips move but no sound comes out. “This cannot be. This cannot be. This cannot be.”
“I refuse to believe,” insists my father, “that any son I fathered could commit murder, however unfortunate his upbringing may have been. When your agent met Eiji, my son must have been provoked into saying the things you claim he did. Or you are imagining the worst—”
“I am a lawyer,” says Akiko Kato. “I am not paid to imagine.”
“I cannot rubber-stamp the death of my own son!”
“Then you are rubber-stamping the death of your legitimate family. He will not go away, Minister. He has a sack of hatred instead of a heart.”
My father squeezes his temples to help him think, the same way I do. “May I ask you a direct question, Ms. Kato?”
“You are the boss,” she replies in the tone of the boss.
“Is our privacy retention agreement a factor in your calculations?”
Akiko Kato’s reply is swift and sharp. “That is a dangerous insinuation.”
“You must admit—”
“I resent your insinuation so much that the price of my silence is doubled.”
My father nearly shouts: “Remember who you are talking to!”
“I am talking to a man with a kingdom to lose, Minister.”
Suddenly, I know the time has come to intervene. I stand up, two rows behind my father and this woman of poison and lies. “Excuse me. I might be able to shed some light here.” They jump up. Akiko Kato is already hissing: “What do you want and who are you?” I swallow my nerves and announce in a voice loud enough to smother the movie: “We are all busy people, so let’s cut the small talk. You already know my name, Ms. Kato, or at least you knew it, once upon a time. Eiji Miyake. Yes, Ms. Kato, that Eiji Miyake. Why am I here in Tokyo? Think about it.” I turn to my father. He is already analyzing the scene—a true, fearless diplomat. “Sir. It is an honor to meet you, at last. I have waited all my life for this moment. Please do not worry. Your lawyer has spun an evil deception . . .”
Icicles fang the window of Voorman’s cell. Bombers drone by. Voorman’s eyelids rise with imperceptible slowness. “Good morning, Doctor. You have been watching me for some time. Will Belgium figure in your session notes today?” Polonski nods at the guard with the cattle prod. “Leave us, please.” The doctor’s eyes are dark and baggy. With much wriggling in his straitjacket, Voorman sits up on his bed. “You slept poorly last night, Doctor. Well, you will grow accustomed to this.”
The doctor opens his medical bag with professional calm.
“Wicked thoughts!” Voorman smacks his lips. “So I am not a lunatic or a malingerer, but a demon? A demon from hell? What next? Am I to be exorcised?”
Polonski scrutinizes the prisoner. “Do you believe you should be?”
“Any demon is just a human who possesses a sufficiently demonic imagination.”
Polonski sits down, opens his notebook, and produces his pencil. “Let us suppose . . . just suppose . . . that you possess certain ‘powers.’ ”
Voorman laughs until his bed squeaks. “I rendered an entire country nonexistent, Doctor! What more evidence do you need?”
“Then what is God doing straitjacketed in the PanOpticon?”
Voorman yawns in a well-fed way. “Honolulu gets boring, Doctor. Golf is tedious when you can guarantee holes-in-one. Existence starts to drag. I put myself into prison for the novelty value. I see prisons as open-cast irony mines. Inmates are so much more appreciative than congregations. I get to meet people like you, good doctor. Your brief is to prove me either a faker or a lunatic, yet you inadvertently demonstrate my divinity.”
“I am not a religious man, Mr. Voorman.”
“I know, Doctor, I know. That is why I chose you. Fear not, I bear glad tidings. We are going to change places. Your turn has come to juggle time, gravity, waves, and particles. Your turn has come to sift through the dreck of human endeavor for rare specks of originality. Your turn has come to count the falling sparrows and the pillaged continents. I am going to meet your wife. She prays to me every night, you know, after you have gone to bed. Most beseechingly. I intend to make her smile in a most involuntary way. First I shall proceed to Warden Bentham’s office, partake of his brandy, and pronounce you a madman of the first degree.”
“You are a sick man, Mr. Voorman. The Belgian trick I cannot yet—”
Doctor Polonski appears to freeze in time.
Voorman whistles a national anthem.
The frame jumps.
The prisoner chokes, “What have you done?”
The doctor flexes his new muscles and tries out his new hands.
“What have you done to me?”
“If you won’t calm down and discuss things like a rational adult—”
“Put me back, you monster! You devil! Guards! Guards!”
The doctor clips his bag shut. “Keep an eye on the Taiwan Straits for me. Oh, and the Balkans. Hot spots.” The door scrapes open, the guard enters, and the doctor shakes his head sadly. “I’m the real Doctor Polonski!” shrieks the prisoner. “That abomination has stolen my body! He’s going to molest my wife!” The cattle prod buzzes as the charge builds up. The doctor closes the door behind him.
I try out my reflection from various angles. I, Eiji Miyake, Experienced Tokyoite. Is my rugged Kyushu tan already pasting over? My reflection plays the staring game: we tie, both looking away at the same time. An impatient knocking starts up on the door. “Sorry, just coming!” I call. I ruffle back my gelled hair—extra-hard formula—and worry at the lock until it opens. It is Lao Tzu. “Took your time in there, Captain.” I apologize, and decide that the time to assault the real PanOpticon has come. I will stop procrastinating. Straight after one last Carlton. I watch workmen on scaffolding erect a giant TV screen against the flank of PanOpticon’s chromium neighbor. The waitress with the perfect neck has finished her shift—the clock says 14:58—and has changed out of her uniform. In her real life she wears a purple sweater and whitish jeans. How drop-dead cool can a girl be and not burn a hole in this dimension? Dowager is giving her a talking-to about something over by the cigarette machine when Donkey rings the help-me bell. My waitress glances at the clock anxiously, feels her cell phone and turns toward me to speak into it, cupping the mouth end. Her face lights up and I feel a cold blade of jealousy slip between my ribs. Before I know it, I am choosing another brand of cigarettes. Of course eavesdropping is wrong and I would never do it, but if I innocently overhear, who can blame me? “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she is saying, “let me speak to Nao, will you?” Naoki a boy or Naoko a girl? “I think I might be a little late, so start without me.” Start what? “The rain was unbelievable, wasn’t it?” She practices piano movements with her free hand. “Yes, I remember how to get there. No problem.” Get where? Naoki’s house? “Room 162. I know we only have two weeks left, yes, but I could play it blindfolded.” She looks at me looking at her and I remember I am supposed to be choosing cigarettes. On an advertisement a legal-looking woman smokes Salem. “See you in twenty minutes or so. Bye-bye.” She puts the phone in her shirt pocket and deliberately clears her throat. “So, did you catch all of that, or would you like me to go over any bits you may have missed?” To my horror I realize that she is talking to me. My blush is so hot I smell burning bacon. I
look up at her—I am still crouching, to extract my Salems from the machine. I search for words to defuse her contempt while keeping my dignity intact. I say “Uh . . .” Her stare is a merciless death ray. I stand up, but fail because my hand is trapped in the jaws of the cigarette machine’s dispensing slot. I finally get my hand back and touch the leaves of the rubber plant. “Uh . . . I was wondering if these plants were real, or, uh . . . artificial. Are. I mean.” Together, my waitress and I watch my lie writhe in its final pathetic throes. There. Dead. “Some things are real,” says my waitress, “and some things are fake. Some things are full of shit.” Dowager returns to resume her talk, I cockroach back to my seat. I will shortly leave and run under a heavy truck, but I need a Salem to steady my nerves before I do this. Lao Tzu returns, posturing his behind. “Eat big, shit big, dream small. Say, Captain, no chance of a spare cig, is there? Just one?” I light a pair of Salems with one match. The girl with the flawless neck has finally escaped Jupiter Cafe. She gazelles over the puddles of Omekaido Avenue. I should have been honest just now, I should have said, “Yes, I was eavesdropping. It was wrong, but you seem so fine and wholesome and true that I had to find out more about you. Please excuse me. I will strive to be a good dog in the future.” That would have made her smile, even. Too late now. One small lie and your credit is blown at the credibility bank. Forget her. She is way out of your class, Miyake. She is a musician at a top Tokyo university with a conductor boyfriend called Naoki. I am unemployed, and I managed to graduate from high school only because of the usual sympathy vote from teachers. She is from a good family and sleeps in a bedroom with real paintings and CD-ROM encyclopedias. Her filmproducer father allows Naoki to sleep over at their Kamakura residence. Her father and Naoki get on well. Naoki has money, talent, and immaculate teeth. You, Miyake, are not actually from a family as such. You sleep in a capsule in Kita Senju with your guitar, and your teeth are not exactly prize specimens of the art of the dentist. “What a beautiful young creature,” sighs Lao Tzu, watching her disappear on the far side of the intersection. “If only I were your age, Captain, if only . . .”
Perhaps my humiliation with the musician-waitress explains why I do not lose my nerve and head straight back to Shinjuku Station. Either I feel I must rally my forces to save the day, or I feel two slaps in the face from life is no worse than one. I nearly get hit by an ambulance crossing Kita Street. The handful of traffic lights on Yakushima are there only for effect. Here they separate living pedestrians from accident victims. Yesterday, when I got off the coach at the bus station, I noticed that Tokyo smells of the insides of pockets. Today I have not noticed that smell, so I must smell of the insides of pockets too. I walk up the steps of PanOpticon. It is the tent pole of the Tokyo sky. Over the last eight years I have imagined this moment so many times . . . how strange to be living in this moment. The revolving door creeps around. Inside, the refrigerated air makes the hairs on my forearms rise—when it gets this cold outside in winter they put on the heating. The marble floor is the white of bleached bone. Palm trees sit in bronze urns. A one-legged man crutches across the lobby. Rubber squeaks, tubular metal clinks. Trombone flowers sway in the air-con breeze, looking for babies to feed on. My left sneaker makes a stupid eeky-eeky sound. Nine interviewees in a row wait in nine identical armchairs. They are my age and may very well be clones. Droneclones. I know what they are thinking: What is that country boy stinking of pickles doing in PanOpticon? I ignore them, reach the building guide by the elevators, and look up and down for Osugi & Bosugi, Legal. The prize is within my grasp. I should be ringing my father’s doorbell by dinnertime. “Hey! Where do you think you’re going, exactly?”
I turn around. The guard at reception is waving his baton this way. Eighteen droneclone eyes swivel from it to me. “Didn’t learn how to read, is that it? Look!” He points at a large sign hanging over the reception desk. VISITORS MUST REPORT TO RECEPTION. I backtrack and give him a deep, apologetic bow. He folds his arms, unimpressed. “So?”
“I have, uh, business with Osugi and Bosugi.”
“Well, how swanky. Your appointment is with whom exactly?”
“Appointment?”
“Yes, appointment. As in, ‘appointment.’ ”
“I was hoping to see Ms. Kato.”
“And is Ms. Kato aware of this imminent honor?”
“Not exactly, because, well, let me—”
“So you have no appointment.”
“Well, if you would just let me—”
“Yes or no?” The bastard is enjoying this.
“No, but look—”
“No, you look. You are standing in a private building. This is not a village marketplace. You cannot just breeze in. Nobody passes by this desk unless they are employees of PanOpticon, or somebody with an appointment—which I verify—with somebody who works here. Not on my watch. I am speaking simply enough, for you, I hope?”
Eighteen droneclone ears tune in to my Kyushu accent. “Can I make an appointment through you, then?”
Way wrong. The guard has stopped enjoying himself. “Do I look like a secretary? I am employed to keep time wasters, salesmen, and assorted scum out. Not usher them in.” My attempts at damage control are blown up on the runway. “I don’t care how you do things in the ricefield ditch you crawled from, but in Tokyo this is how we do things: first, you scuttle away before I get really irritated. Then, you arrange your own appointment with Ms. Kato. You come back on the right day, five minutes before you are expected, preferably not on my shift so I don’t have to see you again. You report to Security. Here. Your appointment with Osugi and Bosugi is confirmed. Then, and only then, you are permitted to step into one of those elevators. Now. I have important business to attend to.” He snaps open a sports paper.
Postdownpour sweat and grime regrunge Tokyo. The puddles steam dry. A street musician sings so off-key that passersby have a civic duty to smash his guitar on his head and relieve him of his coins. I head back toward the Shinjuku subway because I have nowhere else to go in this mortgaged city except my capsule. The crowds are beaten senseless by the heat and march out of step. I am beaten senseless by boiling annoyance and tired guilt. I feel I have broken a promise. I cannot understand this. My father’s doorbell is lost at an unknown grid reference in the city street guide. Could be around this corner, could be halfway to Yokohama. A tiny nugget of earwax beyond the reach of my little fingernail is driving me crazy. John tries to cheer me up by singing “Nobody Told Me,” but I feel too sorry for myself to hum along. I pass a kendo hall. Bone-splintering bamboo-sword screams escape through the window grille. On the pavement is an unexplained pair of shoes. Maybe their owner suddenly turned to vapor and wafted away. Buses and trucks clog arteries, pedestrians squeeze through gaps. During Anju’s and my dinosaur period, we found a theory claiming the great extinction occurred because the dinosaurs gagged to death on their own dung. We laughed for an hour, nonstop. Trying to get anywhere in Tokyo, the theory no longer seems so laughable. I feel I am gagging to death here. I hate its sidewalk-to-rooftop advertising, its capsules, tunnels, tap water, air, its MEMBERS ONLYs and its PRIVATE—KEEP OUTs. If I could, I would turn into a nuclear warhead and blast this concrete dung pile from the surface of the world. I mean it.
two
Lost Property
Sawing the head off a thunder god with a rusty hacksaw is not easy when you are eleven years old. The hacksaw keeps jamming. I jiggle it loose, and nearly slip from the thunder god’s shoulders. If I fall backward from this height I snap my spine. Outside the shrine a blackbird sings in dark purples. I wrap my legs around the god’s muscled torso, like when Uncle Tarmac gives me a piggyback. I drag the blade across his throat. Again, again, again. The wood is stone-hard, but the nick deepens to a slit, the slit becomes a groove. My eyes sting with sweat. The quicker, the better. This must be done, but there is no point getting caught. They put you in prison for this, surely. The blade slips and cuts my thumb. I wipe my eyes on my T-shirt and wait. Here comes th
e pain, in pulses. The flap of skin pinkens, reddens, and blood wells up. I lick it and taste ten-yen coins. Fair payment. Just as I am paying the thunder god back for what he has done to Anju. I carry on sawing. I cannot see his face from where I am, but when I cut through his windpipe both our bodies shudder.
Saturday, September 2, is already one hour old. One week since my Jupiter Cafe stakeout. On the main thoroughfare through Kita Senju the traffic is at low tide. I can see the Tokyo moon down a crack between the apartment buildings across the street. Zinc, industrial, skidmarked. My capsule is as stifling as inside a boxing glove. The fan stirs the heat. I am not going to contact her. I mean it. No way. Who does she think she is, after all this time? Across the road is a photo developer’s with two FUJIFILM clocks—the left clock shows the actual time, the right shows when the photos will be ready, forty-five minutes into the future. Girders creak, cables hum, the sodium streetlamp outside buzzes. I wonder if this building gives me insomnia. Sick Building Syndrome, Uncle Yen calls it. Below me, Shooting Star is shuttered up and waiting for the night to pass. In the last week I have learned the routine: ten to midnight, Buntaro drags in the sandwich board and takes out the trash; five to midnight, the TV goes off, and he washes up his mug and plate; around now a customer may come sprinting down the street to return a video; at midnight on the nail, Buntaro pings open the register and cashes out. Three minutes later the shutters roll down, he kicks his scooter to life, and off he goes. A cockroach tries to tic free of the glue trap. My muscles ache from my new job. I should chuck out Cat’s bowl, I suppose. Keeping it is morbid, now that I know the truth. And the extra milk, and the two cans of quality cat food. Is it edible, if I mix it into a soup or something? Did Cat die instantly, or did she lie on the roadside thinking about it? Did a passerby knock her on the head with a shovel to put her out of her misery? Cats seem too transdimensional to get hit by traffic, but it happens all the time. All the time. Thinking I could keep her was crazy in the first place. My grandmother hates cats. Yakushima islanders keep chained-up dogs as guards. Cats take their own chances. I know nothing about litter trays, when you bring cats in, when you take them out, what injections they need. And look what happened to it when it moved in with me: the Miyake curse strikes again. Anju climbed trees like a cat. A summer puma.
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