Number9dream

by David Mitchell

  Either I am losing my mind or the bathroom walls are bending inward. Time bends too. My watch is dead so I have no idea how long I have been in here. A cockroach navigates the floor. I cup my hands and drink some water. To distract myself from the swarm of unguessable questions I play a favorite game: searching for Anju in my reflection. I often catch sight of her around my eyes. I try a variation on this game: concentrate on my mother’s face; subtract that face from my own; the remainder should be my father. Could my father actually be this Ryutaro Morino or Jun Nagasaki? Daimon implied Morino brought us here. But he also implied Morino is washed up. Too washed up to own a fleet of Cadillacs. I suck a champagne bomb. My throat is sore. By now Mrs. Sasaki will have decided that Aoyama’s suspicions about me were accurate—I am an unreliable dropout. The cockroach reappears. I suck my last champagne bomb. Lizard watches me from the mirror—I jump. “Here comes the moment ya’ve been waiting for, Miyake. Father will see you now.”

  Valhalla is one enormous leisure hotel. When it is completed it will be the plushest in Tokyo. Sugar chandeliers, milky carpets, cream walls, silver fittings. Air-cons are not yet installed, so the passageways are at the mercy of the sun, and under all this glass I am drenched with sweat in thirty seconds. Thick smells of carpet underlay and fresh paint. On the far side of the construction-site perimeter fence I see the vast dome of Xanadu, courtyards, and even a fake river with fake caverns. The windows tint the outside world sepia, the same tones you get in wartime newsreels. The air is dry as a desert. Lizard knocks on room 333. “Father, I got Miyake with me.”

  My stupendous mistake dawns on me.

  Father does not mean my father: father means “yakuza father.” I would laugh if the afternoon were not now so dangerous. A voice rasps out a moment later. “Enter!” The door is unlocked from inside. Eight people sit around a conference table in a spotless meeting room. At the head sits a man in his fifties. “Sit the infant down.” His voice is as thirsty as sandpaper. Cavernous eye sockets, plump lips, mottled and flaky skin—the sort used on young actors playing old roles—and a wart on the corner of his eye bigger than an amorous nipple. My way-too-late fear was quite correct. If this troll is my father, I am Miffy the Bunny. I take the defendant’s chair. I do not even know what the charge is. “So,” says the prosecutor and judge. “You are Eiji Miyake.”

  No point denying anything. “Yes. Who are you?”

  Death gives me a choice of sorts. A point-blank bullet through the brain or a thirty-meter fall. Frankenstein and the stage manager of this black farce are placing bets on which one I will choose right now. Beyond hope is beyond panic. Here comes the Mongolian, strolling up the unfinished bridge. My right eye is so swollen the night swims. Yes, of course I am afraid, and frustrated that my stupid life is ending so soon. But mostly I feel the weight of the nightmare, stopping me waking. I am cattle in a cage, waiting for the bolt through my skull. Why gibber? Why beg? Why try to run when the only escape is a drop through blackness? If my head survived the fall, the rest of my body would not. The Mongolian spits, and folds a fresh strip of gum into his mouth. He pulls out his gun. After Anju I dreamed of drowning several times a week, right up until I got my guitar. In those dreams I handled fear by ceasing to struggle, and I do the same now. I have less than forty seconds. I unfold the photo of my father one last time. Dad is still uncreased. Yes, we do look alike. My daydream was right in that respect, at least. He is fatter than I thought, but hey. I touch his cheekbone and hope, somewhere, he knows. Down below on the reclaimed land Lizard whoops—“A twitcher!” Bang! Picking off the wounded is more interesting to him than how I die. “Ya got the shivers too, huh?” Bang! “Guns! The ultimate fucking video game!” Bang! I jump each time he fires. One of the Cadillacs wheel-screeches into life. My father sits in the driving seat of the car in the photograph, smiling at whatever Akiko Kato is telling him as she gets in. A black-and-white day gone by. This is the closest I got to meeting him. Stars.

  “Who am I?” The yakuza head repeats my question, although his lips barely move and his voice is tone-dead. “My accountant calls me Mr. Morino. My men call me Father. My subscribers call me God. My wife calls me ‘Him’ to her friends, ‘You’ to my face. My lovers call me Incredible.” A ripple of amusement. “My enemies call me the stuff of nightmares. You call me Sir.” He retrieves a cigar from an ashtray and relights it. “Sit down. Your trial is behind schedule.” I do as I am told and look around at my jury. Frankenstein, chomping a Big Mac. A weathered, leathered man, who appears to be meditating, rocking very slightly to and fro, to and fro. A woman who is using a laptop computer, pianist-fast. She reminds me of Queen of Spades’s mama-san until I realize she is Queen of Spades’s mama-san. For her part, she plainly has no interest in renewing our acquaintance. On the left are three police sketches from the catalog of yakuza henchmen. A horn section on pause. Through an opening, in the corner of my eye, a girl dressed in a loose yukata sucks a Popsicle. When I try to meet her eye she retreats out of sight. Lizard takes the chair next to me. Ryutaro Morino watches me, over the pile of junk food boxes. The sound of breathing, the creaking of Leatherjacket’s chair, the tapetty-tap-tap of the computer keyboard. What are we waiting for? Morino clears his throat. “Eiji Miyake, how do you plead?”

  “What is it you think I have done?”

  Lizard’s knife scores a deep cut along the table edge. It stops an inch from my thumb. “What is it you think I have done, sir?”

  I swallow. “What is it you think I have done, sir.”

  “If you are guilty you know the charge.”

  “So I must be innocent, sir.”

  I hear the Popsicle girl in the next room titter.

  “He pleads Not Guilty.” Morino nods his head gravely. “Then explain why you were at Queen of Spades on Saturday, September ninth.”

  “Is Yuzu Daimon here?”

  Morino gives one nod, my face whacks the tabletop, my arm is yanked above my head one degree away from snapping off. Lizard grunts in my ear. “What d’ya suppose ya just did wrong? Just then? Guess!”

  “Didn’t—answer—the—question.” My arm is released.

  “Bright boy.” Morino blinks. “So. Explain why you were at Queen of Spades.”

  “Yuzu Daimon took me there.”

  “Sir.”

  “Sir.”

  “Yet you told Mama-san here last Saturday that you didn’t know Daimon.”

  Mama-san glances at me for the first time. “I warned you—I cannot tolerate whining juveniles. Can anyone tell me what ‘fifteen billion’ is in Russian?” Leatherjacket replies. Mama-san carries on typing. Morino waits for my answer.

  “I didn’t know Daimon. I still don’t. I left my baseball cap in a video arcade, went back, he had it, gave it back to me, we started talking—”

  “—and a beautiful friendship was born. But Queen of Spades is a choosy club. Yuzu Daimon signed you in as his stepbrother. Are you saying this is a lie?”

  I wonder what the consequences will be.

  “Did you hear my question, Eiji Miyake?”

  “Yes, it was a lie. Sir.”

  “I say that Jun Nagasaki sent you to spy.”

  So this is why I am here. I see a very faint glimmer of hope. At least I only have to convince them of the truth. “Not true.”

  “So you know the name Jun Nagasaki?”

  “Since an hour ago, yes. Only the name.”

  “You went to Queen of Spades with Yuzu Daimon to harass a hostess—you know her as Miriam.”

  I shake my head. “No, sir, I did not.”

  “You went to Queen of Spades with Yuzu Daimon to persuade her to defect into Jun Nagasaki’s circle of beagle-fucking traitors.”

  “No, sir.”

  Violence stains Morino’s motionless face. His voice would freeze nitrogen. “You are fucking Miriam. You are fucking my little girl.”

  This is the crunch. I shake my head. “No, sir. No. No.”

  Frankenstein rattles french fry splinters in a cu
p.

  Morino leans back, and the pressure eases, minutely. He opens a gray file folder. “So for your next trick, you will explain this photograph.” The horn section passes it down to me. A letter-size black-and-white picture of a shabby apartment building. The zoom lens focuses on the third floor, where a kid my age is handing something through a door. A dog with its head in a lampshade pisses in a flower box. I recognize Miriam’s apartment, and me. The pressure redoubles. This is really why I am here today. This is bad. No lie is going to get me out of here. But where will the truth get me? Morino clunks his knuckles out of their sockets. “My breath is bated. As they say.” Morino clunks his knuckles into their sockets. My mouth is a sandbox. “Now. Why did you show your zit-puss face at the home of my little girl?”

  I tell him everything from Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park to the conversation with Miriam. The only bit I leave out is Suga—I claim to do the library hacking myself—and I hope this lie is small enough to smuggle through. Morino nicks the tip off a new cigar. I finish. Judgment hangs. Lizard swivels on his chair. “Father?” Morino nods. “Don’t sound right to me. Computer dorks just don’t lug suitcases around stations for a living.” Mama-san shuts down her laptop. “Father?” Morino nods. “I know Miriam matters to you very much, but we need to be in other places very urgently to keep the operation on track. This nondescript fruit-farm boy is, I am quite sure, exactly what he appears to be. Nagasaki does not employ spies in diapers; his story fills in the blanks in Daimon’s; and he hasn’t laid a paw on Miriam.”

  Morino respects her. “How do you know?”

  “One: you had Miriam tailed by the best surveillance agent in Tokyo for the last two weeks. Two: I’m a woman.”

  Morino narrows his eyes to read me better. I lower my eyes. Frankenstein’s cell phone beeps. He goes into the adjoining room to answer. An airship floats into view behind Morino’s head. Higher up, a jet glints in high-altitude sunshine. Mama-san takes a disk from her computer and seals it shut in a case. “Soon,” barks Frankenstein into his phone. “Keep them there. We’ll be there soon.” He resumes his seat. Morino finishes reading me. “Eiji Miyake. The court finds you guilty. Guilty of being a dumb fuck who sticks his nose through wrong doors. The mandatory sentence is having your testicles cut off, dipped in soy sauce, and placed in your mouth, which will be duct-taped until said members are chewed and swallowed by the detainee.” I glance around at the jurors. Nobody is smiling. “However, the court will suspend this sentence on condition that you observe an exclusion order. You will never go near Queen of Spades. You will never go near my little girl. Even if you see her in your dreams, I will discover your lapse, and the sentence will be executed. I make myself clear?”

  I dare not taste the freedom I can smell. “Completely, sir.”

  “You will return to your nondescript life.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mama-san stands, but Morino does not yet dismiss me. “When I was a boy half your age, Miyake, my friends and I would capture dune lizards on the Shimane coast. Dune lizards are cunning. You grab one: they detach their tails and skitter away. How do I know you are not leaving us with a tail?”

  “Because you scare me.”

  “Your father is also afraid of me, but that man has left me with a zooful of tails in his time.”

  The horn players nod. I hear Popsicle giggle.

  “Did you just say my father?”

  Morino breathes smoke. “Ye-es. You know I did.”

  “My real father?”

  “Ye-es.”

  “As in . . .”

  “As in the flesh-and-blood man who banged up your mother, Mariko Miyake, twenty years ago. Who else would I mean?”

  “You know him?”

  “We meet professionally, on occasion. You seem surprised.” Morino watches me flounder. “So, my operative hit the nail on the head. My, what an astute hunch. You really don’t know who your father is, do you? To think, these things happen in real life. A semiorphan comes to Tokyo in search of the father he has never met. So you thought the ATM messages my banking people sent you were from your real father?” His lips bulge slightly in lieu of a laugh. Lizard snickers. Morino taps the file folder—“Everything about your father is in here.” He fans himself with it. “You were buried deep, but my agent can dig up anything. I had you investigated—and your father cropped up. Surprised? Amazed. Still. You can fuck off now.” He tosses the file folder into a metal trash can. Lizard stands and kicks my chair.

  “Mr. Morino?”

  “Are you still here?”

  “Please give me that file folder.”

  Morino narrows his eyes at Lizard and nods at the door.

  “Sir—but if you don’t need that information anymore—”

  “I don’t need it, no, but I enjoy causing you needless suffering. Son will escort you to the lobby. Your friend and mentor Yuzu Daimon is waiting for you. He is feeling drained. Now walk away from this room, or you will be beaten senseless and dumped down a hole.” I follow Lizard, and glance back one final time at the trash can before door 333 closes on my father.

  I resolved to walk past Yuzu Daimon, to show my contempt by just ignoring him. That was before I see his body slumped on the sofa. I have known a few people who died, but I have never actually seen one—so pale, so utterly still—what do you do? My heart is a manic punchbag. The sofa creaks as his limbs shift. His eyes flicker open. His eyeballs wander, then find me. “So—what did they—do to you?”

  A sort of weird crunching of gears.

  “What did they do to you, Miyake?”

  I can finally speak. “They let me go.”

  “Two miracles in the same day. Untouched?”

  “Scared shitless, but untouched. And not as scared shitless as I was a moment ago. I thought you were dead! What did they do to you?”

  Daimon ignores this. “Why—you went to . . . Miriam’s—why?”

  “She dropped a library book when she kicked me in Ueno Park the day after. I took it back. That was all.”

  A laugh tries to twitch his mouth.

  Despite myself I am concerned for him. “What did they do to you?”

  “One liter of blood.”

  I must have misheard. “They took one liter of your blood? Isn’t that . . .”

  “More . . . than a blood donation, yes. Much more. But it was only my first offense, so they let me off lightly.”

  “But what are they going to do with your blood?”

  “Test it—sell it, I imagine.”

  “Who to?”

  “Miyake . . . please. I have no . . . energy . . . for an . . . exposé of illegal markets . . .”

  “Can you move? I think you should get to a hospital.”

  Speaking is costing Daimon a lot. “Correct, Doctor, yes. I had a sixth of my blood removed as a payment in a yakuza vendetta. Awful, isn’t it? Yes, I know I’m lucky to be alive. But please don’t contact the police, because my dear old dad is on the take too.”

  “Okay, but hanging around in this building is a very bad idea.”

  “One minute . . . two minutes . . . let me . . . get some breath.”

  I explore the lobby. The exit will let us leave, but not reenter. The passageway back to the interview room is blocked by a grille locked by Lizard. The glass walls of the lobby are covered by taped plastic sheeting. I peel back a corner—a construction site, the perimeter fence, and Neptune Sea Park, only a soccer-ball kick away. Sunbathers roast on the boardwalks. The Pacific is as glossy as a monster-movie sea. I sneeze. Not a cold, not now, please. I am afraid Daimon will slip into a coma if I don’t haul him away. “Try to stand up.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “I want to call your parents.”

  Daimon half-sits. “No, no, definitely, no. Believe me this once. Calling my parents is the very, very worst thing . . .”

  “Why?”

  Daimon shakes his head as if avoiding a fly. “Politics. Politics.”

  So now what? “How much money
have you got?”

  “Every yen is yours if you leave me alone.”

  “Don’t tempt me. Near the entrance to Xanadu I saw a taxi stand. You and I are going to walk over there. You can either give in now, or make me shout at you for ten minutes and then give in. Up to you.”

  Daimon sighs again. “So masterful when you get roused.”

  We get weird looks as we wade through the crowds, but everyone assumes Daimon is slouched on my shoulder because he is dead drunk, and the crush parts for us. Atomic September sunshine drenches the day. My Japan Railways overalls are gluey with sweat, stale and fresh. People flow into Xanadu and out again. The air is crammed with silvery helium balloons and tinsel music. Swarms of conversation pieces, smoke from a corn-on-the-cob stand. I see our reflection in a pair of mile-wide sunglasses. We look terrible. A giant black rabbit produces a midget magician from a top hat, and the world claps. Somewhere a piano and strings perform something beautiful. I feel Daimon heaving. “Do you want to be sick?” I ask him. “No. I was laughing at the funny side of today.” I wonder where the funny side is. “Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is for me having my hide saved by you, Miyake?” Zax Omega leaps across our path, selling models of himself. “Yeah,” I say. “I imagine it must be pretty humiliating, considering.” Daimon says nothing more until we get to the taxi stand. His feet drag heavier, and his breathing is rawer. The taxi door swings open all by itself—down south you still have to open them by hand. “Do you know Kita Senju?” I ask the driver. He nods. “Do you know the Tenmaya store five minutes from the station with the, uh, fake Holland clock thing?” The driver nods. “This video store is right on the same street.” I scribble Shooting Star’s address. “Please take my friend there.” The taxi driver looks dubious, balancing a very good fare against Daimon’s grogginess. “Only a bit of sunstroke. In ten minutes he’ll be himself again.” The fare wins, and the taxi drives Daimon away. I turn back and face the way I came. I have an appointment back in Valhalla with a discarded file folder in a metal trash can.