Number9dream

by David Mitchell

  Mama-san looks at the smoked glass. “This is him.”

  “I had no idea,” says God, “Morino had fallen on such hard times.”

  Now I really know I am in trouble. My “father” on the telephone was obviously an actor who saved them the trouble of collecting me. I want to whimper and cry but it would not help. I rub life back into my arms, and glance at the three men also sitting at the card table. From their postures and expressions, I can tell that they are also here against their will. A sweat-shiny fat-as-a-doughnut asthmatic, a man who keeps twitching as if his face is under attack, and an older guy who was once handsome but who has had scars gouged upward from the corners of his mouth that fix his face in a mockery of a smile. Mr. Doughnut, Twitcher, and Smiley all fix their eyes on the table.

  “We are gathered here today,” says God, “for you to pay your debts to me.”

  I cannot address a disembodied voice so I address Mama-san. “What debts?”

  God replies first. “Major damage to Pluto Pachinko. Compensation for loss of trading time on the opening day. Two Cadillacs. Lost insurance premiums, cleaning bills, and general indemnities. Fifty-four million yen.”

  “But Morino caused that damage.”

  “And you,” says Mama-san, “are the last living disciple of his faction.”

  I want to be sick. “You know I was no disciple.”

  God rattles his speakers. “We have your contract! Signed in your mixed blood! What faster-binding ink is there?”

  I look at the smoked glass. “How about her?” I point at Mama-san. “She was Morino’s accountant.”

  Mama-san is nearly smiling. “Child, I was a spy. Now shut up and listen or one of these bad, evil men will take a scalpel and slice your tongue in two.” So I shut up and listen. “Mr. Tsuru has selected you four guests, his most hopeless debtors, to play a card game. A simple card game, with three winners and one loser. The winners will leave this chamber free men, owing not a single yen. The loser will donate organs to needy patients. A lung”—she stares at me—“a retina, and a kidney.”

  Everyone in the room behaves as if this is quite normal.

  “I am supposed to say”—I have to start again because no voice came out the first time—“I am supposed to say ‘Sure, fine, let’s gamble with my body parts’?”

  “You are free to decline.”

  “But?”

  “But you will then be declared the loser.”

  “Decline, kid,” jeers Twitcher, opposite me. “Stick to your principles.”

  I smell mustard and ketchup. I have no logic to combat any of this. “A game?”

  Mama-san produces a pack of cards. “You shall cut to decide shuffling order. Aces high, highest shuffles first, the other players follow clockwise from the starter. Then we begin the game proper. In the same order, you shall turn over the top card until the queen of spades appears.”

  “Whoever she chooses,” says God, “loses.”

  I feel how I felt back in the bowling alley.

  “Is that voice him?” I ask Mama-san. My vocal cords are dry as sand. “Is that Mr. Tsuru?”

  Twitcher gives me a round of sarcastic applause.

  So, Tsuru is God. God is Tsuru. I try to buy time. “Even you,” I say to Mama-san, “must think this is insane.”

  Mama-san’s mouth becomes a tight slit. “I take my orders from the company president. So do you. Cut.”

  My hand feels as heavy as a brick. The jack of spades.

  Mr. Doughnut draws the ten of diamonds.

  Twitcher cuts the two of clubs.

  Smiley turns over the nine of spades.

  “The boy is the first to shuffle,” says Tsuru from behind his smoked glass.

  The players look at me.

  I clumsily flicker-shuffle the pack. Up on the screen, hands many times the size of my own do the same. Nine times, for luck.

  Mr. Doughnut wipes his hands on his shirt. The cards fly from hand to hand in gymnastic formation.

  Twitcher makes a magical gesture with three fingers and cuts once.

  Smiley shuffles in precise, circular motions.

  Mama-san slides the pack to the center of the table. It sits there innocently. I look at it as I would a bomb, which is exactly what it is. I wait for an explosion, an earthquake, a gunshot, an “It’s the cops!” But the only sound is sausages spitting on a grill. The slow breathing of men.

  “Take the top card now,” prompts Tsuru’s voice gently, “or a guard will remove your eyelids, and you will never be able to close your eyes again, not even to blink.”

  I turn over the nine of diamonds.

  Mr. Doughnut’s breathing grates as his asthma worsens. He draws the ace of clubs.

  Twitcher had a Buddhist education—he intones “Namu amida butsu” three times before his hand darts out and snatches the ace of spades. “Thank you,” he says.

  Smiley is the coolest of us all. He calmly turns over the seven of spades.

  My turn again. I feel as if Miyake is operating Miyake by remote control. I look at myself on the screen. Myself stares back. I never knew I looked like that. My hand extends—

  A narrow door in the smoked glass swings open and a waggy Labrador skitters out, chomping on a sausage and slipping on the polished marble. “Bring her back!” cries Tsuru, his real voice emerging from the entrance, only half picked up by the microphone and speakers. “She mustn’t run on a full stomach! Her digestion is delicate!” Two of the guards eventually shepherd the dog back to its master.

  “We,” murmurs Smiley, “are just TV dinner for the mad old fuck.”

  All eyes in the room on me again.

  Something alien is under my tongue.

  I turn over the six of hearts.

  I lick my forearm, taste salt, and see a tiny black insect.

  Mr. Doughnut’s arm leaves a sweat patch on the felt. The three of diamonds.

  Twitcher prays to Buddha and flips over the joker. “Thank you.”

  Smiley sighs and turns over the five of clubs.

  Twelve cards gone out of fifty-two, fifty-four including two jokers.

  I look at the backing of the top card for a clue, and two trapezoid eyes stare straight back at me. I know those eyes.

  What is life like without half your organs?

  No, Tsuru would never let the loser walk away to tell the tale, with a torso of scars and holes to prove it. The silence of the lucky winners can be relied upon, but the loser would end up the same way as Kozue Yamaya’s son.

  How did I get here?

  I look at the screen Miyake. He has no answers either.

  Mama-san opens her mouth to threaten me—

  I turn over the card, and the black queen looks into my eyes.

  The room slants from side to side.

  Apparently I have lost.

  “Fuck,” says Twitcher, “I thought the kid found the bitch, not her sister.”

  “So,” says Smiley, “does the kid.”

  What are they talking about?

  Smiley nods at my death notice on the table. “Look closer.”

  It is the queen of clubs, not spades. Clubs.

  Mr. Doughnut says, “I need my inhaler. Can I take it out of my jacket pocket?” Mama-san nods, and he fishes the plastic tube from his jacket. He holds his head back, breathes in a blast, holds it, and breathes out. Then he turns over the queen of spades.

  Nobody says anything.

  The screen Mr. Doughnut is sweating worse than a man dying of plague.

  My head is swelling with relief and guilt and pity. It really hurts.

  Mama-san clears her throat. “Your queen has appeared, Mr. Tsuru.”

  The speakers stay silent.

  “Mr. Tsuru?” Mama-san frowns at the smoked glass. “Your queen has spoken.”

  No response.

  Mama-san leans over and knocks on the glass. “Mr. Tsuru?”

  A guard wrinkles his nose. “What meat is he cooking?”

  Another guard frowns. “Well, it ain
’t sausages . . .”

  The guard nearest the door in the glass pushes it open and peers in. “Mr. Tsuru?” He breathes sharply, as if karate-kicked in his stomach. “Mr. Tsuru!” He stays where he is, and turns around to face us, blankly.

  “Well?” demands Mama-san.

  His jaw moves but nothing comes out.

  “What?”

  He swallows. “Mr. Tsuru has grilled his face to the hot plate.”

  A riot of improvised theater breaks out. All I can do is close my eyes.

  “Mr. Tsuru Mr. Tsuru Mr. Tsuru! Can you hear me?”

  “Scrape his head off!”

  “Turn the gas off!”

  “His lip has fused to the metal!”

  “Ambulance ambulance ambulance someone call—”

  “Fuck! His eyeball just popped!”

  “Wipe it off on your own shirt!”

  “Get that fucking dog out of here!”

  Someone vomits.

  The dog barks joyfully.

  Casually, Mama-san scrapes a metallic object down the smoked glass. The screech is unbearable, and the chamber falls silent. Her composure is perfect, as though she scripted this moment many years ago and has rehearsed it regularly. “Mr. Tsuru’s entertainment has been overtaken by a deus ex machina. The facts, gentlemen, suggest that the excitement triggered a second stroke, and since our dear leader chose his barbecue to fall on, it no longer matters particularly when that ambulance gets here.” She now addresses the older two or three men. “I am appointing myself the acting head of this organization. You shall obey me, or oppose me. Make your intentions known. Now.”

  The moment is dense with calculations.

  The men look at us. “What will we do with them, Mama-san?”

  Their deferral is her coronation. “Card games are no longer company policy. Show them the door.”

  I dare not trust this new development, not until I am outside and running. Mama-san addresses us. “If any of you go to the police and somehow convince a recently graduated detective that you are not a lunatic, three things will occur, in this order. One: you will be taken into protective custody. Two: a bullet will be put through your head within six hours. Three: your debts to us will be transferred to your next of kin and, I give you my word, I will personally ensure that their lives are destroyed. This is not a threat, this is standard procedure. You will now indicate that you understand.”

  We nod.

  “We have been in business for thirty years. Draw your own conclusions about our ability to protect our interests. Now get out of here.”

  The cinema is full. Couples, students, drones. The only free seats are in the front, where the screen looms over your head. Everything in Tokyo is nearly full, full, or too full. There was no trace of Mari Sarashina in the reception area outside the chamber. “Hey, if I was you guys,” said the guard as the elevator doors closed, “I’d buy a fucking lottery ticket.” In the seat next to me is a girl—her boyfriend’s hand has been edging closer over the back of her seat. The elevator began its long, slow descent. Mr. Doughnut dropped his cigarettes. We watched them lying where they fell. Mr. Doughnut began shaking, but with laughter or fear or what, none of us knew. Smiley closed his eyes and tilted his head back. I kept my eye on the descending floor numbers. Twitcher picked up a cigarette and lit it. This movie is brutal and cheap and fake. If people who dream up violent scripts ever came into contact with real violence, they would be too sickened to write such scenes. When the elevator doors opened we plunged into the afternoon crowds without a word. The sunny weather was a sick prank. I came to a place where street performers twisted balloons into crocodiles and giraffes, and had to dig my fingernails into my arm to stop myself crying. The movie finishes and the audience files out. I stay and watch the credits. The key grips, the animal trainers, the caterers. A new audience files in. I rewatch the movie until my brain starts to melt. After the balloon man, I wandered wherever the crowds looked thickest. I cursed myself for not leaving Tokyo after Morino. I should have known. In the cinema foyer I call Ai and quickly hang up when she answers. I get on a Yamanote circle line submarine, and sit with the drones. I wish I was a common drone. I hope their normality will seep into me. The stations roll by, and by, and by, and repeat themselves. I am too full of fear-pollution to ever sleep again.

  A conductor gently shakes me awake. “You’ve gone around six times, kid, I thought I should wake you up.” His eyes are kind and I envy his son.

  “Is it night or are we underground?”

  “Quarter to eleven, Thursday the fifth. Know what year we are in?”

  “Yeah, I know that.”

  “You should get home while the trains are still running.”

  I wish. “I have to get to work.”

  “What are you, a grave robber?”

  “Nothing so exotic . . . thanks for waking me up.”

  “Anytime.”

  The conductor moves down the compartment. Above the seats opposite, behind the swaying hand rings, is an ad for an internet advertising company. An apple tree grows from a computer chip, and from this apple tree grow more computer chips, and from these computer chips grow more apple trees. The forest grows out of the frame and invades the advertising spaces on either side. I was unaware that any part of my brain was thinking about the Kozue Yamaya disk, but an enormous idea occurs to me. I am wide, wide awake.

  My mind is not here, but I never need my mind in Nero’s. When I arrive on the last stroke of Thursday, I get a weird look from Sachiko—she knows about my argument with Ai—but it is hard to care. I think about the twenty-four-hours-ago Eiji Miyake, chicken-cooping up and down these same three-by-one square meters of Tokyo giving birth to his pizzas. Lucky, blind, cursed idiot. I wish I could warn him. I knock back a health drink to ward off sleeplessness and start work on the backed-up orders. “You got a nine of diamonds for me, man?” asks Doi when he returns. I forgot it. “No. Tomorrow.” Doi congratulates himself. “Magic is the manipulation of coincidence, man. You can only rely on coincidences.” I wash my hands and face. Every time the door buzzes, I am afraid it could be a Tsuru thug. Every time the telephone rings, I am afraid Sachiko or Tomomi will appear in the hatch and pass the handset through, saying: “A call for you, Miyake. No name.” Doi is supercommunicative tonight—he tells me how he got dismissed from his last job. He was a night watchman in a multistory cemetery where the ashes of the dead are stored in hives of tiny locker-shrines. He was fired for substituting his own music for the tapes of Buddhist funerary mantras. “I figured, man, if I were stuck in a box for all eternity, which would I prefer? Priests making opening-seriously-larger-than-expected-phone-bill moans, or the golden age of rock ’n’ roll? No contest! I could feel the vibes in the place change, man, whenever I put on my Grateful Dead tapes.” Doi slashes his throat with his forefinger. I hear Doi without listening. His pizza comes through for delivery. I box it and off he goes. The radio plays “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”—a scheming song of paranoia. Sachiko leans through the hatch—“You have a mystery caller on line three!”

  “Ai?”

  “Nooo . . . She prefers not to give her name.”

  Sachiko leans through to the kitchen wall phone, presses a button, and passes me the reciever.

  No name? Then it must be Mama-san.

  “Hello?”

  The caller does not respond.

  Fear makes my voice sharp. “Hello?”

  “Is two A.M. good morning or good night, Eiji? I’m not very sure.” A middle-aged woman, not Mama-san. She is as nervous as I am, I think.

  “Look, would you just tell me who you are?”

  “Me, Eiji, your mother.”

  I lean against the counter.

  Tomomi is studying me through the crack in the hatch. I close it gently.

  “This is, uh, a surprise.”

  “Did you get my letters? Your uncle said he forwarded them to you. He said you’re living in Tokyo now.”

  “Yeah.”

  Yeah
, I got your letters. But therapy that closes wounds in you just opens wounds in me.

  She takes a deep breath. “A man has asked me to be his wife.”

  The words sink in. “Oh.” Tomomi inches open the doors. I bang them shut savagely. “Well.” Hope I broke the bitch’s nose. “Congratulations.”

  “Yes. The hotelier in Nagano I told you about in my last letter.”

  A hotelier, huh? Nice catch. Especially with your history.

  Why are you telling me this now?

  You never bothered telling us about your life before.

  You never cared what we thought. Not remotely.

  You want me to be happy for you? To say “Sure, Mom, great news!”?

  I very nearly put us both out of our misery and hang up.

  “Where are you calling from?” I end up saying.

  “I’m back at the clinic in Miyazaki. The . . . drinking, you know, I was poorly for a very long time. That’s why . . . But now, he—the hotelier, his name is Mr. Ota, by the way—he says after we marry my problems are his problems too, and so . . . I want to get better. So I came back here.”

  “I see. Good. Good luck.” Doubtless he is bankrolling her. “Mrs. Ota.” Ordinary, married, respectable. RESET. A new patron, a new set of bank cards, a new wardrobe. Nice. But answer my question: why are you telling me this now? I see. Mr. Ota doesn’t know about us. You never told him. You want to make sure I won’t fuck things up when I hear the news.

  “He’d love to meet you, Eiji.”