Number9dream

by David Mitchell

  I think the most powerful poison is the malicious word. Its effects may last a lifetime and there is no serum. Forgiveness may soothe the inflammation later, sure, but there is no actual serum. My mother lit a cigarette. I was already smoking by that age and I wanted one, but not one of hers, so I got one of mine out. That made Uncle Yen angry, I could tell. He didn’t know that I smoked until then, and it put him in a bad light, since he was one of my guardians. His jaw was clenched as he poured tea for Mom, himself, and me, a little at a time in each cup, in rotation. “Your mother has traveled a long way to see you, Eiji. I want you to show her courtesy. She will think we have brought you up to be a lout. You can start by putting out that cigarette and apologizing.” Before I could blurt out something like “She obviously doesn’t care how I am brought up!” my mother had stubbed out her cigarette and stood up. “No apology is necessary.” She spoke to her brother: she never looked at me again. “He said nothing I wish to take issue with. What I take issue with are these ‘discussion sessions’ that you put us through. I know you act out of niceness, but this niceness is crueler than nastiness. There is an express train leaving Kagoshima Station”—she looked at her sleek watch—“in fifty minutes, and I shall be on it. Give my regards to your wife.” Maybe the passing years have rewritten the script a little, but this is the gist of what was said. Maybe I added her dark glasses, too, but even now, I have no memory of my mother’s eyes.

  Monkfish opens a can of coffee, switches off the opera, and tunes in to Radio Kitakyushu. The sun switches on as we cross the Shimonoseki Bridge. So much distance and height compared to that hot iron lung the world knows as Tokyo. Cargo ships and ferries to Pusan and Shanghai line up in the port. I am back on Kyushu soil and maybe this is why I am smiling. Broken fences, wildflower breakouts, unplotted spaces. Kyushu is the run-wild underworld of Japan. All myths slithered, galloped, and swam from this part of the country. The farther south you go, the more people think for themselves. Governments in Kyoto and Tokyo forget this at their peril. The expressway ends, and Monkfish slows for the tollgate. “As my dear old granny used to say, every single morning, ‘Rise early. The hour before dawn is a gift from paradise.’ That was when she died. Hour before dawn.”

  My hand falls off and I have to screw it back on. “Stationmaster! How are you? Please accept my sincerest condolences on your, uh, untimely death.” Mr. Aoyama lowers his binoculars. He is still wearing his JR uniform, but he looks much more distinguished than during his life at Ueno. “Death is not so bad, Miyake. It is much the same as being paid. Did you find your sister’s kite?” I cannot make any sense of the last remark, so I just stand there wondering what you say to a dead person. Mr. Aoyama fiddles with the focusing. “I must apologize, incidentally,” he continues, “for accusing you of espionage.” I smile. “You were under loads of stress. Obviously.” Mr. Aoyama touches his upper lip. “See? I shaved off my mustache.” I tell him that major life shifts should be commemorated, somehow. “And you don’t get more major than death,” he agrees. This reminds me that I, too, must be dead. “May I ask how I died, Stationmaster?” He frowns at his binoculars. “Oh, no no no, Miyake, you aren’t dead. Your body is on the expressway bus to Miyazaki, in fine condition except for a fungal growth about to break out between your toes. You are dreaming.” This does not bring me the relief you might expect. “I’ve never had such an . . . undreamlike dream before.” Mr. Aoyama finally looks through the binoculars. “Your own dead can calibrate your dreams. The contrast/brightness/color controls. Come with me.” I realize we are flying. Mr. Aoyama is floating along freestyle, I have a Zax Omega jetpack strapped to my back. “So, are you my dead, Mr. Aoyama?” I ask. “We hired each other,” Aoyama replies, “although I never hired you to spit in my teapot.” Below us the majesty of creation unspools. “No offense, Stationmaster, but how come Anju never visits me? If anyone is my own dead, she is.” Mr. Aoyama checks his watch. “Your sister is not exactly dead.” I hit a pocket of turbulence. Aoyama dives below the cloud and points. There is the secret beach, there is the foot rock, there is the whalestone. If I could only see Anju, maybe I could pick her out of the water in time. “What is keeping her from being dead?” I ask. The last thing Mr. Aoyama says is “You.” Suddenly my jetpack fails, and I am falling from a ninth-floor balcony, a playground is spinning nearer and nearer and if you don’t wake up before you hit the ground you—

  “Gaaaaaa!” or a noise like it stuck in my throat wakes me up. I am on the backseat of a bus. Some passengers—old women, mostly—look at me. I hear somebody say “Drugs!” and tut in my direction. The doors hiss shut and the bus lurches forward. I sit up, blinking. Yes, I remember the coach. Monkfish offered to ask around some truckers’ hangouts for me, but Mom is expecting me in a few hours and I can hardly be late after a six-year gap. An old lady has joined me on the back row since I fell asleep. Weird. There are plenty of unoccupied seats. She knits. Her knitting needles click very softly. Her face is oval and chipped as an aging moon. She must do aromatherapy—I can smell a herb called . . . no name comes. Between us is a bag full of ripe persimmons—not the watery Tokyo persimmons, but ripe, sticky, scarlet-flavored persimmons spirited away from the wrath of enchantresses. I drool. I have eaten crap and crap only for two days. “I propose we barter,” says Mrs. Persimmon. “I give you a fruit. You give me the dream you just had.”

  “I never remember my dreams.”

  “Do you flush banknotes down the toilet?”

  “No.”

  “Then you should train yourself to remember your dreams. We can start with the older man in uniform.”

  She means Mr. Aoyama! I feel cold. “How did you know?”

  “Nothing sinister about that. Most dreams have an authority figure, just as most ghost stories have a ghost.” From this starting point I reconstruct the dream as best I can, and I think I do a reasonable job. I leave out the detail about Anju being my sister because it may lead to all the usual embarrassing questions—I just say she was a girl in my class. She counts the stitches on her needles. “No, I will not be shortchanged, young man. What did you omit?” So I have to admit that Anju is my twin sister. Mrs. Persimmon considers. “When did she leave, this unfortunate?”

  “Leave where?”

  “This side, of course.”

  “This side of . . .”

  “Life.” No, her knitting needles make the sound of a blind person’s stick.

  “Nine years ago. How did you know that?”

  “I shall be eighty-one a week from Thursday.” Her mind is wandering, or mine is plodding. She yawns. Tiny, white teeth. I think of Cat. She unpicks a stitch. Have I offended her? I ask her what she thinks my dream means. “Dreams are shores where the ocean of spirit meets the land of matter. Dreams are beaches where the yet-to-be, the once-were, the will-never-be may walk awhile with the still-are. You believe I am an old woman hoary with superstition, and possibly deranged to boot.” I could not have put it that well. “If I were not deranged, how else could I know what I know? Here. You have, at last, earned your persimmon.”

  Miyazaki is toy town after Tokyo. At the bus station I go to the tourist information office to find out about the clinic my mother is staying at. Nobody has heard of it, but when I tell her the address I am told I will need to get on a local bus headed for Kirishima. The next one is not for over an hour, so I go to the station bathroom and clean my teeth. Next I find a pharmacist, buy some athlete’s foot powder, empty a quarter of it into a pair of relatively clean socks, and change into them. I sit down in the waiting room drinking a can of cold coffee, watching the buses and passengers come and go. Miyazaki people amble. The clouds are in no hurry and a fountain makes rainbows under palm trees. A retired dog with cloudy eyes comes to sniff hello. A very pregnant mother tries to control a clutch of floppy, spring-heeled children. I remember my persimmon—my grandmother says pregnant women must never eat persimmons—and peel it with my penknife. I get sticky fingers, but the fruit is sweet, pearly, perfect. I spit ou
t shiny stones. One of the boys has just learned to whistle but he can only do one tune. The mother watches the kids leap along the plastic seats. I wonder where their father is. Only when they start playing with a fire extinguisher does she say anything: “If you touch that, the bus men will be angry!” I go for a walk. In a gift shop still with its unsold 1950s stock I find a bowl of faded plastic fruit with smiley faces. I buy it for Buntaro to get back at him for my Zizzi key holder. At a Lawson’s I buy a tube of champagne bombs and read magazines until the bus arrives. I should be nervous, I guess, but I lack the energy. I cannot remember what day it is, even.

  I expect a smartish institution with car parks and wheelchair ramps on the outskirts of town—instead, the bus follows a lane deeper and deeper into the countryside. Over a thousand yen later, a farmer on the bus points down a country road with a daikon and tells me to walk until the road becomes a track and to go on until the track runs out. “Can’t miss it,” he insists, which usually spells disaster. A hillside of pines sheers up on one side: on the other, early rice is being harvested and hung out to dry. I find a big, flat, round stone on the track. Grasshoppers trill and ratchet. I put the stone in my backpack. Cosmos flowers sway, all mauve, magenta, and white. All this space. All this air. I walk, and walk. What is the word that means a fear of open spaces? I begin to worry— after twenty minutes I can see the end of the lane, but there is still no clinic in sight. Comic-horror scarecrows leer. Big heads, bony necks. Agoraphobia? The road runs out of tarmac, and I can see the track dies altogether at a group of old farm buildings at the foot of an early autumn mountain. Sweat pools in the small of my back—I must smell none too fresh. Did the bus driver let me off at the wrong stop? I decide to ask at the farmhouse. A skylark stops singing and the silence is loud. Vegetable plots, sunflowers, blue sheets hanging in the sun. A teahouse stands on a small rise in a rockery. I am already past the gate when I see the hand-painted sign: MIYAZAKI MOUNTAIN CLINIC. Despite the signs of life, I cannot actually see a soul. I feel uneasy—I am an intruder here. My mother is in this building! I very nearly lose my nerve and backtrack. I see no bell or buzzer near the front door, so I just open the door and enter a cool reception room where a woman—a maid?—in a white uniform is organizing mountains of files into hills. It is a losing battle. I wonder how to attract her attention without scaring her. She sees me, and stops what she is doing. “Hi.”

  “Hello. Can I, uh, speak to the nurse in charge, please?”

  “You can speak with me, if you like. Suzuki. Doctor. You are?”

  “Uh, Eiji Miyake. I’m here to meet my mother—a patient. Mariko Miyake.”

  Dr. Suzuki makes an ahaaaaaaaa! noise. “A very welcome guest you are too, Eiji Miyake. Yes, our prodigal returnee has been on tenterhooks all morning. We prefer the word members to patients, if that doesn’t sound too cultish. We were expecting you to call from Miyazaki. Did you have any trouble finding us? I’m afraid we are rather a long way out. Of course, a measure of solitude assists treatment. In the cities we Japanese force ourselves to live in, the question should not be ‘Why do so many of us suffer from mental illness?’ but ‘Why do any of us not suffer from mental illness?’ ” The doctor watches me working out whether she expects to hear an answer, and smiles. “Put your bag down. Have you eaten? Our members are having lunch in the refectory.”

  “I had a rice ball on the bus . . .”

  “Then you must still be hungry.”

  “It came with pickles.”

  Dr. Suzuki correctly reads my nervousness at meeting my mother in front of a party of onlookers. “Why don’t you wait in the teahouse, then? We are rather proud of it—one of our members was a tea master, and will be again, if I have any say in the matter. He modeled it on Senno Rikyu’s teahouse and the groundsman helped him build it. It really is quite something. A crafts journal did a piece on it. I’ll go tell your mother her visitor is here.”

  “Doctor—”

  Dr. Suzuki swivels around on one foot. “Yes?”

  “Nothing.”

  I think she smiles, almost. “Just be who you are.”

  I take off my shoes and sit in the shady, four-and-a-half-mat hut. Yes, I am nervous, but acoustic-strumming nervous, not death-metal-megawatt nervous. I watch the humming garden. Bees, runner beans, lavender. I drink some barley tea—warm now, and frothed up—from the bottle I bought in Miyazaki. I can smell pine resin, straw thatch, fungal infection powder. Kneeling on the ceiling, a papyrus butterfly folds its wings. I lie back and close my eyes to compose myself, just for a moment.

  New York billows snows and gray crows. I know the blond driver of my big yellow taxi, but her name escapes while I look for it. I fight past journalists and bug-eyed lenses outside the recording studio, where John Lennon is swigging his barley tea. “Eiji! Your guitar had given up all hope.” Since I was twelve years old, I have wanted to meet this man of genius. My dream has come true, and my English is a hundred times better than I dared hope, but all I can think of to say is “Sorry I’m late, Mr. Lennon.” The great man shrugs, exactly like Yuzu Daimon. “After nine years of learning my songs you can call me John. Call me anything. Except Paul.” This strikes us as very funny. “Let me introduce you to the rest of the band. Yoko you already met at Karuizawa one summer, on our bicycles—” Yoko Ono has shrink-wrapped her head and is dressed like the queen of spades. “It’s all right, Sean,” she says, “Mummy’s only looking for her hand in the snow.” I appreciate the filial reference. John-san points to the bass guitarist. “Klaus Voorman, the unsour Kraut.” I shake hands with the reliable German. “And on keyboards, ladies and genitals, may I introduce our old friend Misterrrrrrrrr Claude Debussy.” The composer sneezes and a tooth flies out, which causes a new round of laughter—yet more teeth fall out, causing yet more laughter. “My pianist friend, Ai Imajo,” I tell Debussy, “worships your work. She won a scholarship for the Paris Conservatoire, but her father says she isn’t allowed to go.” Hey, my French is perfect too, and I’ve never even studied it! “Then her father is a boar with pox,” says Debussy, on his knees to gather up his teeth, “and Ms. Imajo is a woman of distinction. Give her my address! I always had a love for the Orient!” We step outside into Ueno Park, among the bushes and tents where the homeless people live. “John-san—what is ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ actually about?” John pulls a philosopher pose. “I never knew.” We giggle helplessly. “But you wrote it!” He dabs his tears away. “No, Eiji, it wrote me.” Doi lifts the tent flap. The pizza box contains cannabis compost. Picture Lady—it seems we are her guests—produces a cake knife with a polished stoat-skull handle. We are each served a thin slice—it tastes of green tea. “Which is your favorite song by John, Eiji-kun?” I realize that Picture Lady is in fact Kozue Yamaya working undercover, but her secret is safe with me. “Simple. ‘#9 Dream,’ ” I answer. “It should be considered a masterpiece.” John is delighted with this answer, and mimes an Indian deity, singing “Ah, bowakama pousse pousse.” Even the Perspex whale outside the science museum giggles. My lungs fill up with laughter and I am having serious trouble breathing. “Truth is,” John continues, “and I know you have waited patiently for this explanation, ‘#9 Dream’ is a son of ‘Norwegian Wood.’ Both are ghost stories. ‘She’ in ‘Norwegian Wood’ curses the listener with loneliness. The ‘Two spirits dancing so strange’ in ‘#9 Dream’ bless the listener with harmony. But people prefer loneliness to harmony. That’s why you hear ‘Norwegian Wood’ played in elevators.” What an honor to have a conversation like this with my virtual father. “John-san,” I say, “I don’t know if I’ll get another chance to say this, but your songs help me understand my life.” John shrugs. “You’re welcome. I wrote them for me and Yoko, but if other people get a kick out of them, great.” “Power to the people,” I answer, inspired. “Power to the people, right on!” He giggles. I have one last question. “What does the actual title of ‘#9 Dream’ mean?” John-san thinks. “The meaning of the ninth dream begins after all meanings appear to be dea
d and gone . . .” We are interrupted by a furious guru. “Your meaning is too vague, Mr. Lennon! Your wanton imagination has run wild again! Why are you quitting your search for enlightenment?” John scoffs. “If you’re so bloody cosmic, you’ll know why!” I am laughing so hard.

  “I was laughing so hard,” I tell Ai, “I woke up.”

  I hear Ai flumf onto her sofa. “And?”

  “And there was Mom, standing in the doorway.”

  “What must she have thought?”

  “Well, first she thought I was drunk. Then she thought I was having a seizure. She was about to run for Dr. Suzuki.”

  Ai selects one question from the crowd. “What were the first things you both said?”

  “I . . . dunno. I guess I said, ‘Don’t worry, I was only dreaming,’ or something just as forgettable. I remember what she said, though. She told me that Anju used to giggle in her sleep too. Weird. I think it got us off to a good start. I mean, I could hardly get all defensive and sulky after she found me rolling with laughter and unconscious at the same time, even if I had wanted to.”

  “How long did you talk for?”

  “Oh . . . three hours. Dr. Suzuki brought some tea out.”

  “Three hours!”

  “We kind of cut a deal. We—what do lawyers say—we dropped charges. She is my mother, and I am her son, yes, but we sort of pretended not to be. That way we could get on and talk.”

  “ ‘(Just Like) Starting Over.’ ”

  “Hey! You listened to Double Fantasy?”

  “Mmm, of course. So where are you left now, you and your mother, I mean?”

  “Well, I don’t want to pretend this was a summer-of-love festival. I mean, yes, we had the first real conversation I think we have ever had. I asked a question. Then she asked a question. We took it in turns, like that, and talked about a lot, but neither of us wanted to push the other too hard, and really get into the minefield stuff, y’know, ‘Did you ever stop to think about what it would do to us?,’ ‘Did you mean it that time you said you didn’t have a mother?,’ that degree of stuff. One day we probably will have to do all that. But the teahouse was just too summery. I did say that I wish I hadn’t stopped Anju from talking with her on her visits, and she told me I didn’t have to apologize because I was so young at the time, and I said I wanted to apologize for my own peace of mind, not hers, and she nodded and left it at that. I sort of liked her. She can be very funny. She was telling me how they all cheat at dominoes. Apparently Dr. Suzuki is the biggest cheat of them all. I realized she is a real person. Mom, I mean.”