Number9dream

by David Mitchell

  “Gran?”

  I wade through the grass in the courtyard, and think of the old tale of a spinning-wheel sorceress awaiting her adulterous lover’s return. Years pass, and the house goes to rot and ruin, but she never ages a day. In this mist I could be in a tale. Behind mossy stones I see a pearly movement—a snake! Its head and tail are invisible but its coil must be as thick as my arm. Did Anju say something about a pale snake, once? Or was it one of the Goatwriter stories? Or was it my grandmother who said how every house in olden times had its own snake that appeared to announce an imminent death, and that she had seen one in this house just before her father died? The animal vanishes behind a rusting cultivator. Just an old superstition—snakes never live for seventy years. I knock on the frame, and force open the stubborn door. I hear the radio. “Are you home, Gran? Wheatie? It’s Eiji.”

  Nothing. She was deaf when we lived with her, though, and my aunts say her hearing has gotten worse over recent years. I slide the insect screen aside, step into the cool, and slip out of my sneakers without undoing the laces. I breathe in deeply. Cooking sake, damp wood, chemical toilet. Incense from the tatami room. That particular old-person odor—I guess they can detect a particular young-person odor too. A mouse disappears. The radio means my gran is probably not at home—she was in the habit of leaving it on for the dog, and after the dog died she left it on for the house. “Gran?” In the tatami room I feel that somebody I know has died—caused by seeing that pale snake, no doubt. My grandmother is fine, or the silent wholesaler would have said something. A feather duster is propped up against the foot of the family altar. Hanging scrolls of autumn scenes, a vase of flowers, a cabinet filled with trinkets and baubles of an island lifetime. My grandmother has never even crossed the water to Kagoshima. Raindrops, barely heavy enough to fall, splash through the mosquito netting, so I draw the window shut. The respect I felt for this room and its visiting spirits verged on fear when I was a small boy. Not so for Anju, of course. She used to hide outside and burst in to catch the ghostly Miyake ancestors munching the cherries our grandmother left out for them. I look at the black-and-white dead and the Fujifilm deceased in the lacquer cabinet. Dressed in oilskins, suits, uniforms, flying goggles, costumes rented from the photographer in Kamiyaku. Here is Anju, toothy on her first day at elementary school. I go into the kitchen and help myself to a glass of water. I even recognize this glass. I sit down on the sofa that Anju and I tried to levitate and fly to Tahiti—why there, I do not know. She blamed our failure on my puny ESP powers. I believed her for years. The sofa, which is as old as my gran, boingggs, but after two long, sleep-starved days it is comfortable, way too comfortable . . .

  I dream everyone in the world is asleep, dreaming. I dream frost patterns on a temple bell. I dream bright water dripping from the spear of Izanagi, and the alchemy that transforms these drips into the land we call Japan. I dream the Pleiades, and flying fish, and speckled eggs in nests. I dream of skin flakes in keyboard gullies. I dream cities and the ovaries they issue from. I dream lovers who glimpse each other long before they become lovers, and I dream the songs they fall in love to, and I dream the songwriters who find the songs. I dream a mind in eight parts, and a compass rose. I dream of a girl, drowning, resigned to her fate now that she knows there is no possibility of being saved by her brother. Her willowy body is passed from current to current, tide to tide, until it has dissolved into pure blue, and I am sorry, but she knows I am sorry, and she wants me to let her go because she does not want me to drown too, which I will, if I spend the rest of my life looking for her. I dream of a stone whale, of barnacles on the whale, watching it all. When my dream falters, all the world questions its own substance, so it is no surprise that I also dream the message bubbling from the stone whale’s blowhole. “This is the National Seismology Bureau, interrupting this program to bring you an emergency news flash . . .

  . . . a major earthquake has struck the Tokyo region within the last thirty seconds. It measured 7.3 on the Richter scale. I repeat, 7.3. This magnitude represents an earthquake with a greater destructive power than the Great Kansai Earthquake of 1995. Widespread structural damage must be expected throughout the Kanto plain. Imminent aftershocks are likely, and the public in the affected area is advised to evacuate buildings immediately and proceed to an open space if possible, and away from the danger of falling masonry. Do not use elevators, turn off gas and electricity, stay away from windows, and leave personal belongings behind. Due to the scale of the earthquake, all programs on this channel are canceled until the dangers are more fully assessed. People living in coastal areas on the Pacific coast north of Wakayama are advised to prepare for tsunamis, and to move to higher ground if possible. We will be updating nonstop as we receive more news. . . . I repeat, a massive earthquake has hit the Tokyo Bay area . . .” Cold and shaking, I turn the radio down and lift the receiver of my grandmother’s antique telephone. I dial three times, but Ai and Sachiko’s number is dead. Same with Shooting Star. I cannot get through to Nero’s. I try Ueno: even here, I am not connected. In desperation I try the Tokyo operator. Nothing. I would sell my soul for this to be a dream. I feel strangled by helplessness. Are the cables and airwaves jammed because of the volume of traffic trying to place calls to the capital? Or because . . . the images start, and I cannot stop them. Windows exploding an inch from Ai’s face. All the capsules above Shooting Star collapsing into the first floor. Ten thousand pans of boiling oil in ten thousand kitchens overspilling. Pizza ovens tipping over. Girders crashing through pianos and beds. Shelves shooting their contents across rooms. Overpass pillars turning to sand, underpasses caving in. The subway system . . . Rush hour has started . . . All those people in tunnels . . . Here on Yakushima, centuries of quiet rain are falling among the pine needles. What now? What now? I cannot think straight, so my body takes over. I fly down the polished hallway, scrunch my feet into my sneakers, fight with the knots, scrape open the door, and begin running.

  nine

  DAVID MITCHELL was born in northwestern England in 1969. He wrote his first two novels, Ghostwritten and Number9Dream, while living in Japan, and his third, Cloud Atlas, on his return to England. His novels have received several awards and been translated into twenty languages. David Mitchell now lives in Ireland with his family. His latest novel is Black Swan Green.

  Also by David Mitchell

  Ghostwritten

  Cloud Atlas

  Black Swan Green

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of a few well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. Where real-life historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict the actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work.

  2003 Random House Trade Paperback Edition

  Copyright © 2001 by David Mitchell

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mitchell, David (David Stephen)

  Number 9 dream: a novel/David Mitchell.

  p. cm.

  www.randomhouse.com

  eISBN: 978-1-58836-215-5

  v3.0

 

 

 
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