Ghostwritten

by David Mitchell

  I enter the current that flows to the escalators, and away from there.

  Over my shoulder, the train accelerates into the fumy darkness.

  ————

  The palms of my hands were pricking and sweaty. A seagull strutted along the window ledge and peered in. It had a cruel face.

  “And your name, sir?” The old lady who ran the inn grinned the grimace of a temple god. Why was she grinning? To make me nervous? She had more black gaps than stained teeth.

  “My name’s Tokunaga. Buntaro Tokunaga.”

  “Tokunaga … lovely name. It has a regal air.”

  “I’ve never thought about it.”

  “And what business are you in, Mr. Tokunaga?”

  Questions and questions. Do the unclean never stop?

  “I’m just an ordinary salaryman. I don’t work for a famous company. I’m the department head of a small computer business in the suburbs of Tokyo.”

  “Tokyo? Is that so? I’ve never been to the mainland. We get a lot of holidaymakers from Tokyo. Though not off-season, like now. You can see for yourself, we’re almost empty. I only go to the main island once a year, to visit my grandchildren. I have fourteen grandchildren, you know. Of course, when I say “main island,” I mean the main island of Okinawa, not mainland Japan. I’d never dream of going there!”

  “Really.”

  “They tell me Tokyo’s very big. Bigger even than Naha. A department head? Your mother and father must be so proud! My, that’s grand. I’ve got to ask you to fill out these dratted forms, you know. I wouldn’t bother with it myself but my daughter makes me do it. It’s all to do with licenses and tax. It’s a real nuisance. Still. And how long will you be with us on Kumejima, Mr. Tokunaga?”

  “I intend to stay a couple of weeks.”

  “Is that so? My, I hope you’ll find enough to do. We’re not a very big island, you know. You can go fishing, or go surfing, or go snorkeling, or scuba diving … but apart from that, life is very quiet here. Very slow. Not like Tokyo, I imagine. Won’t your wife be missing you?”

  “No.” Time to shut her up. “The truth is, I’m here on compassionate leave. My wife passed away last month. Cancer.”

  The old crone’s face fell, and her hand covered her mouth. Her voice fell to a whisper. “Oh, my. Is that so? Oh, my. There I go, putting my foot in it again. My daughter would be so ashamed. I don’t know what to say—” She kept wheezing apologetically, which was doubly irksome as her breath reeked of prawns.

  “Not to worry. When she passed away, she was finally released from the pain. It was a cruel release, but it was a release. Please don’t be embarrassed. I am a little tired, though. Would you show me to my room?”

  “Yes, of course.… Here are your slippers, and I’ll just show you the bathroom.… This is the dining room. Come this way, you poor, poor, man.… Oh my, what you must have been through … But you’ve come to the right island. Kumejima is a wonderful place for healing. I’ve always believed so.…”

  After my evening cleansing I felt fatigue that no amount of alpha refocusing could dispel. Cursing my weakness, I went to bed and sank into a sleep that was almost bottomless.

  The bottom was in a tunnel. A deserted metro tunnel, with rails and service pipes. My job was to patrol it, and guard it from the evil that lived down there. A superior officer walked up to me. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “Obeying orders, sir.”

  “Which are?”

  “Patrolling this tunnel, sir.”

  He whistled between his teeth. “As usual, a muddle at Sanctuary. There’s a new threat down here. The evil can only consume you when it knows about you. If you maintain your anonymity, all will be well. Now, officer. Give me your name.”

  “Quasar, sir.”

  “And your name from your old life? Your real name?”

  “Tanaka. Keisuke Tanaka.”

  “What is your alpha quotient, Keisuke Tanaka?”

  “16.9.”

  “Place of birth?”

  Suddenly, I realize that I have walked into a trap! The evil is my superior officer, ploughing me with questions so it can consume me. My last defense is not to let it know that I have caught on. I am still floundering when a new character walks down the tunnel toward us. She is carrying a viola case and some flowers, and I’ve seen her before somewhere. Someone from my uncleansed days. The evil that is in the guise of my superior officer turns to her and starts the same ruse. “Haven’t you heard about the evil? Who authorized your presence here? Give me your name, address, occupation—immediately!”

  I want to save her. Lacking a plan, I grab her arm and we run, faster than air currents.

  “Why are we running?”

  A foreign woman on a hill, watching a wooden pole sinking into the ground.

  “I’m sorry! I didn’t have time to explain! That officer wasn’t a real officer. It was a disguise. It was the evil that lives in these tunnels!”

  “You must be mistaken!”

  “Yeah? And how would you know?”

  As we run, our fingers lock together, I look at her face for the first time. Sidelong, she is smiling, waiting for me to get this most grisly of jokes. I am looking into the real face of evil.

  I set off early the next morning to walk around the island. The sea was milky turquoise. The sand was white, hot, and yielding. I saw birds I’d never seen before, and salmon-pink butterflies. I saw two lovers and a husky dog walking down the beach. The boy kept whispering things to the girl, and she kept laughing. The dog wanted them to throw the stick, but was too stupid to realize that first he’d have to give the stick back to one of them. As they passed I noticed neither of them wore wedding rings. I bought a couple of riceballs for lunch in a little flyblown shop, and a can of cold tea. I ate them sitting on a grave, wondering when it was that I last belonged anywhere. I mean apart from Sanctuary. I passed an ancient camphor tree, and a field where a goat was tethered. Field-workers’ radios played tinny pop music that drifted down to the road. They sweltered under wide, woven hats. Cars rusted away in lay-bys, vegetation growing up out of the radiators. There was a lighthouse on a lonely headland. I walked to it. It was padlocked.

  A sugarcane farmer pulled up by the roadside and offered me a lift. I was footsore, so I accepted. His dialect was so heavy I could barely make out what he was trying to say. He started off talking about the weather, to which I made all the right noises. Then he started talking about me. He knew which inn I was staying at, and how long I was staying, my false name, my job. He even gave his condolences for my dead wife. Every time he used the word “computer” he sealed it in quotation marks.

  • • •

  Back at the inn, the gossip shop was open for business. The television flashed and blinked silently on the counter. On the coffee table five cups of green tea steamed. Seated around on low chairs were a man who I guessed was a fisherman, a woman in dungarees who sat like a man, a thin woman with thin lips, and a man with a huge wart wobbling from one eyebrow like a bunch of grapes.

  The old woman who ran the inn was clearly holding court. “I still remember the television pictures on the day it happened. All those poor, poor people stumbling out, holding handkerchiefs to their mouths … a nightmare! Welcome back, Mr. Tokunaga. Were you in Tokyo during the attack?”

  “No. I was in Yokohama on business.”

  I scanned their minds for suspicion. I was safe.

  The fisherman lit a cigarette. “What was it like the day after?”

  “It certainly took a lot of people by surprise.”

  Dungaree-woman nodded and folded her arms. “Looks like it’s the beginning of the end for that bunch of lunatics, however.”

  “How do you mean?” Keeping my voice steady.

  The fisherman looked surprised. “You haven’t heard? The police have raided them. About time, too. The Fellowship’s assets have been frozen. Their so-called minister of defense is being charged with murder of ex-cult members, and five people
have been arrested in connection with the gas. Two of those five hanged themselves in their detention cells. Their suicide notes provided enough evidence for a new round of arrests. Would you like to see my newspaper?”

  I flinched from the shuffling sheets of lies. “No, it’s all right. But how about the Guru?” The branches may burn in the forest fire, but new growth sprouts from the pure heart.

  “The who?” Wartman blubbulled his rubbery nose. I wanted to kneel on his neck and cut that abomination off with a sharp pair of scissors.

  “The Leader of the Fellowship.”

  “Oh, that maggot! He’s hiding, like the coward he is!” Wart-man choked on the hatred in his voice! What a sick zoo the world has become, where angels are despised. “He’s a true devil, is that one. A devil from hell.”

  “Walking evil, he is! Here you are, Mr. Tokunaga.” The old woman poured me a cup of green tea. I needed to escape to my room to think, but I wanted more news. “He fleeces the poor fools who run along to him. Then he acts like their father, orders them to do his dirty work, plays out his wicked dreams, then scurries away from the consequences.”

  Their ignorance made me gasp! If only I could make these vermin understand!

  “It’s beyond my comprehension,” said Dungaree-woman, “how such things can happen. It wasn’t just him, was it? There were bright people in the Fellowship, from good universities and good families. Policemen, scientists, teachers, and lawyers. Respectable people. How could they go along with that alpha Fellowship nonsense, and choose to become killers? Is there so much evil in the world?”

  “Brainwashing,” said Wartman, pointing to everybody. “Brainwashing.”

  The thin woman examined the dragon curled around her cup. “They did not specifically choose to become killers. They had chosen to abdicate their inner selves.” I didn’t like her. Her voice seemed to come not from her, but from a nearby room.

  “I don’t altogether follow you,” said Dungaree-woman.

  “Society,” and from the way the thin woman said the word I knew she was a teacher, “is an outer abdication. We abdicate certain freedoms, and in return we get civilization. We get protection from death by starvation, bandits, and cholera. It’s a fair deal. Signed on our behalf by our educational system on the day we are born. However, we all have an inner self that decides to what degree we honor this contract. This inner self is our own responsibility. I fear that many of the young men and women in the Fellowship handed this inner responsibility to their Guru, to do with as he pleased. And that,” she flicked the newspaper, “is what he did with it.”

  “You sound like you have fairly entrenched opinions,” I remarked.

  The thin woman looked at me straight in the eye. I looked straight back. Our sisters at Sanctuary are taught humility.

  “But why?” The fisherman lit his pipe and bulged his cheeks in and out. “Why did his followers want to give him their will?”

  The thin woman looked at me as she spoke. “You’d have to ask them yourself. Maybe there are many answers. Some get a kick out of self-abasement and servitude. Some are afraid or lonely. Some crave the camaraderie of the persecuted. Some want to be big fish in a small pond. Some want magic. Some want revenge on teachers and parents who promised success would deliver all. They need shinier myths that will never be soiled by becoming true. The handing over of one’s will is a small price to pay, for the believers. They aren’t going to need a will in their New Earth.”

  I couldn’t listen to this anymore. “Maybe you’re reading too much into it. Maybe they just did it because they loved him.” I downed my tea in one gulp. It burned my tongue and it was too bitter. “Could I have my key now, please?”

  The old woman idly passed me the key. “You must be exhausted after your long walk. My nephew’s wife saw you out by the lighthouse!”

  Secrets on islands are hidden from mainlanders, but never from the islanders.

  I lay on my bed, and wept.

  My brothers and sisters, committing self-slaughter! Which of my co-cleansers had fallen at this last hurdle, and why? We were heroes! Just a few months before the end of the unclean world! Paradise had been so near for them! I was further surprised at the minister of defense allowing himself to be captured. He has a high enough alpha quotient to displace molecules and walk through walls.

  The spider in the jar had died. Why? Why, why, why?

  After my evening cleansing I walked around this fishing village. Squealing children were playing some incomprehensible game. Teenagers hung around on street corners in their trendiest gear, doubtless imitating the Tokyo teenagers they see in their magazines. Mothers stood gossiping outside the supermarket. I wanted to shout at them, The world is going to end soon, you are all going to fry in the White Nights! Okinawan music blared out of a bar, all twinky-twanky and jangling.… And at the end of the street I reached the mountains, the sea, and the night.

  I walked along the pebbly beach. Plastic buoys. A sea coconut, shaped like a woman’s loins. Junk, washed up with the driftwood. Cans, bottles, rubber gloves, detergent containers. I heard grunts and squeals from under a peeling boat, never to float again. In the distance a shadow lit a fire.

  His Serendipity speaks to me in the crashing of the waves, and the sucking of the shingle. Why telephone when telepathy is possible? His Serendipity told me that his trusted cleanser Quasar had the greatest role to play. The Days of Persecution had begun, as prophesied in the 143rd Sacred Revelation. My Master told me I shall be a shepherd for the faithful during the White Nights. And after the comet ushers in the New Earth, I shall be at the right hand of His Serendipity, administering justice and wisdom in His name. I replied to His Serendipity that I was ready to die for Him. That I loved Him as a son does his father and would protect Him as a father does a son. His Serendipity, hundreds of miles away, smiled. The comet will be here by Christmas. The New Earth is not far away now. The Fellowship of Humanity will gather together on a purer island, and the survivors will call me “Father Quasar.” There will be no bullying. No victimizing. All the selfish, petty, unbelieving unclean, they will fry in the fat of their ignorance. We will eat papayas, cashew nuts, and mangos, and learn how to make traditional instruments and beautiful pottery. His Serendipity will select our mates according to our alpha quotients, and teach us advanced alpha techniques, and we will travel astrally, visiting other stars.

  I knelt, and thanked my Lord for His encouragement. The moon rose over the open bay, and those same stars came on, one by one.

  The baby in the woolly cap, strapped to her mother’s back, opened her eyes. They were my eyes. A disembodied voice was singing a chorus over and over again. And reflected in my eyes was her face. She knew what I was going to do. And she asked me not to. But she was fated to die anyway, Quasar, when the comet comes! You shortened her suffering in the land of the unclean! The innocents, surely, will be reborn into the Fellowship of the New Earth! Cleanse yourself, and anchor your faith, deep and fast!

  The radio alarm clock glowed 1:30 A.M. Bad karaoke throbbed through the walls. I was wide awake, straightjacketed by my sweaty sheets. A headache dug its thumbs into my temples. My gut pulsed with gamma interference: I lurched to the toilet. My shit was a slurry of black crude oil. I kept thinking of the thin teacher, and what I should have said to her to put her in her place. My eyes wandered around the labyrinth on the worn lino. I took a shower, as hot as the flesh could bear.

  For the first time since my initiation ceremony into the Fellowship I bought some cigarettes, from a machine in the deserted lobby. I lit one, walking back up to my room. I was going to be up for a while.

  ————

  My palms have become blotchy. I clean myself eight or nine times a day, but something is wrong with my skin. I have taken to watching the television every morning. Proceedings are under way to disband the Fellowship, and make membership illegal. I have been named, and my photograph shown, ransacked from Fellowship archives. Luckily it was taken with my scalp shaved and an alph
a energizer on my head, so the likeness isn’t close. I am the last of the Tokyo cleansers to evade capture. I saw my skin father and mother being chased into my skin sister’s car by a baying pack of reporters. The whole scene was lit by flashbulbs. His Serendipity has been caught and charged with conspiracy to commit genocide, and with fraud, kidnapping, and possession of Category 1 nerve agents. The news showed the same clip of His Serendipity being bundled into a car by agents of the unclean and driven through a mob shouting for His blood. They showed it over and over again, to a sinister soundtrack, to tell the mindless that He is a villain, like Darth Vader, to be loathed and feared. The rest of the Cabinet have also been arrested. They are falling over themselves to denounce each other, hoping their death sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment. I myself was denounced by the minister of education. Even His Serendipity’s wife has denounced our Master, saying that she didn’t know anything about the production of the gas. She, who was so zealous about the cleansing! One television news station flew their jackals to Los Angeles, to film the elite school in Beverly Hills where His Serendipity’s sons were boarded.

  I telephoned Sanctuary from the port.

  “State your name, business, and present location,” said the cold voice. A cop. Even with the alpha quotient of a fruitfly, you could spot them a mile off. I hung up.

  But this is bad. I have run out of Japan. My passport is in the possession of the Fellowship’s Foreign Office, so seeking assistance with our Russian or Korean brothers and sisters is impossible. I am running out of money. Of course I have no money of my own: after my initiation every last yen was transferred to the Fellowship. My skin family has disowned me, and would turn me in. So would my skin friends from my life of blindness. This causes me no sorrow. When the White Nights come, they shall reap what they have sown. The Fellowship is my true family.

  I had one final resort. The Fellowship’s Secret Service. The media had mentioned nothing about their arrest, so perhaps they had gone to ground in time. I dialed the secret number, and gave the encoded message: “The dog needs to be fed.”