Paprika

by Yasutaka Tsutsui

  “Inside that box, is it?” Paprika shouted. Yes. The box is made of lead. There’s no doubt. They’ve put the device in there to block its effects. “Whose lab is it?”

  “Gaa!”

  Inui realized that his mind had been read, and his griffin went berserk. Inui lost his self-control into the bargain. This young trollop. Must she keep peering in?! Wherever I go! The griffin flapped its wings. It flew up from the pages of the encyclopedia, which were unfurled by the wind from its wings. The specter flew up toward the transparent domed roof of the reading room. There it hovered as it changed direction, opened its claws wide in anger, and took aim at Paprika below.

  Paprika had to avoid being attacked. Her only option was to continue her counter-offensive.

  “Whose lab is it?” she shouted loudly. “Whose lab? Tell me. Tell me!”

  The griffin vanished. Inui must have chosen to wake up rather than answer Atsuko’s question.

  Right. Let’s go there. It’s probably Osanai’s. All I have to do is go to his lab, take the DC Mini out of the chemical box, hold it tightly in my hand, and return to reality. That’s all. Paprika changed the scene of her dream to the Institute. She appeared at the corner of the corridor in front of the Medical Office, where the corridor widened slightly.

  18

  Noda and Konakawa had delayed their arrival at the Institute until most of the staff had gone home. A few would still have been engaged in hospital-related work, but that couldn’t be helped.

  Finding the front doors closed, they walked around to the side of the building and went in through the staff entrance. There they were challenged by an elderly security guard, who poked his head through the window of the security booth. He had the look of a former worker who had been re-employed.

  “What are you two after?” he demanded haughtily.

  “Where’s the Secretariat?” Konakawa demanded with equal arrogance, brandishing his ID.

  The guard barely glanced at it. “We’re closed! Don’t care what it is. Come back tomorrow!” he barked.

  “What it is, is a police investigation,” Konakawa replied with a calmness that was almost menacing. Noda was impressed.

  The guard took a proper look at the ID and was seized with panic. “What?! … But! … This sudden?! A raid?! You got a search warrant, then?”

  “Take another look, my friend,” said Konakawa. “See there? Where it says ‘Chief Superintendent’? I don’t need a search warrant. I’m the one who issues them. See me as a walking search warrant, if you like.”

  The suitably humbled guard told them where they could find the Secretariat and the Secretary-General’s office, which was next to the Secretariat. They walked to the end of the corridor as instructed.

  “Is that really true?” Noda mused as he tried to keep pace with his friend’s broad strides. “You don’t need a search warrant? I thought they could only be issued by a court of law.”

  Konakawa smiled but gave no reply. Noda supposed he’d been bending the truth.

  A telephone was ringing. It seemed to come from the Secretary-General’s office ahead of them.

  “Sounds like the guard’s called to announce us!”

  “Hmm.”

  They hastened their steps and entered the office without knocking.

  Inside, they saw Katsuragi’s desk with the window wide open behind it. In a blind panic, Katsuragi was desperately stashing ledgers into a safe in the corner.

  “Freeze!” roared Konakawa.

  Startled by the volume of his voice, Katsuragi turned and dropped the books onto the floor. His hair was disheveled with fright, even though he’d made no particularly violent movement.

  “What do you want?!” he shouted, clinging to a corner of his desk. “Coming in unannounced like that! And without knocking! Have you no manners?!”

  “You know why we’re here,” said Konakawa. He strode toward Katsuragi’s desk, took the accounting books that Katsuragi had clutched to his chest, and shoved them along the desktop toward Noda. “Check these, would you.”

  Noda opened the books and started to check through them.

  “My card,” Konakawa said, thrusting a name card at Katsuragi. “I think we’ll be seeing more of each other from now on.”

  Katsuragi gasped when he saw the card, his eyeballs practically popping as spittle flew from his mouth. He reached for the telephone without a word.

  Konakawa left Katsuragi to his devices and went to peer through the open door of the safe.

  This is the “second journal,” thought Noda. He knew it as soon as he’d opened the first accounting book. In that case, there should also be paperwork related to it. “Toshimi,” he called. “Is there a bundle of invoices in the safe, or some other collection of papers? I think you’ll find something like that. Will you have a look?”

  “There’s a bundle of invoices.”

  “Have they been stamped?”

  “Yes. All stamped with Inui’s seal.”

  “That’s it. Confiscate them!”

  “Doctor Inui?” Katsuragi called into the mouthpiece. Inui had taken so long to answer the phone that the Secretary-General was stamping his feet in irritation. “I’ve got the Chief Superintendent from the Metropolitan Police Department with me here. A certain Mr Konakawa,” Katsuragi started, and proceeded to give his report.

  Konakawa and Noda quickly gathered together the ledgers, invoices, related paperwork, and other documents to be confiscated.

  “I’ve just spoken to the President,” Katsuragi said angrily after putting the phone down.

  “President?” Konakawa quibbled. “You were talking to Inui, weren’t you? He’s the Vice President. Why didn’t you call the real President, Doctor Shima?”

  At a loss for an answer, Katsuragi shuffled awkwardly around the desk to stand in front of them. He looked up with hangdog eyes and appeared to be pleading with them. “Could you possibly wait a few minutes? I mean, will you please meet the Vice President? He’ll be here right away. That is … Otherwise … You see, I …”

  Noda smiled wryly. “Of course we could wait, but what’s with this ‘Vice President’?” he said, repeating Konakawa’s sentiment. “Does he scare you more than the President? Ah, but I should have introduced myself. How rude of me. Noda’s the name.”

  The door suddenly opened. The security guard entered in a state of frenzy, closed the door behind him, then stood motionless in front of it, casting bewildered looks at the men in the room as he spread his arms out wide. The three had absolutely no idea what he was trying to say.

  “What?” Katsuragi yelled in irritation.

  “A b-bird … In the c-corridor …”

  “A bird? Chase it away then!”

  Katsuragi stopped short when he realized that, by spreading his arms out, the guard was trying to show them how big the bird was. Now he spread them wider still; the bird was even bigger than that.

  “What sort of bird?” asked Noda.

  Faced with the notion of describing the bird in words, the guard succumbed to paroxysms of panic. “It had the body of an animal,” was all he could squeeze out at first. Then he bawled loudly in exasperation: “IT WAS BREATHING FIRE!”

  Noda and Konakawa exchanged glances. Yes – this was just the kind of place, just the kind of situation where an apparition from a dream might appear.

  “Idiot! You’re half asleep! Get out of here!” barked Katsuragi. At that moment, the sound of roughly flapping wings could be heard in the corridor. Something heavy collided with the other side of the door. The guard had been standing with his back against it. Now he straightened his body in shock. Katsuragi’s eyeballs almost popped out again.

  “Got your pistol?” Noda whispered. Konakawa shook his head.

  The flapping sound moved away. Konakawa went to the door and opened it a crack. After looking out into the corridor, he turned back to Noda. “Looks like it’s gone.”

  Konakawa hurried back to the desk, took a large buff envelope containing important docu
ments from Noda’s hand, and clasped it firmly in his arms.

  “Do not leave this room until further notice,” he warned Katsuragi and the security guard. “There is very grave danger outside. Shall we go?” he said, urging Noda on.

  “W-what was that just now?” a visibly shaken Katsuragi asked as they were about to leave.

  “You called him, didn’t you. I’d say it was the Vice President,” Noda replied before stepping out into the corridor behind Konakawa.

  The corridor was quiet. Some employees should still have been in the building, but there was no sign of them. Perhaps they’d been frightened off by the security guard’s “bird.” The lights in the corridor ceiling were broken, walls and doors on both sides scorched. They seemed to have been burnt at a temperature of several hundred degrees.

  “I wonder if the bird, or whatever it was, has vanished? Like that doll, or the tiger I saw?” said Noda.

  “I wonder.” Konakawa picked up a single brown feather from the floor.

  Noda looked to the end of the corridor and froze. There, where the corridor widened slightly and became brighter, something red had appeared out of nowhere, accompanied by a sparkle like the flickering of a TV screen.

  “Paprika.”

  Konakawa looked up, and was amazed to see her there. “When did she arrive?”

  Paprika seemed to be checking out the vicinity, but noticed the pair as they started off toward her. “Well!” she called. “You two asleep already?”

  Konakawa didn’t know what she was talking about. But Noda felt a shudder. He could sense a bizarre phenomenon in the making. Worried that their presence might have an adverse effect on her, Noda grabbed Konakawa’s arm to stop him advancing farther. They remained at a distance of four or five meters from where Paprika stood in front of the Medical Office. “So you’re asleep now, are you?” Noda called loudly to confirm his fears.

  “This is my dream. And you’ve come to join me. I’ve just been fighting them.”

  It was just as Noda had thought. Paprika spoke as though she was murmuring in her sleep.

  “Paprika. We’re actually here, in reality. We’re actually standing here now. You’ve come here in a dream, and now we’ve met you here.” Noda took a step toward her in the excitement of the moment. “Do you remember, earlier today? We said we’d come here unannounced, to investigate impropriety in the accounts.”

  “Ah.” Paprika’s eyes shone with an intelligence that seemed hardly possible for someone in a dream. As she stood there in the corridor, her sleek, slim figure a classic image from a bygone era, her whole being seemed to emit a faint brownish light. Noda and Konakawa were overcome with a great feeling of nostalgia. She was beautiful.

  “This is no joke,” Konakawa said with a groan of dismay. “I could never have imagined this. It’s no joke at all.”

  “Dreams have merged with reality. Paprika, were you being chased by some kind of bird?”

  “Bird? You mean the griffin? Yes. That was the Vice President.” Without warning, Paprika floated up into the air. “I mustn’t wake up. Not yet. I’ve come to get the DC Minis back.” Floating about a meter above the floor with her body tilted slightly downward, Paprika seemed to be murmuring to remind herself of her mission.

  “You mean, because we approached you?” asked Noda. “You think you might wake up if we approach you?”

  “Not really, but please don’t touch me. I think I’d wake up if someone touched me with a real hand.”

  Paprika was like the touch-me-not, impatiens, the busy lizzie – a plant whose seed pods explode when touched. The slightest indiscretion could have destroyed the delicate balance of this extraordinary phenomenon. Paprika, now floating in the air with her body tilted at around forty-five degrees, moved along the corridor toward the stairs.

  “We’ve already found proof of impropriety in the accounts,” Konakawa said as he followed her along. “Now we want to help you. I think you need help from real people here. You said you were looking for the DC Minis. Are you saying they’re here, in this building?”

  Konakawa’s style of questioning made Noda nervous. Speaking so rationally might stimulate Paprika’s logical thought patterns and wake her.

  As a method of going from A to B in a dream, Paprika’s movement was incredibly fast. Like a fish swimming against the flow, she floated along the ceiling of the stairway to the first floor, nimbly moving in little diagonal darts to the right and left. Noda and Konakawa followed while watching her from below. Konakawa ran two steps at a time without breaking stride; Noda started panting immediately.

  “The DC Minis must be in Osanai’s lab … Judging by Inui’s …” Paprika mumbled as she reached the first-floor corridor and leapt down to the ground, then slid along the corridor as if gliding on air. The first door on the right was the research lab newly assigned to Hashimoto. As the three passed along the corridor outside, little did they know that his bloody, lifeless corpse lay sprawled on a sofa inside the room.

  A door on the left bore Osanai’s nameplate. The door was locked; Konakawa broke it down with his shoulder.

  As she entered the room, Paprika nodded in recognition. “That griffin. I only caught a glimpse through a gap in its consciousness, but … There’s no doubt. This is the room. In there …” and she pointed to a chemical storage box in a corner of the room.

  The box was made of lead and solid as a safe. It was also firmly locked. In her dream, Paprika’s mind started to wander as she watched Konakawa and Noda struggling to open the box. This place was real, not a place in her dream. Maybe she could continue to exist in this real place, but with actions and abilities that could only be possible in a dream. In that case, there would be two of her in reality at the same time – Atsuko, now sleeping, and Paprika, a character in a dream.

  Suddenly, the alarm bell rang. It was so loud that Paprika had to cover her ears. But Konakawa and Noda didn’t seem to hear it at all; they merely continued their despairing attempts to open the chemical box. Only Paprika could hear the bell, it seemed. The noise was deafening, even with hands planted firmly over her ears. So it wasn’t the Institute’s alarm bell. It was a telephone ringing. The telephone next to the bed where she slept. As Atsuko Chiba.

  Leaving her two comrades in Osanai’s lab, Paprika woke in reality as Atsuko. Her telephone was ringing in the gloomy half-light of the bedroom. Even in the waking world, the noise was so loud as to become distorted. Atsuko picked up the receiver.

  “Hello? …”

  “Hello? Hello? Is that Atsuko Chiba? It is, isn’t it?” The caller ignored Atsuko’s sleepy tone; it was too early for anyone to go to bed, and he had no idea that he’d woken her.

  “Who is it? …”

  “It’s Matsukane, social affairs correspondent for the Morning News. We’ve just heard from Sweden. Doctor Chiba, you and Doctor Tokita have won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine! Many congratulations!”

  Atsuko wondered if she’d merely left one dream and entered another, as before. “But I haven’t heard anything … Not from the Swedish Embassy …”

  Atsuko’s cool response seemed to irk Matsukane. He let out a little hysterical laugh; he was the one who was excited. “We heard it directly from a news agency that monitors the headquarters in Stockholm. They’re always quicker than the Swedish Embassy.”

  “And what about Doctor Tokita? Does he know?”

  “I haven’t called him yet. I hope you won’t think me rude, but I actually wanted to talk about holding an emergency press conference. I thought you’d be better equipped to discuss it than Doctor Tokita. But I could call him now, if you like?”

  “No,” Atsuko said sharply. “I’ll call him.”

  Now the excitement started to build up inside her. She wanted to be the first to share this joy with Tokita. She was the only one who could really share any joy with him. Atsuko replaced the receiver and got up purposefully.

  19

  Atsuko arrived at the Institute for Psychiatric Research in her Ma
rginal, with Shima and Tokita in the passenger seats. The entrance to the Institute was jammed with a large throng of media reporters, who were haggling with the night-duty staff, doctors, and security guards. The entrance was bathed in bright light, despite the midnight hour, as the lights from television cameras illuminated the entire vicinity.

  “A press conference at this hour? I never heard of such a thing!”

  “Surely Doctor Chiba has called to tell you?” protested one of the journalists.

  “Chiba doesn’t work here anymore!” said a middle-aged employee, obviously one from the Vice President’s camp.

  “She hasn’t told us that!” Matsukane called loudly, glaring at the employee. “In that case, would you tell us about the conspiracy by the Vice President or whoever it was that forced her out?”

  “Eh? What’s that about a conspiracy?”

  The other journalists started to make noises. The employee screwed up his face in a grimace. “We can’t talk about it here. Are you mad?! You’ll have to make an appointment.”

  “Out of the way, pompous git!” hooted a particularly short-tempered reporter. “We’ve no time for this crap! Two of your scientists have won the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine! What do you mean by obstructing the press conference? You jealous of them, or something?!”

  Dazzled by the glare of the TV-camera lights, the chubby little security guard quickly raised his hands to cover his face.

  “Let us through! Just let us through! We’ll tell you all about it!”

  Kosaku Tokita forged a path through the media scrum toward the entrance. Realizing that the Nobel prizewinners themselves had arrived, the battery of television cameras all turned as one and the surrounding clamor grew louder still.

  “I can’t let you through without the permission of President Inui,” said the security guard, standing in their way.

  “I am the President,” said Torataro Shima. “I don’t recall promoting Doctor Inui.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand any of that. I’ve just been ordered not to let you in.”