The Mists of Osorezan

by Zoe Drake

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Theoretical Physics

  Nozaki had spent a lot of time with his grandfather, growing up in the Gifu countryside. The old man’s way of speaking was coarse, and he drank a lot, often during the day. But he always had a smile and a joke for the children. He took little Tetsuo down to the river on fishing trips while father was working flat out at the office. He pointed out the flowers, and the insects that crawled and squirmed in the grass, and he knew the names of so many of them. Catching the first fish had been surprisingly easy. Little Tetsuo had proudly held it up for the photograph, but the fish was still struggling and slipped right out of its hands, covering its glossy scales with sand and dirt. Grandfather had poured a PET bottle full of water over the fish to clean it, holding it firmly in his callused hands. Grandfather taught him Sumie brush painting; he still remembered the smell of the china ink whenever he pictured the old man’s front room.

  Coming out of his reverie while driving south into Morioka city, Nozaki realized he couldn’t remember much about the route he had just taken. He had been driving mechanically, obeying the signs and signals, following the cues of the other traffic like an automaton.

  Morioka was the capital city of Iwate prefecture, but as it was located far from the coast, it had escaped the ravages of the March 11th earthquake and tsunami. There were still cracks in sidewalks to be seen, and residents still remembered the brown-outs that had lasted for weeks after the event – but the city had valiantly struggled on to keep its name as a safe place to live.

  The café’s name was Milky Way and was on the partly cobbled shopping street called Zaimoku-cho, running parallel to the wide, fast-flowing Kitakami river bisecting Morioka city. In the doorway there hung a large stenciled image of the poet Kenji Miyazawa, one of the local heroes of Iwate, his silhouette in long coat and trilby hat almost Chaplinesque. It was an image Nozaki had seen many times in the last hour, replicated on street signs, in shop windows, on city guides. The entrance to the Milky Way was actually through a craft shop; low ceiling with wooden beams, dim lighting reflecting from the items in the display cases, old gold pendants and moon-colored rings.

  In the center of the café itself was a living paulownia tree behind a glass-walled alcove open to the sky. At a table next to it, his friend waited.

  “Tetsuo! So good to see you again.”

  “Likewise. This is a very nice place, isn’t it?”

  “Absolutely. You haven’t seen the best bit, though. On the wall outside they’ve painted excerpts from Miyazaki’s poems. Excellent calligraphers, you know. I’ll show you on the way out.”

  The passing years had trimmed some of the fat from Ryo Kimura’s figure, but his face was still round and jovial. His glasses – oval lenses, lilac-colored frames – were new and fashionable, as were his grey shirt and blue jeans. Despite the heat, he wore a cap, which made Nozaki suspect his hair had receded even further since the last time they met.

  They ordered tea while catching up with each other’s news. Ryo was still complaining about how busy his position was at Mental Health Services when the tea arrived.

  “So anyway, Tetsuo, what do I owe this visit to? You said you had something to ask me.”

  “Well actually, I’ve got something to show you.” Nozaki slid the plastic folder of scans up out of his briefcase, carefully wiping the tablecloth before he set them down. “I would be very grateful if you could have a look at them.”

  The atmosphere changed as if a light in the café had been switched off. “Tetsuo, you can’t possibly show me these,” Ryo said at length. “That’s violating the patient’s confidence, and breaking the trust of your superiors.”

  They stared at each other across the curdled atmosphere. The concept of zoku had stalled them. Zoku, loyalty to the group. The majority of Japanese belonged to a recognizable, functioning group, and professional groups were the most insular of all, protecting their interests and exercising monopolies of power. Senior professors at universities ran the campus like a medieval fiefdom, controlling grants, research and promotions. Nozaki was effectively betraying his group; he was betraying Dr. Kageyama by bringing in an outsider.

  “Please.” Nozaki stared at his former colleague. “I’ve got nobody else to talk to.”

  Kimura took a long sip of his tea. “Things aren’t right at that place, are they?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Look, I assure you that the patient’s names aren’t included on these. That’s not exactly a breach of confidentiality, is it?”

  “But it could still get us sacked.” Kimura sighed, turning away, looking at the tree as if imploring it for support.

  “Ryo,” Nozaki said to break the silence, “I have subjects showing brain activity that I’ve never seen before. Spikes of intense gamma activity.”

  Kimura picked up his glass of water, looked at it thoughtfully, set it down without drinking from it. “These people are all healthy?”

  “Absolutely. No history of mental illness.”

  “No…if there were, there would be an absence of gamma waves, I suppose. What about epilepsy?”

  “I don’t think epilepsy is involved.”

  “The hippocampus and other mesial temporal structures are healthy? What about increased signal intensity from the hippocampus?”

  “Not from the hippocampus, no.”

  “Well, we can rule out tumors or cavernous malformations.” Kimura finally reached out to pick up the folder, sliding out the brain maps, gingerly holding up the transparencies to the light.

  “I see what you mean,” he murmured. “This is high-frequency gamma-wave activity and brain synchrony on a scale I’ve never seen before. At the gamma frequency, the brain puts together a great deal of individual sensations to make a single perception. It looks like none of the patient’s other brain frequencies are involved in this process. You’re right, Tetsuo. For REM sleep, that’s most unusual.”

  “There’s something else.” Nozaki felt like a swimmer on the high diving board, the water far below him. “I think, during these periods of gamma activity, the subjects are experiencing…premonitions.”

  “Premonitions?” Kimura put down the sheets of film, staring blankly at Nozaki.

  “All of the subjects keep journals, Ryo, they keep a record of what they dream about. And some of those dreams, those mental events…occur in the real world.”

  “Psychic powers?” Kimura smiled. “Tetsuo, this isn’t like you at all.”

  “I know, I know, but…I can’t ignore the evidence any more. I don’t know what to do.”

  There was silence as the waitress came to refill the glasses of water.

  “You know,” Kimura resumed after she’d left, “perhaps there is an explanation. Not in terms of neuroscience, Tetsuo. In terms of quantum physics.”

  “Well, I don’t really want to get into that, it’s not within the field of…”

  “But consider it. We know the brain is a network of neurons, which transmit electrical signals, yes?”

  “Yes. But very weak signals.”

  “And we also know that the brain is more than a computer for processing algorithms. I’m talking about microtubials, Tetsuo.”

  “Microtubials?”

  “Yes, those tiny protein strings in the brain. Under anesthetic, the microtubials stop all activity and become dormant. That’s led some researchers to suggest that they’re the source of conscious awareness.”

  Nozaki nodded.

  “Their size is what’s so intriguing. Microtubials are so small, they’re closer to the quantum realm than anything else. Let’s say this table here was a microtubial, yes? On the same scale, one neuron would be the size of the building this café is in, and the brain would be the size of Iwate prefecture.”

  Nozaki nodded slowly, taking it all in. “And the prophetic dreams?”

  “Well, at the quantum level, anything could happen in theory. There’s a phenomenon called entanglement, which means an atomic particle could inter
act with another particle in a different area of space, perhaps even a different time. Perhaps these particles within the microtubials of the subject’s brains are interacting with particles in other brains somewhere else. It happens to one subject, then they influence another while they’re sleeping.”

  “You make it sound like some kind of contagious disease,” Nozaki said.

  Kimura finished the last of his tea. “Maybe you should continue, Nozaki. If you can get empirical evidence of clairvoyance and where it’s located in the brain, that’s certainly an achievement.”

  He stared into space for a few moments, and then turned back to Nozaki, his face animated.

  “You know, I’ve remembered something else. A few years ago, there was a project run by the University of Wisconsin. They asked a number of Tibetan monks to meditate while hooked up for EEG testing and brain scanning.”

  Nozaki raised his eyebrows. “Tibetan monks?”

  “Yes, really. Apparently it was the Dalai Lama’s idea. He was interested in having neuroscientists studying the minds of his monks and seeing what they could come up with. It proved that mental training through the long-term practice of meditation can physically alter the workings and circuitry of the brain. Neuroplasticity, you see. The area where the brain activity took place was pinpointed as the left prefrontal cortex – just behind the left forehead.”

  Nozaki frowned. “Physically alter the brain?”

  “Oh, yes. It proved that neurons are capable of rewiring themselves. We used to believe that connections among brain nerve cells were fixed in childhood, and they wouldn’t change as you got older.”

  They both lapsed into moody silence.

  “We were wrong, Tetsuo.”

  Before they said goodbye, they went out to the back garden of the café. The poems painted on to the back walls were selections from Miyazawa’s best works, and were beautiful examples of calligraphy. The wind from the river was delightfully refreshing.

  But Nozaki couldn’t stop thinking about the comment he had said almost as a joke. It stayed in his thoughts, mutating, turning into something sour and ominous. The remark that the irregularities were somehow contagious.

  Abnormal brain activity.

  As a plague?

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The Strangers in the Living Room

  There was something strangely comforting about being ill as a child, with the knowledge that someone would come, someone would get home soon and take care of everything. The daytime and the afternoons were almost fun, filled with the smug knowledge that the world was carrying on while you were having a break, the merry-go-round was still revolving but you had stepped off for a while.

  The mood changed as the day slipped down towards evening and shadows lengthened on the bedroom wall. The light failed, the bedroom windows became dappled with the orange Freon glow coming in from the street lamps outside, and the house came alive with the sounds of movement, people signaling their presence, signaling that they cared.

  Before David opened his eyes, he had the sensation of being deeply relaxed. There were voices so close, they could almost have been in the same room as him.

  He opened his eyes.

  He was lying on his own futon. He turned his head to the right to look through the open sliding doors into the main living room.

  Someone he’d never seen before was in his apartment.

  An elderly man sat on the sofa. David’s sofa. An elderly-looking gent in a white suit, panama hat next to him on the desk. He was reading a book, and he looked up sharply at David, sensing that he had awoken. “Good afternoon,” the man said.

  The man had been watching him. In bed.

  “Who are you?” David asked, his voice croaky with sleep.

  The man’s face was sinewy, with swept-back, plush grey hair, a remote look in his blue eyes, and an amicable smile. He was meticulously dressed, with a cravat at the neck of his white shirt, and David noticed the diamond-pattern on the socks he wore pushed into the room slippers. David’s slippers.

  “My name is Professor Benjamin Weiss,” the man replied.

  David sat up, his arms and shoulders stiff. The room was pleasantly cool; the man had switched the air-conditioning on. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, I’m in Japan on a kind of a research trip, you see.”

  “No, I mean what are you doing in my room?”

  The man cleared his throat. “You collapsed outside Aomori University Hospital. I noticed you were in trouble, I had a word with the hospital and they told me where you lived. So I brought you back here.”

  Memories came back in a rush. “Saori,” David blurted out, “the hospital–”

  He froze when he noticed movement from his right. A woman stepped out of David’s tiny kitchen, holding a tray laden with steaming bowls. A Japanese woman, not exactly young but not middle-aged, in a long white dress that came down to her ankles. Her hair was coiled up on top of her head in braids, and she wore an intricate brooch with red, green and blue jewels below her left shoulder.

  “Let me introduce my colleague,” the old man drawled. “Namiko Gozen, the high priestess of the Sarube Order of Shinto.”

  The woman put down the tray on the table next to David’s bed, and then formally bowed. “Yorishiku onegai shimasu. I hope you don’t mind, but I made some ochazuke for you. Rice mixed with Japanese tea. When you’ve been ill, this is very good for you.”

  Speechless, David took the bowl, holding it gingerly as he crossed his legs underneath him. “Ill,” he said, looking at the bowl. “That depends what you mean by ill.”

  It was all coming back to him, the dreams, the visions, the Kuchisake-Onna. He stared back at the old man. “What were you doing at the hospital anyway?”

  The Professor smiled. “David, it’s a long story. You’d better eat that first, to get your strength up.”

  Frowning, David took the chopsticks Namiko offered – his own best chopsticks, the souvenir ones from Asakusa down in Tokyo – and started slurping ochazuke into his mouth. It was strong and musky, redolent with the flavors of seaweed, rice, green tea. “So you said something about a research trip?” he asked suspiciously.

  The man shifted position in his chair, putting the book he’d been reading on top of David’s computer. David jabbed his chopsticks in the air as a sudden thought struck him. “Are you investigating the hospital?”

  A look passed between Weiss and Namiko, a secretive look that David caught and registered. “Yes,” Namiko said after a pause. “Yes, you could say we are.”

  “It’s the Kageyama Treatment, isn’t it? So it’s true, then? It’s dangerous?”

  “David, David,” Weiss got to his feet, and David could now see how tall he was, framed in the confines of the ageing Japanese manshon. “One thing at a time, David. What’s important is that you get back to your proper self. Take things easy. You finish that, then have another nap.”

  The soup in David’s mouth suddenly tasted rancid. “I don’t want to go to sleep.”

  Weiss smiled at him knowingly. “There’s nothing to fear, young man. Believe it or not, you’re in good hands now.”

  Funnily enough, David did believe it. Looking at the old man’s face, looking at Namiko’s smile, he suddenly felt very calm, almost relaxed. It was good to have someone watching over him, and somehow, he felt that these two meant what they said.

  He finished the ochazuke, handed back the bowl to Namiko, and lay back on the bed, suddenly very drowsy once more.

  He lay back. He was ill, he knew, and like they said, he had to recover. He suddenly felt too tired to worry. His head sank into the pillow, through the futon, down through the floors of the old apartment building into the soft warm earth. He closed his eyes, and the last thing he heard was the drone of the old man’s voice.

  “Sleep. Sleep. No nightmares will come, I promise you.”

  David awoke.

  He shifted on the futon, sheets rustling against the tatami, awareness spreading out
into his surroundings. He realized he couldn’t remember any of his dreams; relief and gratitude washed over him like slipping into a warm bath.

  The electric light was on in the kitchen, and the windows told him it was dark outside, the dusk of full evening. Voices came from the other room.

  “No, no, he’s not ready to see it yet…”

  The woman and the elderly man were still there. Namiko sat on the armchair, sheets of paper in her hands. “Careful when you’re getting up,” the Professor said, “There’s something around your neck.”

  “What?” David looked down. “What’s this?”

  There was indeed something around his neck. It looked like metal, a metal disc on a black thread; something was written on the disc. A strange, complicated symbol with lettering around it in a circle, in a language that wasn’t English, or Japanese, but…

  “What language is this?” he asked.

  The Professor smiled. “It’s Hebrew.”

  David pushed his chin further onto his chest, looking at the symbols upside-down. “So why is it around my neck?”

  “For your own protection.”

  “A talisman?”

  “Ah, you know what a talisman is. Good.”

  “Well, of course I do. They sell them at all the temples here.” He flicked a glance at Namiko. “And all the shrines, as well.” David frowned. “What are you a Professor of, exactly?”

  “Jewish Studies at Metropolitan University, London.”

  “So you’ve given me some kind of Jewish good luck charm?”

  “Oh, it’s much more than that. It’s an amulet that protects the wearer against outside influences.”

  “Right. Sorry, I’ve got to go to the loo.”

  After emptying his bladder, he stared at his image in the mirror, leaning closer to get a good look at the talisman. Above a row of Hebrew characters he saw a snake, not a coiled snake but a snake in the act of sinuous motion. Above that, a single Hebrew letter, and next to it, a circle with a cross in it. Not a Christian cross, naturally; it looked more like the letter X.