Number9Dream

by Unknown

  Xanadu, way out beyond Tokyo bay, is having its grand opening today. Bunting flutters over the expressway exit, a giant Bridgestone airship floats above the enormous dome. The glands in my throat start to throb. Valhalla opens in the new year, and Nirvana and its new airport monorail terminus are still under construction. The traffic slugs to a crawl. Coaches, family wagons, jeeps, sports cars, coaches queue bumper to bumper through the toll-gate. Flags of the world hang limp. An enormous banner reads ‘Xanadu Open Today! Family Paradise Here on Earth! Nine-Screen Multiplex! Olympic Pool! Krypton Dance Emporium! Karaoke Beehive! Cuisine Cosmos! California Lido! Neptune Sea Park! Pluto Pachinko! Parking space for 10,000 – yes, 10,000! – automobiles.’ A motorbike cop waves us into an access road. ‘Cadillacs get you in anywhere.’ Lizard stubs out another Hope. ‘One of ours,’ says Frankenstein as the window slides down. ‘The good old days are back. Before your time every fucking cop in the fucking city recognized us.’ The Cadillac veers up a slope straight into the sun, tinted by the windscreen into a dark star. Over the top we enter a building site, walled off from Xanadu by a great screen of metal sheeting. Gravel piles, slab stacks, concrete mixers, unplanted trees with roots in sacks. ‘Where are all the happy workers?’ asks Lizard. ‘Holiday for the Grand Opening,’ says Frankenstein. Rounding a block of Portakabins comes Valhalla. This is a dazzling black glass pyramid built of triangles rising from building rubble. The Cadillac drives down a ramp into shadow, surfing to a halt in front of a barrier arm. A porter slides open the window of his box. He is about ninety and is either drunk or has Parkinson’s disease. Frankenstein’s window lowers and Frankenstein glowers. The porter repeatedly salutes and bows. ‘Open,’ growls Frankenstein, ‘fucking sesame.’ The arm rises and the porter bows out of sight. ‘Where did they dig him up?’ asks Lizard. ‘The pet sematary?’ The Cadillac cruises into the black, reverses and halts. I feel a lurch of excitement. Am I really in the same building as my father?

  ‘Out,’ says Lizard.

  We are in a basement carpark smelling of oil, petrol and breeze blocks. Two Cadillacs are parked alongside ours. My eyes need more time to adjust – it is too dark to see the walls, or anything. Frankenstein pokes me in the small of my back. ‘March, cub scout.’ I follow him – a ball of dim light flickers on and off. A round window in a swing-door. Beyond is a gloomy service corridor smelling of fresh paint and echoing with our footsteps. ‘Hasn’t even been built yet and the lighting’s already fucked,’ notes Lizard. Other corridors run off from this. It occurs to me to be afraid. Nobody knows I am here. Wrong: my father knows. I try to fix landmarks in my memory – right at this fire hose, straight on past this notice-board. Frankenstein halts by a men’s toilet. Lizard unlocks it. ‘In you go.’

  ‘I don’t need the toilet.’

  ‘It wasn’t a fucking question.’

  ‘When do I meet my father?’

  Lizard smirks. ‘We’ll tell him how eager yer are.’ Frankenstein foots the door open, Lizard clamps my nose and shoves me in – the door is locked before I regain my balance. I am in a white bathroom. The floor tiles, wall tiles, ceiling, fittings, sinks, urinals, cubicle doors – everything is snowblindingly white. No windows, no other exits. The door is metal and unkickdownable. I bang on it a couple of times. ‘Hey! How long are you going to leave me in here?’

  Behind me a toilet flushes.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  A cubicle door unbolts and swings open. ‘Thought I recognized that voice,’ says Yuzu Daimon, doing up his belt. ‘What timing. You caught me in mid-dump. So what are you doing in a bad dream like this?’

  Yuzu Daimon washes his hands, watching me in the mirror. ‘Are you going to answer my question or am I going to get the silent treatment until our prison guard comes along to take me away?’

  ‘You have a nerve.’

  He shakes his hands under the dryer but nothing happens, so he dries them on his T-shirt. Its picture shows a cartoon schoolgirl lowering a smoking gun; her speech bubble reads So that’s what it feels like to kill . . . I like it. ‘I get it. You’re still sulking about the love hotel.’

  ‘You are going to make one great lawyer.’

  ‘Thanks for the non-compliment.’ He turns round. ‘Are we going to keep up this period of mourning or are you going to tell me why you are here?’

  ‘My father brought me.’

  ‘And your father is whom?’

  ‘I dunno yet.’

  ‘That seems rather careless of you.’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘To have the shit kicked out of me. You may get to watch.’

  ‘Why? Did you maroon them in a love hotel?’

  ‘Pretty funny, Miyake. It’s a long story.’

  I look at the door.

  ‘Okay.’ Daimon perches on the washbasin. ‘Sit on any chair you like.’

  There are no chairs. ‘I’ll stand.’

  The toilet cistern stops filling and the silence sighs loudly.

  ‘This is an old-fashioned war of succession tale. Once upon a time there was an ancient despot called Konosuke Tsuru. His empire had its roots way back in the Occupation days, in outdoor markets and siphoned-off cigarettes. You don’t happen to . . . ?’ I shake my head. ‘Half a century later Konosuke Tsuru had progressed to breakfast meetings with cabinet members. His interests span the Tokyo underworld and the Tokyo overlords, from drugs to construction – a handy portfolio in a country whose leaders’ sole remedy for economic slumps is to pour concrete down mountainsides and build suspension bridges to uninhabited islands. But I digress. Konosuke’s right-hand man was Jun Nagasaki. His left hand man was Ryutaro Morino. Emperor Tsuru, Admiral Nagasaki and General Morino. Are you with me so far?’

  I give the patronizing slimer a slight nod.

  ‘On his ninety-somethingth birthday Tsuru receives a massive heart attack and an ambulance ride to Shiba-koen hospital. This is February of this year. A delicate time – Morino and Nagasaki were played off against one another by Tsuru as a check on his underlings. Tradition would demand that Tsuru name a successor, but he is a tough old dog and vows to pull through. Nagasaki decides to usher in his manifest destiny seven days later by staging his Pearl Harbor – not against Morino’s forces, which are on red alert, but on Tsuru’s, which believed themselves to be sacrosanct. Over a hundred key Tsuru men are wiped out in a single night, all within ten minutes. No negotiation, no quarter, no mercy.’ Daimon shoots me with his fingers. ‘Tsuru himself managed to get himself lugged out of hospital – one rumour says he was battered to death with his own golf clubs, another rumour says he got as far as Singapore, where a relapse caught up with him. He’s history. By dawn the throne was Nagasaki’s. Any questions from the floor at this point?’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Easy. My father is a bent cop in the pay of Nagasaki. Next.’

  A blunt answer from a slippery liar. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Let me go on. If this was a Yakuza movie, the Tsuru faction survivors would team up with Morino and stage a war of honour. Nagasaki broke the code and must be punished, right? Reality is less exciting. Morino dithers, losing valuable time. The Tsuru survivors work out which way the wind is blowing and surrender to Nagasaki’s offer of amnesty. They are promptly killed, but never mind. By May Nagasaki not only has Tsuru’s Tokyo operations under his thumb, but the Korean and Triad gangs too. By June he is helping to choose the godfather of the Tokyo governor’s grandchild. When Morino sends an ambassador to Nagasaki proposing they divide the kingdom, Nagaski sends the ambassador back minus his arms and legs. By July Nagasaki has the lot, and Morino has sunk to scaring brothel owners for insurance money. Nagasaki is content to watch Morino go extinct, rather than dirty the sole of his boot by stamping on him.’

  ‘Why does none of this make the newspapers?’

  ‘You straight citizens of Japan are living in a movie set, Miyake. You are unpaid extras. The politicos are the actors. But the true directors, the Nagasakis
and the Tsurus, you never see. A show is run from the wings, not centre-stage.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me why you ended up here?’

  ‘I fell in love with the girl Morino fell in love with.’

  ‘Miriam.’

  Daimon’s mask slips and for the first time ever I see his real face. The door bangs open and Lizard appears. ‘Arewe comfortable, ladies?’ He flicks open his knife, spins it, catches it and points it at Daimon. ‘You first.’ Daimon slides off the washbasin counter, still looking at me, puzzled. Lizard smacks his lips. ‘The time has come to kiss yer oh-so-charming face goodbye, Daimon.’ Daimon smiles in return. ‘Is your dress sense a charity fund-raiser or do you actually believe you look cool?’ Lizard smiles back. ‘Cute.’ As Daimon passes, Lizard whacks Daimon in the windpipe, grabs the back of his head and slams it into the metal door. ‘I get such a hard-on from casual violence,’ says Lizard. ‘Say something cute again.’ Daimon picks himself up, bloody-nosed, and stumbles into the corridor. The door is relocked.

  Either I am losing my mind or the bathroom walls are bending inwards. Time bends too. My watch is dead so I have no idea how long I have been in here. Cockroach navigates the floor. I cup my hands and drink some water. I play a game I often play to console myself: searching for Anju in my reflection. I often catch sight of her around my eyes. I try this game: concentrate on my mother’s face; subtract that face from my own; the remainder should be my father. Could my father be Ryutaro Morino or Jun Nagasaki? Daimon implied Morino brought us here. But he also implied Morino is washed up. Too washed up to own a fleet of Cadillacs. I suck a champagne bomb. My throat is sore. Mrs Sasaki will have decided Aoyama was right about me – I am an unreliable dropout. Cockroach reappears. I suck my last champagne bomb. Lizard watches me from the mirror – I jump. ‘Here comes the moment you have been waiting for, Miyake. Father will see you now.’

  Valhalla is one enormous leisure hotel. When it is completed it will be the plushest in Tokyo. Sugar chandeliers, milky carpets, cream walls, silver fittings. Air-cons are not installed, so the passageways are at the mercy of the sun, and under all this glass I am squeaking with sweat in thirty seconds. Thick smells of carpet underlay and fresh paint. On the far side of the building-site perimeter fence I see the vast dome of Xanadu, courtyards and even a fake river and fake caverns. The windows rob the world outside of all colour. Everything is in wartime newsreel tones. The air is as dry as a desert. Lizard knocks on room 333. ‘Father, I got Miyake with me.’

  I understand my stupendous mistake. ‘Father’ does not mean ‘my father’: ‘father’ means ‘Yakuza father’. I would laugh if the afternoon were not now so dangerous. A voice rasps out a moment later. ‘Enter!’ The door is unlocked from inside. Eight people sit around a conference table in a spotless meeting room. At the head sits a man in his fifties. ‘Sit the infant down.’ His voice is as thirsty as sandpaper. Cavernous eye sockets, plump lips, mottled and flaky skin – the sort used on young actors playing old roles – and a wart in the corner of his eye bigger than a strayed nipple. My way-toolate fear was quite correct. If this troll is my father, I am Miffy the Bunny. I take the defendant’s chair. I am being prosecuted by a group of dangerous strangers, and I don’t even know what the charge is. ‘So,’ the man says. ‘This is Eiji Miyake.’

  ‘Yes. Who are you?’

  Death gives me a choice. A point-blank bullet through the brain or a thirty-metre fall. Frankenstein and the stage manager of this black farce are placing bets as to which I will choose right now. Beyond hope is beyond panic. Here comes the Mongolian, strolling up the unfinished bridge. My right eye is so swollen the night swims. Yes, of course I am afraid, and frustrated that my stupid life is ending so soon. But mostly I feel the weight of the nightmare, stopping me waking. I am cattle in a cage, waiting for the bolt through my skull. Why gibber? Why beg? Why try to run when the only escape is a drop through blackness? If my head survived the fall, the rest of my body would not. The Mongolian spits, and folds a fresh strip of gum into his mouth. He pulls out his gun. After Anju I dreamed of drowning several times a week, right up until I got my guitar. In those dreams I handled fear by ceasing to struggle, and I do the same now. I have less than forty seconds. I unfold the photo of my father one last time. Dad is still uncreased. Yes, we do look alike. My daydream was right in that respect, at least. He is fatter than I thought, but hey. I touch his cheekbone and hope, somewhere, he knows. Down below on the reclaimed land Lizard whoops – ‘A twitcher!’ Bang! Picking off the wounded is more interesting to him than how I die. ‘Yer got the wobblies too, huh?’ Bang ! ‘Guns! The ultimate fucking video game!’ Bang! One of the Cadillacs wheel-screeches into life. My father sits in the driving seat of the car in the photograph, smiling at whatever Akiko Kato is telling him as she gets in. A black-and-white day gone by. This is the closest we get. Stars.

  ‘Who am I?’ The Yakuza head repeats my question. His lips barely move and his voice is tone dead. ‘My accountant calls me Mr Morino. My men call me Father. My subscribers call me God. My wife calls me Money. My lovers call me Incredible.’ A ripple of humour. ‘My enemies call me the stuff of nightmares. You call me Sir.’ He retrieves a cigar from an ashtray and relights it. ‘Sit down. Your trial is already behind schedule.’ I do as I am told and look around at my jury. Frankenstein, chomping a Big Mac. A weathered, leathered man, who appears to be meditating, rocking very slightly to and fro, to and fro. A woman is using a laptop computer, pianist fast. She reminds me of Queen of Spades’ Mama-san until I realize she is Queen of Spades’ Mama-san. She ignores me. To the left are three identikit men from the catalogue of Yakuza henchmen. A horn section on pause. Through an opening, visible out of the corner of my eye, a girl dressed in a loose yukata sucks a popsicle. When I try to meet her eye she retreats out of sight. Lizard takes the chair next to me. Ryutaro Morino watches me, over the pile of junk-food Styrofoam boxes. The sound of breathing, the creaking of Leatherjacket’s chair, the tappety-tap-tap of the computer keyboard. What are we waiting for? Morino clears his throat. ‘Eiji Miyake, how do you plead?’

  ‘What is the charge?’

  Lizard’s knife scores a deep cut along the table edge. It stops an inch from my thumb. ‘What is the charge, sir ?’

  I swallow. ‘What is the charge, sir ?’

  ‘If you are guilty you know the charge.’

  ‘So I must be innocent, sir.’

  I hear the ice-lolly girl in the next room titter.

  ‘Not guilty.’ Morino nods his head gravely. ‘Then explain why you were at Queen of Spades on Saturday the ninth of September.’

  ‘Is Yuzu Daimon here?’

  Morino gives one nod, my face whacks the table-top, my arm is yanked above my head one degree away from snapping off. Lizard grunts in my ear. ‘What d’yer suppose yer just did wrong?’

  ‘Didn’t – answer – the – question.’ My arm is released.

  ‘Bright boy.’ Morino blinks. ‘Explain why you were at Queen of Spades on Saturday the ninth of September.’

  ‘Yuzu Daimon took me there.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Yet you told Mama-san here last Saturday that you didn’t know Daimon.’

  Mama-san glances at me. ‘I warned you – I cannot tolerate whining juveniles. Can anyone tell me how to say “fifteen billion” in Russian?’ Leatherjacket replies. Mama-san carries on typing. Morino waits for my answer.

  ‘I didn’t know Daimon. I still don’t. I left my baseball hat in a games centre, went back, he had it, gave it me back, we started talking—’

  ‘—and the rest, as they say, is history. But Queen of Spades is a choosy club. Yuzu Daimon signed you in as his stepbrother. Are you saying this is a lie?’

  I wonder what the consequences will be.

  ‘Did you hear my question, Eiji Miyake?’

  ‘Yes, it was a lie. Sir.’

  ‘I say that Jun Nagasaki sent you to spy.’

  ‘Not true.’

 
‘So you know the name Jun Nagasaki?’

  ‘Since an hour ago, yes. Only the name.’

  ‘You went to Queen of Spades with Yuzu Daimon to harass a hostess – you know her as Miriam.’

  I shake my head. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You went to Queen of Spades with Yuzu Daimon to persuade her to defect into Jun Nagasaki’s circle of beagle-fucking traitors.’