Number9dream

by David Mitchell

  “Daddy.”

  Something broke in me.

  Quite calmly, I decided to throw you off the balcony.

  New ink, new pen. Pretty dramatic point for my pen to die. So. Quite calmly. I decided to throw you off the balcony. Those eight words explain our lives since. I’m not saying they justify what I did, not at all. I don’t mean I wanted to throw you over the balcony. I mean I was going to. Really. It is so hard to write this.

  This is what happened. I flung open my bedroom door—it opened outward—and slid you clean across the polished wooden landing, over the lip of the stairs and out of sight. I froze, but I couldn’t have stopped your fall, not even if I was superhuman. You didn’t cry as you fell. I heard you. Imagine a sack of books falling downstairs. You sounded like that. I waited for you to start screaming, and waited, and waited. Suddenly time moved three times as fast, to catch up with itself. You were lying at the bottom, with blood squirting out of your ear. I can still see you. (I still do, every time I go down any stairs anywhere.) I was hysterical. The ambulance people had to shout at me to stop me jabbering. Then, when I put down the phone, guess what I saw? You were sitting up, licking the blood on your fingers.

  The ambulance man said that children go limp sometimes, like rag dolls. That saved you from major damage. The doctor said you were a lucky boy, but he meant I was a lucky woman. The vodka on my breath pretty much shot down my story about you climbing over the stair guard. Actually, we were all of us lucky. I know I was going to kill you, and could have spent the rest of my life in prison. I can’t believe I’m finally writing this. Three days later I paid the nanny a month’s money and told her I was taking you to see your grandmother. I was mentally unfit to raise you and Anju. The rest, you know.

  I’m not writing this for your sympathy or forgiveness. This story is beyond all that. But the memories even now keep me awake, and showing you them is the only way I know to ease them. I want to get well. I mean—

  —you can tell from the creases, can’t you, I just crumpled this up and threw it at the trash can. I knew I could never get it in, so I didn’t even bother aiming. And guess what? It fell straight in, without even touching the sides. Who knows? Maybe this is one of those times when superstition pays. I’ll go and slip this under Dr. Suzuki’s door, before I change my mind again. If you want to call me, phone the number on the letterhead. Up to you. I wish—

  FUJIFILM is pushing four o’clock. What is the proper way to react to the news that your mother wanted to kill you? After three years of noncommunication. I’m used to my mother being out there, somewhere; but not too near. Things are painless that way. If I move anything, I’m afraid it will all start all over again. The only plan I can think of is Do Nothing. Truth is, I do not care. It is my father’s “nowhere” that I can’t handle, not my mother’s “somewhere.” I know what I mean even if I can’t put it into words. Cockroach is still struggling. I want to see it. I crawl over to the fridge—so humid tonight. The motel starts vibrating as I pick it up. Cockroach panics. A part of me wants to free it, a part of me wishes it instant death. I force myself to peer in. Bicycling feelers and furious wings! So revolting I drop the motel—it lands on its roof. Now Cockroach is dying upside down, poor shiny bastard, but I don’t want to touch the motel. I look for something to flip it over. I fish in the trash— gingerly, in case Elder Brother of Cockroach is in there—and find the squashed box Cat’s biscuits came in. On Thursday, after I read the letter I put it down and did nothing for I don’t know how long. I’m about to reread it when Cat appears. She jumps on my lap and shows me her shoulder. Clotted blood and soft skin show where a gobbet of fur has been gouged off. “You’ve been fighting?” I forget about the letter for a moment. I don’t know anything about first aid, especially cat first aid, but I think I should disinfect the wound. Of course I don’t have anything as practical as antiseptic fluid so I go downstairs and ask Buntaro.

  Buntaro pauses the video at the moment the Titanic upends and people fall down the mile-long deck. He takes a cigarette from his box of Caster and lights it without offering me one. “Don’t tell me. Upon receiving another letter from his mysterious lawyer lady, telling our hero it is all over, he becomes so depressed that he decides to disembowel himself, but all he has is a pair of nail scissors, so—”

  “I have a wounded cat on my hands.”

  Buntaro clouds over. “A what, kid?”

  “A wounded cat.”

  “You’re keeping pets in my apartment?”

  “No. It just wanders in when it’s hungry.”

  “Or when it wants medical attention?”

  “It’s just a scratch. I want to dab some disinfectant on it.”

  “Eiji Miyake, animal doctor.”

  “Please, Buntaro.”

  He grumbles and sifts under the register for a while. He pulls out a dusty red box and causes a landslide of junk around his feet, and hands it to me. “It better not be bleeding on my tatami.”

  “You tight-assed, whining parasite, you’ve fleeced every outgoing tenant for replacement tatami, but you haven’t actually changed it since 1969, have you?” is not what I tell my landlord and job benefactor. Instead I just shake my head meekly. “She isn’t bleeding now. She just has this sort of wound that needs seeing to.”

  “What’s this cat look like? My wife might know the owner.”

  “Black, white paws and tail, and a tartan collar with a silver bell.”

  “No owner, no name?”

  I shake my head. “Thanks for this.” I tap the box and begin my get-away.

  “Don’t get too attached,” Buntaro calls up the stairs after me. “Remember the ‘Thou shalt not have pets except cactuses’ clause in your lease.”

  I turn around and peer down at him. “What lease?”

  Buntaro taps his forehead. He loves reminding me I am at his mercy.

  I seal up my capsule and attend to Cat. The witch hazel must sting her—it always stung me and Anju when Wheatie doused our cuts with it—but Cat doesn’t even flinch. “Girls shouldn’t get into fights,” I tell her. I chuck the cotton wool away and return the first-aid box to Buntaro. Cat makes herself comfortable in my yukata. Weird. Cat trusts me to look after her, me of all people.

  A head appears on the claims counter. Its owner is a spindly girl of maybe eleven, in a Mickey and Donald jogging suit and with red ribbons in her hair. Her eyes are enormous. “Good afternoon,” she says. “I followed the signs. Is this the lost-property office?”

  “Yes,” I answer. “Have you lost anything?”

  “Mommy,” she says. “She always wanders off without my permission.”

  I tut. “I can relate to that.” What do I do? Suga skipped the “lost child” chapter, and now he is collecting the trolley from Ueno annex. Mrs. Sasaki is on her lunch hour. Somewhere her mom is running around in hysterics, imagining train wheels and organ-harvesting child kidnappers. I flap. “Why don’t you sit on the counter,” I tell the girl. She clambers up. Right. What do I do? “Aren’t you going to ask me my name?” asks the girl.

  “Of course I am. What’s your name?”

  “Yuki Chiyo. Aren’t you going to call Mommy on the big speaker?”

  “Of course I am.”

  I go into the side office. Mrs. Sasaki mentioned the PA system on my first day, but Suga never showed me how to use it. Turn this key, flick this switch. I hope. A green light flashes under SPEAK. I clear my throat and lean into the microphone. The sound of me clearing my throat fills Ueno. When Yuki Chiyo hears her name she hugs herself.

  I, however, am broiling with embarrassment. Yuki Chiyo studies me.

  “So, Yuki. How old are you?”

  “Ten. But Mommy tells me not to speak to strangers.”

  “You already spoke to me.”

  “Only because I needed you to call Mommy.”

  “You ungrateful tadpole.”

  I hear Aoyama marching this way before I see him. His shoes, his keys. “You! Miyake!”

  O
bviously I am in deep shit. “Good afternoon—”

  “Do not ‘Good afternoon’ me! Since when have you had the authority to make a general override announcement?”

  My throat is dry. “I didn’t realize that—”

  “Suppose a train were hurtling into Ueno with a snapped brake cable!” His eyes froth. “Suppose I were making an evacuation announcement!” Veins bulge. “Suppose we receive a bomb warning!” Is he going to fire me? “And you, you blanket out my warning with a request for a lost girl’s mother to proceed to the lost-property office on the second floor!” He pauses to reoxygenize. “You, you pollute the order of this institution with your youthful—liberal—modern—”

  “Tra-la-la-la-la!” A leopard-skin woman pads up to the counter.

  “Mommy!” Yuki Chiyo waves.

  “Dearest, you know it upsets Mommy when you go off like this! Have you been making trouble for this handsome young stripling?” She nudges Aoyama aside and deposits her designer bags on the counter. A perky, vixen smile—I guess I am the stripling. “I am so frightfully sorry. What can I say? Yuki plays this little game whenever we go shopping, don’t you, dearest? My husband says it’s just a stage she’s going through. Do I have to sign anywhere?”

  “No, madam.”

  Aoyama smolders.

  “Let me give you a little something for your trouble.”

  “Really, madam, no need.”

  “You are a darling.” She turns to Aoyama. “Oh, good! A porter!”

  I kill my snicker a fraction too late. Aoyama radiates nuclear fury. “No, madam, I am the assistant stationmaster.”

  “Oh. Well, you look like a porter in that getup. Come on, Yuki.”

  Yuki turns to me as her mother leads her away and sticks her tongue out. Oh, don’t mention it. Aoyama breathes deeply until his fury has cooled into malice. “You, Miyake, you, I am not going to forget this! I am going to file a report about this outrage to the disciplinary committee this very afternoon!” Off he storms. I would have preferred the fury. I wonder if I still have a job. Suga steps out from the back office. “Quite a talent you have there for annoying people, Miyake.”

  “You were there all along?”

  “You seemed in control of the situation.”

  I want to kill Suga so I say nothing.

  I am on the ferry! So many times Anju and I watched it disappear to the world over the horizon, now I am actually on it! The deck sways, and the wind is strong enough to lean back into. Yakushima, the enormous island I live on, is slowly but surely growing smaller. Mr. Ikeda is scanning the shoreline with his army binoculars. Seabirds follow the boat, just hanging there. The seventh graders are arguing about what will happen when the ferry sinks and we have to fight for the lifeboats. Others are watching the TV, or being thown out of places you are not supposed to be in. One kid is vomiting in the toilets and some classmates are discussing the contents. The engine pounds away. I smell engine fumes. I watch the hull slice through the spray-chopped waves. If I hadn’t already decided on being a soccer star I would become a sailor. I look for the shrine of the thunder god, but it is already hidden in the morning haze. I wish Anju were here. I wonder what she’ll do today. I try to remember the last day we weren’t together. I go back as far as I can, but no such day ever was. Yakushima is now the size of a barn. I watch new islands rise ahead and fall behind. I can fit Yakushima inside the O of my thumb and first finger. A tooth is wobbling loose. Mr. Ikeda is on the deck too. “Sakurajima,” he shouts at me above the wind and the engine, pointing ahead. I watch the volcano grow and take up a third of the sky. The torn crater belches graceful, solid clouds of smoke over another third. “You can taste the ash,” shouts Mr. Ikeda, “on your tongue! And over there, that’s Kagoshima!” Already? The voyage is supposed to take three hours. I consult my Zax Omega watch and find that, yes, nearly three hours have passed. Here comes Kagoshima. Huge! You could fit the whole of Anbo, our village, between two jetties in the harbor. Enormous buildings, vast cranes, huge freighters marked with place-names I mostly haven’t heard of. I guess when I was here last my memory was switched off. Or maybe it was night? This is where the world starts. Wait until I tell Anju. She’ll be amazed. Amazed.

  According to FUJIFILM, four o’clock slipped by fifteen minutes ago. The best I can hope for now is a couple of hours of sleep, so I can be a zombie at work instead of a decaying corpse. Yesterday was the last day of Suga, so I’ll be on my own all afternoon. I can still see the body falling. Cockroach is quiet. Has he escaped? Is he plotting revenge? Is he asleep, dreaming of stewing garbage? They say that for every single cockroach you see, there are ninety relatives out of sight. Under the floor, in cavities, behind cupboards. Under futons. “Poor Mom,” she is hoping I’ll think. “Okay, she dumped us at our uncle’s when we were three, but let bygones be bygones. I’ll phone her this very morning.” No way! Forget it! I imagine I can hear Tokyo stir. My neck itches. I scratch. My back itches. I scratch. My crotch itches. I scratch. Once Tokyo itself wakes, all hope of sleep is doomed. The fan stirs the heat. How dare she write me a letter like that? How dare she? I was tired when I went to bed. What happened?

  “My final Friday,” says Suga. “Deep joy. Tomorrow, freedom. Imho, you should go back to college, Miyake. It beats earning a living for a living.” I am not really listening—this is the morning after I discovered that when I was three years old my mother decided to throw me off a ninth-floor balcony—but when he says that word again I give in. “Why do you keep using that word?”

  Suga acts puzzled. “What word?”

  “Imho.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Suga says, not sounding at all sorry, “I forgot.”

  “Forgot what?”

  “Most of my friends are e-friends. Other hackers. We use our own language, you know. Imho stands for the English ‘in my humble opinion.’ Like, ‘I think that . . .’ Cool word, or what?”

  The telephone rings. Suga looks—I answer.

  “Pleased with yourself, Miyake?” A voice I know, simmering with malice.

  “Mr. Aoyama?”

  “You work for them, don’t you?”

  “. . . For Ueno Station, you mean, sir?”

  “Drop the act! I mean what I mean! I know you work for the consultants!”

  “. . . Which consultants, sir?”

  “I told you to drop it! I see right through you! You were in my office to snoop. To filch. To assess. I know your little game. Then there was your provocation the day before yesterday. That was to get me out of my office, while my files were copied. It all adds up now. Oh yes. Deny it! I dare you to deny it!”

  “I swear, Mr. Aoyama, there has been some mistake here . . .”

  “A mistake?” Aoyama shouts. “How right you are! The biggest mistake of your treacherous little life! I have served Ueno since before you were born! I have friends at the transport ministry! I went to an influential university!” I cannot believe his voice could get any louder, but it does. “If your masters believe I can be ‘restructured’ to an end-of-the-line deep freeze in Akita with two platforms and a company dormitory made of paper, they are grievously mistaken! My lackey years are long behind me!” He breaks, pants, and launches his final assault. “Ueno has standards! Ueno has systems! Your scumbag parasite know-nothing masters want war, I will give them war, and you, you, you, you worm, you cockroach, you flea, you will get blasted by crossfire and I will spit on your grave!”

  He hangs up.

  Suga sort of sneers. “What was that about?”

  Why me? Why is it always me?

  “How can I say this tactfully?” Mr. Ikeda paces to and fro during our halftime pep talk. “Boys. You are utterly, utterly crap. Shambolic. Subhuman. In fact, submammalian. A disgrace. A sickening waste of shipping fuel. A nonteam of myopic, crippled sloths. We have a miracle to thank that the enemy is not nine goals up, and the name of this miracle is Mitsui.” Mitsui chews gum, enjoying the taste of despotic favor. He is a gifted and aggressive goalkeeper—it is lucky he
lacks the imagination to diversify into playground bullying. Mitsui’s father—a taxi driver—is Yakushima’s most notorious alcoholic, so our goalkeeper has been calculating the flight paths of projectiles from an early age. Ikeda goes on. “In a more civilized century, I could have insisted that the rest of you commit seppuku. You will, however, shave your heads in shame if we lose. Defenders. Despite Mr. Mitsui’s valiant work, how many times has the enemy hit the crossbar? Nakamori?”

  “Three times, sir.”

  “And the post?”

  I suck my warm orange, readjust my shin pads, watch the enemy team having their pep talk—their coach is laughing. The stale smell of boys and soccer uniforms. The afternoon has clouded over. The volcano puffs. “Miyake? The post?”

  “Uh, twice, sir,” I guess.

  “ ‘Uh, twice, sir.’ Uh, yes. Uh, Nakayama, midfield means ‘middle of the field,’ not ‘middle of the penalty area.’ Attack means we attack the enemy goal. How many times has their goalkeeper had to touch the ball? Nakamura?”

  “Not very often, sir.”

  Ikeda massages his temples. “Not once, actually, sir! Not once! He has made three—separate—dates with three—separate—cheerleaders! Listen to me! I am videoing this match, and, boys, it is my birthday tomorrow. If you do not give me a goalless draw, I warn you, you will remember my displeasure until your deaths. In the second half the wind is on our side. Your orders are to dig in and hold out. One more thing. Do not give away a penalty. I got the enemy coach drunk last night, and he boasted that their penalty taker has never missed. Ever. And remember, if you feel your poor little limbs flagging: my camcorder is watching and will exact retribution on a man-by-man basis.”