Number9dream

by David Mitchell

  “If this isn’t an inexplicable message,” you Lord of Irony—I rap the screen with my knuckles—“then give me another name for it.”

  “Oh dear, sir, not exactly Bill Gates, are you? Perhaps the message was telling you that you lack the funds necessary to complete your transaction?” Of course the screen has returned to normal: my pitiful bank balance. I look around—is somebody watching? Erasing the message when a witness comes up? How? “I know this sounds weird,” I begin, not sure where to continue. Captain Smug just raises his eyebrows. “But somebody is using your ATM to mess your customers around.” Captain Smug does mock fascination. “Shouldn’t that worry you?” Captain Smug folds his arms and tilts his head at an I-went-to-a-top-Tokyo-university angle. I storm off without another word. I cycle back to the lost-property office, as suspicious of parked cars and half-open windows as yesterday. My father was influential enough to have his name left off my and Anju’s birth certificates, but surely this is another league. Only the elite of the elite could swing this. I spend the rest of the afternoon attaching labels to forgotten umbrellas, and weeding out for destruction the ones we have held for twenty-eight days. Might my stepmother be somehow trying to intimidate me? If it is my father, why is he playing these pranks instead of just calling me? Nothing makes sense.

  Friday is payday for us probationary stop gap employees recruited in the middle of the year. The bank is packed—I have to wait several minutes to get to a machine. No sign of Minnie, but Captain Smug hovers in the wings. I pull my baseball cap down low. A woman with ostrich feathers in her hat keeps sneezing over me, and groaning. I insert my card and ask for fourteen thousand yen. The virtual bank teller smiles, bows, and asks me to wait. So far so normal. Your breathing space is all used up. Father is warning you. I am expecting this: from under the visor of my cap I study the line of impatient people. Who? No clue, no idea. The machine shuttles my money. The virtual bank teller bows again. Father is coming for you today. Come on, then! What else do you think I am in the city for? I drum the virtual teller with the bases of my fists. “You aren’t from Tokyo, are you, sir?” Captain Smug is at my shoulder. “I can tell because our Tokyo customers usually have the manners to refrain from assaulting our machines.” “Look at this! Look!” I show him the screen and curse. What did I expect? Please take your money and remove your card. It beeps. I know if I say anything to Captain Smug, or even look at the guy, I will be seized by an urgent desire to make him hurt, and I don’t think my cranium could take another headbutt less than seven days since the last. I ignore his unconcealed why-do-all-the-weirdos-come-on-my-shift? expression, take my money, card, and receipt, and walk around the bank lobby for a while, trying to meet stares. Queues, marble floors, number chimes. Nobody looks at anyone in banks. Then I notice Captain Smug talking to a security man. They are glancing in my direction. I slink off.

  Between the bank and Ueno is the seediest noodle shop in all of Tokyo. As Tokyo has the seediest noodle shops in Japan, this is probably the seediest noodle shop in the world. It is too seedy even to have a name or even a definite color. Suga told me about it. It is as cheap as it should be— unusual for Tokyo—and you can drink as much ice water as you want. Plus, they have comic book collections going back twenty years, including some Zax Omegas that even I have never seen. I park my bike in the alley around the side, smell burnt tar through the fan outlet, and walk in through the strings of beads. Inside is murky and flyblown. Four construction workers sit around four greasy bowls in silence. The cook, an old man who died several days ago, has been allowed to rot on his stool. The single round light is dappled with the bodies of dead insects, and the walls are decorated with spatters and dribbles of grease. A TV runs an old black-and-white yakuza movie, but nobody watches it. A gangster is chucked into a concrete mixer. Fans revolve their heads, this way and that. With a shudder, the cook reanimates his corpse and sits up. “Yeah? What can I do for you?” I order a tempura-egg-onion soba, and sit at the counter. Today, the message said. So this time tomorrow I will know everything: whether this Plan E is the true lead, or if it is yet another dud. I must keep a lid firmly on my hopes. I feel excited and my hopes boil over. Who else could it be but my father? My noodles come. I sprinkle on some chili pepper and watch it spread on the jellyfish of grease. Tasted better, tasted worse.

  Outside in the glare, the bike is missing. A black Cadillac, the sort that the FBI uses for presidential missions, takes up the side alley. The passenger door inches open and a lizard pokes his head out—short, spiky white hair, eyes too far apart. “Looking for anything?” I turn my baseball cap around to shade my eyes. Lizard leans on the Cadillac roof. He is about my age. A dragon tail disappears up one arm of his short-sleeved snakeskin shirt, and a dragon head twists out of the other.

  “My bike.”

  Lizard says something to somebody in the Cadillac. The driver’s door opens, and a man in sunglasses and with a Frankenstein scar down the side of his face gets out, walks around the back of the Cadillac, and picks up a mangle of metal. He brings it around and hands it to me. “This it?” His forearms are densely muscled and his knuckles are chunky with gold. He blocks out the sun. In shock, I hold the metal for a moment before dropping it.

  “It was, yeah.”

  Lizard tuts. “People are such mindless vandals, ain’t they? Breakdown of the family unit, it is.” Frankenstein shunts my ex-bike aside with his foot. “Get in”—he jerks his thumb at the Cadillac—“Father sent us to pick you up.”

  “You came from my father?”

  Frankenstein and Lizard find my surprise funny. “Who else?”

  “And did my father tell you to trash my bike?”

  Lizard clears his throat and spits. “Get in the car, ya lippy cock-wart, or I’ll break both yer fucking arms right here, right now.” Traffic drags its heat and din to the next red light. What choice do I have?

  The Cadillac purrs over the Sumida River bridge on air cushions. The tinted windows retune the bright afternoon, and the air-con chills the inside to fridge-beer temperature. I get goose bumps. Frankenstein drives, Lizard is in the back with me, sprawled pop-star fashion. I could almost enjoy the ride if I was not being abducted by yakuza and if I wasn’t going to lose my job. Maybe I could find a phone and call Mrs. Sasaki to say—what? The last thing I want to do is lie to her. Mrs. Sasaki is okay. I tell myself these things are trifles—my father has sent for me. This is it. Why am I unable to get excited? Northside Tokyo slides by, block after block after block. Better to be a car than a human, out here. Highways, overpasses, off-ramps. A petrochemical plant runs pipes for kilometers, lined by those corkscrewing conifers. A massive car plant. Acre upon acre of white body shells. So my father is some kind of yakuza man. Makes sense, sort of. Money, power, and influence. The white lines and billowing trees and industrial chimneys are dreamlike. The dashboard clock reads 13:23. Mrs. Sasaki will be wondering why I am late. “Any chance I could make a phone call?” Lizard gives me the finger. I push my luck: “All I—” But Frankenstein turns around and says, “Shut the fuck up, Miyake! I cannot stand whining children.” My father gives me no status. I should stop guessing, sit back, and wait. We pass through a tollgate. Frankenstein moves into top gear and the Cadillac eats up the expressway. 13:43. The buildings get more residential, and densely pyloned mountains shuffle this way. On the right the sea pencils in the horizon. Lizard yawns and lights a cigarette. He smokes Hope. “Traveling in style, or what?” says Frankenstein, not to me. “Know how much one of these babies costs?” Lizard toys with a death’s-head ring: “Fuck of a lot.” Frankenstein wets his lips: “Quarter of a million dollars.” Lizard: “What’s that in real money?” Frankenstein thinks: “Twenty-two million yen. Give or take.” Lizard looks at me: “Hear that, Miyake? If ya pass yer entrance exams, slave in an office all yer life, save yer bonuses, get reincarnated nine times, ya’ll be able to zip around in a Cadillac too.” I stare ahead. “Miyake! I’m talking to ya!” “Sorry. I thought I had to shut the fuck up.” Liz
ard whistles and a switchblade knife hisses open. “Watch yer lippyliplip”—the knife flashes at my wrist, the blade slices through the casing of my wristwatch and scrapes through its innards— “fuckhead.” The knife is spinning back in his fingers. Lizard’s eyes flare, daring me to open my mouth. He wins his dare and laughs a scratchy, staccato laugh.

  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 line up bumper to bumper through the tollgate. 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. “That guy is 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 our family.” The Cadillac veers up a slope straight into the sun, tinted by the windshield into a dark star. Over the top we enter a construction site, hidden from Xanadu by a great wall of metal sheeting. Gravel piles, slab stacks, concrete mixers, unplanted trees with roots in sack diapers. “Where are all the happy workers?” asks Lizard. “Holiday for the Grand Opening,” says Frankenstein. Rounding a block of portable toilets 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 either is 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. The Cadillac cruises into the black, reverses, and halts. I feel a lurching thrill, despite my charming companions. Am I really in the same building as my father?

  “Out,” says Lizard.

  We are in a basement car park smelling of oil and cinder blocks. Two Cadillacs are parked alongside ours. My eyes need more time to adjust— it is too dark to see the walls. 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 noticeboard. 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 ya 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 snow-blindingly 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, Miyake. So what are you doing in a bad dream like this?” 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 guards come back to take me away?”

  “You really 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.” “Still sulking about the love hotel, Miyake?”

  “I can see you as a lawyer.”

  “Oh, wow, thanks for the compliment.” He turns around. “Look, are you 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 who?”

  “I dunno yet.”

  Daimon decides not to laugh. “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 abandon them in a love hotel?”

  “Sharp, Miyake, sharp. Ever thought of law?”

  “No. I have this fatal flaw. I trust people, occasionally.”

  Daimon pretends to wince.

  “But I still want to know why you’re here.”

  “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. Tsuru’s right-hand man was Jun Nagasaki. His left-hand man was Ryutaro Morino. Emperor Tsuru, Admiral Nagasaki, and General Morino. With me so far?”

  I give the patronizing slime a slight nod.

  “On his ninety-somethingth birthday Tsuru receives a massive heart attack and an ambulance ride to Shiba Park Hospital. This is February of this year. A delicate time—the hatred Morino and Nagasaki have for each other was used 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 believe themselves to be sacred. Over a hundred key Tsuru men were wiped out in a single night, all within ten minutes. No negotiation, no quarter, no mercy.” Daimon shoots me with his fingers. “Tsuru managed to get himself lugged out of the hospital—one rumor says he was battered to death with his own golf clubs, another rumor says he got as far as Singapore, where a relapse caught up with him. He is, as they say, history. By dawn the throne was Nagasaki’s. Any questions from the floor at this point?”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “My father is a corrupt chief of police.”

  A blunt answer from a slippery liar. “He must be phenomenally corrupt to be able to afford Queen of Spades.”

  “He is in the pay of Nagasaki. It is not toy money. Next question.”

  Next. “You were explaining why you are here.”

  “If this was a yakuza movie, the Tsuru faction survivors would team up with Morino and stage a war of honor. 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 Kore
an and Triad gangs too. Nobody ever managed that. Ever. 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, Nagasaki 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. The show is run from the wings, not under the spotlights.”

  “Are you going to get around to telling me why you ended up here?”

  “Okay. I fell in love with the girl Morino fell in love with.”

  At last I see. “Miriam.”

  Daimon’s mask slips and shows a real face. The door bangs open and Lizard appears. “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. “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 in that pantomime mobster getup?” Lizard smiles back. “Cute.” He whacks Daimon in the windpipe, grabs the back of his head, and slams his face 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.