Number9dream

by David Mitchell

  August 14

  Weather: fine at first, clouding over by midday. As my training session was canceled today due to engine failure, I have a spare hour to write to you about my I-333 brothers. Yutaka Abe is our leader, aged 24, of old Tokyo stock and a graduate of Peers. His father was aboard the Shimantogawa at the glorious Battle of Tsushima thirty-nine years ago. Abe is a superhuman who excels in every field. Rowing, navigation, composing haiku. He let it slip that he has won every chess match he has played for the last nine years. The motto on his kaiten is to be “Unerring Arrow of the Emperor.” Shigenobu Goto, aged 22, is from a merchant family in Osaka. He is a comedian. He gets love letters nearly every day from different girls, and complains about the lack of women on the base. Abe responds with a single word: purity. Goto can impersonate anybody and anything. He even takes requests: China-man attacked by snake in privy; Tohoku fishwife being blown through tuba. He uses his voices to distract Abe when they play chess. Abe wins anyway. The message on Goto’s kaiten is to read: “Medicine for Yankees.” Our third member is Issa Kusakabe. Kusakabe is a year older than me, quiet, and reads every word that comes his way. Technical manuals, novels, poetry, old magazines from before the war. Mrs. Oshige (our “mother” on Otsushima, who believes we are testing a new type of submarine) arranged for a boy to bring Kusakabe books from the school library every week. He even has a volume of Shakespeare. Abe questioned whether the works of an effete westerner were appropriate for a Japanese warrior. Kusakabe explained that Shakespeare is English kabuki. Abe said Shakespeare contained corrupting influences. Kusakabe asked which plays Abe was thinking of. Abe let it drop. After all, Kusakabe would not have volunteered to be a kaiten pilot if his ethics were in any way questionable. He is inscribing not a slogan but a line of verse on his kaiten. “The foe may raise ten thousand shouts—we conquer without a single word.” I must not neglect Slick, our unit chief engineer. His nickname is derived from his hands, which are always oily and black. Slick is one of the oldest men on the base. He is vague about his age, but he is old enough to be our father. Goto jokes that he probably is our father. Slick’s real children are his kaitens. I have elected to leave my kaiten without a motto. My sacrifice shall be its motto and its meaning.

  I put the journal under the counter of Shooting Star to rest my eyes— the pages have been professionally laminated, but the pencil marks are fading away to ghost lines. Plus, many of the kanji are obscure, so I often have to stop and refer to a dictionary. I open a can of Diet Pepsi and survey my new empire: video racks, stacks, shelves. Mucous aliens, shiny gladiators, squeaky idols. Soft rock pumps away. In my week away the old shoe repair next to FUJIFILM has been turned into a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. A life-size statue of Colonel Sanders stands outside, under a limp “Opening Fayre” banner. He is as fat and grinny as a statue of Ebisu in a temple. Does KFC make you that fat?

  Buntaro and Machiko will be on their JAL airplane now, somewhere over the Pacific. My landlord was in a near-frenzy when I got back from my meeting with Mr. Raizo, even though he had ninety minutes before the taxi came. What would happen if the computer crashed? If the monitor broke down? When Machiko hauled him into the taxi, he was still hypothesizing disaster scenarios. When Kodai is born the nurses will have to sedate the father. I mean it. I can watch anything on the monitor, but there are too many films to choose, so I leave the same Tom Hanks movie running all day. Nobody will notice. Between two and five, business is pretty quiet; once offices and schools start winding up I get much busier. The regulars gape when they see me—they straightaway assume that Machiko has suffered a miscarriage. When I tell them the Ogisos are on vacation, they act as if I said Buntaro and his wife turned into teapots and flew to Tibet. The question of who I am is a trifle delicate—my scuzzy landlord sublets my capsule without troubling the tax office. Schoolkids cluster around horror, office ladies rent Hollywood movies with blond stars, salarymen rent titles such as Pam the Clam from Amsterdam and Hot Dog Academy. Several customers bring videos back late—you always have to check the dates. Mrs. Sasaki arrives at seven-thirty—I dash upstairs to feed Cat, and dash across to KFC to feed myself. Colonel Sanders’s chicken tastes like sawdust. Mrs. Sasaki tells me about my replacement at Ueno, which makes me sort of nostalgic for the place. She leaves me the Tokyo Evening Mail —Monday has the jobs pages. If I want a career in kitchen portering, telesales, shelf stocking or mailbox stuffing then Tokyo is heaven on Earth. Cat appears on the stairs—during my week in hiding she learned how to open my capsule door. I tell her to go back but she ignores me, and after replacing a stack of returned videos I find her settled on the counter chair, so I have to make do with a wobbly stool. FUJIFILM says 22:26. Business drops off.

  September 2

  Hot weather, but cooler in the evenings now. I received your letter today, Takara, and the parcel from Mother and Yaeko containing the thousand-stitch belt. Given the special attack nature of my mission, the five-sen coins sewn into the belt will not avert death, but I shall wrap it around my middle every time I climb aboard my kaiten. Abe, Goto, Kusakabe, and I read aloud our letters from home, and I was as proud as Tengu when I told them my younger brother is already a junior squadron leader at the bullet factory. Your games resemble authentic military training—charging at Roosevelts and Churchills with bamboo bayonets. My thoughts are also with Yaeko at the parachute factory. Her stitches may save the lives of my former classmates at Nara Naval Air Academy. It must pain Mother to trade Tsukiyama family treasures for rice, but I know Father and our ancestors understand. War changes rules. It is wise of you to tape Xs over the windows. If the enemy’s bombers get as far as Nagasaki, they will doubtless target the shipyards rather than our side of town, so your precautions are unlikely to be battle-tested. Be that as it may, a good soldier considers all possible contingencies.

  I will reply to your letter very soon. By now, you will understand why my reply fails to provide answers to all the questions you asked.

  September 9

  Weather: warm, mild, balmy. I am 20 years old today. To celebrate my birthday in a time of national emergency is inappropriate, so after a warhead study session I snuck away before supper. I gratefully accepted the sunset as my birthday present. Inland Sea sunsets are special. Tonight’s was the color of Yaeko’s plum pickles. Do you remember the story of Urashima Taro? About how he saved the giant turtle, and stayed in the undersea palace for three days, but upon his return three generations had come and gone? I wondered about how this place will look in ninety years. The war will be a hazy memory then. Bring your children to Otsushima when the war is won. The local sea bream is delicious, as are the Inland Sea oysters. I was about to return to the mess hall when Abe, Goto, and Kusakabe found me. Somehow Abe had found out about my birthday and told Mrs. Oshige, who managed to prepare chicken kushiyaki. Kusakabe built a fire and we had supper on the seashore, and some homebrew sake that Goto appropriated from a canteen assistant. The drink was rough enough to paralyze our faces, but no meal ever tasted better. With the exception of Mother’s, of course.

  September 13

  A warm morning, a muggy afternoon. An attack of flu has been around the base. I myself have been in the sick bay for 24 hours with a temperature of 39 degrees. I am recovering now. I suffered from strange dreams. One was particularly shameful, and makes me worry about my patriotism. I was in my kaiten cruising around the Solomon Islands in search of an enemy aircraft carrier. Everything was so blue. I felt indestructible, like a shark. Suddenly Mrs. Shiomi’s son, the boy who threw himself under a Russian tank with a bomb at Nomonhan, was in my kaiten. “Did nobody tell you?” he said. “The war is over.” I asked who won, and I saw Shiomi’s eyes were missing. “The Emperor entertains the Americans with duck shoots in the palace grounds. In this way he hopes to save his skin.” I decided I should sail into Tokyo harbor and sink at least one enemy vessel, and pointed my kaiten north. The acceleration slouched my body back, and when I woke I felt I was remembering being born, or perhaps dying, the
last time or the next time. Kusakabe and Goto visited me later, to share notes they had taken in our navigation class, but I said nothing about my dream.

  October 2

  Drizzle all day. The Kikusui target sites were announced at a secret meeting this afternoon. I-47 and I-36 will head for Ulithi, a vast lagoon in the Carolines captured by the Americans only ten days ago. I-37 and I-333 will simultaneously attack Kossol Passage anchorage in the Palau Islands. The purpose of a dual-site attack is to ensure maximum damage to enemy morale. Find the Palau Islands in Father’s atlas, Takara. You can see how vividly blue the seas are. When you wonder where I am, remember: your brother is the blue of the sea.

  Disharmony grows between Abe and Kusakabe. Our unit leader challenged Kusakabe to a game of chess. He declined. Abe (apparently) teased him: “Are you afraid of losing?” Kusakabe made a strange reply: “No, I am afraid of winning.” Abe retained his smile, but his irritation was plain. Brothers who shall die together should not quarrel in this way.

  October 10

  Weather clear. Dew on the grass this morning. Slick, his ground crew, and I were hauling our kaiten through the tunnel to the launch pier this afternoon when the air raid siren sounded. No drill had been scheduled. The tunnel filled up with men from the launch pier while the commandant shouted orders over the loudspeakers. TNT was secured in the deep bunker, the submarines maneuvered out of the bay, and we waited anxiously for the sound of B-29s. If a bomb scores a direct hit on the machine shops, the project could be delayed crucial weeks. Slick wondered aloud if an attack on the mainland means the Americans are attacking Okinawa already. We hear so many rumors but reliable news is scant. After a nervous forty minutes the all-clear siren sounded. Maybe a jumpy lookout post mistook our own Zeros for enemy planes.

  October 13

  Pleasant afternoon sun. Clouds by evening. Re-reading this journal, I notice that I have failed to describe the atmosphere of the base. It is unique, in my experience. Engineers, instructors, pilots, and trainees all work together toward the same end. I have never felt so alive as in these weeks. The meaning of my life is to defend the Motherland. Discipline is not lax. We undergo the same drills and inspections as any military base. But the excesses of ordinary camps, where green recruits are hazed and where soldiers are hung upside down and beaten, are unknown on Otsushima. We receive regular rations of cigarettes and candy, and real white rice. My one regret is that I cannot share my meals with you, Mother, and Yaeko. I am stockpiling my candy for you, however, and refuse to gamble with it like Goto and most of my co-trainees.

  October 18

  Steady rain all day. The Zuikaku is still afloat and Father is therefore almost certainly alive! Abe arranged for me to use military channels to dispatch a telegram to Mother immediately. I received the news from Cpt. Tsuyoshi Yokota of I-333, which docked in Otsushima today. Cpt. Yokota had himself spoken to Admiral Kurita aboard the Atago only seven days previously while on patrol in the Leyte Gulf. The news that Father is still well and thinking of us heartens me beyond words. One day he may hold this very journal in his hands! Cpt. Yokota says that the Zuikaku is regarded as a charmed ship since Pearl Harbor. Remember that civilian mail to the South Seas is a very low priority, so do not be discouraged if you hear nothing. I received some more good news this evening. A four-day leave was announced for the Kikusui Group men, before we depart for the target zone.

  October 20

  Clear day, refreshing breezes. Good fortune begets good fortune. During dinner, Cmdt. Ujina broadcasted the evening news over the camp speakers, and we heard of the extraordinary kamikaze successes in the Philippines yesterday. Five American aircraft carriers and six destroyers sunk! In a single wave! Surely even the American savages will realize the hopelessness of invading the home islands. Lt. Kamibeppu stood on his bench and proposed a toast to the souls of the brave aviators who had given their lives to our beloved Emperor Hirohito. Rarely have I heard such a moving speech. “Pure spirit, or metal? Which is the stronger? Spirit will buckle metal, and blacken it, and shred it! But metal can no more damage pure spirit than scissors can cut a rope of smoke!” I am embarrassed by my vanity, but I imagined the day when similar toasts shall be drunk to our souls.

  October 28

  Light rain today. The new I-333 kaitens became operational today. They are much more responsive than the training kaitens. After a longer-than-expected test session, I ran back through the rain across the exercise ground and nearly collided with Kusakabe, who was leaning against the supply shed, staring intently at the ground. I asked him what had caught his attention so. Kusakabe pointed at a puddle, and spoke softly. “Circles are born, while circles born a second ago live. Circles live, while circles living a second ago die. Circles die, while new circles are born.” A very Kusakabe comment. I told him he should have been born a wandering poet-priest. He said maybe he was, once. We watched the puddles for a while.

  November 2

  The dying heat of 1944. I just returned from Nagasaki for the final time. Those memories are yours, too, so I have no need to describe them here. I can still taste Mother’s yokan and Yaeko’s pumpkin tempura. The train journey took a long time because the engine constantly broke down. The military carriage was commandeered by a high-ranking party of officers, so I traveled with a carriage full of refugees from Manchukuo. Their stories of the Soviets’ cruelty and their Chinese servants’ treachery were terrible. How grateful I am that Father never joined the colonists. One girl younger than you was traveling alone to find an aunt in Tokyo. This was her first time in Japan. Around her neck was an urn. It contained the ashes of her father who died in Mukden, her mother who died in Karafuto, and her sister who died in Sasebo. She was afraid she would fall asleep and miss Tokyo, which she imagined was a small place like her frontier town. She believed she could find her aunt by asking people. At Tokuyama I gave her half my money, wrapped in a handkerchief, and left before she could refuse. I fear for her. I fear for all of them.

  “Golems,” I explain, lying showered and naked in postmidnight capsule darkness with Ai on the other end of the phone, “are not the same as zombies. Sure, they are both undead, but you mold golems from graveyard mud in the image of the dead man buried below, and then you inscribe his rune on the torso. You can kill golems only by erasing the rune. Zombies you can easily decapitate, or set alight with a flamethrower. You make them from body parts, usually stolen from a morgue, or else you simply reanimate semirotten corpses.”

  “Is necrophilia a compulsory subject in Kyushu high schools?”

  “I work in a video store now. I have to know these things.”

  “Change the subject.”

  “Okay. What to?”

  “I asked you first.”

  “Well, I was always curious about the meaning of life.”

  “Easy. Eating macadamia ice cream and listening to Debussy.”

  “Be serious.”

  “Well,” Ai shifts, “your question is wrong.”

  I imagine her lying here. “What should my question be, then?”

  “It should be ‘What is my meaning of life.’ I mean, look at The Well-TemperedClavier. To me, it means molecular harmony. To my father, it means a broken sewing machine. To Bach, it means an experiment in writing for every available key. To Bach’s wife, it means money to pay his wig maker. Who is right? Individually, we all are. Generally, none of us are.”

  “I keep thinking about my great-uncle. What he wanted—his meaning—seemed so valid.”

  “To him, yes. To me, sacrificing your life for the vainglory of a military clique isn’t my idea of ‘valid,’ but to your great-uncle, aspiring to be a concert pianist might not have seemed worth disobeying his father for.” Cat patters in at this point. “Maybe the meaning of life lies in looking for it.” Cat laps water in the thirsty moonlight.

  “So much space!” Buntaro yells into a telephone on a windy morning. “What do you do with all this space? Why did I never come here years ago? The plane took less time than my
dentist. Do you know when I last took a vacation outside Tokyo?”

  “Nope.” I stifle a yawn.

  “Me neither, kid. I arrived in Tokyo when I was twenty-two. My company made transformers, and it sent me up for training. I get off the train at Tokyo Station, and twenty minutes later I find the exit. ‘Would I ever hate to spend my life living in this hellhole!’ I think. Twenty years on, look at what I did. Be careful of vacations in paradise. You think too much about all the things you never did and never will do.”

  “Does everyone in paradise get up so early?”

  “My wife was up before me. Strolling on the beach, under the palm trees. Why is the ocean so . . . y’know . . . blue? You can hear the waves crash from our balcony. My wife found a starfish washed up. A real, live starfish.”

  “That’s the sea for you. Is there, uh, anything specific you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “Oh, yeah. I thought I’d run through your problems.”

  “My problems? Which ones, uh, did you have in mind?”