Number9dream

by David Mitchell

  “Your problems with the store, of course.”

  “Shooting Star? None I know of.”

  “None?”

  “Not one.”

  “Oh.”

  “Get back to paradise, Buntaro.”

  I try to get back to sleep—I was talking with Ai until after three A.M.— but my mind is moving up its gears. FUJIFILM says 07:45. Cat laps water and leaves for work. I doodle blues chords for some time, smoke my last three Lucky Strikes, eat yogurt—after spooning out a mold colony—and listen to Milk and Honey. My favorite track on this one has always been “Borrowed Time.” A kite of sunlight settles on Anju.

  For two days she was classed as missing, but nobody was cruel enough to tell me not to give up hope. True, tourists go missing on Yakushima all the time, and often turn up—or get rescued—a day or two later. But locals are never so stupid, not even local eleven-year-olds—we all knew Anju had drowned. No goodbye, just gone. My grandmother aged ten years by the following morning, and looked at me as if she scarcely knew me. There was no big scene when I left that day. I remember her at the kitchen table. Her face was twisted in a new way. She told me that if I hadn’t gone to Kagoshima, her granddaughter would still be alive. Which I thought—and still think—is only too true. It was not the bitter change in my grandmother that made me leave, however, but Anju’s clothes and toys and books. The pain was unbearable. I walked to Uncle Orange’s farmhouse and my aunt cleared a corner for me to sleep in. Officer Kuma called round the evening after to tell me the search for Anju’s body had been called off. My Orange cousins are all older girls, and they decided I needed nursing through my grief—they kept saying it was okay to cry, that they understood how I felt, that Anju dying wasn’t my fault, that I had always been a good brother. Sympathy was also unbearable. I had swapped my sister for a never-to-be-repeated goal. So I ran away. Running away on Yakushima is simple—you leave before the old women stir and the fog goes back to the sea, tread quietly through the weatherboarded alleyways, cross the coast road, skirt the tea fields and orange orchards, set a farm dog barking, enter the forest, and start climbing.

  After the head of the thunder god vanishes into the ocean, I skirt the ridge above my grandmother’s house. No light is on. An autumn morning, when rain is always ten minutes away. I climb. Waterfalls without names, waxy leaves, berries in jade pools. I climb. Boughs sag, ferns fan, roots trip. I climb. I eat peanuts and oranges, to make sure I can get high and deep enough before I disappear. Leech on my leg, creeping silence, day clots into gray afternoon, no sense of time. I climb. A graveyard of trees, a womb of trees, a war of trees. Sweat cools. I climb. Way up here, everything is covered in moss. Moss vivid as grief, muffling as snow. Sleep here, and moss covers you, too. My legs stiffen and wobble so I sit down, and here comes the foggy moon through a forest skylight. I am cold, and huddle in my blanket, niched in an ancient shipwreck of a cedar. I am not afraid. You have to value yourself to be afraid. Yet for the first time in three days, I want something. I want the forest lord to turn me into a cedar. The very oldest islanders—crones, who always outlive their husbands—say that if you are in the interior mountains on the night when the forest lord counts his trees, he includes you in the number and turns you into a tree. Animals call, darkness swarms, cold nips my toes. I remember Anju. Despite the cold, I fall asleep. Despite my tiredness, I wake up. A white fox picks its way along a fallen trunk. It stops, turns its head, and recognizes me with more-than-human eyes. Mist hangs in the spaces between my boughs, and birds nest in what was my ear. I want to thank the forest lord, but I have no mouth now. Never mind. Never mind anything, ever again. I wake, stiff, not a tree but a snot-dribbling boy again, throat tight with a cold. I sob and sob and sob and sob and sob and sob. Milk and Honey ends with Yoko singing “How do I tell you? You’re the one, you’re the one, you’re the one . . .” and my Discman hums to a stop. The kite of sunlight has slid to my junk shelf, where Cockroach watches me. Its feelers twitch. I leap up, grab the bug killer, but Cockroach escapes down the gap between the floor and the wall—I zap in about a third of the can. And here I stand, in mammoth hunter pose, empty of everything. I ran away into the interior to understand why Anju had grown with me, cell by cell, day by day, if she was going to die before her twelfth birthday. I never did discover the answer. I made the descent without mishap the following day—the Orange house was having collective hysterics about me—but, looking back, did I ever really leave the interior? Is what Eiji Miyake means still rooted on Yakushima, magicked into a cedar on a mist-forgotten mountain flank, and my search for my father just a vague . . . passing . . . nothing? FUJIFILM says I have to get Shooting Star ready for business. Another day too busy to worry about what it all means. Luckily for me.

  November 7

  Mild weather, fish-scale clouds. I am in our dorm after our predeparture banquet. I am fat with fish, white rice, dried seaweed, victory chestnuts, canned fruit, and sake, which was presented by the Emperor himself. Because the weather was fine today, the Kikusui graduation ceremony was held outside, in the exercise yard. Everyone on the base was in attendance, from Cmdr. Ujina down to the lowliest kitchen boy. The rising-sun flags on the base, the ships, and the submarines were all raised in unison. A brass band performed the Kimigayo. We wore uniforms especially tailored for the kaiten division: black, cobalt trimmings, with green chrysanthemums embroidered on the left breast. Vice Admiral Miwa of the Sixth Fleet gave us the honor of a personal address. He is a fine orator as well as an unequaled naval tactician, and his words inscribed themselves on our hearts. “You are avengers, at last face-to-face with those who would murder your fathers and violate your mothers. Peace will never be yours if you fail! Death is lighter than a feather, but duty is heavier than a mountain! Kai and ten signify ‘turn’ and ‘heaven’—therefore, I exhort you, turn the heavens so light shines anew on the land of the gods!” One by one, we ascended the podium, and the vice admiral presented each of us with a hachimaki to tie around our heads like the samurai of old, and a seppuku sword to remind us that our lives are His Imperial Majesty’s possessions and to avert the indignity of surrender should disaster prevent us from striking our targets. During the closing Kimigayo we bowed before the portrait of the Emperor. A priest then led us to a shrine to pray for glory.

  Abe, Goto, and Kusakabe are writing letters to their families, so I will do the same, and clip off some hair and nails for cremation. I shall write my final orders to you in this letter, but I shall reiterate them here: Takara, you are the acting head of the Tsukiyama family until Father returns. Whatever trials lie ahead, preserve the sword. Impress upon your sons, and their sons, the integrity and purity of the Tsukiyama bloodline. After deification my soul will reside at Yasukuni Shrine, with my myriad brothers who also gave their lives to the Emperor. Come to pray, bring our sword, and let the light dance on the blade. I shall be waiting.

  November 8

  Weather: fair, hazy. The first maple leaves are flaming scarlet. I-333 departed from Otsushima. The departure ceremony was held on the dock at 0900. A camera crew was present to make a newsreel of our departure. I waved at the camera as I passed, Takara, in case you and your friends see me at the cinema in Nagasaki. Lt. Kamibeppu gave a speech on behalf of the Kikusui Group, thanking our trainers, apologizing for our blunders, and promising that every kaiten pilot will do his utmost to make our country proud of us. After this, we thanked Mrs. Oshige individually. She was choked with emotion and unable to speak, but words may sully the message of the heart. The officers toasted us with an omiki libation, and we boarded the submarines to cries of “Banzai.” We stood atop our kaitens, and waved back at our classmates on shore, until we rounded the western head of Otsushima. A small flotilla of fishing boats and training canoes saw us into the open sea. Goto looked at the fishermen’s daughters through Kusakabe’s binoculars. Abe has just announced that our maintenance check has been brought forward an hour, so I’ll wait until tomorrow to tell you about I-333.

  Nov
ember 9

  Weather: rain in the morning; a clear afternoon with swelling waves. Goto describes life in a submarine as being “corked into a tin flask and thrown into a flood.” Into this tin flask is fitted the forward torpedo room, officers’ qtrs., forward battery, pump room, conning tower, control room, mess, crew qtrs. for 60 men, fore/aft engine rooms, aft torpedoes. Slick likens I-333 to an iron whale. I marvel at the crew: they have been on active duty since the war began with only ten days’ shore leave! After one day, I am already aching to run, or throw a baseball. I miss our futons on Otsushima—on I-333 we sleep on narrow shelves, with sides to stop us falling out. The air is stale and the light is sepia. I must emulate the endurance of the crew. Even walking requires contortion, especially at the beginning of a voyage when the gangways are used for food storage. There are only two places one can be alone. One is the kaitens, which can be accessed from the inside of the submarine via specially adapted tubes between the submarine deck and the kaiten lower hatch. The other is the toilet. (Submarine toilets are not conducive to meditation.) However, we have Cpt. Yokota’s permission to use the bridge when conditions permit. Of course, I must inform the duty officer when I go abovedecks, so I can be accounted for if we have to make an emergency dive. After our evening calisthenics session I joined the ensign on lookout duty, starboard of the conning tower. At night the control room is “rigged for dark”—only red lights are permitted, so Cpt. or observers may move above- and belowdecks without loss of night vision. I watched the white spray on the bow and the foam wake to the rear. On moonlit nights these are telltale signs for bombers. He told me the coastline to the west was Cape Sata, in Kagoshima Prefecture. The end of Japan was lost in scarlet clouds.

  “EjjjMyake!” Masanobu Suga bumper-cars into Shooting Star from the neon night, trips over, and whacks the floor with his forehead. He noses the ground, and grins at me—he is so drunk that his brain cannot understand how much his body hurts. Suga wobbles up to a one-leg kneel, as if he is about to ask for my hand in marriage. I dive around from the counter to pick up his glasses before he grinds them to splinters. Suga thinks I am trying to help him up, and elbows me away with a “grfffme!” He stands up, stable as a newborn giraffe, and falls backward into a rack of war movies. The rack topples and a hundred video boxes cascade. A customer—only one, luckily—stares death rays at us through her half-moon glasses. Suga glares at the fallen video rack. “Poltygeists liv’nn heeer, Miyake. Needta leanov’r theeer a mo, mo-mo, justamo . . .” He tightrope-walks to the counter, lifting his head toward the monitor. “Cassyblanca.” The movie is actually Blade Runner. I right the rack and collect the video boxes. Suga dangles his head, broken-puppet style. “M’yake.”

  “Suga. Nice to, uh . . .”

  Suga loses spittle control. I intercept the saliva stalactite with the Tokyo Post. “Notdrunk, n’vergetdrunk, notme. Happy, hap-py, he-he-hep-py, yes, mebbe, butnotnever out-of-cont. Roll.” He sinks to his knees, his knuckles gripping the edge of the cliff. Even Uncle Pachinko on a whiskey bender is not this hopeless. “Wentaseeya, Mishish Shashashaki sedya quit. ByebyeUenobyebye, badvibes, bad, badbadbadvibes in Ueno, where allverlostnf’gottn orphans ended after the war, did did y’knowthat? Died like flies, poorlittlpoorlittl . . .” Tears blossom in Suga’s eyes and one runs down his pocked cheek. Death-Ray Woman has a rape-alarm-in-a-library shrill: “Too much! The way you youngsters behave today makes me vomit out my own lungs!” She leaves before I can begin an apology. For a moment I wish Suga would pass out—I could pretend not to know him and maybe an ambulance would take him away. “Suga! You need to get home! You drank too much!”

  Suga sniffs and focuses on me with puffy dogfish eyes. “I’m curshed.”

  “Have you got enough money for a taxi?”

  “Curshed.”

  “Can you tell me your address?”

  He clenches his eyes and deliberately slams his head back on the front of the counter as hard as he can, which luckily is not too hard as his neck control functions are offline, but even so his face is bright with pain. I hold his head and he pushes me away. “I’m curshed, Miyake! Dontchoogettitt? Curshed! One doughnut! For one fcknmeashly doughnut! Littlkid, kindygartn littlkid, waiting jushinside th’bakery doordoor, hewuzcryin’seyes out . . .” The tears begin again and Suga trembles. A scared-dog sort of shiver.

  “Suga, my room is upstairs, I’m going to—”

  “One”—whack!—“meashly”—whack!—“ doughnut. I opnd the door, littlkid runs out, fastazafastaza.” Suga’s eyes screw up in pain. “Batman’n’Robn on his T-shirt, littlkid, straight inta the middlvthe . . . road . . .” Suga blubbers and his breathing is chopped and sliced. “Wtchy’think I did, Miyake? Swoooooopd t’th’rescue, d’y’think? Nope, Miyake, nope nope nope rootd, rootd, I’s rootd. T’th’spot, Miyake. Saw. Heard. Audiovshl. Car. Brakes. Littlkid. Wham, wham, wham. Flew, littlkid, flew like a baggagroceries, ber-lattt, bowlingball, bloodontheroad, markerpen . . .” Suga’s fingers claw for a ripcord on his face to pull—I grip his hands in my fists. Suga is losing his will to resist. “Mom, she . . . pushpass-pusspashme, wailing right . . . AaarrrAaarrr! Aaaaaarrrrrr . . . I ran. Ran ran ran . . . Ran, Miyake, nverstppd never, run, Suga run, you mur-der-rer . . . Suga the mudderer.” Suga swallows a stone of grief. “Betchawishdyr poisoned th’pineapple now, doncha? Howdjathink I got this this pizza cheezgraterskin? Curshed. Icrossaroad, Isee Littlkid. Iseeanuvva Littlkid, Isee Littlkid. Curshed. Curshed.” His eyes ease themselves shut.

  I see.

  I take the key from the cash register, and manhandle the sack of Suga upstairs. “Toilet. If you piss my futon I’ll blowtorch your computers, okay? Suga? You hear me?” Suga nods, bleared and mumbly beyond grammar. “I’ll be downstairs.” Down at the register a girl in a cow-print T-shirt stands holding every Brad Pitt video in the shop. She studies her watch and emits a sigh of pain. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” I say. She ignores me. I hear Suga barf. Barf one, Cowgirl looks puzzled. Barf two, Cowgirl breaks her vow of noninteraction and stares at me questioningly. Barf three, Cowgirl says, “Can you hear anything?” I look at her as if she is an utter lunatic. “Nothing. Why?” She leaves and I rearrange the fallen video cases on the rack. My toilet flushes, which is sort of encouraging. A flurry of customers follows. I have lost track of who is human and who is a replicant in Blade Runner. I wonder how many years Suga has been carrying his curse around with him. I forget that other people in the world have broken parts too. Eleven o’clock swings around, and the night shows no sign of cooling. I hear a thump or two upstairs: at least I don’t have a dead body on the premises to explain to Buntaro. I hear the drumming of water, and for a moment think the heat has turned to rain—then I realize that no, to answer the last question he asked me three weeks ago, Suga cannot piss straight when he whizzes. Another treat in store tomorrow morning. I crank up the air-con a notch, and retrieve my grandfather’s journal and the kanji dictionary from under the counter. The warmth between Subaru and Takara, his younger brother, is in stark contrast to the cold between my father and Takara, my grandfather. Admiral Raizo’s mention of a “feud” makes me uneasy. The Yakushima aunts happily used me as ammo in their endless polite battles, and I cannot shake the feeling I am on the edge of another war zone.

  November 10, 1944

  Conditions too poor to permit access to bridge. Abe reminds us we are irreplaceable components of our kaitens. Moreover, I-333 rolls about too much to allow maintenance checks on our kaitens. We have sensed a certain reserve between ourselves and I-333’s crew. A certain distance is natural, but at times their conduct borders on coldness. For example, I discovered that Radioman First Class Hosokawa in communications grew up in Nagasaki, and when we passed in the corridor after dinner I addressed him in our local dialect. He looked startled, and replied using rigid, formal speech. When Abe suggested that the kaiten pilots contribute to the cleaning docket, Cpt. Yokota replied with terseness that our offer was generous but unthinkable. Abe believes the men regard us
as incumbent gods, and are merely suffering from excess veneration. Goto pointed out that three and a half years of dodging depth charges would put a strain on anyone’s mental state. Kusakabe speculated that the men may consider us insane. This angered Abe. Kusakabe calmly observed that submariners spend their lives slipping away from the jaws of death, while we seek to meet it head-on. Abe pulled rank and ordered Kusakabe—and Goto—never to voice such thoughts again, because he was demeaning the dedication and patriotism of our hosts. I said nothing for the sake of harmony, but inwardly I sympathized with Goto. Even the youngest crew members have the eyes of old men.

  November 11

  Fine conditions prevail. The mercury in the thermometer climbs as the sea warms. It is impossible to re-mount the kaitens on the submarine deck once released, so we are unable to make test runs in our vessels. We must, however, spend time in our kaitens checking that the engines and other systems are in perfect working order. Watching the sea rush by through the kaiten periscopes is most enjoyable, especially when I-333 is submerged. As we proceed south, I notice changes in the animal kingdom. For example, today I saw a manatee. It swam the way a cow might swim. We passed through a school of tropical fish, brightly colored with marigolds, snow, and lilac. Two dolphins appeared this afternoon, swimming alongside us. The creatures appeared to be laughing at such a peculiar fish. May fortune similarly smile on our mission. Goto made a joke. “If a Chinese bandit, an American imperialist, and a British general jumped off a building at the same time, who would hit the ground first?” Nobody knew, so Goto gave the punchline. “Who cares?” The crew laughed heartily, and re-told the joke until everyone aboard had heard it.

  November 12

  Weather thundery, but no rain, yet. Cpt. Yokota is outspoken in his criticism of the Tokyo government, to say the least. If a civilian spoke in such a manner he would surely be arrested by the secret service. At dinner tonight, the captain opened a bottle of rum. I had never experienced the drink outside pirate tales of my boyhood. It certainly loosens the tongue. Abe drank least, being a weak drinker, but Cpt. Yokota can knock it back like cool tea on a hot day. Cpt. Yokota first savaged the Admiralty for failing to learn from the Midway fiasco, instead of suppressing news of the defeat and turning the very word into a taboo. “The sole strategy of our navy,” according to Cpt. Yokota, “is to lure the enemy into a ‘Decisive Naval Engagement’ like the Battle of Tsushima against the Russians. But it isn’t going to happen in this war. The Americans are not so stupid.” Minister Tojo is “an army idiot of the highest magnitude” for ordering the invasion of uninhabited Alaskan islands: “For what? To liberate seabirds from Anglo-Saxon tyranny?” Prince Higashikuni is “so stupid he couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.” Goto laughed, Kusakabe smiled, and Abe turned a polite pink. I was unsure of the appropriate response. Cpt. Yokota maintains the East Indies oilfields would still be in Japanese territory if the wings of the military had fought as one rather than against one another, and if radar technology had been developed with the same earnestness as our torpedoes, from the earliest stages. Now we must resort to begging the Germans for radar sets. He accuses the Imperial Army of operating subs undeclared to high command as “wheelbarrows,” to support troops stranded on Rabaul and islands the enemy has bypassed. Most worrying of all is the Cpt.’s firm conviction that our secret codes have been cracked. Abe, perhaps rashly, observed that the codes were invented by a Tokyo Imperial University cryptologist to be undecipherable to the occidental brain. Cpt. Yokota retorted that no Tokyo Imperial University cryptologist was ever am-bushed on the high seas by a pack of destroyers that had uncannily pinpointed his vessel’s precise position and heading. We must all pray that Cpt. Yokota’s pessimism is misplaced.