Number9Dream (7 page)

‘You are so, so, slow!’

I shout back up through the early mist and floppy leaves. ‘I’m snagged!’

‘You’re scared!’

‘I am not!’

Anju laughs her wild zither when she knows she is right. The forest floor is a long way down. I worry about rotted-through branches snapping. Anju never worries because I always do her worrying for her. She skip-reads her way up trees. She finds fingerholds in coarse bark and toeholds in smooth bark. Last week was our eleventh birthday, but already Anju can climb the gym ropes faster than any of the boys in our class, and, when she is in the mood, multiply fractions, read second-year texts and recite most Zax Omega adventures word for word. Wheatie says this is because she grabbed most of the brain cells when we were growing inside our mother. I finally unpick my T-shirt and climb after my sister, swift as a three-toed sloth with vertigo. Minutes later I find her on the top branch. Copper-skinned, willow-limbed, moss-stained, thorn-scored, dungareed, ponytail knotted back. Waves of spring sea wind break on the woods. ‘Welcome to my tree,’ she says. ‘Not bad,’ I admit, but it is better than ‘not bad’. I have never climbed so high before. We have already trekked up the razor escarpment to get here, so the view is awesome. The fortress-grey mountain-faces, the green river snaking out of the gorge, the hanging bridge, mishmash of roofs and power lines, port, timber yards, school soccer ground, gravel pit, Uncle Orange’s tea-fields, our secret beach, its foot rock, waves breaking on the shoals around the whalestone, the long island of Tanegashima where they launch satellites, glockenspiel clouds, the envelope where the sea seals the sky. Having bombed as tree-climber-in-chief, I appoint myself head cartographer. ‘Kagoshima is over there . . .’ I am afraid to let go and point, so I nod. Anju is squinting inland. ‘I think I can see Wheatie airing the futons.’ I can’t see our grandmother but I know Anju wants me to ask ‘Where?’ so I don’t. The mountains rise towards the interior. Miyanoura Peak props up the sky. Hill tribes live in the rainshadow – they decapitate the lost tourists and make the skulls into drinking bowls. And there is a pool where a real webby, scaly kappa lives – it catches swimmers, rams its fist up through their bum-holes and pulls out their hearts to eat. Yakushima islanders never go up into the mountains, except for the tourist guides. I feel a lump in my pocket and remember. ‘Want a champagne bomb?’

‘Sure.’

Anju suddenly monkey-shrieks, swings, and dangles down in front of me, giggling at my panic. Scared birds beat away near by. Her legs grip the branch above.

‘Don’t!’ is all I can blurt.

Anju bares her front teeth and chicken-wings her arms. ‘Anju the bat.’

‘Anju! Don’t!’

She swings to and fro. ‘I vant to suckkk your bluddd!’ Her hair clasp falls away and her ponytail streams earthward. ‘Bother. That was my last one.’

‘Don’t dangle like that! Stop it!’

‘Eiji’s a jellyfish, Eiji’s a jellyfish!’

I imagine her falling, ricocheting from branch to branch. ‘
Stop it!
’

‘You’re even uglier upside down. I can see your bogies. Hold the tube steady.’

‘Swing back up first!’

‘No. I was born first so you have to do what I say. Hold the pack steady.’ She extracts a sweet, unpeels the wrapper and watches it flutter away into the sea-greens. Watching me, she puts the sweet in her mouth, and lazily swings herself back upright. ‘You really are such a wuss!’

‘If you fell Wheatie would murder me.’

‘Wuss.’

My heartbeat gradually calms down.

‘What happens to you when you die?’ So Anju.

I don’t care as long as she stays upright. ‘How should I know?’

‘Nobody says the same thing. Wheatie says you go to the pure land and walk in gardens with your ancestors. Boooring. Mr Endo at school says you turn into soil. Father Kakimoto says it depends what you were like in this life – I’d get changed into an angel or a unicorn, but you’d come back as a maggot or toadstool.’

‘So what do you think?’

‘When you die they burn you, right?’

‘Right.’

‘So you turn into smoke, right?’

‘I guess.’

‘So you go there.’ Anju lets go of the tree and shoots the sun with both hands. ‘Up, up and away. I want to fly.’

A careworn buzzard rises on a thermal.

‘In an airplane?’

‘Who wants to fly in a pongy airplane?’

I suck my champagne bomb. ‘How do you know airplanes pong?’

Anju crunches her champagne bomb. ‘Airplanes must pong. All those people breathing the same air. Like the boys’ changing room in the rainy season, but a hundred times worse. No, I mean proper flying.’

‘Like with a jetpack?’

‘No such things as jetpacks.’

‘Zax Omega has a jetpack.’

Anju airs her recently acquired sigh. ‘No such thing as Zax Omega.’

‘Zax Omega opened the new building at the port!’

‘And did he arrive by jetpack?’

‘No,’ I admit, ‘by taxi. But you’re too heavy to fly.’

‘Sky Castle Laputa flies, and that’s made of rock.’

‘If I can’t have Zax Omega, no way are you having Sky Castle Laputa.’

‘Condors, then. Condors weigh more than me. They fly.’

‘Condors have wings. I don’t see any wings on you.’

‘Ghosts fly without wings.’

‘Ghosts are dead.’

Anju picks champagne bomb shrapnel from her teeth. She is in one of those moods when I have no idea what she is thinking. Leaf shadows hide my twin sister. Parts of Anju are too bright, parts of Anju are so dark she isn’t even here.

Jerking off usually sends me to sleep. Am I normal? I never heard of a nineteen-year-old insomniac. I am no war criminal, no poet or scientist, I’m not even lovelorn. Lustlorn, yes. Here I am, in a city of five million women, cruising into my sexual prime, when females should be posting themselves to me naked in padded envelopes, single as a leper. Let me see. Who is riding the caravan of love tonight? Zizzi Hikaru, wet-suited as per the lager ad; the glam-rock mother of Yuki Chiyo; the waitress from Jupiter Café; Insectoid-woman from
Zax Omega and Red Plague Moon
. Back to good old Zizzi, I guess. I ferret around for some tissues.

I ferret around for matches to light my post-coital Mild Seven, but end up having to use my gas stove. One throttled Godzilla, and I am wider awake than ever. Zizzi was disappointing tonight. No sense of timing. Is she getting too young for me? Fujifilm says 01:49. What now? Clean myself up? Practise my guitar? Write an answer to one of the two epoch-shifting letters I received this week? Which one? Let’s stick with the simpler: Akiko Kato’s reply to the letter I wrote after failing to see her. The single sheet of paper is still in the plastic bag in the freezebox with The Other. I put it on the shelf next to Anju but it kept laughing at me. It came . . . when was it? Tuesday. Buntaro read the envelope as he handed it to me. ‘Osugi and Bosugi, Legal. Chasing lawyer ladies? Be careful, lad, you could end up with injunctions slapped on where it hurts. Want to hear my lawyer joke? What’s the difference between a catfish and a lawyer? Guess – go on. No? One is a scaly, bottom-dwelling scum-sucker, and the other is a catfish.’ I tell him I’ve already heard it and dash up the videobox-stacked stairs to my capsule. I tell myself I am expecting a negative answer, but I wasn’t expecting that Akiko Kato’s ‘No’ would pack such a slap. I already know the letter by heart. Its greatest hits include:
Disclosure of a client’s personal data constitutes a betrayal of trust which no responsible attorney could consider.
Pretty final.
Furthermore I feel obliged to refuse your request that I forward mail which my client has stated categorically he does not wish to receive
. Not much room for doubt there. Not much room for a reply, either.
Finally, in the event that legal proceedings are initiated to force data regarding your patrimony to be released, assisting your enquiries at this early stage represents a clear conflict of interest. I urge you not to pursue this matter, and trust that this letter clarifies our position
. Perfectly. Plan A is dead on arrival.

Mr Aoyama, sub-station-master of Ueno, is bald as a rivet-head and has a perfect Adolf Hitler moustache. This is Tuesday, on my first working day at Ueno station lost property office. ‘I am far busier than you can imagine’ – he speaks without taking his eyes off his paperwork – ‘but I make a point of addressing new intake on an individual basis.’ Mile-wide silences open up between his sentences. ‘You know who I am.’ His pen scratches. ‘You are’ – he checks a sheet – ‘Eiji Miyake.’ He looks at me, waiting for a nod. I nod. ‘Miyake.’ He pronounces my name as if it were a food additive. ‘Previously employed on an orange farm’ – he shuffles sheets, and I recognize my writing – ‘on an island of no importance south of Kyushu. Most bucolic.’ Above Aoyama are portraits of his distinguished forebears. I imagine them bickering over who will come alive every morning to pilot the office through another tiresome day. His office smells of sun-faded card files. A computer buzzes. Golf clubs shine. ‘Who hired you? The Sasaki woman?’ I nod. A knock on the door, and his secretary appears with a tray of tea. ‘I am addressing a trainee, Mrs Marui!’ Aoyama speaks in an appalled hiss. ‘My ten-thirty-five tea becomes my ten-forty-five tea, does it not?’ Stressed Mrs Marui bobs an apology and withdraws. ‘Go over to that window, Miyake, look out, and tell me what you see.’

I do as he says. ‘A window cleaner, sir.’

The man is immune to irony. ‘
Below
the window cleaner.’

Trains pulling in and pulling out in the shadow of Terminus Hotel. Mid-morning passengers. Luggage haulers. The milling, the lost, the late, the meeters, the met, the platform-cleaning machines. ‘Ueno station, sir.’

‘Tell me this, Miyake. What
is
Ueno station?’

I am foxed by this question.

‘Ueno station – Aoyama replays his grave spiel – ’ an extra
ordinary
machine. One of the finest-tuned timepieces in the land. In the world. And this fireproof, thiefproof office is one of the nerve centres. From this console I can access . . . nearly everything. Ueno station is our lives, Miyake. You serve it, it serves you. It affords a timetabled career. You have the privilege to be a minute cog in this machine. Even I began in a position as lowly as yours: but with punctuality, hard work, integrity—’ The phone rings and I stop existing. Aoyama’s face switches to a higher-watt glow. His voice beams. ‘
Sir
! What a pleasure . . . yes . . . indeed . . . indeed . . . quite. A superb proposal. And may I venture to add . . . yes, sir. Absolutely . . . at the membership brokerage? Priceless . . . superb . . . and may I propose . . . indeed, sir. Rescheduled for Friday? How true . . . we’re all very much looking forward to hearing how we performed, sir. Thank you, sir . . . quite . . . And may I—’ Aoyama replaces the receiver and gazes at it.

After some seconds I cough politely.

Aoyama looks up. ‘Where was I?’

‘Minute cogs and integrity, sir.’

‘Integrity.’ But his mind is no longer here. He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘Your probationary period is six months. You will have the chance to sit the Japan Railways examinations in March. So, the Sasaki woman hired you. Not my ideal role model. She is one of these men-women. Never quit work, even after marriage. Her husband died – sad, of course, but people die all the time, and she expects a man’s job by way of compensation. So, Miyake. Rectify your accent problem. Listen to NHK radio announcers. Dump the junk that stuffs your head. In my day high schools trained tigers. Now they turn out peacocks. You are dismissed.’

I give him a bow as I close the door, but he is watching vacant space. The office outside is empty. The tray is on the side. To my own surprise, I lift the teapot lid and spit into it. This must be work-related stress.

The lost property office is an okay place to work. I have to wear uncool Japan Railways overalls, but I finish at six sharp and Ueno station is only a few stops down the Kita Senju line from Umejima, near Shooting Star. During my six-month probation period I get paid weekly, which suits me fine. I am lucky. Buntaro got me the job. When I got back from PanOpticon a week ago last Friday, he said he had heard from a contact that there might be a job going there, and would I be interested? You bet, I said. Before I knew it I had an interview with Mrs Sasaki. She is a stern old bird, a Tokyo version of my grandmother, but after talking for about half an hour she offered me the job. I spend the mornings cataloguing – writing date/time/train labels on the items collected by conductors and cleaners when the trains terminate, and housing them on the right metal rack. Mrs Sasaki runs the lost property office and deals with the high-value items in the side office – wallets, cash cards, jewellery – which have to be registered with the police. Suga trains me to do the low-value ones, stored in the back office. ‘Not much natural light in here, right?’ says Suga. ‘But you can tell the month from what gets handed in. November to February, skis and snowboards. March – diplomas. June is all wedding gifts. Swimsuits pile up in July. A decent rain will bring hundreds of umbrellas. Not the most inspiring job, but it beats leaping around a garage forecourt or delivering pizzas, imho.’ Afternoons I spend on the counter, waiting for claimants, or answering the phone. Rush hours are busiest, of course, but during mid-afternoon my job is almost relaxing. My memory is the most regular visitor.

The leaves are so green they are blue. Me and Anju play our staring game: we stare at one another and the first one to make the other smile and look away wins. I pull stupid faces but they bounce off her. Her Cleopatra eyes are sparked with bronze. She wins – she always does – by bringing her eyes close to mine and opening wide. Anju returns to her higher branch and looks at the sun through a leaf. Then she hides the sun with her hand. The webby bit between her thumb and forefinger glows ruby. She looks out to sea. ‘The tide is coming in.’