Paprika

  “Hold on, hold on! What are you talking about? Toratake isn’t dead! He’s as alive as you or I! He runs an inn now.”

  “What? …” Noda was stunned.

  Shinohara laughed. “Who on earth told you he was dead? Someone’s been winding you up!”

  “What do you mean?! You called to tell me about it!”

  “And why would I do that? Yes, I called while you were at university, to tell you about a class reunion. That’s when I told you that Takao had died.”

  Noda was at a loss for words. He’d completely forgotten that Toratake’s given name was “Takao.” Noda and Toratake had been on first name terms. Yet it was not Takao Toratake but Akishige’s crony Takao who had died. Noda had been laboring under a delusion for thirty years.

  “I think you must have made some mistake,” said Shinohara.

  Noda moved the receiver from his mouth and sighed quietly.

  “Yes. I must have.”

  “Toratake would go mad if he heard that. He’s always saying how much he wants to see you.”

  If that was so, Toratake must no longer have felt any resentment about Noda’s betrayal. As the only one to leave the old village, Noda had continued to harbor bad feelings that had long been forgotten among those who’d stayed. Those old complexes had all been dissolved and resolved as people forged new relationships in the new town.

  “What did Takao die of?”

  “Tetanus, poor bloke.”

  The idea that it was suicide must also have been a trick of Noda’s memory. He probably hadn’t even asked Shinohara what had caused Takao’s death in the first place.

  After promising to attend the next reunion without fail, Noda hung up. His dreams had been trying to tell him all along: Toratake’s death had been nothing but an illusion. That was why Toratake had appeared in the old inn, disguised as a tiger. That was why he’d entered Noda’s room, disguised as the boy Torao.

  He would see Toratake again at that year’s class reunion. For a moment, Noda smiled as memories of their boyhood friendship came flooding back. He wanted to share this joy with someone. The only possible candidate was Paprika. Ever since they’d parted, he’d longed to see her again, speak to her again. Though he felt a little ashamed of that sentiment, he convinced himself that he would, after all, merely be reporting something to her. He called her apartment. But of course. It was the middle of the day. She wasn’t there.

  18

  This man’s goody-goody nature is the source of all evil, thought Morio Osanai as he looked down at Shima’s face, bathed in the yellow light of the standing lamp. He had crept into the room at the back of the Administrator’s Office, knowing Shima to be sleeping there. Having a trusting disposition, Shima never locked the doors to his office or back room, even when he was taking a nap. Osanai had slipped in with ease.

  To Osanai, there was nothing more despicable, no one less worthy of his service than a leader who had no policy. He hated this Administrator, this man whose only wish in life was to maintain the status quo and prevent anything untoward from happening. Osanai began to shake with rage at the sight of this man, snoozing there with that expression of utter complacency, so full of false assurance, surrounded by the sickly-sweet, lukewarm smell of his own breath, a smell that filled the room. What profound dullness of instinct! Was he really a psychiatrist?!

  If Shima so openly flaunts his defenselessness, thought Osanai, he deserves all the harm that befalls him. Then maybe he’ll realize that he himself is the root of all evil. Just because, by sheer coincidence, two of his pupils had turned out to be unnaturally clever, Shima had based his record as Institute Administrator solely on their achievements. Now that they were shortlisted for the Nobel Prize, he was bathing himself in the glory of being their mentor. He had happily given free rein to their impish willfulness and deviation from ethics. He was a disgrace to the profession, and so thickheaded with it! For he could never hope to understand the truth of this, never even try to understand, however directly it was said. No, there was nothing at all that Osanai could tolerate about this man, in soul or body. He deserved everything that came his way.

  Osanai took the DC Mini out of his pocket. It was shaped rather like the seed of a loquat fruit. Shima himself should fall victim to this “seed of the Devil,” as Inui had dubbed it, this device whose development Shima had encouraged without the faintest awareness of its diabolical potential. Taking his lead from Inui, Osanai felt no trace of conscience as he planted the DC Mini on the sleeping Administrator’s head. Himuro had told him all there was to know about the device – how it worked, its functions, even the fact that it had no protective code. Everything, that is, except for its name. The DC Mini wobbled slightly, but still managed to attach itself to Shima’s thinning hair. Shima remained in deepest sleep.

  Osanai returned to the Administrator’s Office, where he connected a portable collector to a PC that stood at one end of Shima’s desk. Now he could access Shima’s consciousness as he slept. If Shima had any history of neurosis, he would easily be affected by the delusions of a schizophrenic. But a lengthier strategy had to be planned, as with Tsumura and Kakimoto. Shima’s abnormality must be allowed to seep out gradually, so that no one would suspect a thing. Osanai inserted a disk that would intermittently project the dreams of a mildly schizophrenic patient. Himuro had prepared the program specifically for Torataro Shima. Then he stepped into the corridor and locked the door to the Office. He’d found the key, covered in dust at the back of a drawer in Shima’s desk. The Institute staff might think it odd that the door was locked when it was usually open, but no one would make a fuss about such a petty thing.

  As he made his way back along the connecting passage toward the hospital, Osanai thought about Atsuko Chiba. He knew that she and Tokita were already searching for Himuro and the stolen DC Minis. Osanai felt a rising irritation every time he thought of the close spiritual bond between Chiba and Tokita. He remembered the passion he felt for her, a passion that had grown even stronger recently. He wanted her so much that it hurt, but he could never reveal it openly. For Atsuko, he was sure, regarded him merely as a coconspirator of the enemy, a trusted ally of the Vice President. She would only misinterpret his love as a ruse to help Inui win the Nobel Prize.

  He spotted Tokita in the Medical Office, but passed it without stopping. To him, Tokita was nothing more than a jumbled mass of inferiority complexes—and Tokita’s development of devices was a direct result of these complexes. These distorted stimuli allowed his energy to run wild, with no concern for ethics or morality. That was why he could develop devices that were increasingly bereft of humanity.

  Like his mentor Seijiro Inui, Osanai fervently believed that technology had no place in the field of psychoanalysis. Many mental illnesses in the modern era had arisen from the rampant excesses of science and technology in the first place; the very idea of using science and technology to treat them was fundamentally wrong. It violated the principles of nature.

  Of course, even Osanai recognized the utility value of PT devices, and had applied them to his treatment in line with the Institute’s policy. But he felt that Atsuko’s practice of indiscriminately accessing patients’ dreams, violating their mental space for the sake of her treatment, ran counter to all accepted morality; it far exceeded the tolerable limits of psychotherapy. If such actions were to win her the Nobel Prize, it would mean that psychiatry for the sake of humanity had been reduced to science for the sake of technology. Patients would then start to be treated as objects. The warm, human psychoanalysis that Osanai and the others had expended so much effort to learn would become discarded as old-fashioned medicine, ungrounded in theory and no better than alchemy or witchcraft. Until PT devices could be properly evaluated and used correctly, Tokita and Chiba had to be prevented from winning the Nobel Prize, whatever it took. This was Osanai’s firm conviction.

  Even so, Osanai found himself better equipped to tolerate the role of Atsuko Chiba, compared to that of Tokita. After all, she was a
just woman. As a woman, she had no ideology. So it stood to reason that the only thought in her mind was to faithfully, cheerfully pursue the utility value and application of the PT devices developed by Tokita. That was what all female scientists were like anyway; nothing more could be expected of them. This was not a question of looking down on women, but rather one of recognizing their natural disposition.

  The more he thought about it, the less Osanai could resist Atsuko’s allure as a woman. Ah! Her lightly tanned skin. Her body, so taut and healthy. He could imagine the pleasure of holding her. Given his rich self-awareness culled from past experience with women, he had no reason to doubt that, if he were to confront her directly, declare his love for her, and ask her to sleep with him, she would be only too glad to oblige. After all, he had good looks that even men found attractive. Those good looks were supported by integrity and intelligence, not vacuous empty-headedness. There was nothing offensive or vulgar about him. Atsuko surely had the sexual appetite befitting a woman of twenty-nine years, and there could be no more suitable partner for her than Morio Osanai. Once he had declared his love for her, she would no doubt accede most willingly to his advances.

  His infatuation with Atsuko merely increased at the thought that this situation could become reality at any time. He could bring himself to climax just by imagining the physical sensation of making love to her. Her eyes, normally shining with cool intelligence, would now be moistened with lust. Her usually pert lips would be distorted in ecstasy. Her self-restraint, the flag-bearer of her superior intellect, would crumble and dissolve through the sheer pleasure of sex. This would be a pleasure akin to madness, worlds apart from the risible sensations she shared with that idiot Tokita merely by using PT devices. In Osanai’s imagination, making love to Atsuko Chiba would be an experience light years away from that of humping the pale, sagging body of Misako Sayama, Senior Nurse on the fifth floor.

  Osanai could make love to Senior Nurse Sayama whenever he liked. He could even provide her for the titillation of the unmarried, highly sexed Seijiro Inui – the master just had to say the word. In fact, Inui’s sexual appetite was so voracious that Osanai, the real object of his desire, could never hope to satisfy it fully, however greatly he respected and revered his mentor. By providing his lover for Inui’s gratification, he at least lightened the burden of expectation on himself. Not that this had any adverse impact on the deep affection shared by Inui and Osanai; their love for each other, which had originally started as a teacher-pupil affair, merely grew more intense as they shared more and more secrets.

  Osanai entered the hospital building. After making sure he wasn’t being followed, he took the staircase behind the kitchen down to the second basement. In the second basement were the detention rooms, now no longer in use, a throwback from the days when violent or abusive patients would be confined there. Most of the Institute staff didn’t even know the rooms existed. Osanai used a key to open the massive iron door of the detention ward and walked to the end of its ice-cold corridor. He entered the last detention room, where he’d imprisoned Himuro. The prisoner was sleeping, in his lab coat, on an iron bedstead that didn’t even have a mattress. A collector sat on the table next to him. Sent to the land of dreams by drugs and with a DC Mini implanted in his head, Himuro was having the nightmares of a schizophrenic intermittently fed into his mind. He was trying his hardest to resist them by settling into dreams that he found more comfortable.

  Controlling the urge to throw up, Osanai stared for a moment at the ugly face and body of Himuro as he slept. Osanai felt sick at the thought that he’d yielded his body to this pig, introducing him to pleasures that were wasted on him. It had been a necessary price to pay for Himuro’s betrayal of Tokita. Osanai would probably have nightmares about it for the rest of his life. Damn you! May you now be driven mad by subliminal projections you programmed yourself! And with that, may you forget all about your sordid relationship with me! Yes, my friend, you will forget about everything!

  Osanai looked at the monitor. Himuro was having one of his own dreams, in which he was frolicking about with a cute bob-haired Japanese doll. The doll was alive, the size of a human. The images in the collector were a program for subliminal projection that had been previously used for Tsumura, or perhaps Kakimoto. Osanai had ordered Hashimoto to feed the images to Tsumura and Kakimoto while they used their collectors and reflectors.

  “Much too mild,” tutted Osanai.

  It was Osanai who’d persuaded Himuro to steal the DC Minis and bring them to his room, expecting his usual reward in the form of gratification on the sofa. He had then tricked Himuro into drinking a sleeping drug. He’d called Hashimoto, and together they had dragged the sleeping Himuro down to the second basement. Osanai had then ordered Hashimoto to feed the subliminal projections to Himuro. But the projections used for Tsumura and Kakimoto lasted only one-twentieth of a second every three minutes. And they’d been programmed only to stimulate the traumas of Tsumura and Kakimoto. The worst effect these programs would have on Himuro would be to give him delusions of reference; they would not cause the desired effect: a complete disintegration of personality.

  Tsumura and Kakimoto were the ones who were most infatuated with Atsuko Chiba. As such, it sufficed merely to give them delusions of reference and remove them from the front line of research and treatment. Then they could be turned into fodder for spreading bad rumors about the Institute to the outside world. But Himuro was different. Having been a willing participant in Osanai’s machinations, he knew everything. There was nothing for it; his mind would have to be destroyed.

  Osanai decided to feed Himuro’s mind with the nightmares of a severe schizophrenic, having logged the images from the memory accumulated in his reflector. With this, Himuro would be driven to the very basement of his subconscious, whence never to return. The result would certainly be a complete destruction of his personality.

  Before starting the projection, Osanai checked Himuro’s pockets, just to be sure. There should have been six DC Minis, but Himuro had only brought five, saying they were all he could find. Osanai suspected Himuro of hiding one for his own use. But the missing DC Mini was not in any of Himuro’s pockets – unless he’d buried it inside a half-eaten chocolate bar that Osanai found in the unfortunate man’s lab coat.

  Osanai started to project the nightmares directly into Himuro’s conscious mind. The images were so horrifying that even Osanai found them difficult to watch on the monitor. Himuro’s limbs instantly went rigid. His facial expression turned to one of heart-rending sorrow. He started to issue moans mixed with weak cries. This continued for about two minutes. Suddenly, Himuro opened his eyes wide, fixed a gaze on Osanai and howled in anguish. The shock was evidently immense. He had the terrified face, the terrified voice of a man who can see his killer in front of him, and realizes for the first time that he is going to die.

  Osanai felt a little shiver as Himuro continued to contort his body and scream. Eventually he closed his eyes again. The sobbing continued, but his expression gradually changed to one of imbecility, as if he was being dragged to the very bottom of his subconscious. Even that expression gradually became deformed. Finally, Himuro smiled inanely, suggesting that he’d reached a fundamental state of animal pleasure. This was not a refined pleasure, one made uninteresting by civilization; it was the true, deep essence of pleasure. Reality would suddenly seem extremely boring for anyone who saw it, though it was the product of depravity. Himuro started to issue the low, insane laugh of a psychotic maniac.

  19

  “Toshimi. Toshimi!”

  Noda had made his usual brief appearance at a business party and was heading toward the hotel lobby, firmly intending to make a swift exit, when he’d spotted Toshimi Konakawa stepping out of the hotel pharmacy. Konakawa was a friend from his university days. Tall and well built, he now sported a mustache and looked thinner than before. In fact, Noda was surprised that his friend looked even thinner than when they’d last met two years previously.
br />   Konakawa reacted to Noda’s call with a faint smile and a nod.

  “What’s up? Aren’t you well?” asked Noda. There had never been any reserve between them, however exalted their careers.

  Konakawa grimaced and looked up at the ceiling. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Of course it is! You’re too thin! What are you doing here, anyway?”

  Toshimi Konakawa worked for the Metropolitan Police Department. He’d graduated in the same year as Noda, passed the Civil Service exams, and started his career as a trainee detective constable. He’d then worked his way up through the ranks of detective sergeant and inspector before joining the Met. There, he’d risen to chief inspector and superintendent to cement his place as one of the elite members of the force.

  “Well, it’s the Chief Commissioner. He’s retired now, you see, and …” Konakawa spoke diffidently with downcast eyes. For some reason, he seemed to be finding things difficult to express. “We’ve just had the … er … farewell party.”

  “Oh, I know. That guy who’s standing for parliament or something. Is the party over, then?”

  “Aha.” Konakawa was still stuck for words. “I was invited to the, you know, second party, the informal one, but … Well, I didn’t feel like it.”

  He seemed in very low spirits, unable even to look his friend in the face. Noda could see right away that he was ill.

  “Let’s go to Radio Club,” Noda said in a tone that offered no room for refusal. “I’ve just come from a party myself.”

  This was too good a chance to pass up. Noda used to love cruising the nightlife scene with friends in his university days. Sometimes, made brave by drink, he’d pick fights with thugs and hoodlums. Konakawa, a martial arts expert, had saved him from certain injury on many an occasion. If it weren’t for his good friend, Noda might easily have lost an arm, if not more. He still shuddered to think back on those days.