On their arrival at Paprika’s apartment, Konakawa showed no particular surprise at the splendor of the place. He didn’t react at all. In a way, his lack of expression, his lack of emotion could have been interpreted as a kind of defiance, as if he was saying “Cure me if you can.” But in his condition, he wouldn’t have been capable of such feelings of antagonism or animosity in the first place. Paprika knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep straightaway, but asked him to get into bed anyway.
Paprika suggested that Konakawa sleep almost naked for comfort’s sake. Konakawa detested slovenliness, and appeared to hesitate a little. But when he saw Paprika handling things in a way that suggested familiarity with the procedure, he felt more reassured and took a shower, then got into bed in his underwear.
Paprika set the collector memory to eight hours. She wasn’t going to hang around waiting for an insomniac to fall asleep. Besides, Konakawa was going to have even more trouble than usual tonight. He was in an unfamiliar place, and the apartment of a young woman to boot. Nevertheless, once he’d fallen asleep the memory device would be activated and the collector would record the content of his dreams. While the subject was still awake, resistance from the conscious mind was too strong and only meaningless images were recorded.
“I know it won’t be easy, but please try to sleep,” Paprika said before fitting the gorgon onto Konakawa’s head. Konakawa just let her get on with it – unlike Noda, who had wanted to know how everything worked. Soporifics were out of the question, as merely sleeping would be meaningless without any dreams to record. Please don’t go the whole night without sleeping, Paprika thought wishfully as she withdrew to the living room to sleep on the sofa.
In spite of her clever tricks designed to induce sleep, Paprika was unable to drop off. If anything, it was she who needed the soporifics. As Atsuko Chiba, she still hadn’t discovered Himuro’s whereabouts in the Institute, and there were papers she needed to write. The room where Konakawa lay was quiet. Paprika thought he must be keeping his body perfectly still to avoid making any noise, silently and stoically bearing the immense irritation of another sleepless night. Paprika felt touched by his impeccable behavior. She started to think about Noda and Konakawa, comparing the relative merits of their manly attraction, and in the process eventually managed to fall asleep.
On waking the next morning, Paprika was surprised to see Konakawa sitting fully dressed at the dining table in the living room. Until that moment, he seemed to have been gazing at her face as she slept. Paprika blushed and felt a little flustered.
“Oh! Well! Good! Have you had a shower?” she said as she jumped up and started looking for her clothes.
It was half-past seven.
“Did you manage to sleep?”
“Aha.”
“And did you have any dreams?”
“Well …” It was either that he had no interest in his dreams or that he’d forgotten them immediately.
“You’ll have some coffee?”
Paprika made a pot of coffee and took two cups to the side table in the bedroom. Konakawa helped by carrying the sugar bowl and cream jug.
“Now we’ll replay your dreams,” Paprika said as she called up the memory from the collector.
Numbers at the bottom of the screen revealed that Konakawa had started dreaming at 4:24 in the morning. He probably hadn’t slept at all until then. As they drank coffee together, they watched the screen in silence for a few moments. Even Konakawa seemed interested.
He was inside an airplane, the large passenger compartment of what looked like a jumbo jet. The plane lurched first to one side, then to the other. None of the passengers looked at all surprised; they all sat calmly in their seats. Paprika remembered that passengers on a jumbo jet weren’t normally too aware of the plane’s motion, however greatly it lurched. The scene changed to a room, the dark interior of an old Japanese mansion. Konakawa was walking along a corridor toward a wooden-floored kitchen, where a middle-aged woman was washing dishes.
Paprika stopped the screen.
“Ah! You can even do that.” Konakawa was mildly surprised.
“Whose house is this?”
“I don’t know.”
“And the woman?”
“Sorry.”
“Do you know anyone who looks like her?”
“Well.…”
“Can you remember anyone who cooked meals in a kitchen like this?”
“Well,” Konakawa said after a pause, “that would have to be my mother.”
He seemed to be saying “But that woman is not my mother.”
“She’s quite beautiful,” Paprika continued.
“Oh?”
The implication was that Konakawa didn’t think her beautiful. The woman may have been his wife, appearing in the guise of another. Paprika decided not to ask whether the woman resembled his wife, and instead returned to the dream.
A garden. A dog appeared, but immediately disappeared again. Inside a Western-style mansion. Someone was lying on the ground. A trail of blood flowed along a corridor. The exterior of what appeared to be the same mansion. It was on fire.
It looked like the scene of a crime. Konakawa gave no explanation at all. That makes things difficult, thought Paprika. But she’d experienced this level of difficulty many times.
The entrance to a stately building. A party was going on inside. Konakawa seemed to be trying to get in. A man who looked like a security guard was standing in front of him and blocking the way.
Freeze-frame. “Who’s he?”
“I remember this bit. It’s some embassy, and I’m saying, ‘Let me in, there’s a bomb inside,’ but the guard won’t believe me. He says I just want to gatecrash the party.”
“Did something like this actually happen?”
“No.” Konakawa seemed to have found his tongue. “And to make matters worse, I happened to be wearing party clothes at the time.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d been invited to the party. Not only that, but I’d forgotten my formal invitation.”
“So the security guard thought you were lying about the bomb as a pretext to get in without an invite.”
“Yes. But there really was a bomb!” Konakawa said forlornly.
Next frame. The security guard’s face was elongated in astonishment.
“What’s wrong with him?”
Konakawa laughed. “I told him it was me who’d planted the bomb.”
Next frame. Konakawa must have been allowed in, and was now at a party packed with people. Books were lined up on stalls, as if it were some kind of book fair.
Paprika suddenly gasped when she saw a face loom large on the screen. It was the face of Seijiro Inui.
“Who’s that?” she yelled.
Konakawa looked at her in bemusement, little knowing why she’d raised her voice. “I don’t know.”
“Why is he in your dream?”
“I remember seeing the face in the dream, yes. But I’ve never seen him before. I suppose he does look a bit like my father, but my father didn’t have a beard.”
How had this image become mixed up in Konakawa’s dream? Considering the structure of PT devices, it was unthinkable that part of a dream collected from another patient could appear. And there was no way that any thoughts in Paprika’s mind could appear in Konakawa’s dream without her deliberately accessing it.
“Is something the matter?” asked Konakawa, looking in bewilderment at the clearly shaken Paprika.
“Would you wait a minute?” Paprika skipped back to the frame that was filled with Inui’s face, and printed it out.
“You can even do that?!” Konakawa was again impressed, though only mildly so.
“Let’s continue,” Paprika said as she restarted the picture.
Inui’s face also appeared to have come as a shock to Konakawa. Perhaps it was because Inui resembled his father. The dream ended there; Konakawa seemed to have woken up. After a little while, dreams started to return, but only in fragmentary snatc
hes.
“You hardly slept at all, did you.” Paprika sighed. “This is serious. It’s only your physical strength that keeps you going. A normal person would be on their knees right now.”
Konakawa was immersed in thought as he stared at the printout of Inui’s face.
“What is it?” asked Paprika.
“You were surprised when you saw this face,” Konakawa replied. “You know him, don’t you?”
23
Konakawa was as taciturn as ever, leaving Paprika to unravel the latent meanings behind his dreams over breakfast.
“The jumbo jet was swaying quite badly, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” Konakawa had no appetite. He was forcing himself to eat the eggs and bacon Paprika had prepared, simply because it would have been bad manners not to. “I don’t really travel in jumbo jets that much. But I know they don’t sway that badly.”
“I agree.”
Paprika waited for Konakawa to continue, but he was too busy chewing on a piece of bacon.
“Could it indicate some problem in your workplace?” she asked.
He smiled faintly. He did appear to know the elementary basics of psychoanalysis. “You mean the jumbo jet could represent the Metropolitan Police Department, for example?”
“Perhaps. And nobody seemed to notice it was swaying.”
“No.” Konakawa neither affirmed nor denied Paprika’s interpretation, but fell into thought.
With no clues to assist her analysis, Paprika reluctantly moved to the next point.
“A dog appeared briefly, didn’t it.”
“We had a dog when I was a child. I mean, my father did.”
“Was it the same dog as in the dream?”
“It was similar.”
“Were you fond of it?”
“Yes. But one day I took him out without asking, and he was hit by a car.”
“And died?”
Konakawa nodded.
“Oh dear.” Paprika tried to read his expression, but couldn’t tell whether he felt guilty about it or not. “Then we saw a scene related to some case you handled.”
“That’s right. I always forget about it when I wake up, but I do dream about that one,” Konakawa said in surprise. He almost sounded enthusiastic. “It was an unsolved murder. A domestic employee was killed in that big mansion in Hachioji. I often dream about unsolved cases. But the funny thing is, I never dream about cases I’ve solved.”
Paprika laughed. “You’re so obsessed with your work, you even try to solve cases in your sleep!”
“Oh?” Konakawa looked at Paprika straight-faced. “Is that what dreams are all about?”
“But of course. Dreams often provide clues to solving criminal cases. There have been numerous examples in the past.”
“Yes, I think I’ve heard of that.” Konakawa grew pensive again. “But I dreamt of a fire, didn’t I. There was no fire in that mansion.”
“Does a fire remind you of anything else?”
“I’ve never handled a case involving fire as such.” Naturally, he wanted to link everything to his work.
“It could have been a fire near your house. Any time in the past?”
“No. There’s never been such a thing.”
Konakawa was not one to volunteer information unless asked. The two drank coffee in silence for a few moments.
“You went to a party at an embassy, didn’t you.”
“Yes.”
“I wonder if that embassy actually exists somewhere.”
“No. I only thought so in the dream.”
“You have no memory of a building like that?”
“Not in particular. I may have seen it somewhere. Buildings like that aren’t uncommon.”
Paprika was astonished to realize that it was she who remembered seeing the building somewhere. What building was it? She would have to print that scene out too.
“Do you often go to parties?”
“No. Rarely. Though I’m often invited.” After a moment’s hesitation, Konakawa started to talk again, though only in halting phrases. “My wife goes in my place. She meets other people there. Then she gets invited to more.”
“You mean every night?”
“Well. Maybe not that often.” Konakawa grimaced.
“Is this a recent thing?”
“No. It started six or seven years ago.” Konakawa fixed Paprika with a look that said “So that’s not the cause of my insomnia.”
But Paprika wasn’t ready to let the subject go quite yet – particularly as Konakawa himself had raised it. “Did your wife have a hobby before that?”
In the absence of an answer from Konakawa, Paprika ventured a guess. “Was it reading?”
Konakawa lifted his face. “I see. Yes, there were a lot of books at the party, weren’t there. I wouldn’t call it a hobby, but she certainly did like reading in the old days. So are you saying I want her to stop going to parties and stay at home with her books, like before?” He laughed for a change.
“Quite probably.” Paprika shared his laughter. “By the way, what’s your wife’s family like?”
“Her father was a police officer,” Konakawa said with a hint of pride. “Just like my own.”
Paprika imagined how strict their upbringings must have been.
The conversation broke off again. Paprika was getting tired of reeling off questions; it was beginning to sound monotonous.
“Oh, I just remembered,” she said to change the mood. “I’ve got some Italian ham. Would you care for some?”
Paprika couldn’t fail to note the glint in Konakawa’s eye. He obviously didn’t lack a taste for good food. Perhaps the conversation had whetted his appetite.
Not only that, but eating seemed to enhance his interest in conversation. “Your dream analysis is quite fascinating,” he said between mouthfuls.
“Well … This is only the beginning. It gets more interesting from here on.”
“Noda says you can actually get into people’s dreams?”
“That’s right. Next time.”
“You know that face you printed out?” Konakawa said as he wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. “I’ve no recollection at all of meeting that man. I’d really like to know why he appeared in my dream. Could you give me a copy? I’ll have him checked out.”
“By all means.” Paprika supposed that he meant to search the criminal records. But it all seemed so unlikely. What – Inui had committed some crime in the past, his details had been kept by the police, and this had somehow remained in the Chief Superintendent’s memory? Paprika stared long and hard at the printout of Inui’s face, which still lay on a corner of the table. It was not his usual face. He was smiling; his eyes were soft and warm. They had the look of love about them. Paprika had never seen anything approaching this expression on Inui’s face. The background couldn’t be seen, as the image was framed by the top of his forehead and the bottom of his beard.
“This is not the face of a criminal,” Konakawa declared after examining the printout.
Paprika held back a laugh. “Because he resembles your father?”
“Yes, that unforgiving look in his eye. And the mouth.”
“And did you notice that resemblance in the dream?”
“I can’t say. But I’m sure I didn’t think it was my father. The difference is too great.”
“Then you woke up immediately, didn’t you?”
Konakawa looked puzzled. “You’re saying the face reminded me of my father and the shock woke me?”
“I think so.”
“But why? I often dream of my father. It’s never been a shock.” Konakawa stared at the printout again.
“More coffee?”
“No, that’s fine.”
Paprika felt that was quite enough for the first session. “All right, I’ll give you the medication now. You must take the first dose right away.”
Paprika handed Konakawa one week’s supply of antidepressants.
“And the next session?” Konakawa s
aid after taking a tablet.
“When would be convenient?”
“For me, as soon as possible. The quicker I’m cured the better,” Konakawa said sheepishly, as if suddenly ashamed of his earlier skepticism. As if he’d started to believe the effects of psychotherapy and was actually beginning to enjoy it.
“Let’s take a break tomorrow. How about the day after that?”
“Excellent. Should I come straight here, same time as last night?”
“Please do. I’ll notify security.”
“So … Is that all for today?”
“Yes. Being the first time, I think it’s a good place to stop.”
Konakawa looked around the room as if something were missing.
Paprika stifled another laugh. “What is it?”
“Did you, well, discover anything during this session? I mean, something that could be of use in my treatment?”
“What?! The dream analysis itself is the treatment. Don’t you feel better?”
“Oh, was that it?” Konakawa produced a bright, uncomplicated smile for the first time. “Yes, I feel much better. I was wondering why. I’ve never told anyone so much about myself.”
No, I’m sure you haven’t, thought Paprika. “Actually, I wanted to ask a lot more. If I’m to analyze your dreams, I need to know as much about you as I can. But if I pried too much into your private life at the beginning, it would seem like an interrogation. I don’t think you’d feel comfortable with that.”
“I see. So it isn’t just criminals who feel better when they’ve confessed! Well, anyway, I’ll tell you a lot more next time.” Their eyes met; they smiled. Paprika felt herself being drawn to his personality.
“Do you have to be at work?” she asked as he rose.
“No. I’ll go home first.”
He might try to sleep again in his own bed. Perhaps he was feeling sleepy as a result of last night, now that he’d found some peace of mind. Perhaps it was because of Paprika’s unusually large breakfast. Or perhaps he just wanted to put his wife’s mind at rest. Paprika’s intuition as a therapist told her that Konakawa’s wife treated him with some contempt. Paprika bridled with the righteous indignation that single women often feel against the wives of likable married men.