Paprika

  Sukenobu’s head glistened with perspiration as he eased himself into an armchair. “Er, sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said to Noda. “That man just now, what was his name, yes, Segawa, you seem to know him quite well?”

  Noda gave a wry smile. That’s rich, when you’ve only just been talking to him yourself! Sukenobu seemed unduly concerned that the President might have noticed him coming out of the party venue with the senior executive of a rival company. A petty concern, really, but typical of Sukenobu. The President also smiled wryly.

  The three eventually agreed to have one last drink in one of the hotel’s quieter bars before going home. They went down to an exclusive bar in the basement; Sukenobu was a member.

  Noda, Sukenobu, and the President sat and talked in the far corner of the bar, which was otherwise empty. First they discussed the plans for marketing the zero-emissions vehicle. Even Sukenobu was working on that now.

  Suddenly, Sukenobu started to complain about Namba. He’d been subjected to another of Namba’s selfish rants that afternoon, he said. But while he complained about Namba’s infantile behavior, it was also a roundabout dig at Noda for doing nothing about it. Noda just let Sukenobu have his say. He made no attempt at all to defend either Namba or himself. If he had done, he would certainly have fallen into Sukenobu’s trap. Inwardly, Noda was laughing. This was the very situation where his skill would come to the fore – his skill in taking his opponent by surprise.

  The President didn’t exactly spring to Namba’s defense either, but merely punctuated Sukenobu’s complaints with the occasional “That’s too bad.” Of course, Sukenobu’s strategy was based on the knowledge that even the President had started to dislike Namba.

  Noda himself had had yet another argument with Namba that very day. Noda had suggested a minor compromise as a way of avoiding a larger one. Namba had rejected it, though well aware of the reasoning. The only possible explanation was that Namba had deliberately wanted to pick a quarrel. In the end, Noda felt utterly exasperated, as they just seemed to be arguing for argument’s sake. He realized he’d been indulging Namba too much. In fact, Namba now seemed to be testing him, to see how far his insubordination would be tolerated.

  Despite all this, Noda still refrained from adding his weight to the attack on Namba. In his view, a superior who criticized a subordinate behind his back was a man of questionable integrity. In any case, a superior had the power to make or break a subordinate’s career; if there were accusations to be made, they should be made to the man’s face.

  “By the way, Mr. President, how about young Kinichi as Manager of the Development Office?” Noda said, taking Sukenobu completely by surprise. Kinichi was the President’s nephew. He’d graduated from the engineering faculty of a state university, but had worked in General Affairs since joining the company.

  The President could barely conceal his delight. His nephew had been eyeing the post of Development Office Manager for some time, but Namba’s presence had made it impossible.

  “Oh, yes! That’s right!” Sukenobu exclaimed loudly. Though momentarily thrown by Noda’s suggestion, he now cast daggers at Noda, as if to accuse him of currying favor. “I’d forgotten about Kinichi.” He suddenly seemed to realize how contrived his statement had sounded, and now tried to justify himself: “Of course, that doesn’t mean I hadn’t been thinking about Kinichi …”

  In reality, of course, the President’s nephew had been the furthest thing from his mind; he had never for a moment imagined that Noda would suggest him for the post.

  “Nevertheless, Namba has really done very well, hasn’t he,” the President said in apparent modesty. Since the two directors had finally managed to agree on something, he seemed happy just to let them think it out from now on. He looked quite satisfied.

  “Well, anyway, we’ll talk about it some other day,” Sukenobu said with a meaningful nod toward Noda.

  Noda thought about Namba on his way home in the chauffeured limousine. Namba certainly had talent, but in the final analysis he was not suited to management. Was the man aware of that himself? Probably not. After all, he probably thought he could one day become President.

  Noda realized that he had absolutely no wish to protect Namba, in contrast to his own analysis of the dream in Paprika’s apartment. It had been bound to happen sooner or later, but he’d inadvertently used Namba to curry favor. It was now certain that he would ask him to step down as Manager of the Development Office. He didn’t feel even slightly guilty about that, as he could happily explain that Namba’s downfall was his own doing. After all, Noda had frequently made far more cold-hearted decisions during his time.

  Namba was a proud man, not the kind to start yelling and screaming when transferred to another post. Nor should he become too despondent, if his ego really was that strong. Noda turned his thoughts to Sukenobu. Naturally, his take on things was that he’d been robbed of a trophy, the kudos of being first to recommend the President’s nephew as Manager of the Development Office. So what would he do next? Noda remembered the meaningful look Sukenobu had given him at the end. Perhaps he was already planning something. He probably was, knowing him.

  But what was this? Noda had just acknowledged that he felt no guilt toward Namba. So why the sudden feeling of anxiety? He’d been thinking about Sukenobu, admittedly, but he wouldn’t normally feel anything like anxiety about his machinations. He’d never attached much significance to them before. As if to prove the point, Noda had never once felt the slightest concern about suffering an attack while he was talking to Sukenobu. So why this attack, now?

  Noda started to perspire. His heartbeat quickened. He desperately tried to allay his fears, persuade, convince himself that it was just another panic attack. It would surely pass, in time. But reasoning had no effect. Above all, he felt a searing pain that made him think he was dying. That was enough to destroy all reason. He didn’t exactly feel confident about the state of his heart. He might even suffer a stroke. He might die here in the company’s hired limousine. The very thought struck Noda with intense fear. The scenery along the route home and the lights in the office buildings had become such a familiar sight that they normally filled him with ennui. But now they suddenly seemed like an old friend, dear and irreplaceable; after all, he might be seeing them for the last time. At the same time, it galled him to think that those sights would continue to exist as if nothing had happened, even after his death. He started to wax philosophical about the unfairness, the senselessness of death. It was then that he really began to panic. He couldn’t breathe. It was too late to go to Paprika’s apartment. The limousine was pulling up in front of his house.

  With the greatest difficulty, Noda summoned up the energy to speak to the driver. “I don’t … feel … so well,” he managed to say. “Would you … call … one of … my family?”

  “Certainly sir,” the driver replied, tensing as he noted the tone of panic in Noda’s voice.

  “You must … tell … no one …” Noda felt that if he kept talking, he might be able to distract his mind from his anxiety. “Please … tell no one …”

  “Yes, sir. I understand.”

  Until about ten years earlier, the part of Tokyo where Noda lived had been a high-class residential area. Now, his house was hemmed in by apartment buildings; now, ironically, a detached house of only modest proportions was seen as a sign of great social prestige in this area. The chauffeur got out and alerted Noda’s family via the front-door intercom. Noda’s wife, Ito, and his son Torao immediately came rushing out, ashen-faced.

  “What on earth’s the matter?” shrieked his wife. Slinging a shoulder under each of Noda’s arms, Torao and the chauffeur helped him into the reception room next to the front hallway. Noda was unable to speak; the most he could manage was to keep breathing. Still his wife continued to question him.

  “Can’t you speak? What is it? Can’t you breathe? You can’t breathe, is that it?”

  Torao loosened Noda’s necktie as he lay sprawled on the
sofa.

  “I’ll call Doctor Kuroi right away,” said Noda’s wife.

  Noda simply had to speak out now. Not only was Kuroi openly envious of Noda’s material opulence, but he was also a prattler. The truth would be sure to leak out.

  “No … not Kuroi …”

  “What?! But look at you!”

  “I’m not … ill … It’s … something else …”

  “What then?”

  “Neuro … neurosis …”

  “You mean … you mean mental illness?!” Noda’s wife had been bending over him, wiping the sweat off his brow, but now she stiffened and took a step back. “Why haven’t you told us before?!”

  Noda’s son Tarao had been trying to persuade the chauffeur to stay behind a little longer. He turned to his father. “What do you want us to do then?”

  Noda took a card out of his breast pocket. He’d put it there in readiness for this very eventuality. The card gave an “Emergency Contact Number”; it was Paprika’s.

  “You’ve even got an emergency contact number!” wailed the wife, now in tears.

  Torao moved to a corner of the room to make the call. After giving directions to the house, he returned to his father. “It was a woman who answered. She said she’d arrange it right away.”

  “Arrange it right away”?! So it couldn’t have been Paprika who’d answered the phone – could it? And did that mean the apartment wasn’t Paprika’s either? Noda’s chest heaved violently as he considered the implications.

  The chauffeur left the room, causing Noda to raise his voice once more. “Pay the … driver … pay the driver …”

  “What’s that? The driver? He’s already gone, dear. Don’t worry. The company always pays!”

  “No … To … keep him … quiet …”

  “I understand. Leave it to me,” said Torao, following the driver out.

  Paprika’s taxi pulled up an hour later. Noda’s attack had already subsided.

  10

  Noda was standing alone on a deserted country road. He seemed very familiar with his surroundings; it must have been a scene from his childhood home in the country. From the far end of the road, someone was riding toward him on a red bicycle. Noda began to feel anxious. Before Noda could deny the existence of the red bicycle or the person riding on it, Paprika entered his dream.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  “Don’t you know, Mari?” Noda replied in a boy’s voice. “It’s Sukenobu!”

  Noda seemed to have mistaken Paprika for his childhood sweetheart Mari.

  The person on the bike certainly looked like Sukenobu, as had the old literature teacher in the previous dream. But it couldn’t have been Sukenobu riding toward Noda on that country road. He was merely a mask, a substitute for one of Noda’s boyhood friends. One that Mari must also have known well.

  “No, it’s not Sukenobu!” Paprika said in the voice of a child. Noda started to feel agitated. “Look closer!” Paprika shouted, but it was too late. Noda had already changed the setting of his dream.

  He had entered his final REM sleep in the morning hours. Paprika had sat with him all night trying to unravel the darkest secrets of his psyche.

  When the call from the Noda household came through, Atsuko had only just returned from the Institute. She was tired, but agreed to go to Noda’s house right away. Of course, she needed time to change into Paprika; she had to alter her hairstyle, change her makeup, and, most troublesome of all, attach freckles under her eyes. They had to be positioned one by one with tweezers, stuck fast to ensure they wouldn’t come off when she washed her face. These changes altered her appearance completely and made her look younger. At the same time, they gave Atsuko an opportunity to prepare herself mentally for the transformation into Paprika.

  Atsuko had to be careful when leaving the apartment building. Ever since the press conference, a number of journalists had started to suspect that Paprika was in fact Atsuko Chiba. As a leading candidate for the Nobel Prize, Atsuko found herself caught in the media spotlight, though few suspected that she was still secretly working as a “dream detective.” Caution was essential, nonetheless, as Atsuko had no way of knowing who was watching her, or from where.

  Now metamorphosed into Paprika, Atsuko had left the apartment building through the garage door. She couldn’t risk using her own car, so had decided to hail a taxi on the street.

  On returning to the building later with Tatsuo Noda, she had come in through the back entrance using her security code and fingerprint. The caretaker who kept watch over the lobby knew Atsuko and had a good understanding of her relationship with Paprika. But if any newspaper journalists or media people had been lying in wait, they might even have inquired into the identity of Noda himself. That would certainly have been counterproductive.

  After entering the apartment, Atsuko had first examined Noda, attached the gorgon to his head and waited for him to fall asleep. Then she’d programmed the PT devices to wake her later, and with that had entered a deep sleep. At five in the morning she’d been awoken by a barely detectable, momentary charge of static electricity. She had immediately put the collector on her head and entered Noda’s dream.

  Now Noda was walking along a beach at night. A bizarrely shaped speedboat was racing over the water.

  “Get down, ******!”

  Noda used some foreign-sounding name to call out to Paprika, who had just entered his dream and was holding his hand. Desperate to avoid being spotted by the speedboat, he then threw himself onto the sand.

  “What is that?!” asked Paprika.

  “*****!” Noda replied with a word that even he didn’t understand.

  In her half-sleeping, half-waking state, Paprika was unable to distinguish the field of vision in Noda’s dream from that on the monitor screen she was watching. In both, Noda seemed to equate her with his childhood friend Mari, now transformed into an adult, a preposterously tall foreign actress wearing a wetsuit. Paprika was not in the habit of watching such things, but even she recognized it as a scene from a Bond film.

  Now the two set off on an insanely fantastic adventure. First they jumped into a river that continued from the sea, then headed off upstream, sometimes gliding underwater, sometimes bobbing on the surface. Something that could have been a boat, or possibly a dragon, started to approach them from further upstream. It projected beams of light from searchlights resembling eyeballs, and spewed flames from its mouth. Noda and Paprika had no choice but to return fire with their submachine guns.

  “What ridiculous dreams you have!”

  Appalled at the realization that she’d been completely transformed into Ursula Andress, Paprika turned her attention to Noda’s thought patterns. He was enjoying this dream.

  Next, Namba, the character whose death had been mourned in Noda’s earlier dream, thrust his upper torso from the head of the boat-beast and started firing wildly at them with his own submachine gun. Namba was Noda’s junior, the maverick Manager of the Development Office; if anything, Noda should have been protecting him. But now they were engaged in a battle that felt more like a war game. Noda showed not the slightest concern that he might kill Namba, nor any fear that he could himself be killed. Perhaps Noda enjoyed having arguments with Namba.

  “What film was this?” asked Paprika.

  Paprika’s question made Noda vaguely aware that it was only a dream. He started acting absurdly and yelling incomprehensible phrases as he crawled out of the river.

  They stood on the bank of a small river next to a broad road. Beyond the river, farm fields stretched endlessly toward a range of mountains in the distance. A small number of rustic shops lined the road. The pair were standing behind one of them, an old tobacco store. Noda seemed to feel a strong anxiety about being there. Paprika followed him around to the front of the tobacco store, where there was a bus-stop sign.

  “You used to catch the bus from here, didn’t you,” said Paprika. To Noda, she now appeared as the pretty, freckled Paprika.

  “Yes.
The bus to … junior high school …”

  “In that case …” In her half-sleeping state, even Paprika had difficulty finding the right words.

  Paprika wanted to go back behind the old tobacco store, as Noda seemed to have some kind of complex about it. But by now he’d already arrived in his old junior high classroom, the same one as in the previous dream. Standing on the teacher’s podium this time was a thickset, bull-necked man. He appeared to be teaching math.

  “Who’s that?” asked Paprika as she took her seat next to Noda.

  “Segawa …”

  As Paprika recalled, Segawa was a senior executive of one of Noda’s rivals. He had appeared as Noda’s bear-faced classmate in the previous dream.

  “Wasn’t he … a bear?”

  “No … That’s ******** …”

  The faces of Noda’s classmates were blurred and difficult to tell apart.

  Segawa now started spouting nonsense while madly scribbling numbers on the blackboard. “The sum of n non-negative integers that start from 1 in arithmetical progression haven’t seen you at the usual place recently, and therefore the sum of odd numbers is 1 + 2 + 3 + …… + n = misses you so badly! And this means that, Oh! Hello, Mr. President. Leaving so soon?”

  The teacher must also have been someone else, hiding behind the mask of Segawa. Paprika decided to focus on Noda’s emotions toward Segawa.

  She stood up and started shouting. “Don’t just sit there! Go and give him one!”

  “Right!” Noda stood up.

  On the podium, Segawa showed an expression of fear, whereupon his face changed. He now looked like an old man. The classroom had changed to what looked like a company meeting room.

  The old man seemed to have been talking for some time. “… and that kind of thing just will not do. Office politics and other ******* simply cannot be tolerated. What if there were victims …”

  “Who’s he?”

  Now completely unaware that he was dreaming, Noda remained transfixed with terror at the sight of the old man.

  “QUI EST-IL?” Paprika said again in her best schoolgirl French.