Paprika (14 page)

“What have you done to your eye?!” he asked, like a father scolding his daughter for loose conduct.

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Noda supposed she’d been attacked by a patient. “It looks serious.”

“Does it?” Her left eye was bloodshot, its socket bruised and swollen. “Never mind. Fancy some coffee?”

Noda followed Paprika into the living room, then hesitated. “No, wait a minute. I’ll need to sleep, won’t I?”

“All right, how about a drink then?” Paprika took a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from her trolley and started to fix a whiskey on the rocks as she spoke. “I’ll access your early morning dreams again, so it’s OK for you to drink. Tell you what – let’s have one together. I want to get some sleep myself tonight.”

“Excellent!” Noda felt elated as he gazed across at Paprika, uncharacteristically dressed in a loose gown. Paprika returned his gaze, inducing a faint-heartedness he hadn’t felt in years. He cast his eyes down in embarrassment. He no longer saw her as a young girl.

“But you’re in no mood to drink and make merry?” he ventured.

“It’s cool. Let’s make merry.”

The two sat facing each other across Paprika’s glass table while they drank Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. The night panorama was visible in the background. The room was filled with a homey smell, perhaps because of Paprika’s gown; Noda began to feel pleasantly mellow. But Paprika was still downcast and conversation was sparse. She would start to mouth words, but none would come out. It was as if there were something she wanted to ask Noda, but was unsure whether she should say it.

In the end, Paprika decided to say nothing at all. Ice still nestled in her glass as she put it down and stood up. “You were up early this morning. You must be tired. Bed?”

Noda half-lifted himself, then slumped back in his chair, not knowing quite what to do.

“Mmm. That’s right,” he said, nodding ambiguously.

“OK. You know where the bathroom is. You don’t like pajamas, right? You’ll find a bathrobe in there.”

“Right. Thanks.” As a gentleman, perhaps he should go to bed first. Noda gulped down the rest of his whiskey and stood up.

It felt odd. This confused tangle of paradoxical relationships – doctor with patient, father with daughter, husband with wife, lover with lover – had conjured up a strange atmosphere unlike that of any hospital, or any home, and certainly not any lover’s tryst. Noda emerged from the bathroom and entered the bedroom, doffed his bathrobe in the ethereal glow of the monitor screens and slipped into the bed in his underwear. Paprika followed a few moments later, dressed in a pure-white negligee, to fit the gorgon cap on Noda’s head.

Noda couldn’t get to sleep that night. He wanted to see Paprika in her white negligee once more, even in the dim light of the room. He could faintly hear the sound of her splashing in the bath.

By the time Paprika returned, Noda’s eyes were closed. He half-opened them to see her standing by his bed and smiling down at him. From below she looked huge. Bluish light shone through her negligee from behind and below, revealing the voluptuous outline of her breasts. The swelling around her eye was hidden by shade. In this light, she looked like Kwannon, the goddess of mercy, or Venus, or Hariti, the goddess of children. As Noda stared on, she momentarily revealed a shapely pair of calves as she slipped into the next bed, muttering something about being embarrassed. Then she inserted a program memory into the device at her bedside and wrapped something around her wrist, before half-covering her face with the sheet.

Maybe it was something to do with his age, but Noda felt strangely comforted by seeing a sight he’d so longed to see. Paprika once more in her white negligee. When he could hear the reassuring sound of her breathing as she slept, Noda also fell asleep. He had several short dreams. He woke just once, when he removed the gorgon to go to the bathroom. On returning, he gazed at Paprika’s beautiful face for a few moments, before returning to sleep a happy man. This time, he entered a deep sleep.

Once again, he was in the middle of an absurdly fantastic adventure, half aware that he was dreaming. He often had dreams like this. He rarely went to the cinema these days, but he’d been amazed on seeing a video of
Super Sabre
his son had rented. It had revived a certain thrill he used to feel in the days of his youth, when he’d been an avid film goer. That thrill was more than evident in this dream.

Noda was cutting his way through a jungle, the adventure still clearly in progress. He was wearing a tattered safari suit, as worn by Johnny Weissmuller in
Jungle Jim
. In the stifling heat of the jungle, humanoid creatures scuttled back and forth through the undergrowth ahead. They looked like beggars dressed in rags. Noda had to capture one of them quickly.

One of the creatures disappeared into a thicket of shrubs. Noda followed it, flying into the thicket with a loud rustling noise. They fought, but the fight was completely bereft of strength. It somehow felt empty. His adversary had the face of a wild boar, or perhaps a bear.

Ah – this one’s Segawa
, Noda thought as he wrestled the creature to the ground. His adversary’s feeble resistance was quite at odds with the savage look on its face. “No – it’s not Segawa, it’s … It’s …”
I should know this, after ******ing last night’s dream
.

“That’s right. It’s Takao, isn’t it,” Paprika chimed in to offer support.

That’s right. Segawa stands for Takao. When I’m dreaming, I’ve got to find out who is someone else’s ****** in the dream. Paprika told me that. That’s why it’s so urgent
. The face of his opponent pinned down beneath him started to change. It began to resemble his hazy recollection of Takao’s face. “I’m Taka – o!” the boy chanted in a child’s voice, as if to confirm the point.

Noda set off through the jungle again. This time Paprika was with him. As always, she wore a red shirt and jeans – the “Paprika costume,” as Noda saw it. He wasn’t sure whether this was the illusory Paprika of his dreams or the real Paprika, the one who had willingly stepped in to help him.

“Sorry. Mind if I join you?” Paprika said with a smile.

By all means. Come on in. It’s a pleasure to have you in my dream
. Noda muttered words to that effect. Or maybe he just thought them. In any case, they were relayed to Paprika in an instant. As the two walked on, they were being watched by creatures with the faces of bears, tigers, wild boars, wolves, hyenas, and other animals, their heads peeping out of the undergrowth all around.

“What are these animals?” Paprika said with an air of disgust. “Are they from a Bond film too?”

“No. This isn’t a Bond film. It’s ****************.” He knew the title. But because it was a dream, the words wouldn’t come out properly.

“What did you say?” asked Paprika, sitting in the seat next to him. They were in a theater, watching the film they’d just been appearing in.

“
The Island of Dr. Moreau
. It’s the film I went to see on my own.”

“So you’ve been confusing
Dr. No
with
The Island of Dr. Moreau
?”

Paprika’s sharp insight attacked Noda’s stomach like a pungent spice. Perhaps that explained her name.

“True. If this is the film I went to see on my own, then it couldn’t have been
Dr. No
.”

Noda groaned and turned toward the seat next to him. Something he didn’t want to see would be sitting there, he knew. Just as he’d feared, Paprika had turned into a tiger.

Through the window, Noda could see farm fields stretching into the distance. He was now a guest in an old-style inn. The fields outside looked like the countryside near his childhood home. In one field, a man was selling vegetables to a crowd of customers.

“Who’s that?”

Noda turned to see Paprika standing in the room. She was no longer a tiger. She approached Noda, then sat on a rattan chair by the window.

“It looks a lot like Namba.” But Noda had no idea why Namba should be selling vegetables in the field.

A commotion could be heard in the corridor outside. Paprika smiled wryly. “They’re all in a tizz because they think a tiger’s on the loose.”

“So it seems.” Noda noticed that he’d gone goggle-eyed. “It would be no joke if a tiger got loose in a place like this.”

“I wonder if it’ll come in here.”

I’m sure it will. I don’t want any more of that infantile fighting
, thought Noda, quite fed up with it all.

“By the way, why was I a tiger?”

Noda couldn’t answer. He felt as if his tongue was frozen fast.

The sliding door opened and in came his son, aged four or five. He was wearing a cotton summer kimono. It was a memory from when the family went to a spa town for a short break.

“Is that really your son?” Paprika said, standing in surprise. “The one who phoned me that time?”

“Yes. It’s him, but more than ten years ago.” Noda remembered something important. “His name’s Torao. It’s written differently, but
tora
still means tiger.”

The boy disappeared immediately. The scene changed again, leaving Paprika sitting on the rattan chair, immersed in thought.

Now they were in the empty lobby of an office building. It was Noda’s company building, with a glass front door that opened automatically. Paprika was still questioning Noda, standing beside him in the lobby. They were both staring at the automatic door.

“Can you remember why you called your son Torao?”

“Because I thought it was a good name. You see … well …”

The door opened. Sukenobu came riding into the lobby on a red bicycle.

“Now. That isn’t Sukenobu, is it? It’s not him but …”

“That’s right,” said Paprika. “It’s Akishige. The leader of the pack, the class bully.”

Sukenobu turned into Akishige, the boy Noda had been trying his hardest to forget. He stopped the bicycle in a corner of the lobby and started talking to another boy who was suddenly standing there.

“Who’s the other one?”

“Shinohara. One of Akishige’s cronies.” Noda started to walk as he spoke. “But to answer your question just now. There was a friend I had, a long time ago. His name was Toratake. I think I named my son after him.”

For some reason, Noda was in no small hurry to leave the lobby. He was pretending to have remembered some other important detail; there seemed to be something he didn’t want Paprika to know. Paprika was well aware of his dissembling, but pretended not to have noticed. Now he spoke with ever increasing speed, as if he wasn’t in the middle of a dream. As if he was trying to wake himself. In fact, he probably was beginning to wake up. That explained why he could talk so lucidly.

“I often saw films with Toratake.
Dr. No
was one of them. Toratake’s parents owned a large inn. He was film mad. My dream was to be a film director and his was to be a cameraman. We used to talk about it. We said we’d make a film together one day.”

Paprika seemed aware of these revelations already. She was looking around warily while walking next to Noda. They had left the building and were walking along the pavement. As they approached the crossroads at the corner, Paprika stopped and pointed back to the building. “There’s a tobacco store there,” she said loudly. “The place where Akishige and Shinohara were talking just now? It’s behind it. You see? Behind the tobacco store.”

The scene changed immediately to the banks of the stream they’d seen in the previous night’s dream, the small plot of waste ground behind the tobacco store.

“********!” Noda shouted something that even he didn’t understand, thereby changing the scene. It was the place where he felt most at ease, his favorite
okonomi-yaki
restaurant from university days. He felt a little ashamed at that, but was in no position to be fussy.

As a character who shared his dream, Paprika blocked the change of scene.

“I know it’s cruel, but you can’t.”

In her half-sleeping, half-waking state, she must have pressed the back-skip key with her fingertip. The scene changed back to the vacant lot behind the tobacco store. Akishige, Takao, and Shinohara were bullying Namba. Namba was rolling helplessly on the ground while the three bullies kicked him.

“It’s not Namba. Who is it?”

With a cry of despair at Paprika’s merciless questioning, Noda fled once more to the comfort of the
okonomi-yaki
restaurant.

Back-skip.

Behind the tobacco store. This time, it was Noda’s son who was being bullied. He was four or five years old again. Shinohara was sitting astride Torao and strangling him.

“Stop it!” Noda screamed as he went to punch the bully. “It’s not Torao, is it? It’s Toratake!”

Noda woke with a start. He sat up in bed, his face drenched in sweat. Tears filled his eyes. “You see,” he said to Paprika, who was facing the collector. “Toratake died. I killed him.”