Paprika (21 page)

“In cases like yours, the method that’s usually most effective …” Paprika started, then stopped short.

“Yes?” Konakawa’s eyes were full of expectation. He was about to hear an expert opinion at long last.

“… is recuperation for a period of several months.”

“Ah.” Konakawa shifted his gaze to the space above Paprika’s head, as if to say “
Out of the question
.”

“But that’s impossible, isn’t it.”

“Yes. Completely impossible.”

“The best cure would be to take a complete break from everyday life, rather than vainly battling with sleeplessness or depression. But since you can’t do that …” Paprika started to think again.

Konakawa was definitely not the kind of person to take time off work for recuperation. In fact, that attitude was probably the root cause of his condition. Paprika came to a decision: she would have to see him through it herself.

“All right. There’s nothing for it – I’ll have to analyze your dreams. I presume you’ve heard all about that from Mr Noda?”

“Oh yes.” Konakawa spoke in a tone of resignation. He clearly had no faith whatsoever in the analysis of dreams.

“And to help you recover more quickly, I’ll combine it with drug therapy.”

“Drugs?” This also seemed to sit uneasily with Konakawa.

“You may feel uncomfortable about the idea of treating psychological symptoms with drugs. But in cases like yours, the conventional wisdom is that treatments based on psychoanalysis have no effect and are moreover unnecessary. So the treatment has relied wholly on drugs until now.”

“You mean sleeping pills?”

“Antidepressants.”

“So you’re saying it’s depression, then?”

“Yes.”

Konakawa looked crestfallen. Paprika wanted to avoid using trite platitudes merely to lift his spirits; her aim was rather to calm his anxiety over the treatment.

“I’ll keep the drugs to a minimum, as I’ll be analyzing your dreams at the same time.”

“But what sort of effect do the drugs have?”

Paprika gave him a smile of supreme confidence. She maintained that look as she started to explain things in a way that would appeal to his intelligence. This was an area in which she was particularly skilled.

“A number of drugs have been produced to date. And now we know precisely what effect each of them has.” The development of PT devices made it possible to know the mental effect of a drug by scanning the patient’s mind after administering it. “Drugs act on the synaptic clefts inside the brain. Substances called monoamines come into play when impulses are transmitted from one synapse to the other. Drugs control the effects of those monoamines …”

22

Clinical depression is one of the hardest conditions to treat in a short time without recuperation. Even psychoanalysis will not reveal the cause, and depression is naturally beyond the range of comprehension by modern medicine. There are various theories – Freud’s oral fixation and Pierre Janet’s exhaustion of mental energy, to name two – but none of these gives a satisfactory explanation of the condition.

Paprika had already enjoyed some success in treating depression using PT devices. Her method was first to identify, through psychoanalysis, the condition in which patients susceptible to depression had lived before the onset of clinical symptoms. Then she would calculate the point at which the “endon orientation condition” would cause endon fluctuation – in other words, the point of fluctuation that induced the condition – and would introduce endon-type energy at that point. Endons exist in a third dimension that is neither mental nor physical. For that reason, clinical depression is also called endon-derived melancholia. But since endons are merely the manifestation in the human body of genesis principles shared by humans and nature, it might better be called endon-cosmos-derived melancholia.

Konakawa couldn’t go home that night, as he’d agreed to undergo dream analysis therapy in Paprika’s apartment. He used the cordless phone at Radio Club to call home. “I won’t be coming home tonight,” was all he said to his wife in front of Paprika. The sound of his wife hanging up could be heard before Konakawa terminated the call. Even bearing his taciturn nature in mind, there was an exceptionally icy feeling to their exchange; Paprika could well imagine how chilly their relationship was. But Konakawa himself appeared completely unaware of this.

The lone customer at the counter had left. As Paprika and Konakawa got up to go, Jinnai came close to Paprika. “Take good care of him,” he whispered. “Take care,” Kuga echoed to Konakawa beneath his breath. Noda would surely not have divulged Paprika’s profession to Jinnai and Kuga. They must have realized she was some kind of therapist, even if not a psychoanalyst, using their intuition alone. That came as quite a relief to Paprika; she was glad not to be seen as some kind of teenage prostitute for middle-aged men, being passed from one client to the next through personal introduction.

They hailed a taxi outside Radio Club to take them to Paprika’s apartment. From the words Paprika used to address Konakawa, the driver knew they couldn’t be father and daughter, and proceeded to tell Konakawa just what he thought of him. He was old enough to be her father and should be ashamed of himself. Had he tricked her or just bought her? Whatever. The driver cast all manner of slurs at Konakawa, in a circuitous way. But Konakawa reacted to none of them. He seemed utterly incapable of showing any expression, whether positive or negative. A characteristic of personalities susceptible to clinical depression is that they are obsessed with orderliness. This includes a certain weakness of spirit; they are reluctant to fight others, and should a personality collision appear on the cards, they will gladly yield. Paprika thought it unlikely that Konakawa could fulfill his duties as a senior police officer under such conditions. Or perhaps he was different when faced with an adversary of criminal disposition.

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.