Paprika (47 page)

“Don’t be afraid,” Atsuko whispered back. “He wants you to be afraid.”

Atsuko didn’t understand a word of Swedish. Neither, surely, did Inui. Otherwise he would already have blown his top at the glowing praise that was being heaped on Atsuko and Tokita. Having finished his speech in Swedish, Professor Krantz raised his voice slightly and began to state the reason for the award in English. Atsuko tensed herself. With this part safely over, she and Tokita would then step forward to receive their Nobel Prize Diplomas, together with a gold medal and an envelope containing a check, handed over by His Majesty the King.

“Doctor Kosaku Tokita and Doctor Atsuko Chiba,” Krantz intoned, “for your invention of psychotherapy devices in the treatment of mental illness, and your considerable achievements in their clinical application, it is an honor and a privilege to convey to you, on behalf of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, our most heartfelt wish to soak your sickening romanticism in blood on this altar of death. It is in blood that the power of atonement lies. There can be no life without blood, and with this life, with this blood, we must atone for our life on the other side.”

Atsuko gripped Tokita’s hand. “He’s off.”

Professor Krantz’s voice cracked coarsely. His body started to distort grotesquely.

“Bastard. He’s trying to stop us getting the Prize,” Tokita muttered.

“Ahahahahahahaha!” With an insane laugh, Krantz turned into a hideous, blood-soaked griffin. The griffin leant forward on the lectern, turned its head to Atsuko and bellowed. “Woman! I shall offer up your blood on the altar of death! Woman, source of unrighteousness and sin, repository of misfortune and shame!”

The creature’s repugnant voice was instantly drowned out by the screams, shouts, and anguished cries that now filled the hall. The first to flee was the conductor of the orchestra. Next, the King and his retinue stood as one and made to escape. Foreign dignitaries either fell together with their chairs or just fainted. The laureates and committee members who sat close by, and the laureates’ families further off in the dress circle, simply stood with mouths agape, as if they could hardly believe their eyes.

If Atsuko and Tokita were to succumb to their fear, they would be driven to a world where fear took physical shape; they would have nowhere left to run. “Be firm,” Atsuko said, to give herself courage. “We’ll have to fight him here.”

“But how?” Tokita countered between panting breaths. “There’s no way of fighting him.”

How could Atsuko summon up the strength from her dreams, here and now? Where was Konakawa when she needed him? He hadn’t been invited, so he shouldn’t be in the hall.
Where is he?

The griffin looked toward the high ceiling of the hall and roared at empty space. A violet light shone around the VIP seats in the dress circle. There, a massive being appeared and started to float through the air toward the stage.

It was Vairocana, the physical incarnation of the Buddha.

Moving along the central aisle through the stalls, meanwhile, came another one who bore arms and seemed to shine gold. It was Acala, the immovable one, destroyer of delusion and protector of Buddhism. A closer look at their faces revealed Vairocana to be none other than Kuga; Acala was Jinnai. The griffin roared in dread at these greats of the Buddhist pantheon, but was yet undeterred from its course. The creature changed its position, leapt up, and prepared to swoop down on Atsuko and Tokita.

A shot rang out. The griffin halted before the petrified pair, then disappeared. Toshimi Konakawa ran onto the stage through a door at the back. His pistol had saved the lives of the two laureates, just as the griffin was preparing to rip out their windpipes. Others around them were rushing in all directions, screaming and shouting in sheer panic. Fresh screams could be heard here and there; new phantoms were appearing everywhere.

“Come on!” shouted Noda, who also appeared before them. But Atsuko and Tokita were unable to stand. They knew there was no escape. “Come on! Come into my dream!”

Oh yes!
It was nighttime in Japan. The time when Noda, Jinnai, and Kuga would all be sleeping, dreaming. Atsuko realized that instantly. The three had intercepted Inui’s dream, using it to appear in reality and rescue them from his attack.

“Do as he says,” urged Konakawa, breathing heavily as he battled against the tide of fleeing humanity to reach them.

Noda used the surreal power of a dream character to change reality. He, Atsuko, and Tokita now stood beside a road, surrounded by farm fields that stretched to a line of mountains in the distance. They were standing at a bus stop in front of an old tobacco store; the scene was very familiar to Paprika.

“This is the start of my childhood home,” Noda said in a dreamlike tone. “So many of my dreams start here …” and the rest was no more than inaudible mumbling.

“Are we just going to stand around talking?” Tokita said disinterestedly. “Is there nowhere better we can go? Somewhere we can talk calmly about how to defeat the Vice President?”

“All right then …” said Noda, and with that, instantly transported them to a corner of his favorite
okonomi-yaki
restaurant from his university days.

They sat around a table with a metal hot plate in its middle. Other customers nearby gave them curious looks. Many were student couples.
This place has changed
, thought Noda.
Does history work in dreams? Maybe this restaurant still exists. Maybe we’re here in reality!

“Do you think Jinnai and Kuga could still be fighting?” pondered Atsuko. “Toshimi’s still there too …”

“No. The phantom disappeared.” Jinnai turned to face them from his seat at the counter. He was no longer Acala the immovable one, yet had lost none of his fearlessness. “That Vice President, or whatever he’s called. D’you reckon he’ll be appearing here? Eh?”

The customer sitting next to him also turned to face them, bowing silently. It was Kuga, now back in his tuxedo.

“The ceremony hall must be in total chaos now,” Atsuko lamented. “No more Nobel Prize for us.”

“It’s OK. Using the power of dreams, we’ll go back in time, back to before the ceremony started,” Kuga said with a confident smile. “But before that, we’ll have to deal with that Inui bloke, won’t we.”

If it were so easy to “deal with” him, we would have done it already
. They all groaned and fell silent. Before they knew it, the King of Sweden and Professor Karl Krantz sat facing each other in the opposite corner of the shabby little restaurant, blinking as they surveyed the scene around them.

“They’re here!” Atsuko said in dismay.

Inui’s malevolence had found its way into Noda’s dream. No – perhaps it had originally been Noda’s dream, but now it was unclear whose dream it was. For all they knew, they could all have been dragged back into Inui’s dream.

“I’ve started to sense a loathsome black thing inside, outside, inside my insides,” said Noda. “It’s sharp-edged and prickly. There’s nothing like that inside me.”

The group were transported from the corner of the
okonomi-yaki
restaurant to the middle of a dense jungle. For some reason, Kuga was missing. The jungle was alive with Inui’s febrile energy. But it clearly wasn’t Inui’s dream. Noda thought they were on the island of Dr. Moreau; that thought was immediately relayed to the others. Vaguely familiar with the story, Jinnai pulled out his knife and gripped it in battle readiness.
You’re right. It’s the final confrontation
, thought Atsuko, now transformed into Paprika.
It’s good. We have a lot of friends here
.

Himuro appeared before them wearing a mud-covered lab coat. He was gigantic, so tall that they had to look up. “I might be dead,” he said pitifully, observing them with his little round eyes, “but I haven’t forgotten my bitterness at being killed. These are the last scraps of my consciousness as I lay dying. There are lots of them lying around here.”

Tokita howled in terror and crouched in the undergrowth.

Jinnai hurled his knife at Himuro’s eye, but it had no effect in a dream. It merely made Himuro’s face look even more grotesque and Tokita even more terrified. Noda remembered those fights with old classmates in his dreams, and the feeling of emptiness that accompanied them. “Be
gone!
” he yelled as he performed a wild lunge at Himuro. Called up by Noda’s mind, a number of humanoid creatures dressed in rags emerged from the undergrowth, together with Takao, Akishige, and Shinohara, to join in the attack on Himuro.

Himuro turned into Inui for a moment, then vanished. Inui must have been shocked to be attacked by those hideous humanoids, creatures that not even he had imagined.

They were inside a cathedral bathed in a dark-red light. Now Jinnai was missing; he’d either been unable to enter, or someone had shut him out. Torataro Shima joined them in his place.

“There’s danger here,” said Shima. “We’re in Inui’s dream now, no doubt about it. He’s brought me here many times. I detest this place!”

“All right, let’s go back to my dream, back to my dream,” Noda invited the entourage, resisting his own impulse to fall into a deep sleep. “See, it’s like going on a journey, isn’t it? I’ll be happy to take you with me. I’ll drive the Marginal.”

They were in an old-style inn, under the blue sky and sunlight of early afternoon. Farm fields could be seen from the window. It looked like Toratake’s inn. Shima and Tokita had disappeared; now only Paprika and Noda were in the tatami-floored room. Perhaps the others had all returned to their own dreams, but what about Tokita? Had he been forced back into Inui’s dream? A paper screen slid open on both sides to reveal Nobue Kakimoto in the next room, sitting sideways in a cotton kimono. She gawked at the pair, with hair hanging horribly to one side and her sagging labia exposed.

“Transient illusion of love. It was a sorrow I brought on myself. I wish I could bite you to death!”

This was the kind of phantom Noda found most abhorrent. Shrinking from the ghastly obscenity of the scene, he ran to the window. Namba was selling vegetables in a field outside. “Heeeeelp!” called Noda. “I’m scared! Namba Namba Namba, come and help me, help me, please!”

But Namba just laughed and shook his head, climbed onto a giant tomato and flew off down the road into the distance, floating about three meters above the ground.

“I know,” said Paprika. “This is my fear. The Vice President is using it to his advantage.”

“All right. Come on, Torao.” For some reason, Noda called his son’s name. He’d shouted “Torao,” but in his mind he saw the image of Takao Toratake. An enormous tiger appeared from the tokonoma alcove and went to attack Nobue. Her already crumpled body collapsed entirely, turning into an indeterminate lump of flesh that clung to the tiger, then was eaten by it and bled profusely.

Paprika could see what was really happening. An intense battle with Inui was in progress. At that moment, the contest was evenly matched, but she was nowhere near defeating him. What could she do to “deal with” him once and for all? Would she have to destroy his stubborn ego? And how could she do that?

Yes. How could she do that?

She was inside the cathedral again. The inner sanctuary was deserted; Paprika was alone. A moment’s slip in concentration, and she’d been transported back to Inui’s dream. But this time, the cathedral looked uncannily like the concert hall where the awards ceremony had been held. A life-size image of Christ on the cross stood in the center of the altar. His near-naked body was contorted with pain, fresh blood flowing suggestively over his smooth white skin. Why did Paprika find this image of the dying Christ so alluring? Paprika gasped. It was not Jesus Christ but Morio Osanai. That was why the sight of his freshly flowing blood, his face beautifully distorted in suffering seemed so erotic to her. It must have been the image of Christ in Inui’s mind, the object of his adoration.

Inui’s hoarse voice rang out. “Damn you, woman! Damn your impurity! Your meddling in other people’s lives! Driftwood! Viper! Scum! May you be crushed! May you be sliced up into little pieces! Then I will offer up your remains on this altar!”

A window shattered, and fragments of stained glass came flying at Paprika. There was nowhere she could run. She tried to duck under a chair, but the floor started to undulate, presenting further danger. She could feel Noda, Tokita, Jinnai, and Kuga desperately trying to help her. Inui had removed them from his dream, and was now homing in on Paprika, his first victim.

Noda twisted his body to break through an invisible membrane, and somehow forced his way through to Inui’s dream on the other side. He had been spurred on by that unrealistic bravery that always existed in his dreams, together with an almost indecent passion toward Paprika, and had used them to come to Paprika’s rescue. He appeared just below the altar. Instantly, layers of Inui’s subconscious entered Noda’s vision through gaps in the shell of his preconscious, cracked by the combined violence of love and hatred. Noda would now start his attack on Inui, using a logic that could only exist in dreams.

He jumped onto the altar and whipped off the loincloth from the figure of Christ, the embodiment of Morio Osanai. The result was just as Noda had strongly willed it to be, using the power of dreams. There were female genitals between the savior’s legs.