She feeds a thread through a needle’s eye. ‘Do you see a sign on my desk that reads “Plot Synopses Sold Here”?’
‘I only—’
She sighs, as if dealing with a moron. ‘Do you, or do you not, see a sign on my desk that reads “Plot Synopses Sold Here”?’
‘No.’
‘And why, pray tell, do you suppose no such sign exists?’
I would shoot her but I left my Walther PK in my last fantasy. I would walk out but I know Akiko Kato is somewhere in this building. ‘One ticket, please.’
‘One thousand yen.’
There goes my budget for the day. She gives me a raffle ticket. Lumps of plaster lie here and there. By rights this place should have gone out of business decades ago. She returns to her embroidery, leaving me to the tender mercies of a sign reading
Number 9 dream
SCREEN THIS WAY – THE MANAGEMENT ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ACCIDENTS ON THE STAIRWELL
Number 9 dream
. The steep stairs descend at right angles. Posters of films line the glossed walls. I don’t recognize a single one. Each flight of stairs I expect to be the last, but it never is. In the event of fire, the audience is kindly requested to blacken quietly. Is it getting warmer? Suddenly I have got to the bottom. I smell bitter almonds. A woman with the shaven, bruised skull of a chemotherapy patient blocks my way. When I meet her eyes I see that her sockets are perfect voids. I clear my throat. She doesn’t move. I try to squeeze past her, but her hand shoots out. Her fore and middle fingers and her ring and little fingers have fused into trotters. I try not to look. She takes my ticket and shreds it. ‘Popcorn?’
‘I’ll give it a miss, thank you.’
‘Don’t you like popcorn?’
‘I, uh, don’t feel strongly about popcorn.’
She weighs my statement. ‘So you refuse to admit you dislike popcorn.’
‘Popcorn isn’t something I like or dislike.’
‘Why do you play these games with me?’
‘I’m not playing games. I just had a big lunch. I don’t want to eat anything.’
‘I hate it when you lie.’
‘You must be mistaking me for somebody else.’
She shakes her head. ‘Mistakes never make it this far down.’
‘Okay, okay, I’ll buy some popcorn.’
‘Impossible. There is none.’
I’m missing something. ‘Then why did you offer to sell me some?’
‘Look back. I never did. Do you want to see the film or not?’
‘Yes.’ This is getting irritating. ‘I want to see the film.’
‘Then why are you wasting my time?’ She holds open the curtain. The steeply sloping cinema has a population of exactly three. In the front row I recognize Akiko Kato. A man is next to her. Down the far aisle a third man is in a wheelchair, apparently dead: his neck is bent back brokenly, his jaw gapes, his head is unhinged, and he is quite motionless. I follow his gaze to the night sky painted on the roof of the cinema. I creep down the centre aisle, hoping I can get close enough to the couple to eavesdrop. A loud bang goes off in the projectionist’s room and I hunker down to hide. A shotgun, or an inexpertly opened bag of potato chips. Neither Akiko Kato nor her companion turn around – I creep down to within a couple of rows behind them. The lights fall and the curtain rises on a rectangle of flickering light. An advert for a driving school: the advert is either very old or the driving school only accepts learners with a 1970s bent in clothes and hair. The soundtrack is the ‘YMCA’ song. Next, an advert for a plastic surgeon called Apollo Shigenobo who grafts permanent grins on to all his customers. They sing about facial correction. I enjoy the ‘Coming Soon’ trailers at the Kagoshima cinema – it saves the bother of watching the film – but here there are none. A titanium voice announces the film, PanOpticon, by a director I could never pronounce, winner of a film festival award in a city I could not even pinpoint to the nearest continent. No titles, no music. Straight in.
In a black-and-white city of winter an omnibus shoulders through crowds. A middle-aged passenger watches. Busy snow, wartime newspaper vendors, policemen beating a black marketeer, hollow faces in empty shops, a burnt skeletal bridge. Getting off, the man asks the driver for directions – he receives a nod at the enormous wall obscuring the sky.