Number 9 dream Page 0,114

anywhere you go,’ explained the bureau.

‘And since when did you learn to speak?’

‘Since you learned to unblock your ears,’ answered Sei Shonagon’s pen, who had sharpened her nib on the whetstone of her original mistress’s wit. ‘Shall we make a start?’ suggested the writing bureau. ‘Mrs Comb and Pithecanthropus will be along, in a little while.’ Goatwriter took out a fresh sheet of paper. Outside, over the highlands, lowlands, rainforests, slums, estates, islands, plains, the nine corners of the compass, peace dropped slowly from the mist-melded sky. Reality is the page. Life is the word.

Six

KAI TEN

Amadeus Tea Room is a wedding-cake world. Icing-pastelled, fluted and twirly. Aunt Money would award it her highest decoration: ‘Rapturous’. Me, I want to spray-paint its creamy carpets, milky walls and buttery upholstery. I found the Righa Royal Hotel immediately, which left over an hour to kill walking around Harajuku. Dreamy shop-girls cleaned boutique windows in the morning cool, and florists hosed down pavements. I poke the ice in my water. My grandfather is due here in fifteen minutes. ‘Grandfather’, as a word, will acquire a new meaning. Weird, how words slip meanings on and off. Until last week, ‘grandfather’ meant the man in the grainy photo on my grandmother’s family altar. ‘The sea took him off,’ was all she ever told us about her long-dead husband. Yakushima folklore remembers him as a thief and a boozer who disappeared off the end of the harbour quay one windy night.

Amadeus Tea Room is posh enough to support a butler. He stands behind a sort of pedestal at the pearly gates, examines the reservations book, orders the waitresses, and pedals his fingers. Do butlers go to butler school? How much are they paid? I practise pedalling my fingers, and at that very moment the butler looks straight at me. I drop my hands and look out of the window, acutely embarrassed. On neighbouring tables wealthy wives discuss the secrets of their trade. Businessmen peruse spreadsheets and tap sparrow-sized laptop keyboards. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart looks down from his ceiling fresco, surrounded by margarine cherubs blasting trumpets. He looks puffy and pasty – little wonder he died young. I badly want to smoke one of my Clarks. Mozart certainly has a great view through the panoramic window. Tokyo Tower, PanOpticon, Yoyogi park – where the dirty old men hang out with telephoto lenses. On a soaring chrome block a giant crane builds a scale model of itself. Water tanks, aerials, rooftops. The weather is stained khaki today. A silver teaspoon is struck rhythmically against a bone-china teacup – no, it is the carriage clock on the mantelpiece announcing the arrival of ten o’clock. Butler bows, and guides an elderly man this way.

Him!

My grandfather looks at me – I stand up, flustered, suddenly under-rehearsed – and he gives me that ‘Yes, it is me’ look you put on when you turn up for an appointment with a stranger. I cannot say he looks like me, but I cannot say he doesn’t. My grandfather walks with an cane, wears a navy cotton suit and a bootlace tie with a clasp. Butler zips ahead and prepares a chair. My grandfather purses his lips. His skin is sickly grey and mottled, and he fails to hide how much effort walking costs him. ‘Eiji Miyake, one presumes?’ I give an eight-eighths bow, searching for the right thing to say. My grandfather gives an amused one-eighth. ‘Mr Miyake, I must inform you at the outset that I am not your grandfather.’

I unbow. ‘Oh.’

Butler withdraws, and the stranger sits down, leaving me marooned on my feet. ‘But I am here at your grandfather’s behest to discuss matters pertinent to the Tsukiyama family. Be seated, boy.’ He watches my every motion – his eyebrows are sunken, but the eyes inside are laser sharp. ‘The name is Raizo. Your grandfather and I go back many decades. I know about you, Miyake. In fact, it was I who brought your personal column advertisement to my friend’s attention. Now. As you are aware, your grandfather has been convalescent, in the wake of major heart surgery. His doctor’s original forecasts were overly optimistic, and he is obliged to remain in hospital for another three days. Hence I am here, in his stead. Questions.’

‘Can I visit him?’

Mr Raizo shakes his head. ‘Your stepmother is helping to nurse him in the ward, and . . . how can I express this?’

‘She thinks I am a leech who wants to suck money from the