leer. Big heads, bony necks. The road runs out of tarmac, and I can see that the track dies altogether at a group of old farm buildings at the foot of an early autumn mountain. Sweat pools in the small of my back – I must smell none too fresh. Did the bus driver let me off at the wrong stop? I decide to ask at the farmhouse. A skylark stops singing and the silence is loud. Vegetable plots, sunflowers, blue sheets hanging in the sun. A traditional thatched teahouse stands on a small rise in a rockery taken over by couch grass. I am already past the gate when I see the hand-painted sign: Miyazaki Mountain Clinic. Despite the signs of life, nobody is around. I see no bell or buzzer near the front door, so I just open the door and enter a cool reception room where a woman – a cleaner? – in a white uniform is organizing mountains of files into hills. It is a losing battle. She sees me. ‘Hi.’
‘Hello. Could I, uh, speak to the nurse in charge, please?’
‘You can speak with me, if you like. Suzuki. Doctor. You are?’
‘Uh, Eiji Miyake. I’m here to meet my mother – a patient. Mariko Miyake.’
Dr Suzuki makes an ahaaaaaaaa noise. ‘And a very welcome guest you are too, Eiji Miyake. Yes, our prodigal sister has been on tenterhooks all morning. We prefer the word ‘members’ to ‘patients’, if that doesn’t sound too cultish. We were expecting you to call from Miyazaki: did you have any trouble finding us? I’m afraid we are rather a long way out. I believe solitude can be therapeutic in our hemmed-in lives. Have you eaten? Everyone is having lunch in the refectory.’
‘I had a rice-ball on the bus . . .’
Doctor Suzuki sees I am nervous about meeting my mother with an audience looking on. ‘Why don’t you wait in the teahouse, then? We are rather proud of it – one of our members was a tea-master, and will be again, if I have any say in the matter. He modelled it on Senno-Soyeki’s teahouse. I’ll go tell your mother her visitor is here.’
‘Doctor—’
Dr Suzuki swivels around on one foot. ‘Yes?’
‘Nothing.’
I think she smiles. ‘Just be who you are.’
I take off my shoes and sit in the cool, four-and-a-half-mat hut. I watch the humming garden. Bees, runner beans, lavender. I drink some barley tea – warm now, and frothed up – from the bottle I bought in Miyazaki. Kneeling on the ceiling, a papyrus butterfly folds its wings. I lie back and close my eyes, just for a moment.
New York billows snow and grey crows. I know the driver of my big yellow taxi, but her name escapes while I look for it. I wade through journalists and their bug-eyed lenses into the recording studio, where John Lennon is swigging his barley tea. ‘Eiji! Your guitar had given up all hope.’ Since I was twelve, I have wanted to meet this demi-god. My dream has come true, and my English is a hundred times better than I dared hope, but all I can think of to say is ‘Sorry I’m late, Mr Lennon’. The great man shrugs exactly like Yuzu Daimon. ‘After nine years of learning my songs you can call me John. Call me anything. Except Paul.’ We all laugh at this. ‘Let me introduce you to the rest of the band. Yoko you already met at Karuizawa one summer, on our bicycles—’ Yoko Ono is dressed like the Queen of Spades. ‘It’s all right, Sean,’ she tells me, ‘Mummy’s only looking for her hand in the snow.’ This strikes us as very funny indeed. John Lennon then points to the piano. ‘And on keyboards, ladies and genitals, may I introduce Mr Claude Debussy.’ The composer sneezes and a tooth flies out, which causes a new round of laughter – yet more teeth fall out, causing yet more laughter. ‘My pianist friend, Ai Imajo,’ I tell Debussy, ‘worships your work. She won a scholarship for the Paris Conservatoire, only her father has forbidden her to go.’ My French is perfect, too! ‘Then her father is a beshatted boar with pox,’ says Debussy, on his knees to gather up his teeth. ‘And your Ms Imajo is a woman of distinction. Tell her to go! I always had a penchant for Asian ladies.’
I am in Ueno park, among the bushes and tents where the homeless people live. I feel this is a