Number 9 dream Page 0,176

– ‘Messiah! Messiah! Messiah!’ This perplexes me. ‘Are you quite sure?’ They seem to be. ‘The message shall be revealed to you! You alone shall reverse the meteoric dive of humanity into endless suffering!’ That sounds great. ‘How?’ Kakizaki’s lower jaw falls off, but he says these words: ‘Pull out the plug.’

At my feet is a bath plug, with a shining chain. I pull. Underneath is earth – since the asphalting laws, earth is forbidden. It stirs, and a worm wriggles upward and out of the hole. Another follows, and another, another. The last Japanese worms. They wriggle their way to a preordained position on a nine-by-nine grid. Each position on this grid is a kanji or a Japanese character, written in worm bodies instead of brush strokes. These words are the one true scripture. It is also death for the worms – the tarmac hotplates their tender bodies. As they sizzle, they smell of tuna and mayonnaise. But their sacrifice is not in vain. In the eighty-one characters I read truth – the secrets of hearts and minds, quarks and love, peace and time. The truth glows in blazing jade on my memory’s retina. I shall impart this wisdom to my thirsty species, and the arid deserts will bloom.

‘Miyake! Miyake, you mongrel! Wake up!’

The upside-down face of Mr Ikeda, my ex-sports teacher, floats above me. A half-eaten tuna-and-mayonnaise sandwich wilts in his hand. I jerk up with a groan of annoyance. Mr Ikeda assumes I am just sleepy. I have to remember something . . . ‘I saw you in the ferry terminal, but then I said to myself, “No, Miyake is in distant Edo!” What are you doing back so soon? The big city too much to handle, hey?’

I am forgetting something. What is it? ‘Not really, sir. Actually, I—’

‘Ah, to be young in Tokyo. I could almost envy you if I wasn’t already me. I spent the first two Great Primes of my life in Tokyo. I waltzed into the top sports university – you wouldn’t have heard of it – and a wild young thing I was, too. The days I had! The nights I had! My nickname among the ladies gives you the full story. Ace. Ace Ikeda. Then in my first teaching post I put together one of the finest high-school soccer teams Japan ever saw. Could have gone all the way to the national cup qualifiers, if the referee hadn’t been a geriatric, blind, crippled, corrupt, dribbling sack of slugshit. Me and my boys – our nickname? The Invincibles! Not like’ – Mr Ikeda waves his hand in disgust at the students in their ‘Yakushima Junior High’ track-suit tops – ‘this pack of mongrels.’

‘Are you coming back from a friendly, sir?’

‘Nothing friendly about that bloated faggot tapeworm Kagoshima coach. During the typhoon last night I was praying a lorry of something flammable would crash into his house.’

‘So, what was the score, sir?’

Mr Ikeda grimaces. ‘Kagoshima Tosspots – twenty; Yakushima Mongrels – one.’

This knife I cannot resist twisting. ‘One goal? A hopeful sign, sir.’

‘Kagoshima Tosspots scored an own goal.’ Mr Ikeda skulks off. The tourist video clicks off – we must be within broadcasting range of Yakushima. I look through the window and see the island, sliding over the horizon. The prime minister promises that under his guidance the country will become a lifestyle superpower. Greyhound cracks open a peanut. ‘Politicians and sports coaches need to be smart enough to master the game, but dumb enough to think it matters.’

I remember my dream.

‘Are you suffering from sea-sickness?’ asks Greyhound. ‘Or was it your ex-games teacher?’

‘I . . . dreamed I was a sort of Sanzohoshi carrying the Buddhist scriptures from India. I was shown the divine knowledge necessary to save humanity from itself.’

‘I’ll give you six per cent on the first ten thousand copies sold, nine per cent thereafter.’

‘But I can only remember one word.’

‘Which is?’

‘“Mumps”’

‘As in . . .’

‘The illness that makes your neck swell up.’

‘“Mumps” what?’

‘Mumps . . . nothing.’

‘Deal’s off.’ Greyhound shakes the bag. ‘I ate the last peanut.’

Yakushima grows whenever you look away. Leaving a place is weird, but returning is always weirder. In eight weeks nothing has changed but nothing is the same. The Kamiyaku river bridge, the crushed-velvet mountains, the gaol-grey escarpments. A book you read is not the same book it was before you read it. Maybe a girl you sleep with is not the same girl you went to bed with. Here comes the quay –