Paprika (3 page)

Atsuko lifted her face in some surprise. To her, it wasn’t a trifling matter at all. Their eyes met. Shima was lost for words. It was as if there was something he wanted to say, but he didn’t know how to say it. This was clearly going to be difficult.

In the end, Shima got up and returned to his desk. Atsuko smiled. Only when he wanted to convince someone of something did the well-meaning but weak-willed Shima hide behind the authority of the grand Administrator’s desk.

“Now. Of course I’m aware that your research has entered a most critical phase. So naturally, what I’m about to ask will seem thoroughly unreasonable to you.” Shima clawed the top of the desk with his bony fingertips as he spoke. “But in fact, I want you to call up Paprika.”

“What?!” Atsuko all but fell off her chair. She’d been ready to accept almost any request, but this seemed a request too far. However jovially Shima tried to put it, calling up Paprika was surely out of the question at this time. “I’m sorry, but she doesn’t do that work anymore.”

“Aha. I know. I know. What is it – five, six years since she quit? But this is a really important assignment. Can’t you persuade her, just one more time? As a special favor? You see, it’s not just
anyone
this time. Oh no. It’s someone very important, someone with a very high standing in society. I’m not going to send him to any old clinic, am I.”

“Psh. No one else seems to mind. They’re all going for psychoanalysis these days.”

“Yes, all very well, but this particular person is in a very delicate position, you see. Well, that’s partly what triggered his neurosis in the first place. You see, a lot of people are just waiting for him to mess up and make a fool of himself. His name’s Tatsuo Noda. He’s the same age as me, fifty-four. We were good friends at school and university. He’s still my closest friend, in fact. But now he’s a senior executive in a motor company, and he’s trying to produce a zero-emissions vehicle. A lot of people are against it, both inside and outside the company. So his every move is being watched, not only by rival firms but even by the government. If word got out that he was being treated for a neurotic disorder, his enemies would try to discredit everything about the vehicle, even though he didn’t design it himself. That would cause his company untold damage. Of course, being an experienced businessman, he must often find himself in this kind of position. The cause of his neurosis must therefore lie elsewhere.”

“Yes, I suppose it must.” This Noda was Shima’s friend and contemporary. He was trying to produce a zero-emissions vehicle. Before she knew it, those snippets of information had made Atsuko rather interested in this most important of clients. “The opposition from people around him probably takes the form of harassment. But that would only cause a typical nervous breakdown, at most. Not neurosis.”

“That’s right. That was my diagnosis too.” Noting Atsuko’s interest, the good and honest Shima felt instantly buoyed. “So the proper thing would be to psychoanalyze him, and that’s something I can’t do. In any case, whoever did it would need to spend a lot of time with him. Get into his dreams. That’s why I want Paprika to do it. She’s the very best dream detective.”

“But it won’t be easy to treat, even for the dream detective. It’ll take time.” Atsuko was of two minds. She felt she’d been jockeyed into a position of compliance and no longer had a choice. But if she agreed to Shima’s request there and then, her research would be interrupted at a most critical phase. Since it was trial research, she wasn’t certain exactly how long it would last, but it should be nearing completion now. “And anyway, Paprika hasn’t worked as a dream detective for six years now. She’s not so young anymore. PT devices may no longer be taboo, but this therapy is still very risky. I’m not sure she can do it anymore.”

None of this came as much of a surprise to Shima. He said nothing but merely stared at Atsuko with slightly moistened eyes, waiting for her to empty her bag of troubles.

“Look, will you promise me something first?” Atsuko said at length.

The very question brought an expression of rapture to Shima’s features. He puffed up his chest in anticipation. “But of course. If you’ll help with Noda’s treatment, ask anything you want.” Shima wasn’t the kind to evade an issue with a mere “
I’ll see what I can do
” – he was far too pure for that.

“All right. I want you to accept that your own position right now is just as precarious as that of your friend Mr. Noda.” Shima stared at Atsuko with a look of wonderment – just what would she say next?! “First of all, you should speak to all the directors individually, once each at least. You’ve been ignoring them, can’t you see? You’re so preoccupied with your work that you’ve lost touch with them. Second, I want you to hold a Board Meeting, as soon as possible. You can think of the reason later, but first decide a date.”

Shima had been bracing himself for something much worse. “All right,” he replied with some relief. “I can do that.”

It was just as Atsuko had expected – he was refusing to take her advice seriously. “So, where exactly do you want Paprika to go?” she asked with a little sigh, let down by his lukewarm nature once more.

Shima wrote the details on a memo pad, using his thickest-barreled Meisterstück pen. “In Roppongi, there’s a bar called Radio Club,” he said jauntily. “Only men go there. It’s always quiet, and it’s a favorite haunt of Noda’s. I’ll call him now. Can Paprika meet him tonight?”

“Does he mind if it’s late?” It would take time to call up the dream detective, and besides, Atsuko had so many other things to do.

“I think he’d prefer it that way.”

“How about eleven o’clock?”

“Right. Eleven it is.” Shima wrote two memos and passed one to Atsuko. Then he opened the drawer in his desk and took out a file containing some documents. “These’ll bring you up to speed on Tatsuo Noda. His case records are in there too.

“Oh, and Doctor Chiba?” Shima called as Atsuko was about to leave the room. He’d already picked up the telephone and was dialing the number to Noda’s office. “I’ve got to say I’m a bit jealous of Noda. Why can he have a drink with Paprika when I can’t?!”

Eight years back, when Shima had only just been appointed President and Institute Administrator, Paprika had treated him for a neurotic disorder.

3

Roppongi was a lot quieter now than it had once been. It was all thanks to a change in municipal regulations, introduced to ease the atrocious congestion around the Ginza. What they did was to license late-night openings there, with the result that fewer customers were turned out onto the streets in the early evening hours. Another reason was that exorbitant prices for food, drink, and entertainment had driven the younger revelers away from Roppongi.

Radio Club was in the basement of a thirty-four-story building, amid a cluster of high-rise blocks. The rental premiums were preposterous, but Radio Club was nearly always empty. It didn’t even have its own membership scheme. The customers were always the same, though; they were like members without a scheme.

Tatsuo Noda had arrived well before eleven and was sitting at the far end of the bar, in one of the booths that lent a modicum of privacy by their high backs. The booths faced each other in pairs on one side of the room, overlooked by the counter on the other side. Noda’s booth was at the very back of the bar, forming a little private room of his own. There were no other customers in the bar. Jinnai the bartender stood behind the counter wiping glasses with a tea towel, occasionally glancing over at Noda, smiling and performing a little bow if their eyes met. The solitary waiter Kuga, a man of considerable girth, stood motionless beside the door and appeared to be deep in thought. The professional dedication of this middle-aged double act had probably dictated the profile of their clientele. “P.S. I Love You” played over the speakers.

Noda sat drinking whisky as he waited for Paprika. But not just any old whisky – this, according to Jinnai, was highest quality, twenty-seven-year-old Usquaebach, which he’d managed to get at a discount.
Paprika
. Now that was an odd name for a psychotherapist. But, as Shima had explained, it was just a throwback from the days when using PT devices was illegal and the therapists all had to use code names. Shima had also gone on at some length about how very beautiful this Paprika was.

Noda felt no anxiety at the prospect of being treated with PT devices. He had little faith in the latest fads of modern technology, but trusted Torataro Shima implicitly as a psychiatrist. Actually, he had little choice in the matter. For who else could he trust, if not the administrator of a psychiatric research institute?

Noda was about to order another measure of Usquaebach, which was really rather good, but caught himself in time. He was already beginning to feel pleasantly tipsy, buoyed by the prospect of meeting a woman of renowned beauty. He looked forward to the time he would soon be spending with her – not working time, but time in which he could just let himself go. He didn’t know whether the treatment would start right away that night, but in any case sobriety was surely the best policy. Then again, as it was Shima who’d recommended this bar for the assignation with Paprika, it would have been rude
not
to have a drink or two. Drink would loosen the inhibitions, after all. If anything, Noda was grateful to Shima for choosing this location. No one from his office, none of his competitors would ever come here. Shima must have known that.

Noda somehow sensed that he wouldn’t suffer an anxiety attack while he was in the bar. Of course, he couldn’t afford to be complacent. An attack could occur at any time, and the knowledge of that merely added to the problem. Ironically, this was the only cause of his anxiety that could be identified with any certainty. That terrifying sensation of not knowing when an attack would occur was just as loathsome as the attacks themselves, events that would have brought the strongest of men to their knees.

The first occurrence had been about three months earlier, shortly after lunch one day. Noda had been sitting in a taxi on his way back to the office after a meeting. At first, he just felt dizzy. Then the back of his head began to feel heavy around the neck muscles, and his head started to spin. He’d previously suffered mild bouts of dizziness due to shoulder stiffness. Thinking it was one of those, he tried to ease his anxiety by massaging his shoulders. But then ominous words like
apoplexy
and
stroke
started popping up in his mind. A number of his contemporaries had been dying of such afflictions recently. He’d also heard that many people die of stroke after “selectively disregarding” precursor symptoms that must have been present beforehand – in other words, refusing to acknowledge the inevitability of aging. He started to feel nauseous. It was a really terrible feeling. He imagined that he might collapse and die right there and then. The anxiety of that thought made him break into a cold sweat. His heart suddenly seemed to be beating faster. The sound of his pulse grew louder. Fear made his breathing shorter. His throat began to feel parched. To his credit, he summoned up enough willpower not to cry out to the taxi driver for help. On the contrary – he stiffened his limbs and made no sound at all, in an attempt to conceal the attack. He even surprised himself when he thought about that later. And when at last the attack had subsided, his concern shifted to when the next attack would occur. Perhaps it was a stroke of good fortune that the first one had happened in a taxi. But what if the next attack came while he was at work? The very idea sowed the seeds of a new anxiety. Something had to be done. And while he was still thinking about what that something might be, the second attack occurred while he was at work – the very thing he’d feared most of all.

Luckily, he was in his own office, which he’d earned as Director of Development. As he struggled to bear the anxiety and pain, Noda was struck by two conflicting desires – one, to cry out for help, and the other, not to be seen by anyone. The telephone didn’t ring, and no one entered his office during the attack. But if it had rung, if someone had walked in, he would definitely have asked the other person for help, whoever it might have been. His fear of dying was far too great to do otherwise.

Noda knew it was considered bad for sufferers of mental disorders to read books about their condition. Even so, he bought several volumes on the subject and, while his wife and son were asleep, secretly took them out and read them. The first thing he discovered was that his symptoms resembled something called “anxiety neurosis.” But he remained in the dark as to the cause, or whether there was any chance of self-treatment.

Noda also discovered that there were drugs called anxiolytics, which were often effective in treating his condition. He knew he would need to see a doctor to get them. But he vacillated, not wanting the world to know he was seeing a psychiatrist. For some reason, he didn’t hit upon Torataro Shima right away. Then he discovered, in another book, that anxiety neurosis can sometimes progress to other mental illnesses like schizophrenia, temporarily at least, owing to diminishment of personality. It was then that he finally made up his mind to see a doctor. He thought long and hard; he had to find one who would respect his privacy, a clinic he could visit without the whole world knowing. Then he suddenly remembered his old friend. They still met once or twice a year; Shima would be the perfect person to consult on such a delicate matter.

“Frankly, the notion that most people live
without
anxiety is more of a mystery to me,” Shima had declared with a laugh after hearing Noda’s story. Noda reflected on his good fortune at having such a great friend, not to mention the burgeoning sense of well-being he now felt at the prospect of a cure. Shima, on the other hand, retained a modicum of concern, feeling that he’d perhaps overestimated Noda’s intellect and the strength of his ego. After all, Shima was aware that anxiety neurosis could be resolved by elevating it to an “objective experience” through the strength of the ego; he also had no doubt that Noda’s illness would cure itself. What’s more, Noda himself had felt, after reading a book, that the cause of his anxiety was a psychological problem peculiar to middle age. It was not the same as that crisis of awareness when a son becomes a father for the first time, or when an ordinary employee rises to middle management. It was certainly not the same as an inability to absorb new technology. Those problems were all long past; for Noda, they’d already been solved ten or twenty years earlier. Even when it came to human relationships, he’d successfully seen off numerous challenges in the past. Noda should now be quite capable of overcoming such challenges with relative ease by drawing on his own experience.