5

Noda woke naturally. Or perhaps he only thought as much; perhaps Paprika had roused him with some kind of device. Paprika sat in a position where they could see each other if Noda turned his head slightly to the right. She was looking at the console monitor with a helmet-like apparatus on her head. Noda thought it must be the “collector” he’d heard about. The light from the monitor screen lent Paprika’s face an ethereal glow.

“What time is it?” asked Noda.

Paprika removed the collector and smiled. “Not yet two o’clock. You’ve just finished your first REM sleep. Do you always wake up around this time?”

“No. I thought perhaps you’d woken me deliberately.”

“No, I wouldn’t do that. It must have been this dream that woke you. You remember it, of course?”

“Yes, I do.” Noda sat up. “But how do you know that?”

“When we’re woken during REM sleep, we usually remember what we were dreaming at the time. So, shall we just analyze this dream tonight?” Paprika took Noda’s clothes from the wardrobe and placed them at the foot of the bed. “Although morning dreams are actually much more interesting.”

“It was a very short dream. Can you really learn anything by analyzing that?” Noda said as he dressed himself.

“Of course! Dreams in this phase of sleep are usually short, but the information they contain is condensed. It’s like watching an experimental short film. Morning dreams can sometimes last an hour or so. They’re more like epic feature films.”

“Really? You have statistics of that sort? How interesting.”

“Let’s watch an experimental short then, shall we? Come on, sit here,” Paprika said, patting the foot of the bed invitingly. Now fully dressed, Noda sat next to Paprika. He looked at the monitor. The screen was motionless for now, frozen in an alternating pattern of gray and black waves.

“Can dreams only be monitored in black and white?”

“There’s not much point seeing them in colour, is there?” Paprika said as she pressed a button to start the picture.

It was a school classroom. In Noda’s dream, he was looking toward the teacher’s podium. On the podium stood a slender man of about sixty. He was talking, but his speech was so muffled that it was difficult to hear what he was saying.

“Where is this classroom?”

“My old junior high school.” To Noda, it felt quite unnerving to be seeing the same dream twice. And with Paprika sitting there next to him, he also felt rather uneasy – as if a total stranger might be about to witness some past act of self-gratification … “But when I was having that dream, I didn’t think it was a classroom. I thought I was at work.”

“Why’s that, I wonder?” Paprika paused the picture. “And who is that man?”

“Well, it’s because of him that I thought I was at work. It’s Sukenobu, one of our directors.”

“Don’t you get on with him?”

“You could say that. He’s frightened that I’ll rise too high in the company. He’s also jealous of my success with the zero-emissions vehicle. He says we’re rushing things too much. In fact, he’s been colluding with a Ministry official to obstruct the development.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He wants to be the next President. Well, it’s a long way off yet, but that’s why he’s worried about my age. I’m ten years younger than him, you see.”

“And why’s he worried about that?”

“He thinks he’ll be the first to die, or that he’ll be forced to retire when he goes senile.”

The picture started again. Sukenobu continued to talk while writing something on the blackboard. He could be heard mentioning the poet Basho and his book Oku no Hosomichi. The words Hakutai no Kakyaku appeared on the blackboard.

“It looks like a Japanese literature lesson.”

“Classics. I hated those lessons. The teachers always had it in for me.”

“And does your old teacher have something in common with this Sukenobu?” The picture was frozen again.

“No. The teacher was always changing – sometimes it was a man, sometimes a woman, now young, now old. I had so many teachers of Japanese literature that they couldn’t possibly have anything in common with anyone. Except that they all had it in for me.”

The picture started again. Sukenobu asked Noda something from the teacher’s podium. Noda stood and was about to answer. Freeze-frame.

“This never actually happened in reality, but in the dream I mistakenly pronounced Hakutai as Hyakudai. I wonder why that was. I took the trouble to read Oku no Hosomichi recently, so I should know the correct reading is Hakutai.”

On the screen, Sukenobu was facing Noda, scolding and chiding him.

“Now. The problem is this next bit,” said Paprika.

“Yes.”

Noda’s classmates were laughing at him as he was being scolded. A low ripple of laughter could be heard, and as Noda’s line of vision surveyed the classroom, his classmates all appeared to have the faces of wild animals. Bears, tigers, boars, wolves, hyenas – all mocking him. Freeze – frame.

“Why do they all look like wild animals?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you recognize any of them?”

“No. I don’t know any wild animals! One of the bears looks a bit like the senior executive of a rival company, though.”

“What’s his name?” Paprika was writing everything down on a memo pad.

“Segawa. I don’t particularly see him as a problem, though.”

“People who aren’t a problem in our waking lives often appear in our dreams. If someone who really was a problem appeared in your dream, the shock would wake you, wouldn’t it.”

“I suppose so. As it happens, I don’t see Sukenobu as much of a problem either. Though I hope you won’t think me big-headed for saying that.”

“You’ve every right to be big-headed. After all, you’re a big player, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but do big players suffer from anxiety neurosis?”

“Well, I don’t know about that.” Paprika restarted the picture.

The experimental short moved on to the next scene. It was a funeral. A photograph of a middle-aged man could be seen surrounded by flowers. A woman in mourning dress turned to face Noda’s line of vision, and seemed to be pleading with him about something. The woman was young and beautiful; in a way, she resembled Paprika.

“Who’s that woman?” Freeze-frame.

“The wife of one of our employees, a man called Namba. But I’ve never actually met her in the flesh.”

“Well, does she look like someone else?”

“No one in particular. You, perhaps.”

“And who’s the man in the photo?”

“That’s Namba.”

“So Namba’s dead.”

“Yes, but in reality he’s very much alive. I met him just this afternoon.”

“Is he one of your enemies in the company?”

“Quite the opposite. He’s very important to me – he manages the Development Office.”

“So he’s your junior?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t feel like that. To me he’s a colleague, a comrade in arms, an ally – someone I can talk to.”

Paprika started the picture again. After showing mourners at the funeral for a few more moments, the picture suddenly broke off.

“Yes, that’s when I woke up. When I saw the mourners, it came home to me that Namba really had died – in the dream, I mean. I think it was the shock that woke me.”

Paprika played the same short dream back twice more.

“Fancy some coffee? We’ll have it in the next room,” she said as she got up, looking distinctly weary.

Noda was willing, and they moved to the living room. The bright night view of Shinjuku showed no sign of dimming, even after two in the morning.

“You seem to have a lot of residues,” Paprika said as she arranged coffee cups on her glass table.

“Residues?”

“Residues from your day’s activity. It’s a Freudian term.”

“You mean the office, Sukenobu, Namba, all that?”

Paprika poured the finest Blue Mountain coffee into Noda’s cup, with the precision of a scientist transferring a solution from one flask to the other. “You said your Japanese literature teachers ‘all had it in for you,’ didn’t you.”

“Did I?”

“You said it twice. But people don’t usually use that phrase in that kind of situation.”

“I suppose they don’t. They’d normally say they were always being told off, or something like that. So it must have something to do with how I feel about Sukenobu.”

“So you’re saying this Sukenobu has got it in for you?”

Noda groaned as he picked up his cup. “Well, now I think about it, that’s not really true either. ‘Itching for a fight’ might be a better phrase.” The rich aroma of the coffee wafted into his nostrils. “Ah, that smells good.”

Paprika said nothing but gazed out at the night sky, apparently lost in thought as she sipped her coffee.

“Could I venture my opinion as an amateur?” asked Noda.

“Go on.”

“Why did I give the wrong answer to the teacher, even though I knew the right one in reality? Well, it’s a strategy I sometimes use against Sukenobu at work. To deliberately let down my guard, you see, as a trap. So as well as being a ‘residue,’ it could also stem from my superiority complex toward him.”

“Was that what it was?!” Paprika laughed. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

“I don’t know why Namba died in the dream. And why did his wife appear, when I’ve never even met her?”

“An unknown woman who appears in a man’s dream is what Jung calls the anima.”

“What’s that?”

“The feminine inner personality present in the subconscious of the male. And a man who appears in a woman’s dream is her animus.”

“But she looked like you.”

Paprika blushed. “It was just your impression on meeting me for the first time. You imprinted that on your anima. It wasn’t even a residue of your day!” She almost sounded angry.

“In that case,” Noda said, calmly returning Paprika’s glare, “if my anima is a representation of myself, or an idealized vision of the feminine inside me, would that dream just now express some feminine concern that Namba could die?”

“Hmm. What standing does Namba have in your company?”

“He’s not popular, if that’s what you mean. He’s isolated, a loner. I can’t decide whether the problem is his scientific aloofness or his artistic temperament. He’s stubborn and won’t listen to others. He understands nothing of strategy and even argues with me sometimes.”

“But you feel protective toward him.”

“Frankly, it’s getting to be a bit of a pain. Though yes, he is a valuable person.” Noda noticed how terribly tired Paprika looked. “Well, it’s getting rather late, isn’t it. Should we leave it there?”

“Thank you. And sorry. It’s just that I’ve got an early start tomorrow, and there are still things I need to do.”

“All right then, that’s it for now,” said Noda, getting up quickly. “I look forward to the next session.”

“Right. I’ll be in touch.”

“By the way … Paprika?” Noda said as he made to leave. “That second part of the dream? Does it mean I should protect Namba more than ever, because he has so many enemies?”

Paprika opened her eyes wide and laughed. “That’s maybe how Jung would have seen it! But I think something else caused your neurosis. Something to do with your school days, I’d say.”