Free Number9Dream by David Mitchell Page A

contact her. No way. She will try to talk me out of looking for my father. I wonder how long it will take for Cockroach to die. The glue trap is called a ‘cockroach motel’, and has windows, doors and flowers printed on the side. Traitor cockroaches wave six arms – ‘Come in, come in!’ It has an onion-flavoured bait-sachet – curry, prawn salad and beef jerky are also available at all good Tokyo supermarkets. Cockroach greeted me when I moved in. It didn’t even bother pretending to be scared. Cockroach grinned. Who has the last laugh now? I have! No. It has. I can’t sleep. In Yakushima night means sleep. Not much else to do. Night does not mean sleep in Tokyo. Punks slalom down shopping malls. Hostesses stifle yawns and glance at their patrons’ Rolexes. Yakuza gangsters fight on deserted building sites. High-schoolers way younger than me engage in gymnastic love-hotel sex-bouts. In an apartment high above, a fellow insomniac flushes a toilet. A pipe behind my head chunders.

    Last Wednesday, my second day as a drone at Ueno station. I am taking a good solid dump during my lunch break, smoking a Salem in the cubicle. I hear the door open, a zipper scratch, and the chime of urine against porcelain urinal. Then the voice begins – it is Suga, the computer nerd whose part-time job I am taking over from the end of the week when he goes back to college. Obviously he thinks he is alone in here. ‘Excuse me, are you Suga? Are you responsible for this?’ His voice isn’t his real voice – it is a cartoon voice, and it must scrape the lining off his vocal chords to produce it. ‘I don’t wanna remember, I don’t wanna remember, I don’t wanna remember. Don’t make me. Can’t make me. Won’t make me. Forget it! Forget it! Forget it!’ His voice reverts to its bland, nasal calm. ‘It wasn’t my fault. Could have happened to anyone. To anyone. Don’t listen to them.’
    I am in a fix. If I leave now we’ll both be embarrassed as all hell. I feel as though I have heard him mutter a secret in his sleep. But if I stay here, what might he reveal next? How he chopped up the corpse in his bath and put it out with the garbage bit by bit? If he finds me listening, it will look like I was eavesdropping. I cough, flush the toilet, and take a long time to pull my trousers up. When I emerge from my cubicle Suga has disappeared. I wash my hands and walk the roundabout way back to the office, via the magazine stands. Mrs Sasaki is dealing with a customer. Suga is in the back eating his lunch, and I offer him a Salem. He says no, he doesn’t smoke. I forgot, he told me that yesterday. I go to the mirror and pretend to have something in my eye. If I show him too much kindness he may twig it was me who heard him being memory-whipped.

    Later, back at the claims counter, Suga perches on his stool reading a magazine called MasterHacker . Suga has a weird physique – he is overweight around his belly, but he has no bottom. Long dangly ET arms. He suffers from eczema. His face has been medicated into submission, but the backs of his hands flake, and even in this heat he wears long-sleeved shirts to hide his forearms. A trolley of lost items from the afternoon trains is in the back office waiting for me. Suga smirks. ‘So you already had the Assistant Station-Master Aoyama experience?’ I nod. Suga puts down his magazine. ‘Don’t let him intimidate you. He isn’t as big time as he makes out. The man is losing it, imho. A big shake-up is being announced, Mrs Sasaki was saying last week. Not that I care. Next week I’m doing my IBM internship. Week after, back to uni. I’m getting my own postgrad research room. You can come and see me when I’m not supervising. Imperial Uni, ninth floor. Near Ochanomizu. I’ll draw you a map. You can get the front desk to ring up for me. My masters is in computer systems, but between you, me and the lost property, all that academic crap is a cover for this—’ He waves MasterHacker .