Patient X

captain or other, a revision of a lecture in English for a colleague, a translation of an article from a foreign newspaper, and how could he forget the textbook he was supposed to be putting together. There was also an ever-rising pile of letters from friends and editors which he needed to answer. And then there was his wedding; the endless appointments, discussions and formalities! He cursed again. Then cursed himself; blaming others would solve nothing. He put out his cigarette. He picked up his pen, tried to get it moving again. But still he could not write a single line of worth. He put down his pen again. He needed help, he needed inspiration. And not another cigarette. He picked up a book from the desk. He got up from the desk. He walked over to the bedding already laid out on the floor. He stretched out on the futon to read the book. The book was a collection of stories by Edgar Allan Poe. He began to reread one of the stories, attentive more than ever to the inspiration behind the work, the way in which Poe had adapted his original source. This particular story was based on a brief article by Washington Irving. Ryūnosuke was familiar with that article. He recalled the protagonist was a young man who finds himself followed and thwarted at every turn by a masked figure. Finally, the young man stabs the figure with his sword. But when the young man looks behind the mask, he finds only ‘his own image – the spectre of himself’. Ryūnosuke had even copied out that line by Irving into one of his own notebooks, along with so many other lines and passages from Poe. But now as he reread Poe’s retelling, he began to feel ill. In all of Poe’s tales, Ryūnosuke felt the fragility of the mind, so easily, easily fragmented and torn, shattered and ripped into so many, many pieces. And yet Poe wrote with such craftsmanship, with such clarity and with such realism, yet with such lyricism; the alchemy of his analytical intellect and his poetic temperament, harnessing and sculpting the truth, the verisimilitude of his dreams, his dreams within dreams, real and yet unreal, in words, in writing, in poetry and prose, tales and stories, so beautiful and so terrifying, and so much greater, so much, much greater than Ryūnosuke could ever, ever hope to even, even attempt. He hurled the book into the corner of the room –

‘You have conquered, and I yield!’

Ryūnosuke collapsed back onto the bedding. He stared up at the ceiling, his Night Thoughts reading patterns and signs in the shadows and the stains. And he closed his eyes –

Ryūnosuke was sitting in a box seat at the theatre, a woman by his side, a woman he did not recognise. In the darkness, she was squeezing his arm, resting her cheek on his shoulder. On the screen, an old man in a top hat tore up a sheet of paper, scattered the pieces over the body of a young man lying dead on the floor. The scene then changed, the double of the young man sitting on his grave under a willow tree. Beside Ryūnosuke, the woman was squeezing his arm tighter and tighter, the warmth of her blood burning through her clothes and into his, her mouth to his ear whispering, ‘Where you go, I’ll always be, even to the last of your days. Look, look …’

Now Ryūnosuke saw himself up on the screen, in a garden. A garden which looked like the garden of his family home in Tabata. Ryūnosuke was sitting on the steps to the veranda. He was wearing a large-brimmed sunhat, smoking a cigarette, blowing smoke directly into the camera. He seemed much older, his face gaunt, his hair long beneath the hat. Two children, two boys were playing around him in the garden. They seemed to be his children, his sons. Suddenly, this Ryūnosuke sprang up and started to climb the large crepe myrtle tree beside the veranda. Higher and higher he climbed, his underwear visible, swinging from branch to branch until he reached the eaves of the house. He climbed out onto a limb and perched there, staring out at the audience. A caption flashed up on the screen: ‘Quack, quack! Pleased to meet you. I am a Kappa. My name is Tock.’

The children ran screaming into the house, this house which looked like his family house. Ryūnosuke followed them inside the house. The children disappeared down a corridor. Ryūnosuke followed after them, but lost them. Still searching for them, he turned into a room. A man in a Chinese-patterned yukata was lying on a futon on the floor. His eyes closed, a Holy Bible open on his chest, the man looked like Ryūnosuke, his exact double. Now the eldest child came into the room. He shook the man, he woke the man. The man sat up, and the man said, ‘I have been having such an odd dream. I dreamt we were playing in the garden. But you and your brother ran into the house. I followed you, but I lost you. And when I came into this room, I saw myself lying senseless, lifeless on the floor, like an old discarded raincoat.’

Ryūnosuke could not contain himself. He cried out to the man on the bed, ‘I came searching for you, and here you are!’

The man rose from the futon, came towards Ryūnosuke and embraced him. ‘So you are Ryūnosuke, too. It was not a dream …’

‘No,’ cried Ryūnosuke. ‘It was more true than truth itself.’

But hardly had Ryūnosuke finished speaking when the younger child came to the door, looked inside, then turned and ran, crying, ‘Ma-ma, Ma-ma! Please come to Ryū-chan’s room at once …’

Now the man rushed from the room as Ryūnosuke called after him, ‘Please don’t go, Ryūnosuke! Please don’t leave me …’

The older boy looked at Ryūnosuke, stared at him and laughed. ‘Where is this Ryūnosuke