The Hamlet Paradigm

By Gemma Nishiyama

THE HAMLET PARADIGM

An astronomer discovers a terrible secret and decides to reveal it to the world – but dangerous people want to stop him. He flees but is pursued.
He is joined by his wife, Mari, a woman with a penchant for daydreaming and tumbling into reveries. She finds that her secret romance with a supernatural being may have a strange connection to her husband’s research.
The two worlds collide in the surprising finale in a supernatural realm.

Along the way, a thrilling theory connected to the star Sirius, and the astronomical ideas of Giordano Bruno are woven into the plot and connected to Shakespeare's famous play Hamlet.

A thriller with a radical intellectual twist!

• Language: English
• Publisher: CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS
• Release date: Sep 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370084012

Book preview

THE HAMLET PARADIGM

An astronomer discovers a terrible secret and decides to reveal it to the world – but dangerous people want to stop him. He flees but is pursued.

He is joined by his wife, Mari, a woman with a penchant for daydreaming and tumbling into reveries. She finds that her secret romance with a supernatural being may have a strange connection to her husband’s research.

The two worlds collide in the surprising finale in a supernatural realm.

Along the way, a thrilling theory connected to the star Sirius, and the astronomical ideas of Giordano Bruno are woven into the plot and connected to Shakespeare's famous play Hamlet.

A thriller with a radical intellectual twist!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gemma Nishiyama is the pen name of an academic in Kyoto, Japan, who was born in Canada but grew up in the United States. Educated at Harvard College and the University of Chicago, she started studying the ways that fiction writers use themes of fossil fuels and solar energy in their work in Japan. As an academic, she has published many articles.

Her adventurous academic life continues to be a source of inspiration for her fiction. She is working on her third novel.

In Juliet is the Sun, Gemma Nishiyama’s first novel, Shakespeare’s ghost visits a middle-aged expat academic in Japan to impart his wisdom and make her laugh.

Copyright © 2016 Gemma Nishiyama

Published by

Asia’s Global Print & Digital Publisher

THE

HAMLET

PARADIGM

A Novel

by

GEMMA NISHIYAMA

For Takeshi

‘If music be the food of love, play on…..’

Chapter 1

Perhaps I thought, it was the Greek myths I was reading aloud for Yuuki, who was then just seven, before bed. We read all the myths, even the hard-to-explain ones, for example those where women were carried off, Europa and the Bull, Persephone and Hades, or those where supernatural men invaded the lives of ordinary women, like the story of Cupid and Psyche. I didn’t say exactly what else was implied to be going on between the couples. I just said ‘carried off’. Yuuki didn’t seem to think anything was strange about it. Maybe to him it seemed like a game or a sport.

Later, in my own dreams, I would find myself being carried off too, like Europa or Persephone. The dreams were very vivid and not dream-like series of events, but more like real occurrences. At first I thought it was just for sex.

The first time it happened, I dreamed a crane was standing beside my futon. It was almost dawn and it seemed to me that I could make out his angular shape, somehow bashful yet masterly in the near darkness. His wings were black and white, and I knew it was a male, and while I sat up in surprise, he spread his huge wings over me and, painlessly, I shrank many sizes until I fitted inside his beak. He scooped me up easily, as though I were a live trout or a frog, and then he stalked over to the paper shoji doors, which were open to the hallway. The hallway has a pair of glass doors, which were open since it was summer. The screen doors seemed to baffle him, however. But he used his long and strong beak to pry one open; I watched from inside this beak.

For some reason, I was cheering him on.

He didn’t bother to step down into the garden, but took one leap and bounded up into the sky. I felt the same powerful sense of thrust as when an aeroplane I am in, curves up, up, into the clouds.

His wings rose and fell; I could hear his heartbeat; I felt his blood surging around his body, and the slight moisture in his mouth.

I heard whooshing sounds as the air fell away beneath us, or maybe it was the wind.

I must have fallen asleep; the rhythmical motion made me relax. I became part of the crane; my own sense of being melted a little and I felt happily lost together with him, or in him, rather.

When I woke up I thought right away that I would be back in my futon in the little old house, with Yuuki curled up peacefully asleep in the next tatami room, on the other side of the husuma doors.

But I was in a very different place. It was an old wooden theater, and we were on the stage. The theater seemed to be round. A hole in the ceiling let the dusky sky in. A few stars and the moon glimmered dimly and a little fine and glinting powdery snow was blowing in lightly through the ceiling, too.

I didn’t see any electric lights nearby. The whole theater was in semi-darkness, lit only by the moon.

I was on a strange bed I had never seen before. It was hard, as if it were stuffed with straw or horsehair.

A stranger dressed in black and white, almost like a harlequin, stepped out from behind a nearby screen. I knew it was him, the man who had been disguised as a crane. I knew he wasn’t a man, not really, not a human being with a material body like mine. There was something bright or glimmering about him, so that I could hardly focus on him, my eyes danced away from his face and there was a puzzling, swirling, moving quality to his form. Was the powdery snow getting in my way or was there another explanation?

When a god came to ravish Europa or Psyche, the women couldn’t refuse, and now that a singular spirit had somehow made up his mind to bring me to a private place and reveal himself to me in a similar fashion, I was also powerless to refuse. Nor did I want to, to be honest. Also, I couldn’t help but be desperately curious about his intentions and how he planned to carry them out.

Soon he had come onto the bed. I stayed very still, thinking this was a fascinating experience; with these kinds of strange, wonderful and unexpected moments, actually, it is best to just trust your instincts and not give away too much of yourself.

No time was wasted. It began. At first, I was still myself and I still knew my name, my age, and other things like that. My identity was still intact, but the rhythm and the movement was too swirling, too encompassing, too excellent, too deep, and too fantastical to resist and soon, I had begun to forget many basic things I had learned a long time ago. I stopped being me, in other words, and I became a flame, a bug, a newt, a spider, a drugged thing, a viper, a cat, a tree and whatever else I actually wasn’t. And still he wouldn’t let me go. The feeling was intense, and it worried me for an instant, but I saw, very intricately and brightly, that this wasn’t so very different from what I was used to experiencing with Haruki. There was a musical quality to it all, a rhythm and the pleasurable sense of movement. I felt dissolved in this music, and then, very like a song, with a certain flourish, it was over.

Time, after all an irresistible force, had released me from this spirit. He stood up in the darkness and passed his hand over a candle standing on a table nearby and a flame appeared.

A little snow was still blowing around us. In the candle light, it was rather beautiful. It glimmered and then lightly settled on the floor and melted, leaving a wet stain, as on a road.

He sat down on the side of the bed and now I found that I could focus more easily on his features, which had been so puzzling and obscure before. He looked like a quiet and studious person, with a rather focused expression and dark features. His hair was long, near his shoulders, and curly and loose. He wore, in his left ear, a small but thick golden hoop earring; it must have stirred something in me. Gold has a glow unlike any other metal.

‘Your earring …’ I said, ‘It shines so…’

‘I would be happy if you would accept it,’ he said, quickly moving his hand to take it off. He placed it in my palm. It was so heavy; it was definitely a man’s earring, not for me.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I can’t wear it. It’s too heavy.’

‘Let’s decide later what to do with it,’ he said, placing it on the table beside us.

There was an awkward silence. Or was it just me who was feeling awkward? I decided that talking to a spirit was somehow different from talking to a human.

‘The sky is very beautiful from here,‘ I said. ‘I could stay here forever just watching it.’

‘But you are married, after all. What would your husband say if you stayed here?’

‘Oh him!’ I said moodily. ‘Haruki is always with his books and telescopes. He stays up somewhere near Tokyo. It’s far from Kiyama, where I live’

He laughed. I realized then that I did not know his name. I was not worried about Haruki, with whom, actually I am on good, even passionate and romantic, terms, though we did not often meet anymore. Through the veil of this dream, I perceived that Haruki and this man belonged to different dimensions and that infidelity was not possible. It was a wonderful and freeing feeling.

‘What is your name, by the way?’ I asked, somewhat shyly, ‘or, I mean to say, if you can’t tell me your real name, then what should I call you?’

‘Call me Orsino,’ he said, rather carelessly, looking down, and not at me.

‘Orsino,’ I said slowly. ‘What a strange name!’

‘Or is gold in French, plus ‘in’ and ‘O’. The extra ‘s’ is just for flighty decoration; maybe it stands for strange or maybe for the stars, sidereal, starlings or stillness.’ He looked up through the ceiling to the sky.

‘Or the snow,’ I said, enjoying the game. But, actually, the snow had already almost stopped by then.

He picked up the gold earring and fingered it.

‘Are you sure you don’t want it?’ he asked, looking sad.

‘I would be happy to accept it,’ I said; now I was charmed. I didn’t have to wear it, after all. He dropped it into my hand and I held it in my palm. He didn’t know my name though, and he had already given me a ring. It was strange.

Seeking to rectify the situation, I said, hastily, ‘It is very nice to meet you. My name is…’

‘…Mari,’ he said, with a smile.

‘But how do you know my name? And, by the way, where are we? Are we still in Japan?’

‘I know a little, but not much, about you. But I do know your name. And no, we are not exactly in Japan anymore, or anywhere in your regular, nicely-formed world. We are just in a theater, as you can see.’

Where was I, actually? I wanted to ask, but I thought he probably wouldn’t tell me, nor would I understand the explanation even if he did.

‘Well, then, have you ever been to Japan?’ I asked.

‘Yes, perhaps, in a way.’

‘You speak in riddles and nonsense. You seem to know everything, but you reveal little.’

‘What I have to reveal – well, it may be said that one day it will just reveal itself. But, never mind that. What I wanted to say is that I’d like to bring you here on occasion, if you don’t mind, if it is all right with you. To, umm… commune … with you a bit. Strange as it may seem, you and me together, are really from two separate zones of existence, as you have probably guessed by now.’

I felt remarkably elated to hear this, for I liked him so much and I wanted to see him again too. He could be similar to a yokai, I gathered, a folkish spirit. Like a fox or an inari, like a crane, like a mountain temple ghost. And I had, most luckily, landed up in a kind of spirit spot. Or wherever I was.

I could not complain, certainly.

From then on, I was to have two husbands, a human mortal one, Haruki, a nerdy but clever astronomer and my fetch, or spirit, husband with his odd name, Orsino, who came to me only in my dreams. Once in a while.

He tended to show up whenever I was tired or lonely or feeling sad. He lifted my spirits and for days afterward, I was energized and happy.

I meant for Haruki never to meet my spirit husband, and I never mentioned him to Haruki. I was extremely careful and discreet, always.

But one day, contrary to all of my best intentions, the two worlds, the spirit world of Orsino and the real material world of Haruki, collided.

This is my strange story.

Chapter 2

My husband, Haruki, and I used to live together in Kiyama, a little town that everyone says is quaint, but one day about eight years ago, the call from a major public research university in the Tokyo area came. Haruki was thrilled to be able to leave small Kiyama University, where he felt that fetters bound him and prevented him from completing all the amazing astronomical research he dreamed of doing.

I, on the other hand, had finally gotten a secure job, a job I had wanted very much, teaching English at a small private high school near our house. Nami, our daughter, was just about to start junior high school and she had many friends here. I had planted basil and roses in the garden. I was close friends with the family who owned our little rented house, especially the 83-year old head of the family, Mrs. Shimogawa. A river with a line of cherry trees along it was a few meters away from our house and I watched the seasons change, year by year, as I walked to work or bicycled to the shops. My life here was perfect and I didn’t want it to change.

When Haruki had proudly divulged the news of his job offer one evening, I started to sob. He had looked surprised by my reaction, but after several minutes of trying to explain how wonderful the new job would be for his research, he stopped talking and looked thoughtfully at me. Then, kindly, he had said, ‘You and Nami don’t have to come with me, you know.’

I immediately stopped crying. ‘Really, you don’t mind?’

I lifted up my wet, red face, trying hard not to look too overjoyed.

‘Well, Nami would miss her friends, and you just started a good job here. Besides, I’ll be quite busy every day. I’ll be working very hard, you know.’

I knew him well enough to know it was true.

Haruki had moved north the next spring, but he visited us regularly for holidays and sometimes I would take a train and meet him in Kyoto, which was about halfway for both of us. Maybe because we met like passionate lovers again, often in love hotels, we hadn’t been careful, and Yuuki had been conceived accidentally.

Once, too, I had visited him up in his town, which was called Kubatsu. I had brought baby Yuuki along in his stroller. I took him for a walk along a huge, busy road lined with many impressive and huge cement research buildings and parking lots. After a few minutes, we had turned back.

When Nami was eighteen, she had shocked everyone except Yuuki, who was only four and too young to understand, by announcing that she was postponing college to go and work on the Maldives teaching scuba diving at a resort for a couple of years. She was tired of the cement buildings here, the boring, traffic-ridden roads, the whole industrialized atmosphere, she said.

‘But we are surrounded by beautiful green mountains!’ I had