The Kleptomaniac

The Kleptomaniac
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Tamio lay back and stared at the ceiling of Professor Matsumoto’s consulting chamber in Osaka, Japan. All his life he had worked diligently toward his future. The life that he wanted to build with Eiko, his childhood sweetheart, his promising career with Marubeni; and now that future was at stake.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Tamio,” Professor Matsumoto said as he flipped once again through all the test reports. “Absolutely nothing. You’re as strong as a horse and mentally you might even be a genius. You have everything going for you and yet…”. Both doctor and patient withdrew into silent contemplation.

“I’ve tried. I’ve done everything that is in my power to do. But this …. This thing continues to control me.” Tamio was close to tears. “ Help me professor, I’ll do anything. Please!”

“There may be a way, but it’s experimental.” Professor Matsumoto played nervously with his bifocals. “The risks are great and I really won’t recommend it, you may not be able to return.”

“Return from where?” Tamio asked, his eyes lighting up as he realized that he was being handed a lifeline.

“From your past,” said the professor in a hushed voice," Your problem lies in the deep dark chambers of time."

“I’ll do it,” Tamio exclaimed as he sat up on the couch. “I’ll tell you everything about my past in detail. The only thing is I’ve had this urge to steal since I was a kid. Not all the time. It just happens; something outside of me takes control and then I just can’t help it. I steal.”

It had been going on for as long as Tamio could remember. First it was small change from his father’s purse. Enough to buy himself a dragon kite. Then, he got into the habit of stealing study notes from his class mates. Over the years it had become quite bad. He had begun to steal CD's from his friends, cutlery from hotel rooms and at least one precious stone from Eiko’s collection. She would have willingly given him all that he ever wanted, she was so much in love with him. These urges to steal were temporary. They soon passed and Tamio would become quite normal again. Then he would be filled with remorse and self loathing. Without warning, the urge would return once again and consume him in it’s flames.

What he hadn’t mentioned to Professor Matsumoto was that he was being led onto bigger things. Over a period of a year, he had removed thirty million yen from the company accounts. In his normal and sane moments he realized that it was only a matter of time before Audit would start asking questions. In his periods of remorse, he had even contemplated suicide. Even ‘that’ was preferable to the loss of face and certain dismissal from Marubeni. He couldn’t imagine how he had stolen from Eiko, his sweet Eiko. He would die without her. As the force grew bigger, it hissed and laughed at him. He was petrified. It was only a matter of time before Tamio was fully transformed.

“ I didn’t mean the past that you do know about. Have you heard of past life regression?" Professor Matsumoto asked. Seeing the blankness in Tamio’s eyes he continued. “ I think,.. no, I’m almost certain that your problem lies somewhere in one of your past lives. I don’t know which one. To know this, you will have to regress in time and find out for yourself. Are you ready to do that?”

“ How on earth do I do that? I don’t remember past lives.” Tamio was incredulous.

“Do you at least believe,” the good professor continued, “ That you have had past lives?”

“ Well I’m a Buddhist, so that concept is not beyond my beliefs. You really think I can go back to another life?”

“ Only if you are not afraid of death.” Professor Matsumoto said with some finality."Come back in two days. I’ll have something for you.”

For the next two days Tamio was restless at work. What did the professor mean when he talked about death? He asked himself this question a thousand times. He saw his present life go past many times. He rewound it, put it on fast forward, played it in slow motion and still he couldn’t find the reason. He was afraid to meet Eiko and so he lied to her about being held up at work. Work? He couldn’t think straight. How could he work? On Saturday, Tamio took the Bullet train toward Mount Fujiyama. Mount Fuji was near Tokyo in the East of Japan. A three-hour train ride from Osaka and Tamio was there.

Even though it was already evening Tamio started to climb the mountain. It was a life threatening project that he was embarking on with Professor Matsumoto and he wanted an auspicious start. There could not be anything more auspicious than watching the rising sun on top of Mount Fuji. Tamio climbed all night. His heart filled with courage and confidence as he saw the sun come up as he finally reached the summit of Mount Fuji. He was ready. He offered his prayers at a nearby Shinto shrine. The peace and tranquility of the shrine, the snow tipped cone of Mount Fuji and the cherry blossom paradise calmed his soul. From deep within himself he realized that he was ready to undertake the most difficult journey of his life. The uncertainties and doubts of the past had gone. He could feel the rainbow.

“Ohayo-gozaimasu,” Professor Matsumoto greeted him with a good morning as Tamio entered his chambers. “ We begin today.” Professor Matsumoto made Tamio relax in the couch in his chambers while he prepared himself. “I will hypnotize you and take you back, OK? Only this time we will go back further. Are you prepared?”

Tamio nodded and the professor gently swung the pendulum in front of him. Tamio felt drousy and a sense of deep sleep came over him. It seemed as professor Matsumoto was holding his hands and leading him to some strange place through a dark tunnel. Tamio saw his life flash by in reverse order. He saw his friends, his parents and his sister. He was back in college and then school. He saw himself at his first day at play school, then as a toddler. He saw himself suckling his mother’s breast. He didn’t remember himself as a baby, but there he was. Suddenly he was a few months old, in a crib with a lot of older people laughing and making strange sounds with a rattle. It was quite irritating. Then, he was a fetus in his mother’s womb and everything was dark. There was a sense of free falling and he found himself floating in the dark waters of a strange ocean. He looked below and saw a soft glow. There was light emerging from what he thought was the end of a dark tunnel and he saw a strange sight.

He was hovering over someone who had just had a violent death. There was blood all over the floor. A severed head was staring up at him. He could see another person sitting next to the body in deep prayer and there was a samurai sword in his hands. Tamio cried out as he felt an excruciating pain in his abdomen. And then he was back in the professor's chambers, cold sweat dripping from his forehead.

“You are in shock,” the professor was telling him. “What did you see?”

“I saw death and felt great pain,” Tamio said slowly as he rose from the couch. Then the realization dawned on him. He had seen himself in death in his past life.

“That’s the first barrier,” Professor Matsumoto was explaining to him. “In regression, each of your life journeys will start with death as you regress to your birth. Once again you will start with death as you go through another past life. It’s the wheel of life in reverse order. Are you really up to it? We can stop and not go back again.”

“The dead person did not look anything like me.” Tamio’s hands were still shaking as he wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“ In your previous life you were born to different parents,” Professor Matsumoto laughed for the first time. The tension was getting to him too. “ You will know, you will feel , the soul is the same. The physical material body dies, but the soul ….it’s pure energy. It is transformed but does not die. It can only merge with the source of the energy……so I take it that you want to do it again?”

“Yes. I’ve been there once and I’ll go there again. This time on a longer journey. So help me.”

Professor Matsumoto helped himself to some Japanese sea-weed delicacy and waved him off. “Come back tomorrow in the evening after work. We’ll try again.” Tamio left the good professor hard at work on his computer updating a case study for a ground breaking presentation to the Society of Psychiatry. Tamio slowly made his way home. The image of the severed head followed him all the way home and into his sleep as he dreamed a violent dream.

Tamio couldn’t wait for the evening to arrive. He packed off early from work and went straight to the Professor’s chamber.

“Konbanwa, professor,” Tamio greeted him with a good evening. Without much ado, the professor began.

“Relax,” he whispered as he gently swung his pendulum. “ I am taking you back. …back …..you are on your way back from where you began……back…….” And then he faded away as his Tamio’s present life rewound as in a videotape. Only, this time Tamio did a fast track on his present life and dived in through the strange deep ocean. He did not float over the dead body but journeyed backwards over the same path that he'd taken before.

His curiosity got the better of him and he wanted to see how exactly he had died in his previous life. He hovered around and waited. Time stopped for a while. This was Meiji Japan. He was Ishikawa, a samurai who had joined the great zaibatsu. Wait a moment. There he was being thrown out in disgrace for stealing from the tax coffers. He saw himself stagger out of the city walls of Kyodo. He couldn’t bear it. He called his only friend, Yamaguchi, to help him commit seppuku. As the sun went down, after a period of deep meditation for atonement, Ishikawa took a small dagger and sat down on the cold stone floor. Ever the faithful friend, Yamaguchi stood behind him his samurai sword raised. With both hands he plunged the dagger into his abdomen and then cut sideways deep into his body. Before he could fall, Yamaguchi swung his sword. The samurai sword came down from the right in a smooth circular arch and severed his head from his body. This was the way of the samurai.

Tamio did not feel any pain. He became Ishikawa and continued his journey. This was only the beginning. Life began to flash backwards at great speed and sometimes all that he saw was a blur. Sometimes the backward march of time slowed down. It came to a stand still when he found his mother giving him a hot bath and then serving him his favorite teriyaki dish. Tamio felt a familiar vibration. Then he knew who this was. He was sure. This was the sympathetic vibration of familiar souls. This was his very own Eiko who was going to become his wife. No wonder he had felt so comfortable with her. They had known each other in their past lives. Then she was his mother and now she was going to become his wife. Then the image was gone and his life passed by in a blur of fading memories, of wars, horses, bows, arrows and Mount Fuji. There was always Mount Fuji standing by as a sentinel to history.

As he entered another dark tunnel, he was expecting to start with another death. Instead, he hovered around over a strange grassland. He instinctively knew where this was. He had definitely been here before. From a distance a hundred Sioux warriors charged into a column of blue uniformed soldiers. Tamio was relieved. At least this time he would die a honorable death in battle. Then he realized that this was not to be. He saw an image of a tepee and a woman in buckskin, hands tied, a prisoner. A man dragged her outside . There was sheer terror in her eyes. A terror that touched Tamio as he hovered above. She was him. Oh no, not again! He clearly saw that he was a woman in that birth and that woman was going to die. As the knife flashed Tamio flashed further into the past, over the great lakes and into a Sioux village where he paused for a while. He felt a sense of pleasure as a handsome man made love, slow and gentle. Tamio remembered the sexuality and pleasure of being a woman. He felt complete. Then there was chaos and commotion as a woman rushed in and pulled him off her. Then he knew, she has stolen again, this time she had stolen a married man. He had seen enough and decided that his problems lay further in the past. He had to get to the source.

He journeyed back into the darkness of the womb and emerged beyond. A riotous crowd jeered in the Bastille square as the guillotine dropped and sliced his head into a bucket. Once again he thought he was being given a punishment for stealing, but as he went back he heard a woman calling out to him.

“ Jeanpierre,” Sophie shouted out as he was dragged out of prison. “They’ve found the man who stole the crown jewels. They know it was not you. You have been pardoned. They are on their way with the papers.”

“Liberty, equality, fraternity,” the crowd brayed. We are the children of the revolution. Kill the aristocrat. Kill the blood sucker. “Kill kill,” the crowd surged. They dragged him down the prison steps.

“It's too late Eiko,” Tamio thought. “Sorry Sophie, to leave you behind. Look after little Paul.”

“It was doctor Delacroix,” Sophie was breathless. “Your own doctor Delacroix; he framed you.”

She clutched at his shirt as he was dragged up toward the guillotine. “This man is innocent,” she pleaded to the crowd.” He has been pardoned. They’ve found the real thief.” Sophie shouted out to the crowd in despair but it fell on deaf ears. The mob wanted the blood of aristocrats and here he was.

“Kill. Kill the aristos.” The mob surged and Sophie’s pleading was drowned out in a sea of terror and human sweat. This was the revolution. Equality! Liberty! Fraternity! The birth of civilization in blood, gore and collective madness; the sharp angled edge of the guillotine was waiting.

This time Tamio knew. He had absorbed someone else's karma. He was being killed as a thief. As the executioner picked up his head from the bucket, held it by the hair, the crowd roared and screamed in triumph. Jeanpierre was gone and it was time to move back again. He hovered a while more over Bastille square and made his way over the Siene and the Notre-dam. Then it was a blur again of half formed images and glimpses into a life long gone.

It was a beautiful summer afternoon in Grenoble. He was fishing with his son Paul and Eiko was unpacking the picnic basket.

“Come on you men,” Sophie was saying. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“Famished,” Jeanpierre was saying while Paul was getting caught in his own fishing line.

A gentle breeze started blowing over the waters and the sunflowers danced and joined in the laughter. Tamio felt peace at last. He closed his eyes and entered the tunnel for the last time.

“ I thought you were dead, welcome back, ” he heard Professor Matsumoto saying to him as he opened his eyes. He was back in the good doctor’s chambers. “You were gone a long while. I told you, this procedure’s dangerous.”

“ I feel great. In fact I have never felt better. I feel as if a great burden has been lifted. Doctor, if only you had seen what I saw…”

Professor Matsumoto was silent. He simply nodded. It was then that Tamio noticed the red mark on the Professor’s forehead. “What’s that?” Tamio asked the professor as he got up slowly from the doctor’s consulting couch.

Professor Matsumoto ignored the question and returned to his work table. “Come back for a check up tomorrow in the evening. We are done today.” The professor seemed very far away.

"Arigato-gozaimasu," Tamio bowed several times, thanking the professor. He was really grateful.

Tamio didn’t know whether he was happy or sad. It was a strange feeling this. A burden of lifetimes had been lifted. Gone away with the rush of time, of strange images, places and feelings. Many lives had merged into one again. Tamio headed for the train station through the evening crowd returning home from work. He pulled out his wallet to buy a train ticket. There was no money in there. He was sure that he had put in quite a bit into it that morning. All the money was gone. “To hell with it,” he thought. “ I’ve never been happier.” He started to walk. He wanted to tell Eiko everything.

Professor Matsumoto copiously made his notes. It was a triumph. The Society of Psychiatry would listen to him spellbound. Fame and fortune was at his fingertips. His hands shook as he quietly opened his desk drawer and brought out a bundle of yen notes and a gold pen. They were Tamio’s. A great urge had overtaken him as he had watched Tamio on the couch, dead to this world. He was helpless. He hadn’t been able to stop himself.