Her mother's madness. Her father would not refer to it. Madness had no place in her father's world, though suicide did. Her mother's madness was European, an imported snare of sorrow and delusion... Her father had killed her mother, Kumiko had told Sally, in Covent Garden. But was it true? He had brought doctors from Denmark, from Australia, and finally from Chiba. The doctors had listened to the dreams of the princess-ballerina, had mapped and timed her synapses and drawn samples of her blood. The princess-ballerina had refused their drugs, their delicate surgeries. "They want to cut my brain with lasers," she had whispered to Kumiko.