The Tale of the Strange Stone

Bonus short story distributed with movie tickets to Tatami Time Machine Blues. (2/2)

This story takes place at the beginning of October, when the lingering heat of summer had subsided at last and the A/C was allowed to rest.

Higuchi Seitarō, Ozu, Akashi, and I boarded the Eizan train at Demachiyanagi Station. It was a weekday afternoon, and we were the only ones to disembark at Iwakura Station. As we followed the Iwakura River upstream, we began to come across white-walled storehouses and buildings with thick-shingled rooftops.

We had come in search of a researcher who resided in Iwakura village. He had formerly been in the employ of Yanmar Co. designing agricultural machinery, but his love for rockhounding had grown to such that he had taken early retirement and now made his living as an independent researcher. However, his disquieting theory that rocks and the earth transformed their own properties in appreciation of the human psyche had apparently made him a pariah in the academic community. He had remodeled his storehouse into a laboratory, where he stored the enormous collection of rocks which he had spent half a lifetime accumulating. We had been introduced to him by an acquaintance of Higuchi, and he was only too eager to show us his pride and joy.

“I suppose this is what you’re here to see,” he said, pointing out a black, jagged stone which sat on a shelf. “Ah, but I wouldn’t touch it if I were you,”―this to Akashi―”Any woman who touches it will fall under its spell. It’s a devil stone, see. It’s been known to cause bloody catfights between even the closest of friends. It may look like an ordinary rock, but I suspect it gives off unknown energies which affect the human psyche.”

He dropped his voice. “Now, as we discussed…”

Akashi undid the furoshiki she was carrying, and from the cookie tin within produced a stone. It was about the size of a closed fist, and the shape of a swollen magatama. It was pretty enough, whitish and glossy, but there was nothing particularly out of the ordinary about it.

But, like its black counterpart before us, this was a devil stone.

Let us step one week back in time.

I returned to Shimogamo Yūsuisō after conducting a lab experiment on campus to find the door to neighbouring room 210 flung wide open, a lively exchange audible from within. No doubt the disciples of Higuchi Seitarō were once again wasting the prime of their youth, and indeed I poked my head inside to find Higuchi, Ozu, and Akashi seated in a circle.

“Well hello there,” Higuchi said to me. “You’ve arrived just in time.”

“What’re you doing?”

“We were just about to embark upon a course of training.”

“Come on in,” Akashi urged me. “It sounds like fun.”

Exam season was in full swing, and I was so busy with my studies that I barely had time to sleep. I was engaged in a manful stand against the harsh currents of reality, polishing myself into a socially useful man that I might become worthy of Akashi. What cruel irony, then, that the very same Akashi for whom I was pouring in these efforts was so avidly interested in Higuchi’s so-called “training”, which was nothing more than a headlong flight from reality.

I reluctantly lowered myself to the floor.

“Oh ho!” Ozu cackled. “So you think you’ve got what it takes, eh? This ain’t your average training we’re talking about here!”

I noticed that in the middle of the room was a worn sanbo. A vermilion cushion with gold tassels at each corner sat on top, and placed upon it was a white stone, about the size of a fist. It was a common looking stone; you could find any number of similar rocks simply walking along the bank of the Kamo.

Master Higuchi’s “training” was simply this: to empty your mind and gaze at the stone.

Simple it may have been, but for laypeople like us it was no easy task. After a few seconds all sorts of intrusive thoughts would begin to buzz through your head: this looks a lot like a daifuku mochi, and man, I could go for a bowl of fried rice right about now. So you deal with these unwanted visitors into your mind one after the next, and once both body and mind are exhausted, you arrive in the state of no-mind…and that is when the stone shall bestow upon you a great revelation! Higuchi claimed that the ability to educe truth from this common stone would certainly come of use in the rapid currents of modern society. I’d never heard such poppycock in my life.

“The fewer earthly desires you have, the better, see?” Ozu grinned. “Knowing how insatiable you are, I’d say you’re gonna be sitting here for the better part of a century.”

“Yeah, as if you’re not the avatar of greed itself!”

This all seemed like a waste of time, but since Akashi was looking forward to it I didn’t have a choice. “Let us begin,” Higuchi hummed, and so we all settled down and stared at the stone in silence.

An evening breeze whispered through the still room. As I concentrated upon the stone, it slowly dawned upon me how pretty it was, with its slick surface, its pale luster, its cool sense of refinement…in some ways, it bore a strong resemblance to Akashi. I glanced furtively to my side. Akashi was sitting on her knees, leaning forward with her hands placed upon the tatami, gazing solemnly at the stone. Her bangs swayed slightly in the breeze. How unjust, I mused, how unfair it was that life could not be filled solely with lovely things, like Akashi. Why did it have to be contaminated with impurities like Ozu?

Get it together, I thought. The desires were already rushing into my brain. I looked at Higuchi and Ozu, who with their hooded eyelids reminded me of two weatherbeaten statues of the Buddha. I suspected neither of them was concentrating at all.

In any case I didn’t want to give Ozu more ammo to ridicule me with, so I summoned all my energy to concentrate. But earthly desires are not so easily tamed. They rose up in a constant stream like the spring water bubbling from the earth at Arima, and as I threw them back time and time again my eyelids began to droop. Having spent the previous night locked in mortal combat with my chemistry textbook I was desperately short on sleep.

As I fought to stave off my drowsiness, fantasies began to blossom forth in my head. In one of them I found myself walking on the surface of a smooth stone that resembled the arid landscape of another planet. As I walked along I came to the edge of a large lake. It reminded me of Lake Usori, near Mt. Osore; a strange colour shimmered on the surface, and far off on the other side I could make out a forest. Not far away I discovered a jetty, so I took a boat and crossed to the other side. The boat was captained by Higuchi.

From this point on my fantasy began to blur into a dream.

Entering the forest on the other side of the lake, I came across a magnificent Chinese palace. Behind its snow-white walls, grand pavilions rose up into the sky. I passed beneath a massive vermilion gate into a garden, smothered in riotous bloom. The inhabitants of the palace seemed to have been aware of my coming, for a company of ladies-in-waiting came out to gaily greet me, though for some reason they all had Ozu’s face.

“Hue hue hue!” laughed the Ozu-faced ladies. “We’ve been waiting for you! Come, come! This way!” Grasping my hand they led me into an arbour in the corner of the garden.

Awaiting me there was Akashi.

“You’ve come at last. How I’ve longed for your arrival…” she whispered, filling the air with an exquisite perfume as she nestled against me. She wore a delicate garment like an angel’s plumage, and an opulent ornament glistened in her hair.

Though I could feel myself falling under her spell, I couldn’t help but feel that something wasn’t quite right. There was something not very Akashi-like about her. But I couldn’t tear myself away from her, for she had already coiled herself around me.

“Stay here with me, forever…” she whispered sensually into my ear, her grasp growing ever tighter around me.

Suddenly a cold shiver went through my entire body, and immediately everything vanished: the Chinese palace, the Ozu-women, the bewitching Akashi. When I came to, I found myself sitting in the 4½ tatami room, drenched in water from head to toe, while Higuchi and Ozu peered at me with great amusement.

“Are you alright?” asked Akashi anxiously, standing in front of the sink with a second bucket of water.

They told me that I’d been sitting motionless there for nearly an hour like I was hypnotized, not responding when they called or shook my shoulder. At last Akashi was forced to resort to drastic measures, and dumped a bucket of water on me. We were all baffled at what had occurred.

“Guess there was something funny about that rock after all,” said Ozu. And only then did he tell us the lurid history of the stone.

That summer, a rockhounding club called “Friends of the Stone” had become embroiled in a bloody civil war revolving around a stone which one of them had picked up on Mt. Ibuki. The once mild-mannered enthusiasts had overnight turned into a pack of ravening beasts, wasting the precious summertime of their youth in a vicious tug-of-war over a rock. The strangest thing was, the only ones who fell under the spell of the stone were, to a man, men. It was a summer of betrayal, of thievery, of mortal combat, and at last one of the members, fearing that the circle would fall apart, tried to hurl the stone into the Kamo. He did not succeed, for he too was possessed by the stone. The evil could only be driven out with a greater evil, and so he entrusted the stone to someone whose wickedness outstripped even that artifact’s foul powers: Ozu.

“Why the hell did you bring it here?”

“Cause I thought it’d be fun. Why else?”

“So this is a devil stone,” mulled Higuchi. He picked it up and peered at it with great interest, then tossed it into the cookie tin and replaced the lid.

“What’re you going to do with it?” asked Akashi.

Higuchi stared into space, scratching his chin.

“...Come to think of it, I may have heard of another such stone.”

And so it was that a week later we found ourselves in the village of Iwakura.

The researcher took the cookie tin from Akashi, removed the stone, and placed it on the shelf beside the black one.

“I can only hope it will slumber peacefully here,” he remarked.

This was Higuchi’s grand design: to reunite the stone with its counterpart¹.

Looking at the rocks nestled side by side, I felt a sudden rush of envy. Why should I allow that precious stone to part from me? I could simply seize it now and elope…

I paused in horror, aghast at the thoughts which were going through my mind. What had come over me? Yet even after we left the storehouse and headed back to Iwakura Station, I still felt that grotesque urge stirring within me. Perhaps, like the members of Friends of the Stone, I too had fallen under the spell of the stone.

“There are many tales in this world which revolve around a simple stone,” Higuchi declared as we walked along the Iwakura River. “Kiuchi Sekitei, the renowned rock collector of the Edo period, recorded in his famous treatise the Unkonshi anecdotes of strange rocks that glowed at night, or poured forth an endless stream of water, or wept tears of blood when you struck them with a chisel. At Fushimi Inari-taisha there are the Omokaruishi, stones which portend your success or your failure by the weight you feel when you lift them. You may doubt the stories if you wish, but our ancestors believed in them, and so they have passed on through the ages to us.”

I haven’t heard a peep about those stones since then, so by all appearances Higuchi’s plan was a success. And I suppose that the devil stone and its counterpart are still sitting side by side on that shelf to this day.