Chapter 1―The Silent Reading Club (Part 1)

Speak not of that which concerneth thee not
Lest thou hear that which pleaseth thee not

◯

I spent the summer at my home in Nara in a state of considerable agony.

I was at a loss as to what I should write next.

With little exception the days were quite unremarkable. I rose at 7 each morning, coming out to the veranda to greet the sun and survey the view of the Nara Basin, and after a breakfast of bacon and eggs I would be at my desk by 9. When the clock struck 1 I would lay down my pen for lunch and a siesta, before returning to my desk to read and take care of other various affairs. At 7 in the evening I would have dinner with my wife, then write in my diary, take a bath, and go straight to bed.

When the writing was going well there was little for me to complain about. But when it was not, I felt utterly worthless, as insignificant as a stray pebble lying in the road, if that. And there were many of those days, piling up one after the next until I could not help but imagine myself in the woeful position of Robinson Crusoe, washed up on the shore of some godforsaken island, waiting in vain for some passing ship to rescue me from my desolation. With what alarming alacrity did the irreplaceable seconds tick away! Seasons come and seasons go, here in the ancient capital of Nara; already I could envision myself as an old man, blinking in the sunlight beside my aged wife on the veranda, looking back on what could have been. I suppose there are far worse fates, and I was all but resigned to this one.

When one is suffering from writer’s block one is not much inclined to read a serious piece of fiction. It is much too trying a task to take in weighty social themes and tangled human dramas. Unable to bring myself even to sit at my desk I instead spent my time rolled up in my futon, reading classics of rakugo, or Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, or Shibata Shōkyoku’s Compendium of Strange Tales and Tidings. Once I had more or less worked my way through these, I turned to that famous collection of tales: The Thousand and One Nights.

Life has a way of turning in ways one does not expect, and by a chance encounter I was set on the path of an adventure most strange.

◯

In the tide and show of ancient time, there was a king in Persia, and his name was Shahryar. Shahryar had a wife, and in time her infidelities became known to him. So wroth and distrustful towards all the female sex was he that he ordered a virgin brought to his chambers each night, her chastity for him to seize, only the next morning to lop off her head. So intolerable were these deeds that Scheherazade, the vizier’s daughter, resolved to bring them to an end; over the protests of her father she went of her own accord to serve the king. To him she began to tell a tale, strange and wonderful, but come the dawn she stopped in its midst, and so Shahryar would spare her life for another day in order that he might hear the rest. Night after night after night did this pattern repeat itself, and in the end Scheherazade won not only her own life, but the lives of her people.

Thus unfold the many tales of The Thousand and One Nights. Most are told in the framing device of Scheherazade to Shahryar, but some are told by the characters in the tales themselves, in a kind of nesting doll of stories. The stories are filled with intrigue, to be sure, and yet it is this curious arrangement which bestows upon the Nights their incomparable allure.

In my possession are the 13 volumes of the hardcover edition of The Completed Translated Thousand and One Nights, published by Iwanami Shoten. At the beginning of the first volume, Scheherazade’s sister Dunyazad, who accompanies her into service to the king, begs her to while away their waking hours with a story.

“Gladly and as a duty,” answers Scheherazade, “if the great and courteous King permits.”

Sleepless and restless, Shahryar gladly gives his assent. And thus does Scheherazade begin the first of many nights of stories.

On the title page in my copy there is an illustration, and the following inscription:

HERE BEGIN THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS

One scarcely need imagine the groaning open of a monumental door.

It was the labour of one Joseph Charles Victor Mardrus which I perused that summer, who had translated the stories from Arabic into French, which were then re-translated into Japanese. I have read that there are doubts as to the faithfulness of his rendering to the original; nevertheless it is a fascinating piece of writing.

The story of how the Nights came to be is such a curious one―straddling East and West, riddled with ersatz manuscripts and unfaithful translations―that it would not be out of place among the collection itself. That is another of the Nights’ charms. The reader who wishes to truly understand its origins must be prepared to plumb the depths of a trustworthy reference book. In short, no one truly grasps the form of this story.

The Thousand and One Nights is a book of mystery.

◯

I left my study on a late July afternoon and let myself collapse onto my futon.

The planning of my next work was as paralyzed as a ship run aground, and I was beginning to think to myself that I might as well build a cozy little home upon this reef. I would plant apple trees in the small yard, adopt a darling Shiba Inu (which I would name Koume), sing paeans and praise to my wife, and read and re-read The Thousand and One Nights until the end of my days.

While I engrossed myself in fantasies of the quiet life, my wife hummed a hymn to herself as she folded the laundry. The Nights lay where I had tossed it by my pillow; I had just reached the 500th night. It seemed as though it would never end.

Staring at the ceiling, I mumbled, “I think I’m finished as a writer.”

“Finished?” said my wife.

“Finished. I can’t do this anymore!”

“I feel like you shouldn’t rush into your decision.”

“No need to make an announcement, I guess. After all, everyone will gradually just forget about a writer who doesn’t write. And those people will gradually be forgotten themselves, and civilization will eventually implode, and humanity will dissolve into the stardust whence it came. When you really think about it, what does it matter if I miss my deadline?”

Whenever I’m moping I have a tendency to widen the conversation to cosmic proportions in order to convince myself that deadlines are unimportant.

“Oh, don’t be so pessimistic. You know what they say: good things come to those who wait.”

As a man my wife’s word is gospel. As I rolled back and forth chewing over her sound opinion and waiting for those good things to come, she finished folding the laundry, then pointed at the book at the bedside.

“What’s that book about?”

A difficult question to answer.

“It’s filled with lovely ladies.”

“Lovely ladies? That sounds positively charming.”

“It’s not just about ladies. There are genies, for one, and kings, princes, viziers, slaves, wicked hags…once you let yourself get into the rhythm of it, you start to worry less and less about the details. It feels like your brain is being cleansed. I don’t know how Scheharazade could string so many stories together.”

“She must have been a very wise woman.”

“It’s a very strange book, a book of mysteries.”

After a little pause my wife picked up the laundry and stood up.

“Why don’t you take a little break, have something to eat?”

I went to the kitchen where I saw last night’s leftover pot-au-feu. There were sweet turnips and sausages and bits of chopped carrots left inside, but the bulk of what remained were spuds.

“This isn’t pot-au-feu anymore, it’s potato-au-feu!” I exclaimed.

I lived in an apartment on a plateau in Nara; the glass door which opened to the veranda offered a sweeping view of the Nara Basin. As I ate a spoonful of potato-au-feu I glanced over the valley. Thunderheads hovered in the sky like thick clots of cream; mountains loomed hazily in the distance like the peaks of a continent yet unexplored. Lush groves and hillocks dotted the city below, resembling islands in the South Pacific.

I felt like I’d seen this vista somewhere else before. Images drifted through my mind, images from boyhood family camping trips, and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and Verne’s The Mysterious Island. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I had a feeling it had to do with the conversation I’d just had with my wife.

“What were we talking about earlier?” I called to my wife, who was peeling apples in the kitchen.

“Your retirement?”

“No, besides that…”

“A Thousand and One Nights? Scheharazade? The book of mysteries?”

My spoon paused as I pondered. The phrase “book of mysteries” was prickling in my brain.

“The Tropics,” I mumbled.

My wife glanced at me. “The tropics?”

“Yeah. It just came back to me.”

I’d come across a novel by that name at a used book store near Okazaki in Kyoto, back in my college days. It was written by someone named Sayama Shōichi, and published in 1982. The Thousand and One Nights was a book of mysteries: and so was The Tropics.

◯

During my college years in Kyoto I lived in a 4½ tatami room in Kitashirakawa. An entire wall was dedicated to bookshelves which I assiduously filled with the yields of my frequent sojourns into bookshops of both the new and used sort. Of the volumes which lined those bookshelves, some I had read, some I was reading, some I planned to read soon, some I hoped to read eventually, some I liked to believe I would one day be able to read, and some I would be satisfied to shuffle off this mortal coil knowing that I was capable of reading them. It was a collection of past and present, of hopes and dreams, sprinkled with a little bit of vanity. Sitting in the middle of my room was like sitting within my own psyche.

Often I would seclude myself in my room as though it were a deserted island and pick up a book, intent on putting to use the wisdom I must surely gain to leapfrog ahead in life (or simply to chat up a raven-haired maiden), only to look up to find the whole day vanished and evening stealing in through the window, those carnal ambitions immaculately forgotten. I found myself reading for the sheer sake of reading, and each time I was surprised and astounded to find that which had so engrossed my whole being only a moment ago reduced to mere words printed in a bound sheaf of pages.

Let us proceed to the August of my senior year. It was the most uncertain and listless summer of my life thus far. I had taken a leave of absence from school, unsure of where my life was headed, and whiled away the days slouching around Kitashirakawa. I had a friend who had failed the bar exam and was similarly slouching around Hyakumanben; I remember we cycled around Lake Biwa on granny bikes, nearly dying of exhaustion. I suppose we thought by inflicting suffering upon ourselves we could throw off our despondency.

It was an extremely hot summer.

A 4½ tatami room is no place for humans to live during the Kyoto summer. It approaches the Taklamakan Desert in hostility: drowse too long in the heat and you may never wake up again. Thus each day I would set out in search of an oasis at which to pass the time. Often I found myself heading to Okazaki in Heian Jingū, where there is no shortage of places where one may cool off free of charge, such as the International Exhibition Hall, the National Museum of Modern Art, and the Lake Biwa Canal Museum. As you head along Nijō Avenue towards the Kamo River you will pass a used book store called Nakai Books, which I made a habit of stopping at whenever I came by on my way to Okazaki.

It was there that I discovered The Tropics by Sayama Shōichi. By the entrance to the shop was a cardboard box filled with discounted books, 100 yen apiece, and when I peered in that day the book drew my eye. Perhaps it was the antiquated design of the cover which piqued my interest. In any case the price was only 100 yen, and I had nothing but time on my hands.

I bought the book and then pedaled off towards the Industrial Exhibition Hall, a modern building with plenty of air conditioning. The lobby was empty. I bought a drink at the vending machine and sat down in front of a massive monitor, which currently displayed an image of the Kyoto mounted police.

I opened the book.

Speak not of that which concerneth thee not

Lest thou hear that which pleaseth thee not

With this curious statement does The Tropics begin.

How to describe it in a few words? It is not a mystery, or a romance. Nor is it a work of historical fiction, or science fiction, or an autobiography. I suppose one might describe it as a fantasy, and yet that word is no explanation at all.

All of this to say, it is a rather difficult novel to understand.

It begins with a young man washing ashore on the beach of a deserted island in the South Pacific. He appears to have been shipwrecked, but he has no memory of who he is, or how he arrived here, or where this island is. As day breaks, he walks along the beach and stumbles upon a lovely little cove and a pier, where he meets a man who introduces himself as Sayama Shōichi.

Hmm, I thought to myself, Isn’t that the name of the author? Heh, pretty interesting.

It was not only this mysterious introduction which drew me in, but the precarious situation our protagonist is thrown into. I myself felt unmoored in the streets of Kyoto as though I was washed up on a 4½ tatami island, listlessly waiting for something that would never arrive.

I read the first quarter of the book there in that lobby. It’s all still fresh in my mind: the faded ink on the worn pages, the chill of the air conditioning, the stillness of that empty lobby.

I shut the book feeling as though I had just woken from a daydream.

“Fascinating. I think I’ll take my time with this one.”

I placed the book in my backpack and went back outside, where the glaring afternoon sun glittered on the buildings and baked the yawning strip of asphalt in front of Heian Jingū. Cicadas buzzed shrilly as I rode my bike through the deep shadows of the trees past the city art museum. An excitement coursed through me which I rarely felt since I was a kid.

For the next few days I picked my way through The Tropics bit by bit. The Invisible Archipelago―the Sorcerer-King who commands the waters with the Magic of Creation―the Scholars who seek to seize that Magic for themselves―the 2-car passenger train which travels atop the waves―the gun battery and the prisoner in the dungeon―the Sorcerer-King’s daughter, who visits the library across the sea…

“How is this all going to turn out in the end?” I wondered. But strangely enough, the further into the book I proceeded, the slower I read.

Frequently my thoughts drifted to Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, which I had been first regaled with by a friend in the Sophistry Debate Society. Swift-footed Achilles runs after a plodding tortoise. By the time Achilles reaches the tortoise’s starting position it has moved on a small distance ahead; by the time Achilles reaches that position the tortoise has moved a tiny distance further, and so on and so forth, leading to the absurd conclusion that the Achilles can never actually catch up to the tortoise. Thus I, Achilles, would go on chasing forever after the eternal tortoise that was the ending.

I reached the halfway point, of that much I am certain.

The Tropics departed quite suddenly.

I woke up the morning after the Obon Festival to find that the book had vanished from my bedside. Puzzled, I searched the rest of the room to no avail, and once more when I came home from my shift to identical results. Perhaps I had mislaid it somewhere. I looked around the manager’s office at the sushi place where I worked; I went back to my local curry joint and the video store to ask if anyone had turned it in; I even looked beneath the tables at the student co-op cafeteria, and everywhere else I could think of besides where it might possibly be. But by the third evening after it had disappeared my efforts had still turned up nothing, and I was forced to admit that The Tropics was lost to me.

Never mind. I’ll just find another copy, I thought to myself.

How extraordinarily naïve of me.

It’s been sixteen years. Over that span of time I perused used book stores, prowled used book fairs, visited libraries, scoured the internet, and yet I failed to find even a passing mention of The Tropics. In 2003 I published my first novel, earned my graduate degree at long last, and took a job at the National Diet Library. After moving to Tokyo I would often wander around Jimbōchō, hoping for an unexpected reunion. But even the largest used book district in the world was unable to provide answers.

To this day I do not know how that book ends.

◯

I went to Tokyo at the beginning of August, a week after that conversation with my wife.

I had made plans to meet up with some old colleagues of mine from the National Diet Library where I had once worked, after clearing out a few errands. How quickly seven years had passed since the autumn of 2011, when I left the Tokyo neighbourhood of Sendagi behind and returned to my hometown of Nara.

In the evening I wandered the Jimbōchō branch of Sanseidō Books, then proceeded into the Luncheon beer hall on Yasukuni Avenue. Deeper inside I noticed a table of older men locked in animated discussion. I assumed it was an alumni reunion of some sort. I spotted my editor at Bungeishunjū sitting at one of the tables along the window which looked out on the street.

“Over here!” she called out to me. I sat down across the table. Across the street I could see the imposing signboards for Shosen Grande and Komiyama Books.

“How is everything?”

“No hope in sight so far. I’m obsessed with The Thousand and One Nights.”

“Can you at least try to stay a little focused?”

I’m ashamed to say that in the fifteen years since my debut novel Tower of the Sun was published, my career had largely depended on novelty and the largesse of the public. It was a precarious position which I occupied, for I was still a long way from securing my place in the literary world, and to tell the truth, for a long time I had felt that I was running out of steam.

As a young wannabe literati, I would often daydream about a pulchritudinous editor cornering me and purring, “I’ve just got to have you…as my client!” I imagined that I would be showered with money to write, and write I did, until I could write no more. Now I am dry and worn out as the desert dunes, and into my desiccated mind I can feel dangerous thoughts creeping in―

“Such as, deadlines are the root of all evil,” I finished.

“But you wouldn’t write if you didn’t have any deadlines, would you?”

“An unsophisticated conclusion. You shouldn’t assume that simply producing words is a good thing. To write, or not to write: that is the question.”

“I’m going to have to stop you right there,” interjected my editor, with a raised palm. “That is a dangerous path to go down. Take a deep breath.”

We had set up this meeting in order to break the deadlock around my next project, but given my proclivity toward melting down at the mere mention of deadlines, it was apparent that it would be fruitless to continue this discussion. Hence, my editor smoothly changed the subject to The Tropics, which I had brought up to her in a phone call the other day.

“I did a little digging on your book.”

“What did you find?”

“There are other books with that same title, as you might expect, but I didn’t find anything that matched your description. I asked a few other authors and editors I know, but none of them had ever heard of Sayama Shōichi. Your author’s a real man of mystery.”

“Well that’s a relief.”

“Why’s that?”

“Where would the fun be if you could solve the mystery just like that?”

“I suppose that’s one way to look at it,” she mused. “At the very least we’ve learned that it wasn’t distributed very widely. Maybe it was a custom printing for friends and family. 1982…that’s 36 years ago. Your mystery book isn’t making it easy.”

It sounded like she was enjoying the hunt.

A waiter came along, red vest and black bowtie, with our plates of veal cutlet and asparagus. I washed down each bite with a bottle of Bireley’s as I described the book: a little taller than a bunkobon paperback, and red and green geometric patterns adorning the cover with the title and author in brutalist font. I must have looked at the colophon because the publishing year had stayed in my head, though the publisher had not.

The editor jotted all this down in a notebook and said, “So, what was it about?”

“It’s pretty hard to describe,” I replied. “Especially since I never finished it.”

“You’re serious?”

“As serious as it gets. That’s the funny part.”

I told her the whole story of what had transpired in those bygone college days: the chance encounter, the unexplained parting.

“It’s a little hard to believe,” she told me, with more than a hint of skepticism. “You’re sure you don’t dream the whole thing up?”

“It’s all true, I promise.”

“Well, that makes me want to read it myself.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

She ruminated over a mouthful of veal.

“Then how about―”

“How about?”

“How about for your next book, you write about The Tropics?”

“But I didn’t finish it.”

“You don’t have to. It’ll be about the mystery of your phantom book.”

Intrigued, I took a moment to think.

Phantom books are something every author might like to write about at some point. The topic lets you stretch your imagination about the very acts of reading and writing.

“Let me think for a sec,” I mumbled, looking around the restaurant. That group of old-timers at the table in the back was still going strong.

“I can’t be sure it’ll pan out,” I admitted.

“Of course you can’t. That’s what makes it an adventure.”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

“I suspect Sayama Shōichi is a pen name. I’ll do some more digging on The Tropics, you keep brainstorming about the new book. And don’t worry about any deadlines.”

Evening hung its indigo tendrils low over Yasukuni Avenue when we left the beer hall. Lights were beginning to flicker on up and down the street. The wind was unexpectedly chilly as it sliced between the buildings.

“Any plans for the rest of the night?”

“I’m heading to a secret book club.”

“Ooh, very mysterious.”

“One of my old colleagues from the library is taking me. Even I don’t spend all my time cooped up at home, you know. Every so often I’ll take a little trip to find inspiration.”

“Well it sounds like it’ll come in useful for your next book!”

We arrived at the Surugadai-shita crossing.

As we said our goodbyes, the editor left me with one final plea.

“I’m serious, don’t let yourself get too carried away with a Thousand and One Nights…”