Chapter 3―The Witch of the Full Moon (Part 2)

Once more into the forest I went, and down the leaf-covered trail along the north face of Mt. Yoshida, and soon enough I found myself looking at the cars going back and forth along Imadegawa Street. For the moment there was a lull in the snowfall. It felt as though everything I had just witnessed had been a dream. But I opened my notebook, and sure enough there was the hand-drawn map to Hōrendō.

I hailed a taxi which whisked me north up Shirakawa Street towards Ichijōji. When it let me off I headed into a nearby restaurant to have lunch, as it was already getting near noon.

As I waited for my food, I opened the notebook and wrote about Arabiya Books and the Thousand and One Nights. Sometimes the simple act of putting pen to paper can lead to unexpected discoveries.

Why had Sayama Shōichi decided to open The Tropics with a quote from the Nights?

Speak not of that which concerns you not―

I could not but be convinced that those words concealed some clandestine design.

Leaving the restaurant I crossed Shirakawa Street, proceeding east into the residential neighbourhood. The owner of Arabiya Books had drawn his map true. I found Hōrendō exactly where his drawing said it would be: near Ichijōji-sagarimatsu—the pine tree where Miyamoto Musashi is reputed to have fought a duel with the students of the Yoshioka School—not far from the temple of Shisendō on Mt. Ishikawajō. In front of the glass door was a little shelf with old pottery and wooden carvings of Hotei; an elderly couple had paused to take a look.

I opened the door and went inside.

“Welcome,” said a kind voice, in a whisper that sounded as though it came from right beside my ear. The voice belonged to a woman sitting at the register. She smiled when our gazes met—what striking, glistening eyes she possessed—and said, “Feel free to look around.”

It was not a terribly large shop, perhaps ten tatami in size, and every square inch was crammed with knick-knacks: display cases filled with carved netsuke and tsuba handguards and coins; old traditional wooden bureaus; Shigaraki-ware tanuki and carved figurines of the Seven Gods of Fortune; telescopes and beakers and test tubes and taxidermied birds; small Persian rugs and vessels. Behind the register hung a faded curtain, behind which I could see a small tatami room and stairs leading up to the second floor.

“This is a wonderful shop,” I told her.

“That’s very kind of you to say.”

“I know someone who used to come here very often. It used to be located in Kitashirakawa, if I recall.”

“That was during my dad’s time, when I was still a little girl,” she replied matter-of-factly. “It was relocated here when he died, about thirty years ago.”

“And it’s been here ever since?”

“That’s right. I took it over when my mom passed away.”

What a curious figure; she looked quite youthful, and yet she must have been some years older than I was. She reminded me of a pristine pool hidden deep in the forest, cool and clear. I was about to inquire further when the couple I had seen standing in front of the shop came in. Not wanting to hinder her business I decided to look around the shop until they had gone.

The mark of a great shop is that it encloses the customer in a world of its own devising. At a glance its wares may not share any coherent affiliation, yet their tiny stories resound in such a way as to induce a curious harmony. Such was Hōrendō.

I imagined myself in a cabinet of curiosities, a wunderkammer, those chambers filled with exquisite artifacts both natural and manmade which had once enjoyed a vogue among the nobility of Europe. Chiyo had once told me that she had visited secondhand shops with Sayama Shōichi; perhaps this shop too was a relic of the birth of The Tropics.

As I glanced around the room my eyes lit upon a little shelf which stood in the corner. It was its inhabitants which drew my attention, a gathering of daruma, large and small, some weather-beaten and worn, whose neighbours consisted of seashells no larger than grape seeds, a right hand of stone apparently lopped off from its owner, miniature bottles which had once contained fruit-flavoured milk…

Among that motley neighbourhood sat a small, antique wooden box. It was tiny enough that one could lift it in a single hand, and fitted with a lid with a handle. The front had a metal fitting in which a label could be inserted. It appeared to be an index card organizer. When I was writing my thesis in college I had conducted a great amount of research in specialized libraries, poring through enormous shelves filled with such cards. In those days the catalogues were not yet digitized; you had to come to the library and laboriously thumb through the cards by hand to find what you were searching for.

I opened the box. At first it appeared empty, but further inspection revealed a few cards yellowed by age such that they almost matched the wood.

The first card had what appeared to be some sort of obscure poem written on it.

‘Night’s black fain wing is hiding day.’
‘A cloud, but lo! the moon is there,’
You, rose child, found to say.

“I’m sorry, that isn’t for sale.”

I turned around. The owner was smiling at me at the register. The elderly couple must have conducted their purchase and gone on their way. I closed the lid of the box.

“I haven’t seen a card file like this in quite a while,” I told her. “Not very many use them anymore.”

“It belonged to my dad, as does the rest of the collection,” she said. “He seemed to treasure it dearly, though I’m afraid I have no idea why.”

“And you’ve preserved it ever since.”

“It makes me feel as though he’s still here.”

She looked at me with those luminous eyes, in which I seemed to detect both kindness and uncertainty. There again was that image in my head of the hidden pond in the forest; speaking with her gave me the sensation of skipping stones into the pond.

She stood up and poured hot water from a kettle into a teapot.

“Traveling?” she asked me.

“Yes, I came at the invitation of a friend,” I said, choosing my words carefully. I had the feeling that if I pressed too hard she might abruptly shut up like a clam. “She’s the one that told me about this shop. She lives in Tokyo now, but in the past she made her residence on Mt. Yoshida.”

“…Who would this be?”

“Perhaps you’re familiar with her. Her name is Chiyo.”

Her expression relaxed, and as she poured into a teacup and offered it to me she said, “I know Chiyo.”

“Do you really?”

“I’ve known her since we were kids. In fact, I saw her only the other day.”

I explained in brief my acquaintance with Chiyo: that she was a regular at my place of work, and that we were members of a club devoted to the mysterious book known as The Tropics.

“The Tropics…” She nodded thoughtfully. “Chiyo mentioned it to me, once.”

“It is quite a fascinating book.”

“I was interested in reading it too, once I heard that Sayama had written it.”

I looked sharply at her. “You knew Sayama Shōichi?”

“Yes, a long time ago.”

I asked whether she might be willing to tell me more about it, and after a little consideration, she gave a little nod. “Just a moment,” she said, adjusting the flame of the heater and bidding me to take a seat on a stool.

◯

All of this happened back when the shop was still in Kitashirakawa.

There was a gentleman who used to visit Hōrendō every so often. He had a magnificent grey mane and his eyes were long and almond-shaped, which in a way gave him the appearance of a Westerner. When I was small I was frightened of him, and in secret I called him the Sorcerer. The Sorcerer lived in a mansion on Mt. Yoshida, and because of this the mountain became a source of fear to me as well.

This gentleman’s name was Nagase Eizō, and he was Chiyo’s dad.

I guess it must have been him who first brought her to Hōrendō. She simply adored me, and we would often play together. She would bring me to the Okazaki Zoo, or the movie theater at Shinkyōgoku…though I seem to recall that I was so afraid of the dark that I would usually run straight out of the darkened theater.

I was horribly shy in those days, and whenever a customer spoke to me I would immediately run and hide behind my dad. The only adult whom I could properly speak to, not including Chiyo, was Sayama.

I remember the day I met him quite clearly.

I was amusing myself with some odds and ends around the shop. I wasn’t allowed to touch anything of value, so I had to content myself to play with my dad’s personal collection. You were looking at it on that old shelf just a moment ago. I was especially fond of the daruma collection, and I was always having them act out adventures of all kinds.

He came in that day alongside Chiyo. She I was quite familiar with, but his face was new to me. Seeing me stiffen up, Sayama came and picked up one of the daruma, and made it squeak, “I am a daruma!” like Natsume Sōseki’s famous cat. That blustering voice, that haughty waddle: he breathed such life into it that I was totally entranced, forgetting my nervousness.

It occurs to me now how deeply Sayama understood what children dream of, and what they fear. Most people forget those things when they grow up, but I think that Sayama didn’t, or couldn’t.

There was one game he would play with me which I will never forget.

“PIck three, any three,” he would say to me, and Chiyo and I would run around the store and choose three objects. One day it might be an abalone shell, a telescope, an old bureau; another it might be a paperweight, a water pipe, a Shigaraki-ware tanuki statue. Whatever we picked, Sayama would use them to make up a story on the spot, always including us as characters in it. What a delightful amusement that was. Chiyo loved to play this game, but no matter what she challenged him with, Sayama never talked himself into a corner, and to a little girl like me, that felt like magic.

Much later on, when Chiyo told me that Sayama had written a book called The Tropics, that game was the first thing that came to mind. I was too young at the time to think about who Sayama really was, this strange man who came out of nowhere bearing stories of wonder and intrigue only to vanish as quickly as he came. It was only later that I heard from Chiyo that he was a student of Arabic and so on. He disappeared in the winter, but it was only in the spring that I realized that fact.

Why hasn’t Sayama been around?

As it happened Chiyo had come that particular day, and as we played with the daruma I asked that hesitant question, to which she curtly replied, “He’s abandoned us.”

I supposed that meant that he would never make the daruma squeak again, and even as I looked at the daruma they seemed to lapse into an unfriendly silence. It had been perhaps not even half a year between Sayama’s first visit and his last, but to a child that was an awfully long time, and his abrupt disappearance made me rather forlorn.

But to tell the truth, I also felt a little relieved.

I was fond of both him and Chiyo, but of the two I was fonder of Chiyo. I didn’t want her to treat anyone the way she treated me, and as long as Sayama was around that could not be; because of this selfish desire I always felt a little cool towards him. But I’ll quickly add that this distance didn’t come about from jealousy alone.

I mentioned at the start Nagase Eizo, Chiyo’s father, who frightened me so much that I nicknamed him the Sorcerer. Once, just once, Sayama and the Sorcerer met at the shop, discussing something in hushed tones and grave expressions.

To this day I don’t know what they were talking about, but I recall the invisible tension which stilled the air. This was not the Sayama I recognized; rather it was almost like a reflection which swam up from hidden depths to answer the call of the Sorcerer. From that day on, deep down I was afraid of Sayama.

I didn’t know how to express it in words at the time, but I believe now that I understand what it was that I felt. I sensed that Sayama was hiding something: his kindness to us was merely an inversion of the darkness which lurked within.

◯

This was the story which the owner of Hōrendō told me, and once she had finished with her long tale, she picked up the teapot and refilled my tea.

“Sayama’s secret,” I ventured, “does it have anything to do with his disappearance?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did Chiyo ever say anything about it?”

“She did. After she got married and moved to Tokyo, she would pop in every few years. We spoke about Sayama on a number of those occasions. But it all happened so long ago that there’s no hope of solving the mystery now.”

“Chiyo’s father, Eizo, has passed?”

“Yes, quite some time ago now.”

Chiyo’s father intrigued me. It was he who had employed Sayama as a student: what exactly was that relationship? What had Sayama Shōichi been hiding? Why had he disappeared? Did those questions have any connection to The Tropics? I wrote everything down in my notebook, yet the connections remained opaque.

“When did Chiyo last come here?”

“I believe it was about three days ago.”

“She’s the one who invited me to Kyoto. I thought I’d meet her here, but by the time I got to the hotel she had already checked out, and I haven’t been able to contact her. I’m a little bit at a loss here.”

“I see,” she frowned. “Something odd happened, actually, when Chiyo came by.”

“Something odd?”

“She fled the shop in a hurry, by the back door.”

“Fled? What for?”

“I don’t know. Her companion seemed pretty surprised as well.”

“You mean Chiyo wasn’t alone?”

The companion had been an older man whom she had never seen before. The pair had spent their time looking around the shop; by and by the man’s phone rang, and he went outside the shop by himself. And when he did, Chiyo whispered in the owner’s ear, “I don’t suppose the back door is open?”

“Was she frightened?”

“Not at all. In fact, I think she was rather having fun.”

When the man came back inside he was shocked to find that Chiyo was gone. Why had Chiyo done that? No ready explanation presented itself, and the man’s identity also remained unknown.

The grandfather clock struck four. I stood up and gave her my business card.

“Thank you for all of your help. If Chiyo comes by, may I trouble you to ask her to call this number? I will be in Kyoto until tomorrow night.”

“I’ll do that.”

“I have one last request, if you don’t mind,” I said. “May I go out the back door?”

I wanted to trace Chiyo’s steps as closely as I could.

“Of course. This way.”

I took off my shoes and went up to the sitting room behind the register. The door by the kitchen took me outside to a poorly lit yard enclosed by grey concrete walls. I put my shoes back on and looked around. There I saw in a corner, in spite of the fact that it was only February, a sunflower raising its face to the overcast sky, like an enchanted tongue of flame beneath the quietly falling snow.

“That sunflower is a little out of season.”

“It bloomed after Chiyo came by.”

There was an iron door set in the wall, so small that one had to crouch down to pass through it, like it was straight out of Alice in Wonderland. I half-expected it to lead me into another world entirely, but on the other side I found only an unremarkable alleyway trammeled between the wall and a hedge on the other side.

“Wait,” the owner called out as I started to walk away. She stared at me with those sparkling eyes of hers; she looked so small, crouched down on the other side of the doorway. “Chiyo said something odd as she was leaving here.”

“Something odd?”

“Something about meeting a witch.”

“Was it perhaps the Witch of the Full Moon?”

She looked startled. “Yes, that was what it was.”

I’m going to see the Witch of the Full Moon―that was what Chiyo had said.

◯

I looped through Ichijōji and came back to the Sagarimatsu. Though I had no clues where Chiyo had gone after leaving Hōrendō, I couldn’t very well go around knocking on doors asking all the neighbours, so for the moment I decided to head back into town―back into those same bustling streets which Chiyo and Sayama must once have walked―have dinner, and then return to the hotel in Keage. There was a veritable mountain of mysteries for me to ponder.

At Ichijōji Station I boarded the Eizan Line bound for Demachiyanagi Station.

The Witch of the Full Moon: that I had heard that name could be no mere coincidence.

The Salvage which you and Chiyo undertook at her apartment on Harimazaka, the Desert Palace which lay on the other side of the Doldrums, and the Witch of the Full Moon. These were what had compelled Chiyo to set off for Kyoto.

I’m going to see the Witch of the Full Moon.

There must be some meaning hidden in those words.

At Demachiyanagi Station I transferred to the Keihan Line. By the time the train reached Gion-Shijō Station the winter sun was already going down, and the streetlights were flickering on along the length of the Kamo River.

I crossed the Shijō Bridge to the western bank, and strolled around Teramachi and Shinkyōgoku. How different these streets must have been in Sayama’s time, when both he and Chiyo had still lived in Kyoto. But not everything had changed: the lanterns of Nishiki Tenmangū, and the old sukiyaki restaurants seemed little changed from decades past. I passed shut temple gates, and Buddhist supply stores, and tobacco shops and yawning openings which led into pitch-black alleyways…and once I had done walking, I stopped at an udon shop for dinner before going down Kawaramachi Street into Pontochō, intending to stroll around that neighbourhood for just a little longer before retiring to the hotel.

Pontochō on a Saturday night was just like being in the midst of a festival.

As I walked northward along the narrow stone-cobbled path I noticed one particular sign above a stairwell on the right side. It said Wings of Night. Above me, the windows on the second floor glowed the same amber colour as a bottle of whiskey.

I glanced back at the sign. There was something arresting about it which I couldn’t quite place my finger on.

Wings of Night: a lovely turn of phrase, and one which I was certain I had read somewhere before. Whenever I have convinced myself of such a thing I find myself unable to think of anything else until I have dredged up the origins of the word from my mind. An eccentricity to be sure, but one which I cannot help. The first thing that popped into my mind was Robert Silverberg’s sci-fi novel Nightwings, but it had been quite a long time since I had read it, and the echo I felt from that phrase was much more vivid, fresh. I thought about the things I read since the day before: Robinson Crusoe in my hotel room, the Thousand and One Nights at Arabiya Books. But I did not recall the phrase appearing in either book, and I was confident that I had not opened another book besides.

And quite unexpectedly another set of words presented itself.

‘Night’s black fain wing is hiding day.’
‘A cloud, but lo! the moon is there,’
You, rose child, found to say.

Ah, yes: an indescribable feeling of satisfaction swept over me. The old wooden card organizer in the corner of Hōrendō, and the card within, and the poetic composition on that card: it was there that I had come across the phrase.

◯

Wings of Nights was hardly larger than a ship’s cabin. At my seat at the bar where I nursed a glass of whiskey, the muffled sounds of the street outside sounded like distant ocean waves. It felt as though I was floating in the skies above Pontochō. It was still early; the only other patron was a young woman. She was sitting on the only couch seat in the room, staring out a round window which looked upon the Kamo River and sipping a red cocktail.

“You look tired,” said the bartender gently to me, a fastidiously arranged display case of liquor bottles behind him.

“I’ve been run ragged since this morning.”

“Business?”

“No, call it a hobby,” I replied. “I’m following in the footsteps of a novelist, but the plot just keeps thickening. It’s a little bit like being the main character of a mystery novel.”

“It sounds like you’ve had quite an interesting day.”

“That I have.”

“It just so happens I’m quite fond of detective novels myself,” went on the bartender, rattling off a list of classic mystery writers whom he was fond of, including Ellery Queen and S.S. Van Dine. After we had worn out the subject I decided to ask about the name of the bar.

“It’s a beautiful name,” I said.

“I agree, though I’m afraid I can’t take the credit,” he said with a chuckle. “That would go to a regular at the bar I used to work at, before I struck out on my own. Apparently he’d found it in the Thousand and One Nights, which I can’t say I’ve read. I’m afraid all I read is detective novels.”

“The Thousand and One Nights?”

“You’ve heard of it, I’ll bet. The Arabian Nights?”

“You mean this?”

When I placed the volume which I had purchased at Arabiya Books on the bar, the bartender’s eyes widened in surprise. I suppose not very many people walk around with a book like that. Now the woman by the window was interested; she turned and said, “The Thousand and One Nights?”

“Look, Maki,” the bartender called to her, holding up the book for her to see. “It’s not every day a customer like this walks in.”

“This has got to be some kind of first,” she smiled. “Granddad would be tickled pink.”

She explained to me that her grandfather was the one who had named the bar, inspired by a passage in Mardrus’ translation of the Nights extolling the beauty of Scheharazade’s younger sister, Dunyazad.

“This is the poem,” said Maki, and her lovely voice intoned these lines:

You are more fair than a summer moon
On a winter night, you are more fair.
I said when I saw your falling hair:
‘Night’s black fain wing is hiding day.’
‘A cloud, but lo! the moon is there,’
You, rose child, found to say.

I listened with awe to her vivid recitation. But her delivery was not the only reason for my surprise, for the latter half of that poem contained the very words which I had read on that card in Hōrendō. She gave an elegant bow while the bartender and I applauded.

“What are you doing carrying that book around?” Maki asked.

“In fact it happened by sheer accident,” I said, relating my run-in with the mysterious bookseller on the slopes of Mt. Yoshida. “I came upon the book while I was minding the shop for him. As it happens, I had always wanted to read it for myself…”

“That’s a funny sort of coincidence.”

“And it was not the only one. After my encounter with the bookseller I went to an antiques store named Hōrendō, where I found an old card…”

“A card?”

“Yes, a paper card, like the ones they used to record library catalogues on. It was stored in a wooden box, about this big. And on this card was written the poem which you just recited. In fact, I came into this bar because that phrase, Wings of Night, had left such an impression on me.”

“…That’s quite a story,” Maki said. “How would you like to sit over here and talk about it?”

I stood up and took the sofa across from where she was sitting. Through the window, round as the moon, I could see lights glittering on the other side of the Kamo.

“I always sit here if it’s open,” Maki said to me. Sitting across from her, I really did get the feeling that I was sitting in the cabin of an ocean liner, sailing across the starlit sea.

“That recitation was truly splendid.”

“Thank you.”

“You seem to know quite a lot about the Thousand and One Nights.”

“It just kind of happened…I guess you could chalk it up to my granddad’s influence.”

“You mentioned that he gave this bar its name?”

“He’s passed away. He’s the reason I read the Thousand and One Nights in the first place. It’s kind of a strange story…”

“It sounds quite interesting.”

“It is quite interesting.”

Maki ordered another cocktail, and then began her story.