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

I work at an art gallery by Shijō Karasuma. I think I got into that line of work because of my granddad. He was an artist, and I used to visit his studio all the time.

He was less the “tortured artist” stereotype and more a mild-mannered, easygoing sage. Whenever I was running around his studio he’d just say, “A little distraction’s never a bad thing.” Apparently he was a lot more intense in the old days, but as far back as I can remember he was always “the sage”.

The studio was a few minutes’ walk from Ichihara Station, on the Eizan Line, around a café and up a gravel road. It used to be a small workshop before my granddad renovated it. Every time my mom took me there he’d be standing on the gravel, having a smoke and waiting for us to arrive. I guess he was just eager for us to get there. When I was little my mom took me every time, but once I got into middle school I started to go there by myself.

It was pretty spacious, and my granddad stored all kinds of things there: finished pieces and painting supplies, miscellaneous documents and memorabilia. He used to fancy himself an inventor so he had a lot of tools too, though he never invented anything actually useful.

The place was basically an oversized playroom. Granddad let me poke around whatever I wanted, so every time I visited I had the time of my life. On the other hand, it was boiling in there during the summer and freezing during the winter. But granddad was a hardy man, striding back and forth energetically in that studio like the weather didn’t bother him at all. Maybe that was the secret to how he stayed healthy, because he was in that studio almost every day until the day I graduated high school.

There was just one thing that granddad didn’t allow me to do.

Around the back of the studio there was a little bungalow, which he forbade me to enter. “There’s a monster lives in there,” he told me. Even as a child I had my doubts, but there really was something scary about the place. The trees grew wild and close behind it, and on rainy days, or when the night was closing in, it was incredibly creepy. Once, when I was in high school, I snuck out to peep inside when granddad wasn’t looking. But the green front door was locked, and the building only had one window next to the door, with iron bars over it, made of frosted glass so thick you couldn’t say a thing inside. “That’s a library,” my mom told me when I turned to her in defeat. But even she had never been inside. It was important to give him his privacy, she said, by way of explanation.

After that I forgot all about the bungalow, for a while. When I was a kid I used to draw pictures alongside my granddad as he worked, but gradually I became less interested in creating art myself. I found it much more fulfilling acting as his consultant or assistant. I also talked to people who had business with his gallery. I guess that was how I got interested in working at art galleries.

But around the time I graduated college, granddad’s once-sturdy body started to break down, and he didn’t spend much time at the studio anymore. And just after I got a job at a gallery in Shijō, he passed away. It broke my heart, though I’d been preparing myself for it to happen.

The problem was what to do with the studio he’d left me. Granddad had stuffed it to the rafters with all his belongings. He hated getting rid of things, so it was an absolute mess. My parents and my older brother lent a hand, but I had to orchestrate the whole thing. Luckily, the owner of the art gallery I worked at, Mr. Yanagi, had worked with granddad, and he was always happy to give me advice.

And so whenever I had a spare moment from work I’d go to the studio in Ichihara and tidy up a few more of granddad’s things. It was a hot summer, and I had to keep wiping off the sweat. Occasionally I’d come across an old drawing of mine, and realizing that he’d cared enough to hold on to even this old thing I’d feel tears springing to my eyes.

Eventually something started to weigh on me: what to do with the bungalow in the back.

“There’s a monster lives in there,” granddad had said. I wasn’t exactly anxious to get around to it, but the longer I waited the heavier it got, until one weekend I made up my mind and marched around the side of the studio. I remember how the cicadas were shrieking in the trees. The grass hadn’t been mowed in forever and the thick blades came almost up to my knees. It had a pungent smell, almost tropical.

But when I rounded the corner and saw the house my feet wouldn’t move another step. I was rooted to the spot, staring blankly at the house while the cicadas trilled. It struck me again, as I looked at it, what a strange house it was. The faded green door was offset to the right, and it was so uncomfortably narrow, maybe two-thirds the width of an ordinary door. Off to its left was the sole window in the building, trapped behind immovable iron bars. And that was really all there was to it. It would have been charming in a child’s crude drawing, but standing face to face with it was frightening, like meeting a house straight out of a nightmare. I could scarcely bring myself to believe that it was actually standing in front of me. In the end I turned around and headed home.

“That bungalow gives me the heebie-jeebies,” I announced to my parents, who looked thoughtful.

“That’s only because granddad used to scare you with it,” my brother snorted. “Let me go and unlock it for you.”

“I’ll go too,” my dad said.

Next Sunday we went to Ichihara. Once we rounded that corner my dad stopped and put his hands on his hips.

“Huh,” he said, in a sort of I-see-what-you-mean way. “It is kind of weird.”

“See?” I said. “What if a monster really does live in there?”

My brother chuckled, but there was a nervous tremble in his voice.

For a moment no one said anything. It felt as if some unseen presence was passing through, and in the ensuing silence the buzz of the cicadas was more piercing than ever. My neck prickled as though someone was watching me, though when I turned around the sunbaked gravel path was empty. Yet still I felt that gaze on me. Anxiety built as I struggled to figure out where the sensation was coming from. Midges buzzed by my ear, and beads of sweat slowly trickle down my cheeks. I turned back around and looked at my dad, who was sizing the place up.

“Well, let’s open her up,” said my dad, trying to sound brave. “Open sesame!”

We opened the green door and went inside.

Long story short, it wasn’t a monster’s lair.

I never would have guessed from the exterior that within the walls of this building lay a comfortably appointed library: Persian rugs on the floor, a very comfortable-looking sofa, and antique table and lamp. Three of the walls were filled end-to-end with bookshelves. An air conditioning unit was installed on the ceiling, and when my brother flicked the switch it obliged us with a stream of cool air. Whatever I had been expecting my granddad to be concealing in here, it wasn’t this.

“Dad’s secret hideout,” my dad said admiringly. “Incredible.”

To tell the truth I was a little crestfallen. The shelves were filled with all kinds of books, but nothing in there was remotely frightening or monstrous. It’d all been in my head. When I thought back to how this had all started―granddad feeding tales of monsters to a young, gullible me―I couldn’t help but feel a little sore.

One thing that did catch my attention was the extensive collection of the Thousand and One Nights. You probably know already about the many translations of the Nights: some came direct into Japanese from the Arabic, while others were rendered from the English of Burton or from the French of Mardrus and Galland. They filled the shelves, volume after volume of the Nights. I supposed that granddad must have been particularly fond of it.

After a little while my dad let out a sigh. “What now? This isn’t going to be easy to sort out.”

”Give me some time, let me take a closer look at all this,” I said.

“We could always just call a book dealer,” my brother objected. “Get rid of everything in one fell swoop.”

“Let’s not jump to that. Granddad must have spent a lot of time on this collection, I want to give it the attention it deserves. No need to rush either, now that we know there aren’t any monsters in here.”

“Well, it’s your call…” muttered my brother, who didn’t seem too interested in arguing.

Aside from the many translations of the Nights it was a mess of a collection. There were old books and new, Japanese books and foreign translations, hardcovers and paperbacks. I couldn’t see any rhyme or reason to it all. But given that granddad had never let anyone in here, it must have meant something quite important to him.

Over the next two weeks I was so busy with this and that that I ended up overworking myself, and it wasn’t until September that I went back to the studio. Mr. Yanagi from the gallery came with me; he’d assisted my granddad before and was giving me advice on sorting through his belongings, and when I told him about the library he expressed that he would very much like to see it.

When he walked through the door he made a little sound of delight.

“Yes, now this is quite extraordinary.”

“I’m still not sure what ties it all together.”

“I see there are a number of copies of the Thousand and One Nights,” Mr. Yanagi was quick to observe. “I remember your grandfather was very fond of it.”

“I never knew that.”

“I suppose it is not the easiest book to talk about.”

“Why’s that?”

“It depicts certain, ah, ribald imagery,” he said wryly. “Not something you could talk to your granddaughter about.”

“I see.”

“This reminds me of the books which my father bequeathed to me,” said Mr. Yanagi, closing his eyes. “While I was flipping through some that I picked off the shelf I found some passages here and there that he’d underlined. I wondered why he’d underlined the sentences that he did. Some of them seemed completely unremarkable to me. I guess that only shows the differences between him and me.”

“Do you underline things in books?”

“Almost never. My father was always quoting from things when he talked; that must have been why he made it a habit to underline things as he read. I’d feel a little chill every time I came across an underlined passage which I remembered him quoting to me, and after I’d found a number of them it felt as though everything my father had ever said to me was a quote from one of the books in his collection, that this bookshelf was in fact my father himself: dead, and yet still by my side, speaking to me. It was a moving feeling, and eerie in equal part.”

“Maybe my granddad wrote in his books, too.”

“Perhaps he did. Shall we?”

We began to work through the collection. The first book I happened to pick up was Ikezawa Natsuki’s The Downfall of Matías Guili, and as the pages rustled beneath my fingertipsI paused and sucked in my breath: the sentence It can be seen in the 1001 Nights was underlined in black. I glanced over at Mr. Yanagi, who was staring thunderstruck down at his own book, Yoshida Kenichi’s Shokaki. Leaning over I saw that he was looking at the table of contents where the words Mardrus’ Thousand and One Nights had similarly underlined in black. Next I looked at Tanizaki Junichirō’s Some Prefer Nettles, and saw that yes, references to the Nights―It’s different from my Arabian Nights?―had been underlined.

I looked at Mr. Yanagi, who nodded slowly.

“All of these books are related to the Thousand and One Nights.”

“I had no idea.”

“Why should you? All of the underlined passages are quite cursory. Unless you were looking quite deliberately you might never notice them. Stevenson’s New Arabian Nights, Inagaki Taruho’s One Thousand and One Seconds: each of these were inspired by the original Nights.”

With every book we opened our hypothesis became more and more certain: everything in this library was connected to the Thousand and One Nights.

Could this just have been granddad’s hobby? But as I surveyed this vast collection I sensed a single-mindedness that suggested there was more to it. This was a glimpse of a side to my granddad that I’d never known. One mystery had been solved, but it only led to another, even more impenetrable mystery.

“A strange building indeed,” Mr. Yanagi murmured to me on our way back to the station.

“You thought so too?”

“That door, and the window, very curious. And all the time that you and I were in there, I had the feeling that we were being watched. Curious, very curious,” he said, and the look of contemplation never left his face.

◯

“…And then what happened?” I asked, leaning forward.

Maki smiled. “That’s the end of the story. Didn’t I tell you it was a strange story?”

During the relating of her extended tale, patrons had been trickling into Wings of Night, and the air was filled with murmured conversations and the clinking of glasses.

“What happened to the library?”

“It’s still there, practically untouched. I’ve spent a fair amount of time there reading the Nights again and again, trying to unravel the mystery that granddad left behind. I’ve burned so many of the stories into my brain that if King Shahryār were to appear before me and demand to chop off my head, I’d probably be able to keep him at bay with them for a pretty long time.”

“And did you solve that mystery?”

“It’s still raveled,” she said with a grin. “The Thousand and One Nights is a mystery itself. Let’s say you’ve read the Mardrus version. It was translated by Mardrus from Arabic into French, and only then again into Japanese. But Mardrus’ translation has, let’s say, a touch of whimsy, to such a degree that sometimes it’s almost impossible to tell what source he was working from. So this Thousand and One Nights is really Mardrus’ version of the Nights.”

“I’ve heard about that.”

“But that doesn’t mean that Mardrus’ translation was bad, if you ask me. Antoine Galland, the first European to translate the Nights, included stories from wherever and whoever he liked, whether or not they had anything to do with the original Nights. You can blame the title, too: one thousand and one was originally just a way of saying a lot, but over time it gave birth to this ideal that there was a literal set of 1001 stories. There probably wasn’t, but everyone just kept tacking stories on in pursuit of this fantasy―even making new stories up wholesale, truth be damned. And as a result of all this you get these capricious translations.

“But what if there’s more to it than the title?” And she looked at me.

“Meaning?”

“Doesn’t it seem like there’s some magic at work? Almost as though Scheherazade went around looking for stories so that she could buy a few more nights, and placed a magic spell on everyone she came into contact with. Maybe my granddad was under the spell too. Forget about whether the source texts were reliable, or how faithful the translations were: I think that there are as many versions of the Thousand and One Nights as there are people who have fallen under Scheharazade’s spell.”

I listened to her words with great interest, thinking of course about The Tropics. I wonder, Miss Shiraishi, whether you remember the theory I once spoke to you about, where I posited that each of the Scholars read a different version of The Tropics, each its own unique story. Maki’s theory reminded me very much of it: there exist as many versions of The Tropics as there are people on whom Sayama Shōichi has cast this spell.

In the midst of my pondering Maki let out a little sigh.

“Sorry, that was kind of weird.”

“Not at all, I found it fascinating, instructive.”

“So, what brings you to Kyoto?” She asked. “Whatever it is, it must be fascinating.”

In order to explain why I was here, I must first explain about The Tropics. “It’s a long story,” I demurred.

“Perfect,” Maki exclaimed.

Thus in response to her story I offered up my saga with The Tropics, to which she listened studiously. It occurred to me, as I was telling the tale, that it was a story no less wonderful than the one I had just heard, and when I finished speaking Maki said, “What a mysterious story.”

Now it was her turn to ponder, and when she was done she said, “Doesn’t it worry you?”

“What do you mean?”

“First Sayama Shōichi disappeared, and now Chiyo. Aren’t you worried that something similar might happen to you?”

“Now, hold on. Chiyo isn’t missing.”

“But what if she’s really gone?”

“No,” I muttered. “I do not believe it.”

The clock told me that it was around 11. I stared out the porthole; the slight pitching that I was feeling must surely be the whiskey talking. If I didn’t go back to my hotel soon I might well lose half the day. I stood to go and thanked Maki.

“The pleasure’s mine,” she replied.

The night had been strange, and following this it became even stranger.

After I had settled my tab and left the bar, Maki came chasing after me.

“You should go to the art museum,” she whispered in my ear. “It may not turn into anything, but you should go anyways.”

“The art museum? What will I find there?”

“That’s for you to find out,” she said simply, before turning and vanishing back into the recesses of Wings of Night.

The crowds of Pontochō had dwindled to a smattering. Like a beachcomber walking the shore at low tide I walked the deserted stone path, which eventually brought me to Sanjō Bridge. In the taxi I instructed the driver to take me back to the hotel in Keage, then slumped down into the back seat as I felt the weariness of what had been a very long day crash down on me all at once.

As the lights streamed by outside, my phone rang. It was from a number that I did not recognize.

A man’s voice came through the speaker.

“Mr. Ikeuchi?”

“Who is this?”

“I’m sorry for disturbing you at this hour. My name is Imanishi.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Imanishi?”

“I got your business card at Hōrendō,” the man informed me. “I hear you’re looking for Chiyo.”

As soon as he said that I knew the identity of the unknown caller.

“You must be Chiyo’s friend.”

“That’s right. A very old friend, in fact.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“That’s exactly what I’d like to talk to you about. Could we meet tomorrow, at the Shinshindō Café on Imadegawa Street? Let’s say at one?”

After some hesitation I agreed, whereupon the man asked abruptly, “You don’t happen to have read The Tropics?”

“I have,” I answered, somewhat startled. “And yourself?”

“No, can’t say that I have.”

And just like that, he hung up.

I put my phone down and returned my gaze to the window. The taxi was leaving downtown behind, pulling itself up the wide slope towards Keage. As we passed through the nighttime streets I felt as though I was scuttling along the bottom of a silent sea. Struggling to keep my eyes open, I looked ahead and saw, at last, the radiant lights of the hotel burst into view atop the plateau, like the long-sought beam of a lighthouse to a weary ship emerging from the storm.

◯

A powdering of snow coated the streets of Kyoto when I woke up the next morning. I pulled aside the curtain to see the trees around Nanzenji glittering silver, silver as the foam atop a wave as it crashes down. Ashen clouds obscured the sky, letting through only a cold still light to come falling down upon the earth.

After having breakfast at the hotel lounge, I came back to my room and opened up the notebook. Hōrendō. *Wunderkammer. Daruma and card index. Wings of night. Nagase Eizō. Improvisations. Sayama Shōichi’s shadow. Chiyo abandons companion and escapes through back door. Out of season sunflower. Where is Witch of Full Moon? *I had scrawled these keywords down before bed last night, too tired to properly arrange my thoughts. With these few words it is a simple task to reconstruct my memories afterward, and referring to them closely I wrote down as much as I could remember about what had happened the previous day.

A strange feeling came over me as I wrote. I had come here to investigate The Tropics. It was in order to solve the mysteries of that book which brought me here in pursuit of Chiyo, and led me to retrace Sayama Shōichi’s footsteps.

But as I examined the events of the previous day, it was another tale which came up again and again: I refer, of course, to the Thousand and One Nights.

Read 1001 Nights at Arabiya Books

Found poem from 1001 Nights in catalogue at Hōrendō

Wings of Night bar in Pontochō: name inspired by poem

Met Maki, who spoke to me about 1001 Nights

Maki’s grandfather left behind collection of books related to 1001 Nights

Maki’s story had left a considerable impression on me. It was centered on the Thousand and One Nights, and yet simultaneously I would have not been surprised to read it in the pages of The Tropics.

Maki’s parting words still rang in my ears.

I looked up the art museum and found that it was located beside Heian Jingū, not far from my hotel. My appointment with Mr. Imanishi was at 1 p.m., leaving plenty of time for me to peruse the museum. After arranging for my luggage to be sent back to Tokyo, I checked out and exited the hotel.

Snow was drifting down from the grey heavens. As I walked along the Biwa canals my face grew stiff from the cold.

Do I have what it takes to solve the mysteries of The Tropics?

Perhaps it was my solitude which spurred my uncertainty. I wondered what you would think if you were here. It was your arrival which had set things into motion. Where I dithered, you might simply smash through whatever barriers stood in your way.

After some time the torii of Heigan Jingū came into view. I crossed the bridge across the canal. To the right was the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, whose massive facade―an eclectic melding of Japanese and Occidental architecture―towered overhead like a castle rampart. Approaching the ample doorway I saw banners hanging on the beige walls, advertising an exhibition of Kyoto writers. I bought a ticket and went inside.

Why did Maki tell me to visit this museum?

I studied each exhibit carefully: handicrafts, and copperplate engravings, and nihonga paintings. When I came to a large room which displayed a collection of Western paintings, one piece hanging at the far end of the room soon caught my eye. I rapidly strode through the open space as if I was being drawn to it, and when I read the caption an awful shiver went through me. What it said was this:

Witch of the Full Moon - Maki Nobuo
1984

◯

A lone woman dressed in blue stands in a wilderness. She is facing away from the viewer, gazing at an unbroken line of sand dunes in the distance. The deep shade of ultramarine in the sky could be the initial shades of night, or the darkness before dawn. And on the left in the background, standing alone in the waste, is a white palace.

The Saray in the Sands.

There was no doubt in my mind that this was the very same Saray in the Sands which you and Chiyo had unearthed via Salvage, the palace which lay beyond the Doldrums. The title alone made it plain to see that this mysterious painting had something to do with The Tropics.

Maki Nobuo: the name instantly reminded me of the woman I had met at Wings of Night. Her grandfather—who had left that fantastical collection of books—had been a painter, and so that must mean that this painting was created by him. And it was clear that in its making he had taken inspiration from Sayama Shōichi’s The Tropics.

Closing my eyes, I thought back to what you had told me about that afternoon at Chiyo’s apartment in Harimazaka. You said that when you closed your eyes, The Tropics sprang to life in vivid detail. A white archway towering in the midst of the dunes, an ornate garden buried beneath the sands, a Persian-domed palace. And now I could envision quite clearly for myself what you had described.

All of a sudden I was assaulted by a gust of hot, sandy air. When I opened my eyes in bewilderment, I found myself in a dim chamber, very different from the exhibit hall which I had just been standing in a moment ago. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I saw that the ceiling was lofted high overhead like a great temple. A hush lay over the room, and the stone floor was covered with sand. I turned and saw the exit, on the other side of which lay an equally sand-strewn garden and a white gate. A wall of sand dunes loomed beyond, and porcelain clouds thrust upwards into the wild blue yonder.

I could hardly believe it: I was in the Saray in the Sands depicted in that painting.

From deep within the darkness came a sound.

I turned to face into the room. There was nothing there. But my ears detected the sound of footsteps treading upon the sand. I dared not make the slightest movement.

The footsteps came closer, and closer still. I took in a deep breath, and addressed the unseen presence.

“Are you the Witch of the Full Moon?”

The footsteps stopped, and a voice replied to me.

“Is that you, Mr. Ikeuchi?”

It is impossible to describe the shock I felt, Ms. Shiraishi, when I heard your voice issuing out of thin air.

“Ms. Shiraishi? Where are you?”

“I’d tell you, but I can’t see you, either.”

“What are you doing here, Ms. Shiraishi?”

“Why else—I came after you!”

I blindly reached out in the direction of the voice, but my hands clutched empty air.

How had I arrived at the Saray in the Sands? And what were you doing there? Why was it that we could not see one another? Only questions swirled through my mind, and yet strangely your voice betrayed not the slightest hint of uncertainty: if anything, it sounded like you were quite enjoying yourself.

“I knew I’d be able to find you. Even if we can’t actually see one other.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand…”

“I’d love to stay and chat, but we’re running out of time. The storm will be here any minute.”

And this is what you told me.

“After you left for Kyoto, I ran into Nakatsugawa and we had a chat. He’s realized what The Tropics really is. He said it’s a real, bona fide book of magic, and that none of us have finished reading it, that we exist within its pages.”

“Inside The Tropics?”

“Everything is connected to The Tropics. All the world portends it.”

Another gust of wind swept through the room, this one carrying on it a dampness, and when he turned around he saw above the sand dunes dark clouds rolling across the blue sky, moving so quickly it was as though he was watching a documentary on fast-forward. Lightning flashed, a dragon soaring across the grey expanse, accompanied by the loose low growl of thunder.

“I’ve remembered something from The Tropics, a line from the Sorcerer,” you told me, and when you recited the line it was as though you defied the thunder which shook the air.

“Know ye that in days of yore the Witch of the Full Moon held dominion o’er these seas. ‘Twas she who taught me the magickal arts, which hath allowed me to extend my mortal years beyond that which Nature granted me. I was but a callow wretch when the waves carried me to these shores, much as you stand before me today. In those days this was a vast emptiness. Yet consider this: what is emptiness, but possibility? From this does magic arise.”

A great crash of thunder drowned out Shiraishi’s voice.

“Shiraishi!”

“Find Chiyo, Mr. Ikeuchi!” you shouted. “I’ll be right behind you.”

And that was the last I heard of your voice.

The next thing I knew, I was back in the exhibit hall in front of Maki Nobuo’s painting. Your disembodied voice, the arid sandy air, the sound of the storm—all of it was gone, replaced by a silence, physical, unyielding. I made a little sound and looked all around me.

“Is everything all right?” asked a security guard, getting up and coming towards me.

I was shocked to realize that half an hour had passed since I entered the museum. Had I been standing in front of that painting the whole time? Small wonder that the guard was eyeing me with such suspicion. I was hardly about to say that I had been daydreaming the entire time, so I simply nodded and left as quickly as my feet would carry me, half expecting them to fail me before I reached the exit.

Back outside, I gazed upward at the grey skies as the snow came fluttering down.