Chapter 3―The Witch of the Full Moon (Part 4)

I hailed a cab and dialled your number while it took me to Shinshindō. You may remember receiving a somewhat unexpected call a little past noon on Sunday.

“What’s going on, Mr. Ikeuchi?”

“I do apologize for disturbing you.”

“Oh, I’m not busy. I’m just having lunch.”

I could hear murmurs of conversation, the scraping of silverware, the classical music playing on the speakers, conjuring up that familiar scene.

“Where are you right now?” His voice sounded oddly strained.

“At Café Merry, having a toast set,” you told me. “Why?”

If I told you what had just happened you would never believe me. For I could hardly believe it myself.

“You see, I spotted someone in Kyoto who looks very much like you.”

“I’m pretty sure this is Yūrakuchō,” you chuckled. “Maybe my longing to go to Kyoto spawned a doppelganger.”

Why else—I came after you! That was what your voice had said to me in the hall of the Desert Palace. Yet there was no doubt that you were clearly in Tokyo. You had no reason to lie.

“I must have been mistaken then.”

“I guess so.”

“My sincerest apologies for the confusion.”

That brief silence after I said this was enough to set you on edge.

“…Did something happen over there, Mr. Ikeuchi?”

“Nothing to worry yourself about,” I replied. “So much has happened that I’m still wrapping my mind around it all. Once I have returned there will be a mountain of things for us to discuss.”

“I can’t wait.”

“Your patience will be rewarded,” I said, hanging up.

The taxi travelled north along Higashiōji Street.

Just what was that back at the museum? The Desert Palace, the storm: it had all been a rehash of what your Salvage had unearthed. As for your voice, I could very well have been imagining it on my own. Perhaps it had all been a daydream triggered by my unexpected discovery of Maki Nobuo’s Witch of the Full Moon, though this theory rang hollow to me. The arid scent of the palace, the damp wind which presaged the arrival of the storm, the echo of your disembodied voice: it had all been too visceral to simply dismiss.

A university campus came into view on the right side of the road. At the Hyakumanben crossing the taxi turned right, and eventually eased to a stop in front of an old-fashioned looking coffee shop with wide windows looking out on Imadegawa Street, where a small sign said Shinshindō.

I got out and went inside, taking a seat by the window in the pallid sunlight. It was darker in the café the further back you went; long tables of oak steeped in the aroma of coffee.

I ordered a coffee and then opened my journal.

I’m going to see the Witch of the Full Moon, was what Chiyo had said as she left Hōrendō. Maybe it wasn’t a person she spoke of, but that painting. That would mean that she was familiar with Maki Nobuo, who had bequeathed to his granddaughter that mysterious library―and that would mean that it was all connected.

Everything is connected to The Tropics. We exist within its pages.

Snow was flurrying down outside the window. After spending some time writing down notes I looked up again and saw a man coming through the door, brushing snow from his grey coat. His white-streaked hair was meticulously trimmed, and he wore expensive-looking glasses that glinted white in the light. Taking a business-like survey of the interior, he marched directly up to me and said, “Mr. Ikeuchi, I presume?”

I stood up. “You must be Mr. Imanishi.”

“Precisely. Thank you for coming,” he said. He took off his coat and sat down across from me, and ordered a coffee in the same unhurried voice.

“I knew it was you instantly,” he said with a grin. “You match Chiyo’s description to a T.”

“You know about me?”

“She said that you would most likely be coming after her,” he said. “Though I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting you to be here so soon.”

◯

Mr. Imanishi told me a little about himself. He had lived in Kyoto all his life; worked at a local firm for decades, was now retired and helped out at a company run by a friend. He’d known Chiyo since college, still kept in touch after graduating.

He passed his hand over his brow and said, “Now, where to begin.”

“Do you know where Chiyo is now?”

“Afraid not,” he shook his head. “That’s why I got your number when I heard about you at Hōrendō. You heard about what Chiyo did there, didn’t you? Mighty strange, how Chiyo was acting that day.”

“And you haven’t heard from her since.”

“That’s right. Even called her house in Tokyo: no dice.”

He sighed. “Couldn’t believe it when I got a message from her, make it four days ago now, that she was in Kyoto. Hadn’t seen her in years, and this ain’t the usual time to go visiting graves.”

He ran his hand over the gleaming table.

“I met her here, in this café.”

“Did you?”

“She was already sitting here waiting for me when I got here.”

After spending some time catching up with Imanishi, Chiyo began to talk about a strange adventure novel set on a tropical island. She attended a book club in Yūrakuchō dedicated to this book, and the author? Sayama Shōichi.

“I couldn’t believe what she was telling me. Sayama, that Sayama, writing a book? Not to mention the part about it disappearing before you finished reading it. Sounded just like magic. I have to admit, I thought she’d gone a little cuckoo.”

“But The Tropics does exist.”

“That’s why I asked about it, when I called you last night. So now I know that it wasn’t just all in her head.”

I felt oddly comforted by his levelheaded reasoning.

“And you knew Sayama Shōichi?”

“Course I did. He was one of my best friends.” Mr. Imanishi’s gaze travelled around the café. “As a matter of fact, this was where I first met him, during college. I was in a book club at the time, a funny gathering called the Silent Reading Club.”

He explained that the books members brought in to discuss all contained some sort of mystery; what constituted a mystery was left to the members’ interpretation, as long as they could explain it. It had been founded by a graduate student in literature, and while members came and went, about five or six students showed up to the meeting each month.

“I met Sayama Shōichi at one of those meetings. He was a literature grad student too, so I guess the founder of the club must have dragged him into it. We hit it off instantly; we’d meet up and talk all the time. He had a weird charisma. He’d graduated from another university and come here to study literature for grad school. Apparently he was studying classical Arabic, too, that was how he met Chiyo…but I think you already know about that?”

I nodded. “Yes, her father hired him to translate a manuscript, I believe.”

“Yep, that was Eizo. He was a colourful character himself.”

“Did you know that he was doing that work?”

“That was just one of his side jobs. He had plenty others besides to keep himself busy. Me on the other hand, my parents lived in Shirakawa, so I got to take things easy. After my oldest brother moved out we had a spare room, so I offered it to him for free. I don’t know where he got it from, but he showed up with a little kei truck with all his stuff. Later on he told me he didn’t have a license, if you can believe it. ‘I got some practice out in the countryside,’ that’s what he said. Yeah, he could really surprise you, Sayama could.”

Mr. Imanishi paused and took a sip of his coffee, his eyes clouding over.

“He lived in our house for six months, but it felt like a lot longer. Whenever I reminisce about my college days, those six months are the first thing that come to mind, just like they happened yesterday.”

“What was Sayama like?”

“That’s a complicated question.” For a moment Mr. Imanishi gazed off into the clouds. “He didn’t like to keep anything around that wasn’t related to his research. He’d sell it all off. So he’d come around to my room a lot to borrow books. I’ve always been a bookworm, ever since I was a kid, so I had all sorts of books on my shelves, from children’s lit to books on sociology. Plenty of novels, too. I’m not much for modern literature, so the collection was pretty garden-variety. Robinson Crusoe, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Treasure Island, that sort of thing. But Sayama loved it, he was always complimenting my collection. He used to jokingly call me the Librarian. We used to stay up all night debating about books, or smoking cigarettes and listening to records. It was a strange time. I don’t think I’ll ever experience anything like it again.”

Here he abruptly ended his tale, gazing at the snow which was falling outside the window.

◯

“Cold day today, but it is Setsubun after all,” muttered Imanishi. “Why did Chiyo disappear? Makes me shiver just thinking about it. And Sayama, it just so happens, also disappeared on the night of the Setsubun festival.”

“There must be a connection,” I suggested.

“Don’t see it myself,” Imanishi replied, his eyebrows raised. “Sayama vanished decades ago.”

“Why did Sayama vanish, in the first place?”

“I know as much as you.”

“It appears that he was hiding some kind of secret.”

“Everyone’s got secrets, ‘specially a guy like Sayama,” Imanishi countered. “No matter how well you thought you knew him, there was a part of him that he never let a soul into. He’d never ask for advice, or knock on your door to grumble to a sympathetic ear. He kept his own counsel, made up his own mind. After he disappeared I must have talked to Chiyo a thousand times about what must have happened to him, and I still haven’t got a clue. I don’t think either of us ever really knew what was going through his mind. It’s a cold way to treat people, sure, but in a way I think it was his way of being kind.”

“Did you know that he was writing a novel?” I asked.

His eyes narrowed as he gathered his thoughts. “He always had a notebook with him, see. When he disappeared I went through the things he left behind in his room and found a whole pile of worn notebooks where he’d copied down things from books he’d read, or just kept regular old diary entries. But mixed in all that I found some mysterious passages that he’d written down, all of them left unfinished. He’d begin to describe a scene, and abruptly abandon it halfway through. I could never understand why he’d write anything like that. I take it you understand those things to be the beginnings of The Tropics?”

“Do you remember any of those fragments?”

“You’re pulling my leg,” he chortled. “That was over thirty years ago!”

“What happened to his notes?”

“Must have mailed them back to his hometown. Don’t know anything beyond that.” He sighed, then looked me square in the eye. “I just can’t stop wondering. You came to Kyoto to find Chiyo. You’re also looking for information about someone who went missing decades ago. And it’s all got to do with The Tropics, doesn’t it? Why go to all this effort?”

“It feels as though the more I learn about The Tropics, the deeper the mystery becomes. How to put it…it’s as if my investigation into The Tropics is part of The Tropics itself.”

“You sound like a man possessed.”

“And I would certainly not blame you for thinking so.”

“What is The Tropics, anyhow? I got the gist of it from Chiyo, but if you don’t mind I’d like to hear what your connection is.”

I explained how I had stumbled across the book, striving for brevity in my account, and omitting certain details such as the wild theories we discussed among the Scholars. Naturally I did not mention my bizarre daydream at the museum. Even so, there was much to tell, and quite a long time elapsed before I was done with my tale.

Throughout it Mr. Imanishi listened quietly, though there was one moment where he seemed shaken, and that was when I mentioned the Witch of the Full Moon. But he soon regained his composure, and for the remainder of my recollection his expression was perfectly immobile.

Once I was finished he closed his eyes and exhaled, “Well, isn’t that something.”

“What did you make of it?”

“I think it’s fantastic. But you’re letting your imagination run a little too wild, in my opinion. Particularly with everything that’s happened since you got to Kyoto. How can you be sure that girl you met in the bar is really related to The Tropics, or the painting for that matter?”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it. Doesn’t it seem a little too convenient, all these clues popping up wherever you go? Sure seems that way to me. In my objective opinion, you’re not discovering these clues: you’re creating them out of thin air.”

“But I can assure you, I’ve told you only the truth.”

“I’m not saying you’re lying to me. I’m sure they exist, this woman at the bar and the painting in the museum. But it’s you that’s inventing these connections to The Tropics. If you hadn’t come across them, why, I’m confident that you would have stumbled upon something else that just so happened to be connected to that book. The world is filled with an infinite number of realities, and you can pick and choose whichever one you like. You get what I mean? You believe that you’re investigating the mysteries of The Tropics, but in reality you’re stringing together whatever facts you like and creating a brand new mystery of your own. As long as you’re operating under that fantasy, you’ll never solve the mystery.”

“You mean to say that I’m dreaming it all up?”

That’s impossible, I told myself.

Mr. Imanishi continued in a placating tone, “People see the world through the lens of their own interpretation. If anything ever happens to that lens, if it’s warped or damaged, the world starts to look real funny. Maybe you start to dream up conspiracy theories, or twisted fantasies―whatever it is, that is reality to that person. You look at the world through the twisted lens of The Tropics. I’d guess the same thing’s happened to Chiyo.”

I thought about the daydream I’d had at the museum. Was that really proof that I was a prisoner to my own delusions? It certainly did not seem like something that could happen in real life―and yet, I was not prepared to write everything off as flights of fancy, as Mr. Imanishi claimed it was.

As I racked my brains, struggling to make heads or tails of the intractable situation, one thing niggled at me: that momentary flicker I had seen in Mr. Imanishi’s otherwise staid expression.

“The Witch of the Full Moon,” I murmured, and was rewarded with a raised eyebrow. “Have you heard that term before?”

“What makes you think that?”

Now I was convinced he was hiding something.

“Have you?” I pressed him.

“It’s…it’s nothing. Doesn’t mean anything at all.”

“By all means, I would be most interested in hearing your story.”

“All it’s going to do is muddle things up even more. You’ll be convinced it’s another connection to The Tropics, I know you will. And it hasn’t got anything to do with Sayama Shōichi, anyhow.”

I looked at him wordlessly.

He sighed and ordered a refill for his coffee.

“All right, all right. If it’ll make you happy…”

And he began to tell his tale.

◯

This happened, oh, about a week before Sayama Shōichi disappeared.

Not that I want to repeat myself, but what I experienced on that day had nothing to do with Sayama, nor The Tropics. It’s about me, Chiyo, and her father, Nagase Eizō. I just want to emphasize that one more time.

I was visiting Chiyo’s home, near the end of January. I’d gotten to know her the previous year, late in the autumn. She was visiting Sayama, who called me over to his room and introduced her as the daughter of his employer. He’d told her about me, even the part where he’d nicknamed me the Librarian.

Over the course of many conversations at Sayama’s place we got to know each other pretty well, and just after the new year I invited her to the Silent Reading Club. I’ve already told you about the club: all the members had to bring a book to discuss. She invited me over that day because she wanted my advice on what to bring.

Her house was on the eastern plateau of Mt. Yoshida. A modern thing, all concrete, more like a research lab than a residence. I guess that was how Eizō liked it. You won’t find it there now, it’s all been redeveloped, but back then it really stood out.

She was alone in the house when I got there; her parents were out, which made me feel a little nervous. We talked for the better part of an hour. She’d already picked out a few books, and I’d brought a few of my own. You really are the Librarian, she said to me. Her room was on the second floor facing east, with a good view over Kaguraoka and Mt. Daimonji in the distance. We talked about getting together there to watch the Okuribi bonfires in August. We didn’t, of course, given that Sayama disappeared the week after during Setsubun.

“Want to take a peek at my dad’s study?” she asked during the conversation. She said there were all kinds of books in there.

I”d met Eizō only once. Sayama had spent New Year’s at my place instead of going home, and we went to Chiyo’s place together to deliver New Year’s greetings. Her parents brought out a little sake for us. I remember his striking eyes, his glorious silver locks, and thinking that he seemed more like a scholar, or an artist, than a businessman. Sayama had mentioned that he was a voracious reader.

“He won’t mind?” I asked.

“It’ll be fine, I sneak in there all the time,” Chiyo assured me as she stood up. I was a little unsure about the whole thing, but in the end my curiosity won out.

Eizō’s study was on the west end of the second floor, at the end of a gloomy corridor shaded in an almost deep-sea gloom. I looked to my right when I walked through the door and saw that bookshelves covered three of the walls. The black spines melted into the darkness, though the gold lettering glinted dully. At the far end of the room was an antique writing desk, and just outside the window loomed the woods of Mt. Yoshida.

The part of the room just past the door looked like some kind of reception area, with a leather sofa and a glass table on top of a luxurious Persian rug, and a glass display case containing antique statuettes and pottery.

The bookshelves contained more than just scientific books related to Eizō’s work. There were rows upon rows containing works of literature, history, philosophy. After delivering a lengthy monologue on the contents of those shelves, Chiyo picked up a translation of the Thousand and One Nights, telling me about how she used to sneak in here to read it when she was a little girl. I’d heard of it, obviously, but I’d never thought about reading it myself.

“Maybe I’ll bring this to the book club,” she said, musing about how the very compilation of the Nights was a mystery in and of itself. “I think my dad’s got an original Arabic manuscript.”

“The one that Sayama’s been translating?”

“It’s probably in the annex.” She pointed to the opposite side of the room.

There on the south side of the room was a kind of mezzanine which I’d been wondering about from the moment I stepped inside. It was around two tatami in size, with a ladder leading up to it; the space below appeared to be used for storage.

After the house was built, Chiyo told me, Eizō had had a carpenter construct this “room within a room.” At the top of the ladder was a little green door, almost lilliputian in size. After pondering for a moment, Chiyo suddenly walked across the room to the ladder and stood there gazing up at the door.

“I don’t think you should,” I warned her, coming up beside her.

“It’ll just be a little peek,” she retorted, and up the ladder she went.

I watched her with a creeping feeling of unease. Guilt, maybe, but there was something else that I found hard to put into words. See, the longer I looked at the room, the stronger I got this feeling that there was something real funny about it. Something about the way it was suspended in midair, and that little green door, that was out of place with the rest of the study. This room should not be—that thought just wouldn’t leave my mind.

When Chiyo opened the door I saw an unending blackness. It was unnerving, but Chiyo clambered through and flipped a switch, and immediately a lightbulb flared on. Her head popped into the doorway and she beckoned me to come up. Feeling silly for having been frightened I followed her up the ladder.

When I got to the top I saw her sitting seiza inside the room, as if she were its otherworldly inhabitant. There wasn’t enough space for me to fit in there with her, so I stood there on a ladder rung and leaned inside. There were a few bookshelves, crammed haphazardly with books and journals and other aged trinkets: that was all.

“This must be the manuscript,” Chiyo said, holding up a book wrapped in white paper. She removed the wrapping to reveal the cover, which was decorated with geometric patterns. It was clearly very old, and looked so frail that it might crumble into dust beneath your fingers if you weren’t careful. Chiyo turned the time-yellowed leaves, revealing page after page of ample crimson frames filled edge to edge with Arabic script.

“Sayama can read this?” I muttered in wonder.

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

Chiyo placed the book back in its wrapping and returned it to the shelf.

It really was a weird little room. I was pondering why Eizō might have constructed it when I saw something on the same bookshelf as the Thousand and One Nights.

It was a wooden card box, small enough to fit on your palm. Not too many people use those things nowadays; most people your age have probably never seen one in their lives. You store cards with information written on ‘em, makes it easy to sort and organize info, more convenient than you can do with a notebook. Back in those days I used one to store notes on books I’d read, which is probably why I noticed it. I’ll tell you this for sure, I wasn’t brave enough then to go and read Eizō’s private memos.

And yet I found myself stretching out my hand for it.

I must’ve relived that moment a hundred times in my head, but I still don’t know why I did that. It feels like something was possessing me. When my fingers touched the lid I felt this sort of disgust. I froze up, and Chiyo came over and put her hand on my arm. Not pushing or pulling, just laying it there. I was so aware of her warmth, and the sound of her breathing.

“I don’t know if I should,” I said.

“Yes. Yes, open it,” she urged me on.

That was when we heard the study door creak open.

I turned around, and there was Eizō in the study, standing there with a smile on his lips. Chiyo and I scrambled down the ladder, as fast as a couple of kids caught by their teacher getting up to no good. Eizō walked briskly through the study, went up the ladder and looked around, then turned off the light and shut the door. Chiyo and I stood by the sofa, not daring to move an inch. I wished a hole would open and swallow me up.

Eizō came down the ladder and looked very strangely at us, then told us to take a seat on the sofa. I apologized for trespassing into his study.

“It was my fault,” Chiyo said remorsefully.

But Eizō didn’t scold us. He only said, “Find anything interesting up there?” I thought about the cards. Chiyo was evidently thinking about the same thing, because she leaned forward and asked, “Dad, what’s in the card box?”

“Did you look inside?”

“No.”

“Good. In any case it’d be no use to you two.”

“But what is it?”

Eizō said nothing and instead narrowed his eyes. It was like he was looking through us, straight on to the horizon far away. It was astounding. The air felt stretched taut in that room; it was like something was in there with us, which only Eizō could see and no one else. I half-expected the walls to collapse and reveal an infinite horizon beyond.

At long last Eizō said, as though waking from a dream, “I’m going to tell you an old story.”

“What kind of story?”

“You know that I spent some time in Manchuria.”

“Yes,” Chiyo nodded.

“It’ll be almost forty years ago now,” murmured Eizō, and lighting a cigarette he began this tale.