Chapter 2―The Scholars (Part 3)

On Monday afternoon Shiraishi left for Myōgadani. She emerged from the station onto Kasuga Avenue, where tall buildings presided over streams of cars and pedestrians. Though it wasn’t far from her home in Koishikawa, she’d never been to the area before. So blue was the sky, so warm the day that it hardly seemed possible that it had snowed yesterday.

Chiyo had instructed her to call at 2. Shiraishi pulled out a conductor’s pocketwatch, a gift from her uncle, which read 1:45. She decided to wait until it was precisely 2 o’clock. She stretched, smoothed out the wrinkles from her clothing, inspected her shoes for scuffs. It had been a long time since she had paid a social call to someone’s home, and on top of that she hardly knew Chiyo at all. A lead weight had settled in her stomach, like she was about to go have an interview.

You’re so naïve, letting Ikeuchi fast-talk you into this, she thought to herself. But oh, well.

She stood by the entrance of the station, scowling at the watch face. At 2 on the dot she made the call, and almost immediately Chiyo answered, as if she had been waiting by the phone.

“Punctual as clockwork, Miss Shiraishi.”

“I’m at Myōgadani Station.”

“Marvelous. I do despise people who are too late or too early.”

“Why thank you. So, what do I do now?”

“Start walking east down the road in front of the station. You’ll reach a long slope lined by trees. Harimazaka is its name. Call me again once you’ve arrived.”

No sooner had Chiyo finished pouring out those words than the line went dead. Dutifully Shiraishi trundled off down the street as she had been told. She wondered where Ikeuchi was right now. Was he really standing by near her? For a moment she considered calling him, but quickly decided against it.

Harimazaka was a lovely broad avenue; the lane divider was paved into a broad promenade lined with bare cherry trees. An old man with a cane sat on a bench sunning himself, while two mothers pushing prams stood and chatted: a quiet, sleepy, peaceful weekday afternoon.

Looking down the slope, Shiraishi pulled out her phone again.

“I’m at Harimazaka.”

“Excellent. Come down and look for a block of apartments on the left. You’ll know it by the café on the first floor. Be a dear and call me when you’re in the lobby.”

“Can you just tell me the apartment number? I’m getting a little tired of making all these phone calls.”

“I like to know when my visitors are arriving.”

Exasperatedly Shiraishi made her way down the slope and found an apartment building, which wouldn’t have looked out of place occupying a Paris street corner, complete with first-floor café. It was quite an imposing structure, the top of the building zigzagging downward along with the slope like an enormous staircase. Little details gave the facade a sense of grace and maturity; the time-worn walls were painted an egg yolk yellow, and the metal grating along the sides of the balconies was worked into intricate curves, almost like artwork.

“Well, it looks like the kind of place that Chiyo would live,” said Shiraishi, and went in. Inside the frigid lobby she called Chiyo for a third time.

“I’m in the lobby.”

“Welcome. Take the elevator to the tenth floor, suite 1015. Don’t even knock, just come in and go straight to the end of the hall.”

What a tiresome process. Did Chiyo go through this elaborate song and dance with all of her visitors?

“It’s like some kind of weird ritual,” Shiraishi muttered to herself as she rode the elevator up ten stories. The doors opened up to a bland hallway, whose smooth green flooring and bumpy white walls reminded her of an elementary school corridor. Each side of the hall was lined with heavy-looking grey doors.

Shiraishi opened up the door of suite 1015.

“Hello? Chiyo?”

Inside she found herself in yet another hallway. Not a speck of dust could be found on the wooden floor, and the doors on both sides of the hall were shut. Straight to the end of the hall, Chiyo had said, and so Shiraishi went through to the room at the end of the hall.

It was a very spacious chamber with a wooden floor. The opposing wall was taken up entirely by a glass door, and through it she could see a wide balcony, and potted plants, and the blue sky. The room itself was filled with a variety of sofas and chairs of all shapes and colours and sizes, like fruit scattered on the ground. Some of them would not have looked out of place covered in dust in a private investigator’s office, while others looked as though they had been ripped out of a futuristic space station. Judging from the fact that they were all oriented in completely different directions it was evident that they were not meant for taking in the view or watching television―in fact, apart from the seating there was no other furniture in the room.

“I’ve seen this somewhere before…”

It was almost identical to a scene near the beginning of The Tropics. After washing up on the beach, the protagonist is taken by Sayama Shōichi through the jungle to the Observatory, a mysterious building constructed by the Scholars who dispatched Sayama. And Shiraishi seemed to recall that its lobby was described as having a collection of sofas and chairs very much like the one she saw now.

She gingerly picked her way through the seating. What could Chiyo possibly need all of this for? Could she really have this many visitors? And if she did, how busy she must keep herself, putting them all through the same charade which she had just endured. As she approached the glass door she saw on the other side a small circular table. Atop it was a white cup of coffee (steam still rising from it, like in the tale of the Mary Celeste), and a book which looked very familiar: The Tropics.

“Welcome, Miss Shiraishi,” said a voice, jarring Shiraishi from her stupor. “Thank you for making the journey.”

She turned around to find Chiyo seated on a deep crimson sofa, whose high back had prevented Shiraishi from seeing her on the way in. She was in plush loungewear, and still looked as though she had been drowsing. In her hands was a thick hardcover book.

“I was reading the Thousand and One Nights to pass the time while I waited for you,” she said. “Please, sit anywhere you like.”

“What’s with all the chairs?”

“For each person, the proper chair,” Chiyo said with a smile. “That’s from The Tropics, you know.”

Shiraishi warily lowered herself into a nearby chair. She wasn’t sure why she had chosen it. It was a round little stool with a bright orange fabric seat. She didn’t feel much like sinking down into a luxurious couch.

“Your choice becomes you,” remarked Chiyo with evident pleasure. “Apropos of nothing, have you ever read the Thousand and One Nights?”

“No, not yet.”

“I hope that you will, one day.”

Chiyo began to flip through the book on her lap, continuing to speak as she did.

“When I was a little girl growing up in Kyoto I would often sneak into my father’s study. The window faced into the forests of Mt. Yoshida, so that it felt like living in a hut in the woods. In springtime the room was always bathed in a pale green glow. There was a copy of the Thousand and One Nights in that room, which I was forbidden to read, but that only made me even more determined to get my hands on it. When my father was out I’d go in there and flip through it. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest; it was mysterious, and frightening, almost titillating. All these decades later I can still remember how it felt kneeling on that damp Persian rug―so that I could quickly get out of the study, you see. Time to put it away, I would think to myself, but the stories would keep on going. One story beginning in the midst of another. Sometimes I would tear myself away from the book and not recognize where I was.”

Shiraishi listened to her tale in mute fascination.

“I used to be convinced that Scheherazade was a real person. That she had made up all of the stories in that book.”

What was this coming from? Shiraishi had come there to speak with Chiyo about The Tropics, which was sitting on the table on the balcony. Yet Chiyo hadn’t said a word about it.

“Chiyo means ‘thousand nights’; it comes from the Thousand and One Nights. My father was drafted right out of college and sent to Manchuria, where he stayed until the end of the war. There was a man in his town who ran a bookstore out of a little one-room apartment, and that was where he first came across the Nights. He lost his wife and son during the war, and there was no telling when he’d be able to come back to Japan, so he spent his nights engrossed in that book. A most unforgettable time for him, I’m sure.”

Shiraishi fidgeted. “Can we get to the main topic now?”

“But my dear, this is the main topic.”

“It is?”

“Everything is connected to The Tropics,” said Chiyo, with an enigmatic smile.

◯

Chiyo went out to the balcony and came back with The Tropics in hand. The sun shone through the door down on her as she opened the book.

“Speak not of that which concerneth thee not…” she began.

“Lest thou heareth that which pleaseth thee not,” finished Shiraishi. She remembered the opening line well.

Chiyo continued reading.

“I awoke in darkness, with the sound of waves lapping on the shore. At first I did not comprehend the situation, for I was convinced that I was dreaming, and so I only lay there listening to the murmuring of the waves.

“How long I lay there I do not know. But all at once it all came flooding in: the grit of the sand pressing against my cheek, and the aching all over my cold wet body, and the smell of the driving salty wind. It was like a camera shutter coming into focus, like the world had just been birthed into existence―”

Here Chiyo shut the book.

“Would you like to take a turn?”

Hesitantly Shiraishi reached out a hand. But no sooner had she taken the book than she felt that something was amiss. Yes, the cover was as she remembered, with its patterns of red and blue, and the author’s name and title in brutalist font―the pinnacle of cover design it was not. And yet for a book that had been published over thirty years ago it felt too shiny, too new, as if it had just come out of the press. With a sinking feeling she opened the book to find that every page in it was blank.

“Is this some kind of prank? It’s fake!”

Chiyo giggled.

“Oh, do forgive me. But since I couldn’t find the real thing, why, I thought I’d create one myself, and fill these blank pages with my own version of The Tropics. Now, I suspect that Nakatsugawa is concocting even more elaborate schemes than this. But I believe that what I recited to you just a moment ago is quite close to the real thing. All of the Scholars remember it the same way, you see.

“A gift, for you,” she concluded, pointing at the book.

“…Gee, thanks.”

“You never know when something might come in handy.” Now Chiyo’s expression turned serious. “I haven’t invited you here for my own amusement. I would like your help in my own personal Salvage.”

“Why me?”

“You mentioned the Desert Palace at the meeting, did you not?”

“Sure.”

“I remember it as well.”

Shiraishi never would have suspected it, the way Chiyo had been feigning that blank expression at the time.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“So that it would become not only my own little secret, but yours. I doubt any of the others realize just how significant that place is. It lies beyond the Doldrums: I trust you understand what that means?”

“It means that there’s a way out of the Doldrums.”

“We won’t know for certain until we try. We must combine my recollection with yours, and reconstruct that place as best we can. That is why I invited you.”

Shiraishi reached into her bag to retrieve her notebook, but Chiyo stopped her.

“Close your eyes. Paint it in your mind.”

She did, and a world swam into view: the world of The Tropics.

Shiraishi found herself standing on a desolate wasteland. The wilderness was surrounded by massive dunes of sand, and the sky was a blue so dazzling it hurt to look at.

“It’s a little bit like standing on the surface of another planet,” Chiyo commented beside her. Shiraishi remembered reading those words. Together they continued to collect memory fragments and sketch out that mysterious wasteland in their minds. With Chiyo’s contributions the landscape became tangible, revealing an astonishing number of details.

“So this is Salvage,” Shiraishi murmured.

“Feels like we’re the creators, doesn’t it?”

Together they set to work on the Desert Palace, erecting alabaster doors which opened up to a garden beyond which Persian domes and minarets rose into the sky. Shiraishi almost expected to spot a magic carpet soaring through the air.

“The Thousand and One Nights,” announced Chiyo. “You see? Everything is connected to The Tropics.”

“I knew a few of the stories. There’s Aladdin, and Ali Baba, and Sindbad.”

“Those were not originally from the Nights, or so I hear. Ask Nakatsugawa. He’s quite well acquainted with the subject.”

“I’m really not a fan of his.”

“My dear, no one is.”

Shiraishi walked through the white doors and into the garden of the palace. Perhaps once there had been a fountain, and trees whose boughs hung heavy with fruit, and canals flowing with silvery water. But now all was choked by sand, and an air of desolation lay upon the ruin. Surely no one could live here.

Yet Chiyo was adamant that Sayama and the protagonist had come here to meet someone―seeking their aid, she said. And that person held the key to escaping the Doldrums.

At the entrance to the palace Shiraishi peered within.

“Hello?” she called.

She was answered by only darkness and silence.

Shiraishi screwed up her face and tried as hard as she could to remember what had happened at the palace. How had the protagonist come there, and where had he gone afterward? She turned around. Beyond the garden and that pearly gate the wasteland stretched far away, and thunder clouds gathered over the distant sand dunes.

What if this is actually an island? Shiraishi wondered. Even as she gazed at them the clouds writhed and wriggled like a living thing, and lightning raced along the black canyons. A storm was coming.

“Keep your mind off the storm,” Chiyo instructed her. “That’s what stymies us each time. Instead, try to remember: who is it that lives in this palace?”

But the clouds billowed out and covered the blue sky, and giant raindrops began to pelt down upon the roof of the palace, threatening to engulf the world of Shiraishi’s imagination. Come on, forget about the storm, she said to herself, and she forced her mind’s eye away from the storm and into the palace. Into the great hall, and the gloomy corridors, and all manner of places untouched by light.

And she was rewarded by a sudden revelation.

“The Witch of the Full Moon!” she gasped, opening her eyes. “She’s the one that lives in the Desert Palace!”

Instantly the two were swept out of that kingdom of dreams and back to the real world.

For a little while Chiyo sat there blankly, deaf to what Shiraishi was saying. She stared out the balcony door at the sky, as though there were something strange there that she alone could see.

“The Witch of the Full Moon,” she chuckled. “Thank you. Let us bring this to a close.”

“Huh? But we’re just getting started,” Shiraishi said bewilderedly. “I don’t understand.”

Yes, she had remembered something new, but she had no idea who the Witch of the Full Moon was, or what role she served in the story, or what the purpose of the Desert Palace was. But her pleas to continue fell on deaf ears.

“I’m afraid I cannot tell you,” Chiyo said with an almost sorrowful smile. “Please tell the rest of the Scholars this: as of today the group is disbanded. But I’ve no doubt that you will one day realize the truth. The book which you all believe you have read is a fake.”

“What do you mean, a sham?”

“I, and I alone, possess the real version of The Tropics.”

A few minutes later Shiraishi found herself in front of the apartment building, blinking stupidly in the afternoon light which fell gently on the broad slope of Harimazaka. It felt like she had walked in that door only a moment ago. Yet something had changed.

An emptiness engulfed her: the emptiness that one feels when a story has ended.

◯

At Myōgadani Station she ran into Ikeuchi.

“You really were keeping a lookout.”

“I’m a man of my word,” he said. “How did it go?”

“To be completely honest, my head’s spinning.”

They stopped at a nearby café. Ikeuchi sucked in his breath sharply when she put the fake version of The Tropics on the table. Seeing him stare at it agape sent a little thrill through Shiraishi, though at the same time she felt a little guilty, having been deceived in much the same way herself.

“It’s fake,” she quickly assured him, thumbing through its blank pages. “Chiyo played the same trick on me.”

She told him the whole tale of her interview with Chiyo: the many phone calls on her way to the apartment building on Harimazaka; the strange room with the scattered chairs and sofas; the fake copy of The Tropics on the balcony; Chiyo’s childhood reminiscences; the Salvage of the Desert Palace; and the Witch of the Full Moon. Though it had all occurred only a few minutes ago none of it felt real; it was like she was speaking of the distant past. Ikeuchi’s pen never stopped scribbling notes the entire time she was speaking.

“Rather an unexpected turn of events,” he frowned.

Quite suddenly Shiraishi realized that she was enjoying this. With the Scholars she had always been on the outside looking in, but now the tables had turned. After what she had learned with Chiyo they would have no choice but to listen to what she had to say, a fact with which she took a petty satisfaction.

Seeing the question in Ikeuchi’s eyes she added, “Sorry, it’s all just so exciting.”

“Yes, it is all so fascinating. Mysteries as far as the eye can see.”

Picking up the ersatz The Tropics, Ikeuichi sank into thought.

“It’s what Chiyo said at the end which puzzles me.”

The book which you all believe you have read is a sham. I, and I alone, possess the real version of The Tropics.

“Maybe it was a figure of speech,” suggested Shiraishi. “Ultimately it’s up to each reader to come up with their own interpretation of a novel. Maybe she meant that she’s the only one who really understands The Tropics.”

“There is another possibility.”

“What’s that?”

“That she is the only one who has read the real version of The Tropics, and that we have all read fakes. Quite an interesting theory, wouldn’t you say?”

Flipping to a blank page in the book, Ikeuchi drew a straight line which he split into five branches. At the tip of each branch he wrote their names: Chiyo, Shiraishi, Nakatsugawa, Shinjō, Ikeuchi. Shiraishi saw what he meant: each of the Scholars had read a different version of the book, with different twists and turns.

“Heh, it’s a super interesting idea.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Though it is pretty far-fetched.”

“But it would explain the mystery of the Doldrums. If we have all read different versions of The Tropics, it stands to reason that our recollections all conflict. We cannot resolve them into a single narrative because they all come from completely different stories.”

“But it’s not as if The Tropics was some handwritten manuscript. It was published and everything.”

“And yet even Nakatsugawa has failed to get his hands on a copy. It would appear that it is quite a rare publication with hardly any copies in circulation. Perhaps this was the design of the author: each copy is different from all the rest, the only one of its kind in the world.”

“But what would be the point?”

Ikeuchi appeared to be stymied for a response.

“It’d be an interesting exercise,” Shiraishi continued. “But The Tropics was published in the eighties, right? It’d take more money, more time, than it would today. You’d have to prepare separate manuscripts, print and bind each book one at a time. Why would Sayama Shōichi go to all that trouble?”

“Yes, it does seem rather fantastic.”

“I really think it’s fascinating. It’s just…”

Ikeuchi’s hypothesis was quite interesting, but if Shiraishi was having trouble swallowing it, there was no chance that Nakatsugawa or Shinjō would buy it.

“What do you think we should do at this weekend’s meeting?” prompted Ikeuchi.

“We need to tell them about Chiyo’s departure.”

“We could also keep it from them.”

“I’m not much for keeping secrets.”

“That you are not,” said Ikeuchi with a smile.