Chapter 2―The Scholars (Part 4)

The Scholars assembled again that weekend at Café Merry.

Snow had been fluttering down from the sky since the morning, but down in that underground café nothing had changed.

As she sat down to the table with Nakatsugawa and Shinjō for the first time in a month, Shiraishi did her best not to laugh. What did they all have such serious looks on their faces for? Yes, the mystery of The Tropics ran deep, but in the end it was only a novel. They may have styled themselves the Scholars, but this was still just an ordinary book club.

“We must begin with an announcement,” said Ikeuchi.

The news of Chiyo’s departure took the other members like a bolt from the blue. Nakatsugawa and Shinjō listened stonefaced to the account of what had taken place at Chiyo’s apartment.

“I’ve called her several times since then,” finished Ikeuchi, “but I haven’t been able to get hold of her.”

“She’s pulled a fast one on us,” groaned Nakatsugawa.

“Meaning?”

“What do you think? She’s gotten her hands on a copy of The Tropics!”

Is it really that simple? Shiraishi thought. That was not the impression she had come away from that conversation with Chiyo with. Yet when confronted with the question of what Chiyo did mean, she had no answer.

“You’ve got more to say, haven’t you?” demanded Nakatsugawa, looking her way.

“What do you mean?”

“This group has been meeting for over a year, doing nothing but spinning in circles with nary a lead to show for it. Yet hardly had you joined when things began to move very rapidly.”

“Are you trying to say I’m hiding something?”

“Do you deny it?”

Shiraishi’s gaze traveled around the other members.

“Let’s all take a deep breath. The Tropics is just a book. It’s a very interesting book, and I’d like to enjoy its mystery. I’ve told you everything I know. If you’re going to accuse me of being a liar, then I won’t be coming back.”

After a brief pause, Ikeuchi spoke up.

“Shiraishi is right,” he said. “We’ve gone too far in our obsession with the book.”

“Quite right,” said Nakatsugawa, clearing his throat. “I am suitably chastised. Forgive my rudeness.”

Shiraishi let out a sigh of relief.

“Why don’t we take a deeper look at what Chiyo said?” she suggested.

Nakatsugawa unrolled the Salvage diagram. If Chiyo’s words were to be believed, the Desert Palace lay beyond the Doldrums. In the blank space of the latter half of the novel, Ikeuchi wrote down the words Desert Palace, adding an arrow labeled Witch of the Full Moon? But none of the other members had any recollection of the name.

“And is this Witch distinct from the Sorcerer?” wondered Nakatsugawa.

“I think so.”

“A sorcerer and a witch. It seems to me there must be some connection.”

The Sorcerer wielded the Magic of Creation to bring forth islands in his watery domain, which was where the protagonist had washed up. His presence was alluded to early on in the book, indicating that the two were headed to an eventual showdown: the final boss, if you will.

“I’m curious about Chiyo’s parting words,” said Ikeuchi.

The book which you all believe you have read is a sham.

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

With a little apprehension, Ikeuchi set out the theory he had proposed to Shiraishi: that each of them had read different versions of The Tropics. Surprisingly, Nakatsugawa seemed to be quite interested.

“A fascinating hypothesis. It may not be very plausible, but I like it all the same.”

“It would explain the mystery of the Doldrums.”

“Yes, the Doldrums. It is quite the conundrum.”

Nakatsugawa traced his finger along the solid black line on the map which followed the story. Around the halfway point it branched into a number of dotted lines which represented unverified plotlines, all of them dissolving into confused, fragmentary images: the Doldrums. It was like a mighty river separating into multiple streams which gradually were swallowed up in the desert.

“Why is it, I wonder, that no one has ever finished The Tropics?” Nakatsugawa mused.

“Didn’t you say that it was just coincidence?”

“That is the only explanation. We all read the book intending to finish it. We did not abandon it of our own accord; it was the book that disappeared. Books are physical objects: real, tangible things. How could anyone make a book that disappears halfway through reading it? That would take some kind of witchcraft.”

Suddenly Nakatsugawa paused, his mouth still open.

“What’s wrong?” asked Shiraishi.

“Well, I was just reminded of the Thousand and One Nights.”

And he told them this story:

“This is the Tale of the Wazir of King Yunan and Rayyan the Doctor: there once was a king named Yunan who suffered from a terrible disease. No medicine would avail him; many doctors tried and failed to cure him. One day there came to the city a doctor whose name was Rayyan, who was versed in Greek and Latin and Arabic and Syriac, and possessed all the knowledge of those lands. With his skillful arts Rayyan managed to cure the king, who fell on his knees in gratitude and showered Rayyan with all manner of noble gifts, and gave him a place of honour in his court. But not all were pleased with this turn of events: the king’s vizier, who had been his closest confidant.”

“That sounds pretty typical.”

“The vizier whispers into the king’s ear all manner of half-truths, and ere long he succeeds in convincing the king that Rayyan is secretly plotting treason. The king seizes Rayyan and orders his head to be cut off by the executioner. But the doctor pleads for the king to honour his final request: to present to the king a book from his personal collection―a jewel among jewels, a treasure among treasures, containing the secrets of everything under the sun.

Shiraishi and Ikeuchi exchanged glances.

“It reminds me a little of The Tropics.”

“Indeed,” said Nakatsugawa happily. “Rayyan claims that the king need only turn three pages and read what is written on the left-hand page, and his severed head will answer any question. Filled with curiosity, the king allows Rayyan to go to his house and settle his affairs. Several days later, Rayyan returns and presents the king with the book, warning him not to open it until his head has parted company with his shoulders. But the king heeds him not, and upon opening the cover finds that the pages are stuck together. He wets his fingers with his spittle to loosen the pages, yet finds that every page is blank. What can it mean? He continues to turn the pages, but suddenly he convulses violently and falls down dead.”

“I see,” murmured Ikeuchi, “the book must have been poisoned.”

“So the doctor did it?”

“That’s right. Quite a clever scheme.”

“So Nakatsugawa, are you saying that there’s some kind of poison imbued in The Tropics? For the record, I make a point of not slobbering all over my fingers when I read a book.”

“And I also handle my books with the utmost care. I was reminded of this story, nothing more.”

Shinjō raised a hand. “This has given me an idea.”

“And what would that be, detective?”

“It doesn’t have to be a physical poison. I’m a linguistics major; my interest lies not so much in the words themselves so much as the effect they have on people. I’ve done a good deal of research on hypnosis and autosuggestion, and that’s what gave me this idea: what if The Tropics is imbued with a kind of psycholinguistic poison?”

What on earth is a psycholinguistic poison? Shiraishi wondered.

“Let’s say we have a book: a novel, or a religious text, or a book on philosophy. Whenever you are engrossed in this book, you are subjected to its suggestions. Writing is a medium of words; it is a description of things, rather than the things themselves. And yet its suggestions alter the way we see the world. Suppose that one could embed a very special kind of suggestion into the text of a book, and that that suggestion could control whoever read it…”

“That’s quite a theory, young Sherlock!”

“I know how far-fetched it sounds,” said Shinjō, flaring his nostrils. “But so is Ikeuchi’s multiple books theory, and your poison book theory.”

“Yes, yes, I’m well aware.”

“Let’s say we all read The Tropics, and fell under the suggestion which Sayama Shōichi embedded in it. Then at some point in the book, we got rid of the book: because we were programmed to do so and forget what we had done.”

“And how do you explain the Doldrums?”

Ikeuchi’s question barely slowed Shinjō down.

“If the purpose of The Tropics was to program us, then the story isn’t important. The beginning is written to be interesting, as a trap to lure us into the linguistic poison which waits beyond. Once the reader has been pulled in, what does it matter whether the plot makes sense? The reason that our memories of the latter half disagree, that we struggle to find a coherent story, is that there is no story. The Doldrums is simply where the linguistic poison was hidden all along.”

It was quite an intriguing theory, and yet Shiraishi could not stop herself from asking: “Why would Sayama Shōichi write such a thing?”

Upon hearing this, Shinjō sank back into his sofa, looking full of doubt, and when he answered her, he mumbled as though he was talking to himself.

“It is strange when you think about it. The Tropics is just a novel. Why are we all so obsessed with it? It’s almost like some sort of curse.”

◯

Snow was drifting down from the overcast sky when Shiraishi emerged from Kasuga Station onto Hakusan Street. Into the side streets she went, turning right at Konnyaku Enma and walking through the shopping district until she reached Zenkōji-zaka. Here the quiet lay so heavy upon the streets that it made her lightheaded; her face felt as warm as though her entire head were swaddled in raw silk. Her breath puffed out white in front of her as she looked upward, where she noticed a woman standing about halfway up the slope in front of the Zenkōji gate.

She was holding a parasol, and wearing a luxurious black coat like a movie star. Is that Chiyo? thought Shiraishi, though she quickly dismissed the thought.

Her second-ever meeting of the Scholars had concluded with that round of wild theories. Yet she had not come away empty-handed: it was clear to her now how deeply enthralled each of the Scholars was with The Tropics.

It’s almost like some sort of curse.

She mused whether she herself was under that same spell. No matter how strongly she insisted that The Tropics was just a book, deep inside she had her doubts. Now she was being drawn into two stories―the one within The Tropics, and another which surrounded the book itself―and she could not but be convinced that there was some passageway between the two.

When she had reached Zenkōji herself she looked around, for the woman in the black coat was nowhere to be seen.

“Where did she go?”

The snow was falling harder now. She turned around and looked back along the white-coated slope only to spot the woman standing at the bottom, just as she had been standing in front of Zenkoji. How had she gotten there without Shiraishi having noticed her passing? Her face was hidden beneath the parasol. But something about her reminded Shiraishi of Chiyo. A chill ran down her spine.

“This isn’t right, whatever it is,” she told herself, and she turned right back around and hurried home.

“Why do you look so pale?” asked her mother, looking concerned.

“I think I just saw a ghost.”

“Where?”

“At a slope nearby.”

“Well. In the old days they used to say ghosts roam the streets at twilight.”

Now that she was safe and sound and out of the cold, listening to her mother’s familiar voice chatting away, she wondered why she had felt so uneasy. But even after eating dinner the chills wouldn’t leave her.

“You haven’t caught a cold, have you?” her mother frowned. Once the thermometer had answered in the positive, Shiraishi felt a little silly about letting a common cold get the best of her imagination, and after taking some herbal kakkantō extract she turned in early.

Once she had laid out her futon in her room her mind turned to the fake copy of The Tropics which Chiyo had given her. She’d meant to show it to the rest of the Scholars, but it had slipped her mind. Oh well, she shrugged, it’s a fake anyways.

She was getting the feeling that talking about The Tropics exclusively among the Scholars had thrown her a little off-kilter, and so she phoned a friend from college.

“Hey! It’s been forever. What’s up?”

The mere sound of her voice made Shiraishi feel better.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch you at work, did I?” she asked.

“Don’t sweat it. I’m always at work.”

Shiraishi recalled that her friend worked at a publisher in Jimbōchō: maybe she knew of The Tropics. She briefly sketched out the situation, but her friend had never heard of the strange book.

“Oh, too bad,” mumbled Shiraishi.

“It sounds interesting though. I’ll ask around,” her friend replied. “Let’s grab a meal some time.”

Shiraishi was still laid out when Monday rolled around. The doctor told her it wasn’t the flu, but her high fever persisted, and going to the bathroom was painful. She hadn’t been sick in a long time, and she tried to remember whether it was always this bad. Even reading her favourite manga didn’t help her feel any better.

During the three days of her fevered delirium she often dreamed about The Tropics, with bits and pieces from reality and fiction all jumbled up: tropical islands and meetings at Café Merry and that room with the chairs in Chiyo’s apartment. Lying there in her darkened room with the curtains drawn she often forgot where she was. And she dreamed of the Desert Palace, too: of wandering alone through those sand-buried halls, visions so realistic that she was convinced that they were actual memories.

“You’ve been working yourself too hard,” said her mother as she brought in a bowl of rice porridge.

“I don’t think I work hard enough for that.”

“But you must have tired yourself out somehow,” her mother reminded her gently. “Your father’s bought some strawberries.”

“He always buys strawberries when I’m sick.”

“That’s because strawberries help you look on the bright side.”

When the fever finally broke on Wednesday morning, Shiraishi felt refreshed, like her insides had been steam cleaned. She fumbled down the stairs and found that the little garden outside the veranda was covered in snow. On the television the news announcer was reporting that traffic in the city was paralyzed by heavy snowfall.

“I hope your dad’s alright,” murmured her mother.

After breakfast Shiraishi went back to her room.

“I’ll see if I can go back to work tomorrow,” she told herself. The next time she’d be able to see Ikeuchi was Friday; she could easily imagine him walking through the door of the hobby shop, black notebook in hand. She didn’t expect to get a call from him around noon.

“How are you feeling?”

“The fever’s gone down. I‘ll be back in the shop tomorrow.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

There was a brief pause, during which she could hear the sounds of the underground corridor in the background.

“Is everything okay, Ikeuchi?”

“I’ll be traveling to Kyoto on Friday night,” he said. “I won’t be able to visit the shop at noon that day. What do you say we have dinner together? There’s something I must tell you about The Tropics before I go.”

Shiraishi sucked in her breath.

“Has there been a new discovery?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m going to Kyoto.”

◯

Shiraishi left work a little early on Friday evening.

As she went through the Yūrakuchō railway underpass and headed towards the Tokyo Kotsu Kaikan building, she was surprised at how rapidly her heart was beating.

“Let’s meet in the skies over Yūrakuchō,” she mumbled to herself, recalling the old song¹. They had agreed to meet at the Ginza Sky Lounge on the 15th floor.

It was still early enough that only a handful of customers were scattered around the curving room. Tables covered in white linen stood along the windows, through which she could see the round dome of Tokyo Station and the Marunouchi skyline, sparkling beneath the setting sun. Occasionally she noticed through her feet the rumbling of the building as it rotated sedately. It felt a bit like being on a cruise liner.

Ikeuchi stood up when he saw her approaching.

“I must apologize for the poor timing of my invitation.”

“Don’t sweat it, I feel just fine,” she said, noting that he had brought a little suitcase. “I see that you’re heading out right after this.”

“Well spotted.”

After they had each ordered a course, Ikeuchi opened up his well-worn notebook to show her a postcard stuck inside.

“This arrived two days ago. Have a look.”

Shiraishi took the postcard and studied it. It appeared to be a typical tourist postcard, with a picture of the Sanmon Gate at Nanzenji. She turned it over to see Ikeuchi’s address written on the other side, and a single sentence:

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

“You’ll notice that whoever wrote this did not leave their name.”

“It has to be Chiyo.”

She must have gone to Kyoto after leaving the Scholars. No surprise there, since that was where she had been raised. What was more puzzling was why she had sent Ikeuchi this postcard.

I am right―all of you are wrong: was she taunting them? But what was the point? Chiyo didn’t seem the type to do something like this. Shiraishi was convinced that there must be some other purpose behind the postcard.

“She’s telling us to come to Kyoto.”

“I have reached the same conclusion.”

“But why? What for?”

“I suspect that Kyoto holds the secret to The Tropics,” said Ikeuchi with a smile. “That’s one of the cards up my sleeve.”

“That’s right, you still haven’t told me.”

“Only because I promised Chiyo. But now she’s gone, and you have always maintained that you do not keep secrets. It would be unworthy of me to keep you in the dark now.”

“Well, that’s going a little far, but…”

“Sayama Shōichi, the man who wrote The Tropics, lived in Kyoto. He was still a college student at the time. But in February of 1982 he disappeared.”

“How do you know this?”

“Chiyo knew him before,” Ikeuchi admitted. “And now you know the secret I’ve been keeping.”

Shiraishi exhaled and looked out the window. From her perch amidst the glittering Marunouchi skyline she could see the forest which ensconced the imperial palace; though night was creeping over the sky, the horizon was still aflame with light. Shiraishi had the strongest feeling that she was gazing over the ocean.

“This is what Chiyo told me,” said Ikeuchi, and he related to her a tale which had taken place over thirty years ago.

Chiyo had been in college then, living with her parents on the slopes of Mt. Yoshida. Their home was a rude two-story affair, all rebar and concrete, and from her window on the second floor she had a clear view of Mt. Daimonji. Her father was a chemist by trade, trained at Tokyo Imperial University, but during the war he was drafted and dispatched to Manchuria, where he had lost his first wife and their son. A year after war’s end he was repatriated to Japan where alongside a school chum of his he set up shop manufacturing paints. He married again: Chiyo was the product of that union.

“She told me about her father, too,” Chiyo interrupted. “About how she snuck into his study when was young.”

“The Thousand and One Nights, yes?”

“Yeah, that was it.”

“Her father figures into her meeting Sayama Shōichi.”

In her father’s study was a strange little alcove: the Room Within a Room. There was a ladder which terminated at a narrow mezzanine, which had a small door right out of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Her father told her that behind that door lay a collection of rare books as well as personal memoirs and journals. The manuscript which led her to her meeting with Sayama Shōichi was on the other side of that door.

In the summer of her second year in college, a student came to visit her father, a thin, gangly fellow with a stubbly beard.

“My name is Sayama Shōichi. Professor Nishida sent me here.”

When Chiyo went into her father’s study to bring them coffee, her eyes fell upon a book that lay upon the table: a volume from the collected Thousand and One Nights which her father had acquired during a trip to Egypt. Sayama was a graduate student studying Arabic in the literature department: her father wanted him to read the book. It wasn’t a particularly uncommon book, but her father took a liking to the slender young man, and from then on he would occasionally call upon her father in his study, bearing a well-worn notebook under one arm.

Chiyo and he soon became friends.

“But he disappeared, didn’t he?” interrupted Shiraishi.

“Correct.”

Flipping to another page, Ikeuchi read aloud.

“In February 1982―six months after they met―Chiyo and Sayama attended the Setsubun Festival at Yoshida Shrine. They became separated in the crowd: she never saw him again. Over that winter he had often told her that he planned to write a novel involving magic and adventure and intrigue, taking place on tropical isles…”

“An adventure?”

“It could only be The Tropics.”

Chiyo had told Ikeuchi that she had first come across Sayama Shōichi’s The Tropics purely by accident during a spring cleaning at her husband’s office, buried in a pile of materials which was to be disposed of. Strangely enough, her husband claimed that he did not remember buying any such book, and all of the other employees professed ignorance of it as well.

Although it had been over thirty years since his mysterious disappearance, when she saw the author and title Chiyo was immediately certain that it had been written by the Sayama Shōichi she had once known, a certainty which only grew as she read it.

“But she never finished it, either.”

The Tokyo twilight had faded into night; while Ikeuchi had been speaking the restaurant had continued its sluggish revolution, bringing the throngs in front of Yūrakuchō Station into view. On the same floor of the glass-fronted building directly across from them, Shiraishi saw a cluster of vending machines on the same floor. It was fascinating looking at everything was happening on the different floors, like observing an ant farm―a cardiganed woman (a dental hygienist, she suspected) sitting on a bench―a middle-aged man in a suit speaking rapidly into his phone―a young college student scowling into the glass and fixing their hair―scattered fragments just waiting to be woven into a story. Perhaps they viewed her in much the same way.

“Apparently, Sayama Shōichi was also fond of taking notes,” said Ikeuchi, closing his own notebook and placing a hand on it. “He always had a notebook with him whenever he went out walking with Chiyo, or was chatting with her at his rented room. In that sense I feel a great kinship with him.”

“Do you think he was writing The Tropics in that notebook?”

“There’s no way to know now,” Ikeuchi replied. “Chiyo didn’t tell me much more than that. She was always a little cagey when it came to Sayama’s disappearance. I don’t know the nature of their relationship. I can but speculate: perhaps they were seeing each other, and yet I believe that it was more to it than that.”

Shiraishi rested her face in her hands and pondered. Why had Sayama Shōichi vanished? He must have been alive, based on the fact that The Tropics existed. But then, why had he never contacted Chiyo or her father? And why had he not written anything else in the thirty-plus years since? Perhaps they could not even consider The Tropics much proof; after all, not one of them had a copy of it in hand.

A disappearing author, a disappearing book: leaving only a gaping void.

Maybe if I go to Kyoto everything will become clear.

“If only I could…” she found herself whispering.

“Would you like to come along?”

“Well, I’d love to, but I just can’t.”

Ikeuchi smiled.

“This is all thanks to you, you know.”

“It is?”

“You were the start of it all.”

It was dark now, and the stars twinkled above like fairy lights strung along an ultramarine ceiling. A woman in a dress was performing on the piano. It really did feel like being on an enormous cruise ship now, sailing across an ocean of stars.

“I want to hear everything when you come back.”

“Of course. I’m sure I will have quite a tale to tell,” replied Ikeuchi with a grave nod.

Shiraishi watched Ginza spin slowly around them as the piano tinkled in the background. She felt suddenly entranced by that building across from them, as though the lights of this row of restaurants had triggered a memory very dear to her. For a long time she could not tear her eyes away from those enchanted lights, from that festival floating in a sea of darkness.

Footnotes

1. Let’s Meet in Yūrakuchō was a hit song in 1957, and was released as part of an advertising campaign for the Sogo department store which opened in Yūrakuchō that same year. ↩