Chapter 3―The Witch of the Full Moon (Part 1)

Miss Shiraishi Tamako

I hope this finds you well. When you joined the Scholars in the quest to find The Tropics, I was sure that your arrival would set great things into motion. My faith was rewarded: if I had not met you, I would surely have never been able to write what I have in this journal.

This is my story.

And at the same time, it was written for you.

In the Grimm Brothers’ Hansel and Gretel, the two siblings leave a trail of white pebbles with which they find their way out of the forest. It is my hope that this journal will become such a white pebble for you. Yet unlike in the fairy tale, I fear that this trail of stones will only lead you further into the forest of The Tropics.

◯

I shall begin this account on the night I arrived in Kyoto.

At Kyoto Station I transferred from the Shinkansen to the subway, which I rode to Keage, in the shadow of Higashiyama, very near to Nanzenji and Murin-an Garden. A large hotel stands on the plateau there; I was under the impression that Chiyo always stayed there when she came to Kyoto to visit her family grave.

It was quite late by the time I arrived at the hotel, and the spacious lobby was by and large deserted. After I had checked in at the front desk, a concierge approached me.

“Mr. Ikeuchi, I have a message from Ms. Umino Chiyo.”

A message from Chiyo: no sooner had I heard the words than a thrill ran through my chest.

Yet the message turned out to be quite mundane: I hope your journey was pleasant. I felt rather crestfallen, and was even more so when the hotelier informed me that she had checked out in the morning two days prior.

“Has she returned to Tokyo?”

“I’m afraid I do not know.”

“Perhaps we just missed one another,” I mused. “She did invite me here to Kyoto.”

“I suspect she may still be in Kyoto. She mentioned that she was going to visit an old friend.”

That, of course, immediately brought to mind Sayama Shōichi.

“Do you know if that friend happened to be named ‘Sayama?’”

“I’m afraid she did not say.”

I expressed my thanks and went to my room, which commanded an excellent view of the lights of Kyoto. On the right the dark woods of Nanzenji held court beneath the black shadows of the mountains anchored by Mt. Hiei in the north. As I looked down at the scattered streetlights below, I thought about the fact that somewhere in this city there must be a pathway that lead to the secret of The Tropics. Chiyo had beaten us to it, found the hidden entrance.

I switched on the desk lamp and examined the postcard again.

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

Though midnight was approaching, sleep eluded me. I buried myself in the hotel bed and opened Robinson Crusoe. I had brought it with me for a long overdue re-read after remembering that I had seen you reading it at the hobby store. As I plunged myself in by headboard reading light, my mind was transported to Jules Vernes’ The Mysterious Island, and Stevenson’s Treasure Island, books which I had avidly read as a boy, at an age where the joy of reading was so real that it felt almost physical.

Feeling as though I was deep in a forest, eventually I drifted to sleep.

◯

The following morning I pondered over each page in my notebook thoroughly over a cup of coffee. If I returned to Tokyo on Sunday night that would give me the use of two full days here.

Before I came to Kyoto I had reviewed each of the many notebooks I had written about The Tropics and summarized everything in a fresh notebook: the Salvaged plot threads; the many theories proposed by the Scholars; my conversations with Chiyo, and with you…

My first order of business, I decided, was to follow in Chiyo’s footsteps.

She had lived in Mt. Yoshida during college, I was aware, and her window looked out on Mt. Daimonji. Sayama Shōichi had also lived in the vicinity, and so one could consider it the birthplace of The Tropics. I was quite keen to visit it myself.

The taxi ride to the foot of Mt. Yoshida took about ten minutes. I got out at a broad intersection. The path that followed the canal to Ginkakuji was jam-packed with tourists. But my destination was not Ginkakuji, but a neighbourhood along the slope of Higashiyama where the tourists were few.

A slope led me up between the houses, toward the overcast sky. After I had come up a distance I turned around and saw Higashiyama cresting the crowded rooftops, tracing its gentle slope until my eyes lighted on that famous Gozan no Okuribi sight, Daimonji.

As a student, I had made use of one summer vacation to come to Kyoto to see the Okuribi with a friend. It had been an otherworldly sight, the flames leaping up from the black mountainside.

“The Okuribi is meant to send off visiting spirits back to the other side,” I remember my friend saying to me.

“If there’s a Sending-off Fire, is there a Welcoming Fire?” I’d asked him.

At the top of my climb I found the green forests of Mt. Yoshida. I took the trail which winds along the trees: wooden houses on the right, the shade of the forest on my left.

What kind of life had Sayama Shōichi led, I wondered. He had studied linguistics in graduate school; in fact his visit to Chiyo’s house had been to translate manuscripts. In my head I pictured him as a solitary, gloomy kind of fellow: an image born perhaps of his melancholy story that had ended with his disappearance, of which the only remaining legacy was that strange book known as The Tropics.

I passed the last of the houses on my right and was rewarded with a sweeping view of the town below. I supposed that were the sea to rise up and swallow the buildings, Mt. Yoshida would appear as an island. Perhaps that was what had given Sayama the inspiration to set his adventure in a tropic archipelago. This town was filled with vestiges of the origin of The Tropics, if only you knew where to look. Maybe that was why Chiyo had summoned me here.

Leaving the houses behind me I walked into the forest.

“How would Sayama have seen this place?” I mused, daring to venture off the path and deeper into the trees, treading leaves underfoot. Winter had faded these woods, and yet perhaps once Sayama had seen in these same trees the vibrant jungle of The Tropics. Pondering this strange country which lived only in fantasy, I listened to the rustling all around me, and as I did the fragments of The Tropics I had once read swirled through my mind.

My detour through the woods brought me out from beneath the trees to a children’s park. The open sky was obscured by grey clouds which cast a pallour over the forlorn playground equipment.

While I wandered around the park I made quite a strange discovery. It resembled a ramen cart, but piled high with curious odds and ends, like a traveling peddler. Not spotting whoever owned it nearby, I went up to it and looked beneath the roof, where I found a small bookshelf. Immediately I recalled quite vividly what you had previously described to me. I looked up at the yellow banner, which said

Arabia Books

◯

It was the same used bookstore at which you had bought The Tropics. The strange assortment of curios well represented the fantastic namesake of the shop as well as the particular tastes. Perhaps it would have been too much to expect to find The Tropics there.

There was a stir of movement on the other side of the cart.

“See anything you like?” asked the owner with a yawn as he stood up.

“Are you open?”

“Knock, and it shall be opened unto you,” said the owner with another yawn, brushing the sand off the seat of his pants. It appeared he had been sitting in the shadow of his cart, dozing off. He was wearing coveralls with a fuzzy collar, and what appeared to be a Russian ushanka complete with earflaps. Coupled with the odd cart of his he looked like an exotic merchant wandering far afield. His grizzled stubble made him look much older at first, but I suspected that he was around my own age.

“I’ve never seen a bookshop quite like this before.”

“Fabulous, ain’t it?”

“Fabulous, yes, but…”

“What it’s doing up here on a mountainside?” the owner guessed. “Fact of the matter is, up until a few days ago I was parked at Shimogamo Shrine. I try to go where I’m least expected.”

“But you can’t get very many customers here.”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

I had to admit his logic.

“So, looking for any book in particular?”

“I’m looking for a book called The Tropics.”

“The Tropics, hmm?” he said, looking his bookshelf up and down. “Doesn’t look like I’ve got it.”

“I know someone who said she bought it at this shop.” I flipped through my journal and read to him what you had told me, that you had found The Tropics at this shop in front of the ropeway station at the foot of Mt. Eizan.

“I pop in there from time to time, it’s true,” he admitted. “I might have had a book by that title, but I just can’t recall.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“That book must mean something special to you.”

“Hmm, well,” I prevaricated.

The owner stood there looking at me, scratching at his beard. The mood was such that I couldn’t bring myself to simply walk away, so I turned my attention to the bookshelf again, deciding to buy a book before I left.

“Would you mind doing me a favour?” the owner said. “I’d like you to look after the shop for a little while. I’ve got a little errand, see, but I’d much prefer not to close down the shop.”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly―”

“It’ll be easy,” he assured me as if he hadn’t heard me, coming out from behind the cart. His face was unseasonably sunburnt, and there was a boyish glint in his eye: the mien of a seasoned adventurer.

“You help me out, and I’ll tell you a secret.”

“A secret?”

“About the book you’re looking for.”

“You do know of it, then?” I asked excitedly.

He winked. “You’ll just have to wait and see. Do take good care of my shop, now.”

He stumped off towards the park exit, while I in astonishment watched him go.

◯

It was quite an odd role to have foisted upon me. But I couldn’t bring myself to simply walk away from the shop―and besides, I was quite curious about his parting words.

Across the grey park all was still.

To escape the snow which had begun to flitter down I sheltered beneath the roof of the cart. My head knocked against a painting which hung from the ceiling, sending it pendulating in the air. It depicted a tiger the size of a boulder, fangs bared; I suspected it was a reproduction of an Edo-period illustration.

Nearly every bit of space in the cart was covered in bookshelves or other knick-knacks, save for a locked drawer cabinet in the corner and a counter. I placed my notebook on it and, breathing on my frozen hands to warm them up, and wrote down everything that had occurred since last night.

After scribbling for a few minutes I glanced up and saw a college-aged couple bundled up in scarves staring perplexedly at the cart, as if they had stumbled upon a three-ring circus in the middle of the woods. “Welcome!” I said, in the friendliest voice I could muster.

“Is…this some kind of store?” asked the woman, looking bemused.

“A used bookshop, to be precise. Please, feel free to take a look.”

The pair approached cautiously, like stray cats lured in by a can of cat food. I couldn’t help but smile as I watched them browsing the shelf and whispering to one another.

“I know this one!”

“What’s it about?”

“You know, the one where the guy turns into a tiger.”

It was a paperback which they were examining, a collection of Nakajima Atsushi’s short stories. I supposed they must be talking about The Moon Over the Mountain, in which the young aspiring poet Li Zheng encounters setbacks and frustrations and in the end turns into the ferocious feline. I myself had read it in school.

The man placed 200 yen on the counter and remarked, “This is a pretty interesting shop.”

“It is not mine.”

“Huh?”

“I was only asked to watch it.”

The couple walked off, looking mystified.

Snow continued to fall over the forest. It was so quiet that it felt as though time was standing still.

As I grappled with an unease, of feeling that I had been left to fend for myself, a story popped into my head. It was a story about a cursed used bookshop, wherein the owner of the bookshop asks the protagonist to mind the shop and then leaves, never to return. The protagonist realizes that he cannot leave the shop: he is bound to it for all eternity, unless he finds another sacrifice to mind it in his stead… and here I let out a wry chuckle. Perhaps, like you, my Story Sense was becoming a little too overactive.

I collected myself and took another look at the bookshelf. One book caught my eye: a volume of the Thousand and One Nights.

You and I discussed the book, as I recall. Chiyo’s father had invited Sayama Shōichi to his house to translate a manuscript of the Nights. I myself had only read through the tale of King Shahryār, and the tale of the Merchant and the Ifrīt, up until the tale of the Merchant and the Jinnī. Thinking that this was the perfect opportunity, I picked up the worn book and began to flip through the pages.

The Nights is constructed in a most peculiar fashion. In the midst of a story Scheharazade will begin yet another story, in the midst of which a character might launch into yet another story of their own. In the Tale of the Fisherman, for example, the fisherman opens a copper jar from which issues forth the terrible ifrīt, and in fear for his life the fisherman tells the tale of the Wazir of King Yunan and Rayyan the Doctor (perhaps you remember Nakatsugawa recounting it during the meeting of the Scholars): wherein King Yunan’s wazir tries to persuade him to kill the doctor, to which King Yunan responds with the tale of the King Sindbad and the Falcon, to which the wazir retorts with the tale of the Prince and the Ogress―and all of these, of course, take place within a single story told by Scheherazade.

I began to read the tale of the Porter and the Young Girls¹, and this is how it goes:

There was once a young man in the city of Baghdad who was by trade a porter. One day, as he was leaning idly against his basket in the marketplace, a woman spoke to him: “Take up your basket, porter, and follow me.”

She raised the veil a little from her face, revealing herself to be of uncommon beauty. Instantly the porter was starstruck, and did as she bade him. The girl took him around the marketplace, purchasing a mountain of delights and having the porter load them all into his basket, until it was so weighted and burdensome that he lamented, “If you had told me, I would have brought a mule!”

After she had bought all these things the girl led the porter back to a splendid palace with a great ebony door, where awaited two maidens, her elder sisters. They took the porter to an ample hall which looked upon the central court, and there they partook of the delightful confections and traded in lewd jests and had a merry time. When night fell, the porter begged that they should allow him to pass the night with them, to which they agreed, upon the conditions that he obey them in all things, and ask not of anything which he might see there. Readily he assented, upon which they pointed and ordered him to read the golden words written above the door. And this is what they said:

Speak not of that which concerns you not

or you will hear that which shall please you not

I could scarcely believe what I had just read. I am sure you remember them just as well as I do, for they are the words which are inscribed upon the first page of The Tropics.

◯

Indeed, a most unexpected discovery.

Sayama Shōichi could only have drawn those words from the Thousand and One Nights. I read on.

The porter has won a night at the palace with the three ladies, but their revelling is joined by the intrusion of three one-eyed beggars, as well as the caliph Harun al-Rashid, his majesty concealed in the guise of a merchant. In the same way as the porter, these newest visitors are bound by that golden inscription above the door. But burning with curiosity at the sisters’ strange conduct, the guests beg them for an explanation: whereupon the sisters fly into a fury and summon seven slaves bearing swords to tie them up. In fear for their lives, the one-eyed beggars one by one tell their wondrous tales: of a prince who inflamed by incestuous lust takes his sister down to an underground love nest where they meet their doom: of another prince who is enchanted into the form of an ape and sails the world: of the magical duel between a princess and an ifrit: of the magnetic mountain which drowns those unfortunate vessels which venture too close: of a man who is sewed up in a sheepskin and carried away by a rukh: of a golden palace and the forty maidens within. And at the end of all these tales, the sisters grant the visitors their pardons and their lives.

It strikes me that this act―the telling of tales to save one’s life―was in fact the very act in which Scheherazade was engaged: each story she told kept the blade of King Shahryār’s executioner at bay for another night.

A story most peculiar. And yet, with the exception of those glittering letters above the door I could not make out any connection with The Tropics.

There was a rustling in the forest behind me, and from out of the shadow of the trees stepped the bookstore owner.

“Why did you come out from there?” I asked.

“It’s a little shortcut,” he said, handing me a still-warm can of coffee. “Appreciate the help, I didn’t mean to take so long.”

It was only then that I noticed the chill which permeated my body. Whenever I am engaged in a book I tend to forget about my physical existence, and only when I felt the sweet warmth of that coffee settling within me did I feel that I was truly returned from the world of the Nights.

“I wasn’t actually expecting you to make a sale,” said the proprietor, looking rather surprised when I handed the 200 yen to him.

A mobile bookshop certainly did not seem like a very profitable venture, and when I told him as much he replied, “It’s something like a charity venture for me,” blinking up at the snow, and when he looked back down his eyes fell upon the copy of the Nights which lay on the counter.

“Doing a little reading, hmm?”

“You’ll forgive me, I hope, but it was something of a wait…”

“Of course, of course. You find it interesting?”

“Very much so.”

“It’s got such an interesting structure, doesn’t it? You could have Scheherazade tell any story in the world and make it part of the Thousand and One Nights. No need to stick to a thousand nights either; you could have two thousand, or three…”

“Pardon me. You had mentioned something earlier.”

“What’d I say?”

“You said that you knew something about the book I’m looking for.”

“Ah, right.” The proprietor lit up a pipe and took a puff. “Must have been maybe three days ago. This woman came out of the woods: coloured glasses, dolled up real smart. She told me the same thing you did, that a friend of hers had bought The Tropics at my cart. Heck of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“What else did she say?”

“Not much, really. She mentioned that she used to live around these parts, and that she knew the author of the book.”

“I need to find her.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I thought you were looking for the book.”

“It’s a long story.”

He thought for a little while and then said, “She said that she was going to try a secondhand store, place called Hōrendō, down in Ichijōji. Bought a few things there myself. Why don’t you try asking around there?”

He drew a rudimentary map in my notebook, and told me, “I hope you find her.”

“Thank you kindly,” I said.

As I turned to go, he thrust the copy of the Thousand and One Nights into my hands, refusing to take my money.

“Don’t worry about it. The pleasure’s all mine,” he grinned. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

Footnotes

1. Other, possibly less objectionable translations exist; but I find myself all too wary of what Borges termed “Puritan subterfuge” to intentionally deviate from Mardrus’ translation for the appearance of good taste. ↩