The Love of Stones

by Tobias Hill

‘I don’t work for any company.’

  ‘You have no business here.’

  ‘I was looking for Hikari Murasaki.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Is he here?’

  He stands stooped, head cocked. As if listening for something other than a question answering a question.

  ‘I’ve come a long way to find him.’

  ‘Everywhere is a long way, from here.’ He puts the worn shirt back on. An uncomfortable gesture. His eyes don’t show it. ‘Our name is Mura. This is my house. We have lived here for a long time.’ He looks past me towards the voices of the children, as if glancing at a clock. ‘Eight years. I don’t know any Murasaki.’

  ‘Are you a fisherman?’

  He shrugs. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Your English is very good, for a fisherman.’

  His eyes flicker. ‘I am sansei,’ he says, quietly, reluctantly. ‘Third-generation immigrant. I learned English from my family.’

  I’m sorry, I almost say, and don’t. He expects it in every sense. ‘Do you know who lived here before you?’

  ‘A man.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  He shrugs again. ‘It was a long time ago.’ He scratches the stubble at his hairline, then nods. ‘Maybe Murasaki. I can’t say.’

  He is lying, I think. Of course he is, I need him to be lying. But even as I think it, the sense of failure is beginning to rise. It is quicker these days, its channels running deeper. As if a part of me has been worn away.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He gestures towards the porch. Beyond the lamp, the interior is unlit. ‘We will be eating soon. You must be tired.’

  ‘I–’ I look back towards the dunes. Faintly, I can smell pine trees. The sea has carried their scent, out from the coast on the low tide. It is a long way back there. I have come as far as I can go.

  ‘Where is your car?’

  ‘I walked.’

  He clicks on a light. We go inside. ‘The forecast is for rain. Sometimes the road floods. You should not stay too long. Your shoes. Please, sit by the fire. Are you staying in Kôchi?’

  ‘No.’ I am too tired to lie. The miles south and east are beginning to catch up with me. The room is big, well lit by the kitchen and hearth, fading to shadows by the staircase and shelves. There are the smells of tatami matting and sea tar. A house lizard zigzags up into the roofbeams.

  ‘There are guest rooms in Tosa. We will eat first, then I will take you back.’ At the door Mura leans out, calling two names. Tom. Iren. When he is satisfied with what he sees he goes to wash his hands with soap at the kitchen counter. Pots and spoons hang around his head. Beside the counter are a refrigerator, canister gas stove and rice steamer. The white goods so battered they might have been salvaged from a shipwreck.

  It feels as if I have walked to the end of the world. I watch the man in silence. His age is indeterminate, anywhere between forty and sixty. Certainly the sea has aged him. The lines of his mouth are not unkind. He lifts the lid on the steamer. Opens the fridge, brings out raw fish, burdock and lotus root. Picks up a knife. A radio sits on the counter beside him, a long-wave signal turned down low.

  ‘You can call me Saisei.’

  ‘Katharine.’

  He nods a formal hello. Two children come in hand in hand. The boy eight or nine, the girl half that. They have their father’s eyes and their hair, too, is not quite black. A foreign lightness. They stop dead at the sight of me.

  ‘This is Katharine,’ says the man. ‘She is eating with us tonight.’ And then, as if they need a motive, ‘She speaks English.’

  Keeping a distance, like his father, the boy heels off his shoes. But the girl is already moving, up onto the matting. There are butterfly barrettes in her hair. One is loose. Her eyes shift. As if they are trying to see behind mine.

  ‘Her name is Iren,’ says the boy. Sizing me up. ‘She’s only five. She doesn’t speak so much English. She understands it as well as you do. Are you from New York?’

  ‘England.’

  He glowers at me. ‘I don’t know that.’

  ‘It’s a country. Where English comes from.’

  ‘Do you have zebra in England?’

  ‘Only the kind without stripes.’

  He stops glowering to consider the possibility of stripeless zebra. The girl puts her hand up to my face. Her father glances up from the cooking. ‘Tom, take Iren upstairs. You need to wash before we eat.’

  Iren looks round with narrowed eyes, whining. Her brother takes her hand again and leads her away. The man nods at me from the chopping board. ‘Do you find people professionally?’

  ‘No.’

  He turns off the radio. ‘What is it that you do?’

  ‘I’m in the stone trade.’

  ‘What kind of stones?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ I can hear the children upstairs. The sound of water and laughter. Their presence, the joy of it, runs out of me as quickly as it gathered. I look down at the fire. The ash is just warm. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No. But I’m interested, since you are here.’

  I look up. Too many questions, I think. Somehow, they have become one too many. I examine the man’s face again. The fisherman who is third-generation Japanese. I wonder if Pavlov ever checked boat licences.

  ‘I buy and sell. Precious stones, gems, jewels. Diamonds and rubies and pearls. There is not much more than that to tell.’

  ‘It sounds very interesting.’

  ‘It’s just a job.’

  He is cutting tuna, combing the skin out from under the flesh. ‘It is always hard, working alone.’

  ‘I never said I worked alone.’ The room realigns itself around me. Its atmosphere changes. I see that, perhaps, I have been shepherded inside. The children have been herded away. The man with the knife is between me and the door. That perhaps it has been the gentlest of interrogations.

  ‘But you don’t work for a company.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why do you come here, looking for stones?’

  I answer him with questions. ‘The man who lived here. Do you remember anything about him?’

  Without looking up he shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry.’ Iren comes carefully down the stairs. Tom behind her.

  ‘Where did your family come from? Can I ask?’

  He grunts. ‘They were traders. They lived in many different countries, many years ago.’ He turns on the tap. Runs hot water over the knife. ‘But now it is time to eat.’

  The table is barely higher than the tatami mats, space recessed beneath it. I sit uncomfortably while the man serves miso soup, vegetables stewed in soy, bowls of rice topped with sashimi. The fish is so fresh it tastes of nothing. Only sweetness, like iced fruit.

  ‘This is good,’ I say, and realise I mean it. The man nods. Iren is learning how to use chopsticks. Her father teaches her, his fingers opening and closing in slow crab-motions. Her hand is all thumbs. Tom jibes at her in Japanese. She looks at him mournfully.

  ‘Have you heard of a man called Enzo Mushanokoji?’

  ‘No. Why?’ He is still teaching. Iren’s hand copies his, the chopsticks desperately waving. Clumsy as an upturned insect. A finger-bug. I keep myself asking questions.

  ‘Martian-Mitsubishi?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am looking for a jewel called the Three Brethren.’

  He pauses. I see him do it, the small fact of it, before he shakes his head and begins to eat.

  ‘You asked about the stones I work with. I’m telling you. The Three Brethren is a knot of gold and jewels, made to hold a cloak at the shoulder. It is very early fifteenth century. For hundreds of years people have believed it has been lost for good. I’m going to find it again.’

  ‘That is all you do? You have an easy life.’ The man is watching me as he eats. ‘Iren,’ he says, without looking away. ‘Please don’t play with your food.’

  Her face crumples up with misery. I talk over her head. ‘A century ago there was a company on Shikoku called Man
kin-Mitsubishi. A worker called Enzo Mushanokoji bought the Three Brethren for this company. The owner of Mankin-Mitsubishi was a Mr Lewis. A Mari Lewis died in Tosa in 1987. Her son was Hikari Murasaki. He lived in this house. I’ve spent five years trying to find this jewel. Please. If there is anything you remember–’

  ‘I am sorry. I said I can’t help you. Iren, please.’

  The girl smiles up at me. Craftily, as if she has done something a little wrong but pardonably clever. ‘But you must remember–’

  ‘Iren.’

  Out of nothing his voice is sharp as his face. I look between him and the child. Her features are wiped clean with surprise. The chopsticks still droop in her fingers. Her bowl is an edible sculpture. The man reaches across me. For a moment it isn’t clear whether he means to grab the bowl or the child. I look back at them and see what he sees.

  It is an illusion. The duck which becomes a rabbit, the black chalice which is also two white faces. In the centre of Iren’s bowl, three pieces of tuna have been drawn together in a triangle. The girl begins to cry in deep sobs. A child who understands English, playing with her food. Between the red slabs, rice has been kneaded up to a point.

  ‘Please,’ says the man, and shakes his head, bewildered. He mutters to Tom in Japanese. The boy stands up uneasily, reaching out for his sister.

  ‘You lied to me,’ I say, as if I feel betrayed. Instead it feels as if I should apologise. It is as if I have broken the family china. Something precious. I don’t know what to do any more than the man across the table, or the children between us. As I watch, his hand picks up the chopsticks and tightens into a fist.

  All this way, I think, to be alone at the end of the world. I try to stand. My foot catches under the table. Quite slowly, I fall backwards onto the matting. The boy watches me with his mouth open. Iren gapes, shocked into quiet. The man whispers to them again, rising easily as he does so. Before I am on my knees he is at the kitchen counter.

  ‘Sit down. You are not leaving yet. Tell me who you work for.’ When I look up he has the sushi knife in one hand. It is a large blade, black oxidised metal, an edge tempered in waves. I walk straight past him into the shut door. My head knocking to get out. He steps round the counter. ‘I said wait, Katharine. I need to know who it is you work for–’

  I get the door open and start to run. Crickets chirrup in the marram grass. Creatures with traps instead of legs. The man calls out after me. The night air is warm against my face. There is a smell in it which might be rain. At the top of the dunes the sand collapses under my weight, and I climb over and crawl down between the sea thistles. When the man calls out again it is neither of the children’s names, nor mine.

  I try to remember how far it is from the house to the coast road. To gauge how fast the man can run. I wonder if I could hide, and for how long, and if anyone would find me but him. In the distance I hear him swear and shout out the same name again. Lyu.

  The beach looms up, lines of waves white in the dark. The sand is compact at the water’s edge. I turn inland, settling into a barefoot rhythm. Over my own noise and the crash and hiss of surf I listen for the man’s steps, but there is nothing. The waves are high, spume blown from their tips. The Ferris wheel still turns above Tosa. It looks so close that if I called out, now, the wind might carry my voice to its top.

  There is a dull pattering behind me. It is some time before I realise it is getting any nearer. It is less like the sound of feet than rain. For a moment I wonder if it is the boy, Tom, and I look over my shoulder.

  A dog is pacing me along the beach. It is the size of a Dobermann but much heavier. Barrel-chested, with the head and jaws of a fighting animal. A Tosa, I think. The Kôchi figurines made flesh. Its black and tan coat is grey in the moonlight. It makes little sound as it closes the distance between us.

  I turn back to face the coast and run harder. The dog is no longer getting closer. Its breath shudders under its own weight. I begin to feel a little sorry for it. Only a little. It is almost companionable, the chase. A woman and one man’s best friend. The Tosa is not built for speed, after all. Running is secondary to what it is designed for.

  ‘Help!’ I call out, faintly comical with exertion. I might as well be on the dark side of the moon. Bladderwrack coils around my feet. For a second I lose my rhythm, its alignment of breathing, heartbeat, footfall. When I find it again, the air hurts. I keep going, but now I can feel the weight of my clothes, the wind tugging them. The dog is still coming. Not closing the gap between us, but seeming to wait in motion, as if it knows it only has to be patient.

  The coast is far away, distant as a fiction. For the first time, I allow myself to realise I am never going to reach it. I wonder if I will die here. I wish it was the man behind me after all, then I could ask what happens next. A last request. It seems to me that I should at least be allowed to ask.

  The sea crashes beside me. I look at it as I run. Where the water hits the beach it draws back hard, hissing. Undertow strips the sand away to steep black shingle. It looks stronger than me, more cunning and more vicious. Pulling the ground from under it.

  I struggle with my jacket, the wind helping me get rid of it. It is harder to make myself slow down. I close my eyes to do it, bent over, taking deep, ragged breaths. There is time for three, then another. To half-turn, before the animal reaches me.

  It barrels into my side, too out of breath itself to leap. I reach for it, find a collar, and fall backwards. The movement lifts us both down over the incline towards the waves. We hit the ground rolling. The head snaps at me, all froth and foam. It has time to gasp once, staring upwards with the whites of its eyes, before the undertow takes us both.

  The world changes. Phosphorescence blooms around us. It is a halo of violence, a sheen of light around our limbs. The sea drags us down and out. The storm of breakers fades away southwards, until there is no sound but the submarine tick and skitter of sand. The undertow’s propulsion begins to fade. My ears pop with pressure. The animal is still in my arms. It thrashes, muscular as a shark, forcing itself upwards, and I press against its ribs. A heart massage. Life to life. Hugging the last air out of it.

  And then it is also changed. The sense of it is too smooth. The scales slip through my cold hands. The neck turns, serpentine. It gores at me with its spurred feet. A head snakes round to face mine and the eyes are old. Old as stones. Teeth grin for me in the salt dark.

  I hold it away. It begins to spasm. Only when it stops moving do I let it go. It drifts upwards with its own valency and I follow it. The surface current is with me. I turn onto my back and scull south, a pale human star. Not looking at how far I have to swim. Keeping the moon westwards.

  It takes immeasurable time. The sea is quiet. There is blood in my clothes. It warms my skin and I’m glad of it. The sea washes into my cold mouth and I cough out the taste of salt and iron. The breakers begin to pick me up and where they leave me I dig in my hands, anchored to the shore.

  The tide is going out. For a while I sleep. Later the rain wakes me, warm, falling into my eyes. I open them and the man is there. He leans above me. His hands are empty. I cry out and remember nothing else.

  * * *

  Jenny bright as the day,

  And buxom as May,

  I happened to kiss; when she angry did say,

  ‘What liberties, Sir! Why these freedoms I pray?’

  George Fox, drink on his breath, singing to the pedal of the wheel. It was June. Two weeks until Coronation Day.

  Dear Jenny, I need no apology use,

  Your charms for my crimes are sufficient excuse,

  Your charms for my crimes –

  Are sufficient excuse.

  Apprentices worked around him. Aproned, like butchers. George himself was down to shirtsleeves. In the morning the Young Vinegar had been in, but these days the work went quicker without him. The workshop was rank with the smell of men. More faintly, like fresh air, Fox could smell meat from the Dean Street chop houses.

  H
e was correcting a brilliant, cleaning down the facets. Between the skew and skill he looked up, searching for Salman in the bad light. Hoping he was gone: George could admit it to himself. Hoping he had gone back where he came from overnight. It was not a malicious thought. He knew that he was not a malicious man. It was only a question of good business.

  There were new faces in the workshop. Outside men, drafted in to break the back of the coronation order. George would have drafted out Salman if he could. It worried him that Mr Rundell didn’t see it. The Jew was an element in an old transaction. He was too quiet. George watched for him as if he might hurt himself, or go home with crown jewels hidden in his pockets. As if he might burn up with anger at the work table, leaving nothing behind, like a diamond.

  He sang again when the work let him. His voice was rough but sure of itself. Not good, not bad. An ordinary voice for an ordinary man.

  What followed, ye lovers, must never be said,

  The sweetest of fruits, they will always be hid,

  But ’twas all very fine, very pretty indeed.

  It was all very fine, very pretty indeed.

  Cheers. An applause of hammers on benches. Fox spoke up into it. ‘Now, sirs. Too kind, too kind. William Bennett, now, has a drawing-room voice. Where are you, William?’

  William half-rose, shy as a ghost in the crucible-light. ‘What shall I sing?’

  ‘A request, then,’ said George. He scanned the new apprentices. Young men, mostly. Not without desire for the gold they hammered out to leaf; but not understanding, either, what people would do for jewels. The lengths and stakes. They looked innocent to him. ‘Gentlemen, something to work to. Eh? Come on.’

  “‘I Locked Up All My Treasure.’”

  Salman’s accent. George could see him, dark in the dark, still bent over his work. His face fierce with sweat and his hands working together, like a surgeon’s. He is the best smith I’ve ever had, George thought. Perhaps the best I’ve ever known. No one has such a feeling for stones. He blinked, not hearing, for a moment, that William had begun to sing.

  I locked up all my Treasure,

  I hastened many a mile,

  And by my grief did measure