A Son of the Rock

The Harvill Press, 1998, 106 p. Translated from the Italian, Seta (Rizzoli, Milan, 1966,) by Guido Waldman

This is an odd, intense concoction. Told in spare prose and short chapters, some only a paragraph long, few extending beyond two pages, it is a tale of love, life, deception, envy and devotion.

In 1861, the silk industry in Europe is in crisis, epidemics of pébrine were, it seemed, ravaging the silkworm hatcheries of the whole world. “‘Nearly the whole world,’ quietly observed Baldabiou,” who had brought silk production to the town of Lavilledieu and recognised in Hervé Joncour the man who could help him with the problem. Joncour was to travel to the end of the world, Japan. The Japanese were willing to sell their silk but not the eggs. It was a crime to leave the island with any. “The silk manufacturers of Lavilledieu were all gentlemen, more or less, and it would never have crossed their minds to break any law of their country. The notion of doing so on the other side of the world, however, struck them as entirely reasonable.”

Joncour sets out on the arduous journey, the steps of which are outlined in some detail, no doubt to highlight its arduousness, leaving his beautiful-voiced wife, Hélène, behind, evades an attempt to palm him off with fish-eggs, before meeting with Hara Kei, the most elusive man in Japan.

It is a fateful encounter. On Hara Kei’s lap, eyes closed, is a young girl. Once she opens those eyes, Joncour sees she is not Japanese but Western, and that her gaze had “a disconcerting intensity.” Joncour takes a sip from the tea-cup in front of him. As he tells Hara Kei his life story, the girl slowly picks up Joncour’s cup, rotates it to the position from which he had drunk, and sips from the same spot before laying it down and resting on Kei’s lap again, eyes all the while on Joncour.

The deal done, Joncour undertakes his journey in reverse (again the steps are given in detail,) returning to Lavilledieu in triumph.

For the next season Joncour returns to Japan again (the journey described in almost exactly the same words as before) meets Hara Kei again, and sees the girl again. This time, when he leaves, he bears a message from her in Japanese. After scouring France for a Japanese speaker he discovers it says Come back, or I shall die. The translator, Madam Blanche, tells him to forget about it. Of course he cannot.

By the time of his last visit Japan has descended into civil war. As he sets out Hélène says to him, “‘Promise you’ll come back.’” He does; and he does. Again the journey is described in almost the same words – no doubt to hint at its tedium.

Silk is not simply a history of the importation of Japanese silkworms to France. And it is not one love story. It is two. It is also about how we can fail to know or understand the impulses of those closest to us.

Pedant’s corner:- “Abraham Lincoln was fighting a war of which he was not to see the finish” (Lincoln did see the finish. He was assassinated some days after Robert E Lee had surrendered,) “to leave the island” (Japan consists of more than one inhabited island, but then again, perhaps silk worms occurred on only one.)