original English title. I still remembered the name of Gaberiel Betteredge,
one of the narrators, as 伽百里尔 贝特里奇, a transliteration that made no sense
in Chinese except for invoking a fascination toward a remote alien world. It
took me a few tries to finish reading.
A plover-egg-sized Indian diamond, dedicated to a Hindu deity, was looted by the
British and passed down with its curse to an innocent girl. It was then lost for
a second time for a new generation of human weaknesses and, after the dust
settled, dramatically returned to the forehead of the statue of the moon god. It
was a mystery as well as love story. Like Greek and Roman mythologies, to me,
the Moonstone was a call of the wild as well as an escape from the daily drudery
to survive and get ahead. It invoked a longing to go overseas and see.
30 years later, I chanced upon the word "moonstone" one day and memories flooded
back. This time, I learned the name of the author, Wilkie Collins, and the
significance of the story as an early detective novel, and I wondered, into the
21 century, where the yellow diamond resided and if three Brahmins were still
watching day and night. Next, I borrowed the Everyman's Library edition.
The 1868 novel showed some age but was nonetheless the same page-turner which it
must be back then and which I couldn't say of some of the modern books I read of
the same genre. (I heard Taleb whispering: "I told you. Read nothing from the
past 100 years!" and "No skill to understand it; mastery to write it.") The
settings were given enough attention with few rare words that I had to look up
in the dictionary. Through the accounts of several narrators, the story
proceeded at a good pace and suspenses were never drawn-out. Humor fills the
volume, especially in Betteredge's and Miss Clack's accounts. Here is a
paragraph on page 14 to give a taste of the language.
If I had had a hat in my hand, nothing but respect would have prevented me
from throwing that hat up to the ceiling. I had not seen Mr. Franklin since
he was a boy, living along with us in this house. He was, out of all sight
(as I remembered him), the nicest boy that ever spun a top or broke a
window. Miss Rachel, who was present, and to whom I made that remark,
observed, in return, that SHE remembered him as the most atrocious tyrant
that ever tortured a doll, and the hardest driver of an exhausted little
girl in string harness that England could produce. 'I burn with indignation,
and I ache with fatigue,' was the way Miss Rachel summed it up, 'when I
think of Franklin Blake.'
Upon finishing the Moonstone, I was impressed enough to borrow the author's
magna opus, the 1860 novel The Woman In White.
