The Moonstone

We had the paperback 月亮宝石, when I was a child. I didn't even know the

original English title. I still remembered the name of Gaberiel Betteredge, one of the narrators, as 伽百里尔 贝特里克, 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 a 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.