Killing Commendatore: A novel (19 page)

“Let's see each other again tomorrow at eleven,” Menshiki said. And quietly hung up.

Soon after he'd hung up, I got a call from my married girlfriend. I was a little surprised. It wasn't often that she'd get in touch at this time of night.

“Can I see you tomorrow around noon?” she asked.

“I'm sorry, but I have an appointment tomorrow. I made it just a little while ago.”

“Not another woman, I hope?”

“No. It's with Mr. Menshiki. I'm painting his portrait.”

“You're painting his portrait,” she repeated. “Then the day after tomorrow?”

“The day after tomorrow's totally free.”

“Great. Is early afternoon okay?”

“Of course. But it's Saturday.”

“I'll manage it.”

“Did something happen?” I asked.

“Why do you ask?” she said.

“You don't often call me at this time of day.”

She made a small sound at the back of her throat, as if making a minor adjustment in her breathing. “I'm in my car now, by myself. I'm calling from my cell.”

“What are you doing in the car all alone?”

“I just wanted to be by myself in the car, so that's where I am. Housewives sometimes do these things. Is that a problem?”

“No problem. No problem at all.”

She sighed, the kind of sigh that condensed a variety of sighs into one. And then she said, “I wish you were here with me. And that we could do it from behind. I don't need any foreplay. I'm so wet you could slip right inside. I want you to pound me, hard and fast.”

“Sounds good to me. But a Mini is too small inside to pound you hard like that.”

“Don't expect too much.”

“Let's figure out a way.”

“I want you to knead my breast with your left hand and rub my clit with your right.”

“What should my right foot be doing? I could manage to use it to adjust the car stereo. You don't mind a little Tony Bennett?”

“I'm not joking here. I'm totally serious.”

“I know. My bad. Serious. Got it,” I said. “Tell me, what are you wearing right now?”

“You want to know what clothes I'm wearing?” she asked enticingly.

“I do. My procedure might change depending on what you have on.”

Over the phone she gave me a detailed rundown on the clothes she had on. It always surprised me, the variety of clothes mature women wore. Orally, she took these off, one by one.

“So, did that get you hard?” she asked.

“Like a hammer,” I said.

“You could pound a nail?”

“You bet.”

There are hammers in the world that need to pound in nails, and nails that need to be pounded by hammers. Now who said that? Nietzsche? Or was it Schopenhauer? Or maybe nobody said it.

Over the phone line, we entwined bodies in a way that felt so real. Phone sex was definitely a first for me, with her—or with anyone, for that matter. Her descriptions were so detailed, so arousing, that these imaginary sex acts were, in part, more sensual than what we could do with our actual bodies. Words can sometimes be so direct, sometimes so erotically suggestive. At the end of this exchange, I unexpectedly climaxed. And she seemed to have an orgasm as well.

We said nothing, catching our breath.

“I'll see you Saturday, then,” she said after she seemed to have pulled herself together. “I have something to tell you about our Mr. Menshiki, too.”

“You got some new information?”

“A bit of new information I gathered through the jungle grapevine. But I'll wait to see you to tell you. While we're probably doing something naughty.”

“You going home now?”

“Of course,” she said. “I'd better be getting back.”

“Drive carefully.”

“Right. I need to take care. I'm still sort of shuddering down there.”

I stepped into the shower and used soap to clean my penis. I changed into pajamas, threw on a cardigan, and with a glass of cheap white wine in hand went out onto the terrace and gazed off in the direction of Menshiki's house. The lights were still on in his massive, pure-white mansion across the valley. The lights seemed to be on all over the house. What he was doing over there (most likely) all by himself, I had no idea. Seated at the computer, perhaps, engaged once more in quantifying intuition.

“A relatively good day,” I said to myself.

And an odd day at that. What kind of day tomorrow would bring I had no clue. Suddenly I remembered the horned owl up in the attic. Was today a good day for it, too? Then I recalled that for horned owls, the day was now only beginning. During the day they slept in dark places. And come night, they set out to the woods in search of prey. That was a question a horned owl should be asked early in the morning. The question of “Was today a good day?”

I went to bed, read a book for a while, then turned off the light at ten thirty and went to sleep. Since I slept, without waking even once, until just before six the next morning, I imagine that the bell didn't ring during the middle of the night.

I never could forget the last words my wife said when I left our home: “Even if we break up like this, can we still be friends? If possible, I mean.” At the time (and for a long time after), I couldn't understand what she was trying to say, what she was hoping for. I was confused, as if I'd put some totally tasteless food into my mouth. The best I could say was, “Well, who knows.” And those were the last words I said to her face-to-face. Pretty pathetic, as final words go.

Even after we broke up, it felt like my wife and I were still connected by a single living tube. An invisible tube, but one that was still beating slightly, sending something like hot blood traveling back and forth between our two souls. I still had that sort of organic sensation. But before long, that tube would be severed. And if it was bound to be cut sometime, I needed to drain the life from that faint line connecting us. If the life was drained from it, and it shriveled up like a mummy, the pain of it being severed by a sharp knife would be that much more bearable. To do so, I needed to forget about Yuzu, as soon as I could, as much as I could. That's why I never tried to contact her. After I came back from my trip and went to pick up some belongings back at the apartment, I did call her once. I needed to get all my painting materials I'd left behind. That was the only conversation I had with Yuzu after we broke up, and it didn't last long.

We officially dissolved our marriage, and I couldn't contemplate the thought of us remaining friends. We'd shared so many things during our six years of marriage. A lot of time, emotions, words and silence, lots of confusion and lots of decisions, lots of promises and lots of resignation, lots of pleasure, lots of boredom. Naturally each of us must have had inner secrets, but we even managed to find a way to share the sense of having something hidden from the other. With us there was a gravitas of place that only the passage of time can nurture. We did a good job of accommodating our bodies to that sort of gravity, maintaining a delicate balance. We had our own special local rules that we lived by. And there was no way we could get rid of all that history, jettison the gravitational balance and local rules, and live simply as
good friends
.

I understood that very well. That's the conclusion I came to after thinking about it during that lengthy trip. I invariably came to the same conclusion: it was best to keep Yuzu at a distance and break off contact. That made the most sense. And that's what I did.

And for her part Yuzu didn't contact me either. Not a single phone call, not one letter. Even though she was the one who said she wanted to
remain friends
. That hurt far more than I'd expected. Or more precisely, what hurt me was actually
me
, myself. In the midst of that continuing, unsettled silence my feelings, like a heavy pendulum, a razor-sharp blade, made wide swings between one extreme to the other. That arc of emotions left fresh wounds in my skin. And I had only one way of forgetting the pain. And that was, of course, by painting.

Sunlight filtered in silently through the studio window. From time to time a gentle breeze rustled the white curtains. The room had an autumn-morning scent. After coming to live on the mountain I'd grown sensitive to the changes in smells from one season to another. Back when I lived in the city I'd hardly ever noticed those.

I sat on the stool, and gazed for a long time at the portrait of Menshiki I'd begun. This was the way I always began work, reevaluating with new eyes the work I'd done the previous day. Only then could I pick up my brush.

Not bad, I thought. Not bad at all. The colors I'd created completely enveloped the original framework of Menshiki I'd done. The outline of him in black paint was hidden now behind those colors. Though concealed, I could still make it out. I would have to once more bring that outline into relief. Transform a hint into a statement.

There was no guarantee, of course, that the painting would ever be complete. It was still inchoate, something missing. Something that should be there was appealing to the nonvalidity of absence. And that missing element was rapping on the glass window separating presence and absence. I could make out its wordless cry.

Focusing so hard on the painting had made me thirsty, so I went into the kitchen and drank a large glass of orange juice. I relaxed my shoulders, stretched both arms high above my head, took a deep breath, and exhaled. I went back to the studio and sat down on the stool and studied the painting. Refreshed, I focused again. But something was different from before. The angle I was looking at the painting from was clearly not the same as it had been a few minutes before.

I got down from the stool and checked its location. It was in a slightly different spot from when I'd left the studio earlier. The stool had clearly been moved. But how? When I'd gotten down from the stool, I hadn't moved it. That I was sure of. I'd gotten down gingerly in order not to move the stool, and when I'd come back I'd also been careful not to move it when I sat down. I remembered these details because I'm very sensitive about the position and angle I view paintings from. I have a set position and angle that I always use, and like batters who are very particular about their stance in the batter's box, it bothers me to no end if things are off, even by a fraction.

But now the stool was eighteen inches away from where it had been, the angle that much changed. All I could think was that while I'd been in the kitchen drinking orange juice and taking deep breaths, someone had moved the stool. Someone had gone into the studio, sat on the stool to look at the painting, then got down from the stool before I came back, and silently slipped out of the room. And that's when—whether intentionally or it just worked out that way—they moved the stool. But I'd been out of the studio at most five or six minutes. Who in the world would go out of their way to do something like that—and why? Or had the stool moved on its own?

My memory must be messed up. I'd moved the stool but forgotten that I had. That's all I could think. Maybe I was spending too much time alone. The order of events in my memory was getting muddled.

I left the stool in the spot where I'd found it—in other words, a spot twenty inches away from where it had been, and at a different angle. I sat down on it and studied Menshiki's portrait from that position. What I saw was a slightly different painting. It was the same painting, of course, but it looked ever so different. The way the light struck it was not the same as before, and the texture of the paint, too, looked changed. There was something decidedly animated and alive in the painting. But also something still lacking. The direction of that lack, though, wasn't the same as before.

So what was different about it? I brought my focus to bear on the painting. The difference must be speaking to me, trying to tell me something. I had to discover what was being hinted at by the difference. I took a piece of white chalk and marked the position of the three legs of the stool on the floor (location A). Then I moved the stool back twenty inches to the side to its original position (location B), and marked that, too, with chalk. I moved back and forth between the two positions, studying the one painting from the different angles.

Menshiki was still in both paintings, but I noticed that his appearance was strangely different depending on the two angles. It was as if two different personalities coexisted within him. Yet both versions of Menshiki were missing something. That shared lack unified both the A and B versions of Menshiki. I had to discover what it was, as if it were triangulated between position A, position B, and myself. What could that shared absence be? Was it something that had form, or something formless? If the latter, then how was I to give it form?

Not an easy thing to do, now is it
, someone said.

I clearly heard that voice. Not a loud voice, but one that carried. Nothing vague about it. Not high, not low. And it sounded like it was right next to my ear.

I involuntarily gulped and, still seated on the stool, slowly gazed around me. I couldn't see anyone else there, of course. The clear morning light filled the floor like pools of water. The window was open, and from far off I could faintly hear the melody played by a garbage truck. It was playing “Annie Laurie” (why the garbage trucks in Odawara played a Scottish folk song was a mystery to me). Beyond that, I couldn't hear a thing.

Maybe I was just imagining things. Maybe it was my own voice I was hearing, a voice welling up from my unconscious. But what I'd heard sounded odd.
Not an easy thing to do, now, is it?
Even unconsciously, I wouldn't talk to myself like that.

I took a deep breath and from my perch on the stool again looked at the painting, focusing my attention on the work. It must have just been my imagination.

Is it not obvious?
someone now said. The voice was right beside my ear.

Obvious? I asked myself. What's so obvious?

What you must discover, can you not see, is what it is about Mr. Menshiki that is not present here
, someone said. As before, a clear voice. A voice with no echo, like it was recorded in an anechoic chamber. Each sound clear as crystal. And like an embodied concept, it had no natural inflection.

I looked around again. This time I got down from the stool and went to check in the living room. I checked every room, but nobody else was in the house. The only other creature there was the horned owl in the attic. The horned owl, of course, couldn't talk. And the front door was locked.

First the stool moving on its own, and now this weird voice. A voice from heaven? Or my own voice? Or the voice of some anonymous third party? Something was clearly wrong with my mind. Ever since I had started hearing that bell, I'd begun having doubts about whether my brain was functioning normally. With the bell, at least, Menshiki had been there and had heard the same sound, which proved that it wasn't an auditory hallucination. My hearing was working fine. Okay, so what could this mysterious voice be?

I sat back down on the stool and looked at the painting.

What you must discover, can you see, is what Mr. Menshiki has that is not here.
Sounded like a riddle. Like a wise bird deep in the forest showing lost children the way home.
What Menshiki has that is not here
—what could that be?

It took a long time. The clock silently, regularly, ticked away the minutes, the pool of light from the small east-facing window silently shifted. Colorful, agile little birds flew onto the branches of a willow, gracefully searched for something, then flew away with a twitter. White clouds, like round slates, floated over the sky in a row. A single silver plane flew toward the sparkling sea. A four-engine propeller SDF plane, on antisubmarine patrol. Keeping their ears and eyes sharp and watchful, making the latent manifest, was their daily job. I listened as the engine drew closer and then flew away.

And finally, a single fact struck me. Literally as plain as day. Why had I forgotten this? What Menshiki had that my portrait of him did not—it was all clear to me now.
His white hair.
That beautiful white hair, as pure white as newly fallen snow. Menshiki without that white hair was unimaginable. How could I miss something that important?

I leaped up from the stool, went to my paint box and gathered up the white paint, picked a brush, and, without thinking, thickly, vigorously spread it on the canvas. I used a knife too, even my fingertip at one point. For fifteen minutes I painted, then stood back from the canvas, sat down on the stool, and checked out my work.

And there, before me, was Menshiki the person. Without a doubt, he was in the painting now. His personality—no matter what that was made up of—was integrated, manifested in the painting. I had no handle on the person named Wataru Menshiki, and knew barely a thing about him. But as an artist I had captured him on canvas, as a synthesized image, as a single, indivisible package. Alive and breathing within the painting. Even the riddles about him were present.

Still, no matter how you looked at it, this was no
portrait
. I'd succeeded (at least I felt I had) in artistically bringing the presence of Wataru Menshiki into relief on canvas. But the goal wasn't to depict his outer appearance. That wasn't the goal at all. That was the big difference between this work and a portrait. What I'd created was, at heart, a painting I'd done
for my own sake
.

I couldn't predict if Menshiki would accept this painting as his
portrait
. It might be light-years away from the kind of painting he'd been expecting. He'd told me to paint it any way I liked, and didn't have any special requests about the style it was done in. But just
possibly
, there might be some element in the painting, something negative, that he himself didn't want to recognize. Not that I could do anything about that now. Whether he liked the painting or not, it was already out of my hands, beyond my will.

Seated on the stool, I kept staring at the portrait for nearly another half hour.
I
had painted it, that much I knew, but the end product outstripped the bounds of any logic or understanding I possessed. How had I painted something like that? I couldn't even recall now. I stared dumbfounded at the painting, my feelings swinging from intimacy to total alienation. But one thing was sure—the colors and form were perfect.

Maybe I was on the verge of finding an exit, I thought. Finally able to pass through the thick wall that stood in my way. But still, things had only begun. I had only just managed to grasp a kind of clue as to how to proceed. I would have to be extremely careful. Telling myself this, I went over to the sink and methodically cleaned the paint from the brushes and painting knife. I washed my hands with oil and soap. Then I went to the kitchen and drank several glasses of water. I was parched.

All well and good, but who had moved the stool in the studio? (It had most definitely been moved.) And who had spoken in my ear in that strange voice? (I had clearly heard the voice.) And who had suggested to me what was missing from the painting? (A suggestion that had clearly been effective.)