Killing Commendatore: A novel (31 page)

“So Tomohiko Amada was sent back to Japan?”

“Correct. Rescued is more like it. Thanks to the political considerations of higher-ups, he narrowly escaped getting killed. If the Gestapo had gotten hold of him under suspicion of something that serious—even if they hadn't had any clear-cut evidence—that would have been the end of him.”

“But the assassination didn't happen?”

“No, it was abortive. There was an informant in the group, and the plan was leaked to the Gestapo. There was a wholesale arrest of the members.”

“There would have been a real uproar if they'd gone through with it.”

“The strange thing is, there was no talk of it at the time,” Menshiki said. “There were whispers about a scandal, but there doesn't seem to be any public record of it. For various reasons, it was covered up.”

So the Commendatore in the painting
Killing Commendatore
might represent that Nazi official. The painting might be a hypothetical depiction of the assassination that never actually happened in Vienna in 1938. Amada and his lover were connected with this plot, and then it was discovered by the authorities. The two of them were torn apart, and the woman most likely killed. And after he returned to Japan Amada transferred that horrific experience in Vienna onto the very symbolic canvas of a Japanese-style painting.
Adapting
it, in other words, into a scene from the Asuka period, set over a thousand years ago.
Killing Commendatore
was a painting Tomohiko Amada painted for himself alone. He felt compelled for his own sake to paint it to preserve that awful, bloody memory from his youth. Which is precisely why he never made the painting public, why he wrapped it up tightly and hid it away in the attic.

Perhaps that incident in Vienna was one reason he made a clean break with his career as an artist of Western paintings and converted to Japanese-style painting. He might have wanted to decisively separate himself from the self he used to be.

“How did you find out about all this?” I asked.

“It didn't take a lot of effort on my part. I asked an organization run by an acquaintance to investigate it for me. But it happened such a long time ago, and they can't be held responsible for how much of it is really true. They did check with multiple sources, though, so I think the information can basically be trusted.”

“Tomohiko Amada had an Austrian lover. She was a member of an underground resistance group. And he was involved in that assassination plot.”

Menshiki inclined his head a bit and then spoke. “If that's true, then it's a pretty dramatic series of events. But most of the people involved are dead by now, so there's no way for us to really know what happened. Facts have a tendency to get embellished, too. At any rate, though, it's pretty melodramatic.”

“No one knows how deeply he was involved in that plot?”

“No. We don't know. I've just given it my own dramatic touch. Amada was deported from Vienna, bid his lover farewell—or maybe wasn't even able to do that—was put on a ship in Bremen, and returned to Japan. During the war he remained silent, holed up in rural Aso, then debuted as a painter of Japanese-style paintings soon after the end of the war. Which took people by complete surprise. Another pretty dramatic development.”

Thus ended the story of Tomohiko Amada.

The same black Infiniti I'd arrived in was quietly awaiting me in front of the house. A faint drizzle was still intermittently falling, the air wet and chilly. The season when you needed a coat was just around the corner.

“Thank you so much for coming,” Menshiki said. “My thanks, too, to the Commendatore.”

It is
I
who should be doing the thanking
, the Commendatore murmured in my ear. His voice, of course, was only for me to hear. I thanked Menshiki once more for dinner. It was an amazing meal, I said. I couldn't be more satisfied. The Commendatore seemed grateful as well.

“I hope bringing up all of those boring details after dinner didn't spoil the evening,” Menshiki said.

“Not at all. But about your request: I need some time to think about it.”

“Of course.”

“It takes me time to consider things.”

“It's the same for me,” Menshiki said. “My motto is: Thinking three times is better than two. And if time allows, thinking four times is better than three.”

The driver had the rear door open, waiting. I got inside. The Commendatore should have boarded at the same time, though I didn't see him. The car started up the asphalt slope, drove out the open gate, then proceeded slowly down the mountain. Once the white mansion disappeared from view, everything that happened that night seemed like part of a dream. It was getting harder to distinguish what was normal from what was not, what was real and what was not.

What you can see is real
, the Commendatore whispered in my ear.
What you need to do is open your eyes wide and look at it. You can judge it later on
.

Even with my eyes wide open, there could be many things I was overlooking, I thought. I may have actually murmured this aloud, since the chauffeur shot me a glance in the rearview mirror. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the seat. And thought this: How wonderful it would be to put off judging things forever.

I got home a little before ten p.m. I brushed my teeth in the bathroom, changed into pajamas, slid into bed, and fell right asleep. Predictably, I had a million dreams, all of them strange, disconcerting. Swastika flags flying over the streets of Vienna, a huge passenger ship easing out of Bremen harbor, a brass band playing on the pier, Bluebeard's unopened room, Menshiki playing the Steinway.

Two days later I got a call from my agent in Tokyo. They'd received the transfer of funds from Mr. Menshiki, the payment for the painting, and after taking the agent's fee out of it the rest had been deposited into my bank account. When I heard the total amount I was astonished. It was much higher than what I'd originally heard.

“The finished painting was better than he'd anticipated, so he added a bonus. There was a message from Mr. Menshiki requesting that you accept this as a token of his gratitude,” my agent said.

I groaned faintly, but no words would come.

“I haven't seen the actual painting, though Mr. Menshiki attached a photo. From the photo, at least, it looks like an amazing work. Something that goes beyond the boundaries of portrait painting, yet remains a convincing portrait.”

I thanked him and hung up.

A little while later my girlfriend called. Did I mind if she came over tomorrow morning? That would be fine, I told her. Friday was when I taught art class, but I'd have enough time to make it.

“Did you have dinner at Mr. Menshiki's place?” she asked.

“Yes, a really excellent meal.”

“Did it taste good?”

“It was amazing. The wine was great, too, and the food was outstanding.”

“What was the house like inside?”

“Beautiful,” I said. “It'd take me half a day to describe it all.”

“Could you tell me all about it when I see you?”

“Before? Or after?”

“After's good,” she said simply.

After I hung up the phone, I went into the studio and looked at Tomohiko Amada's
Killing Commendatore
. I'd seen it so many times, but now, after what Menshiki told me, it took on a strangely graphic reality. This was not simply some historical picture of a past event, reproduced in an old-fashioned format. It felt—from the expressions and movements of each of the four characters (excluding Long Face)—like you could read their reactions to the situation. The young man piercing the Commendatore with his long sword was perfectly expressionless. He'd shut away his heart, hiding his emotions. In the Commendatore's face, one could read the agony as his chest was stabbed, but also a sense of pure surprise, the sense of
How could this possibly be happening?
The young woman watching this take place (in the opera, this character is Donna Anna) was torn apart by violently conflicting emotions. Her lovely face was contorted in anguish, her lovely white hand held to her mouth. The stocky man, a servant by the look of him (Leporello), was gasping for breath, gazing up at the sky. His hand was stretched out as if trying to reach something.

The organization was perfect. The composition couldn't be improved. It was a superb, polished arrangement. Each character maintained a vivid dynamism in their actions, instantaneously frozen in time. And now I saw the events of the aborted assassination that
may
have occurred in 1938 Vienna overlaying the painting. The Commendatore was dressed not in Asuka period costume but in a Nazi uniform. Maybe the black uniform of the SS. And in his chest was a saber or perhaps a dagger.
Perhaps
the one stabbing him was Tomohiko Amada himself. And who was the woman gasping nearby? Was this Amada's Austrian lover? And what was it that was rending her heart in two like that?

I sat on the stool, gazing for a long time at
Killing Commendatore
. My imagination could come up with all sorts of allegories and messages contained therein, but these were, in the final analysis, nothing more than unsubstantiated hypotheses. The background—what I took as background, that is—that Menshiki had talked about was not historical fact, but nothing more than rumor. Or else just a melodrama. Everything remained on the level of
perhaps
.

A thought suddenly struck me: I wish my sister were here.

If Komi were with me, I'd tell her everything that had happened, and she'd listen quietly, adding an occasional short question. Even with an incomprehensible, mixed-up story like this, I doubt she'd frown or show any surprise. Her calm, thoughtful expression wouldn't change. And after I finished, she'd pause, then give me some useful advice. Ever since we were little we'd had that kind of interaction. But I realized now she'd never come to
me
for advice. As far as I could recall, that had never happened. Why? Maybe she didn't have any major emotional issues? Or maybe she'd decided asking me for advice wasn't going to help? Maybe both, or half of each.

But even if she had been healthy and hadn't died at twelve, the intimate brother-sister relationship we had shared might not have lasted. Komi might have ended up marrying some boring guy, gone to live in a town far away, been run ragged by everyday life, exhausted by raising children, lost her sparkle, and no longer retained the energy to give me advice. No one could say how our lives would have worked out.

The problems my wife and I had had might have stemmed from me unconsciously wanting Yuzu to stand in for Komi. That was never my intention, of course, but now that I thought of it, ever since I lost my sister I may have been seeking, somewhere inside me, a substitute partner I could lean on whenever I was struggling. Needless to say, though, Yuzu wasn't Komi. Their positions, and roles, were vastly different. And so was the history we'd shared.

As I thought about this, I remembered the visit I'd made to Yuzu's parents' home in Kinuta in Setagaya in Tokyo, before we got married.

Yuzu's father was the branch manager of a large bank. His son—Yuzu's older brother—was also a banker, and worked for the same bank. Both were graduates of the elite economics department of Tokyo University. There seemed to be a lot of bankers in her family. I wanted to marry Yuzu (and of course she wanted to marry me, too), and the visit was for me to convey my intentions to her parents. Any way you looked at it, it was hard to call the half-hour interview I had with her father a friendly visit. I was an unknown artist who worked part-time painting portraits and didn't make what could be called a regular income. A guy with little in the way of future prospects. Not at all the sort of man a top banker like her father would view favorably. I'd anticipated this ahead of time and was dead set on not losing my cool no matter what he said, or how much criticism he heaped upon me. And I was basically the kind of person who could put up with a lot.

Yet as I listened to her father's long-winded sermon, a kind of physical revulsion welled up in me, and I lost it. I felt sick, like I was going to throw up. I stood up before he'd finished and said, I'm sorry, but I need to use the bathroom. I knelt down in front of the toilet bowl, trying to vomit up the contents of my stomach. But I couldn't vomit. Because there was hardly anything in my stomach. Even the gastric juices wouldn't come out. I took some deep breaths and calmed down. I gargled with water to get rid of the bad taste in my mouth, wiped the sweat from my face with a handkerchief, and went back to the living room.

“Are you all right?” Yuzu asked, looking concerned. I must have looked awful.

“A successful marriage is up to the people involved, but I can tell you, this one won't last long. Four, five years at the most.” These were her father's parting words to me that day. (I didn't respond.) His spiteful words stayed with me, a kind of curse that remained for a long time to come.

Her parents never did agree to our marriage, but we went ahead and registered it, and officially became a married couple. By this time, I had very little contact with my own parents. Yuzu and I didn't have a wedding ceremony. Our friends rented a small place and held a simple party to celebrate, but that was it. (The person who did the most to make that happen was Masahiko, who was always good at taking care of others.) Despite the inauspicious beginning, we were happy. At least for the first few years, we were definitely happy together. For four or five years, we had no problems between us. But then, like a huge cruising ship in the middle of the ocean turning its rudder, there was a gradual change. I still don't know why. I can't even pinpoint when things began to move in a different direction. What she hoped for in marriage, and what I was looking for, must have been different, and that gap only grew more pronounced over time. And then, before I knew it, she was seeing another man. In the end our marriage only lasted some six years.

I imagine that when her father learned that our marriage had failed, he'd chuckled to himself and thought, I told you so. (Though we had stayed together a year or two beyond what he'd predicted.) It must have pleased him no end that Yuzu had left me. After we'd broken up, had Yuzu reconciled with her family? I had no way of knowing, and didn't really want to know, at that point. This was her business, not mine. But still her father's curse continued to hang over me. Even now, I sensed the vague weight of its presence. I'd been hurt, more than I cared to admit, and had bled. Like the pierced heart of the Commendatore in Tomohiko Amada's painting.

Late afternoon came on, and with it, the early-autumn twilight. The sky turned dark in the twinkling of an eye, the glossy black crows squawking their way across the valley, heading for their roosts. I went out on the terrace, leaned against the railing, and gazed over at Menshiki's house across the way. Several mercury lights were on in his garden, the whiteness of the house rising up in the dusk. I pictured Menshiki out there every night, searching through his high-powered binoculars for Mariye Akikawa. He'd purchased that white house, almost by force, for the sole purpose of doing that. Spent a huge amount of money, made a great deal of effort, all for an overly large house that didn't suit his tastes.

And strangely enough (at least to me it felt strange), I'd begun to feel a closeness to Menshiki, a closeness I'd never felt to anyone before. An affinity—no, a sense of solidarity, really. In a sense, we were very similar—that's what I thought. The two of us were motivated not by what we had got hold of, or were trying to get, but by what we'd lost, what we
did not now have
. I can't say I understood his actions. They were beyond my comprehension. But I could understand what had spurred him on.

I went to the kitchen, took the single malt that Masahiko had given me, and poured a glass on the rocks. I carried the drink out to the living room sofa and selected a record of a Schubert string quartet from Tomohiko Amada's collection, and put it on the turntable. A piece titled “Rosamunde.” The same music that had been playing in Menshiki's study. I listened to the music, occasionally clinking the ice in my glass.

The Commendatore never showed up that day. Maybe, like the horned owl, he was quietly resting up in the attic. Even Ideas needed some time off. I didn't do any painting that day, either. I needed some time off as well.

I raised my glass to the Commendatore.