Killing Commendatore: A novel (45 page)

Menshiki's Jaguar was gone when I got back to the house. He had probably come by taxi to pick it up. Or else sent one of the people who worked for him to collect it. Whichever the case, my mud-spattered Toyota Corolla was left there, parked forlornly outside my front door. Menshiki had been right—I should check the tires one of these days, though I hadn't bought an air pressure gauge and probably never would.

I went to the kitchen to start making lunch, but no sooner had I picked up a knife than I realized I was no longer ravenously hungry. Instead, I was very sleepy. I got a blanket, stretched out on the living room sofa, and promptly drifted off. I had a dream, a short one. It was clear and very vivid. But I couldn't remember anything about it. Just that it was clear and vivid. It felt as though a fragment of real life had slipped into my sleeping mind by mistake. Then the moment I awoke, it fled like a quick-footed animal, leaving no trace behind.

The next week flew by. I spent my mornings focused on my painting, and my afternoons reading, taking walks, and doing whatever housework needed to be done. One day blended into the next. My girlfriend showed up on Wednesday and we spent the afternoon making love. The constant creaking of my old bed really cracked her up.

“It's going to fall to pieces before long,” she predicted during a pause in our exertions. “There'll be nothing left but splinters—we won't be able to tell if they're wood or pretzel sticks.”

“Maybe we should try to make love more quietly.”

“Maybe Captain Ahab should have hunted sardines,” she said.

I thought about that for a moment. “Are you saying some things in this world can't be changed?”

“Kind of.”

A short time later, we were back on the rolling seas, in pursuit of the great white whale. Some things really can't be changed so easily.

Each day, I worked a little on Mariye Akikawa's portrait. My initial sketch had established the skeleton, and now I was filling it out. I tried combining various colors to come up with the right tone for the background. Her face had to sit naturally over that foundation. These tasks tided me over as I waited for her next visit to the studio on Sunday. Some parts of my job were carried out while the model was present, while other preparatory work had to be done before the model's arrival. I loved both. I could take my time mulling over the various elements, and experiment to find just the right color, just the right style. I enjoyed the hands-on nature of this work, and the challenge of creating an environment from which the subject would spring to life.

While preparing Mariye's portrait, I began working on a different canvas—a painting of the pit behind the shrine. The pit had etched itself in my mind with such force that I didn't need it in front of me. I painted the scene in minute detail. The style was purely realistic, the viewpoint objective. I avoided objective representation in my art (except, of course, the portraits that were my “day job”), but that didn't mean I couldn't do it. When I wanted to, I could paint so precisely that the result could be mistaken for a photograph. I used that hyperrealistic style occasionally to change my mood, or refresh the fundamentals of my craft. I never showed those paintings to anyone, though—they were for my private enjoyment, nothing more.

In this way, the pit in the woods began to appear before me, more vivid and alive with each passing day. A mysterious round aperture half covered by thick planks. This was the pit that had given birth to the Commendatore. There were no human figures in the painting, however, just a black hole. Fallen leaves covered the earth surrounding it. A scene of perfect tranquility. Yet it felt as if someone (or something) might come crawling out of that hole any minute. The longer I pictured the scene, the stronger that premonition grew. Looking at it made my spine tingle, although I was the one who had painted it.

I worked like this every day, spending all morning alone in the studio. Palette and brush in hand, I moved back and forth between
A Portrait of Mariye Akikawa
and
The Pit in the Woods
—two more different paintings would be hard to imagine—as the mood struck me. I applied myself to the canvases while sitting on the same stool Tomohiko Amada had occupied in the dead of night the previous Sunday. Perhaps because my focus was so great, the dense presence I had felt the next morning had at some point disappeared. The old stool was once again a mere piece of furniture, there for my use. It seemed that Tomohiko Amada had gone back to where he belonged.

There were nights that week when I opened the studio door a crack to peek inside. But no one was ever there. Not Tomohiko Amada, not the Commendatore. Just an old stool parked in front of two easels. The moon cast its dim light over the objects in the room. All was quiet.
Killing Commendatore
hung on one wall. My unfinished work,
The Man with the White Subaru Forester,
was turned around so no one could see it. The two paintings I was working on,
A Portrait of Mariye Akikawa
and
The Pit in the Woods,
sat side by side on two easels. The smell of oil paint, turpentine, and poppyseed oil hung in the air. It never left, no matter how long the windows were left open. It was a special aroma, one I breathed every day, and would probably go on breathing for the rest of my life. I inhaled the air of the studio as if to confirm its presence, then quietly closed the door.

Masahiko called Friday night to say he was coming the next afternoon. He'd buy fresh fish from the market nearby, so I needn't worry about dinner. I could look forward to a special treat.

“Anything more I should bring?” he asked. “I can pick up what you want on my way.”

“Can't think of anything,” I answered. Then I remembered. “Now that you mention it, I'm out of whiskey. A friend and I polished off what you brought last time. Could you pick up another bottle? Any brand is okay.”

“I like Chivas myself. Would that do?”

“You bet,” I said. Masahiko had always been picky about food and drink. I was a different story. I ate and drank whatever was put in front of me.

When our phone call ended, I went to the studio, took
Killing Commendatore
down from the wall, carried it to my bedroom, and covered it. It wouldn't do to have Tomohiko Amada's son see the painting his father had hidden in the attic. For the time being, at least.

Now a visitor to the studio would see only
A Portrait of Mariye Akikawa
and
The Pit in the Woods
. I stood there looking back and forth at the two works in progress, comparing them. An image rose to my mind: I could see Mariye walking behind the shrine to the pit. I had a distinct sense that
something
might begin then. The lid was half open. The darkness was calling. Was Long Face there waiting for her? Or the Commendatore?

Could these two paintings be connected in some way?

Since moving to this house, I had been painting almost nonstop. I had completed Menshiki's portrait on commission, then started
The Man with the White Subaru Forester
(brought to a halt when I had just begun to add color), and now was working on
A Portrait of Mariye Akikawa
and
The Pit in the Woods
in tandem. It struck me that the four paintings might fit together to form the beginning of a story of some kind.

Then again, perhaps I was documenting the story through my painting. That's what it felt like, anyway. Had someone given me the role or the right to be that chronicler? If so,
who
? Why was I chosen, of all people?

Masahiko's black Volvo station wagon came trundling up the slope shortly before four o'clock on Saturday afternoon. He loved the toughness and reliability of those old boxy cars. He'd driven this one seemingly forever, put a ton of miles on it, yet showed no inclination to trade it in for a new one. On this occasion, he brought along the special carving knife he used for fish. As always, it was razor sharp. In my kitchen, he used it to prepare the large, fresh sea bream he had just bought in Itoh. Masahiko had always been good with his hands, a man of many talents. Without a wasted motion, he filleted the fish, sliced the flesh into sashimi, and boiled the bones for broth. He lightly grilled the skin to nibble on with our drinks. I just stood there, enjoying the show. Who knows, he might have been a famous chef had he taken that route.

“Actually, it's best to let sashimi sit a day until the flesh softens and the flavor comes out, but what the hell,” he said, deftly plying the knife. “You can handle it, right?”

“No problem—I'm not picky,” I said.

“You can eat any leftovers tomorrow.”

“Will do.”

“Hey, do you mind if I crash here tonight?” Masahiko asked. “I'd like to stay the evening so we can hang out and drink without feeling rushed. Drinking and driving is no good, right? I can sleep on the sofa in the living room.”

“Sure,” I said. “It's your house, after all. Stay as long as you like.”

“Are you sure some woman won't show up in the middle of the night?”

“No plans as of now,” I replied, shaking my head.

“Okay, then I'll stay.”

“You don't have to crash on the sofa—there's a bed in the guest room.”

“No, I prefer the sofa. It's a lot more comfortable than it looks. Slept like a baby on it back in the old days.”

He pulled out a bottle of Chivas Regal, cut the seal, and opened it. I brought ice from the refrigerator and two glasses. The gurgle of whiskey pouring into the glass was music to my ears. Like an old friend opening his heart to me. We sipped the whiskey as we finished preparing dinner.

“It's been a hell of a long time since you and I drank like this,” Masahiko said.

“It sure feels that way. I remember us putting back a lot.”

“
I
put back a lot, you mean,” he said. “You never drank that much.”

I laughed. “Maybe not from your point of view, but it was a lot for me.”

I never got totally drunk. I always fell asleep first. But he was a different kind of drinker. Once he settled in for the long haul, he went all the way.

We sat across from each other at the table, sipping whiskey and eating the seafood. For starters, we shared the eight raw oysters he had bought with the sea bream. Then we dug into the sashimi. It was a bit too firm, as he had predicted, but it was delicious nonetheless, especially with the whiskey. By the end, we had polished it all off. We were already pretty full. The only other food was the crispy fish skin, small chunks of wasabi mixed with sake lees, and a dish of tofu. We topped off the meal with the soup he had prepared.

“I haven't had a feast like this in ages,” I said.

“You can't eat like this in Tokyo,” he said. “Living around here wouldn't be half bad. Fresh fish anytime.”

“I bet you'd find life here boring eventually, though.”

“Are you bored?”

“Am I? I guess I've never found boredom that painful. And besides, there's quite a lot going on here.”

That was for sure. I had met Menshiki soon after my arrival in early summer, we had dug up the pit behind the shrine, then the Commendatore had made his appearance, and finally Mariye Akikawa and her aunt Shoko had entered my life. I had a girlfriend, a housewife in her sexual prime, who came to comfort me. Tomohiko Amada's living spirit had paid me a visit. There was hardly time to be bored.

“I might not be bored here either,” Masahiko said. “Did you know I used to be into surfing? I rode the waves all up and down this coast.”

That was news to me, I told him. He'd never mentioned it before.

“I've been thinking of leaving Tokyo, of going back to that kind of life. I'd check out the ocean when I woke up, then grab my board and head out if the surf was up.”

The idea of that kind of life left me cold.

“What about your job?” I asked.

“I only need to go to Tokyo twice a week to take care of business. Most of my work is done on computer anyway, so it wouldn't be that hard to live outside the city. The world's changing, right?”

“I wouldn't know.”

He looked at me in amazement. “This is the twenty-first century, man. Haven't you heard?”

“I've heard talk.”

After dinner, we moved to the living room to continue drinking. Autumn was almost over, but it wasn't so cold that we needed to light a fire.

“So then, how's your father doing these days?” I asked.

Masahiko let out a small sigh. “Same as always. His mind is shot. Can't tell the difference between his balls and a pair of eggs.”

“If it breaks when you drop it, it's an egg,” I said.

He laughed. “People are strange creatures, aren't they? I mean, my father was as solid as a rock until just a few years ago. Mind as clear as the night sky in winter. To an almost disgusting degree. And now his memory is like a black hole. This dark, unfathomable hole that popped up out of nowhere in the middle of the cosmos.”

Masahiko shook his head.

“Who was it that said, ‘The greatest surprise in life is old age'?” he asked.

I couldn't help him with that one. I'd never heard the saying. But it was probably true. Old age must be an even bigger shock than death. Far beyond what we can imagine. The day someone tells you that you're flat-out useless, that your existence is irrelevant—biologically (and socially)—in this world.

“So tell me about this dream you had of my father,” Masahiko asked me. “Was it really as lifelike as you said?”

“Yeah, so lifelike it hardly seemed a dream.”

“And he was in the studio?”

I took him to the studio.

“Your father was sitting there,” I said, pointing to the stool in the middle of the room.

Masahiko walked over to the stool. “Just sitting?” he asked, placing his palm on its seat.

“That's right. He wasn't doing anything.”

In fact, his father had been staring at
Killing Commendatore
on the wall, but I didn't tell him that.

“My father loved this stool,” he said. “It was just a common old thing, but he never got rid of it. He sat on it to paint, and to think.”

“It's relaxing to sit on,” I said. “You'd be surprised.”

Masahiko stood there with his hand on the stool, lost in thought. But he didn't sit down. After a minute, he turned his attention to the two canvases facing it.
A Portrait of Mariye Akikawa
and
The Pit in the Woods,
my two works in progress. He examined them slowly and carefully, like a doctor looking for a trace of shadow on a patient's X-ray.

“These are great,” he said. “Really interesting.”

“Both of them?”

“Yes, both. When you place them side by side like this, you feel a strange kind of movement between them. Their styles are totally different, but you get a sense they're somehow linked.”