Killing Commendatore: A novel (48 page)

“But it's not that easy to stop a relationship of this sort once it's gotten started,” I said.

Not that easy at all
, I said to myself. It would move forward, crushing everything in its path, like the Hindus' great wheel of karma. There could be no turning back.

“That's why I had to talk to you,” Mariye said. Then she looked me square in the eye.

When it began to get dark, I took my flashlight and walked Mariye almost as far as her passageway. She said she had to be home by dinner. They usually ate around seven.

She had come to ask me for advice. Yet I hadn't been able to offer anything useful. All I could tell her was to wait and see how things developed. I knew Menshiki and Shoko might be having sex, but they were two unmarried and consenting adults. What was I supposed to do? Sure, I had some background information, but I couldn't reveal it, not to Mariye, and not to her aunt. That meant that I couldn't give useful advice to anyone. I was like a boxer trying to fight with his best arm tied behind his back.

Mariye and I walked side by side through the woods, hardly exchanging a word. We had gone partway along the path when she reached down and took my hand. Her hand was small, but its grip was unexpectedly firm. I was surprised at first, but then I had often walked this way with my sister, so it didn't put me off. Instead, it felt normal, a kind of return to my youth.

Mariye's hand was very smooth to the touch. Warm but not at all sweaty. She must have been thinking about something, for her hand squeezed mine and relaxed, squeezed and relaxed, depending, I guess, on what she was thinking. My sister had done the same thing back in the old days.

When we reached the shrine, she let go of my hand and, without a word, circled around to the back. I followed her.

The pampas grass still bore the tread marks of the backhoe. Within lay the silent pit. Its cover was made of sturdy boards, weighted down by a row of stones. I shone my flashlight on them to confirm that they hadn't been moved. They hadn't.

“Is it okay if I look in?” Mariye asked me.

“Just look.”

“Just look,” Mariye said.

I set some of the stones to the side and removed one of the boards. Mariye knelt and peered through the opening. I trained the flashlight on the floor of the pit. Of course, nobody was there. Only a metal ladder leaning against the wall. If one so chose, one could use it to climb down and then back up again. It would be next to impossible to get out without the ladder, although the pit was less than nine feet deep. The walls were just too smooth and slick to be scaled.

Holding her hair back with one hand, Mariye stared inside the pit for a long time. Intently, as if searching for something in the dark. I had no idea what was down there to capture her attention.

“Who built this?” she asked, looking up at last.

“I don't know. At first I thought it might be a well, but now I'm not so sure. I mean, who would dig a well in such an out-of-the-way place? Anyway, it looks very old. And it's very well put together. It must have taken a long time to build.”

Mariye looked at me steadily without saying anything.

“This area has been your playground for quite a while, hasn't it?” I said.

She nodded.

“But you didn't know this pit was behind the shrine until recently.”

She shook her head. No, she hadn't known.

“You found it and opened it, didn't you?” she asked.

“That's right, I may have been the one who discovered it. I didn't know it was a pit, but I figured
something
had to be under that pile of rocks. The person who arranged for the rocks to be moved and the pit to be opened, though, was Mr. Menshiki.” I wanted to let her in on this much, at least. It was better to be honest.

A bird cried in the trees. It was a sharp, piercing call, as if to warn its fellow creatures. I looked up but couldn't catch sight of it. All I could see were the layered branches of the leafless trees. And beyond those the evening sky of approaching winter, flat, expressionless, and gray.

Mariye winced slightly. But she didn't respond.

“It's hard to explain,” I said. “I felt as if the pit was demanding that someone open it. And that I had been bidden to perform that task.”

“Bidden?”

“Invited. Called upon to.”

She looked up at me. “It wanted you to open it?”

“Yes.”

“
This pit
asked you to open it?”

“It could have been anyone, perhaps. Maybe I just happened to be around.”

“But it was Mr. Menshiki who actually did it.”

“Yes. I brought him here. I couldn't have uncovered it without him. The rocks were too heavy to move by hand, and I didn't have the cash to bring in heavy equipment. It was a fortunate coincidence.”

“Maybe you shouldn't have done it,” she said after a moment's thought. “I think I told you that before.”

“So you think I should have left it as it was?”

Mariye didn't answer immediately. She stood up and brushed the dirt off the knees of her jeans. Not once but several times. She and I replaced the board, and the stones that held it down. Once again, I committed their location to memory.

“Yes, I think so,” she said at last, lightly rubbing her palms against each other.

“I think this place may have had some kind of religious background. There might be legends or stories connected to it.”

Mariye shook her head. She didn't know of any. “Maybe my father knows something.”

The whole area had been owned by her father's family since before the Meiji period. The adjoining mountain was also in their hands. He might have a good idea of what the pit and shrine meant.

“Could you ask him?”

Mariye winced slightly. “I'll try,” she said in a small voice. She hesitated. “If I have a chance.”

“It would be a big help if we knew who built it when, and for what purpose.”

“Maybe they shut up something inside, and put heavy stones on top to make sure it didn't get out,” she offered.

“So you think maybe they heaped on the stones to prevent whatever it was from escaping, and then built the little shrine to ward off its curse?”

“Maybe.”

“And then we went and pried it open anyway.”

Mariye gave a small shrug.

I accompanied her to where the woods ended. She'd go on from there by herself, she said. The darkness was no problem—she knew the way. She wanted no one to see the passage that led to her home. It was a shortcut that she alone should know. So I turned back, leaving her there. Only a glimmer of light remained in the sky. The cold blackness was descending.

The same bird made the same piercing call when I passed before the shrine. This time, though, I didn't look up. I headed straight home, leaving the shrine behind. As I prepared dinner I sipped a glass of Chivas Regal and water. There was only enough left in the bottle for one more drink. The night was deathly silent. As if the clouds were absorbing every living sound.

You shouldn't have opened the pit.

Perhaps Mariye was right. I should have steered clear of the pit. It seemed that everything I did these days was off the mark.

I imagined Menshiki making love to Shoko. The two of them naked, entwined on a big bed in a room somewhere in that sprawling white mansion. That event was taking place in another world, of course, one that bore no connection to me. Yet the thought of the two of them together left me bereft. As if I were standing in a station watching a long, empty train pass by.

Finally, I fell asleep and my Sunday ended. A deep dreamless sleep, undisturbed by anyone.

Of the two paintings I was working on,
The Pit in the Woods
was the one I knocked off first. It was Friday afternoon when I finished it. Paintings are strange things: as they near the end they acquire their own will, their own viewpoint, even their own powers of speech. They tell the artist when they are done (at least that's the way it works for me). A spectator to the process—if one is present—can't tell the difference between a painting in process and a completed painting, for the line is virtually invisible to the naked eye. But the artist knows. He or she can hear the painting say,
Hands off, I'm done
. The artist has only to heed that voice.

So it was with
The Pit in the Woods
. At a certain point, it announced itself finished and refused my brush. Like a sexually satisfied woman. I took the canvas from the easel and leaned it against the wall. Then I sat down on the floor and regarded it at length. My painting of a half-covered hole in the ground.

I couldn't pin down my motive for painting it, or its meaning. It had just grabbed me. I couldn't come up with anything beyond that. These things happen. When something strikes me in that way—a landscape, an object, a person—I pick up my brush and am off to the races. No meaning, no motive. I just go where my gut tells me, pure and simple.

But wait, I thought. This time was different. This wasn't mere impulse.
Something
had demanded that I paint this painting. Urgently. That was why I had finished it so quickly—whatever it was, that demand had fired me up, sent me to my easel, and propelled me forward, like a hand on my back. Or maybe the pit was the agent, pushing me to draw its portrait, leaving me to guess its motive. In the same way that Menshiki, likely in pursuit of some larger plan, had enlisted me to paint his portrait.

Judged in a fair and objective way, the painting wasn't bad. I couldn't tell whether it could be called a work of art or not. (Not to make excuses, but I hadn't begun with that goal in mind.) From the standpoint of pure technique, though, it was a success. The composition was flawless, and I had captured both the light streaming through the trees and the colors of the fallen leaves. It was realistic right down to its tiniest detail, yet, nevertheless, a mysterious, symbolic aura hovered over it.

As I sat there staring at the finished work, a feeling came over me, what might be called a
premonition of impending movement
. On the surface at least, it was just as its title said: a landscape painting of the pit in the woods. It was so accurate, in fact, that “reproduction” might be closer to the truth. As someone who had been developing his craft, however imperfectly, for so long, I had the artistic skill to reproduce an exact likeness of the scene on canvas. I had not painted the scene so much as I had
documented
it.

Nevertheless, that
premonition
was there. Something was about to take place within that landscape. The painting was telling me that. Then I realized. What I had been trying to get across, or what that
something
had been trying to get me to paint, was precisely that premonition, those signs.

Sitting there on the floor, I straightened my back and looked at the painting anew.

What was about to happen? Was someone or something about to come crawling out from the darkness that lay beneath the half-open cover? Or, conversely, was someone about to climb down into the hole? Though I looked long and hard, I couldn't guess what would take place. I only knew some sort of movement was about to occur. The strength of my premonition left no doubt.

Why did the pit so badly want me to paint it? To try to tell me something? To warn me? It was a game of riddles. So many riddles, and not a single answer. I wanted to show the painting to Mariye and hear what she had to say. Maybe she could see what I couldn't.

Friday was the day I taught drawing near Odawara Station. Mariye was one of the students, so she would be there. Perhaps I could have a word with her afterward. I hopped in my car and headed to town.

There was still plenty of time when I arrived, so I parked and went to get my customary cup of coffee. No gleaming, functional Starbucks for me—my coffee shop was untouched by time, a back-alley spot run by a man on the cusp of old age who served a jet-black, muddy brew in a cup that weighed a ton. Jazz from a former era played on the ancient speakers. Billie Holiday, Clifford Brown, and other classics. As I still had time to spare when I finished my coffee, I wandered down the shopping street. I was low on coffee filters, so I bought a pack. I found a used-record store, and browsed through their old LPs. I realized I hadn't listened to anything other than classical music for a very long time. Tomohiko Amada's shelves contained no other kinds of records. If I listened to the radio, it was only to catch the news and weather on the AM dial (my location meant almost no FM reception).

I had left my records and CDs—not that there were a lot of them—in the Hiroo apartment. It would have been painful to sort out which books and records belonged to Yuzu and which to me. Impossible, really. Who did Bob Dylan's
Nashville Skyline
belong to? How about the Doors album with “Alabama Song” on it? What difference did it make who had shelled out the money? We'd shared the same music for a period of time, lived our life together listening to it. Even if we had been able to divide the records, we could never have separated the memories attached to them. I had to leave them all behind.

I looked for
Nashville Skyline
and the first album by the Doors, but couldn't find either. They may have been available on CD, but I wanted to hear them on an old-style phonograph. There was no CD player in Tomohiko Amada's house anyway. And no cassette deck. Just a couple of record players. Tomohiko Amada likely had no interest in new technology. He'd probably never come within six feet of a microwave oven.

In the end, I bought two records. Bruce Springsteen's
The River
and a collection of duets by Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway. Both were old favorites of mine. At some point in my life, I had given up on new music. Instead, I listened to the old stuff over and over again. Books were the same. I reread books from my past, often more than once, but ignored books that had just come out. Somewhere along the way, time seemed to have come to a screeching halt.

Perhaps time really had stopped. Then again, maybe it kept nudging forward despite the fact that evolution, or anything resembling it, had ended. Like a restaurant approaching closing time that has stopped taking orders. And I was the only one who hadn't figured it out.

The shop assistant put the two records in a bag, and I paid. Then I went to a nearby liquor store to buy some whiskey. I wasn't sure what to get, but finally settled on Chivas Regal. It was a little more expensive, but would be a big hit with Masahiko the next time he stopped by.

My starting time for class was approaching, so I stashed the records, coffee filters, and whiskey in my car and entered the building where classes were held. The kids were first, starting at five o'clock. Mariye was part of that group. But I couldn't spot her. This was a first. She was passionate about the class, had never skipped it before, as far as I knew. Her absence unsettled me. I found it somehow alarming, even threatening. Was she all right? Was she ill, or had something unexpected happened to her?

Nevertheless, I carried on as though nothing was wrong, assigning simple exercises, offering comments on each child's drawing, giving advice. When class ended, the children went home and the adult class began. It too passed without incident. I exchanged good-natured pleasantries with the people there (hardly my strong point, but I can do it when required). After that, I had a brief meeting with the workshop organizer about future plans. He had no idea why Mariye was absent. There had been no word from her family.

After work, I went to a nearby noodle shop and ate a hot bowl of tempura soba. This too was my weekly habit. Always the same shop, and always tempura soba. One of life's little pleasures. Then I drove back to my house on the mountain. It was almost nine when I arrived.

I couldn't tell if anyone had tried to contact me while I was gone, for there was no answering machine (such a “clever” device probably numbered among Tomohiko Amada's bêtes noires). I gave the simple, old-fashioned telephone a long look, but it didn't speak. It just sat there, in black silence.

I had a long soak in a hot bath. Then I poured what was left of the original bottle of Chivas Regal into a glass, added two ice cubes from the fridge, and took the drink to the living room, where I sipped it while listening to one of the records I had just bought. At first, it seemed somehow
inappropriate
to be playing anything other than classical in my mountaintop domicile. The air in the room had been conditioned to that type of music for a very long time. Still, I was playing my music, so that now, song by song, a familiarity overcame the feeling of inappropriateness. As I listened, I could feel my body start to relax. I must have been tense without being aware of it.

The A side of the Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway record had ended and the first song on the B side (“For All We Know,” a really cool performance) had just begun when the phone rang. The clock said 10:30. Who on earth would be calling me so late? I didn't want to answer. Yet the ring sounded urgent. I put down my glass, rose from the sofa, lifted the needle off the record, and picked up the phone.

“Hello?” It was Shoko Akikawa.

I greeted her.

“I'm so terribly sorry to be phoning this late,” she said. I had never heard her sound so anxious. “But I needed to ask you something. Mariye didn't show up at art class today, did she?”

No, I replied, she didn't. The question was a strange one. Normally, Mariye came straight from school (the public junior high in the area) in her uniform. When class ended, her aunt picked her up in the car, and the two went home together. That pattern never varied.

“I haven't seen Mariye anywhere,” Shoko said.

“Haven't seen her?”

“She's missing.”

“Since what time?” I asked.

“Since this morning, when she left for school. I offered to drive her to the station, but she said she'd walk. She likes walking. Much more than riding in the car. So I give her a lift when she's running late, but otherwise she walks down the hill to the bus stop and takes the bus to the station. This morning she left the house at seven thirty, as usual.”

Shoko said all this in a single breath, then stopped. I could hear her trying to control her breathing. I used the pause to put what she had just told me into some kind of order.

“Today is Friday,” Shoko continued. “When school lets out on Fridays, she goes directly to art class. And then I pick her up afterward. But today Mariye said she'd take the bus home instead. So I didn't go. When she says something like that, it's pointless to argue. But she still gets back by seven or seven thirty. Then she has dinner. But tonight, it turned to eight and then eight thirty and she still hadn't returned. So I called the center and asked whether she had come to class or not. They checked and said she hadn't shown up. That's when I got really worried. Now it's ten thirty and she's still not back. I've heard nothing. That's why I'm calling you—I thought perhaps you might know something.”

“I haven't a clue where she is,” I said. “I was rather surprised when I showed up for class and Mariye wasn't there. She's never skipped before.”

Shoko gave a deep sigh. “My brother's not back yet. I don't know when to expect him—he hasn't contacted me. I'm not sure if he'll return tonight or not. I'm here all alone, and I don't know what to do.”

“She was wearing her school uniform when she left this morning, correct?”

“Yes, she left in her uniform, with a bag over her shoulder. The same as always. A blazer and skirt. I don't know if she ever made it to school, though. It's late, so there's no way to check. But I'm quite sure she got there. The school contacts us if there's an unexplained absence. She was carrying enough money for a single day's expenses, no more. I make her take a cell phone just in case, but it's been shut off all day. She doesn't like cell phones. She'll use hers to call me, but she usually keeps it off the rest of the time. I've warned her about that over and over, begged her not to turn it off, explained that we may need to reach her if something important comes up, but she doesn't—”

“Has this ever happened before? Her coming home late?”

“This is the first time, really. Mariye is very dependable. She has no close friends she hangs out with, and once she's agreed to do something, she follows through, even though she doesn't like school all that much. She won a prize for perfect attendance in elementary school. She always comes straight home after school. She never loiters along the way.”

Mariye's aunt was clearly in the dark about her nighttime forays.

“Was there anything she said or did this morning that was out of the ordinary?”

“No, nothing. It was a regular morning. The same as always. She drinks a glass of warm milk, eats a slice of toast, and heads out the door. Every day is identical. I made her breakfast today as I usually do. She didn't say a great deal. But that's normal. She can talk a blue streak once she gets started, but most of the time, you can't get much out of her.”

I was beginning to worry. It was almost eleven at night, and it was pitch dark outside. The moon was hiding behind the clouds. What on earth had happened to Mariye Akikawa?

“I'll wait one more hour. If Mariye still hasn't contacted me by then, I'll call the police,” Shoko said.

“That's a good idea,” I said. “And let me know if there's anything I can do. Any time is all right—please don't hesitate, no matter how late it is.”