Killing Commendatore: A novel (49 page)

Shoko thanked me and hung up. I drained what was left of the whiskey and washed the glass in the sink.

After that I went to the studio. I turned on all the lights and stood there in the bright room, taking another lingering look at my unfinished
Portrait of Mariye Akikawa
on the easel. It was close to done—only a little work remained. It showed a version of what a quiet thirteen-year-old girl would ideally look like. Yet there were other elements too, aspects of her that could not be seen, that made her who she was. What I was attempting in all my painting—though not, of course, in the portraits I did on commission—was to try to capture those things which lay outside my field of vision and communicate their message in a different form. Mariye was, in that sense, a most fascinating subject. There was just so much that was hidden, like a trompe l'oeil. And now as of this morning she herself had disappeared. As if swallowed by that very trompe l'oeil.

I turned to look again at
The Pit in the Woods
leaning against the wall. I had just completed it that afternoon. I could feel that painting calling out to me too, though in another way, and from a different direction, than
A Portrait of Mariye Akikawa
.

Something is about to happen.
I felt this again as I looked at the landscape. Until that afternoon it had been a premonition of sorts, but now it was encroaching on reality.
The movement was already under way.
Mariye's disappearance and the pit in the woods were linked in some way. I could sense it. By finishing the painting I had set the gears in motion. And Mariye's vanishing act was the likely result.

Yet I could tell Shoko none of this. All that would do was confuse her even more.

I went back to the kitchen and rinsed the whiskey taste from my mouth with several glasses of water. When that was done, I picked up the phone and called Menshiki. I called three times before he picked up. I detected a slight edge to his voice, as if he were waiting for an important call. That it was me on the line seemed to surprise him. It only took a second, though, for the edge to disappear and the voice to turn cool and collected, as always.

“I'm very sorry to call so late,” I said.

“Not at all. I stay up late, and I've got plenty of time. I'm always happy to hear your voice.”

Skipping the normal pleasantries, I gave him a brief report of Mariye's disappearance. The girl had left home for school in the morning but hadn't returned. Nor had she shown up at my painting class. The news seemed to throw Menshiki for a loop. He took a moment to reply.

“And you have no idea where she might have gone, right?” he asked me.

“None at all,” I replied. “It came out of left field. How about you?”

“I have no idea either, of course. She barely says a word to me.”

There was no anger or regret in his voice. He was simply relating the way she treated him.

“That's just how she is—she's like that with everybody,” I said. “But Shoko is at her wit's end. Mariye's father isn't home either, so she's all alone and unsure what to do.”

Menshiki paused again. It was rare to see him at a loss for words—in fact, I had never witnessed it before.

“Is there anything I can do?” he said at last.

“I know it's sudden,” I said, “but is there any chance you could drop by now?”

“To your home?”

“Yes. There's something in this connection that I need to talk to you about.”

Menshiki took a moment to respond. “All right,” he said. “I'll leave right away.”

“Are you sure you don't have to take care of a matter there first?”

“It's not big enough to call a ‘matter.' It's just a trivial thing,” he said. He cleared his throat. He seemed to be checking his watch. “I can be there in about fifteen minutes.”

When the phone call ended, I got ready to go out. I laid out a sweater and my leather jacket, and placed the big flashlight within easy reach. Then I sat on the sofa and waited for the purr of Menshiki's Jaguar rolling up the hill.

Menshiki arrived at eleven twenty. The moment I heard his Jaguar, I slipped on my leather jacket and headed out the door. He stepped from the car wearing a padded, dark-blue windbreaker, narrow-cut black jeans, and leather sneakers. A light scarf was draped around his neck. His mane of white hair glowed in the dark.

“If it's okay, I'd like you to come with me to check out the pit in the woods,” I said.

“Of course,” Menshiki said. “Do you think it's connected to Mariye's disappearance?”

“I'm not sure. But I've had a premonition for a while that something bad was going to happen. Something connected to that pit.”

Menshiki asked no more questions after that. “Fine,” he said. “Let's go take a look.”

He opened the trunk of his Jaguar and pulled out what looked like a lantern. Then he closed the trunk and set off with me toward the woods. Neither moon nor stars were out, so it was very dark. There was no wind.

“Sorry to ask you to venture out so late,” I said. “But it seemed safer to have you come along. If something went wrong, I might not be able to handle it alone.”

He patted my arm. As though to encourage me. “It's no trouble at all—I'm happy to do what I can.”

We picked our way through the trees, shining the flashlight and lantern on our feet to avoid tripping over the roots. The only sound was the crunch of dry leaves underfoot. Otherwise it was dead silent. I sensed the animals of the woods silently watching us from their hiding places. The dark depths of midnight give rise to illusions like that. Had someone seen us, they might have mistaken us for a pair of grave robbers on their way to ransack a tomb.

“There's just one thing I'd like to ask,” Menshiki said.

“What's that?”

“Why do you think Mariye's disappearance and the pit might be connected?”

I explained that she and I had visited the pit together not long before. That she had already known about its existence. That the whole area was her playground. That nothing happened here without her knowledge. Then I told him what she had said:
You should have left the place as it was. You should never have opened it up.

“When she stood in front of the pit she seemed to have experienced something,” I said. “A special feeling…I guess you could call it spiritual.”

“And she was drawn to it?”

“Yes. She was leery, but at the same time something about the pit was drawing her in. That's why I worry it might have played a role. That she might be down there, unable to get out.”

Menshiki thought for a moment. “Did you tell her aunt this?” he asked. “Does Shoko know?”

“No, I haven't said anything yet. If I mentioned the pit to her, I'd have to go back to the beginning. To how we opened it, and why you were involved. It would turn into a very long story, and I doubt I could explain myself very well.”

“Yes, it would cause her a lot of needless worry.”

“It would be even more awkward if the police got involved. If they grew interested in the pit.”

Menshiki looked at me. “Are they investigating already?”

“She hadn't contacted them yet when I talked to her. But she could have put in a search request by now. After all, it's getting pretty late.”

Menshiki nodded several times. “Yes, it's only natural. It's almost midnight, and a thirteen-year-old girl hasn't come home. No one knows where she's gone. What can her family do but call the cops?”

I could tell from his tone that Menshiki wasn't too thrilled that the police would be entering the picture.

“Let's keep the pit between ourselves if we can,” he said. “The fewer people know, the better. Otherwise we could run into problems.” I agreed.

The biggest problem for me was the Commendatore. It was almost impossible to explain the significance of the pit without bringing him—as an Idea, no less—into the mix. Yes, as Menshiki said, mentioning the pit would only make things worse. (And even if I did reveal the existence of the Commendatore, who would believe me? They'd just question my sanity.)

We emerged from the trees in front of the small shrine and circled around to the back. Stepping across the clump of pampas grass, whose plumes still lay cruelly flattened by the backhoe's treads, we arrived at the pit. The first thing we did was shine our lights on the boards covering the hole and the row of stones that held them down. I checked the placement of the stones. The change was subtle, but I could tell they had been moved. Someone had come after Mariye and me, removed the stones and several boards, and then, when they left, tried to return everything to its original position. My eyes could spot that slight difference.

“Someone moved the stones,” I said. “There are signs that the pit has been opened.”

Menshiki glanced at me. “Do you think it was Mariye?” he asked.

“I wonder. It's not a place anyone would stumble upon, and apart from you and me, she's the only one who knows about it. So the chances are good it was Mariye.”

The Commendatore knew about the pit, of course. After all, that was where he had come from. Yet in the end he was an Idea. He had no fixed shape. He wouldn't have had to move those heavy stones if he wanted to go back inside.

We removed the stones and took the boards away. Once again, the hole was exposed. It was perfectly round and not quite six feet across, but it looked bigger now, and blacker, too. I imagined that the darkness was what created the illusion.

Menshiki and I leaned over the hole and directed our lights inside. No one was there. There was nothing at all. Just that empty cylindrical space surrounded by the same stone wall. There was one difference, however. The ladder had vanished. The collapsible metal ladder that the landscaper had considerately left behind after moving the pile of boulders. I had last seen it leaning against the wall of the pit.

“Where did the ladder go?” I wondered out loud.

It didn't take us long to find it lying on its side some distance away in a stand of pampas grass that the backhoe hadn't flattened. Someone had taken it from the hole and chucked it there. It wasn't heavy, so moving it required no great strength. We returned the ladder to the hole and leaned it back against the wall.

“I'm going down to take a look,” Menshiki said. “Maybe I'll find something.”

“Are you sure you'll be okay?”

“Don't worry, I've been down there before.”

Menshiki descended the ladder with ease, lantern in hand.

“By the way, do you know the height of the Berlin Wall?” he asked as he descended.

“No.”

“Ten feet,” he said looking up at me. “It varied depending on the location, but that was the standard height. A little taller than this hole is deep. It was about a hundred miles long, too. I saw it with my own eyes. When Berlin was still divided into East and West. A pitiful sight.”

When Menshiki reached the bottom, he inspected the pit in the light from his lantern. Even then, though, he kept on talking to me.

“Walls were originally erected to protect people. From external enemies, storms, and floods. Sometimes, though, they were used to keep people in. People are powerless before a sturdy, towering wall. Visually and psychologically. Some walls were constructed for that specific purpose.”

Menshiki broke off at that point. Holding his lantern aloft, he examined every inch of the wall and the ground. Intently and carefully, like an archaeologist poring over the inner sanctum of an Egyptian pyramid. His lantern was stronger than my flashlight, so it illuminated a much wider area. He seemed to have found something on the floor of the pit, for he knelt down and examined it closely. I couldn't make it out from above, though. Menshiki said nothing. Whatever it was, it must have been very small. He stood up, wrapped it in his handkerchief, and deposited it in the pocket of his windbreaker. He looked up at me.

“I'm coming out,” he said, raising his lantern into the air.

“Did you find something?” I asked.

Menshiki didn't answer. Carefully, he ascended the ladder. Each rung gave a dull creak under his weight. I kept close watch, my flashlight trained on him. The vantage point made me realize how well his daily routine had trained his body. Not a motion was wasted. Each muscle played its role perfectly. When he was back on the ground he gave a big stretch and then brushed the dirt from his trousers with care. Not that there was much to brush off.

“You can feel how intimidating the height of those walls is from down there. You really feel powerless. I saw something similar in Palestine a while ago. Israel erected a twenty-five-foot concrete wall there, with high-voltage wires running along the top. That wall is almost three hundred miles long. I guess the Israelis figured ten feet was too low, but that's enough to do the job.”

He set the lantern down. Now the ground around our feet was illuminated.

“Come to think of it, the walls of the solitary cells in Tokyo prison measure about ten feet as well,” Menshiki said. “I don't know why they made them so high. All you had to look at were those blank walls, day after day. Nothing else to lay your eyes on. No pictures or anything like that, of course. Just those damned walls. You start feeling like you've been thrown into a pit.”

I listened in silence.

“I did some time in that place a while back. I haven't told you about that, have I?”

“No, you haven't.” My girlfriend had told me he had spent time in prison, but of course I didn't mention that.

“I figure I should be the one to tell you. You know how gossips love to twist facts to spice up their stories. So it's better if I give it to you straight. It's not pretty, but this might be a good time to tell you. In passing, so to speak. Do you mind?”

“Not at all. Tell me.”

“I'm not making excuses,” he said after a moment's pause, “but I've done nothing to feel guilty about. I've tried my hand at many things in my life. Borne many risks. Still, I'm not stupid, and I am cautious by nature, so I've always been careful to avoid anything illegal. I know where to draw the line. In this case, though, I happened to take on a partner who was careless. Because of him, I suffered a great deal. That experience taught me never to join forces with anyone again. To take responsibility for myself and no one else.”

“What were you charged with?”

“Insider trading and tax evasion. What they call ‘economic crimes.' I was indicted and tried, but in the end they found me not guilty. All the same, the investigation was grueling, and I spent a pretty long time in prison. They found one reason after another to keep me locked up. I was in there for so long that now being surrounded by walls makes me a little nostalgic. As I said, I had done nothing to warrant punishment. My hands were clean. But the prosecutors had already concocted their scenario, and in it, I was guilty as sin. They had no desire to go back and rewrite it. That's how bureaucracies work. It's practically impossible to change something once it's been decided. Going against the current means that someone, somewhere down the line, has to take responsibility. As a result, I spent a long time in solitary.”

“How long?”

“Four hundred and thirty-five days,” Menshiki said, as if it were nothing. “A number I'll never forget, no matter how long I live.”

It wasn't hard to imagine what spending that much time in solitary meant.

“Have you ever been confined in a small space for a long time?” Menshiki asked me.

“No,” I said. My experience being locked in the back of the moving van had given me a bad case of claustrophobia. Now I couldn't even ride in an elevator. I'd fall apart if I were confined as he had been.

“I learned how to endure it,” Menshiki said. “I spent the days training myself. In the process, I learned several foreign languages. Spanish, Turkish, and Chinese. They limit how many books you can keep in solitary, but those restrictions don't apply to dictionaries. In that sense, it's the ideal place to study languages. I'm blessed with good powers of concentration, so when I was focused on a language I could forget the walls. There's a bright side to everything.”

Even the darkest, thickest cloud shines silver when viewed from above.

Menshiki continued. “What terrified me was the thought of earthquake and fire. Trapped like that, I could never have escaped. Imagining myself crushed or burned to death in that tiny space scared me so much sometimes I couldn't breathe. That was the one fear I couldn't overcome. It woke me up some nights.”

“But you got through it.”

“Of course. I'd be damned if I'd let those bastards beat me. Or let their system grind me down. If I had signed the papers they laid in front of me, I could have walked out of my cell and returned to the world. But signing them would have meant my utter defeat. I would have admitted to crimes I hadn't committed. So I decided to treat the experience as an ordeal sent from above, an opportunity to test my strength.”

“Did you think about your time in prison when you spent that hour alone down in the pit?”

“Yes. I need to return to that experience once in a while—it's my starting point, so to speak. Where the person I am today was formed. It's easy to get soft when life is comfortable.”

What a peculiar guy, I thought again. How would another person react to treatment that harsh—wouldn't they try to forget it as soon as possible?

As if remembering, Menshiki reached into the pocket of his windbreaker and pulled out something wrapped in a handkerchief.

“I found this at the bottom of the pit,” he said. He unfolded the handkerchief, took out a small plastic object, and handed it to me.

I examined it under my flashlight. It was a black-and-white penguin, barely half an inch long, with a tiny black strap attached to it. The kind of thing that schoolgirls like to attach to their cell phones and schoolbags. It was clean and looked quite new.