Killing Commendatore: A novel (51 page)

“Affirmative, my friends. Affirmative!”

“I'm not demanding that you tell me precisely how Mariye can be saved. I'm not asking the impossible—I can see that the world of Ideas has its own restrictions. But can't you give me a hint? After all I've done for you, don't you think you owe me at least that much?”

The Commendatore gave a deep sigh.

“An indirect, roundabout hint is enough. I'm not trying to accomplish anything earthshaking here, like putting a stop to ethnic cleansing or global warming, or saving the African elephant. All I'm trying to do is find one thirteen-year-old girl who's likely caught somewhere, in some small, dark place, and return her to this world.”

The Commendatore sat there for a long time lost in thought, his arms folded. He seemed to be having second thoughts.

“Affirmative, my friends,” he said, with resignation. “When you speak in such a fashion, there is not much I can do. I will give my friends but a single hint. Yet be warned—
several sacrifices
may be required. Are you willing nonetheless?”

“What sort of sacrifices?”

“I cannot speak much of that yet. But they will be inevitable. Metaphorically speaking,
there will be blood
. That is an inevitable fact. What sorts of sacrifices are involved should grow clearer as time passes. Someone may have to risk his life.”

“I don't care. Give me the hint.”

“Affirmative!” the Commendatore said. “It is now Friday, is it not?”

I checked my bedside clock. “Yes, it's still Friday. No, wait a minute, it's Saturday already.”

“On Saturday morning, before noon, my friends will receive a phone call,” the Commendatore said. “For an invitation somewhere. No matter the circumstances, my friends must not decline that invitation. Do you understand?”

I mechanically repeated what he had just said. “Someone will call me this morning and invite me somewhere. I must not decline.”

“Hold those words close,” said the Commendatore. “For it is the only hint I am able to share. It traverses the narrow line that divides ‘public' and ‘private' parlance.”

With those final words, the Commendatore began to fade away. Before I knew it, his form had disappeared from the window ledge.

I turned off the bedside lamp and this time fell asleep with relative ease. The whir of insect wings in my head was gone. A moment before I went under, I imagined Menshiki sitting in front of the fire, absorbed in his thoughts. I guessed he would keep the fire burning all night. I had no idea what those thoughts might be, of course. He was a strange man. But it went without saying that his life was bounded by time, space, and probability. Like everyone else's in this world. None of us could escape those constraints, as long as we lived. Each of us was enclosed by sturdy walls that stretched high in the air, surrounding us on all sides. Probably.

“Someone will call me this morning and invite me somewhere. I must not decline.” I parroted the Commendatore's words one more time in my head. Then I slept.

I woke shortly after five. It was still dark outside. I slipped a cardigan over my pajamas and went to check the living room. Menshiki was sleeping on the sofa. He hadn't been asleep for long—the fire was out but the room was still warm. The stack of firewood had shrunk. He was sleeping peacefully on his side, breathing quietly with the duvet draped over his body. Not snoring at all. His manners governed even the way he slept. The room seemed to be holding its breath so as not to disturb him.

Leaving him there, I went into the kitchen and brewed coffee. I made some toast as well. Then I carried the toast and coffee into the dining area and sat there, munching and sipping, as I read my book. It was about the Spanish Armada. About the unfolding of the brutal conflict upon which Queen Elizabeth and Philip II had staked the fortunes of their nations. Why did I feel compelled to read an account of that late-sixteenth-century sea battle off the coast of Great Britain at that particular moment? All I knew was that, once I started reading, I couldn't stop. It was an old book I had found on Tomohiko Amada's shelf.

While standard accounts claim that faulty strategy caused the Armada's decimation by the English fleet, a defeat that changed the course of history, this book argued that most of the damage was caused not by direct fire from English cannon (volleys by both sides, it appeared, missed their targets to fall harmlessly into the ocean), but by shipwreck. Accustomed to the calm waters of the Mediterranean, the Spaniards simply couldn't navigate the angry seas off the Irish coast, and thus ran vessel after vessel against the dark reefs.

As I followed the sad fate of the Spanish navy and sipped my second cup of black coffee, the sky gradually brightened in the east. It was Saturday morning.

Someone will phone you, my friends, this morning, and invite you somewhere. You must not decline.

I mentally repeated what the Commendatore had told me. Then I looked at the phone. It preserved its silence. But it would ring at some point, I was sure of that. The Commendatore was not one to lie. All I could do was be patient and wait.

I thought of Mariye. I wanted to call her aunt to find out if she was safe, but it was still too early. I should wait until seven o'clock at least. Her aunt would contact me if Mariye was found. She knew how worried I was. No word from her meant no progress. So I sat at the dining table reading about the invincible Armada and, when I tired of reading, staring at the phone. But the phone maintained its silence.

I called Shoko shortly after seven. She answered immediately. As if she had been sitting beside the phone, waiting for it to ring.

“We haven't heard from her. She's still missing,” she said right away. She sounded as if she'd had little (or maybe no) sleep. Fatigue filled her voice.

“Are the police looking?” I asked.

“Yes, two officers came last night. We gave them photographs of Mariye, described what she was wearing…We explained that she isn't the kind of girl who would run away or stay out late partying. They spread the word, and by now I'm sure it's been broadcast to all the precincts. I've asked them not to make the search public yet, of course.”

“But nothing so far, correct?”

“That's right, no leads up to this point. I'm sure they're working very hard on it, though.”

I did my best to console her and asked her to let me know the moment something did turn up. She promised she would.

When our call ended, Menshiki had already risen and was scrubbing his face in the bathroom sink. After brushing his teeth with the toothbrush I had set aside for him, he sat across from me at the dining room table and drank his black coffee. I offered him toast, but he declined. Sleeping on the sofa had mussed his luxuriant hair a bit more than usual, but then his “usual” was super neat. The man sitting there was the same coolheaded, well-groomed guy as always.

I related my conversation with Shoko. “This is just my gut feeling,” he said when I finished, “but I doubt the police will be very much help.”

“Why is that?”

“Mariye is no typical teenager, and her disappearance is no typical disappearance. I don't think she was kidnapped, either. That means the usual police methods are likely to hit a wall.”

I didn't offer an opinion. But I figured he was right. We had been given an equation with multiple functions but almost no solid numbers. To make any progress, we had to nail down as many numbers as possible.

“Shall we go take another look at the pit?” I asked. “Who knows—there might be some change.”

“Let's go,” Menshiki said.

We were operating under the tacit assumption that
nothing else was to be done.
I knew that the phone could ring, and that Shoko Akikawa or the person behind the “invitation” the Commendatore had mentioned might be on the other end. But I was pretty sure neither would call this early. Call it a vague premonition on my part.

We put on our jackets and headed out. It was a sunny day. A southwesterly wind had swept away the cloud cover of the previous night, leaving behind a sky almost unnaturally high and transparent. Indeed, when I raised my eyes to the sky, I had the feeling that up and down had been reversed, and that I was peering down into a spring of clear water. I could hear the faint drone of a long train running along a faraway track. When the air was like this, you could pick up distant sounds on the wind with great clarity. That's the sort of morning it was.

Without exchanging a word, we cut through the woods and around the little shrine. The plank cover of the pit was exactly as we had left it the night before. Nor had the stones holding it down been moved. When we took off the boards, the ladder was still leaning against the wall, its position unchanged. No one was in the pit. This time, Menshiki didn't offer to go down to search the floor. The bright sunlight made that unnecessary—we could see that nothing had changed. The pit looked altogether different in the light of day than it had at night. There was nothing at all unsettling about it.

We replaced the lid and rearranged the stones that held it down. Then we walked back through the woods. In front of my house, Menshiki's spotless silver Jaguar sat reticently beside my dusty, unpretentious Toyota Corolla.

When he reached his car, Menshiki came to a halt. “I think I'll head home,” he said. “I'll just be in your way if I presume on your hospitality any longer, and there's nothing I can do now anyway. Do you mind?”

“Of course not. Please go home and rest. I'll let you know right away if there's any change.”

“Today is Saturday, isn't it?”

“That's right. It's Saturday.”

Menshiki reached into his windbreaker pocket and pulled out his key. He stood there staring at it for a moment, thinking. Trying to make his mind up about something, perhaps. I waited for him to reach a conclusion.

“There's one thing I should probably tell you,” he said at last.

I leaned on the door of my Corolla as he figured out what to say.

“It's actually quite personal, so I wasn't sure if it was appropriate, but then I thought perhaps I should, for courtesy's sake. I don't want to cause any needless misunderstandings…Anyway, the thing is, Shoko and I have become—what's the correct word?—quite intimately involved.”

“You mean you and she are lovers?” I asked, cutting to the chase.

“Exactly,” Menshiki replied after a moment's pause. I thought I saw a faint blush rise to his cheeks. “You may think it quite hasty.”

“No, the speed isn't the problem.”

“That's correct,” Menshiki acknowledged. “The speed is not the problem.”

“The problem is—” I began.

“My motives, you were going to say. Am I correct?”

I didn't respond. Yet it was clear that my silence meant yes.

“You should know,” he said, “that none of this was planned from the beginning. It was an entirely natural development. In fact, it happened without me being conscious of it. You may find that hard to believe, of course.”

I sighed. Then I spoke frankly. “All I know is that if you started with that plan in mind, it would have been pretty easy to carry out. I'm not being sarcastic, either.”

“You're probably right,” Menshiki said. “I recognize that. Easy, or at least not all that difficult.
Perhaps.
But that's not how it was.”

“So are you saying that you met Shoko Akikawa for the first time and fell in love right off the bat, or something like that?”

Menshiki pursed his lips as if embarrassed. “Fell in love? No, I can't make that claim. To be honest, the last time I fell in love—I think that's probably what it was—was ages ago. I can't even remember what it was like. But I can say with confidence that I find myself powerfully attracted to Shoko, as a man is attracted to a woman.”

“Leaving Mariye out of the picture?”

“That's hard to know. Mariye was the reason for our first meeting, after all. But had Mariye never existed, I think I still would have been attracted to her aunt.”

I wondered about that. Would a man whose mind was as complicated as Menshiki's be so “powerfully attracted” to a woman as simple and easygoing as Shoko Akikawa? Still, I was in no position to judge. The workings of the human heart are impossible to predict. Especially when sex is involved.

“I understand,” I said. “At any rate, thank you for speaking so honestly. Honesty is always best, I think.”

“I hope you're right.”

“To tell you the truth, Mariye already knew. That you and Shoko had begun that sort of relationship. In fact, she came to talk to me about it. A few days ago.”

The news seemed to catch Menshiki by surprise.

“She's a perceptive child,” he said. “We tried our best not to let her find out.”

“Yes, a
very
perceptive child. But she didn't find out from you. It was the things her aunt said and did that tipped her off.”

Shoko was a well-brought-up, intelligent woman, but while she could conceal her feelings to a degree, her mask was bound to slip sooner or later. Menshiki was aware of that, no question.

“If that's the case…do you think Mariye's disappearance is connected to her discovery of our relationship?”

I shook my head. “I can't tell for sure. But I can tell you that you and Shoko ought to talk through everything together. She's beside herself with worry, and she's confused. She must be in need of your encouragement and support. Urgently in need.”

“You're right. I'll contact her the minute I get home.”

Menshiki wasn't finished. Something else appeared to be on his mind.

He sighed. “To tell the truth, I don't think I've fallen in love. I'm not cut out for that. Haven't been from the beginning. I don't know why I feel as I do. Would I have been so attracted to Shoko if not for Mariye? The connection between the two of them isn't clear to me at all.”

I said nothing.

“But I swear I didn't plan any of it in advance. Can you believe me?”

“Mr. Menshiki,” I said. “I can't explain why, but I think you're an honest man at heart.”

“Thank you,” he said. The corners of his mouth edged upward. It was a somewhat uncomfortable smile, but not an altogether unhappy one.

“Can I go on being honest?” he said.

“Of course.”

“Sometimes I think I'm empty,” he confessed. The smile still lingered on his lips.

“Empty?”

“Hollow inside. I know it sounds arrogant, but I've always operated on the assumption that I was a lot brighter and more capable than other people. More perceptive and discerning, with greater powers of judgment. Physically stronger, too. I figured I could succeed at whatever I turned my mind to. And I did. Put my hands on whatever I wanted to possess. Being locked up in Tokyo prison was a clear setback, of course, but I considered that an exception to the rule. When I was young, I saw no limits to what I could achieve. I thought I could attain a state close to perfection. Climb and climb until I reached a height where I could gaze down on everyone else. But when I passed fifty, I looked at myself in the mirror and discovered nothing but emptiness. A zero. What T. S. Eliot called a ‘straw man.' ”

I couldn't think of anything to say.

“My whole life may have been a mistake up till now,” Menshiki went on. “I feel that way sometimes. That I took a wrong turn somewhere. That nothing I've done has any real meaning. That's why I told you I often find myself envying you.”

“Envying what, for example?”

“You have the strength to wish for what you cannot have. While I have only wished for those things I can possess.”

I assumed he was talking about Mariye. She was the one thing that had evaded his grasp. Yet there wasn't much I could say about that.

Menshiki slowly got into his car. Then he rolled down the window, said goodbye, and drove off. When his car was out of sight I went back into the house. It was just past eight.

The telephone rang at shortly after ten. The call was from Masahiko.

“I know it's sudden,” he said, “but I'm on my way to Izu to see my father. Would you like to come along? You mentioned the other day that you'd like to meet him.”

Someone will phone my friends tomorrow morning and invite you somewhere. You must not decline.

“That's great. I'd love to go.”

“I just got on the Tokyo-Nagoya Expressway. I'm at the Kohoku parking area now. I think it'll take me about an hour to reach you. I'll pick you up and we can drive to Izu Kogen.”

“Did something happen to your father?”

“Yeah, the nursing home called. Seems he's taken a turn for the worse. So I'm going to check on him. I'm more or less free today anyway.”