Killing Commendatore: A novel (59 page)

Mustering my courage, I stepped into the trees. It was impossible to tell the time of day—it could have been dawn, or midday, or evening. The half-light never seemed to vary, no matter how much time passed. Then again, time might not exist in this world. In which case, this dusk could persist, day in and day out, forever.

Sure enough, it was dark inside. The layered branches above my head blocked out almost all light. Yet I left my flashlight off. Once my eyes adjusted, I could see enough to walk, and I didn't want to waste the batteries. I plunged through the forest, trying hard to empty my mind. Any thoughts would likely lead me to an even darker place. The path continued its gentle rise. All I could hear were my own footsteps, and those were more and more faint, as if their sound was slowly being sucked away. I hoped my thirst wouldn't return. By this time, the river would be far indeed. No chance of heading back for a drink, however thirsty I got.

How long did I walk? The forest was deep and dark, the view unchanging. The light never changed, either. My footsteps were all I could hear, and barely at that. The air was tasteless and odorless, as always. Thick trees walled both sides of the path. I could see nothing else. Did anything live here? Perhaps not. I had noticed no birds or insects.

Yet I could feel something watching me—the sensation was clear and very unpleasant. Sharp eyes were being trained in my direction from behind the wall of foliage. Every movement I made was under surveillance. My skin burned, as if under a magnifying glass in the sun.
What was I doing there?
they demanded. This was their domain, and I was a lone invader. Yet I never actually saw any of those eyes. I may have imagined them. Fear and suspicion can fashion eyes in the dark.

Then again, Mariye had felt Menshiki's eyes on her from across a valley, and through a telescope, no less. She had guessed that someone was keeping constant watch on her. And she was right. Those eyes were no fantasy.

Nevertheless, I decided to dismiss the eyes I felt scrutinizing me. There was no way that they were real. They had to be hallucinations, created by my fears. I needed to think that way. I had to make it through the great forest (though its actual size was a mystery). While retaining as much of my sanity as possible.

Luckily, there were no side trails. Thus I wasn't forced to make a choice that might take me into a maze that led nowhere. No thorny thickets blocked my way. All I had to do was push forward along a single path.

I couldn't tell how long I had been walking, yet I didn't feel especially tired. Perhaps I was under too much stress to register fatigue. Just when my legs were getting a little heavy, however, I spied a yellow point of light in the distance. At first, I thought it was a firefly. But I was mistaken. The light didn't move, or flicker on and off. Its fixed position suggested that it was human-made. The farther I went, little by little, the light grew larger and brighter. There could be no doubt.
I was approaching something.

Was it something good, or something bad? Would it help or harm me? Whichever, I was out of options. For better or for worse, I had to find out what that light was. If I didn't have the guts to do that, I never should have embarked on this journey in the first place. Step by step, I advanced toward the light.

Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared before me, the forest ended. The trees that had lined the path on both sides vanished, and before I knew it, I had stepped out into a broad clearing. The clearing was the shape of a half-moon, and perfectly level. Now I could see the sky once more, and view my surroundings in that dusky light. Directly across from me rose a sheer cliff, and at the base of that cliff was the open mouth of a dark cave. The yellow light I had been following streamed directly from that opening.

The gloomy sea of trees was behind me, the towering cliff (much too steep for me to climb) straight ahead. The mouth of the cave opened directly before me. I looked up at the sky a second time, then around at my surroundings. Nothing looked like a path. My next move had to be to enter the cave—there was no alternative. Before going in, I took several deep breaths, to brace myself. By moving forward, I would generate a new reality in accordance with the principle of connectivity. So the faceless man had said. I would navigate the interstice between presence and absence. I could only entrust myself to his words.

Warily, I stepped into the cave. Then it struck me—
I had been here before
. I knew this cave by sight. The air inside was familiar, too. Memories came flooding back. The wind cave on Mt. Fuji. The cave where our young uncle had taken Komichi and me during our summer break, back when we were kids. She had slipped into a narrow side tunnel and disappeared for a long while. I had been scared to death that she was gone for good. Had she been sucked into an underground maze for all eternity?

Eternity is a very long time
, the faceless man had said.

I walked slowly through the cave toward the yellow light, deadening my footsteps and trying to quiet my pounding heart. I rounded a corner, and there it was: the source of the light. An old lantern with a black metal rim, the sort that coal miners once carried, hanging on a thick nail driven into the stone wall. A fat candle burned inside the lantern.

Lantern, I thought. The word had come up not long before. It was part of the name of the anti-Nazi underground student organization that Tomohiko Amada was presumed to have joined. Things seemed to be converging.

A woman was standing beneath the lantern. I didn't see her at first because she was so tiny. Less than two feet tall. Her black hair was coiled atop her head in a neat bun, and she wore a white gown from some ancient time. Its elegance was apparent at a glance. Another character lifted from
Killing Commendatore
. The beautiful maiden who looks on in horror, her hand over her mouth, as the Commendatore is slain. In Mozart's
Don Giovanni,
she is Donna Anna. The daughter of the Commendatore.

Magnified by the light of the lantern, her sharp black shadow trembled on the wall of the cave.

“I have been awaiting you,” the miniature Donna Anna said.

“I have been awaiting you,” said Donna Anna. She was tiny, but her voice was clear and bright.

Nothing could have surprised me by that point. It even seemed natural for her to be there waiting for me. She was a beautiful woman, with an innate elegance, and the way she spoke had a majestic ring. She might be only two feet tall, but she clearly had that special something that could captivate a man.

“I will be your guide,” she said to me. “Please be so kind as to take that lantern.”

I unhooked the lantern from the wall. I didn't know who had put it there, so far beyond her reach. Its circular metal handle allowed it to be hung on a nail or carried by hand.

“You were waiting for me?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “For a very long time.”

Could she be another form of Metaphor? I hesitated to pose such a bold question.

“Do you live in these parts?”

“Live here?” she said, casting a dubious glance in my direction. “No, I am
here
to meet you. And I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean by ‘these parts.' ”

I gave up asking questions after that. She was Donna Anna, and she had been waiting for me.

She wore the same sort of ancient garb as the Commendatore. In her case, a white garment, most likely made of fine silk. Draped in layers over the top half of her body, with loose-fitting pantaloons below. Though her shape was therefore hidden, I guessed she was slender but strong. Her small black shoes were fashioned of leather of some kind.

“Then let us commence,” Donna Anna said to me. “Not much time remains. The path is narrowing as we speak. Please follow me. And be so good as to hold the lantern.”

I followed in her wake, holding the lantern above her head. She walked toward the back of the cave with quick, practiced steps. The candle's flame fluttered as we moved, casting a dancing mosaic of shadows on the pitted walls.

“This looks like a wind cave on Mt. Fuji that I once visited,” I said. “Is that possible?”

“All that is here
looks like
something,” Donna Anna declaimed without turning around. As though she were addressing the darkness ahead.

“Do you mean to say nothing here is the real thing?”

“No one can tell what is or is not the real thing,” she stated flatly. “All that we see is a product of connectivity. Light here is a metaphor for shadow, shadow a metaphor for light. You know this already, I believe.”

I didn't think I knew, at least not all that well, but I refrained from inquiring further. That could only lead to more knotty abstractions.

The cave grew narrower the farther back we went. The roof became lower too, so that I had to stoop as I walked. Just as I had done in the Mt. Fuji wind cave. Finally, Donna Anna drew to a halt and turned to face me. Her small, flashing eyes stared up into mine.

“I can guide you this far. Now you must take the lead. I will follow, but only to a certain point. After that, you are on your own.”

Take the lead? I shook my head in disbelief—from what I could see, we had reached the very back of the cave. A dark stone wall blocked our way. I passed the lantern across its face. But it appeared that we had hit a dead end.

“It seems we can't go any farther,” I said.

“Please look again. There should be an opening in the corner to your left,” Donna Anna said.

I shone the lantern on that section of the cave wall once more. When I stuck my head out and looked more closely, I could make out a dark depression on the far side of a large boulder. I squeezed myself between the wall and the boulder to inspect it. It certainly did appear to be an opening. I remembered my sister slipping into an even narrower crack.

I turned back to Donna Anna.

“You must enter there,” the two-foot-tall woman said.

I looked at her lovely face, wondering what to say. On the wall, her elongated shadow flickered in the lantern's yellow light.

“I am fully aware,” she said, “that you have been terrified of small, dark places all your life. In such places, you can no longer breathe normally. I am correct, am I not? Nevertheless, you must force yourself to enter. Only in such a manner can you grasp that which you seek.”

“Where does this opening lead?”

“I do not know. The destination is something you yourself must determine by following your own heart.”

“But fear is in my heart as well,” I said. “That's what worries me. That my fear will distort what I see and push me in the wrong direction.”

“Once again, it is you who determines the path. You are the one who chose the proper route to reach this world. You paid a great price for that, and have crossed the river by boat. You cannot turn back now.”

I looked again at the opening. I shuddered to think I would have to crawl into that dark, cramped tunnel. Yet that was what I had to do. She was right—I couldn't turn back now. I placed the lantern on the ground and took the flashlight from my pocket. A lantern would be much too cumbersome in that tiny space.

“Believe in yourself,” Donna Anna said, her voice small but penetrating. “You have drunk from the river, have you not?”

“Yes, I was very thirsty.”

“It is good that you did so,” Donna Anna said. “That river flows along the interstice between presence and absence. It is filled with hidden possibilities that only the finest metaphors can bring to the surface. Just as a great poet can use one scene to bring another new, unknown vista into view. It should be obvious, but the best metaphors make the best poems. Take good care not to avert your eyes from the new, unknown vistas you will encounter.”

Tomohiko Amada's
Killing Commendatore
might be seen as one such “unknown vista.” Like a great poem, the painting was a perfect metaphor, one that launched a new reality into the world.

I switched on the flashlight and checked its beam. It was bright and unwavering. The batteries should last for some time yet. I removed my leather jacket. It was too bulky to fit into such a tight space. That left me wearing a light sweater and jeans. The cave wasn't especially cold, but neither was it all that warm.

Bracing myself, I crouched until I was almost on all fours and squeezed headfirst into the opening. Inside I found what appeared to be a tunnel sunk into solid rock. It was smooth to the touch, as if worn by water over the course of many years. There were almost no jagged or protruding edges. As a result, despite its narrowness, I was able to progress more easily than I had expected. The rock was cool and slightly damp. I inched forward on my stomach like a worm, the flashlight illuminating my way. I figured that the tunnel must have functioned as a waterway at some point in the past.

The tunnel was about two feet high and three feet across. Crawling was the only option. It looked like it would go on forever, a dark, natural pipe that expanded and contracted by small degrees. Sometimes it curved to the side. At other times it sloped up or down. Thankfully, though, there were no abrupt rises or falls. Then it hit me. If this was an underground conduit, water could flood the tunnel at any moment, and I would surely drown. My legs stopped moving, paralyzed by fear.

I wanted to turn around and go back the way I had come. But it was impossible to reverse course in such a cramped space. The tunnel seemed to have grown even narrower. Crawling backward to where I had begun was out of the question. Terror engulfed me. I was literally nailed to the spot. I couldn't move forward, and I couldn't retreat. Every cell in my body cried out for fresh air. Forsaken by light, I felt powerless and alone.

“Do not stop. You must push on.” Donna Anna's command was irrefutable. I couldn't tell if I was hearing things or if she was really behind me, urging me on.

“I can't move,” I gasped, squeezing out the words. “And I can't breathe.”

“Make fast your heart,” said Donna Anna. “Do not let it flounder. Should that happen, you will surely fall prey to a Double Metaphor.”

“What are Double Metaphors?” I asked.

“You should know the answer to that already.”

“I should know?”

“That is because they are within you,” said Donna Anna. “They grab hold of your true thoughts and feelings and devour them one after another, fattening themselves. That is what Double Metaphors are. They have been dwelling in the depths of your psyche since ancient times.”

Unbidden, the man with the white Subaru Forester entered my mind. I didn't want him there. But there was no way around it. It was he who had pushed me to throttle that young woman, forcing me to look into the darkness of my own heart. He had reappeared more than once, to make sure I would remember that darkness.

I know where you were and what you were doing
, he was announcing to me. Of course he knew everything. Because he lived inside me.

My heart was in chaos. I closed my eyes and tried to anchor it
,
to hold it in one place. I ground my teeth with the effort. But how should I go about securing my heart? Where was its true location, anyway? I looked within myself, searching one place after another. But it didn't turn up. Where could it be?

“Your true heart lives in your memory. It is nourished by the images it contains—that's how it lives,” a woman said. This time, however, it was not Donna Anna speaking. It was Komi. My sister, dead at age twelve.

“Search your memory,” said that dear voice. “Find something concrete. Something you can touch.”

“Komi?” I said.

There was no answer.

“Komi, where are you?” I said.

Still no reply.

There in the dark, I searched my memory. Like rummaging through an old duffel bag. But it seemed to have been emptied. I couldn't even recall exactly what memory was.

“Turn off your light and listen to the wind,” Komi said.

I switched off the flashlight. But I couldn't hear the wind, though I tried. All I could make out was the restless pounding of my heart, a screen door banging in a gale.

“Listen to the wind,” Komi repeated.

Once again, I held my breath and focused. This time, I could hear, lying beyond my heartbeat, a faint humming. A wind seemed to be blowing somewhere far away. A wisp of a breeze brushed my face. Air was entering the tunnel ahead. Air I could smell. The unmistakable odor of damp soil. The first odor I had encountered since setting foot in this Land of Metaphor. The tunnel was leading somewhere. To a place I could smell. In short, to the real world.

“All right then, on you go,” said Donna Anna. “There isn't much time left.”

With my flashlight turned off, I crawled on into the blackness. As I moved forward, I tried to draw even the slightest whiff of that real air into my lungs.

“Komi?” I asked again.

There was no answer.

I ransacked my store of memories. Komi and I had raised a pet cat. A smart black tomcat. We named it Koyasu, though why we gave it that name escapes me. Komi had picked it up as a kitten on her way home from school. One day, however, it disappeared. We scoured our neighborhood looking for it. We stopped countless people and showed them Koyasu's photograph. But in the end the cat never turned up.

I crawled on, the image of the black cat vivid in my mind. I tried to imagine my sister and me together, searching for it. I strained my eyes to catch a glimpse of the cat at the end of the dark tunnel. I pricked my ears to hear its mewing. The black cat was solid and concrete, something I could touch. I could feel its fur, its warmth, the firmness of its body—even hear it purr—as if it were yesterday.

“That's right,” Komi said. “Just keep remembering like that.”

I know where you were and what you were doing
, the man with the white Subaru Forester called out of nowhere. He wore a black leather jacket and a golf cap with the Yonex logo. His voice was hoarse from the sea wind. Caught by surprise, I recoiled in fear.

I tried to find my memories of the cat. To draw the fragrance of damp earth into my lungs. I seemed to recall that smell from somewhere. From a time not so far away. But I couldn't remember, try as I might. Where had it been? As I struggled to recall, once again, my memories began to fade away.

Strangle me with this
, the girl had said. Her pink tongue peeked out at me from between her lips. The belt of her bathrobe lay beside her pillow, ready to be used. Her pubic hair glistened like grass in the rain.

“Come on,” Komi urged me. “Call up a favorite memory. Hurry!”

I tried to bring back the black cat. But Koyasu was gone. Why couldn't I remember him? Perhaps the darkness had snatched him away while I was distracted. Its power had devoured him. I had to come up with something else, and fast. I had the horrid sense that the tunnel was tightening around me. It seemed alive.
There is not much time
, Donna Anna had said. Cold sweat trickled from my armpits.

“Come on now, remember something,” Komi's voice said behind me. “Something you can physically touch. Something you can draw.”

Like a drowning man clutching a buoy, I latched onto my old Peugeot 205. My little French car. I remembered the feeling of the steering wheel as I toured northeastern Japan and Hokkaido. It felt like ages ago, yet I could still hear the rattle of that primitive four-cylinder engine, and the way the clutch growled when I shifted from second into third. For a month and a half, the car had been my constant comrade, my only friend. Now it was probably sitting in a scrap yard somewhere.

The tunnel was definitely narrowing. My head kept banging against the roof. I reached for the flashlight.

“Do not turn on the light,” Donna Anna commanded.

“But I can't see where I'm going.”

“You must not see,” she said.
“Not with your eyes.”

“The hole is closing in. If I go on I won't be able to move.”

There was no answer.

“I can't go any farther,” I said. “What should I do?”