Killing Commendatore

by Haruki Murakami

  Finally, I was able to speak. “I do have one question, though,” I said, gazing blankly at that strap. My voice was stiff, dry, and flat.

  “I’ll answer, if I can.”

  “Is this my fault?”

  She thought this over. Then, like someone who has been underwater for a long time, she finally broke through to the surface and took a deep, slow breath.

  “Not directly, no.”

  “Not directly?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I considered the subtle tone of her voice. Like checking the weight of an egg in my palm. “Meaning that I am, indirectly?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “A few days ago, just before dawn, I had a dream,” she said instead. “A very realistic dream, the kind where you can’t distinguish between what is real and what’s in your mind. And when I woke up that’s what I thought. I was certain of it, I mean. That I can’t live with you anymore.”

  “What kind of dream was it?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you that here.”

  “Because dreams are personal?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Was I in the dream?” I asked.

  “No, you weren’t. So in that sense, too, it’s not your fault.”

  Just to make sure I got it all, I summarized what she’d just said. When I don’t know what to say I have a habit of summarizing. (A habit that, obviously, can be really irritating.)

  “So, a few days ago you had a very realistic dream. And when you woke up you were certain you can’t live with me anymore. But you can’t tell me what the dream was about, since dreams are personal. Did I get that right?”

  She nodded. “Yes. That’s about the size of it.”

  “But that doesn’t explain a thing.”

  She rested her hands on the tabletop, staring down at the inside of her coffee cup, as if an oracle was floating there and she was deciphering the message. From the look in her eyes the words must have been very symbolic and ambiguous.

  My wife puts great stock in dreams. She often makes decisions based on dreams she had, or changes her decisions accordingly. But no matter how crucial you think dreams can be, you can’t just reduce six years of marriage to nothing because of one vivid dream, no matter how memorable.

  “The dream was just a trigger, that’s all,” she said, as if reading my mind. “Having that dream made lots of things clear for me.”

  “If you pull a trigger, a bullet will come out.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A trigger is a critical part of a gun. ‘Just a trigger’ isn’t the right expression.”

  She stared at me silently, as if she couldn’t understand what I was getting at. I don’t blame her. I couldn’t understand it myself.

  “Are you seeing someone else?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “And you’re sleeping with him?”

  “Yes, and I feel bad about it.”

  Maybe I should have asked her who it was, and when it had started. But I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to think about those things. So I gazed again outside the window at the falling rain. Why hadn’t I noticed all this before?

  “This was just one element among many,” my wife said.

  I looked around the room. I’d lived there a long time, and it should have been familiar, but it had now transformed into a scene from a remote, strange land.

  Just one element?

  What does that mean, just one? I gave it some thought. She was having sex with some man other than me. But that was “just one element.” Then what were all the others?

  “I’ll move out in a few days,” my wife said. “So you don’t need to do anything. I’m responsible, so I should be the one who leaves.”

  “You already decided where you’re going to go?”

  She didn’t answer, but seemed to have already decided on a place. She must have made all kinds of preparations before bringing this up with me. When I realized this, I felt helpless, as if I’d lost my footing in the darkness. Things had been steadily moving forward, and I’d been totally oblivious.

  “I’ll get the divorce procedures going as quickly as I can,” my wife said, “and I’d like you to be responsive. I’m being selfish, I know.”

  I turned from the rain and gazed at her. And once again it struck me. We’d lived under the same roof for six years, yet I knew next to nothing about this woman. In the same way that people stare up at the sky to see the moon every night, yet understand next to nothing about it.

  “I have one request,” I ventured. “If you’ll grant me this, I’ll do whatever you say. And I’ll sign the divorce papers.”

  “What is it?”

  “That I’m the one who leaves here. And I do it today. I’d like you to stay behind.”

  “Today?” she asked, surprised.

  “The sooner the better, right?”

  She thought it over. “If that’s what you want,” she said.

  “It is, and that’s all I want.”

  Those were my honest feelings. As long as I wasn’t left behind alone in this wretched, cruel place, in the cold March rain, I didn’t care what happened.

  “And I’ll take the car with me. Are you okay with that?”

  I really didn’t need to ask. The car was an old, stick-shift model a friend of mine had let me have for next to nothing back before I got married. It had well over sixty thousand miles on it. And besides, my wife didn’t even have a driver’s license.

  “I’ll come back later to get my painting materials and clothes and things. Does that work for you?”

  “Sure, that’s fine. By ‘later,’ how much later do you mean?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the future. There was barely any ground left under my feet. Just remaining upright was all I could manage.

  “I might not stay here all that long,” my wife said, sounding reluctant.

  “Everyone might go to the moon,” I said.

  She seemed not to have caught it. “Sorry?”

  “Nothing. It’s not important.”

  * * *

  —

  By seven that evening I’d stuffed my belongings into an oversized gym bag and thrown that into the trunk of my red Peugeot 205. Some changes of clothes, toiletries, a few books and diaries. A simple camping set I had always had for hiking. Sketchbooks and a set of drawing pencils. Other than these few items, I had no idea what else to take. It’s okay, I told myself, if I need anything I can buy it somewhere. While I packed the gym bag and went in and out of the apartment, she was still seated at the kitchen table. The coffee cup was still on top of the table, and she continued to stare inside it…

  “I have a request, too,” she said. “Even if we break up like this, can we still be friends?”

  I couldn’t grasp what she was trying to say. I’d finished tugging on my shoes, had shouldered the bag, and stood, one hand on the doorknob, to stare at her.

  “Be friends?”

  “I’d like to meet and talk sometimes. If possible, I mean.”

  I still couldn’t understand what she meant. Be friends? Meet and talk sometimes? What would we talk about? It’s like she’d posed a riddle. What could she be trying to convey to me? That she didn’t have any bad feelings toward me? Was that it?

  “I’m not sure about that,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything more to say. If I’d stood there a whole week, running this through my head, I doubt I’d have found anything more to add. So I opened the door and stepped outside.

  When I left the apartment I hadn’t given any thought to what I was wearing. If I’d had on a bathrobe over pajamas, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. Later on, when I looked at myself in a full-length mirror in a restroom at a drive-in, I saw I had on a swea
ter that I favored while working, a gaudy orange down jacket, jeans, and work boots. And an old knit cap. There were white paint stains here and there on the frayed, green, round-neck sweater. The only new item I had on were the jeans, their bright blue too conspicuous. A random collection of clothes, but not too peculiar. My one regret was not having brought a scarf.

  When I pulled the car out from the parking lot underneath the apartment building, the cold March rain was still falling. The Peugeot’s wipers sounded like an old man’s raspy, hoarse cough.

  * * *

  —

  I had no clue where to go, so for a while I drove aimlessly around Tokyo. At the intersection at Nishi Azabu, I drove down Gaien Boulevard toward Aoyama, turned right at Aoyama Sanchome toward Akasaka, and after a few more turns found myself in Yotsuya. I stopped at a gas station and filled up the tank. I had them check the oil and tire pressure for me, and top off the windshield washer fluid. I might be in for a very long trip. For all I knew I might even go all the way to the moon.

  I paid with my credit card, and headed down the road again. A rainy Sunday night, not much traffic. I switched on an FM station, but it was all pointless chatter, a cacophony of shrill voices. Sheryl Crow’s first CD was in the CD player, and I listened to the first three songs and then turned it off.

  I suddenly realized I was driving down Mejiro Boulevard. It took a while before I could figure out which direction I was going—from Waseda toward Nerima. The silence got to me and I turned on the CD again and listened to Sheryl Crow for a few more songs. And then switched it off again. The silence was too quiet, the music too noisy. Though silence was preferable, a little. The only thing that reached me was the scrape of the worn-out wipers, the endless hiss of the tires on the wet pavement.

  In the midst of that silence I imagined my wife in the arms of another man.

  I should have picked up on that, at least, a long time ago. So how come I didn’t think of it? We hadn’t had sex for months. Even when I tried to get her to, she’d come up with all kinds of reasons to turn me down. Actually, I think she’d lost interest in having sex for some time before that. But I’d figured it was just a stage. She must be tired from working every day, and wasn’t feeling up to it. But now I knew she was sleeping with another man. When had that started? I searched my memory. Probably four or five months ago, would be my guess. Four or five months ago would make it October or November.

  But for the life of me I couldn’t recall what had happened back in October or November. I mean, I could barely recall what had happened yesterday.

  I paid attention to the road—so as not to run any red lights, or get too close to the car in front of me—and mentally reviewed what had happened last fall. I thought so hard about it that it felt like the core of my brain was going to overheat. My right hand unconsciously changed gears to adjust to the flow of traffic. My left foot stepped on the clutch in time with this. I’d never been so happy that my car was a stick shift. Besides mulling over my wife’s affair, it gave me something to do to keep my hands and feet busy.

  So what had happened back in October or November?

  An autumn evening. I’m picturing my wife on a large bed, and some man undressing her. I thought of the straps on her white camisole. And the pink nipples that lay underneath. I didn’t want to visualize all this, but once one image came to me, I couldn’t stop. I sighed, and pulled into the parking lot of a drive-in restaurant. I rolled down the driver’s-side window, took a deep breath of the damp air outside, and slowly got my heart rate back to normal. I stepped out of the car. With my knit cap on but no umbrella I made my way through the fine drizzle and went inside the restaurant. I sat down in a booth in the back.

  The restaurant was nearly empty. A waitress came over and I ordered coffee and a ham-and-cheese sandwich. As I drank the coffee I closed my eyes and calmed down. I tried my best to erase the image of my wife and another man in bed. But the vision wouldn’t leave me.

  I went to the restroom, gave my hands a good scrub, and checked myself in the mirror over the sink. My eyes looked smaller than usual, and bloodshot, like a woodland animal slowly fading away from famine, gaunt and afraid. I wiped my hands and face with a thick handkerchief, then studied myself in the full-length mirror on the wall. What I saw there was an exhausted thirty-six-year-old man in a shabby, paint-spattered sweater.

  As I gazed at my reflection I wondered, Where am I headed? Before that, though, the question was Where have I come to? Where is this place? No, before that even I needed to ask, Who the hell am I?

  As I stared at myself in the mirror, I thought about what it would be like to paint my own portrait. Say I were to try, what sort of self would I end up painting? Would I be able to find even a shred of affection for myself? Would I be able to discover even one thing shining within me?

  These questions unanswered, I returned to my seat. When I finished my coffee the waitress came over and refilled my cup. I asked her for a paper bag and put the untouched sandwich in it. I should be hungry later on. But right now I didn’t want to eat anything.

  I left the drive-in, and drove down the road until I saw the sign for the entrance to the Kan-Etsu Expressway. I decided to get on the highway and head north. I had no idea what lay north, but somehow I got the sense that heading north was better than going south. I wanted to go somewhere cold and clean. More important than north or south, however, was getting away from this city.

  I opened the glove compartment and found five or six CDs inside. One of them was a performance of Mendelssohn’s Octet by I Musici. My wife liked to listen to it when we went on drives. An unusual setup with a double string quartet, but a beautiful melody. Mendelssohn was only sixteen when he composed the piece. My wife told me this. A child prodigy.

  What were you doing when you were sixteen?

  I called up the past. When I was sixteen I was crazy over a girl in my class.

  Did you go out with her?

  No, I barely said a word to her. I just looked at her from a distance. I wasn’t brave enough to speak up. When I went home I used to sketch her. I did quite a few drawings.

  So you’ve done the same thing from way back when, my wife said, laughing.

  True, I’ve done the same thing from way back when.

  True, I’ve done the same thing from way back when, I said, mentally repeating the words I’d spoken to her.

  I took the Sheryl Crow CD out of the player and slipped in an MJQ album. Pyramid. I listened to Milt Jackson’s pleasant, bluesy solo as I headed down the highway toward the north. I’d make the occasional stop at a service area, take a long piss, and drink a couple of cups of hot black coffee, but other than that I drove all night. I drove in the slow lane, only speeding up to pass trucks. I didn’t feel sleepy, strangely enough. It felt like I’d never be sleepy again in my whole life. And just before dawn I reached the Japan Sea coast.

  * * *

  —

  In Niigata I turned right and drove north along the coast, from Yamagata to Akita Prefecture, then through Aomori into Hokkaido. I didn’t take any highways, and drove leisurely down back roads. In all senses of the word I was in no hurry. When night came I’d check in to a cheap business hotel or run-down Japanese inn, flop down on the narrow bed, and sleep. Thankfully I can fall asleep right away just about anywhere, in any type of bed.

  On the morning of the second day, near Murakami City, I phoned my agent and told him I wouldn’t be able to do any portrait painting for a while. I had a few commissions I was in the middle of, but wasn’t in a place where I could do any work.

  “That’s a problem, since you’ve already accepted the commissions,” the agent said, his tone harsh.

  I apologized. “There’s nothing I can do about it. Could you tell the clients I got in a car accident or something? There are other artists who could take over, I’m sure.”

  My agent was silent for a time.
Up till now I’d never missed a deadline. He knew how seriously I took my work.

  “Something came up, and I’ll be away from Tokyo for a while. I’m sorry, but in the meantime I can’t do any painting.”

  “How long is ‘for a while’?”

  I couldn’t answer. I switched off the cell phone, found a nearby river, parked my car on the bridge over it, and tossed that small communication device into the water. I felt sorry toward him, but I had to get him to give up on me. Have him think I’d gone to the moon or something.

  In Akita I stopped at a bank, withdrew some cash, and checked my balance. There was still a decent amount in my personal account. Credit card payments were automatically deducted…For the time being I had enough to continue my trip. I wasn’t using that much each day. Gas money, nights in business hotels, that’s about the size of it.

  At an outlet store outside Hakodate I purchased a simple tent and a sleeping bag. Hokkaido in early spring was still cold, so I also bought some thermal underwear. Whenever I arrived in a place, I looked for an open campground, set up my tent, and slept there, in order to save money. Hard snow still covered the ground and the nights were cold, but because I’d been spending nights in cramped, stuffy business hotel rooms I felt relieved and free inside the tent. Hard ground below, the endless sky above. Countless stars sparkling in the sky. That and nothing else.

  For the next three weeks I wandered all over Hokkaido in my Peugeot. April came, but it looked like the snow wasn’t going to melt anytime soon. Still, the color of the sky visibly changed, and plants began to bud. Whenever I ran across a small town with a hot springs I’d stay in an inn there, enjoy the bath, wash my hair and shave, and have a decent meal. Even so, when I weighed myself I found I’d lost eleven pounds.

  I didn’t read any newspapers or watch TV. My car radio had started acting up from the time I arrived in Hokkaido, and soon I couldn’t hear anything on it at all. I had no clue what was happening in the world at large, and didn’t care to know. I stopped once in Tomakomai and did laundry at a laundromat. While I waited for the clothes to finish I went to a nearby barbershop and got a haircut and shave. At the shop I saw the NHK news on TV for the first time in a long while. I say “saw,” but even with my eyes closed I could hear the announcer’s voice, whether I wanted to or not. From start to finish, though, the news had nothing to do with me, like events happening on some other planet. Or else some fake stories somebody had cooked up for the fun of it.