Killing Commendatore

by Haruki Murakami

  I’d stayed up until two thirty but hadn’t heard the bell at all, I told him. It was a very quiet night.

  “Glad to hear it. Since then has anything unusual happened around you?”

  “Nothing particularly unusual, no,” I replied.

  “That’s good. I hope it continues that way,” Menshiki said. A moment later he added, “Would it be all right for me to stop by tomorrow morning? I’d really like to take another good look at the stone chamber if I could. It’s a fascinating place.”

  “Fine by me,” I said. “I have no plans for tomorrow morning.”

  “Then I’ll see you around eleven.”

  “Looking forward to it,” I said.

  “By the way, was today a good day for you?” Menshiki asked.

  Was today a good day for me? It sounded like a sentence that had been translated mechanically by computer software.

  “A relatively good day,” I replied, puzzled for a moment. “At least, nothing bad happened. The weather was good, overall a pleasant day. What about you, Mr. Menshiki? Was today a good day for you?”

  “It was a day when one good thing happened, and so did one not-so-good thing,” Menshiki replied. “The scale is still swinging, unable to decide which one was heavier—the good or the bad.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I stayed silent.

  Menshiki went on. “Sadly, I’m not an artist like you. I live in the business world. The information business, in particular. In that world the only information that has exchange value is that which can be quantified. So I have the habit of always quantifying the good and the bad. If the good outweighs the bad even by a little, that means it’s a good day, even if something bad happened. At least numerically.”

  I still had no idea what he was getting at. So I kept my mouth closed.

  “By unearthing that underground chamber like we did yesterday, we must have lost something, and gained something. What did we lose, and what did we gain? That’s what concerns me.”

  He seemed to be waiting for me to reply.

  “I don’t think we gained anything you could quantify,” I said after giving it some thought. “At least right now. The only thing we got was that old Buddhist bell. But that probably doesn’t have any actual value. It doesn’t have any provenance, and isn’t some unique antique. On the other hand, what was lost can be clearly quantified. Before long, you’ll be getting a bill from the landscaper, I imagine.”

  Menshiki chuckled. “It’s not that expensive. Don’t worry about it. What concerns me is that we haven’t yet taken from there the thing we need to take.”

  “The thing we need to take? What’s that?”

  Menshiki cleared his throat. “As I said, I’m no artist. I have a certain amount of intuition, but unfortunately I don’t have the means to make it concrete. No matter how keen that intuition might be, I still can’t turn it into art. I don’t have the talent.”

  I was silent, waiting for what came next.

  “Which is why I’ve always pursued quantification as a substitute for an artistic, universal representation. In order to live properly, people need a central axis. Don’t you think so? In my case, by quantifying intuition, or something like intuition, through a unique system, I’ve been able to enjoy a degree of worldly success. And according to my intuition…” he said, and was silent for a time. A very dense silence. “According to my intuition, we should have got hold of something from digging up that underground chamber.”

  “Like what?”

  He shook his head. Or at least it seemed that way to me from the other end of the phone line. “I still don’t know. But I think we have to know. We need to combine our intuition, allow it to pass through your ability to express things in concrete form, and my ability to quantify them.”

  I still couldn’t really grasp what he was getting at. What was this man talking about?

  “Let’s see each other again tomorrow at eleven,” Menshiki said. And quietly hung up.

  * * *

  —

  Soon after he’d hung up, I got a call from my married girlfriend. I was a little surprised. It wasn’t often that she’d get in touch at this time of night.

  “Can I see you tomorrow around noon?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry, but I have an appointment tomorrow. I made it just a little while ago.”

  “Not another woman, I hope?”

  “No. It’s with Mr. Menshiki. I’m painting his portrait.”

  “You’re painting his portrait,” she repeated. “Then the day after tomorrow?”

  “The day after tomorrow’s totally free.”

  “Great. Is early afternoon okay?”

  “Of course. But it’s Saturday.”

  “I’ll manage it.”

  “Did something happen?” I asked.

  “Why do you ask?” she said.

  “You don’t often call me at this time of day.”

  She made a small sound at the back of her throat, as if making a minor adjustment in her breathing. “I’m in my car now, by myself. I’m calling from my cell.”

  “What are you doing in the car all alone?”

  “I just wanted to be by myself in the car, so that’s where I am. Housewives sometimes do these things. Is that a problem?”

  “No problem. No problem at all.”

  She sighed, the kind of sigh that condensed a variety of sighs into one. And then she said, “I wish you were here with me. And that we could do it from behind. I don’t need any foreplay. I’m so wet you could slip right inside. I want you to pound me, hard and fast.”

  “Sounds good to me. But a Mini is too small inside to pound you hard like that.”

  “Don’t expect too much.”

  “Let’s figure out a way.”

  “I want you to knead my breast with your left hand and rub my clit with your right.”

  “What should my right foot be doing? I could manage to use it to adjust the car stereo. You don’t mind a little Tony Bennett?”

  “I’m not joking here. I’m totally serious.”

  “I know. My bad. Serious. Got it,” I said. “Tell me, what are you wearing right now?”

  “You want to know what clothes I’m wearing?” she asked enticingly.

  “I do. My procedure might change depending on what you have on.”

  Over the phone she gave me a detailed rundown on the clothes she had on. It always surprised me, the variety of clothes mature women wore. Orally, she took these off, one by one.

  “So, did that get you hard?” she asked.

  “Like a hammer,” I said.

  “You could pound a nail?”

  “You bet.”

  There are hammers in the world that need to pound in nails, and nails that need to be pounded by hammers. Now who said that? Nietzsche? Or was it Schopenhauer? Or maybe nobody said it.

  Over the phone line, we entwined bodies in a way that felt so real. Phone sex was definitely a first for me, with her—or with anyone, for that matter. Her descriptions were so detailed, so arousing, that these imaginary sex acts were, in part, more sensual than what we could do with our actual bodies. Words can sometimes be so direct, sometimes so erotically suggestive. At the end of this exchange, I unexpectedly climaxed. And she seemed to have an orgasm as well.

  We said nothing, catching our breath.

  “I’ll see you Saturday, then,” she said after she seemed to have pulled herself together. “I have something to tell you about our Mr. Menshiki, too.”

  “You got some new information?”

  “A bit of new information I gathered through the jungle grapevine. But I’ll wait to see you to tell you. While we’re probably doing something naughty.”

  “You going home now?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I’d better be getting b
ack.”

  “Drive carefully.”

  “Right. I need to take care. I’m still sort of shuddering down there.”

  I stepped into the shower and used soap to clean my penis. I changed into pajamas, threw on a cardigan, and with a glass of cheap white wine in hand went out onto the terrace and gazed off in the direction of Menshiki’s house. The lights were still on in his massive, pure-white mansion across the valley. The lights seemed to be on all over the house. What he was doing over there (most likely) all by himself, I had no idea. Seated at the computer, perhaps, engaged once more in quantifying intuition.

  “A relatively good day,” I said to myself.

  And an odd day at that. What kind of day tomorrow would bring I had no clue. Suddenly I remembered the horned owl up in the attic. Was today a good day for it, too? Then I recalled that for horned owls, the day was now only beginning. During the day they slept in dark places. And come night, they set out to the woods in search of prey. That was a question a horned owl should be asked early in the morning. The question of “Was today a good day?”

  I went to bed, read a book for a while, then turned off the light at ten thirty and went to sleep. Since I slept, without waking even once, until just before six the next morning, I imagine that the bell didn’t ring during the middle of the night.

  17

  HOW COULD I MISS SOMETHING THAT IMPORTANT?

  I never could forget the last words my wife said when I left our home: “Even if we break up like this, can we still be friends? If possible, I mean.” At the time (and for a long time after), I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say, what she was hoping for. I was confused, as if I’d put some totally tasteless food into my mouth. The best I could say was, “Well, who knows.” And those were the last words I said to her face-to-face. Pretty pathetic, as final words go.

  Even after we broke up, it felt like my wife and I were still connected by a single living tube. An invisible tube, but one that was still beating slightly, sending something like hot blood traveling back and forth between our two souls. I still had that sort of organic sensation. But before long, that tube would be severed. And if it was bound to be cut sometime, I needed to drain the life from that faint line connecting us. If the life was drained from it, and it shriveled up like a mummy, the pain of it being severed by a sharp knife would be that much more bearable. To do so, I needed to forget about Yuzu, as soon as I could, as much as I could. That’s why I never tried to contact her. After I came back from my trip and went to pick up some belongings back at the apartment, I did call her once. I needed to get all my painting materials I’d left behind. That was the only conversation I had with Yuzu after we broke up, and it didn’t last long.

  We officially dissolved our marriage, and I couldn’t contemplate the thought of us remaining friends. We’d shared so many things during our six years of marriage. A lot of time, emotions, words and silence, lots of confusion and lots of decisions, lots of promises and lots of resignation, lots of pleasure, lots of boredom. Naturally each of us must have had inner secrets, but we even managed to find a way to share the sense of having something hidden from the other. With us there was a gravitas of place that only the passage of time can nurture. We did a good job of accommodating our bodies to that sort of gravity, maintaining a delicate balance. We had our own special local rules that we lived by. And there was no way we could get rid of all that history, jettison the gravitational balance and local rules, and live simply as good friends.

  I understood that very well. That’s the conclusion I came to after thinking about it during that lengthy trip. I invariably came to the same conclusion: it was best to keep Yuzu at a distance and break off contact. That made the most sense. And that’s what I did.

  And for her part Yuzu didn’t contact me either. Not a single phone call, not one letter. Even though she was the one who said she wanted to remain friends. That hurt far more than I’d expected. Or more precisely, what hurt me was actually me, myself. In the midst of that continuing, unsettled silence my feelings, like a heavy pendulum, a razor-sharp blade, made wide swings between one extreme to the other. That arc of emotions left fresh wounds in my skin. And I had only one way of forgetting the pain. And that was, of course, by painting.

  * * *

  —

  Sunlight filtered in silently through the studio window. From time to time a gentle breeze rustled the white curtains. The room had an autumn-morning scent. After coming to live on the mountain I’d grown sensitive to the changes in smells from one season to another. Back when I lived in the city I’d hardly ever noticed those.

  I sat on the stool, and gazed for a long time at the portrait of Menshiki I’d begun. This was the way I always began work, reevaluating with new eyes the work I’d done the previous day. Only then could I pick up my brush.

  Not bad, I thought. Not bad at all. The colors I’d created completely enveloped the original framework of Menshiki I’d done. The outline of him in black paint was hidden now behind those colors. Though concealed, I could still make it out. I would have to once more bring that outline into relief. Transform a hint into a statement.

  There was no guarantee, of course, that the painting would ever be complete. It was still inchoate, something missing. Something that should be there was appealing to the nonvalidity of absence. And that missing element was rapping on the glass window separating presence and absence. I could make out its wordless cry.

  Focusing so hard on the painting had made me thirsty, so I went into the kitchen and drank a large glass of orange juice. I relaxed my shoulders, stretched both arms high above my head, took a deep breath, and exhaled. I went back to the studio and sat down on the stool and studied the painting. Refreshed, I focused again. But something was different from before. The angle I was looking at the painting from was clearly not the same as it had been a few minutes before.

  I got down from the stool and checked its location. It was in a slightly different spot from when I’d left the studio earlier. The stool had clearly been moved. But how? When I’d gotten down from the stool, I hadn’t moved it. That I was sure of. I’d gotten down gingerly in order not to move the stool, and when I’d come back I’d also been careful not to move it when I sat down. I remembered these details because I’m very sensitive about the position and angle I view paintings from. I have a set position and angle that I always use, and like batters who are very particular about their stance in the batter’s box, it bothers me to no end if things are off, even by a fraction.

  But now the stool was eighteen inches away from where it had been, the angle that much changed. All I could think was that while I’d been in the kitchen drinking orange juice and taking deep breaths, someone had moved the stool. Someone had gone into the studio, sat on the stool to look at the painting, then got down from the stool before I came back, and silently slipped out of the room. And that’s when—whether intentionally or it just worked out that way—they moved the stool. But I’d been out of the studio at most five or six minutes. Who in the world would go out of their way to do something like that—and why? Or had the stool moved on its own?

  My memory must be messed up. I’d moved the stool but forgotten that I had. That’s all I could think. Maybe I was spending too much time alone. The order of events in my memory was getting muddled.

  I left the stool in the spot where I’d found it—in other words, a spot twenty inches away from where it had been, and at a different angle. I sat down on it and studied Menshiki’s portrait from that position. What I saw was a slightly different painting. It was the same painting, of course, but it looked ever so different. The way the light struck it was not the same as before, and the texture of the paint, too, looked changed. There was something decidedly animated and alive in the painting. But also something still lacking. The direction of that lack, though, wasn’t the same as before.

  So what was different about it? I
brought my focus to bear on the painting. The difference must be speaking to me, trying to tell me something. I had to discover what was being hinted at by the difference. I took a piece of white chalk and marked the position of the three legs of the stool on the floor (location A). Then I moved the stool back twenty inches to the side to its original position (location B), and marked that, too, with chalk. I moved back and forth between the two positions, studying the one painting from the different angles.

  Menshiki was still in both paintings, but I noticed that his appearance was strangely different depending on the two angles. It was as if two different personalities coexisted within him. Yet both versions of Menshiki were missing something. That shared lack unified both the A and B versions of Menshiki. I had to discover what it was, as if it were triangulated between position A, position B, and myself. What could that shared absence be? Was it something that had form, or something formless? If the latter, then how was I to give it form?

  Not an easy thing to do, now is it, someone said.

  I clearly heard that voice. Not a loud voice, but one that carried. Nothing vague about it. Not high, not low. And it sounded like it was right next to my ear.

  I involuntarily gulped and, still seated on the stool, slowly gazed around me. I couldn’t see anyone else there, of course. The clear morning light filled the floor like pools of water. The window was open, and from far off I could faintly hear the melody played by a garbage truck. It was playing “Annie Laurie” (why the garbage trucks in Odawara played a Scottish folk song was a mystery to me). Beyond that, I couldn’t hear a thing.

  Maybe I was just imagining things. Maybe it was my own voice I was hearing, a voice welling up from my unconscious. But what I’d heard sounded odd. Not an easy thing to do, now, is it? Even unconsciously, I wouldn’t talk to myself like that.

  I took a deep breath and from my perch on the stool again looked at the painting, focusing my attention on the work. It must have just been my imagination.