Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

Mariye’s eyes were still on the white teapot. She seemed deep in thought. Of course, I had no idea what was on her mind, or in her heart. I had no idea what the three of them would do for lunch, either. But Menshiki was smart. He had it all planned—there was no need for me to sweat the details.

Shoko sat in the passenger seat, while Mariye settled in the back. Adults in front, kids in back. The natural way of the world—no prior consultation necessary. I watched from my front door as the car slipped down the slope and out of sight. I went back into the house, took the teacups and teapot into the kitchen, and washed them.

When I finished, I placed Richard Strauss’s Rosenkavalier on the turntable, stretched out on the sofa, and listened. Der Rosenkavalier had become my fallback when I had nothing else to do. A habit implanted in me by Menshiki. The music was somehow addictive, as he had warned. An uninterrupted stream of emotion. Musical instruments in colorful profusion. It was Strauss who boasted, “I can describe anything in music, even a common broom.” Maybe he didn’t say “broom”—it could have been something else. At any rate, there was something painterly about his music. Though what I was aiming for in my painting was very different.

When I opened my eyes a while later, there was the Commendatore. He was sitting in the leather easy chair across from me wearing the same Asuka-period clothing, his sword still on his hip. Perched on the chair, his two-foot frame looked quite demure.

“It’s been a while,” I said. My voice sounded strained and forced, as if coming from somewhere else. “How have you been?”

“As I have told my friends in the past, time is a concept foreign to Ideas,” he said in a small but clear voice. “ ‘A while’ thus lies outside my understanding.”

“It’s a customary phrase. Please don’t let it bother you.”

“I cannot fathom ‘customary’ either.”

Fair enough. Where there is no “time” there can be no “custom.” I stood up and walked to the stereo, lifted the needle, and returned the record to its sleeve.

“As you may have surmised,” the Commendatore said, reading my mind, “in a realm where time flows freely in both directions such things as customs cannot exist.”

“Don’t Ideas require an energy source of some kind?” I asked him. The question had been puzzling me for some time.

“It is a thorny question,” the Commendatore answered, frowning dramatically. “All beings require energy—to be brought into this world and to survive. It is a principle that holds true throughout the universe.”

“So what you’re saying is, Ideas have to have a source of energy too. Right? In accordance with the universal principle.”

“Affirmative! It is an undisputed fact. Universal law binds us one and all—there can be no exceptions. Ideas are felicitous insofar as we possess no form of our own. We materialize when others become aware of us—only then do we take shape. Though that shape is but a borrowed thing, for the sake of convenience.”

“So then Ideas can’t exist unless people are cognizant of them.”

The Commendatore closed one eye and pointed his right index finger in the air. “And what principle can be deduced from that, my friends?”

It took a long moment to wrap my head around that one. The Commendatore waited patiently.

“This is what I think,” I said at last. “Ideas take their energy from the perceptions of others.”

“Affirmative!” the Commendatore said cheerfully. He nodded several times. “You have a good head on your shoulders. Ideas cannot exist outside the perceptions of others—those perceptions are our sole source of energy.”

“So then if I think, ‘The Commendatore doesn’t exist,’ you cease to exist. Right?”

“Negative! In theory, you have a point,” the Commendatore said. “But only in theory. In reality, that is quite unrealistic. One is hard put to will oneself to cease thinking about a given matter. Namely, to determine to ‘stop thinking’ about something is itself a thought—as long as one follows that path, that something continues to exist. In the end, to stop thinking about something means to stop thinking about stopping thinking.”

“In other words,” I said, “it’s impossible for people to escape Ideas unless they lose either their memory or their interest in Ideas.”

“Truly, dolphins have that power,” the Commendatore said.

“Dolphins?”

“Dolphins have the power to put the right or left half of their brain to sleep. Did my friends not know that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Affirmative! It is why dolphins have so little time for Ideas. It is why they stopped evolving, too. We Ideas tried our hardest, but I am sad to say that all of our efforts led nowhere. It was such a promising species, too. Proportionate to their size, they had the biggest brains of all the mammals until humankind reached its full development.”

“So then you managed to establish a rewarding relationship with humans?”

“It is a known fact that, unlike the dolphin brain, the brain of the human species runs along a single track. Hence, an Idea that enters such a brain cannot be easily brushed aside. That allows us to draw energy therein, and thus sustain ourselves.”

“Like parasites,” I said.

“Nonsense!” said the Commendatore, wagging his finger like a schoolmaster scolding his wards. “When I say ‘drawing energy,’ I mean the tiniest amount. A shred so infinitesimal the members of my friends’ species are unaware. Too small to affect health, or hinder lives in any way.”

“But you told me that Ideas possess nothing like morality. Ideas are an entirely neutral concept, neither good nor bad. It all depends on how humans use them. In which case Ideas can have a beneficial effect in some cases, and a negative effect in others. Isn’t that so?”

“E = mc 2is neutral in itself, yet that Idea led to the creation of the atomic bomb. Then the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In reality. Is that what you are trying to say, my friends?”

I nodded.

“My heart bleeds for you—figuratively, of course; we Ideas have no bodies, and hence no hearts. But then again, my friends, all is caveat emptor in this universe.”

“What?”

“The Latin for ‘buyer beware.’ To wit, a vendor is not responsible for how the buyer uses his wares. Can a shopkeeper determine what manner of man will wear the suit hanging in his window?”

“That argument sounds pretty fishy to me.”

“E = mc 2gave birth to the atomic bomb, but by the same token it spawned a host of good things as well.”

“Like what, for instance?”

The Commendatore thought about this for a moment. He seemed to be having trouble coming up with a good example, however, for he said nothing, just vigorously rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. Then again, perhaps he simply saw no point in pursuing the discussion any further.

“By the way,” I asked, suddenly remembering. “Do you have any inkling where the bell in the studio disappeared to?”

“Bell?” the Commendatore asked, looking up. “What bell?”

“The old bell you were ringing at the bottom of the pit. I put it on the shelf in the studio, but when I looked the other day it was gone.”

The Commendatore shook his head in an emphatic no. “Oh, that bell. Negative! I have not laid hands on it recently.”

“So who do you think might have taken it?”

“How should I know?”

“Whoever it was has started ringing it somewhere.”

“Hmm. It is nothing to do with me. I have no use for it anymore. The bell was never mine alone. It belongs to the place, to be shared by everyone. So if it has disappeared, there must be a reason. No need to worry—it will show up sooner or later. Just wait.”