Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

“Vienna, you said? Did he study Japanese painting in Vienna?”

“Nobody’s that eccentric—to go all the way to Vienna to study Japanese painting. My father originally worked on Western painting. That’s why he went to study in Vienna. At the time he did very cutting-edge modern oil paintings. But after he came back to Japan he suddenly switched styles, and began painting Japanese-style. Not totally unheard of, I suppose. Going abroad awakens your own ethnic identity or something.”

“And he was very successful at it.”

Amada made a small shrug. “According to the public he was. But from a child’s perspective, he was just a grouchy old man. All he thought about was painting, and did exactly as he pleased. No trace of that now, though.”

“How old is he?”

“Ninety-two. When he was young he was apparently pretty wild. I never heard the details.”

I thanked him. “Thank you for everything. I’m really grateful. This really helps me out.”

“You like it here?”

“Yes, I’m really happy you’re letting me stay.”

“I’m glad. Though I’m hoping you and Yuzu can get back together again.”

I didn’t respond. Masahiko himself wasn’t married. I’d heard a rumor he was bisexual, though I didn’t know if it was true or not. We’d known each other for a long time, but had never spoken about it.

“Are you going to keep doing portraits?” Amada asked as we were leaving.

I explained how I’d made a clean break with portrait painting.

“Then how are you going to make a living?” Amada asked, the same thing my agent had wanted to know.

I’ll cut back on expenses and get by on my savings for a while, I replied, echoing my first answer. I also wanted to try painting whatever I wanted, something I hadn’t been able to do for ages.

“Sounds good,” Amada said. “Do what you like for a while. But would you consider teaching art part time too? There’s this arts-and-culture center near Odawara Station and they have painting classes. Most of them are for children, but they have some community art classes for adults set up as well. They teach sketching and watercolor, but not oil painting. The man who runs the school knows my father, he’s not really in it for the money. And he needs a teacher. I’m sure he’d be overjoyed if you’d help out. It doesn’t pay much, but you could make a little extra to live on. You’d only need to teach twice a week, and it shouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“But I’ve never taught painting, and don’t know much about watercolors.”

“It’s simple,” he said. “You’re not training professionals. You just teach the basics. You’ll pick it up in a day. Teaching children should be good for you, too. And if you’re going to live up here all by yourself, you have to get down off the mountain a couple of times a week and be with other people, even if you don’t want to, or else you’ll go a little stir-crazy. Don’t want you ending up like The Shining .”

Masahiko screwed up his face like Jack Nicholson. He’s always been good at impressions.

I laughed. “I’ll give it a try. Whether I’ll do a good job or not, I don’t know.”

“I’ll get in touch with him and let him know,” he said.

Then Masahiko drove me to the used Toyota dealership next to the highway, where I paid cash for the Corolla station wagon. My life alone on a mountaintop in Odawara began that day. I’d been on the move for nearly two months, but now I’d take up a sedentary life. It was quite a switch.

Starting the following week, I began teaching art classes on Wednesdays and Fridays at the arts-and-culture center near Odawara Station. There was a perfunctory interview beforehand, but Masahiko’s introduction meant that I was as good as hired already. I was to teach two classes for adults, plus one for children on Fridays. I quickly got used to teaching the kids. I enjoyed seeing the paintings they did, and, as Masahiko said, it was a good stimulus for me as well. I quickly got to be friends with the children. All I did was go around the room, check on the paintings they did, give them a few words of technical advice, find good points about their paintings, and praise and encourage them. My approach was to have them paint the same subject matter several times, to instill in them the idea that the same object could appear quite different if viewed from a different angle. Just as people had many facets, so too did objects. The kids immediately picked up on how fascinating this could be.

Teaching adults was a bit more of a challenge. The students were either elderly retirees, or housewives whose children were grown and in school, and had time on their hands. As you might imagine, they weren’t as adaptable as the kids, and when I pointed out something, they didn’t easily accept my suggestions. A few of them, though, were willing to learn, and there were a couple who did some pretty appealing paintings. Whenever they asked, I gave them helpful pointers, but for the most part I let them paint however they liked. I confined myself to praising them whenever I found something nice about what they’d done. That seemed to please them. I figured it was enough for them to simply enjoy painting.

And I started sleeping with two housewives, both of whom attended the art classes and received my so-called instruction. Both my students, in other words, and incidentally both fairly decent painters. It’s hard for me to tell whether that was something permissible for a teacher—even a casual teacher like me with no proper license. I basically think mutually consenting adults having sex isn’t a problem, though certainly society might frown at this kind of relationship.

I’m not trying to excuse my actions, but at the time I really didn’t have the mental wherewithal to decide whether I was right or wrong. I was desperately clinging to a scrap of wood that had been swept away. In pitch-black darkness, not a single star, or the moon, visible in the sky. As long as I clung to that piece of wood I wouldn’t drown, but I had no clue where I was, where I was heading.

It was a couple of months after I’d moved there that I discovered Tomohiko Amada’s painting Killing Commendatore . I couldn’t know it at the time, but that one painting changed my world forever.

One sunny morning near the end of May I carried all my painting materials into the studio Mr. Amada had been using, and for the first time in what seemed like forever stood before a brand-new canvas. (Nothing of the master’s painting materials was left in the studio. I assume that Masahiko had packed them all away somewhere.) The studio was a large, square room sixteen feet on a side, with a wood floor and white walls. The floor was bare wood, with not a single rug. There was a large open window on the north side, with simple white curtains. The window on the east side was smaller, with no curtains. As elsewhere in the house, there was nothing hanging on the walls. In one corner of the room was a large porcelain sink for washing away paint. The sink must have been in long use, for its surface was dyed with a mix of different colors. Next to the sink was an old-fashioned kerosene stove, and there was a large ceiling fan. A worktable and a round wooden stool. A compact stereo set was on a built-in shelf so he could listen to opera while painting. The wind blowing in the open window carried with it the fresh fragrance of trees. This was, without doubt, a space for an artist to focus on his work. Everything you might need was here, and not one thing extra.

Now that I had this environment to work in, the feeling of wanting to paint something grew stronger, like a quiet ache. And there were no limits on the amount of time I could spend for myself. No need any longer to paint things I didn’t want to in order to earn a living, no more obligation to prepare dinner for my wife when she came home. (Not that I minded making dinner, though that didn’t change the fact that it was an obligation.) And it wasn’t just preparing meals—I had the right to stop eating altogether and starve if I felt like it. I was utterly free to do exactly what I wanted, without worrying about anybody else.