Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

I thought about Yuzu some more. Her belly would probably be showing after seven months. I pictured how that would look. What would she be doing now? What would she be thinking? Was she happy? Of course, I had no way to know any of those things.

Perhaps it was as Masahiko had said. Perhaps, like a nineteenth-century Russian intellectual, I should do something out-and-out crazy just to prove I was a free man. But what? Something like… spend an hour shut up at the bottom of a pitch-black pit? That was what Menshiki had done. True, his actions might not fit the category “out-and-out crazy.” But they were definitely beyond the pale, to put it mildly.

It was after four when Mariye showed up. The doorbell rang, I opened the door, and there she was. She slipped through the half-open door like a wisp of cloud and looked around warily.

“No one’s here.”

“Nobody’s here, that’s true,” I said.

“Someone was here yesterday.”

That was a question. “Yes, a friend of mine stayed over,” I said.

“A man.”

“Yes, a man. A male friend. But how did you know?”

“There was an old car I’d never seen before parked in front of your house. It looked like a black box.”

That would be Masahiko’s ancient Volvo station wagon, what he called his “Swedish lunch box.” Convenient for hauling reindeer carcasses.

“So you came yesterday.”

Mariye nodded. It appeared that she was using her passageway to come and check on the house whenever she had time. She’d probably been doing this since long before my arrival. After all, it was her playground. Or “hunting ground” might be more accurate. I was just someone who had chanced to move in. In which case, could she have come face-to-face with Tomohiko Amada at some point? I had to ask her about that sometime.

I led her into the living room. We sat down together, she on the sofa, me in the armchair. I offered her something to drink, but she said no.

“The guy who stayed over is a friend from my college days,” I said.

“A good friend?”

“I think so,” I said. “In fact, he may be the only person I can call a true friend.”

Such a good friend that he could introduce his colleague to my wife and keep me in the dark when they started sleeping together—a situation that had led to my just concluded divorce—without casting a cloud over our relationship. To call us friends would hardly be stretching the truth.

“Do you have any good friends?” I asked her.

Mariye didn’t answer. In fact, she didn’t bat an eye, just acted as if she hadn’t heard what I’d said. I guessed it was something I shouldn’t have asked.

“Mr. Menshiki isn’t a good friend of yours,” she said. I knew it was a question, though her intonation was flat. Do you mean Mr. Menshiki isn’t a good friend of yours? was what she meant.

“As I’ve told you,” I said, “I haven’t known Mr. Menshiki long enough to call him a real friend. I started talking with him after I moved here, and that was only six months ago. It takes longer than that for people to become close. Still, he strikes me as a very interesting person.”

“Interesting.”

“How can I explain? His disposition strikes me as a little different than the average guy. Maybe more than a little, actually. He’s not an easy person to figure out.”

“Disposition.”

“Personality. The traits that make a person who they are.”

Mariye stared at me for a while. As if selecting the exact words she ought to use.

“He can see my home from his deck—it’s right across the valley.”

It took me a moment to respond to that. “Yes, you’re right. That’s the lay of the land. But he can see my house just as clearly. Not yours alone.”

“Still, I think that man is spying on us.”

“What do you mean, spying on you?”

“He’s got something like a pair of big binoculars on the terrace, though he hides them with a cover. They’re on a kind of tripod. He can see us really clearly if he uses those.”

So the girl found him out , I thought. Watchful, observant. Eyes that missed nothing of importance.

“So you think that Mr. Menshiki has been observing you through those binoculars?”

Mariye gave a terse nod.

I took a deep breath, then let it out. “Still, that’s just a guess on your part, right? They don’t necessarily mean he’s peeking into your house. He could be observing the moon and stars.”

Mariye’s gaze didn’t waver. “I’ve had this feeling like I’m being watched ,” she said. “For a while. But I didn’t know who was watching me, or from where. But now I know. It’s that person, for sure.”

I took another long, slow breath. Mariye’s supposition was on the money. Menshiki was watching her through his high-powered military binoculars on a nightly basis. Yet to my knowledge—and this was not to defend Menshiki—his motives for being a peeping Tom were far from nefarious. He just wanted to see the girl. This beautiful thirteen-year-old girl who might be his biological daughter. For that reason, and that reason alone, he had purchased the mansion on the other side of the valley. Wresting it from the family living there and booting them out. Yet I couldn’t reveal that to Mariye.

“Let’s say you’re right,” I said. “But then what’s his motive? Why is he so fixated on your home?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he has a crush on my aunt.”

“Has a crush on your aunt?”

She gave a brief shrug of her shoulders.

Mariye couldn’t imagine she was the target. She hadn’t yet reached the stage where she could see herself as an object of male desire. I found it strange, yet I didn’t dare call her version of events into question. If that was how she read the situation, better perhaps to let it ride.

“I think Mr. Menshiki is hiding something,” Mariye said.

“What, for example?”

“My aunt is seeing Mr. Menshiki,” she said, not answering my question. “They met twice this week.” Her tone suggested that she was passing on highly sensitive state secrets.

“On dates?”

“I think she went to his house.”

“Alone?”

“She left a little after noon and didn’t return until late.”

“But you can’t be sure she went to Mr. Menshiki’s, can you?”

“I can tell,” she said.

“How can you tell?”

“My aunt doesn’t leave the house that much,” she said. “Sure, she’ll volunteer at the library or go shopping, but then she doesn’t take a long shower, or paint her nails, or put on perfume and her fanciest underwear.”

“You really have sharp eyes, don’t you,” I said, impressed. “You see everything. But are you sure the man she’s meeting is Mr. Menshiki? Couldn’t it be someone else?”

Mariye narrowed her eyes at me. She gave a small shake of her head. As in, Do you think I’m that stupid? After all, under the circumstances it was unlikely to be anyone but Menshiki. And Mariye was anything but stupid.

“So your aunt spends quite a bit of time at Mr. Menshiki’s house, just the two of them together.”

Mariye nodded.

“And the two of them—how should I put this?—are engaged in what we might call a very intimate relationship.”

She nodded again. “Yes, a very intimate relationship,” she said, her cheeks turning a faint pink.

“But you’re in school all day. Not at home. So how can you know these things?”

“I can tell. I can tell that much from a woman’s face.”

But I couldn’t tell. Yuzu had carried on an extended affair while we were living together, and I was clueless. Looking back, I should have been able to figure out that much. How could a thirteen-year-old girl pick up on something I couldn’t that quickly?