Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

Nevertheless, I carried on as though nothing was wrong, assigning simple exercises, offering comments on each child’s drawing, giving advice. When class ended, the children went home and the adult class began. It too passed without incident. I exchanged good-natured pleasantries with the people there (hardly my strong point, but I can do it when required). After that, I had a brief meeting with the workshop organizer about future plans. He had no idea why Mariye was absent. There had been no word from her family.

After work, I went to a nearby noodle shop and ate a hot bowl of tempura soba. This too was my weekly habit. Always the same shop, and always tempura soba. One of life’s little pleasures. Then I drove back to my house on the mountain. It was almost nine when I arrived.

I couldn’t tell if anyone had tried to contact me while I was gone, for there was no answering machine (such a “clever” device probably numbered among Tomohiko Amada’s bêtes noires). I gave the simple, old-fashioned telephone a long look, but it didn’t speak. It just sat there, in black silence.

I had a long soak in a hot bath. Then I poured what was left of the original bottle of Chivas Regal into a glass, added two ice cubes from the fridge, and took the drink to the living room, where I sipped it while listening to one of the records I had just bought. At first, it seemed somehow inappropriate to be playing anything other than classical in my mountaintop domicile. The air in the room had been conditioned to that type of music for a very long time. Still, I was playing my music, so that now, song by song, a familiarity overcame the feeling of inappropriateness. As I listened, I could feel my body start to relax. I must have been tense without being aware of it.

The A side of the Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway record had ended and the first song on the B side (“For All We Know,” a really cool performance) had just begun when the phone rang. The clock said 10:30. Who on earth would be calling me so late? I didn’t want to answer. Yet the ring sounded urgent. I put down my glass, rose from the sofa, lifted the needle off the record, and picked up the phone.

“Hello?” It was Shoko Akikawa.

I greeted her.

“I’m so terribly sorry to be phoning this late,” she said. I had never heard her sound so anxious. “But I needed to ask you something. Mariye didn’t show up at art class today, did she?”

No, I replied, she didn’t. The question was a strange one. Normally, Mariye came straight from school (the public junior high in the area) in her uniform. When class ended, her aunt picked her up in the car, and the two went home together. That pattern never varied.

“I haven’t seen Mariye anywhere,” Shoko said.

“Haven’t seen her?”

“She’s missing.”

“Since what time?” I asked.

“Since this morning, when she left for school. I offered to drive her to the station, but she said she’d walk. She likes walking. Much more than riding in the car. So I give her a lift when she’s running late, but otherwise she walks down the hill to the bus stop and takes the bus to the station. This morning she left the house at seven thirty, as usual.”

Shoko said all this in a single breath, then stopped. I could hear her trying to control her breathing. I used the pause to put what she had just told me into some kind of order.

“Today is Friday,” Shoko continued. “When school lets out on Fridays, she goes directly to art class. And then I pick her up afterward. But today Mariye said she’d take the bus home instead. So I didn’t go. When she says something like that, it’s pointless to argue. But she still gets back by seven or seven thirty. Then she has dinner. But tonight, it turned to eight and then eight thirty and she still hadn’t returned. So I called the center and asked whether she had come to class or not. They checked and said she hadn’t shown up. That’s when I got really worried. Now it’s ten thirty and she’s still not back. I’ve heard nothing. That’s why I’m calling you—I thought perhaps you might know something.”

“I haven’t a clue where she is,” I said. “I was rather surprised when I showed up for class and Mariye wasn’t there. She’s never skipped before.”

Shoko gave a deep sigh. “My brother’s not back yet. I don’t know when to expect him—he hasn’t contacted me. I’m not sure if he’ll return tonight or not. I’m here all alone, and I don’t know what to do.”

“She was wearing her school uniform when she left this morning, correct?”

“Yes, she left in her uniform, with a bag over her shoulder. The same as always. A blazer and skirt. I don’t know if she ever made it to school, though. It’s late, so there’s no way to check. But I’m quite sure she got there. The school contacts us if there’s an unexplained absence. She was carrying enough money for a single day’s expenses, no more. I make her take a cell phone just in case, but it’s been shut off all day. She doesn’t like cell phones. She’ll use hers to call me, but she usually keeps it off the rest of the time. I’ve warned her about that over and over, begged her not to turn it off, explained that we may need to reach her if something important comes up, but she doesn’t—”

“Has this ever happened before? Her coming home late?”

“This is the first time, really. Mariye is very dependable. She has no close friends she hangs out with, and once she’s agreed to do something, she follows through, even though she doesn’t like school all that much. She won a prize for perfect attendance in elementary school. She always comes straight home after school. She never loiters along the way.”

Mariye’s aunt was clearly in the dark about her nighttime forays.

“Was there anything she said or did this morning that was out of the ordinary?”

“No, nothing. It was a regular morning. The same as always. She drinks a glass of warm milk, eats a slice of toast, and heads out the door. Every day is identical. I made her breakfast today as I usually do. She didn’t say a great deal. But that’s normal. She can talk a blue streak once she gets started, but most of the time, you can’t get much out of her.”

I was beginning to worry. It was almost eleven at night, and it was pitch dark outside. The moon was hiding behind the clouds. What on earth had happened to Mariye Akikawa?

“I’ll wait one more hour. If Mariye still hasn’t contacted me by then, I’ll call the police,” Shoko said.

“That’s a good idea,” I said. “And let me know if there’s anything I can do. Any time is all right—please don’t hesitate, no matter how late it is.”

Shoko thanked me and hung up. I drained what was left of the whiskey and washed the glass in the sink.

After that I went to the studio. I turned on all the lights and stood there in the bright room, taking another lingering look at my unfinished Portrait of Mariye Akikawa on the easel. It was close to done—only a little work remained. It showed a version of what a quiet thirteen-year-old girl would ideally look like. Yet there were other elements too, aspects of her that could not be seen, that made her who she was. What I was attempting in all my painting—though not, of course, in the portraits I did on commission—was to try to capture those things which lay outside my field of vision and communicate their message in a different form. Mariye was, in that sense, a most fascinating subject. There was just so much that was hidden, like a trompe l’oeil. And now as of this morning she herself had disappeared. As if swallowed by that very trompe l’oeil.

I turned to look again at The Pit in the Woods leaning against the wall. I had just completed it that afternoon. I could feel that painting calling out to me too, though in another way, and from a different direction, than A Portrait of Mariye Akikawa .