Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

“Someone moved the stones,” I said. “There are signs that the pit has been opened.”

Menshiki glanced at me. “Do you think it was Mariye?” he asked.

“I wonder. It’s not a place anyone would stumble upon, and apart from you and me, she’s the only one who knows about it. So the chances are good it was Mariye.”

The Commendatore knew about the pit, of course. After all, that was where he had come from. Yet in the end he was an Idea. He had no fixed shape. He wouldn’t have had to move those heavy stones if he wanted to go back inside.

We removed the stones and took the boards away. Once again, the hole was exposed. It was perfectly round and not quite six feet across, but it looked bigger now, and blacker, too. I imagined that the darkness was what created the illusion.

Menshiki and I leaned over the hole and directed our lights inside. No one was there. There was nothing at all. Just that empty cylindrical space surrounded by the same stone wall. There was one difference, however. The ladder had vanished. The collapsible metal ladder that the landscaper had considerately left behind after moving the pile of boulders. I had last seen it leaning against the wall of the pit.

“Where did the ladder go?” I wondered out loud.

It didn’t take us long to find it lying on its side some distance away in a stand of pampas grass that the backhoe hadn’t flattened. Someone had taken it from the hole and chucked it there. It wasn’t heavy, so moving it required no great strength. We returned the ladder to the hole and leaned it back against the wall.

“I’m going down to take a look,” Menshiki said. “Maybe I’ll find something.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve been down there before.”

Menshiki descended the ladder with ease, lantern in hand.

“By the way, do you know the height of the Berlin Wall?” he asked as he descended.

“No.”

“Ten feet,” he said looking up at me. “It varied depending on the location, but that was the standard height. A little taller than this hole is deep. It was about a hundred miles long, too. I saw it with my own eyes. When Berlin was still divided into East and West. A pitiful sight.”

When Menshiki reached the bottom, he inspected the pit in the light from his lantern. Even then, though, he kept on talking to me.

“Walls were originally erected to protect people. From external enemies, storms, and floods. Sometimes, though, they were used to keep people in. People are powerless before a sturdy, towering wall. Visually and psychologically. Some walls were constructed for that specific purpose.”

Menshiki broke off at that point. Holding his lantern aloft, he examined every inch of the wall and the ground. Intently and carefully, like an archaeologist poring over the inner sanctum of an Egyptian pyramid. His lantern was stronger than my flashlight, so it illuminated a much wider area. He seemed to have found something on the floor of the pit, for he knelt down and examined it closely. I couldn’t make it out from above, though. Menshiki said nothing. Whatever it was, it must have been very small. He stood up, wrapped it in his handkerchief, and deposited it in the pocket of his windbreaker. He looked up at me.

“I’m coming out,” he said, raising his lantern into the air.

“Did you find something?” I asked.

Menshiki didn’t answer. Carefully, he ascended the ladder. Each rung gave a dull creak under his weight. I kept close watch, my flashlight trained on him. The vantage point made me realize how well his daily routine had trained his body. Not a motion was wasted. Each muscle played its role perfectly. When he was back on the ground he gave a big stretch and then brushed the dirt from his trousers with care. Not that there was much to brush off.

“You can feel how intimidating the height of those walls is from down there. You really feel powerless. I saw something similar in Palestine a while ago. Israel erected a twenty-five-foot concrete wall there, with high-voltage wires running along the top. That wall is almost three hundred miles long. I guess the Israelis figured ten feet was too low, but that’s enough to do the job.”

He set the lantern down. Now the ground around our feet was illuminated.

“Come to think of it, the walls of the solitary cells in Tokyo prison measure about ten feet as well,” Menshiki said. “I don’t know why they made them so high. All you had to look at were those blank walls, day after day. Nothing else to lay your eyes on. No pictures or anything like that, of course. Just those damned walls. You start feeling like you’ve been thrown into a pit.”

I listened in silence.

“I did some time in that place a while back. I haven’t told you about that, have I?”

“No, you haven’t.” My girlfriend had told me he had spent time in prison, but of course I didn’t mention that.

“I figure I should be the one to tell you. You know how gossips love to twist facts to spice up their stories. So it’s better if I give it to you straight. It’s not pretty, but this might be a good time to tell you. In passing, so to speak. Do you mind?”

“Not at all. Tell me.”

“I’m not making excuses,” he said after a moment’s pause, “but I’ve done nothing to feel guilty about. I’ve tried my hand at many things in my life. Borne many risks. Still, I’m not stupid, and I am cautious by nature, so I’ve always been careful to avoid anything illegal. I know where to draw the line. In this case, though, I happened to take on a partner who was careless. Because of him, I suffered a great deal. That experience taught me never to join forces with anyone again. To take responsibility for myself and no one else.”

“What were you charged with?”

“Insider trading and tax evasion. What they call ‘economic crimes.’ I was indicted and tried, but in the end they found me not guilty. All the same, the investigation was grueling, and I spent a pretty long time in prison. They found one reason after another to keep me locked up. I was in there for so long that now being surrounded by walls makes me a little nostalgic. As I said, I had done nothing to warrant punishment. My hands were clean. But the prosecutors had already concocted their scenario, and in it, I was guilty as sin. They had no desire to go back and rewrite it. That’s how bureaucracies work. It’s practically impossible to change something once it’s been decided. Going against the current means that someone, somewhere down the line, has to take responsibility. As a result, I spent a long time in solitary.”

“How long?”

“Four hundred and thirty-five days,” Menshiki said, as if it were nothing. “A number I’ll never forget, no matter how long I live.”

It wasn’t hard to imagine what spending that much time in solitary meant.

“Have you ever been confined in a small space for a long time?” Menshiki asked me.

“No,” I said. My experience being locked in the back of the moving van had given me a bad case of claustrophobia. Now I couldn’t even ride in an elevator. I’d fall apart if I were confined as he had been.

“I learned how to endure it,” Menshiki said. “I spent the days training myself. In the process, I learned several foreign languages. Spanish, Turkish, and Chinese. They limit how many books you can keep in solitary, but those restrictions don’t apply to dictionaries. In that sense, it’s the ideal place to study languages. I’m blessed with good powers of concentration, so when I was focused on a language I could forget the walls. There’s a bright side to everything.”

Even the darkest, thickest cloud shines silver when viewed from above.

Menshiki continued. “What terrified me was the thought of earthquake and fire. Trapped like that, I could never have escaped. Imagining myself crushed or burned to death in that tiny space scared me so much sometimes I couldn’t breathe. That was the one fear I couldn’t overcome. It woke me up some nights.”