Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

“Then let us commence,” Donna Anna said to me. “Not much time remains. The path is narrowing as we speak. Please follow me. And be so good as to hold the lantern.”

I followed in her wake, holding the lantern above her head. She walked toward the back of the cave with quick, practiced steps. The candle’s flame fluttered as we moved, casting a dancing mosaic of shadows on the pitted walls.

“This looks like a wind cave on Mt. Fuji that I once visited,” I said. “Is that possible?”

“All that is here looks like something,” Donna Anna declaimed without turning around. As though she were addressing the darkness ahead.

“Do you mean to say nothing here is the real thing?”

“No one can tell what is or is not the real thing,” she stated flatly. “All that we see is a product of connectivity. Light here is a metaphor for shadow, shadow a metaphor for light. You know this already, I believe.”

I didn’t think I knew, at least not all that well, but I refrained from inquiring further. That could only lead to more knotty abstractions.

The cave grew narrower the farther back we went. The roof became lower too, so that I had to stoop as I walked. Just as I had done in the Mt. Fuji wind cave. Finally, Donna Anna drew to a halt and turned to face me. Her small, flashing eyes stared up into mine.

“I can guide you this far. Now you must take the lead. I will follow, but only to a certain point. After that, you are on your own.”

Take the lead? I shook my head in disbelief—from what I could see, we had reached the very back of the cave. A dark stone wall blocked our way. I passed the lantern across its face. But it appeared that we had hit a dead end.

“It seems we can’t go any farther,” I said.

“Please look again. There should be an opening in the corner to your left,” Donna Anna said.

I shone the lantern on that section of the cave wall once more. When I stuck my head out and looked more closely, I could make out a dark depression on the far side of a large boulder. I squeezed myself between the wall and the boulder to inspect it. It certainly did appear to be an opening. I remembered my sister slipping into an even narrower crack.

I turned back to Donna Anna.

“You must enter there,” the two-foot-tall woman said.

I looked at her lovely face, wondering what to say. On the wall, her elongated shadow flickered in the lantern’s yellow light.

“I am fully aware,” she said, “that you have been terrified of small, dark places all your life. In such places, you can no longer breathe normally. I am correct, am I not? Nevertheless, you must force yourself to enter. Only in such a manner can you grasp that which you seek.”

“Where does this opening lead?”

“I do not know. The destination is something you yourself must determine by following your own heart.”

“But fear is in my heart as well,” I said. “That’s what worries me. That my fear will distort what I see and push me in the wrong direction.”

“Once again, it is you who determines the path. You are the one who chose the proper route to reach this world. You paid a great price for that, and have crossed the river by boat. You cannot turn back now.”

I looked again at the opening. I shuddered to think I would have to crawl into that dark, cramped tunnel. Yet that was what I had to do. She was right—I couldn’t turn back now. I placed the lantern on the ground and took the flashlight from my pocket. A lantern would be much too cumbersome in that tiny space.

“Believe in yourself,” Donna Anna said, her voice small but penetrating. “You have drunk from the river, have you not?”

“Yes, I was very thirsty.”

“It is good that you did so,” Donna Anna said. “That river flows along the interstice between presence and absence. It is filled with hidden possibilities that only the finest metaphors can bring to the surface. Just as a great poet can use one scene to bring another new, unknown vista into view. It should be obvious, but the best metaphors make the best poems. Take good care not to avert your eyes from the new, unknown vistas you will encounter.”

Tomohiko Amada’s Killing Commendatore might be seen as one such “unknown vista.” Like a great poem, the painting was a perfect metaphor, one that launched a new reality into the world.

I switched on the flashlight and checked its beam. It was bright and unwavering. The batteries should last for some time yet. I removed my leather jacket. It was too bulky to fit into such a tight space. That left me wearing a light sweater and jeans. The cave wasn’t especially cold, but neither was it all that warm.

Bracing myself, I crouched until I was almost on all fours and squeezed headfirst into the opening. Inside I found what appeared to be a tunnel sunk into solid rock. It was smooth to the touch, as if worn by water over the course of many years. There were almost no jagged or protruding edges. As a result, despite its narrowness, I was able to progress more easily than I had expected. The rock was cool and slightly damp. I inched forward on my stomach like a worm, the flashlight illuminating my way. I figured that the tunnel must have functioned as a waterway at some point in the past.

The tunnel was about two feet high and three feet across. Crawling was the only option. It looked like it would go on forever, a dark, natural pipe that expanded and contracted by small degrees. Sometimes it curved to the side. At other times it sloped up or down. Thankfully, though, there were no abrupt rises or falls. Then it hit me. If this was an underground conduit, water could flood the tunnel at any moment, and I would surely drown. My legs stopped moving, paralyzed by fear.

I wanted to turn around and go back the way I had come. But it was impossible to reverse course in such a cramped space. The tunnel seemed to have grown even narrower. Crawling backward to where I had begun was out of the question. Terror engulfed me. I was literally nailed to the spot. I couldn’t move forward, and I couldn’t retreat. Every cell in my body cried out for fresh air. Forsaken by light, I felt powerless and alone.

“Do not stop. You must push on.” Donna Anna’s command was irrefutable. I couldn’t tell if I was hearing things or if she was really behind me, urging me on.

“I can’t move,” I gasped, squeezing out the words. “And I can’t breathe.”

“Make fast your heart,” said Donna Anna. “Do not let it flounder. Should that happen, you will surely fall prey to a Double Metaphor.”

“What are Double Metaphors?” I asked.

“You should know the answer to that already.”

“I should know?”

“That is because they are within you,” said Donna Anna. “They grab hold of your true thoughts and feelings and devour them one after another, fattening themselves. That is what Double Metaphors are. They have been dwelling in the depths of your psyche since ancient times.”

Unbidden, the man with the white Subaru Forester entered my mind. I didn’t want him there. But there was no way around it. It was he who had pushed me to throttle that young woman, forcing me to look into the darkness of my own heart. He had reappeared more than once, to make sure I would remember that darkness.

I know where you were and what you were doing , he was announcing to me. Of course he knew everything. Because he lived inside me.

My heart was in chaos. I closed my eyes and tried to anchor it , to hold it in one place. I ground my teeth with the effort. But how should I go about securing my heart? Where was its true location, anyway? I looked within myself, searching one place after another. But it didn’t turn up. Where could it be?

“Your true heart lives in your memory. It is nourished by the images it contains—that’s how it lives,” a woman said. This time, however, it was not Donna Anna speaking. It was Komi. My sister, dead at age twelve.