Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

“Search your memory,” said that dear voice. “Find something concrete. Something you can touch.”

“Komi?” I said.

There was no answer.

“Komi, where are you?” I said.

Still no reply.

There in the dark, I searched my memory. Like rummaging through an old duffel bag. But it seemed to have been emptied. I couldn’t even recall exactly what memory was.

“Turn off your light and listen to the wind,” Komi said.

I switched off the flashlight. But I couldn’t hear the wind, though I tried. All I could make out was the restless pounding of my heart, a screen door banging in a gale.

“Listen to the wind,” Komi repeated.

Once again, I held my breath and focused. This time, I could hear, lying beyond my heartbeat, a faint humming. A wind seemed to be blowing somewhere far away. A wisp of a breeze brushed my face. Air was entering the tunnel ahead. Air I could smell. The unmistakable odor of damp soil. The first odor I had encountered since setting foot in this Land of Metaphor. The tunnel was leading somewhere. To a place I could smell. In short, to the real world.

“All right then, on you go,” said Donna Anna. “There isn’t much time left.”

With my flashlight turned off, I crawled on into the blackness. As I moved forward, I tried to draw even the slightest whiff of that real air into my lungs.

“Komi?” I asked again.

There was no answer.

I ransacked my store of memories. Komi and I had raised a pet cat. A smart black tomcat. We named it Koyasu, though why we gave it that name escapes me. Komi had picked it up as a kitten on her way home from school. One day, however, it disappeared. We scoured our neighborhood looking for it. We stopped countless people and showed them Koyasu’s photograph. But in the end the cat never turned up.

I crawled on, the image of the black cat vivid in my mind. I tried to imagine my sister and me together, searching for it. I strained my eyes to catch a glimpse of the cat at the end of the dark tunnel. I pricked my ears to hear its mewing. The black cat was solid and concrete, something I could touch. I could feel its fur, its warmth, the firmness of its body—even hear it purr—as if it were yesterday.

“That’s right,” Komi said. “Just keep remembering like that.”

I know where you were and what you were doing , the man with the white Subaru Forester called out of nowhere. He wore a black leather jacket and a golf cap with the Yonex logo. His voice was hoarse from the sea wind. Caught by surprise, I recoiled in fear.

I tried to find my memories of the cat. To draw the fragrance of damp earth into my lungs. I seemed to recall that smell from somewhere. From a time not so far away. But I couldn’t remember, try as I might. Where had it been? As I struggled to recall, once again, my memories began to fade away.

Strangle me with this , the girl had said. Her pink tongue peeked out at me from between her lips. The belt of her bathrobe lay beside her pillow, ready to be used. Her pubic hair glistened like grass in the rain.

“Come on,” Komi urged me. “Call up a favorite memory. Hurry!”

I tried to bring back the black cat. But Koyasu was gone. Why couldn’t I remember him? Perhaps the darkness had snatched him away while I was distracted. Its power had devoured him. I had to come up with something else, and fast. I had the horrid sense that the tunnel was tightening around me. It seemed alive. There is not much time , Donna Anna had said. Cold sweat trickled from my armpits.

“Come on now, remember something,” Komi’s voice said behind me. “Something you can physically touch. Something you can draw.”

Like a drowning man clutching a buoy, I latched onto my old Peugeot 205. My little French car. I remembered the feeling of the steering wheel as I toured northeastern Japan and Hokkaido. It felt like ages ago, yet I could still hear the rattle of that primitive four-cylinder engine, and the way the clutch growled when I shifted from second into third. For a month and a half, the car had been my constant comrade, my only friend. Now it was probably sitting in a scrap yard somewhere.

The tunnel was definitely narrowing. My head kept banging against the roof. I reached for the flashlight.

“Do not turn on the light,” Donna Anna commanded.

“But I can’t see where I’m going.”

“You must not see,” she said. “Not with your eyes.”

“The hole is closing in. If I go on I won’t be able to move.”

There was no answer.

“I can’t go any farther,” I said. “What should I do?”

Again no answer.

I could no longer hear Donna Anna and Komi. I sensed they were gone. All that remained was a deep silence.

The tunnel continued to shrink, making it even harder for me to advance. Panic was setting in. My limbs felt paralyzed—just drawing a breath was growing difficult. A voice whispered in my ear. You are trapped , it said. This is your coffin. You cannot move forward. You cannot move backward. You will lie buried here forever. Forsaken by humanity, in this dark and narrow tomb .

I sensed something approaching from behind. A flattish thing, crawling toward me through the dark. It wasn’t Donna Anna, nor was it Komi. In fact, it wasn’t human. I could hear the scraping of its many feet and its ragged breathing. It stopped when it reached me. There followed a few moments of silence. It seemed to be holding its breath, planning its next move. Then something cold and slimy touched my bare ankle. The end of a long tentacle, it seemed. Sheer terror coursed up my back.

Could this be a Double Metaphor? That which stemmed from the darkness within me?

I know where you were and what you were doing.

I couldn’t recall a thing. Not the black cat, not the Peugeot 205, not the Commendatore—everything was gone. My memory had been wiped clean a second time.

I squirmed and twisted, frantically trying to escape the tentacle. The tunnel had contracted even farther—I could barely move. I was trying to force myself into a space smaller than my body. That was a clear contravention of basic principles. It didn’t take a genius to figure out it was physically impossible.

Nevertheless, I kept on thrusting, pushing myself forward. As Donna Anna had said, this was the path I had chosen, and it was too late to choose another. The Commendatore had died to make my quest possible. I had stabbed him with my own hands. His body had sunk in a pool of blood. I couldn’t allow him to die for nothing. And the owner of that clammy tentacle was trying to get me in its grips.

Rallying my spirits, I pressed on. I could feel my sweater unravel as it caught and tore on the rock. I awkwardly squirmed ahead, loosening my joints like an escape artist slipping his bonds. My pace was no faster than that of a caterpillar. The narrow tunnel was squeezing me like a giant vise. My bones and muscles screamed. The slimy tentacle slithered farther up my ankle. Soon it would cover me, as I lay there in the impenetrable dark, unable to move. I would no longer be the person I was.

Jettisoning all reason, I mustered what strength I had left and forced myself into the ever-narrowing space. Every part of my body shrieked in pain. Yet I had to push forward, whatever the consequences. Even if I had to dislocate every joint. However agonizing that would be. For everything around me was the product of connectivity. Nothing was absolute. Pain was a metaphor. The tentacle clutching my leg was a metaphor. All was relative. Light was shadow, shadow was light. I had no choice but to believe. What else could I do?

The tunnel ended without warning, spitting me out like a clump of grass from a clogged drainpipe. I flew through the air, utterly defenseless. There was no time to think. I must have fallen at least six feet before I hit the ground. Luckily, it wasn’t solid rock, but relatively soft earth. I curled and rolled as I fell, tucking in my head to protect it from the impact. A judo move, done without thinking. I whacked my shoulder and hip on landing, but I barely felt it.