Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

Mariye kept looking at me. She didn’t speak. But I could see the sparkle slowly returning to her eyes.

“Tomohiko Amada invested everything, all of himself, in this painting. It’s filled with his emotion. As though he painted it with his own blood and flesh. Truly a once-in-a-lifetime work of art. He did it for himself, but also for those who were no longer of this world, a kind of requiem to their memory. To purify the blood they had shed.”

“Requiem?”

“A work to bring peace to the spirits of the dead and heal their wounds. That’s why he didn’t expose it to public view. The critical reception, the accolades, the financial rewards—they had no meaning. He wanted none of those things for this painting. It was enough for him to know that he had created it, and that it existed somewhere. Even if it was wrapped up in paper and hidden in an attic where no one would ever see it. I want to respect his feelings.”

The room was quiet for a while.

“You’ve played around here since you were small, right? Using that secret passageway of yours. Isn’t that so?”

Mariye nodded.

“Did you ever meet Tomohiko Amada?”

“I saw the old guy. But I never talked to him. I just hid and looked at him from far away. When he was painting. I mean, I was trespassing, right?”

I nodded. The image was all too real. Mariye in the shrubbery, peeking into the studio. Tomohiko Amada on his stool, intently wielding his brush. The thought that he was being observed a million miles from his mind.

“You asked me to help you with something,” Mariye said.

“So I did. There’s one thing,” I said. “I’d like you to help me wrap up these two paintings and hide them in the attic where no one can see them. Killing Commendatore and The Man with the White Subaru Forester . I don’t think we need them right now. That’s where I could use your help.”

Mariye nodded but didn’t say anything. Truth be told, this was a task I really didn’t want to do alone. More than help, I needed someone to act as observer and witness. Someone tight-lipped, whom I could trust to share the secret.

I went to the kitchen and got some twine and a utility knife. Then Mariye and I packed up Killing Commendatore . We wrapped it carefully in the same brown washi, the traditional Japanese paper it had been in before, bound it with twine, draped it in a white cloth, and then tied it again. Firmly, to make it difficult for anyone to unwrap. The thick paint on The Man with the White Subaru Forester wasn’t quite dry, so we wrapped it more loosely. Then we carried the two paintings to the closet of the guest bedroom. I climbed to the top of the stepladder, raised the trap door to the attic (much like Long Face had pushed up the square lid to his hole, come to think of it), and climbed up. The air was chilly there, but a pleasant kind of chilly. Mariye handed the paintings up to me. Killing Commendatore went first, followed by The Man with the White Subaru Forester . I leaned them next to each other against the wall.

All of a sudden, I sensed I had company. I gulped. Someone was there—I could feel a presence. Then I saw the horned owl. Probably the same owl I had seen the first time. The night bird was perched on the same beam as before, still as a statue. He didn’t seem particularly concerned when I moved in his direction. Also like the first time.

“Hey. Come up and see something,” I whispered to Mariye. “Something very cool. Try not to make any noise.”

Looking curious, Mariye mounted the ladder and crawled through the opening into the attic. I pulled her up the last step with both hands. The floor of the attic was covered with a fine white dust, but she didn’t show any concern that it would get on her wool skirt. I sat down and pointed out the horned owl to her. She knelt beside me and looked at the bird, entranced. It was very beautiful. Like a cat that had sprouted wings. “It’s been living here the whole while,” I whispered to her. “It goes out to hunt in the forest in the evening, and flies back in the morning to sleep. That’s its entrance there.”

I pointed at the air vent with the hole in its screen. Mariye nodded. I could hear the faint sound of her breathing.

We sat there side by side without speaking, looking at the owl. Showing little interest in us, the owl sat there quietly, a model of discretion. The owl and I had a tacit understanding that we would share the house. One of us was active during the day, the other at night—in that way, the domain of consciousness was shared equally, half and half.

Mariye reached over and took my hand in hers. Her head came to rest on my shoulder. I gently squeezed her hand back. Komi and I had spent long hours together like this. We were close as brother and sister. Our feelings had flowed back and forth in a very natural way. Until death separated us.

I could feel the tension drain from Mariye’s body. Little by little, that part of her that had become so rigid was beginning to unclench. I stroked her head on my shoulder. Her soft, straight hair. When my hand touched her cheek, I realized she was crying. The tears were so warm it felt as if blood was spilling from her heart. I continued to hold her like that. The girl had needed to cry. But she hadn’t been able to. Probably for a very long time. The horned owl and I kept watch over her as she wept.

The rays of the afternoon sun angled through the hole in the broken vent. White dust and silence surrounded us, nothing more. Dust and silence that seemed to have been passed down from antiquity. We could hear no wind. On his beam, the horned owl mutely preserved the wisdom of the forest. A wisdom also bequeathed from the distant past.

Mariye wept for a long time. She made no sound, but the trembling of her body told me she was still crying. I kept stroking her hair. As if she and I were heading upstream along the river of time.

“Iwas at Mr. Menshiki’s house,” Mariye said. “The whole four days.” She had stopped crying, and was talking again.

She and I were in the studio. Mariye was perched on the round stool, her knees touching as they peeked out from beneath her skirt. I was leaning on the windowsill. I could see how pretty her legs were. Her bulky tights couldn’t hide that. When she matured a bit more, those legs would attract the gaze of many men. By then, her chest would have filled out too. Now, however, she was just a lost and confused girl, wavering on the threshold of adulthood.

“You were at Mr. Menshiki’s?” I asked. “I’m not sure I understand. Can you fill me in a little?”

“I needed to know more about him, so I went to his house. I had to find out why he was watching our home through those binoculars every night. I think he bought the big house across the valley just to do that. To spy on us. I couldn’t understand why he would do something like that. I mean, it was so not normal. I thought there had to be some kind of reason.”

“So you went to pay him a visit?”

Mariye shook her head no. “I didn’t pay him a visit. I snuck in. Secretly. And then I couldn’t get out.”

“You snuck in?”

“Yes, like a burglar. I didn’t plan it like that, though.”

When her morning classes ended on Friday, Mariye slipped out the back door of the school. If a student was unexpectedly absent in the morning, the school called their family. But no phone call was made when a student missed his or her afternoon classes. There was no clear reason for this policy—that’s just the way things were done. Mariye had never skipped out before, so she figured if she got caught she could talk her way out of trouble. She hopped on a bus and got off close to where she lived. But instead of heading home, she turned up the opposite slope, toward Menshiki’s house.