Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

This left me speechless. “That’s strange. Hardly anybody knows I’m living here. Especially that I’m in Amada’s house.”

“I didn’t know that either,” the agent said.

“Then how does that person know?”

“I have no idea. But you can find out just about anything from the Internet these days. For people who know their way around it, privacy is a thing of the past.”

“Is it just a coincidence that that person lives near me? Or was the fact that I live nearby one of the reasons he chose me?”

“That, I couldn’t say. When you meet the client, if there’s something you want to know, you can ask.”

“I’ll do that,” I said.

“So when can you start?” he asked.

“Anytime,” I said.

“All right, I’ll let them know, and get back to you,” the agent said.

After I hung up I went out to the terrace, settled into the lounge chair, and thought about how things had turned out. The more I mulled it over, the more questions I had. First off, it bothered me that the client knew I was living here, in this house. It was like I was under surveillance, with somebody watching my every move. But why would anyone have that much interest in a person like me? Plus the whole thing sounded too good to be true. The portraits I’d done were certainly well received. And I had a certain amount of confidence in them. But these were, ultimately, the kind of portraits you could find anywhere. No way could you ever call them “works of art.” And as far as the world was concerned I was a completely unknown artist. No matter how many of my paintings someone had seen and liked (not that I accepted that story at face value), would that person really shell out such an enormous fee?

A thought suddenly struck me, out of nowhere: Could the client be the husband of the woman I was having an affair with? I had no proof to go on, yet the more I thought about it the more it seemed like a real possibility. When it came to an anonymous neighbor who was interested in me, that’s all I could come up with. But why would her husband go to the trouble and expense of paying a huge fee to have his wife’s lover paint his own portrait? It didn’t add up. Unless he was some weird pervert or something.

Fine. If that’s how things are working out, then just go with the flow. If the client has some hidden agenda, just let it play out. That was a much more sensible thing to do than remaining as I was, stuck, deadlocked in the mountains. Curiosity was also a factor. What kind of person was this client? What did he want from me in exchange for the huge fee? I had to discover what motivated him.

Once I’d made up my mind I felt relieved. That night, for the first time in a while, I fell into a deep sleep right away, with no thoughts buzzing around in my head. At one point I felt like I heard the rustling of the horned owl in the middle of the night. But that might have just been a piece of a fragmentary dream.

My agent in Tokyo called a few more times, and we decided that I would meet our mystery client on Tuesday afternoon of the following week. (At that point the client’s name was still not revealed.) I had them agree to my usual procedure, wherein, on the first day, we simply met and talked together for an hour or so, before we embarked upon a drawing.

As you might imagine, painting a portrait requires the ability to accurately grasp the special features of a person’s face. But that’s not all. If it were, you’d end up with a caricature. To paint a vibrant portrait you need the skill to discover what lies at the core of the person’s face. A face is like reading a palm. More than the features you’re born with, a face is gradually formed over the passage of time, through all the experiences a person goes through, and no two faces are alike.

On Tuesday morning I straightened up the house, picked some flowers from the garden and put them in vases, moved the Killing Commendatore painting out of the studio into the guest bedroom, and wrapped it up again in brown paper. I didn’t want anyone else seeing it.

At five past one p.m. a car drove up the steep slope and parked in the covered driveway at the entrance. A heavy, brazen-sounding engine echoed, like some giant animal giving a satisfied purr from deep inside a cave. A high-powered engine. The engine shut off, and quiet again settled over the valley. The car was a silver Jaguar sports coupe. Sunlight from between the clouds reflected brightly off the long, brightly polished fenders. I’m not that into cars, so I don’t know which model this was, but my guess was that it was the latest model, the mileage in the four digits, the price twenty times what I paid for my used Corolla station wagon. Not that this surprised me. The client was, after all, willing to pay such a huge fee to have a portrait done. If he’d appeared at my door in a massive yacht, it wouldn’t have been surprising.

The person who got out of the car was a well-dressed middle-aged man. He had on dark-green sunglasses, a long-sleeved white cotton shirt (not simply white, but a pure white), and khaki chinos. His shoes were cream-colored deck shoes. He was probably a shade over five feet seven inches tall. His face had a nice, even tan. He gave off an overall fresh, clean feel. But what struck me most on this first encounter was his hair. Slightly curly and thick, it was white down to the last hair. Not gray or salt-and-pepper, but a pure white, like freshly fallen, virgin snow.

He got out of the car, closed the door (which made that special pleasant thunk expensive car doors make when you casually shut them), didn’t lock it but put the key in his trouser pocket, and strode toward my front door—all of which I watched from a gap in the curtains. The way he walked was quite lovely. Back straight, the necessary muscles all equally in play. I figured he must work out regularly, and pretty hard training at that. I stepped away from the window, sat in a chair in the living room, and waited for the front doorbell to ring. Once it did, I slowly walked to the door and opened it.

When I opened the door the man took off his sunglasses, slipped them into the breast pocket of his shirt, and without a word held out his hand. Half reflexively I held out my hand, too. He shook it. It was a firm handshake, the way Americans do it. A little too firm for me, not that it hurt or anything.

“My name is Menshiki. It’s very nice to meet you,” the man said in a clear voice. The sort of tone a lecturer would make at the beginning of his talk to test the microphone and introduce himself at the same time.

“The pleasure’s mine,” I said. “Mr. Menshiki?”

“The men is written with the character in menzeiten —the one that means ‘avoidance’—and the shiki is the character iro , for ‘color.’”

“Mr. Menshiki,” I repeated, lining the two characters up in my mind. A strange combination.

“ ‘Avoiding colors,’ is what it means,” the man said. “An unusual name. Other than my relatives I rarely run across anyone who shares it.”

“But it’s easy to remember.”

“Exactly. It’s an easy name to remember. For better or for worse.” The man smiled. He had faint stubble from his cheeks to his chin, but I don’t think he’d simply left off shaving. When he’d shaved he’d left an exact, calculated amount of stubble. Different from his hair, his beard was half black. I found it odd that only his hair was pure white.

“Please come in,” I said.

Menshiki gave a small nod, removed his shoes, and stepped inside. The way he carried himself was charming, though I could sense a bit of tension. Like some large cat taken to a new place, each movement was careful and light, his eyes darting quickly around to take in his surroundings.