Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

“Through an intermediary.”

“Correct. I normally use an intermediary, a law office. It’s not that I have a guilty conscience or anything. I just like to protect my anonymity.”

“And it’s an easy name to remember.”

“Exactly,” he said, and smiled. His mouth spread wide, the tips of his ears quivered ever so slightly. “There are times when I don’t want my name to be known.”

“Still, the fee is a little too much,” I said.

“Price is always relative, determined by supply and demand. Those are basic market principles. If I want to buy something and you don’t want to sell it, the price goes up. And in the opposite case, the price goes down.”

“I understand market principles. But is it really necessary for you to go to all that length to have me paint your portrait? Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but a portrait isn’t something a person really needs .”

“True enough. It’s not something you need. But I’m also curious about what sort of portrait you’d do if you painted me. I want to find that out. You could think of it another way, namely that I’m putting a price on my own curiosity.”

“And your curiosity doesn’t come cheap.”

He smiled happily. “The purer the curiosity is, the stronger it is. And the more money it takes to satisfy it.”

“Would you care for some coffee?” I asked.

“That would be nice.”

“I made it a little while ago in the coffee maker. Is that okay?”

“That’s fine. I’ll take it black, if you don’t mind.”

I went into the kitchen, poured coffee into two cups, and carried them back out.

“I notice you have a lot of opera recordings,” Menshiki said as he drank the coffee. “You’re a big opera fan?”

“Those aren’t mine. The owner of this place left them. Thanks to them, though, I’ve listened to a lot of opera since I came here.”

“By owner you mean Tomohiko Amada?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you have a favorite?”

I gave it some thought. “These days I’ve been listening to Don Giovanni a lot. There’s a bit of a reason for that.”

“What kind of reason? I’d like to hear, if you don’t mind?”

“Well, it’s personal. Nothing important.”

“I like Don Giovanni too, and listen to it a lot,” Menshiki said. “I heard it once in a small opera house in Prague. This was back just after the fall of the communist regime.

“I’m sure you know this,” he continued, “but Don Giovanni was first performed in Prague. The theater was small, and so was the orchestra, and none of the singers were famous, yet it was a wonderful performance. They didn’t have to sing really loud like in a big opera house, and could express their feelings in a very intimate way. Impossible at the Met or La Scala. There you need a well-known singer with a booming voice. Sometimes the arias in those big opera houses remind me of acrobatics. But what operas like Mozart’s need is intimacy, like music. Don’t you think so? In that sense the performance I heard in Prague was the ideal Don Giovanni .”

He took another sip of coffee. I said nothing, observing his actions.

“I’ve had the opportunity to hear performances of Don Giovanni all over the world,” he went on. “In Vienna, Rome, Milan, London, Paris, at the Met, and even in Tokyo. With Abbado, Levine, Ozawa, Maazel, and who else?… Georges Prêtre, I believe. But the Don Giovanni I heard in Prague is the one that, strangely enough, has stayed with me. The singers and conductor weren’t people I’d ever heard of, but outside, after the performance, Prague was covered in a thick fog. There weren’t many lights back then and the streets were pitch black at night. As I wandered down the deserted cobblestone streets I suddenly ran across a bronze statue. Whose statue, I have no idea. But he was dressed as a medieval knight. The thought struck me that I should ask him out to dinner. I didn’t, of course.”

He smiled again.

“Do you often go abroad?” I asked.

“Sometimes for work I do,” he said. As if a thought occurred to him, he remained silent. I surmised that he didn’t want to talk specifics about his job.

“So, what do you think?” Menshiki asked, looking me right in the eye. “Did I pass the test? Will you paint my portrait?”

“I’m not testing you. We’re just getting together for a talk.”

“But before you begin a painting you always meet and talk with the client. I heard that if you don’t like the person, you won’t paint his portrait.”

I glanced over toward the terrace. A large crow had settled on the railing, but as if sensing my gaze, he spread his glossy wings and took off.

“I guess that’s possible, but fortunately I haven’t met anyone I don’t like yet.”

“I hope I’m not the first,” Menshiki said with a smile. His eyes, though, weren’t smiling. He was serious.

“Don’t worry. I would be more than pleased to paint your portrait.”

“That’s wonderful,” he said. He paused. “This is kind of selfish of me, but I have a little request myself.”

I looked straight at him again. “What kind of request?”

“If possible I’d like you to paint me freely, and not worry about the usual conventions involved in doing a portrait. I mean, if you want to paint a standard portrait, that’s fine. If you paint it using your usual techniques, the way you’ve painted till now, I’m all right with that. But if you do decide to try out a different approach, I’d welcome that.”

“A different approach?”

“Whatever style you like is entirely up to you. Paint it any way you like.”

“So you’re saying that, like Picasso’s painting during one period, I could put both eyes on one side of the face and you’d be okay with that?”

“If that’s how you want to paint me, I have no objections. I leave it all up to you.”

“And you’ll hang that on the wall of your office.”

“Right now I don’t have an office per se. So I’ll probably hang it in my study at home. As long as you have no objection.”

Of course I had none. All walls were the same as far I was concerned. I mulled all this over before replying.

“Mr. Menshiki, I’m grateful to you for saying that, for telling me to paint in whatever style I want. But honestly nothing specific pops into my head at the moment. You have to understand, I’m merely a portrait painter. For a long time I’ve followed a set pattern and style. Even if I’m told to remove any restrictions, to paint as freely as I want, the restrictions themselves are part of the technique. So I think it’s likely I’ll paint a standard portrait, the way I have up till now. I hope that’s all right with you?”

Menshiki held both hands wide. “Of course. Do what you think is best. The only thing I want is for you to have a totally free hand.”

“One other thing: if you’re going to pose for the portrait, I’ll need you to come to my studio a number of times and sit in a chair for quite a while. I’m sure your work keeps you quite busy, so do you think that’ll be possible?”

“I can clear my schedule anytime. I was the one, after all, who asked that you paint me from real life. I’ll come here and sit quietly in the chair as long as I can. We can have a good long talk then. You don’t mind talking?”

“No, of course not. Actually, I welcome it. To me, you’re a complete mystery. In order to paint you, I might need a little more information about you.”

Menshiki laughed and quietly shook his head. When he did so, his pure white hair softly shook, like a winter prairie blowing in the wind.

“I think you overestimate me. There’s nothing particularly mysterious about me. I don’t talk much about myself because telling all the details would bore people, that’s all.”