Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

“Well, it might be healthier for you to walk,” she said.

I also had a feeling akin to fear about women with larger than normal breasts. I don’t know if that has anything to do with my sister, or the way her breasts were just beginning to develop when she died. Still, I’ve always been attracted to women with more modest breasts, and every time I see them, every time I touch them, I remember my sister… Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t sexually interested in my sister. I think I was just looking for a certain type of scene. A finite scene, lost and never to return.

On Saturday afternoon my hand was resting on the chest of my married lover. Her breasts weren’t particularly small, or large. Just the right size, they fit neatly into my palm. Her nipples were still hard in my hand.

She’d never come to my house on a Saturday. She always spent the weekends with her family. But that weekend her husband was on a business trip to Mumbai and her two daughters were staying over at their cousin’s house in Nasu in Tochigi. So she came to my place. And like we did on weekday afternoons, we leisurely enjoyed sex. Afterward we lay there in a lazy, indolent silence. Like always.

“Would you like to hear what the jungle grapevine turned up?” she asked.

“Jungle grapevine?” I suddenly couldn’t think of what she was talking about.

“Don’t tell me you forgot? The mystery man in the big white house across the valley. You asked me to look into this Mr. Menshiki the other day.”

“Ah, that’s right. Of course I remember.”

“I found out a little bit about him. One of my housewife friends lives near him, and she could gather some info on him. Would you like to hear it?”

“Of course.”

“Mr. Menshiki bought that house with the gorgeous view about three years ago. Another family was living in it before then. They’re the ones who built the house, but those original owners only lived there about two years. One sunny morning they suddenly packed up all their belongings and left, and Menshiki took their place. He bought the house, which was practically brand-new. How that all came about, though, nobody knows.”

“So he didn’t build the house himself,” I said.

“That’s right. He moved into a container that was already there. Like a quick-witted hermit crab.”

That was unexpected. I’d been positive he was the one who built that house. That’s how closely I’d linked his image—probably corresponding to his wonderfully white hair—with that white mansion on top of the mountain.

She continued. “Nobody knows what kind of work he does. What they do know is that he never commutes to work. He stays in his house all day, probably on his computer. His study is full of those devices. Nowadays if you know what you’re doing, you can find out most everything online. A man I know is a surgeon who works entirely from home. He’s crazy about surfing and doesn’t want to leave the ocean.”

“A surgeon can work entirely from home?”

“They send him all the images and information about the patients, which he analyzes and then creates the protocols for the operations, sends these to the on-site staff, and monitors the operations remotely, sometimes giving them advice. Sometimes he uses a remote magic hand device to actually perform operations. That kind of thing.”

“What an age we live in,” I said. “I wouldn’t like to have anyone operate on me like that.”

“I wonder if Mr. Menshiki is doing something similar,” she said. “No matter what kind of work he’s doing, he’s pulling in enough income. He lives alone most of the time in the huge house, occasionally goes on long trips. Probably trips abroad. In his house he has a home gym with lots of exercise machines, where he works out whenever he has a chance. There’s not an ounce of fat on him. He mostly prefers classical music, and has a substantial listening room. A pretty luxurious life, wouldn’t you say?”

“Where’d you get all these details?”

She laughed. “You seem to underestimate women’s information-gathering skills.”

“You could be right.”

“He has four cars altogether. Two Jaguars and a Range Rover. Plus a Mini Cooper. He seems to like British cars.”

“Mini Coopers are made by BMW these days, and I believe Jaguar was purchased by an Indian corporation. So it’s hard to call either of them British cars.”

“The Mini he drives is an older version. And whatever corporation bought Jaguar, it’s still a British car.”

“Did you find out anything else?”

“Hardly anybody ever comes to the house. Mr. Menshiki prefers solitude. He likes to be alone, likes to listen to classical music and read a lot. He’s single and well off, yet almost never brings women home. For all appearances he lives a very simple, orderly life. Makes you think he might be gay. Though there’s some evidence that points in the other direction.”

“I’m thinking you must have a well-placed source of information.”

“She’s not there now, but until not long ago he had a maid who’d come in a few times a week. She’s the one who took out the garbage, went shopping for him at the local supermarket, where there were other housewives from the neighborhood and they’d start chatting.”

“I see,” I said. “That’s how the jungle grapevine gets formed.”

“You got it. According to her, there’s a kind of forbidden chamber in the house. He instructed her never to enter it. He made it quite clear.”

“Sounds like Bluebeard’s castle.”

“Exactly. People often say that, right? That every house has a skeleton in the closet.”

That reminded me of the painting Killing Commendatore hidden away in the attic. That might be a skeleton hidden in a closet too.

She went on. “The woman never did find out what was in that mystery room. It was always locked. But anyway, that maid doesn’t work there anymore. Maybe she got fired for being a bit too talkative. He seems to be doing all the housework himself now.”

“He told me the same thing. That aside from a once-a-week cleaning service he takes care of all the household chores himself.”

“He seems very touchy about his privacy.”

“Be that as it may, but isn’t the fact that you and I meet like this spreading through your jungle grapevine?”

“I doubt it,” she said in a quiet voice. “First of all, I’m very careful that it doesn’t. And second, you’re a little different from Mr. Menshiki.”

“Meaning…,” I said, translating this into words that were easy to understand, “…that there are things about him that lend themselves to rumor, but not with me.”

“We should be thankful for that,” she said cheerily.

After my little sister died all kinds of things started to go wrong. The metalworking company my father operated went downhill, and he was so busy dealing with that he hardly ever came home. The atmosphere at home became strained. Long, heavy silences reigned over the house. It hadn’t been that way when my sister was still alive. I wanted to get away from it all, and got even more absorbed in painting as a way to escape. Eventually I decided to attend art school and major in painting. My father was dead set against it. You can’t earn a decent living painting, he argued. And I don’t have the money to help raise an artist. The two of us argued about it. My mother intervened to smooth things over, and though somehow I was able to attend art school, my father and I never did reconcile.

If only my sister hadn’t died, I sometimes thought. If she’d lived, my family would have been so much happier. Her sudden disappearance made our family fall apart. Our home became a site where people lashed out and hurt each other. I felt helpless, knowing I could never fill in the hole my sister had left behind.