Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

I got down from the stool and checked its location. It was in a slightly different spot from when I’d left the studio earlier. The stool had clearly been moved. But how? When I’d gotten down from the stool, I hadn’t moved it. That I was sure of. I’d gotten down gingerly in order not to move the stool, and when I’d come back I’d also been careful not to move it when I sat down. I remembered these details because I’m very sensitive about the position and angle I view paintings from. I have a set position and angle that I always use, and like batters who are very particular about their stance in the batter’s box, it bothers me to no end if things are off, even by a fraction.

But now the stool was eighteen inches away from where it had been, the angle that much changed. All I could think was that while I’d been in the kitchen drinking orange juice and taking deep breaths, someone had moved the stool. Someone had gone into the studio, sat on the stool to look at the painting, then got down from the stool before I came back, and silently slipped out of the room. And that’s when—whether intentionally or it just worked out that way—they moved the stool. But I’d been out of the studio at most five or six minutes. Who in the world would go out of their way to do something like that—and why? Or had the stool moved on its own?

My memory must be messed up. I’d moved the stool but forgotten that I had. That’s all I could think. Maybe I was spending too much time alone. The order of events in my memory was getting muddled.

I left the stool in the spot where I’d found it—in other words, a spot twenty inches away from where it had been, and at a different angle. I sat down on it and studied Menshiki’s portrait from that position. What I saw was a slightly different painting. It was the same painting, of course, but it looked ever so different. The way the light struck it was not the same as before, and the texture of the paint, too, looked changed. There was something decidedly animated and alive in the painting. But also something still lacking. The direction of that lack, though, wasn’t the same as before.

So what was different about it? I brought my focus to bear on the painting. The difference must be speaking to me, trying to tell me something. I had to discover what was being hinted at by the difference. I took a piece of white chalk and marked the position of the three legs of the stool on the floor (location A). Then I moved the stool back twenty inches to the side to its original position (location B), and marked that, too, with chalk. I moved back and forth between the two positions, studying the one painting from the different angles.

Menshiki was still in both paintings, but I noticed that his appearance was strangely different depending on the two angles. It was as if two different personalities coexisted within him. Yet both versions of Menshiki were missing something. That shared lack unified both the A and B versions of Menshiki. I had to discover what it was, as if it were triangulated between position A, position B, and myself. What could that shared absence be? Was it something that had form, or something formless? If the latter, then how was I to give it form?

Not an easy thing to do, now is it , someone said.

I clearly heard that voice. Not a loud voice, but one that carried. Nothing vague about it. Not high, not low. And it sounded like it was right next to my ear.

I involuntarily gulped and, still seated on the stool, slowly gazed around me. I couldn’t see anyone else there, of course. The clear morning light filled the floor like pools of water. The window was open, and from far off I could faintly hear the melody played by a garbage truck. It was playing “Annie Laurie” (why the garbage trucks in Odawara played a Scottish folk song was a mystery to me). Beyond that, I couldn’t hear a thing.

Maybe I was just imagining things. Maybe it was my own voice I was hearing, a voice welling up from my unconscious. But what I’d heard sounded odd. Not an easy thing to do, now, is it? Even unconsciously, I wouldn’t talk to myself like that.

I took a deep breath and from my perch on the stool again looked at the painting, focusing my attention on the work. It must have just been my imagination.

Is it not obvious? someone now said. The voice was right beside my ear.

Obvious? I asked myself. What’s so obvious?

What you must discover, can you not see, is what it is about Mr. Menshiki that is not present here , someone said. As before, a clear voice. A voice with no echo, like it was recorded in an anechoic chamber. Each sound clear as crystal. And like an embodied concept, it had no natural inflection.

I looked around again. This time I got down from the stool and went to check in the living room. I checked every room, but nobody else was in the house. The only other creature there was the horned owl in the attic. The horned owl, of course, couldn’t talk. And the front door was locked.

First the stool moving on its own, and now this weird voice. A voice from heaven? Or my own voice? Or the voice of some anonymous third party? Something was clearly wrong with my mind. Ever since I had started hearing that bell, I’d begun having doubts about whether my brain was functioning normally. With the bell, at least, Menshiki had been there and had heard the same sound, which proved that it wasn’t an auditory hallucination. My hearing was working fine. Okay, so what could this mysterious voice be?

I sat back down on the stool and looked at the painting.

What you must discover, can you see, is what Mr. Menshiki has that is not here. Sounded like a riddle. Like a wise bird deep in the forest showing lost children the way home. What Menshiki has that is not here —what could that be?

It took a long time. The clock silently, regularly, ticked away the minutes, the pool of light from the small east-facing window silently shifted. Colorful, agile little birds flew onto the branches of a willow, gracefully searched for something, then flew away with a twitter. White clouds, like round slates, floated over the sky in a row. A single silver plane flew toward the sparkling sea. A four-engine propeller SDF plane, on antisubmarine patrol. Keeping their ears and eyes sharp and watchful, making the latent manifest, was their daily job. I listened as the engine drew closer and then flew away.

And finally, a single fact struck me. Literally as plain as day. Why had I forgotten this? What Menshiki had that my portrait of him did not—it was all clear to me now. His white hair. That beautiful white hair, as pure white as newly fallen snow. Menshiki without that white hair was unimaginable. How could I miss something that important?

I leaped up from the stool, went to my paint box and gathered up the white paint, picked a brush, and, without thinking, thickly, vigorously spread it on the canvas. I used a knife too, even my fingertip at one point. For fifteen minutes I painted, then stood back from the canvas, sat down on the stool, and checked out my work.

And there, before me, was Menshiki the person. Without a doubt, he was in the painting now. His personality—no matter what that was made up of—was integrated, manifested in the painting. I had no handle on the person named Wataru Menshiki, and knew barely a thing about him. But as an artist I had captured him on canvas, as a synthesized image, as a single, indivisible package. Alive and breathing within the painting. Even the riddles about him were present.

Still, no matter how you looked at it, this was no portrait . I’d succeeded (at least I felt I had) in artistically bringing the presence of Wataru Menshiki into relief on canvas. But the goal wasn’t to depict his outer appearance. That wasn’t the goal at all. That was the big difference between this work and a portrait. What I’d created was, at heart, a painting I’d done for my own sake .