Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

Perhaps that incident in Vienna was one reason he made a clean break with his career as an artist of Western paintings and converted to Japanese-style painting. He might have wanted to decisively separate himself from the self he used to be.

“How did you find out about all this?” I asked.

“It didn’t take a lot of effort on my part. I asked an organization run by an acquaintance to investigate it for me. But it happened such a long time ago, and they can’t be held responsible for how much of it is really true. They did check with multiple sources, though, so I think the information can basically be trusted.”

“Tomohiko Amada had an Austrian lover. She was a member of an underground resistance group. And he was involved in that assassination plot.”

Menshiki inclined his head a bit and then spoke. “If that’s true, then it’s a pretty dramatic series of events. But most of the people involved are dead by now, so there’s no way for us to really know what happened. Facts have a tendency to get embellished, too. At any rate, though, it’s pretty melodramatic.”

“No one knows how deeply he was involved in that plot?”

“No. We don’t know. I’ve just given it my own dramatic touch. Amada was deported from Vienna, bid his lover farewell—or maybe wasn’t even able to do that—was put on a ship in Bremen, and returned to Japan. During the war he remained silent, holed up in rural Aso, then debuted as a painter of Japanese-style paintings soon after the end of the war. Which took people by complete surprise. Another pretty dramatic development.”

Thus ended the story of Tomohiko Amada.

The same black Infiniti I’d arrived in was quietly awaiting me in front of the house. A faint drizzle was still intermittently falling, the air wet and chilly. The season when you needed a coat was just around the corner.

“Thank you so much for coming,” Menshiki said. “My thanks, too, to the Commendatore.”

It is I who should be doing the thanking , the Commendatore murmured in my ear. His voice, of course, was only for me to hear. I thanked Menshiki once more for dinner. It was an amazing meal, I said. I couldn’t be more satisfied. The Commendatore seemed grateful as well.

“I hope bringing up all of those boring details after dinner didn’t spoil the evening,” Menshiki said.

“Not at all. But about your request: I need some time to think about it.”

“Of course.”

“It takes me time to consider things.”

“It’s the same for me,” Menshiki said. “My motto is: Thinking three times is better than two. And if time allows, thinking four times is better than three.”

The driver had the rear door open, waiting. I got inside. The Commendatore should have boarded at the same time, though I didn’t see him. The car started up the asphalt slope, drove out the open gate, then proceeded slowly down the mountain. Once the white mansion disappeared from view, everything that happened that night seemed like part of a dream. It was getting harder to distinguish what was normal from what was not, what was real and what was not.

What you can see is real , the Commendatore whispered in my ear. What you need to do is open your eyes wide and look at it. You can judge it later on .

Even with my eyes wide open, there could be many things I was overlooking, I thought. I may have actually murmured this aloud, since the chauffeur shot me a glance in the rearview mirror. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the seat. And thought this: How wonderful it would be to put off judging things forever.

I got home a little before ten p.m. I brushed my teeth in the bathroom, changed into pajamas, slid into bed, and fell right asleep. Predictably, I had a million dreams, all of them strange, disconcerting. Swastika flags flying over the streets of Vienna, a huge passenger ship easing out of Bremen harbor, a brass band playing on the pier, Bluebeard’s unopened room, Menshiki playing the Steinway.

Two days later I got a call from my agent in Tokyo. They’d received the transfer of funds from Mr. Menshiki, the payment for the painting, and after taking the agent’s fee out of it the rest had been deposited into my bank account. When I heard the total amount I was astonished. It was much higher than what I’d originally heard.

“The finished painting was better than he’d anticipated, so he added a bonus. There was a message from Mr. Menshiki requesting that you accept this as a token of his gratitude,” my agent said.

I groaned faintly, but no words would come.

“I haven’t seen the actual painting, though Mr. Menshiki attached a photo. From the photo, at least, it looks like an amazing work. Something that goes beyond the boundaries of portrait painting, yet remains a convincing portrait.”

I thanked him and hung up.

A little while later my girlfriend called. Did I mind if she came over tomorrow morning? That would be fine, I told her. Friday was when I taught art class, but I’d have enough time to make it.

“Did you have dinner at Mr. Menshiki’s place?” she asked.

“Yes, a really excellent meal.”

“Did it taste good?”

“It was amazing. The wine was great, too, and the food was outstanding.”

“What was the house like inside?”

“Beautiful,” I said. “It’d take me half a day to describe it all.”

“Could you tell me all about it when I see you?”

“Before? Or after?”

“After’s good,” she said simply.

After I hung up the phone, I went into the studio and looked at Tomohiko Amada’s Killing Commendatore . I’d seen it so many times, but now, after what Menshiki told me, it took on a strangely graphic reality. This was not simply some historical picture of a past event, reproduced in an old-fashioned format. It felt—from the expressions and movements of each of the four characters (excluding Long Face)—like you could read their reactions to the situation. The young man piercing the Commendatore with his long sword was perfectly expressionless. He’d shut away his heart, hiding his emotions. In the Commendatore’s face, one could read the agony as his chest was stabbed, but also a sense of pure surprise, the sense of How could this possibly be happening? The young woman watching this take place (in the opera, this character is Donna Anna) was torn apart by violently conflicting emotions. Her lovely face was contorted in anguish, her lovely white hand held to her mouth. The stocky man, a servant by the look of him (Leporello), was gasping for breath, gazing up at the sky. His hand was stretched out as if trying to reach something.

The organization was perfect. The composition couldn’t be improved. It was a superb, polished arrangement. Each character maintained a vivid dynamism in their actions, instantaneously frozen in time. And now I saw the events of the aborted assassination that may have occurred in 1938 Vienna overlaying the painting. The Commendatore was dressed not in Asuka period costume but in a Nazi uniform. Maybe the black uniform of the SS. And in his chest was a saber or perhaps a dagger. Perhaps the one stabbing him was Tomohiko Amada himself. And who was the woman gasping nearby? Was this Amada’s Austrian lover? And what was it that was rending her heart in two like that?

I sat on the stool, gazing for a long time at Killing Commendatore . My imagination could come up with all sorts of allegories and messages contained therein, but these were, in the final analysis, nothing more than unsubstantiated hypotheses. The background—what I took as background, that is—that Menshiki had talked about was not historical fact, but nothing more than rumor. Or else just a melodrama. Everything remained on the level of perhaps .