Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

The paint on the picture was still wet, but I took the canvas down from the easel, turned it facing away, and propped it up against the studio wall, careful not to get paint on the wall. It was harder and harder for me to stand seeing the painting. There was something ominous about it—something I shouldn’t know about.

Hovering around the painting was the air of a fishing port. In that air was a mix of smells—the smell of the tide, of fish scales, of diesel engines, of fishing boats. Flocks of birds were screeching, slowly circling on the strong wind. The black golf cap of a middle-aged man who’d probably never played a round of golf in his life. The darkly tanned face, the stringy nape of the neck, the short-clipped hair mixed with gray. The well-used leather jacket. The clatter of knives and forks in the restaurant—that impersonal sound found at chain restaurants around the world. And the white Subaru Forester quietly parked in the lot out front. The sticker of a marlin on the rear bumper.

“Hit me,” the woman had said in the middle of sex. Her fingernails were digging deep into my back. There was a strong smell of sweat. I did as she asked, smacking her face with an open hand.

“Not like that. Don’t hold back, hit me harder,” the woman said, shaking her head violently. “Harder, much harder. Really hit me. I don’t care if there’s a bruise. Hard enough so my nose bleeds.”

I had no desire to hit her. I never had those kind of violent tendencies. Hardly any at all. But she was seriously hoping I would seriously hit her. What she needed was real pain. So I reluctantly hit her again, a little harder this time. Hard enough to leave a red mark on her. Every time I struck her, her flesh squeezed my penis like a vise. Like a starving animal pouncing on some food.

“Would you choke me a little?” she whispered a little while later. “Use this.”

The sound seemed to be coming from another realm. She pulled out a white bathrobe belt from under her pillow. She’d had it there, ready to use.

I refused. I could never do something like that. It was too dangerous. Mess up, and she could die.

“Just pretend,” she pleaded, gasping. “You don’t need to really choke me, just pretend like you are. Wrap this around my neck and tighten it a little.”

I couldn’t refuse.

The impersonal clatter of silverware in a chain restaurant.

I shook my head, trying to drive away those memories. It was an incident I didn’t care to recall, a memory I’d like to throw away and never have again. But the feel of that bathrobe belt lingered in my hands. The way her neck felt, too. For whatever reason, these stayed with me.

And this man knew. Where I’d been the night before, what I’d done. What I’d been thinking.

What should I do with this painting? Keep it here in the studio, turned toward the wall? Even turned around like that, it still made me uneasy. The only other place to keep it was the attic. The same place Tomohiko Amada had hidden away Killing Commendatore . The place to hide away what was in your heart.

In my mind, the words I’d spoken aloud came back to me.

I could reproduce exactly what it looked like. I’m a painter—it’s what I do. But I can’t explain what went into it.

All sorts of things I couldn’t explain were insidiously grabbing hold of me. Tomohiko Amada’s Killing Commendatore that I’d discovered in the attic, the strange bell left behind inside the gaping stone chamber in the woods, the Idea that appeared to me in the guise of the Commendatore, and the middle-aged man with the white Subaru Forester. And that odd white-haired person who lived across the valley. Menshiki seemed to be enlisting me into some kind of plan he had in mind.

The whirlpool swirling around me was gradually picking up speed. And there was no way for me to turn back. It was too late. That whirlpool was totally soundless. And that weird silence had me scared.

That evening I taught a children’s art class. The assignment that day was to do rough sketches of people. The children worked in pairs, selecting the type of drawing instruments they wanted from the ones the school had prepared ahead of time (charcoal or various types of soft pencils), and took turns sketching each other in their notebooks. They were limited to fifteen minutes per drawing (I used a kitchen timer to accurately time them). They were supposed to use an eraser as little as they could, and limit themselves to one sheet of paper, if possible.

One by one the children then came to the front of the class, showed us their sketches, and got feedback from the other children. It was a small class, and the atmosphere was congenial. Afterward I went forward and taught them some simple techniques for rough sketches. I explained in general the difference between croquis —rough sketches—and dessan . A dessan is more of a blueprint for a painting, and requires a certain accuracy. Compared with that, a croquis is a free first impression. You get an impression in your mind and trace the rough outline of it before it disappears. More than accuracy, croquis require balance and speed. Many famous painters actually weren’t very skilled at doing croquis. I’ve always prided myself on being good at drawing these kind of quick sketches.

Finally I chose one of the children to model for me and did a rough sketch of her on the blackboard in white chalk, to show them an actual example. Wow! You’re so fast! It looks just like her! the children called out, impressed. One of a teacher’s important duties is to get children to be genuinely impressed.

Next, I had them change partners and do another croquis, and the second time they were much improved. They absorbed knowledge quickly. This time, the instructor was impressed. Of course some of them were better than others, but that didn’t matter. What I was teaching them was less how to draw than a way to view the world.

On this day I selected Mariye Akikawa (intentionally, of course) to serve as model when I drew an example. I did a simple sketch of her from the waist up on the blackboard. It wasn’t exactly a croquis, though the elements were the same. I finished quickly, in three minutes. I wanted to use the class to test what kind of painting I could do of her. What I discovered in doing this was that, as a model for a painting, she had a lot of unique possibilities hidden away inside.

I’d never really consciously observed her before, but now, looking at her carefully as the subject of a drawing, I found her face far more intriguing than my original vague impression. It wasn’t just that she had lovely features. She was, indeed, a beautiful girl, but a closer observation showed a kind of imbalance at work. And behind that unstable expression there was a latent energy, like some agile animal lurking in the tall grass.

I wanted to see if I could capture that impression, but it was next to impossible to do that in three minutes, in chalk on a blackboard. Basically impossible, I should say. I needed more time to observe her face and dissect all the elements. And I had to know more about this young girl.

I left the chalk sketch of her on the blackboard, and after the children had all left, I stayed behind, arms folded, studying the sketch. I tried to determine if there was anything of Menshiki in her features. But I couldn’t decide. I could detect a resemblance in certain features, in others not so much—it could go either way. But if I had to give one feature it would be the eyes, a shared look in their eyes. The distinctive way their eyes would flash for an instant.