Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

Shoko walked over to the windows on the west side and gazed with great interest at the view of the valley from there.

“It’s the same mountain we see from our place, but this is a slightly different angle and it doesn’t look the same at all,” she said, sounding impressed.

Menshiki’s huge white mansion glittered on top of that mountain (and he was probably over there watching my house now through his binoculars). How did that mansion appear from her house? I wanted to ask, but it seemed risky to broach that topic right off the bat. It was hard to tell what that might lead to.

Wanting to steer clear of that, I quickly led them into the studio.

“This is where I’ll have Mariye model for me,” I said to them.

“This must be where Tomohiko Amada did his painting,” Shoko said, gazing with great interest around the studio.

“I believe so,” I said.

“There’s a different feeling here, even from the rest of your house. Don’t you think?”

“I’m not sure. Living here day to day, I don’t really get that sense.”

“What do you think, Mari-chan?” Shoko asked Mariye. “Don’t you find there’s an unusual sort of feeling to the room?”

Mariye was busy looking around the studio and didn’t reply. She probably hadn’t heard her aunt’s question. I wanted to hear her reply as well.

“While the two of you are working here, I’ll wait in the living room, if that’s all right?” Shoko asked.

“It’s all up to Mariye. The most important thing is creating an environment where she can feel relaxed. Whether you stay here or not, either way is fine with me.”

“I don’t want Auntie to be here,” Mariye said, the first time she’d opened her mouth that day. She spoke quietly, but it was a terse announcement with no room for negotiation.

“That’s fine. I’ll do as you’d prefer. I figured that’s how it would be, so I brought a book to read,” Shoko replied calmly, not bothered by her niece’s stern tone. She was probably used to that sort of exchange.

Mariye completely ignored what her aunt said, and crouched down a bit, gazing steadily at Tomohiko Amada’s Killing Commendatore hanging on the wall. The look in her eyes as she studied this rectangular Japanese painting was intense. She examined each and every detail of the painting, as if etching every element of it in her memory. Come to think of it (I thought), this might be the first time anyone else had ever laid eyes on this painting. It had totally slipped my mind to move the painting somewhere out of sight. Too late now, I thought.

“Do you like that painting?” I asked the girl.

Mariye didn’t reply. She was concentrating so much on the painting that she didn’t hear my voice. Or did she hear it but was just ignoring me?

“I’m sorry. She really goes her own way sometimes,” Shoko said, interceding. “She focuses so hard sometimes she blocks out everything else. She’s always been that way. With books and music, paintings and movies.”

I don’t know why, but neither Shoko nor Mariye asked whether the painting was by Tomohiko Amada, so I didn’t venture to explain. And of course I didn’t tell them the title, Killing Commendatore , either. I wasn’t too worried that they’d both seen the painting. Neither one probably would notice that this was a special work not included in Amada’s oeuvre. Things would be different if Menshiki or Masahiko spotted it.

I let Mariye examine Killing Commendatore to her heart’s content. I went to the kitchen, boiled water, and made tea. I put cups and the teapot on a tray and carried it to the living room. I added the cookies Shoko had brought as a gift. Shoko and I sat on chairs in the living room and sipped tea while chatting about life in the mountains, the weather in the valley, etc. This kind of relaxed conversation was necessary before I began to work in earnest.

Mariye kept studying Killing Commendatore by herself for a while, then finally, like a very curious cat, slowly made her way around the studio, picking things up and checking them out along the way. Brushes, tubes of paint, a canvas, and even the old bell that had been exhumed from underground. She held the bell and shook it a few times. It made its usual light jingling sound.

“How come there’s an old bell here?” Mariye, facing a blank space, didn’t seem to be addressing her question to anyone in particular. She was asking me, of course.

“The bell came nearby, from out of the ground,” I said. “I just happened across it. I think it’s connected with Buddhism somehow. Like a priest would ring it as he recited sutras.”

She rang it again next to her ear. “Kind of a strange sound,” she commented.

Once more I was impressed that such a faint sound could have reached out from underground in the woods and found me in the house. Maybe there was some special way of shaking it.

“You shouldn’t touch someone else’s things without permission,” Shoko Akikawa cautioned her niece.

“I don’t mind,” I said. “It’s not valuable.”

Mariye seemed to quickly lose interest in the bell. She returned it to the shelf, plunked down on the stool in the middle of the room, and gazed at the scenery out the window.

“If you don’t mind, I was thinking of starting,” I said.

“All right, then I’ll stay here and read,” Shoko said, an elegant smile rising to her lips. From her black bag she took out a thick paperback with a bookstore’s paper cover. I left her there, went into the studio, and shut the door between it and the living room. Mariye and I were alone in the room.

I had Mariye sit in a dining room chair, one with a backrest. And I sat on my usual stool. We were about six feet apart.

“Could you sit there for a while for me? You can sit however you’d like. As long as you don’t change your position too much, it’s okay to move around. No need to sit completely still.”

“Is it okay for me to talk while you’re painting?” Mariye asked probingly.

“No problem at all,” I said. “Let’s talk.”

“That drawing of me you did the other day was great.”

“The one in chalk on the blackboard?”

“Too bad it got erased.”

I laughed. “Can’t keep it on the blackboard forever. But if you like that kind of thing I can do as many as you want. It’s simple.”

She didn’t reply.

I picked up a thick pencil and used it as a kind of ruler to measure the various elements of her facial features. Different from a croquis, when drawing a dessan you need to take time and make sure you have an accurate grasp of the model’s features. No matter what kind of painting it ends up being.

“I think you have a real talent for drawing,” Mariye said after a period of silence, as if remembering.

“Thank you,” I said. “Hearing that gives me courage.”

“You need courage?”

“Sure I do. Everybody needs to have courage.”

I picked up a large sketchbook and opened it.

“I’m going to sketch dessan of you today. I enjoy painting with oils directly on a blank canvas, but today I’ll stick to drawing detailed dessan. That way I can gradually understand the kind of person you are.”

“Understand me?”

“Drawing someone means understanding and interpreting another person. Not with words, but with lines, shapes, and colors.”

“I wish I could understand myself,” Mariye said.

“I feel the same way,” I agreed. “I wish I could understand myself, too. But it’s not easy. That’s why I paint.”

Using a pencil, I quickly sketched her face and figure from the waist up. How to transfer her depth to a flat medium was critical. And how to transplant her subtle movements to something static—that too was vital. A dessan sketch determines the outline of those.