Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

“My breasts are really small, don’t you think?” Mariye asked, out of nowhere.

“I wonder,” I said.

“They’re like bread that didn’t rise.”

I laughed. “You’ve just started junior high. I’m sure they’ll get bigger. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t even really need a bra. The other girls in my class all wear bras.”

Certainly it was hard to see any development through her sweater. “If it really bothers you, you could always pad your bra,” I said.

“You want me to?”

“Either way’s fine with me. It’s not like I’m painting you to capture your breasts. You should do whatever you like.”

“But don’t men like women with big breasts?”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “When my younger sister was about your age, her breasts were small too. But that didn’t seem to bother her.”

“Maybe it bothered her, but she just didn’t mention it.”

“Could be,” I said. But I don’t think that bothered Komi. She had other things to worry about.

“Did your sister’s breasts get bigger after that?”

My hand continued to move the pencil swiftly across the page. I didn’t respond to her question. Mariye watched my hand glide along the paper.

“Did her breasts get bigger after that?” Mariye asked again.

“No, they didn’t,” I finally gave up and answered. “My sister died the year she entered junior high. She was only twelve.”

Mariye didn’t say anything for a while.

“Don’t you think my aunt’s really beautiful?” Mariye said, abruptly changing subjects.

“Yes, she’s a very lovely person.”

“Are you single?”

“Ah— nearly, ” I responded. Once that envelope arrived at the law office it’d be completely.

“Would you like to go on a date with her?”

“That would be nice.”

“She has big breasts, too.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“And they’re really nicely shaped. We bathe together sometimes, so I know.”

I looked at Mariye’s face again. “Do you get along well with your aunt?”

“We fight sometimes,” she said.

“About what?”

“All kinds of things. When we have a difference of opinion, or when she makes me mad.”

“You’re an unusual girl,” I said. “You’re quite different from when you’re in art class. I got the impression you were very quiet.”

“In places where I don’t want to talk, I don’t,” she said simply. “Am I talking too much? Would it be better if I stayed quiet?”

“No, not at all. I like talking. Feel free to talk as much as you like.”

Of course I welcomed a lively conversation. I wasn’t about to stay totally silent for nearly two hours and just paint.

“I can’t help thinking about my breasts,” Mariye said after a while. “That’s all I think about, pretty much. Is that weird?”

“Not particularly,” I said. “You’re at that age. When I was your age all I thought about was my penis. Whether it was shaped funny, or was too small, whether it was working wrong.”

“What about now?”

“You’re asking what I think about my penis now?”

“Yeah.”

I thought about it. “I don’t give it much thought. It’s pretty ordinary, I guess, and hasn’t given me any problems.”

“Do women admire it?”

“Occasionally there might be one who does. But that might just be flattery. Like when people praise paintings.”

Mariye pondered this for a while. Finally she said, “You may be a little strange.”

“Really?”

“Normal men don’t talk like that. Even my father doesn’t say things like that to me.”

“I doubt fathers in normal families want to talk about penises with their daughters,” I said. All the while my hand continued to move busily over the paper.

“At what age do nipples get bigger?” Mariye asked.

“I’m not really sure. Since I’m a guy. I’d say it really depends on the person.”

“Did you have a girlfriend when you were a kid?”

“I had my first girlfriend when I was seventeen. A girl in the same class in high school.”

“What high school?”

I told her the name of a public high school in Toshima, in Tokyo. Outside of people who lived in Toshima, probably no one had ever heard of it.

“Did you like school?”

I shook my head. “Not particularly.”

“Did you ever see that girlfriend’s nipples?”

“Yeah,” I said. “She showed them to me.”

“How big were they?”

I remembered the girl’s nipples. “They weren’t especially small, or big. Normal size, I guess.”

“Did she pad her bra?”

I tried to recall the bra my girlfriend had worn back then. All I had was a very vague memory of it. What I did recall was how much trouble I had slipping my hand behind her and unhooking it. “No, I don’t think she padded it.”

“What’s she doing now?”

What was she doing now? “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her for a long time. I imagine she’s married, maybe with some children.”

“How come you don’t see her?”

“The last time I saw her, she said she never wanted to see me again.”

Mariye frowned. “Was this because there was something wrong with you?”

“I guess,” I said. Of course the problem lay with me. No room for doubt there.

Actually, I’d recently had two dreams about this high school girlfriend. In one dream we were strolling along a river on a summer’s evening. I tried to kiss her, but her long black hair formed a curtain in front of her face and my lips couldn’t touch hers. In the dream she was still seventeen, but I had already turned thirty-six, something I suddenly noticed. And that’s when I woke up. It was such a vivid dream. I could still feel her hair on my lips. Before this, I hadn’t thought about her for years.

“How much younger than you was your younger sister?” Mariye said, again suddenly changing topics.

“Three years younger.”

“You said she died when she was twelve?”

“That’s right.”

“So that would make you fifteen then.”

“Right. I was fifteen. I’d just started high school. And she’d just started junior high. Just like you.”

Now that I thought about it, Komi was now twenty-four years younger than me. Since she’d died, every year the age gap only increased between us.

“I was six when my mother died,” Mariye said. “She got stung by hornets. When she was walking in the mountains nearby.”

“I’m very sorry,” I said.

“She had an allergy to hornet stings. They took her by ambulance to the hospital but she was already in shock and went into cardiac arrest.”

“Your aunt moved in with you after that?”

“Yeah,” Mariye said. “She’s my father’s younger sister. I wish I’d had an older brother. A brother three years older.”

I finished up the first dessan and began a second. I wanted to draw her from several angles. This first day I planned to devote just to sketches.

“Did you ever fight with your sister?” she asked.

“No, I don’t recall ever fighting.”

“So you got along well?”

“I suppose so. I never considered whether we did or not.”

“What does ‘nearly single’ mean?” Mariye asked, again shifting subjects.

“I’ll soon be officially divorced,” I said. “We’re in the midst of handling all the paperwork, so that’s why it’s ‘nearly.’”

She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t get divorce . Nobody I know has ever divorced.”

“I don’t get it either. I mean, it’s the first time I ever got divorced.”

“What does it feel like?”

“A bit bizarre, I guess. Like you’re walking along as always, sure you’re on the right path, when the path suddenly vanishes, and you’re facing an empty space, no sense of direction, no clue where to go, and you just keep trudging along. That’s what it feels like.”