Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

“Mr. Menshiki’s house is really impressive,” I said to Mariye. “You may or may not like it, but it wouldn’t hurt to take a look.”

“Have you been there?”

“Only once. I went there for dinner.”

“It’s on the other side of the valley?”

“Right across from us.”

“Can you see it from here?”

I pretended to think for a moment. “Yes, but it’s far away, of course.”

“Show me.”

I led her to the terrace and pointed out Menshiki’s mansion on top of the mountain across the valley. Bathed in the light from the garden lanterns, the building floated white in the distance like an elegant ocean liner sailing the night sea. Several of the windows were also lit up. The lights burning there were small and unobtrusive.

“That enormous white house?” Mariye exclaimed in surprise. She stared at me for a moment. Then, wordlessly, she turned back to the distant mansion.

“I can see it from my house, too,” she said eventually. “The angle’s a bit different, though. I’ve always wondered who would live in a place like that.”

“It does stand out, that’s for sure,” I said. “Anyway, that’s Mr. Menshiki’s home.”

Mariye spent a long time leaning over the railing looking at the house. A handful of stars twinkled above its roof. There was no wind, and a small, sharp-edged cloud hung there motionless. Like a paper cutout nailed to a plywood backdrop in a play. Each time the girl moved her head, her straight black hair glittered in the moonlight.

“Does Mr. Menshiki really live there all by himself?” Mariye asked, turning to me.

“Yes, he does. All alone, in that big house.”

“And he’s not married?”

“He told me he has never married.”

“What kind of work does he do?”

“I’m not sure. Something connected to the information business, he said. Maybe having to do with tech. He doesn’t have a regular job right now, though. He lives on the money he made from selling his old business, and from stock dividends and so forth. I don’t know the details.”

“So he doesn’t work?” Mariye said, wrinkling her forehead.

“That’s what he said. Seldom leaves his home, apparently.”

He might well be standing on his terrace, watching the two of us through his high-powered binoculars just as we were watching him. What would run through his mind if he saw us standing side by side like this?

“You’d better head home,” I told Mariye. “It’s getting late.”

“Besides asking about Mr. Menshiki,” she said softly, as if confiding something, “I wanted to tell you I’m really happy that you’re painting my picture. I can’t wait to see it.”

“I hope it turns out well,” I said. Her words moved me more than a little. It was strange how much this girl opened up when painting was involved.

I walked her to the door. Mariye put on her tight-fitting down jacket and crammed her Indians cap down over her head. Now she looked like a boy.

“Shall I walk with you partway?” I asked.

“I’m fine. I know the path.”

“See you next Sunday, then.”

But instead of leaving, she paused for a moment with her hand on the doorframe.

“One thing bothers me,” she said. “It’s that bell.”

“The bell?”

“I thought I heard it ringing on my way here. The same kind of jingling sound that the bell in your studio made.”

I was at a loss for words. Mariye’s eyes were on my face.

“Where was it exactly?” I asked.

“In the woods. It came from behind the shrine.”

I listened to the dark. But I heard no bell. I heard no sound at all. Just the quiet of the night.

“Weren’t you scared?” I asked.

Mariye shook her head. “If I leave it alone, there’s nothing to be scared of.”

“Wait here just a second,” I told Mariye. I ran back to the studio. The bell was not where I had left it. It had vanished from the shelf.

After seeing Mariye off, I went into the studio, turned on all the lights, and combed every inch of the room. But the old bell was nowhere to be found. It had vanished from sight.

When had I last seen it? The previous Sunday, on her first visit, Mariye had taken the bell down and shaken it. Then she had returned it to the shelf. I remembered that. But had I laid eyes on the bell since? I couldn’t recall. I had hardly set foot in the studio all week. Not once had I picked up my brush. The Man with the White Subaru Forester had stalled, and I hadn’t yet started Mariye’s portrait. I was what you might call “between paintings.”

Then, without my knowledge, the bell had disappeared.

But Mariye had heard it ringing behind the shrine when she passed through the woods. Could someone have returned it to the pit? Should I rush there now, see if I could hear the bell with my own ears?

Yet the prospect of hurrying off into the dark woods alone didn’t appeal to me. Too many surprises in one day had worn me out. Whatever one might say, I had more than filled my quota of “unforeseen events.”

I went into the kitchen, pulled out the ice tray, plunked a few cubes in a glass, and doused them with whiskey. It was only eight thirty. Had Mariye safely navigated the woods and returned home through her passageway? I felt sure she had. No need for me to worry. This mountain had been her playground since she was small, she had said. And she was a lot tougher than she looked.

I took my time working my way through two glasses of Scotch, munched a few crackers, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. For all I knew, I might be roused in the middle of the night by a ringing bell. Around two a.m., as before. Nothing much I could do about that. If it happened, I would deal with it then. But nothing happened. As far as I knew, anyway. I slept like a log until half past six the next morning.

When I awoke, it was raining outside. A chilly rain, signaling the approach of winter. Quiet and persistent. It reminded me of the rain that had been falling that day in March when my wife announced that our marriage was over. I hadn’t faced her as she spoke. For the most part, I had looked out the window at the rain.

After breakfast, I put on my vinyl poncho and rain hat (both purchased on my trip, at a sporting-goods store in Hakodate) and walked into the woods. I didn’t take an umbrella. I circled the shrine and removed half the boards covering the pit. I made a careful search with my flashlight, but it was empty. No bell, and no sign of the Commendatore. Just to make sure, I decided to descend the metal ladder to check. I had never entered the pit before. The rungs sagged and gave an ominous creak with each step down. In the end, however, I found nothing. It was just an uninhabited hole in the ground. Perfectly round, it might have been a well were it not so wide. Had its builders intended to draw water from it, they would have made its circumference much smaller. And the construction of the wall was too intricate. It was just as the landscaper had said.

I stood in the pit for some time, lost in thought. I didn’t feel trapped since I could see a cleanly severed half-moon of sky above. I flicked off my flashlight, leaned my back against the damp, dark stone wall, and closed my eyes as the rain pattered overhead. Something was running through my mind, but I couldn’t grasp what it was. One thought would link to another, which in turn would link to still another thought. That chain was bizarre somehow, though I couldn’t say exactly why. It was as if I had been swallowed by the act of thinking, if that makes sense.

The pit was thinking too, I could tell. It was alive—I could feel it breathing. My thoughts and those of the pit were like trees grown together: our roots joined in the dark, our sap intermingled. In this condition, self and other blended like the paints on my palette, their borders ever more indistinct.