Харуки Мураками - Killing Commendatore

“I wonder,” I said. What I might have said was, maybe it was because I spent the whole morning madly sketching a strange six-foot-wide hole in the ground and, partway through, my mind made a connection between the hole and a woman’s vagina, which must have turned me on… But I couldn’t.

“It was because I haven’t seen you for so long,” I said instead.

“You’re sweet,” she said, tracing a line on my chest with her fingertips. “But be honest—sometimes don’t you want a younger woman?”

“No, I’ve never thought about that.”

“Really?”

“Not once,” I said. I was being truthful. Our sexual relationship was pure pleasure for me, and I had no desire to seek out anyone else. (My desire for Yuzu, of course, was of a wholly different order.)

I decided not to tell her about Mariye Akikawa. If she learned that a beautiful thirteen-year-old girl was modeling for me, it would only spark her jealousy. It seemed a woman at any age—thirteen, forty-one, you name it—felt she was facing a delicate time in her life. This was one thing my modest experience with the opposite sex had taught me.

“Still,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s strange, the way women and men hook up?”

“Strange in what way?”

“I mean, look at us. We haven’t known each other that long, yet here we are lying together naked, making love like this. Completely vulnerable, with no sense of shame. Don’t you think it’s weird?”

“Maybe you’re right,” I murmured.

“Try to think of it as a game. Maybe not only that, but a kind of game all the same. Otherwise what I’m saying won’t make any sense.”

“Okay, I’ll try,” I said.

“A game has to have rules, right?”

“Yeah, you need those.”

“Baseball, soccer, all the sports have a thick rule book, right, where the rules are written down to the tiniest detail, and then umpires and players have to memorize them all. Without that, the game can’t take place. Isn’t that so?”

“You’re absolutely right.”

She paused, waiting for the image to sink in.

“So what I’m trying to say is, have we ever sat down and discussed the rules of this game that we’re playing? Have we?”

I thought for a moment. “Possibly not,” I said finally.

“Yet despite that, we are playing the game by a set of hypothetical rules. Right?”

“When you put it that way, I guess you have a point.”

“So this is what I think,” she said. “I’m playing the game according to my set of rules. And you’re playing according to yours. The two of us instinctively respect each other’s rules. As long as the two sets don’t conflict and mess things up, we can go on like this without a hitch. Don’t you agree?”

I considered what she had said. “Maybe you’re right. We basically respect each other’s rules.”

“But you know, I think there’s something even more important than respect and trust. And that’s etiquette.”

“Etiquette?”

“Etiquette’s big.”

“You may be right there,” I agreed.

“If all those things—trust, respect, etiquette—stop functioning, the rules clash and the game breaks down. Then we either suspend the game and come up with a new set of rules we can both follow, or we end it and leave the playing field. The big question then would be which of those two routes we decide to follow.”

That was precisely what had happened to my marriage. I had called a halt to the game and walked off the field. On that cold and rainy Sunday afternoon in March.

“So are you suggesting that we should talk out the rules of our relationship?”

“You don’t get what I’m saying at all,” she said, shaking her head. “What I want is not to have to discuss the rules of the game. That’s why I’m able to be naked with you like this. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not a bit,” I said.

“So that leaves us with trust and respect. And most of all etiquette.”

“And most of all etiquette,” I repeated.

She reached down and squeezed a part of my body.

“It’s getting hard again,” she whispered in my ear.

“Maybe that’s because today is Monday,” I said.

“What does Monday have to do with it?”

“Or maybe because it’s raining. Or winter is coming. Or we’re starting to see migrating birds. Or there’s a bumper crop of mushrooms this year. Or my cup is a sixteenth full of water. Or the shape of your breasts under your green sweater turns me on.”

She giggled. My answer appeared to have done the trick.

Menshiki called that evening. He thanked me for the day before.

I had done nothing worthy of his gratitude, I replied. All I had done was introduce him to two people. What developed after that, and how, had nothing to do with me—in that sense, I was a mere outsider. And I would like to keep it that way (though I had a premonition things might not work out so conveniently).

“Actually, I’m calling about something else,” Menshiki said once the pleasantries were over. “I’ve received some new information about Tomohiko Amada.”

So he was continuing his investigation. He might not be doing it himself, but arranging for such detailed work was certainly costing him a lot. Menshiki was a man who poured money into anything he thought necessary, sparing no expense. But why, and to what degree, was tracking down Tomohiko Amada’s experiences in Vienna necessary to him? I didn’t have a clue.

“What we’ve turned up may not have a direct connection with Amada’s stay in Vienna,” Menshiki went on. “But it overlaps with that time, and it’s clear that it had a huge personal impact on him. So I thought you would like to hear about it.”

“It overlapped with that time?”

“As I told you before, Tomohiko Amada returned to Japan from Vienna in early 1939. On paper, he was deported, but in fact he was rescued by the Gestapo. Officials from the foreign ministries of Japan and Nazi Germany had met in secret, and agreed that he be extradited but not charged with any crime. The failed assassination attempt had taken place in 1938, but it was linked to two other important events of that year: the Anschluss —Hitler’s annexation of Austria—and Kristallnacht . The Anschluss took place in March, and Kristallnacht in November. Once they occurred, the brutality of Hitler’s plan was obvious to everyone. Austria was firmly installed as a part of the Nazi war effort. An inextricable cog in the machine. Hoping to block this flow of events, students organized an underground resistance movement, and in the same year, Tomohiko Amada was arrested for his role in the assassination plot. Get the picture?”

“In a general sort of way, yes,” I said.

“Do you like history?”

“I’m no expert, but I love books that deal with history,” I said.

“A number of important events were taking place in Japan that year as well. Fatal, irrevocable events, which led to eventual disaster. Does anything spring to mind?”

I dusted off my store of historical knowledge, so long untouched. What had taken place in 1938? In Europe, the Spanish Civil War had intensified. German Condor bombers had flattened Guernica. But in Japan…?

“Did the Marco Polo Bridge Incident take place that year?” I asked.

“That was the year before,” Menshiki said. “On July 7, 1937. With the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the war between China and Japan went into full swing. Then in December of that year, another serious event took place.”

What had happened in December of 1937?

“The fall of Nanjing?” I asked.

“That’s right. What’s known today as the Nanjing Massacre. After a hard-fought battle, Japanese troops occupied the city, and many people were killed. Some died in the fighting, others after the fighting ended. The Japanese army lacked the means to keep prisoners, so they killed the Chinese soldiers who surrendered as well as thousands of civilians. Historians disagree on exactly how many died, but no one can deny that a massive number of noncombatants were sucked into the conflict and lost their lives. Some say 400,000, others 100,000. But what difference is there really between 400,000 lives and 100,000?”