“That does not matter. If I decide to be a mummy, I can do that in a flash.”
“No, stay as you are,” I said hurriedly. “I would appreciate it if you stay the way you are.”
“I will accompany you to Menshiki’s house. You will be able to see me, but Menshiki will not. So it does not matter if I am a mummy or a commendatore. Though there is one thing I would like my friends to do.”
“And what would that be?”
“My friends should call Menshiki now and make sure the invitation for Tuesday night is still open. When you do, make sure to say, ‘It will not be a mummy coming with me that day, but the Commendatore. Would that still be all right?’ As I mentioned, I cannot set foot in a place unless I have been invited. The other party needs to invite me, in some form or other say ‘Please, come on in.’ Once I have been invited, then I can go whenever I feel like it. For this house, that bell over there acted as a substitute invitation.”
“I see,” I said. The one thing I couldn’t have was him turning into a mummy. “I’ll call Mr. Menshiki, see if the invitation is still on, and tell him I’d like him to revise the guest list from mummy to Commendatore.”
“Affirmative. I would be grateful. Receiving an invitation to a dinner party is quite unexpected.”
“I have another question,” I said. “Weren’t you originally a priest who undertook certain death austerities? A priest who voluntarily was buried underground, stopped eating and drinking, and chanted the sutras until you passed away? Didn’t you die in the pit while you continued to ring the bell, and eventually turned into a mummy?”
“Hmm,” the Commendatore said, and shook his head a little. “Unclear. I can’t say, really. At a certain point I became a pure Idea. But I have no linear memory of what I was before that, where I was or what I did.”
The Commendatore was silent, staring fixedly into space.
“Anyway, I have to disappear soon,” the Commendatore said in a quiet, slightly hoarse voice. “The time during which I can materialize is nearly over. The morning is not my time. Darkness is my friend. A vacuum is my breath. I must be saying goodbye soon. So, thank you in advance for calling Mr. Menshiki.”
As if meditating, the Commendatore closed his eyes. His lips were tightly sealed, his fingers locked together, as he steadily grew fainter and then disappeared. Just like the night before. Like fleeting smoke, he silently vanished in the air. In the bright morning sunshine, all that was left was me and the painting I’d started. The outline of the man with the white Subaru Forester glaring at me.
I know exactly where you’ve been and what you’ve been up to.
After noon I called Menshiki. I realized this was the first time I’d ever phoned his home. He was the one who always called me. He picked up after six rings.
“I’m glad you called,” he said. “I was just about to call you. But I didn’t want to bother you while you’re working, so was waiting until the afternoon. I remember you mainly work in the morning.”
“I just finished for the day,” I said.
“Is it going well?” Menshiki asked.
“Yes, I started a new painting. Though I’ve barely begun.”
“That’s wonderful. I’m so glad to hear it. By the way, I hung the portrait you painted on the wall of my study, not yet framed. I’m letting it dry there. Even without a frame it looks wonderful.”
“About tomorrow…,” I said.
“I’ll send a car to pick you up at six,” he said. “The same car will take you back. It’ll just be the two of us, so you don’t need to dress up, or bring a gift or anything. Please just come as you are.”
“There’s one thing I wanted to check with you.”
“Yes?”
“The other day you said you wouldn’t mind having a mummy join us for dinner, right?”
“I did say that, yes. I remember.”
“Is that invitation still open?”
Menshiki considered this for a moment and then gave a cheery laugh. “Of course it is. I meant what I said. The invitation is still open.”
“Something happened and the mummy won’t be able to come, but instead the Commendatore says he’d like to. Is it all right to invite the Commendatore?”
“Of course,” Menshiki said without hesitation. “Like Don Giovanni invited the statue to dinner, I would be pleased to have the Commendatore come to dinner in my humble abode. But unlike Don Giovanni in the opera, I haven’t done anything so bad that I deserve to be thrown into hell. At least I don’t think I have. After dinner I’m not going to be pulled into hell or anything, I hope?”
“That won’t happen,” I replied. Though honestly I wasn’t all that confident. I couldn’t predict anymore what was going to happen next.
“Good. I’m not ready for hell quite yet,” Menshiki said cheerily. As you might expect, he was taking it all as a clever joke. “One question, though. As a dead person, Don Giovanni’s Commendatore wasn’t able to eat earthly food, but what about this Commendatore? Should I prepare food for him? Or does he not take any worldly food?”
“There’s no need to prepare food for him. He doesn’t eat or drink. But it wouldn’t be a problem if you set a place for him.”
“Because he’s basically a spiritual being?”
“I believe so.” An Idea and a spirit were a little different, I thought, but I didn’t want to get into it.
“I’m fine with that,” Menshiki said. “I’ll make sure the Commendatore has his own seat at the table. It’s an unexpected pleasure to be able to invite the famous Commendatore to dinner in my humble home. It’s too bad, though, that he won’t be able to sample the food. We’ll have some delicious wine as well.”
I thanked Menshiki.
“Until tomorrow, then,” Menshiki said, and hung up.
* * *
—
That night, the bell didn’t ring. The Commendatore must have been tired out from materializing during the day (and answering my questions). Or maybe he no longer felt the need to summon me to the studio. At any rate, I slept a deep, dreamless sleep until morning.
The next morning as I painted in the studio the Commendatore didn’t make an appearance. So for two hours, I was able to forget everything and focus on painting. The first thing I did that day was paint over the outline, like spreading a thick slab of butter on toast.
I started with a deep red, an edgy, offbeat green, and a grayish black. These were the colors the man wanted. It took a while to mix the right colors. As I went through this process I put on the record of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. With that music playing, it felt like the Commendatore would appear behind me at any minute, though he didn’t.
That day, Tuesday, the Commendatore, like the horned owl up in the attic, maintained a deep silence. But that didn’t bother me particularly. As a flesh-and-blood person, I couldn’t worry about an Idea. Ideas had their own way of doing things. And I had my own life. I focused on completing The Man with the White Subaru Forester. Whether I was in the studio or out, standing before the canvas or not, the image of the painting was never far from my mind.
According to the radio weather report, there was supposed to be heavy rain that night in the Kanto-Tokai region. And off to the west the weather was indeed taking a turn for the worse. In southern Kyushu torrential rains had made rivers overflow, and people living in low-lying areas had had to evacuate. People in higher areas were warned to watch out for landslides.
A dinner party on a night when it’s going to be pouring, I thought.
I thought of that dark hole in the middle of the woods. That weird stone-lined little chamber that Menshiki and I had exposed to the light of day when we moved the heavy rocks of the mound. I pictured myself sitting alone at the bottom of that pitch-dark hole listening to rain pounding on the wooden cover. I’m shut up inside that hole, unable to escape. The ladder’s been
taken away, the heavy cover shut tight right above me. And everyone in the world has completely forgotten I’ve been left behind. Or perhaps they think I’m long dead. But I am still alive. Lonely, but still breathing. All I can hear is the downpour. There’s no light. Not a single ray reaches me. The stone wall I’m leaning against is damply cold. It’s the middle of the night. All sorts of bugs might ooze their way out.
As this scene took shape in my mind, I gradually found it hard to breathe. I went out to the terrace, leaned against the railing, slowly breathed in the fresh air through my nose, and slowly exhaled through my mouth. As always, I counted the number of breaths and repeated this process at regular intervals. After repeating this for a while, I was able to breathe normally again. The twilight sky was covered in heavy, leaden clouds. The rain was getting closer.
Menshiki’s white mansion appeared faintly across the valley. This evening that’s where I’ll be having dinner, I thought. Menshiki, me, and the famous Commendatore—three of us seated around the dining table.
Affirmative. That is real blood I’m talking about, you know, the Commendatore whispered in my ear.
23
THEY ALL REALLY EXIST
When I was thirteen and my little sister was ten, the two of us traveled by ourselves to Yamanashi Prefecture during summer vacation. Our mother’s brother worked in a research lab at a university in Yamanashi and we went to stay with him. This was the first trip we kids had taken by ourselves. My sister was feeling relatively good then, so our parents gave us permission to travel alone.
Our uncle was single (and still is single, even now), and had just turned thirty, I think, at that time. He was doing gene research (and still is), was very quiet and kind of unworldly, though a very open, straightforward person. He loved reading and knew everything about nature. He enjoyed taking walks in the mountains more than anything, which, he said, was why he had taken a university job in rural, mountainous Yamanashi. My sister and I liked our uncle a lot.
Backpacks in tow, we boarded an express train at Shinjuku Station bound for Matsumoto, and got off at Kofu. Our uncle came to pick us up at Kofu Station. He was spectacularly tall, and even in the crowded station, we spotted him right away. He was renting a small house in Kofu along with a friend of his, but his roommate was abroad so we were given our own room to sleep in. We stayed in that house for one week. And almost every day we took walks with our uncle in the nearby mountains. He taught us the names of all kinds of flowers and insects. We cherished our memories of that summer.
One day we hiked a bit farther than usual and visited a wind cave near Mt. Fuji. Among the numerous wind caves around Mt. Fuji there was one in particular that was fairly large. Our uncle told us about how these holes were formed. The caves were made of basalt, so inside you heard hardly any echoes at all, he said. Even in the summer the temperature remained low inside, so in the past people would store ice they’d cut in winter inside the caves. He explained the distinction between the two types of holes: fuketsu, the larger ones that were big enough for people to go into, and kaza-ana, the smaller ones that people couldn’t enter. Both terms were alternate readings of the same Chinese characters meaning “wind” and “hole.” Our uncle seemed to know everything.
At the large wind hole, you paid an entrance fee and went inside. Our uncle didn’t go with us. He’d been there numerous times, plus he was so tall and the ceiling of the cave so low, he’d end up with a backache. It’s not dangerous, he said, so you two go on ahead. I’ll stay by the entrance and read a book. At the entrance the person in charge handed us each a flashlight and put yellow plastic helmets on us. There were lights on the ceiling of the cave, but it was still pretty dark inside. The deeper we went inside the cave, the lower the ceiling got. No wonder our lanky uncle had bowed out.
My kid sister and I shone the flashlights at our feet as we went. It was midsummer outside but inside the cave it was chilly. It was ninety degrees Fahrenheit outside, but inside it was under fifty. Following our uncle’s advice, we were both wearing thick windbreakers we’d brought along. My sister held my hand tightly, either wanting me to protect her, or else hoping to protect me, one or the other (or maybe she just didn’t want to get separated). The whole time we were inside the cave that small, warm hand was in mine. The only other visitors were a middle-aged couple. But they soon left, and it was just the two of us.
My little sister’s name was Komichi, but everyone in the family called her Komi. Her friends called her Micchi or Micchan. As far as I know, no one called her by her full name, Komichi. She was a small, slim girl. She had straight black hair, neatly cut just above her shoulders. Her eyes were big for the size of her face (with large pupils), which made her resemble a fairy. That day she wore a white T-shirt, faded jeans, and pink sneakers.
After we’d made our way deeper into the cave my sister discovered a small side cave a little ways off from the prescribed path. Its mouth was hidden in the shadows of the rocks. She was very interested in that little cave. “Don’t you think it looks like Alice’s rabbit hole?” she asked me.
My sister was a big fan of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. I don’t know how many times she had me read the book to her. Must have been at least a hundred. She had been able to read since she was little, but she liked me to read that book aloud to her. She’d memorized the story, but each time I read it, she still got excited. Her favorite part was the Lobster Quadrille. Even now I remember that part, word for word.
“No rabbit, though,” I said.
“I’m going to peek inside,” she said.
“Be careful,” I said.
It really was a narrow hole (close to a kaza-ana, in my uncle’s definition), but my little sister was able to slip through it with no trouble. Her upper half was inside, just the bottom half of her legs sticking out. She seemed to be shining her flashlight inside the hole. Then she slowly edged out backward.
“It gets really deep in back,” she reported. “The floor drops off sharply. Just like Alice’s rabbit hole. I’m going to check out the far end.”
“No, don’t do it. It’s too dangerous,” I said.
“It’s okay. I’m small and I can get out okay.”
She took off her windbreaker, so that she was wearing just her T-shirt, and handed the jacket to me along with her helmet. Before I could get in a word of protest, she’d wriggled into the cave, flashlight in hand. In an instant she’d vanished.
A long time passed, but she still didn’t come out. I couldn’t hear a sound.
“Komi,” I called into the hole. “Komi! Are you okay?”
There was no answer. Without any echo my voice was sucked right up into the darkness. I was starting to get concerned. She might be stuck inside the hole, unable to more forward or back. Or maybe she had had a convulsion inside the hole and lost consciousness. If that had happened I wouldn’t be able to help her. All kinds of terrible scenarios ran through my head, and I felt choked by the darkness surrounding me.
If my little sister really did disappear in the hole, never to return to this world again, how would I ever explain that to my parents? Should I run and tell my uncle, waiting outside the entrance? Or should I sit tight and wait for her to emerge? I crouched down and peered into that hole. But the beam from my flashlight didn’t reach far. It was a tiny hole, and the darkness inside was overwhelming.
“Komi,” I called out again. No response. “Komi,” I called more loudly. Still no answer. A wave of cold chilled me to the core. I might lose my sister forever. She might have been sucked into Alice’s hole and vanished. Into the world of the Mock Turtle, the Cheshire Cat, and the Queen of Hearts. A place where worldly logic didn’t apply. No matter what, we never should have come here.
But finally my sister did return. She didn’t back out like before, but crawled out headfirst. First her black hair appeared from the hole, then her shoulders and arms. She wriggled out her waist,
and finally her pink sneakers emerged. She stood in front of me, without a word, stretched, slowly took a deep breath, and brushed the dirt off her jeans.
My heart was still pounding. I reached out and straightened her disheveled hair. I couldn’t quite make it out in the weak light inside the cave, but there seemed to be dirt and dust and other debris clinging to her white T-shirt. I put the windbreaker on her. And handed back her yellow helmet.
“I didn’t think you were coming back,” I said, hugging her to me.
“Were you worried?”
“A lot.”
She grabbed my hand tightly again. And in an excited voice she said, “I managed to squeeze through the narrow part, and then deeper in it suddenly got lower, and down from there it was like a small room. A round room, like a ball. The ceiling’s round, the walls are round, and the floor too. And it was so, so silent there, like you could search the whole world and never find any place that silent. Like I was at the bottom of an ocean, in a hollow going even deeper. I turned off the flashlight and it was pitch dark, but I didn’t feel scared or lonely. That room was a special place that only I’m allowed into. A room just for me. No one else can get there. You can’t go in either.”
“ ’Cause I’m too big.”
My little sister bobbed her head. “Right. You’ve gotten too big to get in. And what’s really amazing about that place is that it’s darker than anything could ever be. So dark that when you turn off the flashlight it feels like you can grab the darkness with your hands. And when you’re there in the dark by yourself, it’s like your body is gradually coming apart and disappearing. But since it’s dark you can’t see it happen. You don’t know if you still have a body or not. But even if, say, my body completely disappeared, I’d still remain there. Like the Cheshire Cat’s grin remaining after he vanished. Pretty weird, huh? But when I was there I didn’t think it was weird at all. I wanted to stay there forever, but I thought you’d be worried, so I came out.”
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