* * *
—
Menshiki was wearing a lime-green cardigan over a cream-colored shirt. His pants were gray wool. They were clean and wrinkle-free, as if just back from the cleaners. None of his clothes appeared to be new—they all looked comfortably worn. That made them seem even cleaner. His hair, as always, was a glowing white. It seemed impervious to the seasons and the weather. I guessed that in summer or in winter, on sunny or cloudy days, its radiance would never fade. Only its tone would vary.
Menshiki got out of the car, closed the door, and looked up at the cloudy sky. He thought about the weather for a moment (at least that’s how it looked to me), composed himself, and walked slowly to the front door. Then he rang the doorbell. Slowly and deliberately, like a poet selecting the precise word for a crucial passage. However you looked at it, though, it was just a common old doorbell.
I opened the door and showed Menshiki into the living room. Smiling, he greeted the two women. Shoko rose to welcome him. Mariye remained on the sofa, twirling her hair. She barely glanced his way. At my bidding, we all sat down. Would you like some tea, I asked Menshiki. Please don’t bother, he replied, shaking his head several times and waving his hand in refusal.
“How is your work going?” he asked me.
Moving along as usual, I replied.
“Modeling is tiring, isn’t it?” Menshiki asked Mariye. I couldn’t remember him addressing her while looking her in the eye before. His tone was still a bit tense, but today at least he wasn’t paling or blushing in her presence. His face looked almost normal. He was doing a good job controlling his emotions. I bet he’d been training hard to pull that off.
Mariye didn’t answer. She seemed to mumble something, but it was entirely inaudible. Her hands were clasped tightly on her knees.
“You know she really looks forward to coming here Sunday mornings,” Shoko remarked, breaking the silence.
“Modeling is hard work,” I said, doing my humble best to back her up. “Mariye is doing a great job.”
“I served as a model here for a while,” Menshiki said. “I found it odd somehow. There were times it felt like my soul was being stolen from me.” He laughed.
“It’s not like that at all,” Mariye said, in what was little more than a whisper.
The three of us turned in her direction.
Shoko looked as though she had popped something she shouldn’t have into her mouth and bitten down on it. Menshiki’s face registered unadulterated curiosity. I remained, as ever, the impartial observer.
“What do you mean?” asked Menshiki.
“Nothing’s being stolen from me,” Mariye said in a monotone. “I’m giving something, and I’m getting something in return.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Menshiki said quietly. He seemed impressed. “I was being too simplistic. There has to be an exchange. Artistic creation can never be a one-way street.”
Mariye was silent, her eyes fixed on the teapot on the table. She looked like a lone night heron motionless on the shore, glaring at the water’s surface for hours on end. The teapot was simple white ceramic, the kind you can find anywhere. It was old (Tomohiko Amada had used it), and eminently practical, but apart from a small chip on the rim, nothing about it warranted close examination. Mariye just needed something to stare at right then.
The room fell silent. Like a blank, white billboard.
Artistic creation, I thought to myself. Those words had a pull to them that drew all the silence in the vicinity into a single spot. Like air filling a vacuum. No, more like a vacuum sucking up all the air.
“If you’re coming to my house,” Menshiki said gingerly, facing Shoko, “then perhaps we should go in my car. I’ll bring you back here afterward. The backseat is a bit cramped, but the drive is so full of twists and turns—you’ll find this much easier.”
“Of course,” Shoko said at once. “We’ll ride in your car.”
Mariye’s eyes were still on the white teapot. She seemed deep in thought. Of course, I had no idea what was on her mind, or in her heart. I had no idea what the three of them would do for lunch, either. But Menshiki was smart. He had it all planned—there was no need for me to sweat the details.
* * *
—
Shoko sat in the passenger seat, while Mariye settled in the back. Adults in front, kids in back. The natural way of the world—no prior consultation necessary. I watched from my front door as the car slipped down the slope and out of sight. I went back into the house, took the teacups and teapot into the kitchen, and washed them.
When I finished, I placed Richard Strauss’s Rosenkavalier on the turntable, stretched out on the sofa, and listened. Der Rosenkavalier had become my fallback when I had nothing else to do. A habit implanted in me by Menshiki. The music was somehow addictive, as he had warned. An uninterrupted stream of emotion. Musical instruments in colorful profusion. It was Strauss who boasted, “I can describe anything in music, even a common broom.” Maybe he didn’t say “broom”—it could have been something else. At any rate, there was something painterly about his music. Though what I was aiming for in my painting was very different.
When I opened my eyes a while later, there was the Commendatore. He was sitting in the leather easy chair across from me wearing the same Asuka-period clothing, his sword still on his hip. Perched on the chair, his two-foot frame looked quite demure.
“It’s been a while,” I said. My voice sounded strained and forced, as if coming from somewhere else. “How have you been?”
“As I have told my friends in the past, time is a concept foreign to Ideas,” he said in a small but clear voice. “ ‘A while’ thus lies outside my understanding.”
“It’s a customary phrase. Please don’t let it bother you.”
“I cannot fathom ‘customary’ either.”
Fair enough. Where there is no “time” there can be no “custom.” I stood up and walked to the stereo, lifted the needle, and returned the record to its sleeve.
“As you may have surmised,” the Commendatore said, reading my mind, “in a realm where time flows freely in both directions such things as customs cannot exist.”
“Don’t Ideas require an energy source of some kind?” I asked him. The question had been puzzling me for some time.
“It is a thorny question,” the Commendatore answered, frowning dramatically. “All beings require energy—to be brought into this world and to survive. It is a principle that holds true throughout the universe.”
“So what you’re saying is, Ideas have to have a source of energy too. Right? In accordance with the universal principle.”
“Affirmative! It is an undisputed fact. Universal law binds us one and all—there can be no exceptions. Ideas are felicitous insofar as we possess no form of our own. We materialize when others become aware of us—only then do we take shape. Though that shape is but a borrowed thing, for the sake of convenience.”
“So then Ideas can’t exist unless people are cognizant of them.”
The Commendatore closed one eye and pointed his right index finger in the air. “And what principle can be deduced from that, my friends?”
It took a long moment to wrap my head around that one. The Commendatore waited patiently.
“This is what I think,” I said at last. “Ideas take their energy from the perceptions of others.”
“Affirmative!” the Commendatore said cheerfully. He nodded several times. “You have a good head on your shoulders. Ideas cannot exist outside the perceptions of others—those perceptions are our sole source of energy.”
“So then if I think, ‘The Commendatore doesn’t exist,’ you cease to exist. Right?”
“Negative! In theory, you have a point,” the Commendatore said. “But only in theory. In reality, that is quite unrealistic. One is hard put to will oneself to cease thinking about
a given matter. Namely, to determine to ‘stop thinking’ about something is itself a thought—as long as one follows that path, that something continues to exist. In the end, to stop thinking about something means to stop thinking about stopping thinking.”
“In other words,” I said, “it’s impossible for people to escape Ideas unless they lose either their memory or their interest in Ideas.”
“Truly, dolphins have that power,” the Commendatore said.
“Dolphins?”
“Dolphins have the power to put the right or left half of their brain to sleep. Did my friends not know that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Affirmative! It is why dolphins have so little time for Ideas. It is why they stopped evolving, too. We Ideas tried our hardest, but I am sad to say that all of our efforts led nowhere. It was such a promising species, too. Proportionate to their size, they had the biggest brains of all the mammals until humankind reached its full development.”
“So then you managed to establish a rewarding relationship with humans?”
“It is a known fact that, unlike the dolphin brain, the brain of the human species runs along a single track. Hence, an Idea that enters such a brain cannot be easily brushed aside. That allows us to draw energy therein, and thus sustain ourselves.”
“Like parasites,” I said.
“Nonsense!” said the Commendatore, wagging his finger like a schoolmaster scolding his wards. “When I say ‘drawing energy,’ I mean the tiniest amount. A shred so infinitesimal the members of my friends’ species are unaware. Too small to affect health, or hinder lives in any way.”
“But you told me that Ideas possess nothing like morality. Ideas are an entirely neutral concept, neither good nor bad. It all depends on how humans use them. In which case Ideas can have a beneficial effect in some cases, and a negative effect in others. Isn’t that so?”
“E = mc2 is neutral in itself, yet that Idea led to the creation of the atomic bomb. Then the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In reality. Is that what you are trying to say, my friends?”
I nodded.
“My heart bleeds for you—figuratively, of course; we Ideas have no bodies, and hence no hearts. But then again, my friends, all is caveat emptor in this universe.”
“What?”
“The Latin for ‘buyer beware.’ To wit, a vendor is not responsible for how the buyer uses his wares. Can a shopkeeper determine what manner of man will wear the suit hanging in his window?”
“That argument sounds pretty fishy to me.”
“E = mc2 gave birth to the atomic bomb, but by the same token it spawned a host of good things as well.”
“Like what, for instance?”
The Commendatore thought about this for a moment. He seemed to be having trouble coming up with a good example, however, for he said nothing, just vigorously rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. Then again, perhaps he simply saw no point in pursuing the discussion any further.
“By the way,” I asked, suddenly remembering. “Do you have any inkling where the bell in the studio disappeared to?”
“Bell?” the Commendatore asked, looking up. “What bell?”
“The old bell you were ringing at the bottom of the pit. I put it on the shelf in the studio, but when I looked the other day it was gone.”
The Commendatore shook his head in an emphatic no. “Oh, that bell. Negative! I have not laid hands on it recently.”
“So who do you think might have taken it?”
“How should I know?”
“Whoever it was has started ringing it somewhere.”
“Hmm. It is nothing to do with me. I have no use for it anymore. The bell was never mine alone. It belongs to the place, to be shared by everyone. So if it has disappeared, there must be a reason. No need to worry—it will show up sooner or later. Just wait.”
“The bell belongs to the place?” I said. “You mean it belongs to the pit?”
“By the way,” he said, not answering my question. “If my friends are waiting for Shoko and Mariye’s return, it will not happen soon. At least not until nightfall.”
“And do you think Menshiki has something up his sleeve?” I asked my final question.
“Affirmative! Menshiki has an ulterior motive for everything. Never wastes a move, that fellow. It is the only way he knows. Using both sides of his brain, all the time. He could never be a dolphin.”
The Commendatore’s form faded little by little, and then, like mist on a windless midwinter morning, it thinned and spread until it was completely gone. All that sat facing me now was an old empty armchair. His absence was so absolute, so profound, I had trouble believing that, until a moment earlier, he had been there at all. Perhaps I had been sitting across from empty space, nothing more. Perhaps I had only been talking to myself.
* * *
—
As the Commendatore had predicted, Menshiki’s silver Jaguar took a long time to show up. The two beautiful ladies seemed in no rush to leave his home. I stepped onto my terrace and looked across the valley at the white house. But I could spot no one. To kill time, I went inside and started preparing dinner. I made soup stock, parboiled the vegetables, and froze what I would not be using. I kept myself busy doing whatever I could think of, but when I finished, I still had time on my hands. I returned to the living room, put Richard Strauss’s Rosenkavalier back on the turntable, stretched out on the sofa, and read a book.
Shoko was charmed by Menshiki. That much was certain. She looked at him differently than she looked at me. Her eyes shone. He was a most attractive middle-aged man, to say the least. A handsome and wealthy bachelor, well dressed and well mannered, a man who lived in the mountains in a huge mansion with four English automobiles stored in its garage. It was no mystery why so many women in this world might find him charming (to the same degree they might find me less than desirable). Yet it was equally certain that Mariye had a deep distrust of Menshiki. She was a girl of keen instincts. Perhaps she had intuitively divined that he was concealing the reasons for his behavior. Thus she maintained a careful distance. At least that was how it appeared to me.
What was going to happen? I was naturally curious, yet at the same time I had vague misgivings. My curiosity and those misgivings were therefore in direct opposition. Like an incoming tide meeting the outgoing current at the mouth of a river.
It was shortly after five thirty when Menshiki’s Jaguar made its way back up the slope. As the Commendatore had predicted, it was already dark outside.
39
A CAMOUFLAGED CONTAINER, DESIGNED FOR A SPECIFIC PURPOSE
The Jaguar eased to a stop in front of my house, and Menshiki emerged. He walked around the car to open the door for Mariye and Shoko Akikawa, lowering the passenger seat so that Mariye could climb out of the back. The girl and the woman got into the blue Prius. Shoko rolled down the window and politely thanked Menshiki (Mariye, of course, turned the other way). Then the two drove home without stopping by to say hello. Menshiki watched them until they were out of sight, took a moment to (I assumed) recalibrate his mind and adjust his expression, and walked to my front door.
“I know it’s late, but do you mind if I drop in for a few minutes?” he asked rather shyly.
“Sure, please do. I’m not busy right now,” I said, showing him in.
We went to the living room; he sat on the sofa, while I sat in the easy chair that the Commendatore had just vacated. I thought I could feel the Commendatore’s shrill voice still reverberating in the air.
“Thank you so much for today,” Menshiki said to me. “I owe you a lot.”
No thanks were necessary, I said. I really hadn’t done anything.
“But if it hadn’t been for your portrait—indeed, if it hadn’t been for you, period—this chance would have passed me by. I would never have met Mariye fac
e-to-face, never come this close to her. Everything has hinged on you—you’re like the base of a folding fan. I’m concerned that you may not be enjoying that role, however.”
“Nothing could make me happier than helping you out like this,” I said. “But I must confess, it’s hard to figure out how much is accidental and how much is planned. That part of it does bother me.”
Menshiki thought for a moment. “You may not believe this,” he said, nodding, “but I didn’t plan any of this. Maybe it’s not all pure coincidence, but almost everything has unfolded quite naturally.”
“So I’m the catalyst that happened to set those events in motion? Has that been my role?” I inquired.
“Catalyst? Yes, maybe you could say that.”
“To tell the truth, though, I feel more like a Trojan horse.”
Menshiki looked up at me, as if squinting into a bright light. “What do you mean?”
“You know, the hollow wooden horse the Greeks built. They hid their warriors inside and presented it as a gift to the clueless Trojans, who dragged it inside their fortress. A camouflaged container, designed for a specific purpose.”
Menshiki took a moment to respond. “In other words,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “you think I may have exploited you, used you as a kind of Trojan horse? To get close to Mariye?”
“At the risk of offending you, I do feel a little that way.”
Menshiki narrowed his eyes, and the corners of his mouth curled in the beginnings of a smile.
“I guess that can’t be helped. But as I just said, this has been a series of unexpected coincidences. To be honest, I like you. My affection for you is personal, and very natural. I don’t find myself liking many people, so when it does happen I try to take it seriously. I would never exploit you for my sole convenience. I know I can be selfish, but I’d like to think that I’m able to draw a line between friendship and self-interest. You’re not being used as a Trojan horse—not now, not ever. So please don’t worry.”
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