He didn’t seem to be making this up—his words had the ring of truth.
“So did you have a chance to show them the painting?” I asked. “My portrait of you in your study?”
“Of course. That’s why they came in the first place. They loved it. Though Mariye didn’t say anything. She’s a girl of few words, as you know. But I could tell how strongly she felt. It showed in her face. She stood in front of the portrait for a very long time. Just stood there, not speaking or moving.”
In fact, I couldn’t remember the portrait very well, though I had finished it only a few weeks before. That was my pattern—the moment I launched into a new painting, the one I had just finished slipped from my mind. Only a vague and general image remained. I did retain a physical memory, however, of the sense of achievement I got from working on it. That palpable sensation meant more to me than the completed work.
“Their visit sure lasted a long time,” I said.
Menshiki gave an embarrassed shrug. “After they’d seen your painting, I gave them a light lunch and showed them around. A tour of my house and the grounds. Shoko seemed interested, you see. The time flew by.”
“I bet they were impressed.”
“Shoko was, I think,” Menshiki said. “Especially by my Jaguar XKE. But Mariye didn’t say anything. Maybe she didn’t like my house. Or maybe she’s not interested in houses in general.”
I guessed she probably couldn’t care less.
“Did you have a chance to talk to her?” I asked.
Menshiki shook his head no. “She opened her mouth two or three times at most. And what she said was almost meaningless. She generally ignores me.”
I kept quiet. I had no special thoughts on the matter, but I could picture the scene. Whenever he tried to start a conversation with Mariye, she would clam up, just mumble a word or two. Once Mariye made up her mind not to speak, trying to reach her was like ladling water onto a parched desert.
Menshiki picked up an ornament from the table, a glossy ceramic snail, and inspected it from a variety of angles. The snail had been one of the very few decorative objects left in the house. Probably a piece of Dresden china. The size of a smallish egg. Purchased long ago, perhaps, by Tomohiko Amada himself. Menshiki gingerly returned the snail to the table. Then he raised his head and looked across at me.
“I guess it will take her a while to get used to me,” he said, as if addressing himself. “I mean, we’ve only just met. She’s a quiet child to begin with, and thirteen is said to be a difficult age, the beginning of puberty. All the same, being with her in the same room, breathing the same air—it was a precious experience, priceless really.”
“So then your feeling hasn’t changed?”
Menshiki’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What feeling do you mean?”
“That you don’t care to know if Mariye is your child.”
“No, that hasn’t changed a bit,” Menshiki said without hesitation. He chewed his lip for a moment before continuing. “It’s hard to explain. But when she’s near, and I look at her face and watch her move, this odd feeling comes over me. The sense that somehow my life up to now may have been wasted. That I no longer understand the purpose of my existence, the reason I’m here. As if values I’d thought were certain were turning out to be not so certain after all.”
“And for you these sorts of feelings are extremely odd, am I right?” For me, they were par for the course.
“That’s right. I’ve never experienced them before.”
“And they started after spending several hours with Mariye?”
“Yes. You must think I’m some kind of idiot.”
I shook my head no. “Not at all. I felt the same way when I hit puberty and met a girl I liked.”
Menshiki gave a small smile. There was something rueful in it. “That’s when the pointlessness of all my accomplishments and successes, and all the money I’ve accumulated, hit me. That I’m no more than an expedient and transitory vehicle meant to pass a set of genes on to someone else. What other function do I serve? Beyond that, I’m just a clod of earth.”
“A clod of earth.” I tried saying the words. They had a strange ring.
“To tell the truth, I was down in the pit when that realization hit me. Remember, that pit we uncovered behind the shrine, underneath the pile of rocks?”
“How could I forget?”
“If you’d felt like it, you could have abandoned me there. Without food and water, my body would have shriveled and returned to the soil. I would have been no more than a clod of earth in the end.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I remained silent.
“It’s enough for me,” Menshiki said, “that the possibility exists that Mariye and I are related by blood. I feel no compulsion to find out if it’s true or not. That mere possibility has sent a beam of light into my life—now I can look at myself in a new way.”
“I think I understand,” I said. “Maybe not every step in your reasoning, but the way you feel. What I don’t get is what you’re expecting from Mariye. In concrete terms.”
“It’s not that I haven’t given that question any thought,” Menshiki said. He looked down at his hands. They were beautiful hands, with long fingers. “People devote a lot of energy to thinking about things. Whether they want to or not. Yet in the end we all just have to wait—only time can tell how events play out. The answers lie ahead.”
I remained quiet. I had no clear idea what he had in mind, and no compelling desire to find out. Were I to know, my position might become even more difficult.
“I’ve heard Mariye is much more forthcoming with you,” Menshiki said after a long pause. “That’s what Shoko said, at least.”
“That’s probably true,” I said cautiously. “We seem to be able to talk quite naturally when we’re in the studio.”
Of course, I didn’t tell him that Mariye had come to visit me from the adjoining mountain through a hidden passageway. That was our secret.
“Do you think it’s because she’s gotten comfortable with you? Or because she feels some personal connection?”
“The girl is fascinated by painting, maybe artistic expression in general,” I explained. “If a painting is involved, there are occasions—not always, mind you—when she’s quite comfortable talking. She’s not a typical child, that’s for sure. When I taught her at the community center, she didn’t speak much to the other kids.”
“So she doesn’t get along with children her own age?”
“Maybe. Her aunt says she doesn’t make many friends at school.”
Menshiki pondered that for a moment.
“She opens up with Shoko to some extent, I guess,” he said.
“So it seems. From what I’ve heard, she’s much closer to her aunt than she is to her father.”
Menshiki merely nodded. His silence seemed charged with implication.
“What sort of man is her father?” I asked him. “Have you checked?”
Menshiki looked to the side and narrowed his eyes. “He was fifteen years older than she was,” he finally said. “By ‘she’ I mean his late wife.”
Of course, “late wife” meant Menshiki’s former lover.
“I don’t know how they got together, or why they married. I have no interest in those things,” he said. “Whatever the case, though, it’s clear he loved his wife dearly. Her death was a terrible shock. They say he was a changed man after that.”
According to Menshiki, the Akikawas were a big landowning family in the area (much as Tomohiko Amada’s family was in Kyushu). Although they had lost nearly half of their property in the land reform that followed World War Two, they retained many assets, enough that the family could get along comfortably on the income they produced. Yoshinobu Akikawa, Mariye’s father, was the first of two children and the only son, so when his father passed away at an earl
y age he became the head of the family. He built a house for himself at the top of the mountain they owned, and set up an office in one of their buildings in Odawara. From that office, he managed the family properties in the city and its environs: several commercial and apartment buildings, and a number of rental houses and lots. He also dabbled in real estate. In other words, while he kept the business going, he made no attempt to broaden its scale. The core of his enterprise consisted of looking after the family’s assets when the need arose.
Yoshinobu married late in life. He was in his mid-forties when he tied the knot, and his daughter (Mariye) was born the following year. Then, six years later, his wife was stung to death. It was early spring, and she had been walking alone through a big plum grove they owned when she was attacked by a swarm of large hornets. Her death hit him hard. To wipe away anything that could remind him of the tragedy, as soon as the funeral was over he hired men to raze the plum trees, and yank their roots from the earth. What was left was a dreary and barren plot of land. It had been a beautiful grove, so its destruction was painful for many. Moreover, for generations those living nearby had been permitted to pick a portion of the abundant fruit to make pickled plums and plum wine. As a result, Yoshinobu Akikawa’s barbaric act of retaliation deprived many local residents of one of the small pleasures they could look forward to each year. Still, it was his mountain, the plum grove was his, and no one could fail to understand his fury—at the hornets and the trees. As a consequence, those complaints were never voiced in public.
Yoshinobu Akikawa turned into a rather morose man after his wife’s death. He hadn’t been particularly social or gregarious to begin with, and now his introverted side only grew stronger. His interest in spiritual things deepened, and he became involved with a religious sect whose name was unknown to me. It is said that at one point he spent some time in India. At great personal expense, he built a grand hall for the sect’s use on the outskirts of town, where he began spending much of his time. It’s not clear exactly what takes place there. But it appears that a daily regimen of stringent religious “austerities” and the study of reincarnation helped him find a new purpose in life after his wife’s death.
These activities reduced his involvement in the business, but his duties hadn’t been all that demanding in the first place. There were three longtime employees more than capable of managing things when the boss failed to show up. His visits home became more infrequent. When he did return it was usually just to sleep. His relationship with his only daughter had, for some reason, grown more distant after his wife’s death. Perhaps she reminded him of his dead wife. Or perhaps he had never really cared for children. In any case, as a result the child never really took to her father. The responsibility for looking after Mariye went to his younger sister, Shoko. She had taken leave from her job as secretary for the president of a medical college in Tokyo and moved to the house atop the mountain near Odawara on what she expected to be a temporary break to look after the child. In the end, though, the arrangement became permanent. Perhaps she came to love the girl. Or perhaps she couldn’t stand idly by when her little niece needed her so much.
Having reached that point in his account, Menshiki stopped to touch his fingers to his lips.
“Do you happen to have any whiskey in the house?” he asked.
“There’s about a half a bottle of single malt,” I said.
“I don’t want to impose, but could I have some? On the rocks.”
“My pleasure. But aren’t you driving?”
“I’ll call a cab,” he said. “No point in losing my license.”
I went to the kitchen and came back with a whiskey bottle, a ceramic bowl of ice, and two glasses. In the meantime, Menshiki put the record of Der Rosenkavalier that I had been listening to on the turntable. We sat back and listened to the lush strains of Richard Strauss as we sipped our whiskey.
“Are you a devotee of single malt?” Menshiki asked.
“No, this was a gift. A friend brought it. Sure tastes good, though.”
“I have a bottle of rare Scotch at home that a friend in Scotland sent to me. A single malt from the island of Islay. It’s from a cask sealed by the Prince of Wales himself on his visit to the distillery there. I’ll bring it on my next visit.”
“You needn’t make such a fuss on my account,” I said.
“There’s a small island near Islay called Jura,” he said. “Have you heard of it?”
“No,” I replied.
“It’s practically uninhabited. More deer than people. Lots of other wildlife, too—rabbits, pheasants, seals. And one very old distillery. There’s a spring of freshwater nearby, just perfect for making whiskey. If you mix the single malt with that water, the flavor is absolutely amazing. You can’t find it anywhere else.”
“It sounds delicious,” I said.
“Jura is also known as the place where George Orwell wrote 1984. Orwell rented a small house on the northern end of the island, really the middle of nowhere, but the winter took a terrible toll on his body. It was a primitive place, with none of the modern amenities. I guess he needed that kind of Spartan environment to write. I spent a week on that island myself. Huddled next to the fireplace each night, drinking that marvelous whiskey.”
“Why did you spend a whole week in such an out-of-the-way place all by yourself?”
“Business,” Menshiki said simply. He smiled.
Apparently, he wasn’t going to let me in on what sort of business was involved. And I had no particular desire to find out.
“I really needed a drink today,” he said. “To settle myself down. That’s why I’m imposing on you like this. I’ll come and pick up my car tomorrow, if that’s all right with you.”
“Of course, I don’t mind at all.”
We sat there awhile without talking.
“Do you mind if I ask something personal?” Menshiki broke the silence. “I hope you won’t take offense.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not a guy who gets offended. I’ll answer you if I can.”
“You’ve been married, correct?”
I nodded. “Yes, I was married. As a matter of fact, I just mailed off the divorce papers, signed and sealed. So I’m not sure if I’m officially married now or not. Still, it’s safe to say that I was married. For six years.”
Menshiki was studying the ice cubes in his glass as if deep in thought.
“Sorry to pry,” he said. “But do you have any regrets about the way your marriage ended?”
I took another sip of whiskey. “How does one say ‘buyer beware’ in Latin?” I asked.
“ ‘Caveat emptor,’ ” Menshiki said without hesitation.
“I have a hard time remembering how to say it. But I know what it means.”
Menshiki laughed.
“Sure, I have regrets,” I replied. “But even if I could go back and rectify one of my mistakes, I doubt it would change the outcome.”
“Do you think there’s something in you that’s impervious to change, something that became a stumbling block in your marriage?”
“Perhaps it’s my lack of something impervious to change that was the stumbling block.”
“But you have the desire to paint. That must be closely connected to your appetite for life.”
“There may be something I have to get past first before I can really get started with my painting, though. That’s my feeling, anyway.”
“We all have ordeals we must face,” Menshiki said. “It’s through them that we find a new direction in our lives. The more grueling the ordeal, the more it can help us down the road.”
“As long as it doesn’t grind us into the ground.”
Menshiki smiled. He had finished his questions about my divorce.
I brought a jar of olives in from the kitchen to accompany our drinks. We nibbled on them while sipping our whiskey. When
the record finished, Menshiki flipped it over. Georg Solti continued conducting the Vienna Philharmonic.
Menshiki has an ulterior motive for everything. Never wastes a move, that fellow. It is the only way he knows.
If the Commendatore was correct, what move was Menshiki making—or about to make—now? I hadn’t a clue. Perhaps he was holding back for the moment, waiting for his opportunity. He said that he had “no intention” of exploiting me. Probably he was speaking the truth. Yet intentions were, in the end, just intentions. He was a savvy guy who had managed to survive and thrive in the most cutting-edge sector of the business world. If he was harboring an ulterior motive, even if it was dormant now, it would be next to impossible for me to avoid getting sucked in.
“You’re thirty-six years old, right?” Menshiki said out of the blue.
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“That’s the best age.”
I didn’t see it that way at all. But I didn’t say so.
“I’m fifty-four. Too old to be fighting on the front lines in the business I was in, but still a little too young to be considered a legend. That’s why you see me dawdling around like this.”
“Some become legends in their youth, though.”
“Sure, there are a few. But there’s no great merit in that. In fact, it could be a real nightmare. Once you’re considered a legend, you can only trace the pattern of your rise for the rest of your life. I can’t think of anything more boring than that.”
“Don’t you ever get bored?”
Menshiki smiled. “I can’t remember ever being bored. I’ve been too busy.”
I could only shake my head in admiration.
“How about you?” he asked. “Have you ever been bored?”
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