It was right around that time that Yuzu had conceived. Of course, the precise date could not be known. But it would not be odd if it were that day.
The similarity between my situation and the story Menshiki had told me was striking. The difference was that he had made love to a flesh-and-blood woman on his office sofa in reality. That had not taken place in a dream. And it had been right around then that she had conceived. Immediately thereafter she had married a man of substantial means, and had subsequently given birth to Mariye. Menshiki’s belief that Mariye might be his child therefore had a basis in fact. It was a long shot, perhaps, but at least it was possible. My lovemaking with Yuzu, on the other hand, had taken place in a dream. I was in the mountains of Aomori, while Yuzu was (probably) in the heart of Tokyo. Thus her child could not possibly be mine. That was the only logical conclusion. The odds were not low, they were zero. If, that is, one was thinking logically.
But my dream was too vivid to be so easily dismissed on logical grounds. Moreover, the pleasure I had felt during our lovemaking was greater, and far more memorable, than at any time during our six years of marriage. When I came again and again inside her, the fuses in my brain seemed to have all blown at once, melting what had been distinct layers of reality into a single heavy, turbid mass. As in the primal chaos of the earth.
So graphic an occurrence must have consequences—it couldn’t end like any other dream. I felt that strongly. It had to be connected to something. To have some sort of impact on the present.
* * *
—
Masahiko woke up shortly before nine. He padded into the dining room in his pajamas and drank a cup of hot black coffee. No breakfast, thanks, he said—just coffee, if you don’t mind. There were bags under his eyes.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” he said, rubbing his eyelids. “I’ve had much worse hangovers. This is mild.”
“Why don’t you stick around for a while?” I said.
“Don’t you have a guest coming?”
“That’s at ten. There’s still time. And there’s no problem if you’re here when they arrive. I’ll introduce you. They’re both very attractive.”
“Both? I thought there was just one model.”
“Her aunt is her chaperone.”
“Her chaperone? So they still do things the old-fashioned way in this neck of the woods? Like in a Jane Austen novel. They don’t wear corsets and ride in a horse-drawn carriage, do they?”
“Not a horse-drawn carriage. A Toyota Prius. And no corsets. When I’m painting the girl, the aunt sits in the living room and reads for the whole two hours. ‘Aunt’ makes her sound old, though—she’s pretty young.”
“What sort of books is she into?”
“I don’t know. I asked, but she wouldn’t tell me.”
“No kidding,” he said. “Oh yeah, speaking of books, remember the character in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, the guy who shoots himself with a pistol just to prove how free he is? What’s his name? I figured you might know.”
“Kirillov,” I said.
“That’s right, Kirillov. I’ve been trying to remember, but it keeps slipping my mind.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“No special reason,” Masahiko said, shaking his head. “He popped into my head, and when I tried to recall his name, I couldn’t. It’s been bugging me. Like a fish bone caught in my throat. But man, those Russians. They come up with the weirdest ideas, don’t they?”
“There are lots of characters in Dostoevsky who do crazy things just to prove that they are free people, unconstrained by God and society. Though looking at Russia back then, maybe they weren’t so crazy after all.”
“Then how about you?” Masahiko asked. “You and Yuzu are formally divorced, which means you’re now a lawfully unwedded man. So what comes next? Even if it wasn’t your choice, freedom is still freedom, right? Why not run out and do something crazy, now that you have the opportunity?”
I laughed. “I’m not planning anything at present. Sure, I may be free for the moment, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got to go out and prove it to the world, does it?”
“So that’s how you look at it,” Masahiko said in a disappointed tone. “But hey, you’re a painter, right? An artist. Artists flaunt the rules left and right—they make a great show of it. But you’ve always walked the straight and narrow. The path of reason, I guess. So why not let loose now, throw off the restraints and do something wild?”
“Like murdering an old moneylender with an axe?”
“Yeah, that might work.”
“Or falling for a prostitute with a heart of gold?”
“Even better.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “But you know, it seems to me that reality itself has a screw loose somewhere. That’s why I try to keep at least myself in line as much as possible.”
“Well, I guess that’s one way of looking at it,” Masahiko said resignedly.
It’s more than just “one way of looking at it,” I wanted to tell him. Indeed, it felt like everything around me was becoming unscrewed—that reality was losing its grip. If I lost my grip too, then the craziness would get completely out of hand. But I couldn’t tell Masahiko the whole story at this stage of the game.
“At any rate, I’ve got to be going,” he said. “I’d love to meet the two women, but I’ve got work waiting for me back in Tokyo.”
Masahiko finished his coffee, got dressed, and drove off in his boxy jet-black Volvo. Baggy eyes and all. “Glad we finally had a chance to talk,” were his parting words.
One thing that morning completely stumped me. Masahiko’s knife, the one he’d brought to prepare the fish, had gone missing. It had been carefully washed, and neither of us remembered touching it afterward, but we searched the kitchen high and low and still couldn’t find it.
“Forget it,” he said. “It’s probably out for a walk. Grab it for me when it comes back. I’ll pick it up on my next visit—I don’t use it all that often.”
I’ll keep looking, I told him.
* * *
—
I checked my watch once the Volvo was out of sight. The Akikawas would be showing up before long. I removed the bedding from the living room sofa, and flung the windows wide open to let fresh air in. The sky was still faintly overcast and gray. There was no wind.
I took Killing Commendatore from my bedroom and hung it back where it had been on the studio wall. Then I sat down on the stool to examine the painting one more time. Red blood still gushed from the Commendatore’s chest, while Long Face’s sharp eyes still glittered in the lower left-hand corner of the canvas. Nothing had changed.
Even as I studied Killing Commendatore, though, I couldn’t erase Yuzu from my mind. It had been no dream, of that much I felt sure. I had truly visited our apartment that night. I was as sure of that as I was that Tomohiko Amada had visited the studio several days before. Like him, I had overcome the laws of physics by some means to make my way to our Hiroo apartment, penetrate her, and discharge my semen inside her body. People can accomplish anything, I thought, if they want it badly enough. There are channels through which reality can become unreal. Or unreality can enter the realm of the real. If we desire it that strongly. Deep in our heart. But that didn’t mean that we were free. It might demonstrate quite the opposite.
If I had the chance, I wanted to ask Yuzu if she had experienced a similar dream in late April of this year. If she had dreamed shortly before dawn that I had come to ravish her while she was fast asleep (or else somehow deprived her of her freedom). In other words, was my dream something I alone experienced, or was it a two-way street? That’s what I wanted to confirm. Yet if the dream was one we had shared, wouldn’t she view me as sinister, a villain? Could such a presence exist within me? I hated to think of myself in that way.
Was I free? As far as I was concerned, the question was wholly irrelevant. What I needed now more than anything was a firm reality to hold on to. A solid foundation on which to stand. Not the sort of freedom that allowed me to rape my own wife in my dreams.
44
THE TRAITS THAT MAKE A PERSON WHO THEY ARE