Mariye didn’t speak that morning. She just sat there, the perfect model, in the simple straight-backed chair, and gazed at me as if at some distant landscape. Since my stool was taller than her chair, she was looking up at a slight angle. I made no special attempt to talk to her. There was nothing I had to say, nor did I feel any particular need. So I plied my brush across the canvas in silence.
I was painting Mariye’s portrait, yet I could sense elements of my dead sister Komi and my former wife Yuzu creeping into the work. This wasn’t intentional—they worked their way in quite naturally. Perhaps I was searching within Mariye for reminders of those two women, so important to me, whom I had lost. I couldn’t say if this was healthy or not. But that was the only way I could paint at the time. No, to say “at the time” is off the mark. When I thought about it, I had operated like this from the very beginning. Giving form to what eluded me in reality. Inscribing secret signals only I could decipher.
Whatever the case, I was able to push Mariye’s portrait forward with relative ease. Step by step, it moved steadily toward completion. Like a river, it followed the contours of the land, pooling in the hollows until it overflowed the final barrier to stream unobstructed to the sea. I could feel it circulate through my body, like blood.
* * *
—
“Can I come visit you later,” Mariye said in a small voice just before we finished our morning’s work. The lack of inflection made it sound like an assertion, but it was a clear question.
“You mean through your secret passageway?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t mind at all, but around what time?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“I don’t think you should come after dark,” I said. “You can never tell what’s in these mountains at night.”
All sorts of weird things could be lurking out there: the Commendatore, Long Face, the man with the white Subaru Forester, Tomohiko Amada’s living spirit. Even the incubus that was my sexual alter ego. Yes, depending on the circumstances, I might turn into one of those sinister creatures that prowled the night. The thought gave me a chill.
“I’ll try to come before dark,” Mariye said. “I want to talk to you about something. Just the two of us.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
We wrapped up for the day not long after the noon-hour chimes sounded.
Shoko was sitting on the sofa, once again focused on her reading. She appeared to have almost finished the thick paperback. Taking off her glasses, she noted her place with a bookmark and looked up at us.
“We made good progress today,” I told her. “One or two more sessions and we should be done. I’m sorry to be taking so much of your time.”
Shoko smiled. It was a beautiful smile. “Not at all,” she answered. “Mariye seems to enjoy sitting for you, and I so look forward to seeing the finished portrait. And this sofa is the perfect place to read. I’m never bored in the slightest. In fact, it’s a welcome change of pace for me to come here—I always feel better afterward.”
I wanted to ask her how their visit to Menshiki’s house had gone the previous Sunday. Had his fine mansion impressed her? What had she thought of him as a person? But asking questions like that would have been a breach of etiquette—I had to wait for her to raise the subject first.
Once again, Shoko had dressed for the occasion. It was most definitely not what a regular person would put on to visit a neighbor on a Sunday morning. A perfectly pressed camel hair skirt, a fancy white silk blouse with a big ribbon, and a dark blue-gray jacket with a gold pin adorning the collar. The pin had a jewel embedded in it, which I took to be a real diamond. The whole outfit seemed rather too fashionable to wear behind the wheel of a Toyota Prius. But who was I to say? Toyota’s director of marketing would likely have a very different opinion.
Mariye was dressed as usual. The same old varsity jacket, her hole-studded jeans, and a pair of white sneakers even dirtier than the ones she usually wore (the backs of these were stomped flat).
When they were heading out the door, Mariye looked back and gave me a wink, a secret sign that said “See you later.” I flashed a quick smile in response.
* * *
—
When Shoko and Mariye had gone, I went to the living room, lay down on the sofa, and slept. I had no appetite, so I skipped lunch. It was a brief nap, about thirty minutes, deep and dreamless. I was grateful for that. It was more than a little scary to think what I might do in my dreams, and even scarier to think what I might become.
My mood that Sunday afternoon was as unfocused as the weather. It was a quiet, slightly overcast day with no wind to speak of. I read a little, listened to a little music, cooked a little, but nothing helped me work out my feelings. It promised to be one of those afternoons where nothing gets resolved. Giving up, I ran a hot bath, got in, and soaked for a long time. I tried to remember the names of the characters in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed. I was able to come up with seven, including Kirillov. For some reason, since my high school days I’ve had a knack for memorizing lengthy Russian names. Maybe now was a good opportunity to go back and reread The Possessed. I was free, with time on my hands and nothing that had to be done. The perfect conditions for reading long Russian classics.
I thought about Yuzu some more. Her belly would probably be showing after seven months. I pictured how that would look. What would she be doing now? What would she be thinking? Was she happy? Of course, I had no way to know any of those things.
Perhaps it was as Masahiko had said. Perhaps, like a nineteenth-century Russian intellectual, I should do something out-and-out crazy just to prove I was a free man. But what? Something like…spend an hour shut up at the bottom of a pitch-black pit? That was what Menshiki had done. True, his actions might not fit the category “out-and-out crazy.” But they were definitely beyond the pale, to put it mildly.
* * *
—
It was after four when Mariye showed up. The doorbell rang, I opened the door, and there she was. She slipped through the half-open door like a wisp of cloud and looked around warily.
“No one’s here.”
“Nobody’s here, that’s true,” I said.
“Someone was here yesterday.”
That was a question. “Yes, a friend of mine stayed over,” I said.
“A man.”
“Yes, a man. A male friend. But how did you know?”
“There was an old car I’d never seen before parked in front of your house. It looked like a black box.”
That would be Masahiko’s ancient Volvo station wagon, what he called his “Swedish lunch box.” Convenient for hauling reindeer carcasses.
“So you came yesterday.”
Mariye nodded. It appeared that she was using her passageway to come and check on the house whenever she had time. She’d probably been doing this since long before my arrival. After all, it was her playground. Or “hunting ground” might be more accurate. I was just someone who had chanced to move in. In which case, could she have come face-to-face with Tomohiko Amada at some point? I had to ask her about that sometime.
I led her into the living room. We sat down together, she on the sofa, me in the armchair. I offered her something to drink, but she said no.
“The guy who stayed over is a friend from my college days,” I said.
“A good friend?”
“I think so,” I said. “In fact, he may be the only person I can call a true friend.”
Such a good friend that he could introduce his colleague to my wife and keep me in the dark when they started sleeping together—a situation that had led to my just concluded divorce—without casting a cloud over our relationship. To call us friends would hardly be stretching the truth.
“Do you have any good friends?” I asked her.