“Just look,” Mariye said.
I set some of the stones to the side and removed one of the boards. Mariye knelt and peered through the opening. I trained the flashlight on the floor of the pit. Of course, nobody was there. Only a metal ladder leaning against the wall. If one so chose, one could use it to climb down and then back up again. It would be next to impossible to get out without the ladder, although the pit was less than nine feet deep. The walls were just too smooth and slick to be scaled.
Holding her hair back with one hand, Mariye stared inside the pit for a long time. Intently, as if searching for something in the dark. I had no idea what was down there to capture her attention.
“Who built this?” she asked, looking up at last.
“I don’t know. At first I thought it might be a well, but now I’m not so sure. I mean, who would dig a well in such an out-of-the-way place? Anyway, it looks very old. And it’s very well put together. It must have taken a long time to build.”
Mariye looked at me steadily without saying anything.
“This area has been your playground for quite a while, hasn’t it?” I said.
She nodded.
“But you didn’t know this pit was behind the shrine until recently.”
She shook her head. No, she hadn’t known.
“You found it and opened it, didn’t you?” she asked.
“That’s right, I may have been the one who discovered it. I didn’t know it was a pit, but I figured something had to be under that pile of rocks. The person who arranged for the rocks to be moved and the pit to be opened, though, was Mr. Menshiki.” I wanted to let her in on this much, at least. It was better to be honest.
A bird cried in the trees. It was a sharp, piercing call, as if to warn its fellow creatures. I looked up but couldn’t catch sight of it. All I could see were the layered branches of the leafless trees. And beyond those the evening sky of approaching winter, flat, expressionless, and gray.
Mariye winced slightly. But she didn’t respond.
“It’s hard to explain,” I said. “I felt as if the pit was demanding that someone open it. And that I had been bidden to perform that task.”
“Bidden?”
“Invited. Called upon to.”
She looked up at me. “It wanted you to open it?”
“Yes.”
“This pit asked you to open it?”
“It could have been anyone, perhaps. Maybe I just happened to be around.”
“But it was Mr. Menshiki who actually did it.”
“Yes. I brought him here. I couldn’t have uncovered it without him. The rocks were too heavy to move by hand, and I didn’t have the cash to bring in heavy equipment. It was a fortunate coincidence.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have done it,” she said after a moment’s thought. “I think I told you that before.”
“So you think I should have left it as it was?”
Mariye didn’t answer immediately. She stood up and brushed the dirt off the knees of her jeans. Not once but several times. She and I replaced the board, and the stones that held it down. Once again, I committed their location to memory.
“Yes, I think so,” she said at last, lightly rubbing her palms against each other.
“I think this place may have had some kind of religious background. There might be legends or stories connected to it.”
Mariye shook her head. She didn’t know of any. “Maybe my father knows something.”
The whole area had been owned by her father’s family since before the Meiji period. The adjoining mountain was also in their hands. He might have a good idea of what the pit and shrine meant.
“Could you ask him?”
Mariye winced slightly. “I’ll try,” she said in a small voice. She hesitated. “If I have a chance.”
“It would be a big help if we knew who built it when, and for what purpose.”
“Maybe they shut up something inside, and put heavy stones on top to make sure it didn’t get out,” she offered.
“So you think maybe they heaped on the stones to prevent whatever it was from escaping, and then built the little shrine to ward off its curse?”
“Maybe.”
“And then we went and pried it open anyway.”
Mariye gave a small shrug.
* * *
—
I accompanied her to where the woods ended. She’d go on from there by herself, she said. The darkness was no problem—she knew the way. She wanted no one to see the passage that led to her home. It was a shortcut that she alone should know. So I turned back, leaving her there. Only a glimmer of light remained in the sky. The cold blackness was descending.
The same bird made the same piercing call when I passed before the shrine. This time, though, I didn’t look up. I headed straight home, leaving the shrine behind. As I prepared dinner I sipped a glass of Chivas Regal and water. There was only enough left in the bottle for one more drink. The night was deathly silent. As if the clouds were absorbing every living sound.
You shouldn’t have opened the pit.
Perhaps Mariye was right. I should have steered clear of the pit. It seemed that everything I did these days was off the mark.
I imagined Menshiki making love to Shoko. The two of them naked, entwined on a big bed in a room somewhere in that sprawling white mansion. That event was taking place in another world, of course, one that bore no connection to me. Yet the thought of the two of them together left me bereft. As if I were standing in a station watching a long, empty train pass by.
Finally, I fell asleep and my Sunday ended. A deep dreamless sleep, undisturbed by anyone.
45
SOMETHING IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN
Of the two paintings I was working on, The Pit in the Woods was the one I knocked off first. It was Friday afternoon when I finished it. Paintings are strange things: as they near the end they acquire their own will, their own viewpoint, even their own powers of speech. They tell the artist when they are done (at least that’s the way it works for me). A spectator to the process—if one is present—can’t tell the difference between a painting in process and a completed painting, for the line is virtually invisible to the naked eye. But the artist knows. He or she can hear the painting say, Hands off, I’m done. The artist has only to heed that voice.
So it was with The Pit in the Woods. At a certain point, it announced itself finished and refused my brush. Like a sexually satisfied woman. I took the canvas from the easel and leaned it against the wall. Then I sat down on the floor and regarded it at length. My painting of a half-covered hole in the ground.
I couldn’t pin down my motive for painting it, or its meaning. It had just grabbed me. I couldn’t come up with anything beyond that. These things happen. When something strikes me in that way—a landscape, an object, a person—I pick up my brush and am off to the races. No meaning, no motive. I just go where my gut tells me, pure and simple.
But wait, I thought. This time was different. This wasn’t mere impulse. Something had demanded that I paint this painting. Urgently. That was why I had finished it so quickly—whatever it was, that demand had fired me up, sent me to my easel, and propelled me forward, like a hand on my back. Or maybe the pit was the agent, pushing me to draw its portrait, leaving me to guess its motive. In the same way that Menshiki, likely in pursuit of some larger plan, had enlisted me to paint his portrait.