Judged in a fair and objective way, the painting wasn’t bad. I couldn’t tell whether it could be called a work of art or not. (Not to make excuses, but I hadn’t begun with that goal in mind.) From the standpoint of pure technique, though, it was a success. The composition was flawless, and I had captured both the light streaming through the trees and the colors of the fallen leaves. It was realistic right down to its tiniest detail, yet, nevertheless, a mysterious, symbolic aura hovered over it.
As I sat there staring at the finished work, a feeling came over me, what might be called a premonition of impending movement. On the surface at least, it was just as its title said: a landscape painting of the pit in the woods. It was so accurate, in fact, that “reproduction” might be closer to the truth. As someone who had been developing his craft, however imperfectly, for so long, I had the artistic skill to reproduce an exact likeness of the scene on canvas. I had not painted the scene so much as I had documented it.
Nevertheless, that premonition was there. Something was about to take place within that landscape. The painting was telling me that. Then I realized. What I had been trying to get across, or what that something had been trying to get me to paint, was precisely that premonition, those signs.
Sitting there on the floor, I straightened my back and looked at the painting anew.
What was about to happen? Was someone or something about to come crawling out from the darkness that lay beneath the half-open cover? Or, conversely, was someone about to climb down into the hole? Though I looked long and hard, I couldn’t guess what would take place. I only knew some sort of movement was about to occur. The strength of my premonition left no doubt.
Why did the pit so badly want me to paint it? To try to tell me something? To warn me? It was a game of riddles. So many riddles, and not a single answer. I wanted to show the painting to Mariye and hear what she had to say. Maybe she could see what I couldn’t.
* * *
—
Friday was the day I taught drawing near Odawara Station. Mariye was one of the students, so she would be there. Perhaps I could have a word with her afterward. I hopped in my car and headed to town.
There was still plenty of time when I arrived, so I parked and went to get my customary cup of coffee. No gleaming, functional Starbucks for me—my coffee shop was untouched by time, a back-alley spot run by a man on the cusp of old age who served a jet-black, muddy brew in a cup that weighed a ton. Jazz from a former era played on the ancient speakers. Billie Holiday, Clifford Brown, and other classics. As I still had time to spare when I finished my coffee, I wandered down the shopping street. I was low on coffee filters, so I bought a pack. I found a used-record store, and browsed through their old LPs. I realized I hadn’t listened to anything other than classical music for a very long time. Tomohiko Amada’s shelves contained no other kinds of records. If I listened to the radio, it was only to catch the news and weather on the AM dial (my location meant almost no FM reception).
I had left my records and CDs—not that there were a lot of them—in the Hiroo apartment. It would have been painful to sort out which books and records belonged to Yuzu and which to me. Impossible, really. Who did Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline belong to? How about the Doors album with “Alabama Song” on it? What difference did it make who had shelled out the money? We’d shared the same music for a period of time, lived our life together listening to it. Even if we had been able to divide the records, we could never have separated the memories attached to them. I had to leave them all behind.
I looked for Nashville Skyline and the first album by the Doors, but couldn’t find either. They may have been available on CD, but I wanted to hear them on an old-style phonograph. There was no CD player in Tomohiko Amada’s house anyway. And no cassette deck. Just a couple of record players. Tomohiko Amada likely had no interest in new technology. He’d probably never come within six feet of a microwave oven.
In the end, I bought two records. Bruce Springsteen’s The River and a collection of duets by Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway. Both were old favorites of mine. At some point in my life, I had given up on new music. Instead, I listened to the old stuff over and over again. Books were the same. I reread books from my past, often more than once, but ignored books that had just come out. Somewhere along the way, time seemed to have come to a screeching halt.
Perhaps time really had stopped. Then again, maybe it kept nudging forward despite the fact that evolution, or anything resembling it, had ended. Like a restaurant approaching closing time that has stopped taking orders. And I was the only one who hadn’t figured it out.
The shop assistant put the two records in a bag, and I paid. Then I went to a nearby liquor store to buy some whiskey. I wasn’t sure what to get, but finally settled on Chivas Regal. It was a little more expensive, but would be a big hit with Masahiko the next time he stopped by.
My starting time for class was approaching, so I stashed the records, coffee filters, and whiskey in my car and entered the building where classes were held. The kids were first, starting at five o’clock. Mariye was part of that group. But I couldn’t spot her. This was a first. She was passionate about the class, had never skipped it before, as far as I knew. Her absence unsettled me. I found it somehow alarming, even threatening. Was she all right? Was she ill, or had something unexpected happened to her?
Nevertheless, I carried on as though nothing was wrong, assigning simple exercises, offering comments on each child’s drawing, giving advice. When class ended, the children went home and the adult class began. It too passed without incident. I exchanged good-natured pleasantries with the people there (hardly my strong point, but I can do it when required). After that, I had a brief meeting with the workshop organizer about future plans. He had no idea why Mariye was absent. There had been no word from her family.
After work, I went to a nearby noodle shop and ate a hot bowl of tempura soba. This too was my weekly habit. Always the same shop, and always tempura soba. One of life’s little pleasures. Then I drove back to my house on the mountain. It was almost nine when I arrived.
I couldn’t tell if anyone had tried to contact me while I was gone, for there was no answering machine (such a “clever” device probably numbered among Tomohiko Amada’s bêtes noires). I gave the simple, old-fashioned telephone a long look, but it didn’t speak. It just sat there, in black silence.
I had a long soak in a hot bath. Then I poured what was left of the original bottle of Chivas Regal into a glass, added two ice cubes from the fridge, and took the drink to the living room, where I sipped it while listening to one of the records I had just bought. At first, it seemed somehow inappropriate to be playing anything other than classical in my mountaintop domicile. The air in the room had been conditioned to that type of music for a very long time. Still, I was playing my music, so that now, song by song, a familiarity overcame the feeling of inappropriateness. As I listened, I could feel my body start to relax. I must have been tense without being aware of it.
The A side of the Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway record had ended and the first song on the B side (“For All We Know,” a really cool performance) had just begun when the phone rang. The clock said 10:30. Who on earth would be calling me so late? I didn’t want to answer. Yet the ring sounded urgent. I put down my glass, rose from the sofa, lifted the needle off the record, and picked up the phone.
“Hello?” It was Shoko Akikawa.
I greeted her.
“I’m so terribly sorry to be phoning this late,” she said. I had never heard her sound so anxious. “But I needed to ask you something. Mariye didn’t show up at art class today, did she?”
No, I replied, she didn’t. The question was a strange one. Normally, Mariye came straight from school (the public junior high in the area) in her uniform. When class ended, her aunt picked her up in the car, and the two went home together. That pattern never varied.
“I haven’t seen Mariye anywhere,” Shoko said.
“Haven’t seen her?”
“She’s missing.”