The Commendatore shook his head. “Determining what constitutes great danger is a role that humans, not Ideas, must play. If my friends truly wish to bring her back, however, my friends must find the road and move quickly.”
Find the road? What road was he talking about? I looked at the Commendatore for a moment. It was as though he was playing a riddle game. Assuming his riddles had answers, that is.
“So what is it that you are offering me by way of assistance?”
“What I can do for my friends,” the Commendatore said, “is to send you to a place wherein my friends encounter yourself. But that is not as easy as it may sound. It will involve considerable sacrifice, and an excruciating ordeal. More specifically, the sacrifice will be made by the Idea, while the ordeal will be endured by my friends. Do I have your approval?”
What could I say? I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.
“So what is it exactly that I have to do?”
“It is simple,” the Commendatore said. “My friends must slay me.”
51
NOW IS THE TIME
“It is simple,” the Commendatore said. “My friends must slay me.”
“Slay you?” I said.
“Slay me, as in Killing Commendatore—let the painting be your model.”
“I should slay you with a sword—is that what you mean?”
“Precisely. As luck would have it, I happen to have a sword with me. It is the real thing—as I told my friends once before, if it cuts you, then you will bleed. It is not full-sized, but I am not full-sized either, so it should suffice.”
I stood at the foot of the bed facing the Commendatore. I wanted to say something but had no idea what it should be. So I just stood there, rooted to the spot. Tomohiko Amada was staring in the Commendatore’s direction too, from where he lay stretched out on the bed. Whether he could make him out or not was another story. The Commendatore was able to choose who could see him, and who couldn’t.
At last I pulled myself together enough to pose a question. “If I kill you with that sword, will I learn where Mariye Akikawa is?”
“Negative. Not exactly. First, my friends must dispose of me. Wipe me off the face of this earth. A chain of events will follow that could well lead my friends to the girl’s location.”
I struggled to decipher what he meant.
“I’m not sure what sort of chain of events you’re talking about, but can I be certain they will lead me in the direction you anticipate? Even if I kill you, there’s no guarantee. In which case, yours would be a pointless death.”
The Commendatore raised one eyebrow and stared at me. Now he looked like Lee Marvin in Point Blank. Super cool. There wasn’t the ghost of a chance that the Commendatore had seen Point Blank, of course.
“Affirmative! It is as my friends say. Maybe the chain of events will not flow so smoothly in reality. Maybe my hypothesis is based on mere supposition and conjecture. Just maybe, there are too many maybes. But there is no alternative. There is not the luxury of choice.”
“So if I kill you, will you be dead to me? Will you vanish from my sight forever?”
“Affirmative! As far as my friends are concerned, I shall be dead and gone. One of the countless deaths an Idea must undergo.”
“Isn’t there a danger that the world itself will be altered when an Idea is killed?”
“How could it be otherwise?” the Commendatore said. Again, he raised one eyebrow, Lee Marvin–style. “What would be the meaning of a world that did not change when an Idea was extinguished? Can an Idea be so insignificant?”
“But you think I should still kill you, even though the world would be altered as a result.”
“My friends set me free. And now my friends must kill me. Should my friends fail in that task, the circle would remain open. And a circle once opened must then be closed. There are no other options.”
I looked at Tomohiko Amada, lying on the bed. His eyes seemed to be trained on the chair where the Commendatore was sitting.
“Can Mr. Amada see you?”
“It is about now that he should be seeing me,” the Commendatore said. “And hearing our voices too. A few moments hence, he will begin to grasp the import of our discourse. He is marshaling all his remaining strength to that end.”
“What do you think he was trying to convey in Killing Commendatore?”
“That is not for me to say. My friends should ask the artist,” the Commendatore said. “Since he is right before you.”
I sat back down in my chair and drew close to the man stretched out on the bed.
“Mr. Amada, I found the painting you stored in the attic. I am quite sure you meant to hide it. You would not have wrapped it so thoroughly had you planned to show it to anyone. But I unwrapped it. I know that may displease you, but my curiosity got the better of me. And once I discovered how superb Killing Commendatore was, I couldn’t let it out of my sight. It is a great painting. One of your best, no question. At this moment, almost no one knows of its existence. Even Masahiko hasn’t seen it yet. A thirteen-year-old girl named Mariye Akikawa has, though. And she went missing yesterday.”
The Commendatore raised his hand. “Please, let him rest. His brain is easily overtaxed—it cannot handle more than this at one time.”
I stopped talking and studied Tomohiko Amada’s face. I couldn’t tell how much had sunk in. His face was still expressionless. But when I looked more closely I could see a glitter in the depths of his eyes. Like the glint of a sharp penknife at the bottom of a deep spring.
I began talking again, this time with frequent pauses. “My question is, what was your purpose in painting that picture? Its subject matter, its structure, and its style are so different from your other works. It makes me think you were using it to communicate a very personal message. What is the painting’s underlying meaning? Who is killing whom? Who is the Commendatore? Who is the murderer Don Giovanni? And who is that mysterious bearded fellow with the long face poking his head out of the ground in the lower left-hand corner?”
The Commendatore raised his hand again. I drew up short.
“Enough questions,” he said. “It will take a while for those to permeate.”
“Will he be able to answer? Does he have enough strength left?”
“No,” the Commendatore said, shaking his head. “I doubt my friends will obtain answers. He does not have the energy for that.”
“Then why did you have me ask?”
“What my friends imparted were not questions, but information. That my friends had found Killing Commendatore in the attic, that its existence was known to my friends. It is the first step. Everything begins from there.”
“Then what is the second step?”
“When my friends slay me, of course. It is the second step.”
“And is there a third step?”
“There should be, of course.”
“Then what is it?”
“Have you still not yet figured this out, my friends?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“By reenacting the allegory contained within that painting, we shall lure Long Face into the open. Into this room. By dragging him out, my friends shall win back Mariye Akikawa.”
I was speechless. What world had I stepped into? There seemed no rhyme or reason to it.
“It is a hard thing, without question,” the Commendatore intoned. “Yet there is no alternative. Hence my friends must dispatch me now, without further ado.”
* * *
—
We waited for the information I had given Tomohiko Amada to complete its journey to his brain. That took some time. Meanwhile, I tried to put to rest some of my doubts by peppering the Commendatore with questions.