I rolled Long Face over onto his stomach and tied his hands behind him with the belt of a bathrobe hanging close by. Then I dragged his motionless body to the center of the room. Because of his size, he wasn’t very heavy. About the weight of a medium-sized dog. I grabbed a curtain tie and bound one of his legs to the bed. Now he had no way to flee.
Stretched out unconscious in the bright afternoon light, Long Face just looked pitiful. Gone was the weirdness that had alarmed me when he had poked his head up out of his hole, observing events with those glittering eyes. I could find nothing sinister about him. He didn’t look bright enough to be evil. Instead, he looked honest in a dull-witted sort of way. And timid, too. Not like someone who concocted plans and made decisions, but, rather, the type who meekly followed his superiors’ orders.
Tomohiko Amada was still stretched out on the bed, his eyes closed. He was completely still. I couldn’t tell, looking at him, if he was alive or dead. I leaned down and put my ear less than an inch from his mouth. His breathing was faint, like a distant surf. He wasn’t dead yet, just sleeping on the floor of his twilight world. I felt relieved. I didn’t like the idea of Masahiko returning from his phone call to find that his father had died in his absence. Tomohiko’s face, as he lay on his side, looked far more peaceful and satisfied than before. Maybe witnessing the slaying of the Commendatore (or someone else he wished to see killed) had put some of his painful memories to rest.
The Commendatore was slumped in his cloth chair. His eyes were wide open, and I could see his tiny tongue curled behind his parted lips. Blood was still seeping from the wound in his chest, but the flow was weaker than before. His right hand flopped lifelessly when I took it. Although his skin retained some warmth, it felt remote and somehow detached. The kind of detachment life acquires as it moves steadily toward its own end. I felt like straightening his limbs and placing him in a proper-sized coffin, one made for a small child. I would lay the coffin in the pit behind the shrine, where no one could bother him again. But all I could do now was gently close his eyes.
I sat in the chair and watched Long Face on the floor as I waited for him to regain his senses. Outside the window, the broad Pacific sparkled. A few fishing boats were still plying the waters. I could see the sleek fuselage of an airplane shining in the sun as it slowly made its way south. A four-prop plane with an antenna jutting up from its tail—probably an antisubmarine aircraft from the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force base in Atsugi. Some of us were quietly going about our business on a Saturday afternoon. I, for one, was in a sunlit room in an upscale nursing home, having just slain the Commendatore and fished out and tied up Long Face in my quest to find a beautiful thirteen-year-old girl. It takes all kinds, I guess.
Long Face didn’t regain consciousness for some time. I checked my watch again.
What would Masahiko think if he came back now? The Commendatore in a pool of blood, Long Face bound and unconscious on the floor. Both in the unfamiliar garb of an ancient time, neither standing even three feet tall. Tomohiko Amada comatose on the bed, a faint but satisfied smile (if that’s what it was) on his lips. A square, black hole gaping in a corner of the room. How could I explain what had led to this scene?
Of course, Masahiko didn’t come back. He was tied up in a work-related phone call of great importance, as the Commendatore had said. He would be dealing with it for some time yet. Everything had been arranged in advance. No one would bother us. I sat on the chair, eyeing the unconscious Long Face. I had whacked his head pretty hard on the edge of the hole, but it shouldn’t take him that long to come to. He’d have a fair-sized lump on his head, that’s all.
At last, Long Face woke up. He twisted and turned a bit on the floor, and uttered a few incomprehensible words. Then, slowly, he opened his eyes a crack. Like a child looking at something scary—something he didn’t want to see, but must.
I went and knelt beside him.
“There’s very little time,” I said, looking down at him. “I need you to tell me where I can find Mariye Akikawa. If you do, I’ll untie you, and you can go back.”
I pointed to the square hole in the corner. The lid was still raised. I couldn’t tell if he understood what I was saying or not. But I decided to keep talking. All I could do was give it a shot.
Long Face violently shook his head back and forth several times. I couldn’t tell if he was saying that he didn’t know anything, or that my language was foreign to him.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll kill you,” I said. “You saw me stab the Commendatore, I bet. Well, there’s no big difference between one murder and two.”
I pressed the bloody blade of my knife against his dirty throat. I thought of the fishermen and the pilot of the southbound airplane. We all have jobs we have to do. And this was mine. I wasn’t going to kill him, of course, but the knife was real, and very sharp. Long Face quivered in fear.
“Wait!” he gasped in a husky voice. “Stay your hand.”
His way of speaking was strange, but I could understand him. I eased off on the knife.
“Where is Mariye Akikawa?” I pressed him. “Come on, spit it out!”
“No, sir, I do not know. I swear it.”
I studied his eyes. They were big and easy to read. He seemed to be telling the truth.
“All right then, tell me, what are you doing here?” I asked.
“I am enjoined to verify and record these events. I do only what I am told to do. You have my word.”
“Why must you verify them?”
“Because I was so bidden. I know nothing beyond that.”
“So what on earth are you? Another kind of Idea?”
“Goodness no! I am a Metaphor, nothing more.”
“A Metaphor?”
“Yes. A mere Metaphor. Used to link two things together. So please, untie my bonds, please, I beseech you.”
I was getting confused. “If you are as you say, then give me a metaphor now, off the top of your head.”
“I am the most humble and lowly form of Metaphor, sir. I cannot devise anything of quality.”
“A metaphor of any kind is all right—it doesn’t have to be brilliant.”
“He was someone who stood out,” he said after a moment’s pause, “like a man wearing an orange cone hat in a packed commuter train.”
Not an impressive metaphor, to be sure. In fact, not really a metaphor at all.
“That’s a simile, not a metaphor,” I pointed out.
“A million pardons,” he said, sweat pouring from his forehead. “Let me try again. ‘He lived as though he were wearing an orange cone hat in a crowded train.’?”
“That makes no sense. It’s still not a true metaphor. Your story doesn’t hold. I’ll just have to kill you.”
Long Face’s lips trembled with fear. His beard may have been manly, but he was short on guts.
“My sincerest apologies, sir. I am yet but an apprentice. I cannot think of a witty example. Forgive me. But I assure you that I am the genuine article, a true Metaphor.”
“Then who is your superior—who commands you?”
“I have no superior, per se. Well, perhaps I do, but I have never laid eyes on him. I only follow orders—acting as a link between phenomena and language. Like a helpless jellyfish adrift on the ocean. So please do not kill me. I implore you.”
“I can spare your life,” I said, my knife still on his throat. “But only if you agree to guide me to where you came from.”
“That is something I cannot do,” Long Face said in a firm voice. It was the first time he had used that tone. “The road I took to get here is the Path of Metaphor. It is different for each one who traverses it. It is not a single road. Thus I cannot guide you, sir, on your way.”
“Let me get this straight. I must follow this path alone, and I must discover it for myself—is that what you’re saying?”
Long Face nodded vigorously. “The Path of Metaphor is rife with perils. Should a mortal like you stray from the path even once, you could find yourself in danger. And there are Double Metaphors everywhere.”
“Double Metaphors?”