Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared before me, the forest ended. The trees that had lined the path on both sides vanished, and before I knew it, I had stepped out into a broad clearing. The clearing was the shape of a half-moon, and perfectly level. Now I could see the sky once more, and view my surroundings in that dusky light. Directly across from me rose a sheer cliff, and at the base of that cliff was the open mouth of a dark cave. The yellow light I had been following streamed directly from that opening.
The gloomy sea of trees was behind me, the towering cliff (much too steep for me to climb) straight ahead. The mouth of the cave opened directly before me. I looked up at the sky a second time, then around at my surroundings. Nothing looked like a path. My next move had to be to enter the cave—there was no alternative. Before going in, I took several deep breaths, to brace myself. By moving forward, I would generate a new reality in accordance with the principle of connectivity. So the faceless man had said. I would navigate the interstice between presence and absence. I could only entrust myself to his words.
Warily, I stepped into the cave. Then it struck me—I had been here before. I knew this cave by sight. The air inside was familiar, too. Memories came flooding back. The wind cave on Mt. Fuji. The cave where our young uncle had taken Komichi and me during our summer break, back when we were kids. She had slipped into a narrow side tunnel and disappeared for a long while. I had been scared to death that she was gone for good. Had she been sucked into an underground maze for all eternity?
Eternity is a very long time, the faceless man had said.
I walked slowly through the cave toward the yellow light, deadening my footsteps and trying to quiet my pounding heart. I rounded a corner, and there it was: the source of the light. An old lantern with a black metal rim, the sort that coal miners once carried, hanging on a thick nail driven into the stone wall. A fat candle burned inside the lantern.
Lantern, I thought. The word had come up not long before. It was part of the name of the anti-Nazi underground student organization that Tomohiko Amada was presumed to have joined. Things seemed to be converging.
A woman was standing beneath the lantern. I didn’t see her at first because she was so tiny. Less than two feet tall. Her black hair was coiled atop her head in a neat bun, and she wore a white gown from some ancient time. Its elegance was apparent at a glance. Another character lifted from Killing Commendatore. The beautiful maiden who looks on in horror, her hand over her mouth, as the Commendatore is slain. In Mozart’s Don Giovanni, she is Donna Anna. The daughter of the Commendatore.
Magnified by the light of the lantern, her sharp black shadow trembled on the wall of the cave.
“I have been awaiting you,” the miniature Donna Anna said.
55
A CLEAR CONTRAVENTION OF BASIC PRINCIPLES
“I have been awaiting you,” said Donna Anna. She was tiny, but her voice was clear and bright.
Nothing could have surprised me by that point. It even seemed natural for her to be there waiting for me. She was a beautiful woman, with an innate elegance, and the way she spoke had a majestic ring. She might be only two feet tall, but she clearly had that special something that could captivate a man.
“I will be your guide,” she said to me. “Please be so kind as to take that lantern.”
I unhooked the lantern from the wall. I didn’t know who had put it there, so far beyond her reach. Its circular metal handle allowed it to be hung on a nail or carried by hand.
“You were waiting for me?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “For a very long time.”
Could she be another form of Metaphor? I hesitated to pose such a bold question.
“Do you live in these parts?”
“Live here?” she said, casting a dubious glance in my direction. “No, I am here to meet you. And I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean by ‘these parts.’?”
I gave up asking questions after that. She was Donna Anna, and she had been waiting for me.
She wore the same sort of ancient garb as the Commendatore. In her case, a white garment, most likely made of fine silk. Draped in layers over the top half of her body, with loose-fitting pantaloons below. Though her shape was therefore hidden, I guessed she was slender but strong. Her small black shoes were fashioned of leather of some kind.
“Then let us commence,” Donna Anna said to me. “Not much time remains. The path is narrowing as we speak. Please follow me. And be so good as to hold the lantern.”
I followed in her wake, holding the lantern above her head. She walked toward the back of the cave with quick, practiced steps. The candle’s flame fluttered as we moved, casting a dancing mosaic of shadows on the pitted walls.
“This looks like a wind cave on Mt. Fuji that I once visited,” I said. “Is that possible?”
“All that is here looks like something,” Donna Anna declaimed without turning around. As though she were addressing the darkness ahead.
“Do you mean to say nothing here is the real thing?”
“No one can tell what is or is not the real thing,” she stated flatly. “All that we see is a product of connectivity. Light here is a metaphor for shadow, shadow a metaphor for light. You know this already, I believe.”
I didn’t think I knew, at least not all that well, but I refrained from inquiring further. That could only lead to more knotty abstractions.
The cave grew narrower the farther back we went. The roof became lower too, so that I had to stoop as I walked. Just as I had done in the Mt. Fuji wind cave. Finally, Donna Anna drew to a halt and turned to face me. Her small, flashing eyes stared up into mine.
“I can guide you this far. Now you must take the lead. I will follow, but only to a certain point. After that, you are on your own.”
Take the lead? I shook my head in disbelief—from what I could see, we had reached the very back of the cave. A dark stone wall blocked our way. I passed the lantern across its face. But it appeared that we had hit a dead end.
“It seems we can’t go any farther,” I said.
“Please look again. There should be an opening in the corner to your left,” Donna Anna said.
I shone the lantern on that section of the cave wall once more. When I stuck my head out and looked more closely, I could make out a dark depression on the far side of a large boulder. I squeezed myself between the wall and the boulder to inspect it. It certainly did appear to be an opening. I remembered my sister slipping into an even narrower crack.
I turned back to Donna Anna.
“You must enter there,” the two-foot-tall woman said.
I looked at her lovely face, wondering what to say. On the wall, her elongated shadow flickered in the lantern’s yellow light.
“I am fully aware,” she said, “that you have been terrified of small, dark places all your life. In such places, you can no longer breathe normally. I am correct, am I not? Nevertheless, you must force yourself to enter. Only in such a manner can you grasp that which you seek.”
“Where does this opening lead?”
“I do not know. The destination is something you yourself must determine by following your own heart.”
“But fear is in my heart as well,” I said. “That’s what worries me. That my fear will distort what I see and push me in the wrong direction.”
“Once again, it is you who determines the path. You are the one who chose the proper route to reach this world. You paid a great price for that, and have crossed the river by boat. You cannot turn back now.”
I looked again at the opening. I shuddered to think I would have to crawl into that dark, cramped tunnel. Yet that was what I had to do. She was right—I couldn’t turn back now. I placed the lantern on the ground and took the flashlight from my pocket. A lantern would be much too cumbersome in that tiny space.
“Believe in yourself,” Donna Anna said, her voice small but penetrating. “You have drunk from the river, have you not?”
“Yes, I was very thirsty.”