“It is good that you did so,” Donna Anna said. “That river flows along the interstice between presence and absence. It is filled with hidden possibilities that only the finest metaphors can bring to the surface. Just as a great poet can use one scene to bring another new, unknown vista into view. It should be obvious, but the best metaphors make the best poems. Take good care not to avert your eyes from the new, unknown vistas you will encounter.”
Tomohiko Amada’s Killing Commendatore might be seen as one such “unknown vista.” Like a great poem, the painting was a perfect metaphor, one that launched a new reality into the world.
I switched on the flashlight and checked its beam. It was bright and unwavering. The batteries should last for some time yet. I removed my leather jacket. It was too bulky to fit into such a tight space. That left me wearing a light sweater and jeans. The cave wasn’t especially cold, but neither was it all that warm.
Bracing myself, I crouched until I was almost on all fours and squeezed headfirst into the opening. Inside I found what appeared to be a tunnel sunk into solid rock. It was smooth to the touch, as if worn by water over the course of many years. There were almost no jagged or protruding edges. As a result, despite its narrowness, I was able to progress more easily than I had expected. The rock was cool and slightly damp. I inched forward on my stomach like a worm, the flashlight illuminating my way. I figured that the tunnel must have functioned as a waterway at some point in the past.
The tunnel was about two feet high and three feet across. Crawling was the only option. It looked like it would go on forever, a dark, natural pipe that expanded and contracted by small degrees. Sometimes it curved to the side. At other times it sloped up or down. Thankfully, though, there were no abrupt rises or falls. Then it hit me. If this was an underground conduit, water could flood the tunnel at any moment, and I would surely drown. My legs stopped moving, paralyzed by fear.
I wanted to turn around and go back the way I had come. But it was impossible to reverse course in such a cramped space. The tunnel seemed to have grown even narrower. Crawling backward to where I had begun was out of the question. Terror engulfed me. I was literally nailed to the spot. I couldn’t move forward, and I couldn’t retreat. Every cell in my body cried out for fresh air. Forsaken by light, I felt powerless and alone.
“Do not stop. You must push on.” Donna Anna’s command was irrefutable. I couldn’t tell if I was hearing things or if she was really behind me, urging me on.
“I can’t move,” I gasped, squeezing out the words. “And I can’t breathe.”
“Make fast your heart,” said Donna Anna. “Do not let it flounder. Should that happen, you will surely fall prey to a Double Metaphor.”
“What are Double Metaphors?” I asked.
“You should know the answer to that already.”
“I should know?”
“That is because they are within you,” said Donna Anna. “They grab hold of your true thoughts and feelings and devour them one after another, fattening themselves. That is what Double Metaphors are. They have been dwelling in the depths of your psyche since ancient times.”
Unbidden, the man with the white Subaru Forester entered my mind. I didn’t want him there. But there was no way around it. It was he who had pushed me to throttle that young woman, forcing me to look into the darkness of my own heart. He had reappeared more than once, to make sure I would remember that darkness.
I know where you were and what you were doing, he was announcing to me. Of course he knew everything. Because he lived inside me.
My heart was in chaos. I closed my eyes and tried to anchor it, to hold it in one place. I ground my teeth with the effort. But how should I go about securing my heart? Where was its true location, anyway? I looked within myself, searching one place after another. But it didn’t turn up. Where could it be?
“Your true heart lives in your memory. It is nourished by the images it contains—that’s how it lives,” a woman said. This time, however, it was not Donna Anna speaking. It was Komi. My sister, dead at age twelve.
“Search your memory,” said that dear voice. “Find something concrete. Something you can touch.”
“Komi?” I said.
There was no answer.
“Komi, where are you?” I said.
Still no reply.
There in the dark, I searched my memory. Like rummaging through an old duffel bag. But it seemed to have been emptied. I couldn’t even recall exactly what memory was.
“Turn off your light and listen to the wind,” Komi said.
I switched off the flashlight. But I couldn’t hear the wind, though I tried. All I could make out was the restless pounding of my heart, a screen door banging in a gale.
“Listen to the wind,” Komi repeated.
Once again, I held my breath and focused. This time, I could hear, lying beyond my heartbeat, a faint humming. A wind seemed to be blowing somewhere far away. A wisp of a breeze brushed my face. Air was entering the tunnel ahead. Air I could smell. The unmistakable odor of damp soil. The first odor I had encountered since setting foot in this Land of Metaphor. The tunnel was leading somewhere. To a place I could smell. In short, to the real world.
“All right then, on you go,” said Donna Anna. “There isn’t much time left.”
With my flashlight turned off, I crawled on into the blackness. As I moved forward, I tried to draw even the slightest whiff of that real air into my lungs.
“Komi?” I asked again.
There was no answer.
I ransacked my store of memories. Komi and I had raised a pet cat. A smart black tomcat. We named it Koyasu, though why we gave it that name escapes me. Komi had picked it up as a kitten on her way home from school. One day, however, it disappeared. We scoured our neighborhood looking for it. We stopped countless people and showed them Koyasu’s photograph. But in the end the cat never turned up.
I crawled on, the image of the black cat vivid in my mind. I tried to imagine my sister and me together, searching for it. I strained my eyes to catch a glimpse of the cat at the end of the dark tunnel. I pricked my ears to hear its mewing. The black cat was solid and concrete, something I could touch. I could feel its fur, its warmth, the firmness of its body—even hear it purr—as if it were yesterday.
“That’s right,” Komi said. “Just keep remembering like that.”
I know where you were and what you were doing, the man with the white Subaru Forester called out of nowhere. He wore a black leather jacket and a golf cap with the Yonex logo. His voice was hoarse from the sea wind. Caught by surprise, I recoiled in fear.
I tried to find my memories of the cat. To draw the fragrance of damp earth into my lungs. I seemed to recall that smell from somewhere. From a time not so far away. But I couldn’t remember, try as I might. Where had it been? As I struggled to recall, once again, my memories began to fade away.
Strangle me with this, the girl had said. Her pink tongue peeked out at me from between her lips. The belt of her bathrobe lay beside her pillow, ready to be used. Her pubic hair glistened like grass in the rain.
“Come on,” Komi urged me. “Call up a favorite memory. Hurry!”
I tried to bring back the black cat. But Koyasu was gone. Why couldn’t I remember him? Perhaps the darkness had snatched him away while I was distracted. Its power had devoured him. I had to come up with something else, and fast. I had the horrid sense that the tunnel was tightening around me. It seemed alive. There is not much time, Donna Anna had said. Cold sweat trickled from my armpits.
“Come on now, remember something,” Komi’s voice said behind me. “Something you can physically touch. Something you can draw.”
Like a drowning man clutching a buoy, I latched onto my old Peugeot 205. My little French car. I remembered the feeling of the steering wheel as I toured northeastern Japan and Hokkaido. It felt like ages ago, yet I could still hear the rattle of that primitive four-cylinder engine, and the way the clutch growled when I shifted from second into third. For a month and a half, the car had been my constant comrade, my only friend. Now it was probably sitting in a scrap yard somewhere.
The tunnel was definitely narrowing. My head kept banging against the roof. I reached for the flashlight.
“Do not turn on the light,” Donna Anna commanded.