—
My terrace faced the narrow valley to the west, and across the way was a range of mountains about the same height as mine. And on the slopes of those mountains were a number of houses with generous space separating them, surrounded by lush greenery. To the right, diagonally across from the house I was living in, was a particularly striking modern-style house. The mountaintop house, built of white concrete and plenty of bluish tinted glass, was so elegant and luxurious the word “mansion” seemed a better term. It was built in three levels that ran along the slope. Most likely some first-rate architect had designed it. There are lots of summer homes in this area, but someone seemed to live in this house all year long, with lights on behind the windows every night. Of course it could be that the lights were on timers as a safety precaution. But I gathered otherwise, since the lights came on and turned off at different times, depending on the day. Sometimes all the lights were on at once and the windows were lit like brilliant window displays on a main street, while at other times the whole house sank back into darkness, the only light a faint glow from lanterns in the yard.
Sometimes a person would appear on the deck that faced my direction (the one that resembled the top deck of an ocean liner). At twilight I would often see the figure of whoever lived there. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. The silhouette was small and usually backlit and in shadow. But from the outline of the silhouette, and the movements, my guess was that it was a man. And this person was always alone. Perhaps he didn’t have any family.
What kind of person lived in a place like that? In spare moments I tried to imagine. Did this person really live all by himself on this out-of-the-way mountaintop? What sort of work did he do? No doubt his life in that chic, glass-enclosed mansion was one of luxury and ease. He couldn’t be commuting every day to Tokyo from such an inconvenient spot. He must be living a life free of worries. But viewed from his perspective, looking at me from his side of the valley, I might appear to also be living a life of ease and leisure. From a distance, most things look beautiful.
That evening the figure appeared again. Like me, he sat, barely moving, in a chair out on the deck. As if he too was gazing at the twinkling stars, mulling over something. Thinking, no doubt, about things for which there was no answer, no matter how hard you thought about them. At least that’s how he looked to me. Everybody has something they speculate and wonder about, no matter how blessed their circumstances. I raised my wineglass a couple of inches, a secret gesture of solidarity to this person across the valley.
* * *
—
Naturally at the time I never imagined that this person would soon enter my life and change its direction entirely. Without him, none of the events that happened to me would have ever taken place. At the same time, if he hadn’t been there I might very well have lost my life in the darkness, with no one ever the wiser.
Our lives really do seem strange and mysterious when you look back on them. Filled with unbelievably bizarre coincidences and unpredictable, zigzagging developments. While they are unfolding, it’s hard to see anything weird about them, no matter how closely you pay attention to your surroundings. In the midst of the everyday, these things may strike you as simply ordinary things, a matter of course. They might not be logical, but time has to pass before you can see if something is logical.
Generally speaking, whether something is logical or isn’t, what’s meaningful about it are the effects. Effects are there for anyone to see, and can have a real influence. But pinpointing the cause that produced the effect isn’t easy. It’s even harder to show people something concrete that caused it, in a “Look, see?” kind of way. Of course there is a cause somewhere. Can’t be an effect without a cause. You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Like falling dominoes, one domino (cause) knocks over the adjacent domino (cause), which then knocks over the domino (cause) next to it. As this sequence continues on and on, you no longer know what was the original cause. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Or people don’t care to know. And the story comes down to “What happened was, a lot of dominoes fell over.” The story I’ll be telling here may very well follow a similar route.
In any case, the first things I want to describe—the first two dominoes I have to bring up, in other words—are the mysterious neighbor who lived on the mountaintop across the valley, and the painting titled Killing Commendatore. I’ll start with the painting.
5
HE HAS STOPPED BREATHING…HIS LIMBS ARE COLD
The first thing I found odd after I moved into the house was the utter lack of any paintings. Not only were none hanging on the walls, but there wasn’t a single painting of any kind even stuffed away in a shed or closet. No paintings by Tomohiko Amada, but none by any other artists either. Every wall was bare, with no traces even of nails that might have once been used to hang paintings. Artists almost always had at least some paintings around them—their own paintings, or those by other artists. Before they knew what had hit them, they’d be surrounded by all kinds of paintings, like when you endlessly shovel the snow but it keeps on piling up.
Once when I called Masahiko about something else, I happened to raise the topic. How come there’s not a painting of any kind in this house? Did somebody take them away, or there weren’t any to begin with?
“My father didn’t like keeping his own paintings around,” Masahiko said. “He’d call up his art dealers when he finished a work and leave it with them. If he wasn’t happy with a painting, he burned it in the incinerator in the yard. So it’s not so strange that there’s not a single one of his paintings there.”
“He didn’t own any paintings by other artists either?”
“He owned a handful. An old Matisse or Braque and the like. All of them small paintings he bought in Europe before the war. He got them from acquaintances, and they weren’t so expensive at the time. Now, of course, they would bring a hefty price. When he went into the nursing home I took all those paintings to an art dealer I know and let him handle them. Can’t leave them sitting there in an empty house now, can I? I imagine they’re in a special air-conditioned art storage warehouse. Apart from those, I’ve never seen any other artists’ works in the house. To tell the truth, my father didn’t much like other artists. And they didn’t like him either. A lone wolf, you might call him, or if we’re not being nice about it, a misfit.”
“Your father was in Vienna from 1936 to 1939, wasn’t he?”
“Right, he was there for about two years. I don’t know why he chose Vienna, since the artists he liked were mainly French.”
“And then he returned to Japan and suddenly switched to Japanese-style paintings,” I said. “Why do you think he made such a monumental decision? Did something unusual happen while he was abroad?”
“Hmm. It’s a mystery. My father never spoke much about his time in Vienna. Occasionally he’d talk about things nobody cared about—the Vienna zoo, or food, or the opera house. But when it came to talking about himself, he was a man of few words. And I never dared to ask him. We mostly lived apart, and rarely saw each other. He was less like a father to me than an uncle who came to visit every once in a while. When I got to junior high he seemed even more annoying, and I avoided contact with him. When I went into the art institute, too, I never consulted him about it. It’s not like our family was complicated, though it wasn’t exactly a normal family either. You get the general idea?”