How should I pass the time? The proper thing would be to climb back into bed. But I wasn’t at all sleepy. I didn’t feel like reading or working. With nothing better to do, I decided to run a bath. While the bathtub was filling, I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling.
Why had it been necessary to pass through that underground world? To make that trip, I had been forced to kill the Commendatore with my own hands. He had sacrificed his life, and I had been compelled to endure one ordeal after another in a world of darkness. There had to have been a reason. The underground realm was full of unmistakable danger, and real fear. Down there, the most outlandish occurrences weren’t strange at all. By successfully navigating that realm, I seemed to have freed Mariye from somewhere. At least she had returned home safely. As the Commendatore had foretold. But what connected my experiences underground and her safe return? Were they somehow parallel?
Perhaps the river water I had ingested was an important piece of the puzzle. It could have altered something in me. I felt that at an intuitive and physical level, though it made no rational sense. Thanks to that change, I had passed through a tunnel clearly too small for my body. Cheered on by Donna Anna and Komi, I had managed to overcome my deep-rooted claustrophobia. No, Donna Anna and Komi could have been a single entity, Donna Anna at one moment, Komi at the next. Together, perhaps, they had shielded me from the dark powers, and protected Mariye Akikawa at the same time.
But where had Mariye been confined? Had she been confined in the first place? When I had given her penguin charm (though “given” didn’t really cover it) to the faceless man, had I harmed her? Or, conversely, had the charm in some shape or form protected her in the end?
The questions only mounted.
Perhaps I would understand the events of the past few days better once I met Mariye in person. I would have to wait. True, things might be no clearer even after we talked. Mariye might recall nothing. Or she might remember, but (like me) be unwilling to share her story.
At any rate, I had to see her once more in this real world, and have a good long talk. We needed to share our stories about what had happened to us. If at all possible.
But was this the real world?
I looked around. So much was familiar. The breeze through the window carried a familiar smell, the sounds outside were familiar sounds.
Just because it looked like the real world at first glance, however, didn’t mean that was necessarily the case. It might be no more than my assumption. I might well have descended through one hole in Izu and traveled the underworld only to be spit out three days later through the wrong hole in the mountains of Odawara. There was no guarantee that the world I had left and the world I had returned to were one and the same.
I rose from the sofa, stripped off my clothes, and stepped into the bathroom. Once again, I soaped and scrubbed every inch of my body. I thoroughly washed my hair. I brushed my teeth, swabbed my ears with cotton, trimmed my nails. I shaved (though there wasn’t much beard to shave). I put on another set of clean underwear. A freshly ironed white cotton shirt and a pair of khaki pants with a sharp crease. I strove to make myself look as acceptable as I could to the real world. But the night still hadn’t ended. Outside was pitch black. So black I felt morning might never arrive, not for all eternity.
But morning did come. I brewed some fresh coffee and made some buttered toast. The fridge was almost bare. Two eggs, some sour milk, and a few limp vegetables. I made a mental note to go shopping later.
I was washing the coffee cup when it struck me that I hadn’t seen my girlfriend in some time. How long had it been? I couldn’t count the exact number of days without checking my calendar. But I knew quite a while had passed. So many things had been going on—a number of them literally not in this world—that I hadn’t noticed her failure to contact me.
Why was that? She called me at least twice every week. “How’s it going?” she would say. I couldn’t call her, though. She couldn’t give me her cell phone number, and I didn’t use email. When I wanted to see her, I had to wait for her call.
* * *
—
Sure enough, my girlfriend did call around nine that morning, when she was still in the back of my mind.
“I’ve got to talk to you about something,” she said, skipping the pleasantries.
“Fine, let’s talk,” I said.
I leaned against the kitchen counter, phone to my ear. The clouds outside were starting to break up, and the early-winter sun was peeking through the gaps. The weather at least was improving. From the sound of it, though, what she had to say wasn’t going to be all that pleasant.
“I think it’s best if we don’t see each other again,” she said. “It’s too bad, but…”
Her tone was flat and dispassionate. I couldn’t tell if she really felt it was too bad or not.
“There are a number of reasons,” she said.
“A number of reasons,” I echoed.
“To begin with, I think my husband is catching on. He’s noticed some signs.”
“Signs,” I repeated.
“Women leave certain signs in situations like this. Like they start paying more attention to their makeup and their clothes, or change their perfume, or start a serious diet. I’ve tried to be careful, but even so.”
“I see.”
“The main thing is, we can’t go on like this.”
“Like this,” I repeated.
“With no future. No hope of resolution.”
She had it there. Our relationship had no “future,” no “hope of resolution.” The risks were too large if we continued as we were. I didn’t have all that much to lose, but she had a family and two teenage daughters attending private school.
“There’s more,” she went on. “I’m having a serious problem with my daughter. The older one.”
Her elder daughter. If I remembered correctly, she was the obedient child who never talked back to her parents and got good grades.
“A serious problem?”
“She can’t get out of bed in the morning.”
“Can’t get out of bed?”
“Hey, will you please stop repeating everything I say?”
“Sorry,” I apologized. “But what is her specific problem? She can’t get out of bed?”
“That’s right. It’s been going on for about two weeks. She doesn’t try to get up. She doesn’t go to school. She just lies in bed in her pajamas all day. Doesn’t answer when spoken to. I take food to her, but she barely touches it.”
“Has she seen a counselor?”
“Of course,” she said. “There’s a school counselor. No help at all.”
I thought for a minute. But there was nothing I could say. I’d never even met the girl.
“So that’s why I can’t see you,” she said.
“Because you have to stay home and look after her?”
“There’s that. But that’s not all.”
She didn’t go on, but I understood how she felt. She was terrified, and blaming herself as a mother for our affair.
“It’s really too bad,” I said.
“It’s fine for you to say that, but it’s even worse for me.”
She could be right, I thought.
“There’s one last thing I wanted to tell you,” she said. She took a quick, deep breath.
“What’s that?”
“I think you can become a really good artist. Even better than now.”
“Thank you,” I said. “That gives me some confidence.”
“Goodbye.”
“Take care,” I said.
* * *
—
When our phone call ended, I went to the living room, stretched out on the sofa, and thought about her as I looked at the ceiling. We had been together so many times, yet never had I thought of painting her portrait. Somehow, that feeling had never arisen. Instead I had sketched her over and over again. In a small sketchbook with a thick pencil, so quickly I hardly removed pencil from paper. In most she was naked, and posing lewdly. Spreading her legs to show her vagina, for example. Or I sketched her in the act of making love. Simple drawings but still very real. And very vulgar. She loved looking at them.
“You’re really good at drawing naughty pictures, huh? You toss them off, but they’re super dirty.”