As before, I led them to the living room. Shoko launched into a string of apologies, but I cut her off. This was no time for social niceties.
“If you don’t mind, could you leave Mariye and me alone for a while?” I said, getting straight to the point. “I think that’s best. Please come back in about two hours. Would that be possible?”
“Oh, well, certainly,” the young aunt said. She seemed a little flustered. “If it’s all right with Mariye, then it’s all right with me.”
Mariye gave a slight nod. It was all right with her.
Shoko Akikawa consulted her small silver watch.
“Then I’ll come back at five o’clock. I’ll be waiting at home, so please call if you need anything.”
I told her we would.
Looking worried, Shoko paused uncertainly, clutching her black purse. Then she appeared to make up her mind, for she took a deep breath, smiled a bright smile, and left. There was the sound of the Prius’s engine starting (I couldn’t really hear it, but I assume it did), and the car disappeared down the slope. Mariye and I were left alone in the house.
The girl sat on the sofa and looked down at her lap, her lips still set in a stubborn line and her knees pressed together. Her pleated blouse was neatly ironed.
A deep silence followed. Finally, I spoke up.
“You don’t have to say a word,” I began. “You can stay quiet as long as you want. So try to relax. I’ll do the talking—all you have to do is listen. All right?”
Mariye raised her eyes and looked at me. But she didn’t speak. Nor did she nod or shake her head. She merely stared in my direction. Her face showed no emotion. I felt as if I were gazing at the full moon in winter. Perhaps she had made her heart like the moon for the time being. An icy mass of rock floating in the sky.
“First, I need your help with something,” I said. “Can you come with me?”
I rose and headed to the studio. A moment later she got up and followed. The room was chilly, so I lit the kerosene stove. When I pulled back the curtains, the mountainside was bright in the sun. Mariye’s portrait-in-progress was sitting on an easel, close to finished. She glanced at it but then quickly looked away, as if she had glimpsed something she shouldn’t have.
I crouched down, removed the cloth I had draped over Killing Commendatore, and hung the painting on the wall. I asked Mariye to sit on the stool to observe it more closely.
“You’ve seen this painting before, right?”
Mariye gave a small nod.
“It’s called Killing Commendatore. At least that’s what was written on its wrapping. It’s one of Tomohiko Amada’s most perfect works, though we don’t know exactly when he painted it. It’s beautifully composed and masterfully drawn. Each character is fully realized and utterly convincing.”
I paused for a moment, waiting for my words to sink in.
“Yet this painting was wrapped up and closeted away in the attic of this house,” I went on, “where no one would ever see it. When I stumbled upon it and brought it downstairs, it had been gathering dust for a very long time. Apart from the artist, you and I are probably the only people who have ever looked at it. Your aunt could have too on your first visit, but for some reason it didn’t catch her eye. I don’t know what made Tomohiko Amada hide it in the attic. It’s such a brilliant work, one of his true masterpieces, so why would he keep it from the world?”
Mariye didn’t respond. She sat on the stool, her eyes fixed on Killing Commendatore.
I continued. “As if on cue, weird things have happened one after another since I stumbled on this painting. First, Mr. Menshiki went out of his way to make my acquaintance.”
Mariye nodded slightly.
“Then I uncovered that strange hole behind the shrine in the woods. I heard a bell ringing in the middle of the night and traced it to that spot. It was coming from beneath a pile of stones. They couldn’t be moved by hand—they were too big and too heavy. So Menshiki arranged for a landscaper to come in with his backhoe. I didn’t understand why Menshiki would go to such lengths, and I still don’t. At any rate, the stones were moved at great cost of time and money. Underneath them was a hole. A round pit about six feet across, made of smaller stones tightly set together in a perfect circle. Who built it, and for what purpose, is a mystery. Of course you know about the pit.”
Mariye nodded.
“The Commendatore came out of that opened pit. This guy.”
I went up to the painting and pointed to the figure. Mariye looked at him. But her expression didn’t change.
“He looked exactly the same as you see here, same face, same clothes. But he was only two feet tall. Very compact. And with a peculiar way of speaking. For some reason, I seem to be the only person able to see him. He called himself an ‘Idea.’ And said he had been stuck in that pit. In other words, Mr. Menshiki and I had set him free. Do you get what he meant by ‘Idea’?”
Mariye shook her head no.
“It’s hard for me, too. The way I understand it, an idea is a type of concept. But not all concepts are ideas. Love, for example, is not an idea. But ideas are what make love possible. Without ideas, love cannot exist. This discussion can go on forever, though. And to tell you the truth, I’m not even sure of the correct definitions. Anyway, an idea is a concept, and concepts have no physical shape. They are pure abstractions. Nevertheless, this Idea temporarily borrowed the form of the Commendatore in the painting to make itself visible to me. Do you follow me so far?”
“Pretty much,” Mariye broke her silence for the first time. “I met him too.”
“You did?” I exclaimed. I looked at her in stunned silence. Then I recalled what the Commendatore had said to me in the Izu nursing home. I met her not long ago, he had told me. We exchanged a few words.
“So you met the Commendatore too.”
Mariye nodded.
“When? Where?”
“At Mr. Menshiki’s,” she said.
“What did he say?”
Mariye clamped her lips together again. To signal, it seemed, that she didn’t want to talk any more for the moment. I didn’t push her further.
“Other characters in this painting have appeared as well,” I said. “For example, the man in the lower left-hand corner of the painting, the bearded guy with the strangely shaped face. Right here.”
I pointed to Long Face.
“I call him ‘Long Face,’ and he’s a weird one, all right. He’s about two and a half feet tall. He slipped out from the painting too—I caught him holding up the cover of his hole just as he is doing here, and he helped me reach the underground world. I had to get a bit rough, though, before he gave me directions.”
Mariye looked at Long Face for some time. But she didn’t say anything.
I continued. “I walked through that dim world, climbing hills, crossing a rapid river, until I met the pretty young woman you see right here. This person. I call her ‘Donna Anna,’ after the character in Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. She’s also very small. She led me to a tunnel in the back of a cave. Then she and my dead sister helped me worm my way through to where it ended. If they hadn’t cheered me on I never would have made it—I’d have been trapped in the underworld forever. My hunch—though of course it’s pure guesswork—is that Donna Anna in this painting may be the young woman Tomohiko Amada loved when he was a student in Vienna. She was executed as a political prisoner seventy years ago.”
Mariye looked at Donna Anna in the painting. Her face still as impassive as the white winter moon.
Then again, Donna Anna could have been Mariye’s mother, stung to death by a swarm of hornets. Perhaps she was the one who had protected Mariye. Depending on who was looking at her, Donna Anna might embody many things. Of course, I didn’t say this out loud.
“Then we have this man here,” I said. I turned the painting leaning against the wall around so we could see its front. It was my portrait in progress, The Man with the White Subaru Forester. On the surface, it was just thick layers of paint, three colors in all. Behind those layers, though, was the Subaru Forester guy. I could see him. Though other people couldn’t.