The cleaners finally showed up on Tuesday morning. She could hear the lively chatter of women in the upper garden as they unloaded equipment from the back of their van. Menshiki had not done his laundry that morning, nor performed his exercise routine. In fact, he hadn’t come downstairs at all. She had wondered if this could be why (Menshiki wouldn’t change his daily schedule without a reason), and, sure enough, it was as she had guessed. Menshiki had probably driven his Jaguar out the gate at the same moment the cleaners’ big van pulled in.
Mariye rushed to tidy up the maid’s room. She gathered the empty water bottles and cracker packets and put them in a garbage bag, which she set out in a visible place. The cleaners would look after it. She neatly folded the blanket and quilt and returned them to the closet. She took care to erase every trace of her presence. Now no one could tell that someone had been living there for days. Then she slung her bag over her shoulder and crept up the stairs. Timing her moves, she darted through the hallway without attracting the cleaners’ attention. Her heart pounded at the thought of the dangers of that room. At the same time, though, she missed the clothes hanging in its closet. She wanted to go back for one last look. Touch them with her hands. But there was no time for that. She had to hurry.
She slipped through the front door undetected, and ran up the curved driveway. The gate had been left open, as she had anticipated. It made no sense for anyone working there to open and close it each time they passed through. Her face as she stepped out onto the road was a picture of normality.
Should I really be able to leave this easily? she thought outside the gate. Shouldn’t I have to pay a higher price? Go through some sort of painful rite of passage, like the teenage tribesmen of New Guinea? Endure a ritual like that as a badge of courage? Those thoughts did not linger, however. They were dwarfed by the liberation she felt at having made her getaway.
The day was overcast, with lowlying clouds that threatened cold rain at any minute. But Mariye’s face was raised to the sky. As if she were on the beach at Waikiki, gazing up at the swaying palm trees. She took several deep breaths, giddy with her good fortune. I am free, she thought. My feet will take me anywhere I want to go. My nights spent trembling in the dark are over. That fact alone made her grateful to be alive. It had been only four days, but now the world appeared so fresh, each tree, every blade of grass charged with such wonderful vitality. She found the smell of the wind exhilarating.
Yet this was no time to dawdle. Menshiki could have forgotten something and come driving back at any time. I should get away from here, she thought, and fast. Adopting what she hoped was a nonchalant expression, Mariye tried to smooth her wrinkled school uniform (she had been sleeping in it for days) and straighten her hair to avoid arousing suspicion as she trotted down the mountain.
At the foot of the slope, she turned up the road on the other side. But she did not take her usual route home—rather, she headed for my place. She had something in mind. But the house was empty. She rang the bell repeatedly, but no one came to the door.
Giving up, she went around to the back and took the path through the woods to the pit behind the little shrine. Now, however, a blue plastic sheet covered the pit. The sheet hadn’t been there before. It was held firmly in place by cords attached to stakes driven into the ground. Stone weights were lined up on top. It was no longer possible to peek inside. In her absence, someone—who, she didn’t know—had sealed it. Probably they considered it a safety hazard. She stood in front of the pit and listened for a while. But she heard nothing.
(My note: The fact she didn’t hear the bell could have meant that I hadn’t arrived yet. Or possibly that I had fallen asleep.)
Cold drops of rain began to fall. I should go home, she thought. My family is worried about me. But how could she explain the last four days? She had to think of something. She couldn’t let on that she had been hiding at Menshiki’s all that time—that was out of the question. It would create an even bigger mess. The police had probably been notified of her disappearance. If they knew that she had broken into Menshiki’s home, she’d be charged with trespassing. She would be punished.
What if she claimed that she had fallen into the pit by accident, and had been unable to get out for four days? That only when her teacher—me, in other words—came by was she able to climb to safety. Mariye had expected me to play along with this scenario. But I hadn’t been home, and the pit’s opening had been secured with a plastic tarp. Thus her plan fell through. (Had that scenario unfolded, I would have had to explain to the police why Menshiki and I had brought in heavy equipment to uncover the pit, which might have led to even thornier problems.)
Claiming temporary amnesia was the only other story she could think of. Nothing else came to mind. She would say that those four days were a blank. That she couldn’t remember a thing. That when she came to, she was lying alone on the mountain. She would stick with that—there was no other way. She had seen a TV show that hinged on that idea. She wasn’t sure if people would swallow an excuse like that. The police and her family would grill her. They might send her to a psychiatrist or counselor of some kind. Even so, a claim of amnesia was the only option. She would have to mess up her hair, splatter mud on her legs and arms, and add a few scattered cuts and bruises to make it look as if she had spent all that time in the mountains. It would be an act she would have to carry through to the very end.
And in fact that was what she did. It was hardly a masterful performance, but she could come up with no alternative.
* * *
—
This was what Mariye revealed to me. She had just finished her account when Shoko Akikawa returned. I heard her Toyota Prius pull up in front of my house.
“I think you should keep quiet about what really happened,” I said to Mariye. “Don’t tell anyone but me. It will be our secret.”
“Of course,” Mariye said. “Of course I won’t tell anyone. Even if I did, they wouldn’t believe me.”
“I believe you.”
“Does this mean the circle is closed?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe not all the way. But I think we can rest easy. The dangerous part is over.”
“The virulent part.”
“That’s right,” I said. “The virulent part.”
Mariye studied my face for a full ten seconds. “The Commendatore,” she said in a small voice. “He really exists.”
“That’s right,” I replied. “He really does.” And I killed him with these hands. Really. But of course I couldn’t tell her that.
Mariye gave a single nod. I knew she would keep our secret. It was a secret we would share forever.
I wished I could have told Mariye that the clothes that had protected her from that something had been worn by her late mother before she married. But I couldn’t. I didn’t have the right. Neither did the Commendatore. There was but one person in the world who did, and that was Menshiki. But he would never exercise it.
We all live our lives carrying secrets we cannot disclose.
63
BUT IT’S NOT WHAT YOU’RE THINKING
Mariye and I had a secret. An important secret shared by the two of us alone. I described my time in the underworld, and she told me exactly what had happened to her at Menshiki’s mansion. We wrapped up the two paintings, Killing Commendatore and The Man with the White Subaru Forester, as tightly as we could and stored them in the attic of Tomohiko Amada’s house. Nobody else knew about that, either. The owl did, of course, but it wasn’t going to talk. It would hold our secret in perfect silence.