When five o’clock came around, I would go to pick up our daughter at the nursery school. This was my designated role (my wife having gone back to work at the architectural firm). On an adult’s legs, the school was a ten-minute walk away. Then the two of us would slowly stroll home, hand in hand. If the weather was good, we would stop by a park on the way to sit on a bench and watch the neighborhood dogs pass by. Our daughter wanted a little dog of her own, but no pets were permitted in our apartment building, so she had to make do with looking at them in the park. Every so often, someone would let her pet their small, unthreatening dog.
Our daughter’s name was Muro. Yuzu had chosen it. She had seen the name in a dream shortly before the baby was born. In the dream, she had been in a large Japanese-style room that looked out over a spacious and beautiful garden. There was a low, old-fashioned writing desk, and on top of that a sheet of white paper. On the paper a single character, 室 (Muro), had been written in bright black ink. The calligraphy was magnificent. That was Yuzu’s dream. It stayed stuck in her mind even after she awoke. Thus, she decided, Muro had to be the baby’s name. I was fine with that, of course. After all, she was the one having the baby. The idea that the calligrapher might be Tomohiko Amada popped into my head. But that was just a passing thought. When you came right down to it, it was only a dream, nothing more.
I was happy the child was a girl. I had grown up with my younger sister Komi, so I found it relaxing to have a little girl around. It felt as natural as could be. I was happy, too, that she came into this world with her name already settled. Names are important, whatever one might say.
When we got home, Muro and I watched the news together. I tried to shield her from shots of towns being swallowed by the tsunami. I thought the images were too disturbing for a young child. I was quick to cover her eyes when they came on the screen.
“Why, Daddy?” Muro asked me.
“Because you’re still too young.”
“But it’s real, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. It’s really happening somewhere far from here. But just because it’s real doesn’t mean you have to see it.”
Muro thought about that for a while. But of course she couldn’t wrap her head around what I had said. She couldn’t understand tsunamis and earthquakes yet, or the meaning of death. All the same, I blocked her vision whenever the tsunami appeared on the screen. Understanding something and seeing it are two different things.
One time, I saw the man with the white Subaru Forester on TV. Or at least I thought I did. They were shooting a large fishing vessel stranded on a bluff some distance from shore, and he was standing nearby. Like an elephant keeper beside an elephant that had outlived its usefulness. But that shot was quickly followed by another. I couldn’t be sure if it was really the man with the white Subaru Forester or not. But to me the tall fellow in the black windbreaker and black cap with a Yonex logo could be no one else.
His image came and went. There was only a brief second before the camera angle shifted.
Besides watching news about the earthquake, I painted “commercial” portraits on commission to shore up our finances. It was something I could do without thinking—when I sat before the canvas, my hands moved almost automatically. I had been seeking just that sort of life. And that’s what people had been seeking from me. The work provided a steady income. I needed that too. I had a family to take into account.
* * *
—
Two months after the earthquake, my old home in Odawara burned down. The house on the mountain where Tomohiko Amada had spent half his life. Masahiko called with the news. He had been tearing his hair out over how to look after it once I had left, and it turned out his fears were well founded. It had caught fire just before dawn at the end of the May holidays, and although firemen had rushed to the scene, the old wooden structure had almost burned to the ground by the time they arrived (the fire trucks had trouble navigating the steep and twisting road). Luckily, it had rained the night before, so flames hadn’t spread to the surrounding trees. The fire department investigated, but to no avail. It might have been an electrical short circuit, but then again it could have been arson.
The first thing that came to mind when I heard the news was Killing Commendatore. It must have been incinerated along with the house. Same with The Man with the White Subaru Forester. And the record collection. Had the owl in the attic managed to escape?
Killing Commendatore was without a doubt one of Tomohiko Amada’s best works, its demise a great loss to Japan’s art world. Yet only a few people had laid eyes on it. Just Mariye Akikawa and me. Shoko Akikawa, very briefly. Its creator, Tomohiko Amada, of course. After that, possibly no one. Now it was gone forever, swallowed by the flames. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was somehow to blame. Shouldn’t I have made public Tomohiko Amada’s hidden masterpiece? Instead, I had bundled it up and stuck it back in the attic. Now it was just a pile of ashes. (I had carefully copied the characters who appeared in it in my sketchbook, all that remained of Killing Commendatore.) As a self-respecting artist myself, the idea pained me. The painting was so wonderful, I thought. Perhaps I had committed a crime against art itself.
Yet it also struck me that it might have been a work that had to be lost. Tomohiko Amada had poured just too much of his passion, his soul, into it for it to be exposed to public view. It was filled with his spirit. Thus, although it was a superb painting, it possessed some sort of vicious power—it could summon things from the other side. By discovering it, I had set a cycle of some kind in motion. Dragging a painting like that out into the light could well have been a big mistake. Wasn’t that what the artist himself had thought? Wasn’t that why he had hidden it in the attic, away from view? If so, then I had respected his wishes. Whichever the case, it had been lost to the flames, and there was no way anyone could turn back time to recover it.
I didn’t regret the loss of The Man with the White Subaru Forester for a moment. I knew I would tackle that subject again in the future. By then, though, I would have become a more resolute man, and an artist of greater integrity. When it came time to create my own art again, I should be able to paint The Man with the White Subaru Forester from a whole new angle. Perhaps that work would become my own Killing Commendatore. If that happened, it would be the greatest legacy I could receive from Tomohiko Amada.
* * *
—
Mariye called me right after the fire, and we talked for half an hour about the little old house it had left in ashes. That house had been important to her. Not so much the building, perhaps, as the world it encompassed, and the time when it was an essential part of her life. That would include Tomohiko Amada, back in the days when he still lived there. Whenever she saw him, the painter was always immersed in his work. From Mariye’s experience, an artist was someone who holed up for days painting in his studio. She had watched Amada through the window of that house. Now it was gone, and she had lost that world forever. I shared her sadness. That house held deep meaning for me as well, though I had lived there less than eight months.
At the end of our call, Mariye told me that her breasts were much bigger than before. By now, she was in her second year of high school. I had not seen her once since my departure. Our relationship consisted of an occasional phone call. I didn’t particularly want to revisit the house, nor had I any compelling reason to go there. It was always Mariye who called me.
“They haven’t filled out yet, but they’re definitely growing,” she whispered confidentially. It took me a while to register what she was talking about.
“Just as the Commendatore prophesied,” she said.
That’s wonderful, I said. I considered asking if she had a boyfriend, but decided against it.
Her aunt was still seeing Menshiki. She had revealed that to Mariye at some point. That they were very close indeed. And that they might get married before too long.
“Would you live with us if that happened?” her aunt had asked.
Mariye had pretended she hadn’t heard. She was good at that.
I found the idea a bit unsettling. “Are you intending to live with Mr. Menshiki?” I asked her.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “But I’m not so sure.”
Not so sure?