There were a few other figures nearby watching the duel. One was a young woman. She had on refined, pure white clothes. Her hair was done up, with a large hair ornament. She held one hand in front of her mouth, which was slightly parted. She looked like she was about to take a deep breath and let out a scream. Her lovely eyes were wide open.
And there was another young man there. His clothes were not as splendid. Dark clothes, bereft of any ornaments, the kind of outfit designed to be easy to move around in. On his feet were plain-looking zori sandals. He looked like a servant. He had no long sword, just a short sword hanging from his waist. He was short and thickset, with a scraggly beard. In his left hand he held a kind of account book, like a clipboard that a company employee nowadays might have. His right hand was reaching out in the air as if to grab something. But it couldn’t grab anything. You couldn’t tell from the painting if he was the servant of the old man, or of the young man, or of the woman. One thing that was clear, though, was that this duel had taken place quickly, and neither the woman nor the servant had expected it to happen. Both of their faces revealed an unmistakable shock at the sudden turn of events.
The only one of the four who wasn’t surprised was the young man doing the killing. Probably nothing ever took him by surprise. He was not a born killer, and he didn’t enjoy killing. But if it served his purpose he wouldn’t hesitate to kill. He was young, burning with idealism (though of what kind I have no idea), a man overflowing with strength. And he was skilled in the art of wielding a sword. Seeing an old man past his prime dying by his hand didn’t surprise him. It was, in fact, a natural, rational act.
There was one other person there, an odd observer. The man was at the bottom left of the painting, much like a footnote in a text. His head was peeking out from a lid in the ground that he had partially pushed open. The lid was square, and made of boards. It reminded me of the attic cover in this house. The shape and size were identical. From there the man was watching the people on the surface.
A hole opening up to the surface? A square manhole? No way. They didn’t have sewers back in the Asuka period. And the duel was taking place outdoors, in an empty vacant lot. The only thing visible in the background was a pine tree, with low-hanging branches. Why would there be a hole with a cover there, in the middle of a vacant lot? It didn’t make any sense.
The man who was sticking his head out of the hole was weird looking. He had an unusually long face, like a twisted eggplant. His face was overgrown with a black beard, his hair long and tangled. He looked like some sort of vagabond or hermit who’d abandoned the world. In a way he also looked like someone who’d lost his mind. But the glint in his eyes was surprisingly sharp, insightful, even. That said, the insight there wasn’t the product of reason, but rather something induced by a sort of deviance—perhaps something akin to madness. I couldn’t tell the details of what he was wearing, since all that I could see was from the neck up. He, too, was watching the duel. But unlike the others, he showed no surprise at the turn of events. He was a mere observer of something that was supposed to take place, as if checking all the details of the incident, just to be sure. The young woman and the servant weren’t aware of the man with the long face behind them. Their eyes were riveted on the bloody duel. No one was about to turn around.
But who was this person? And why was he hiding beneath the ground back in ancient times? What was Tomohiko Amada’s purpose in deliberately including this uncanny, mysterious figure in one corner of the painting, and thus forcibly destroying the balance of the overall composition?
And why in the world was this painting given the title Killing Commendatore? True, an apparently high-ranking person was being killed in the picture. But that old man in his ancient garb certainly didn’t deserve to be called a commendatore—a knight commander. That was a title clearly from the European Middle Ages or the early modern period. There was no position like that in Japanese history. But still Tomohiko Amada gave it this strange-sounding title—Killing Commendatore. There had to be a reason.
The term “commendatore” sparked a faint memory. I’d heard the word before. I followed that trace of memory, as if tugging a thin thread toward me. I’d run across the word in a novel or drama. And it was a famous work. I knew I’d seen it somewhere…
And then it hit me. Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. In the beginning of that opera was a scene, I was sure, of Killing Commendatore. I went over to the shelf of records in the living room, took out the boxed set of Don Giovanni, and read through the accompanying commentary. And sure enough, the person killed in the opening scene was the Commendatore. He didn’t have a name. He was simply listed as “Commendatore.”
The libretto was in Italian, and the old man killed in the beginning was called Il Commendatore. Whoever translated the libretto into Japanese had rendered it as kishidancho—literally, “the knight commander”—and that had become the standard term in Japanese. I had no clue what sort of rank or position the term “commendatore” referred to in reality. The commentary in a few other boxed sets didn’t elaborate. He was merely a nameless commendatore appearing in the opera with the sole function of being stabbed to death by Don Giovanni in the opening of the opera. And in the end he transformed into an ominous statue that appeared to Don Giovanni and took him down to hell.
Pretty obvious, if you think about it, I thought. The handsome young man in this painting is the rake Don Giovanni (Don Juan in Spanish) and the older man being killed is the honored knight commander. The young woman is the Commendatore’s beautiful daughter Donna Anna, the servant is Don Giovanni’s man, Leporello. What he had in his hands was the detailed list of all the women Don Giovanni had seduced up until then, a lengthy catalog of names. Don Giovanni had forced himself on Donna Anna, and when her father confronted him with this violation, they had a duel, and Don Giovanni stabbed the older man to death. It’s a famous scene. Why hadn’t I picked up on that?
Probably because Mozart’s opera and a Japanese-style painting depicting the Asuka period were so remote from each other. So of course I hadn’t been able to make the connection. But once I did, everything fell into place. Tomohiko Amada had “adapted” the world of Mozart’s opera into the Asuka period. A fascinating experiment, for sure. That, I recognized. But why was that adaptation necessary? It was so very different from his usual style of painting. And why did he tightly wrap the painting and hide it away in the attic?
And what was the significance of that figure in the bottom left, the man with the long face sticking his head out from underground? In Mozart’s Don Giovanni no one like that appeared. There must have been a reason Tomohiko Amada had added him. Also in the opera Donna Anna didn’t actually witness her father being stabbed to death. She was off asking her lover, the knight Don Ottavio, for help. By the time they got back to the scene, her father had already breathed his last. Amada had—no doubt for dramatic purposes—subtly changed the way the scene played out. But there was no way the man sticking his head out of the ground was Don Ottavio. That man’s features weren’t anything found in this world. It was impossible that this was the upright, righteous knight who could help Donna Anna.
Was he a demon from hell? Scouting out the situation in anticipation of dragging Don Giovanni down to hell? But he didn’t look like a demon or devil. A demon wouldn’t have such strangely sparkling eyes. A devil wouldn’t push a square wooden lid up and peek out. The figure more resembled a trickster who had come to intervene. “Long Face” is what I called him, for lack of a better term.
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