On Tuesday morning I straightened up the house, picked some flowers from the garden and put them in vases, moved the Killing Commendatore painting out of the studio into the guest bedroom, and wrapped it up again in brown paper. I didn’t want anyone else seeing it.
At five past one p.m. a car drove up the steep slope and parked in the covered driveway at the entrance. A heavy, brazen-sounding engine echoed, like some giant animal giving a satisfied purr from deep inside a cave. A high-powered engine. The engine shut off, and quiet again settled over the valley. The car was a silver Jaguar sports coupe. Sunlight from between the clouds reflected brightly off the long, brightly polished fenders. I’m not that into cars, so I don’t know which model this was, but my guess was that it was the latest model, the mileage in the four digits, the price twenty times what I paid for my used Corolla station wagon. Not that this surprised me. The client was, after all, willing to pay such a huge fee to have a portrait done. If he’d appeared at my door in a massive yacht, it wouldn’t have been surprising.
The person who got out of the car was a well-dressed middle-aged man. He had on dark-green sunglasses, a long-sleeved white cotton shirt (not simply white, but a pure white), and khaki chinos. His shoes were cream-colored deck shoes. He was probably a shade over five feet seven inches tall. His face had a nice, even tan. He gave off an overall fresh, clean feel. But what struck me most on this first encounter was his hair. Slightly curly and thick, it was white down to the last hair. Not gray or salt-and-pepper, but a pure white, like freshly fallen, virgin snow.
He got out of the car, closed the door (which made that special pleasant thunk expensive car doors make when you casually shut them), didn’t lock it but put the key in his trouser pocket, and strode toward my front door—all of which I watched from a gap in the curtains. The way he walked was quite lovely. Back straight, the necessary muscles all equally in play. I figured he must work out regularly, and pretty hard training at that. I stepped away from the window, sat in a chair in the living room, and waited for the front doorbell to ring. Once it did, I slowly walked to the door and opened it.
When I opened the door the man took off his sunglasses, slipped them into the breast pocket of his shirt, and without a word held out his hand. Half reflexively I held out my hand, too. He shook it. It was a firm handshake, the way Americans do it. A little too firm for me, not that it hurt or anything.
“My name is Menshiki. It’s very nice to meet you,” the man said in a clear voice. The sort of tone a lecturer would make at the beginning of his talk to test the microphone and introduce himself at the same time.
“The pleasure’s mine,” I said. “Mr. Menshiki?”
“The men is written with the character in menzeiten—the one that means ‘avoidance’—and the shiki is the character iro, for ‘color.’?”
“Mr. Menshiki,” I repeated, lining the two characters up in my mind. A strange combination.
“?‘Avoiding colors,’ is what it means,” the man said. “An unusual name. Other than my relatives I rarely run across anyone who shares it.”
“But it’s easy to remember.”
“Exactly. It’s an easy name to remember. For better or for worse.” The man smiled. He had faint stubble from his cheeks to his chin, but I don’t think he’d simply left off shaving. When he’d shaved he’d left an exact, calculated amount of stubble. Different from his hair, his beard was half black. I found it odd that only his hair was pure white.
“Please come in,” I said.
Menshiki gave a small nod, removed his shoes, and stepped inside. The way he carried himself was charming, though I could sense a bit of tension. Like some large cat taken to a new place, each movement was careful and light, his eyes darting quickly around to take in his surroundings.
“A comfortable-looking place,” he said after sitting down on the sofa. “Very relaxed and quiet.”
“Quiet it certainly is. But kind of inconvenient when you have to go shopping.”
“I would imagine for someone in your field it’s an ideal environment.”
I sat down in the chair across from him.
“I heard that you live nearby, Mr. Menshiki?”
“Yes, that’s right. It would take a while to walk here, though as the crow flies it’s actually pretty near.”
“As the crow flies,” I said, repeating his words. There was a somehow strange ring to the expression. “But how near is it, actually?”
“Close enough that if you wave your hand here you could see it.”
“You can see your house from here?”
“Exactly.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond, and Menshiki asked, “Would you like to see my house?”
“If I could, yes,” I said.
“Do you mind if we go out on the terrace?”
“Please, go right ahead.”
Menshiki got up from the sofa and went straight from the living room to the terrace. He leaned out over the railing and pointed across the valley.
“You see that white concrete house over there? The one on top of the mountain, with the shiny windows?”
I was speechless. That was the house, that smart, elegant house I often looked at when I went out at sunset onto the terrace to enjoy a glass of wine. The large house that stood out from all the rest, diagonally to the right from mine.
“It’s a little far, but if you made a big wave with your hand you could say hello,” Menshiki said.
“But how did you know I was living here?” I asked, resting my hands on the railing.
He looked puzzled. He wasn’t really fazed, just displaying a puzzled look. Not that his expression seemed contrived. He’d simply wanted to throw in a pause before responding.
“One aspect of my job is gathering all kinds of information,” he said. “That’s the sort of business I’m in.”
“Is it tech related?”
“That’s right. Or more precisely, that’s also one aspect of my work.”
“But hardly anyone knows yet that I’m living here.”
Menshiki smiled. “Saying hardly anyone knows means, paradoxically, that there are some who do.”
I looked over again at that exquisite white concrete building across the valley, and once more studied the man beside me. He was, most likely, the one who appeared almost every evening on the deck of that house. When I thought of it, his shape and movements all fit that silhouette perfectly…It was hard to figure out his age. That snow-white hair made me think he must be in his late fifties or early sixties, though his skin was lustrous and tight, and wrinkle free. His deep-looking eyes had the youthful twinkle of a man in his late thirties. All of which made guessing his age a tough call. I would have accepted anything between forty-five and sixty.
Menshiki went back to the sofa in the living room, and I sat down again across from him.
“Do you mind if I ask a question?” I finally ventured.
“Ask away,” he said, beaming.
“Is there some connection between the fact that I live near your house and your decision to ask me to paint your portrait?”