A slight look of confusion came over him. And when he looked confused, several tiny wrinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. Charming wrinkles. His features, viewed individually, were all quite attractive—the eyes almond shaped and slightly deep set, the forehead noble and broad, the eyebrows thick and nicely defined, the nose thin and a nice size. Eyes, eyebrows, and nose that perfectly fit his smallish face. His face was a bit small, yet too broad in a way, and from a purely aesthetic viewpoint was a little imbalanced. The vertical and horizontal were out of sync, though this disparity wasn’t necessarily a defect. It’s what gave his face its distinctiveness, since it was this imbalance that conversely gave the viewer a sense of calm. If his features had been too perfectly symmetrical people might have felt a bit of antipathy, or wariness, toward him. But as it was, his ever-so-slightly unbalanced features had a calming effect on anyone meeting him for the first time. They broadcast, in a friendly way, “It’s all good, not to worry. I’m not a bad person. I don’t plan to do anything bad to you.”
The pointed, largish tips of his ears were slightly visible through his neatly trimmed hair. They conveyed a sense of freshness, of vigor, reminding me of spry little mushrooms in a forest, peeking out from among the fallen leaves on an autumn morning, just after it had rained. His mouth was broad, the thin lips neatly closed in a line, diligently prepared to, at any moment, break into a smile.
One could call him handsome. And he actually was. Yet his features rejected that sort of casual description, neatly circumventing it. His face was too lively, its movements too subtle to simply abide by that label. The expressions that rose on his features weren’t calculated, but looked more like they’d arisen naturally, spontaneously. If they weren’t, then he was quite the actor. But I got the impression that wasn’t the case.
When I observe the face of a person I’ve met for the first time, from habit I sense all sorts of things. In most cases there’s no tangible basis for how I feel. It’s nothing more than intuition. But that’s what helps me as a portrait artist—that simple intuition.
“The answer is yes, and no,” Menshiki said. His hands on his knees were wide open, palms up. He turned them over.
I said nothing, waiting for his next words.
“I do worry about who lives in the neighborhood,” Menshiki went on. “No, not worry, exactly. It’s more like I’m interested. Especially when it’s someone I see now and then across the valley.”
It’s a little too great a distance to say we actually see each other, I thought, but didn’t say anything. Maybe he had high-powered binoculars and had been secretly observing me? I kept that thought to myself. I mean, what possible reason could he have to observe a person like me?
“And I learned that you had moved in here,” Menshiki continued. “I found out you’re a professional portrait artist, and that aroused my interest enough to seek out a few of your paintings. At first I saw them on the Internet. But I wasn’t satisfied, so I went to see three actual paintings.”
That had me puzzled. “You saw the actual paintings?”
“I went to see the people who had modeled for you and asked them to let me see the portraits. They were happy to show me them. It seems like people who sit for portraits are really pleased to show them off. I got a strange sensation when I saw the actual paintings up close and compared them to the faces of the people. It’s like I couldn’t tell which one was real anymore. How should I put it? There’s something about your paintings that strikes the viewer’s heart from an unexpected angle. At first they seem like ordinary, typical portraits, but if you look carefully you see something hidden inside them.”
“Something hidden?” I asked.
“I’m not sure how to put it. Maybe the real personality?”
“Personality,” I mused. “My personality? Or the subject’s?”
“Both, probably. They’re mixed together, so elaborately intertwined they can’t be separated. It’s not something you can overlook. Even if you just glance at the paintings as you pass by, you feel like you’ve missed something, and you can’t help but come back and study them carefully. It’s that indefinable something that drew me to them.”
I was silent.
“And I had this thought: This is the person I want to paint my portrait. No matter what. I got in touch with your agent right away.”
“Through an intermediary.”
“Correct. I normally use an intermediary, a law office. It’s not that I have a guilty conscience or anything. I just like to protect my anonymity.”
“And it’s an easy name to remember.”
“Exactly,” he said, and smiled. His mouth spread wide, the tips of his ears quivered ever so slightly. “There are times when I don’t want my name to be known.”
“Still, the fee is a little too much,” I said.
“Price is always relative, determined by supply and demand. Those are basic market principles. If I want to buy something and you don’t want to sell it, the price goes up. And in the opposite case, the price goes down.”
“I understand market principles. But is it really necessary for you to go to all that length to have me paint your portrait? Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but a portrait isn’t something a person really needs.”
“True enough. It’s not something you need. But I’m also curious about what sort of portrait you’d do if you painted me. I want to find that out. You could think of it another way, namely that I’m putting a price on my own curiosity.”
“And your curiosity doesn’t come cheap.”
He smiled happily. “The purer the curiosity is, the stronger it is. And the more money it takes to satisfy it.”
“Would you care for some coffee?” I asked.
“That would be nice.”
“I made it a little while ago in the coffee maker. Is that okay?”
“That’s fine. I’ll take it black, if you don’t mind.”
I went into the kitchen, poured coffee into two cups, and carried them back out.
“I notice you have a lot of opera recordings,” Menshiki said as he drank the coffee. “You’re a big opera fan?”
“Those aren’t mine. The owner of this place left them. Thanks to them, though, I’ve listened to a lot of opera since I came here.”
“By owner you mean Tomohiko Amada?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you have a favorite?”
I gave it some thought. “These days I’ve been listening to Don Giovanni a lot. There’s a bit of a reason for that.”
“What kind of reason? I’d like to hear, if you don’t mind?”
“Well, it’s personal. Nothing important.”
“I like Don Giovanni too, and listen to it a lot,” Menshiki said. “I heard it once in a small opera house in Prague. This was back just after the fall of the communist regime.
“I’m sure you know this,” he continued, “but Don Giovanni was first performed in Prague. The theater was small, and so was the orchestra, and none of the singers were famous, yet it was a wonderful performance. They didn’t have to sing really loud like in a big opera house, and could express their feelings in a very intimate way. Impossible at the Met or La Scala. There you need a well-known singer with a booming voice. Sometimes the arias in those big opera houses remind me of acrobatics. But what operas like Mozart’s need is intimacy, like music. Don’t you think so? In that sense the performance I heard in Prague was the ideal Don Giovanni.”
He took another sip of coffee. I said nothing, observing his actions.
“I’ve had the opportunity to hear performances of Don Giovanni all over the world,” he went on. “In Vienna, Rome, Milan, London, Paris, at the Met, and even in Tokyo. With Abbado, Levine, Ozawa, Maazel, and who else?…Georges Prêtre, I believe. But the Don Giovanni I heard in Prague is the one that, strangely enough, has stayed with me. The singers and conductor weren’t people I’d ever heard of, but outside, after the performance, Prague was covered in a thick fog. There weren’t many lights back then and the streets were pitch black at night. As I wandered down the deserted cobblestone streets I suddenly ran across a bronze statue. Whose statue, I have no idea. But he was dressed as a medieval knight. The thought struck me that I should ask him out to dinner. I didn’t, of course.”
He smiled again.
“Do you often go abroad?” I asked.
“Sometimes for work I do,” he said. As if a thought occurred to him, he remained silent. I surmised that he didn’t want to talk specifics about his job.
“So, what do you think?” Menshiki asked, looking me right in the eye. “Did I pass the test? Will you paint my portrait?”
“I’m not testing you. We’re just getting together for a talk.”
“But before you begin a painting you always meet and talk with the client. I heard that if you don’t like the person, you won’t paint his portrait.”
I glanced over toward the terrace. A large crow had settled on the railing, but as if sensing my gaze, he spread his glossy wings and took off.