“Only the beginning?”
He held his palms upward. “I’m not sure, of course. Maybe that’ll be it, and we’ll just be left thinking what a strange day that was. That would probably be the best outcome. But nothing’s been resolved. The same questions remain. And these are very important questions. That’s why I have a hunch that something else is going to happen.”
“Something connected to that stone-lined chamber?”
Menshiki gazed outside for a moment before he spoke. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s just a hunch.”
And of course it turned out as he’d felt—or predicted—it might. Like he said, that day was only the beginning.
16
A RELATIVELY GOOD DAY
That night I had trouble sleeping. I was anxious whether the bell I’d left in the studio would start ringing in the middle of the night. If it did, then what would I do? Pull the covers up over my head and pretend not to hear anything until the next morning? Or take my flashlight and go to the studio to check it out? And what would I find there?
Unable to decide how I should react, I lay in bed reading. But even after two a.m. the bell hadn’t rung. All I heard was the usual drone of insects. As I read my book I checked the clock next to my bed every five minutes. When the digital display read 2:30 I finally breathed a sigh of relief. The bell wouldn’t be ringing tonight, I figured. I closed the book, turned out the bedside light, and went to sleep.
* * *
—
The next morning when I woke up before seven, the first thing I did was go check on the bell. It was as I’d left it the night before, on the shelf. Brilliant sunlight illuminated the mountains, and the crows were in the midst of their usual noisy morning routine. In the light of day the bell didn’t look ominous at all. It was nothing more than a simple, well-used Buddhist implement from the past.
I went back to the kitchen, brewed coffee in the coffee maker, and drank it. Heated up a scone that had gotten hard in the toaster and ate it. Then went out to the terrace, breathed in the morning air, leaned against the railing, and looked over at Menshiki’s house across the valley. The large tinted windows glistened in the morning sun. Probably one of the tasks included in the once-per-week cleaning service was to clean all the windows. The glass was always clean and shiny. I looked over there for a while, but Menshiki didn’t appear. We still hadn’t yet reached the point where we waved at each other across the valley.
At ten thirty I drove my car to the supermarket to buy groceries. I came back, put them away, and made a simple lunch, a tofu and tomato salad with a rice ball. After I ate, I had some strong green tea. Then I lay down on the sofa and listened to a Schubert string quartet. It was a beautiful piece. According to the liner notes on the jacket, when it was first performed there was quite a backlash among listeners, who felt it was “too radical.” I don’t know what part was radical, but something about it must have offended the old-fashioned people of that time.
As one side of the record ended I suddenly got very sleepy, so I pulled a blanket over me and slept for while on the sofa. A short but deep sleep, probably about twenty minutes. It felt like I had a few dreams, but when I woke up I couldn’t remember them. Those kinds of dreams—the kind where all sorts of unrelated fragments are mixed together. Each fragment has a certain gravitas, but by intertwining they canceled each other out.
I went to the fridge and drank some cold mineral water straight from the bottle and managed to chase away the dregs of sleep that remained like scraps of clouds in the corners of my body. I felt a renewed awareness of the reality that I was living, alone, in the mountains. I lived here by myself. Some sort of fate had brought me to this special place. I remembered the bell. In the weird stone chamber deep in the woods, who in the world had been ringing that bell? And where on earth was that person now?
* * *
—
By the time I had changed into my painting outfit, gone into the studio, and stood looking at Menshiki’s portrait, it was past two p.m. Normally I worked in the morning. From eight to noon was the time I could focus best on painting. I liked the sort of domestic quiet at those times. After moving to the mountains I’d grown fond of the brilliant and pure air that the teeming nature around me provided. Working at the same time in the same place each day has always held a special meaning for me. Repetition created a certain rhythm. But this day, partly because I hadn’t slept well the night before, I spent the morning without accomplishing anything. Which is why I went to the studio in the afternoon.
I sat on my round work stool, arms folded, and from a distance of some six feet gazed at the painting I’d begun. I’d started by using a thin brush to outline Menshiki’s face, then with him modeling before me for fifteen minutes also used black paint to flesh this out. This was just a rough framework at this point, though it gave rise to a productive flow. A flow that had its source in Wataru Menshiki. This was what I needed most.
As I stared hard at this black-and-white framework, an image of a color I should add came to me. The idea sprang up suddenly, all on its own. The color was like that of a tree with its green leaves dully dyed by rain. I mixed several colors together and created what I wanted on my palette. After much trial and error, I finally arrived at what I’d pictured and, without really thinking, added the color to the line drawing I’d done. I had no idea myself what sort of painting would emerge from this, though I did know that that color was going to be a vital grounding for the work. Gradually this painting was beginning to stray far afield from the format of a typical portrait. But even if it doesn’t turn out as a portrait, I told myself, that was okay. As long as there was a set flow, all I could do was go with it. What I wanted now was to paint what I wanted to paint, the way I wanted to paint it (something Menshiki wanted as well). I could think about the next step later on.