I understood that very well. That’s the conclusion I came to after thinking about it during that lengthy trip. I invariably came to the same conclusion: it was best to keep Yuzu at a distance and break off contact. That made the most sense. And that’s what I did.
And for her part Yuzu didn’t contact me either. Not a single phone call, not one letter. Even though she was the one who said she wanted to remain friends. That hurt far more than I’d expected. Or more precisely, what hurt me was actually me, myself. In the midst of that continuing, unsettled silence my feelings, like a heavy pendulum, a razor-sharp blade, made wide swings between one extreme to the other. That arc of emotions left fresh wounds in my skin. And I had only one way of forgetting the pain. And that was, of course, by painting.
* * *
—
Sunlight filtered in silently through the studio window. From time to time a gentle breeze rustled the white curtains. The room had an autumn-morning scent. After coming to live on the mountain I’d grown sensitive to the changes in smells from one season to another. Back when I lived in the city I’d hardly ever noticed those.
I sat on the stool, and gazed for a long time at the portrait of Menshiki I’d begun. This was the way I always began work, reevaluating with new eyes the work I’d done the previous day. Only then could I pick up my brush.
Not bad, I thought. Not bad at all. The colors I’d created completely enveloped the original framework of Menshiki I’d done. The outline of him in black paint was hidden now behind those colors. Though concealed, I could still make it out. I would have to once more bring that outline into relief. Transform a hint into a statement.
There was no guarantee, of course, that the painting would ever be complete. It was still inchoate, something missing. Something that should be there was appealing to the nonvalidity of absence. And that missing element was rapping on the glass window separating presence and absence. I could make out its wordless cry.
Focusing so hard on the painting had made me thirsty, so I went into the kitchen and drank a large glass of orange juice. I relaxed my shoulders, stretched both arms high above my head, took a deep breath, and exhaled. I went back to the studio and sat down on the stool and studied the painting. Refreshed, I focused again. But something was different from before. The angle I was looking at the painting from was clearly not the same as it had been a few minutes before.
I got down from the stool and checked its location. It was in a slightly different spot from when I’d left the studio earlier. The stool had clearly been moved. But how? When I’d gotten down from the stool, I hadn’t moved it. That I was sure of. I’d gotten down gingerly in order not to move the stool, and when I’d come back I’d also been careful not to move it when I sat down. I remembered these details because I’m very sensitive about the position and angle I view paintings from. I have a set position and angle that I always use, and like batters who are very particular about their stance in the batter’s box, it bothers me to no end if things are off, even by a fraction.
But now the stool was eighteen inches away from where it had been, the angle that much changed. All I could think was that while I’d been in the kitchen drinking orange juice and taking deep breaths, someone had moved the stool. Someone had gone into the studio, sat on the stool to look at the painting, then got down from the stool before I came back, and silently slipped out of the room. And that’s when—whether intentionally or it just worked out that way—they moved the stool. But I’d been out of the studio at most five or six minutes. Who in the world would go out of their way to do something like that—and why? Or had the stool moved on its own?
My memory must be messed up. I’d moved the stool but forgotten that I had. That’s all I could think. Maybe I was spending too much time alone. The order of events in my memory was getting muddled.
I left the stool in the spot where I’d found it—in other words, a spot twenty inches away from where it had been, and at a different angle. I sat down on it and studied Menshiki’s portrait from that position. What I saw was a slightly different painting. It was the same painting, of course, but it looked ever so different. The way the light struck it was not the same as before, and the texture of the paint, too, looked changed. There was something decidedly animated and alive in the painting. But also something still lacking. The direction of that lack, though, wasn’t the same as before.
So what was different about it? I brought my focus to bear on the painting. The difference must be speaking to me, trying to tell me something. I had to discover what was being hinted at by the difference. I took a piece of white chalk and marked the position of the three legs of the stool on the floor (location A). Then I moved the stool back twenty inches to the side to its original position (location B), and marked that, too, with chalk. I moved back and forth between the two positions, studying the one painting from the different angles.
Menshiki was still in both paintings, but I noticed that his appearance was strangely different depending on the two angles. It was as if two different personalities coexisted within him. Yet both versions of Menshiki were missing something. That shared lack unified both the A and B versions of Menshiki. I had to discover what it was, as if it were triangulated between position A, position B, and myself. What could that shared absence be? Was it something that had form, or something formless? If the latter, then how was I to give it form?
Not an easy thing to do, now is it, someone said.
I clearly heard that voice. Not a loud voice, but one that carried. Nothing vague about it. Not high, not low. And it sounded like it was right next to my ear.
I involuntarily gulped and, still seated on the stool, slowly gazed around me. I couldn’t see anyone else there, of course. The clear morning light filled the floor like pools of water. The window was open, and from far off I could faintly hear the melody played by a garbage truck. It was playing “Annie Laurie” (why the garbage trucks in Odawara played a Scottish folk song was a mystery to me). Beyond that, I couldn’t hear a thing.
Maybe I was just imagining things. Maybe it was my own voice I was hearing, a voice welling up from my unconscious. But what I’d heard sounded odd. Not an easy thing to do, now, is it? Even unconsciously, I wouldn’t talk to myself like that.
I took a deep breath and from my perch on the stool again looked at the painting, focusing my attention on the work. It must have just been my imagination.
Is it not obvious? someone now said. The voice was right beside my ear.
Obvious? I asked myself. What’s so obvious?
What you must discover, can you not see, is what it is about Mr. Menshiki that is not present here, someone said. As before, a clear voice. A voice with no echo, like it was recorded in an anechoic chamber. Each sound clear as crystal. And like an embodied concept, it had no natural inflection.
I looked around again. This time I got down from the stool and went to check in the living room. I checked every room, but nobody else was in the house. The only other creature there was the horned owl in the attic. The horned owl, of course, couldn’t talk. And the front door was locked.
First the stool moving on its own, and now this weird voice. A voice from heaven? Or my own voice? Or the voice of some anonymous third party? Something was clearly wrong with my mind. Ever since I had started hearing that bell, I’d begun having doubts about whether my brain was functioning normally. With the bell, at least, Menshiki had been there and had heard the same sound, which proved that it wasn’t an auditory hallucination. My hearing was working fine. Okay, so what could this mysterious voice be?
I sat back down on the stool and looked at the painting.