“No doubt. Though I’m only at the point where my creativity is finally starting to kick in.”
Menshiki took another soundless sip of his cocktail, with what I took to be a satisfied gleam deep in his eyes.
“Nothing could make me happier,” he said. “The fact that I may have been of help to you, that is. If you don’t mind, could I see that new painting when it’s finished?”
“I’d be happy to show it to you, provided I’m happy with the result.”
I looked over at the grand piano in a corner of the room. “Do you play piano, Mr. Menshiki? That’s a beautiful instrument.”
Menshiki nodded slightly. “I’m not good, but I do play a little. I took piano lessons as a child. Five or six years from the time I entered elementary school until I graduated. Then I got busy with schoolwork and quit taking lessons. I wish I hadn’t, but the piano lessons had worn me out. So my fingers don’t move the way I’d like them to, but I’m good at reading sheet music. I play some simple pieces every once in a while just for my own amusement, for a change of pace. I’m not good enough to play for other people, and I never touch the keys when other people are here.”
I went ahead and asked a question I’d been wanting to ask for a long time. “Doesn’t it feel a little too spacious for you, living in such a big house all by yourself?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Menshiki replied immediately. “Not at all. I’ve always preferred being by myself. Consider the cerebral cortex for a moment. Humans are provided with a wonderfully precise and efficient cerebral cortex. But normally we use, at most, less than ten percent of it. We’ve been divinely provided with this amazing, highly efficient organ, but sadly we haven’t the ability to use it completely. You could compare it to a four-person family living in a magnificent, grand mansion but using only one small room. All the other rooms are unused and neglected. When you think that way, it’s not so unnatural that I live in this house by myself.”
“When you put it that way, I suppose it makes sense,” I said. It was an interesting analogy.
Menshiki rolled a few cashews around in his hand for a moment and then spoke. “That highly efficient cerebral cortex might seem wasted at first, but without it we wouldn’t be able to think abstract thoughts, or enter the realm of the metaphysical. Even though we use but a small part of it, the cerebral cortex has that capacity. If we could use all the rest of it, what would we be capable of, I wonder. Isn’t it fascinating to consider?”
“But in exchange for that efficient brain—the price we paid for that magnificent mansion, in other words—mankind had to neglect all kinds of basic abilities. Right?”
“Exactly,” Menshiki said. “Even without abstract thought or metaphysical theorizing, just standing on two legs and using clubs gave mankind more than enough skill to win the race for survival on earth. These other abilities aren’t that necessary. And in exchange for our hyper-capable cerebral cortexes, of necessity we have to give up lots of other physical abilities. For example, dogs have a sense of smell several thousand times better than humans, and a sense of hearing tens of times better. But we’re able to amass complex hypotheses. We’re able to compare and contrast the cosmos and the microcosmos, and appreciate Van Gogh and Mozart. We can read Proust—if you want to, that is—and collect Koimari porcelain and Persian rugs. Not something a dog can do.”
“Marcel Proust used a sense of smell inferior to that of a dog’s to write his lengthy novel.”
Menshiki laughed. “That he did. I’m just speaking in generalities.”
“The question then is whether or not an idea can be treated as an autonomous entity or not, right?”
“Exactly.”
Exactly, the Commendatore whispered into my ear. But following his earlier warning, I didn’t look around me.
* * *
—
After this, Menshiki led me into his study. There were broad stairs that led out of the living room, and we took them to the floor below. Somehow these stairs seemed more than stairs, and part of the habitable space in the house. We went down the hallway past several bedrooms (I didn’t count how many, but maybe one of them was the locked “Bluebeard’s secret room” my girlfriend spoke of), and at the end was the study. It wasn’t an especially big room, but of course, it wasn’t cramped either. Built to be just the right amount of space. There were few windows in the study, just long, narrow windows like skylights near the ceiling on one wall. All that was visible from the windows were pine branches and the sky visible through the branches. (The room didn’t seem to particularly require sunlight or a view.) Without many windows, the walls were that much bigger. One wall was floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases, one section of which was for a shelf for CDs. The bookshelves were packed with books of all sizes. There was a wooden stepladder to reach the books on the upper shelves. All the books seemed to have been used at one time or another. It was clear that this was a practical collection used by a devoted reader, not decorative bookshelves.
A large office desk faced away from one wall, with two computers on top, a desktop model and a laptop. There were a couple of cups holding pens and pencils, and a neat pile of paperwork. On another wall was a beautiful, expensive-looking stereo set, and on the opposite wall, facing directly across from the desk, sat a pair of tall, narrow speakers. They were about my height (five feet eight), the cases made of high-quality mahogany. An Art Deco armchair for reading and listening to music was in the middle of the room, and next to it a stainless-steel standing lamp for reading. I imagined that Menshiki spent a large part of his days alone in this room.
My portrait of Menshiki was hanging on the wall, at about eye level, exactly between the two speakers. Bare, not yet framed. It looked like a natural part of the room, as if it had been hanging there for a long time. A painting I’d basically created in one intense sitting, yet in this study that uninhibited aspect of it felt, strangely enough, neatly contained. The unique feeling of the place comfortably stilled the painting’s plunge-ahead vigor. And unmistakably concealed within that painting was Menshiki’s face. To me, in fact, it looked like Menshiki himself was contained within.
I had most definitely painted that painting, but once it had left my hands and become Menshiki’s possession, hanging on his study wall, it had transformed into something beyond my reach. Now it was Menshiki’s painting, not mine. Even if I tried to comprehend something within it, like a slippery, nimble fish the painting would slip out of my hands. Like a woman who’d once been mine but was now someone else’s.
“What do you think? Doesn’t it fit this room perfectly?”
Menshiki was referring to the painting, of course. I nodded without a word.
“I tried putting it in lots of different rooms. But in the end I knew this was the best room and the perfect spot for it. The amount of space, the way the light hits it, the whole atmosphere is perfect. What I enjoy most is gazing at the picture from that reading chair.”
“Could I give it a try?” I said, pointing to the reading chair.
“Of course. Go right ahead.”