“It’s a bit early in the season for it, but I heard that down at the harbor they got hold of some excellent monkfish,” Menshiki said. The fish was certainly fresh and amazing. Firm texture, a refined sweetness, but still a clean aftertaste. Lightly steamed, then served with (what I took to be) a tarragon sauce.
Next came thick venison steaks. There was again an explanation of the special sauce, but it was so full of specialized terms I couldn’t remember half of it. At any rate, a wonderfully fragrant sauce.
The ponytailed young man poured red wine into our glasses. Menshiki explained that the bottle had been opened an hour before and decanted.
“It’s breathed nicely, and it should be just the peak time to drink it.”
I knew nothing about aerating wine, but it had a deep flavor. When your tongue first encountered it, then when you held it in your mouth, and finally when you drank it down, the flavor was different each time. It was like a mysterious woman whose beauty changes slightly depending on the angle and light. The wine left a pleasant aftertaste.
“It’s Bordeaux,” Menshiki said. “I won’t sing its praises. Just know it’s a Bordeaux.”
“It’s the kind of wine that once you started listing its good points, you’d have a long list.”
Menshiki smiled. Pleasant wrinkles formed at the corners of his eyes. “You’re exactly right. It would be very long if you listed its merits. But I don’t particularly like to do that with wines. I’m not good at enumerating the merits of things, no matter what they are. It’s just a delicious wine—that’s enough, right?”
I had no objections to that.
All this time the Commendatore watched us drinking and eating from his perch on the display shelf. He sat there, unmoving, diligently observing the scene there down to the smallest detail, but didn’t seem to have any reaction to what he was seeing. Like he told me once, he merely observes. He doesn’t judge, or have any partiality toward it. He’s merely gathering raw data.
This might be how he observed me and my girlfriend making love in bed in the afternoons. The thought unsettled me. He’d told me that watching people have sex was for him no different from watching morning radio exercise routines or someone sweeping a chimney. And that might very well be the case. But the fact remained that it was disconcerting to think of being observed.
An hour and a half later, Menshiki and I finally arrived at dessert (a soufflé) and espresso. A long but fulfilling journey. For the first time, the chef came out of the kitchen and over to the dining table. A tall man, in a white chef’s outfit. In his mid-thirties would be my guess, with a sparse black beard. He greeted me politely.
“The food was amazing,” I told him. “I’ve hardly ever had anything so delicious.”
Those were my honest feelings. I still couldn’t believe that a chef who made such exquisite dishes ran a small, unknown French restaurant near the harbor in Odawara.
“Thank you very much,” he said, smiling brightly. “Mr. Menshiki’s always been very kind to me.”
He bowed and returned to the kitchen.
“I wonder if the Commendatore was satisfied, too?” Menshiki said after the chef had left, a concerned look on his face. He didn’t appear to be playacting. He seemed genuinely concerned.
“I’m sure he is,” I replied with a straight face. “It’s a shame, of course, that he couldn’t enjoy the fabulous meal, but he must have enjoyed the atmosphere.”
“I do hope so.”
Of course I enjoyed it, the Commendatore whispered in my ear.
* * *
—
Menshiki suggested an after-dinner drink, but I declined. I was so full I really couldn’t manage anything else. He had a brandy.
“There was something that I wanted to ask you,” Menshiki said as he slowly swirled the brandy in the oversized glass. “It’s an odd question, and I hope you’re not offended.”
“Feel free to ask me anything.”
He took a small sip of brandy, tasting it. Then quietly laid his glass on the table.
“It’s about the pit in the woods,” Menshiki said. “The other day I spent about an hour in that stone chamber. No flashlight, seated alone at the bottom of the pit. The cover was on top, and rocks on top of that to hold it down. And I told you, ‘Please come back in an hour and get me out of here.’ Correct?”
“That’s right.”
“Why do you think I did that?”
“I have no idea,” I answered honestly.
“I needed to do that,” Menshiki said. “I can’t explain it, but sometimes I need to do that. Be left all alone in a cramped, dark, completely silent space.”
I was silent, waiting for his next words.
Menshiki continued. “Here’s my question to you. During that hour did you ever find yourself, even for a moment, wanting to abandon me in that pit? Tempted to just leave me behind at the bottom of that dark hole?”
I couldn’t grasp what he was getting at. “Abandon you?”
Menshiki touched his right temple and rubbed it, as if checking out a scar. “This is what I mean. I was at the bottom of that pit, a little less than nine feet deep and six feet across. The ladder had been pulled up. The stones in the wall were all densely laid together, and there was no way to climb up. And the cover was on tight. In mountains like these I could yell at the top of my voice or ring the bell, but no one would ever hear me—though of course you might. In other words, I couldn’t get back to the surface on my own. If you hadn’t come back, I’d have had to stay in the pit forever. Isn’t that so?”
“That could be.”
The fingers of his right hand were still at his temple. He’d stopped rubbing. “What I’d like to know is whether during that hour the thought ever occurred to you, even for a moment, I’ll just leave that man inside the pit. Leave him the way he is. Tell me the truth, it won’t offend me.”
He took his fingers from his temple, reached for the glass of brandy, and again slowly held it up and swirled it. This time, though, he didn’t take a sip. Eyes narrowed, he inhaled the aroma and put the glass back on the table.
“That thought never occurred to me,” I answered honestly. “Even for a moment. All I thought about was that after an hour I had to take the cover off and get you out of there.”
“Really?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Well, if I had been in your position…” Menshiki said, sounding confessional. His voice was quite calm. “I’m sure I would have thought of that. I definitely would have been tempted to leave you inside that pit forever. I would have thought, This is the chance of a lifetime.”
No words came to me.
Menshiki said, “Down at the bottom of the pit that’s what I was thinking about the whole time. That if I was in your position I would definitely consider it. It’s a strange thing. You were the one on the surface and I was the one at the bottom of the pit, but all that time I was picturing me on the surface and you at the bottom.”
“But if you’d actually abandoned me in the pit I might have starved to death. I might have turned into an actual mummy, ringing a bell. You’re saying you’d be okay with that?”
“It’s just a fantasy. Or delusion, perhaps. Of course I would never actually do that. I was just imagining the scenario. Just mentally playing with the concept of death. So don’t worry. What I mean is, I find it hard to fathom that you didn’t feel the same temptation.”
I said, “Weren’t you afraid, Mr. Menshiki, being down at the bottom of that dark pit all alone? Thinking that I might be tempted to abandon you there?”
Menshiki shook his head. “No, I wasn’t afraid. Deep inside me I may have actually been hoping you would.”
“Hoping I would?” I said, surprised. “That I would leave you down in that pit?”
“Exactly.”
“In other words, you were okay with being abandoned down there?”
“Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that I was okay with dying. Even I still have some attachment to this life. And starving to death or dying of lack of water aren’t the ways I’d like to go. All I wanted was to try to get closer to death, even if just a little more. I know that boundary is a very fine line.”