After I got the short letter from Yuzu I thought about her for a long time. About when we’d first met, that autumn night when we first made love. About how my feelings for her had basically never changed, from the first moment up to the present. Even now I didn’t want to lose her. That much was clear to me. I’d signed and sealed the divorce papers, but that didn’t change things. No matter how I felt about it, though, the fact was that she’d suddenly left me. Gone far away—probably very far away—where even the most powerful binoculars couldn’t afford me a glimpse of her.
Somewhere, while I was oblivious to it, she must have found a new, handsome lover. As always, her brain went out the window. I should have picked up on this when she started refusing to sleep with me. Having a physical relationship with several partners at the same time wasn’t her style. If only I’d thought about it, I soon would have realized that.
A chronic disease, I thought. A serious illness with no prospects for a cure. A physical inclination that doesn’t respond to reason.
That night (a rainy Thursday night) I had a long, dark dream.
In that small seaside town in Miyagi I was driving the white Subaru Forester (it was now my car). I had on an old black leather jacket, and a black golf cap with a Yonex logo. I was tall, deeply suntanned, my salt-and-pepper hair short and stiff. In other words, I was the man with the white Subaru Forester. I was stealthily following my wife and the small car (a red Peugeot 205) the man she was having an affair with was driving. We were on the highway that ran along the coast. I saw the two of them go into a tacky love hotel on the outskirts of town. The next day I came up behind my wife and strangled her with a narrow, white belt from a bathrobe. I was used to physical labor and had powerful arms. And as I strangled her with all my might, I screamed something. I couldn’t hear what I’d yelled out—a meaningless roar of pure rage. A horrific rage I’d never experienced before had control over my mind and body. White spittle flew as I roared out.
As she desperately gasped for air, I saw my wife’s temples convulse a little. I saw her pink tongue ball up and twist inside her mouth. Blue veins rose up on her skin like an invisible-ink map. I smelled my own sweat. An unpleasant smell I’d never smelled before rose up from my body like steam from a hot springs. It reminded me of the stink of some hairy beast.
Don’t you dare paint me, I ordered myself. I violently thrust out an index finger at myself in the mirror on the wall. Don’t paint me anymore!
And there I snapped awake.
I knew now what had frightened me most in bed in that love hotel in the seaside town. Deep in my heart I feared that in the last instant I really would have strangled to death that girl (the young girl whose name I didn’t even know). “You can just pretend,” she said. But it might not have ended with just that. It might not have ended with just pretend. And the reason for that lay inside me.
I wish I could understand myself, too. But it’s not easy.
This is what I’d told Mariye Akikawa. I remembered this as I wiped the sweat away with a towel.
* * *
—
The rain let up on Friday morning, the sky turning beautifully sunny. I hadn’t slept well, felt worked up, and to calm down went for an hour’s walk around the neighborhood later in the morning. I went into the woods, walked behind the little shrine, and checked out the hole for the first time in a long while. It was November now and the wind was much colder than before. The ground was covered with damp, fallen leaves. The hole was, as before, tightly covered over with several boards. Many-colored leaves had piled up on the boards, and there were several heavy stones to hold the boards down. But the way the stones were lined up seemed a little different from when I’d last seen them. Nearly the same, yet ever so slightly positioned differently.
I didn’t worry about it. There wouldn’t be anyone else other than Menshiki and me who would tramp all the way out here. I pulled away one of the boards and peered down inside, but no one was there. The ladder was leaned up against the wall like before. Like always, that dark, stone-lined chamber lay there, deep and silent, at my feet. I put the board back on top and placed the stone back where it had been.
It didn’t bother me, either, that the Commendatore hadn’t appeared for a good two weeks. Like he said, an Idea has a lot of business to attend to. Business that transcended time and space.
The following Sunday finally came. A lot of things happened that day. It turned out to be a very hectic day.
32
HIS SKILLS WERE IN GREAT DEMAND
Another prisoner approached us as we talked. He was a professional painter from Warsaw, a man of medium height with a hawk nose and a very black mustache on his fair-skinned face…His distinctive figure stood out from afar, and his professional status (his skills were in great demand in the camp) was evident. He was certainly no one’s nonentity. He often talked to me at length about his work.
“I do color paintings, portraits, for the Germans. They bring me photos of their relatives, wives, mothers and children. Everyone wants to have pictures of their closest kin. The SS describe their families to me with emotion and love—the color of their eyes, their hair. I produce family portraits from amateurish, blurry black-and-white photos. Believe me, I would rather paint black-and-white pictures of the children in the piles of corpses in the Lazarett than the Germans’ families. Give ’em pictures of the people they murdered; let ’em take them home and hang them on the wall, the sons of bitches.”
The artist was especially distraught on this occasion.
—SAMUEL WILLENBERG, Revolt in Treblinka, p. 96. ? Copyright by Samuel Willenberg, 1984. Lazarett was another name for the execution facility in the Treblinka concentration camp.
PART 2
THE SHIFTING METAPHOR
33
I LIKE THINGS I CAN SEE AS MUCH AS THINGS I CAN’T
Sunday was another fine clear day. No wind to speak of, and the fall colors in the valley sparkling in the sunlight. Small white-breasted birds hopped from one branch to the next, deftly pecking the red berries. I sat on the terrace, soaking it all in. Nature grants its beauty to us all, drawing no line between rich and poor. Like time—no, scratch that, time could be a different story. Money may help us buy a little extra of that.
The bright blue Toyota Prius rolled up the slope to my door at ten on the dot. Shoko Akikawa was decked out in a thin beige turtleneck and snug-fitting slacks of pale green. Around her neck, a modest gold chain gave off a muted glow. As on her past visit, her hair was perfectly done. When it swayed I could catch a glimpse of the lovely line of her neck. Today, though, she had a leather bag, not a purse, slung over her shoulder. She wore brown loafers. It was a casual outfit, yet she had clearly spent time choosing each piece. And the swell of her breasts was very attractive too. I had the inside scoop from her niece that “no padding” was involved. I felt quite drawn to those breasts—in a purely aesthetic way, of course.
Mariye was dressed in straight-cut faded blue jeans and white Converse sneakers, a 180-degree turnaround from the formality of her first visit. Her jeans had holes in them (strategically placed, of course). She had on the sort of plaid shirt a lumberjack might wear in the woods, with a thin gray windbreaker draped over her shoulders. Underneath the shirt, as before, her chest was flat. And, just as before, she had a sour expression on her face. Like a cat whose dish has been whisked away halfway through its meal.
Just as I’d done the previous week, I went into the kitchen, made a pot of tea, and brought it to the living room. Then I showed them the three dessan I had made.
Shoko seemed to like them. “They’re all so full of life,” she exclaimed. “So much more like Mariye than photographs.”
“Can I keep them?” Mariye asked.
“Sure,” I answered. “Once your portrait is finished. I may need them until then.”
Her aunt looked worried. “Really? Aren’t you being too—…”
“Not at all,” I said. “They’re of no use to me once the portrait’s done.”
“Will you use one of these dessan for your underdrawing?” Mariye asked.
“No.” I shook my head. “I did them just to get a three-dimensional feel for who you are. The you who I put on canvas will be altogether different.”