“You’d better head home,” I told Mariye. “It’s getting late.”
“Besides asking about Mr. Menshiki,” she said softly, as if confiding something, “I wanted to tell you I’m really happy that you’re painting my picture. I can’t wait to see it.”
“I hope it turns out well,” I said. Her words moved me more than a little. It was strange how much this girl opened up when painting was involved.
* * *
—
I walked her to the door. Mariye put on her tight-fitting down jacket and crammed her Indians cap down over her head. Now she looked like a boy.
“Shall I walk with you partway?” I asked.
“I’m fine. I know the path.”
“See you next Sunday, then.”
But instead of leaving, she paused for a moment with her hand on the doorframe.
“One thing bothers me,” she said. “It’s that bell.”
“The bell?”
“I thought I heard it ringing on my way here. The same kind of jingling sound that the bell in your studio made.”
I was at a loss for words. Mariye’s eyes were on my face.
“Where was it exactly?” I asked.
“In the woods. It came from behind the shrine.”
I listened to the dark. But I heard no bell. I heard no sound at all. Just the quiet of the night.
“Weren’t you scared?” I asked.
Mariye shook her head. “If I leave it alone, there’s nothing to be scared of.”
“Wait here just a second,” I told Mariye. I ran back to the studio. The bell was not where I had left it. It had vanished from the shelf.
36
WHAT I WANT IS NOT TO HAVE TO DISCUSS THE RULES OF THE GAME
After seeing Mariye off, I went into the studio, turned on all the lights, and combed every inch of the room. But the old bell was nowhere to be found. It had vanished from sight.
When had I last seen it? The previous Sunday, on her first visit, Mariye had taken the bell down and shaken it. Then she had returned it to the shelf. I remembered that. But had I laid eyes on the bell since? I couldn’t recall. I had hardly set foot in the studio all week. Not once had I picked up my brush. The Man with the White Subaru Forester had stalled, and I hadn’t yet started Mariye’s portrait. I was what you might call “between paintings.”
Then, without my knowledge, the bell had disappeared.
But Mariye had heard it ringing behind the shrine when she passed through the woods. Could someone have returned it to the pit? Should I rush there now, see if I could hear the bell with my own ears?
Yet the prospect of hurrying off into the dark woods alone didn’t appeal to me. Too many surprises in one day had worn me out. Whatever one might say, I had more than filled my quota of “unforeseen events.”
I went into the kitchen, pulled out the ice tray, plunked a few cubes in a glass, and doused them with whiskey. It was only eight thirty. Had Mariye safely navigated the woods and returned home through her passageway? I felt sure she had. No need for me to worry. This mountain had been her playground since she was small, she had said. And she was a lot tougher than she looked.
I took my time working my way through two glasses of Scotch, munched a few crackers, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. For all I knew, I might be roused in the middle of the night by a ringing bell. Around two a.m., as before. Nothing much I could do about that. If it happened, I would deal with it then. But nothing happened. As far as I knew, anyway. I slept like a log until half past six the next morning.
When I awoke, it was raining outside. A chilly rain, signaling the approach of winter. Quiet and persistent. It reminded me of the rain that had been falling that day in March when my wife announced that our marriage was over. I hadn’t faced her as she spoke. For the most part, I had looked out the window at the rain.
* * *
—
After breakfast, I put on my vinyl poncho and rain hat (both purchased on my trip, at a sporting-goods store in Hakodate) and walked into the woods. I didn’t take an umbrella. I circled the shrine and removed half the boards covering the pit. I made a careful search with my flashlight, but it was empty. No bell, and no sign of the Commendatore. Just to make sure, I decided to descend the metal ladder to check. I had never entered the pit before. The rungs sagged and gave an ominous creak with each step down. In the end, however, I found nothing. It was just an uninhabited hole in the ground. Perfectly round, it might have been a well were it not so wide. Had its builders intended to draw water from it, they would have made its circumference much smaller. And the construction of the wall was too intricate. It was just as the landscaper had said.
I stood in the pit for some time, lost in thought. I didn’t feel trapped since I could see a cleanly severed half-moon of sky above. I flicked off my flashlight, leaned my back against the damp, dark stone wall, and closed my eyes as the rain pattered overhead. Something was running through my mind, but I couldn’t grasp what it was. One thought would link to another, which in turn would link to still another thought. That chain was bizarre somehow, though I couldn’t say exactly why. It was as if I had been swallowed by the act of thinking, if that makes sense.
The pit was thinking too, I could tell. It was alive—I could feel it breathing. My thoughts and those of the pit were like trees grown together: our roots joined in the dark, our sap intermingled. In this condition, self and other blended like the paints on my palette, their borders ever more indistinct.
At a certain point, it felt as though the walls of the pit were beginning to close in. My heart made a dry sound as it expanded and contracted in my chest. I felt I could hear its valves open and close. The sensation chilled me, as if I were approaching the realm of the dead. That world didn’t strike me as altogether unpleasant, but it was not yet my time to enter.
I returned to my senses with a start. I untangled myself from my train of thought, which had run on without me, then flicked on my flashlight and looked around. The ladder was still where it had been. The sky above my head was the same. I breathed a sigh of relief. For all I knew, the sky could have vanished and the ladder disappeared. Anything could happen in this place.
With great care, I climbed from the pit one rung at a time. Only when I had emerged and was standing on the wet ground did my breathing finally return to normal. It took even longer to get my heartbeat under control. I peered down into the pit one last time. With my flashlight, I illuminated every inch of the dirt floor. But it was just a normal, everyday kind of pit. It was not breathing or thinking, nor were its walls closing in. It just sat there in silence, absorbing the chilly mid-November rain.
I moved the boards back into place and set the rocks on top. I arranged them with care, making sure that they were exactly as they had been before. That way I would know if someone moved them. Then I stuck my rain hat back on my head and walked home along the same path I had come on.
As I walked through the woods, I wondered where the Commendatore had gone. I hadn’t seen him for at least two weeks. Strangely, I missed having him around. Without realizing it, I had come to feel a certain kinship with the two-foot man with the tiny sword at his side, despite his odd way of speaking, his voyeurism when my girlfriend and I were making love, and the fact that I had no clear idea what he was. I hoped nothing bad had happened to him.