Killing Commendatore

by Haruki Murakami

Look deep enough into any person and you will find something shining within.

Just as people had many facets, so too did objects.

I was desperately clinging to a scrap of wood that had been swept away. In pitch-black darkness, not a single star, or the moon, visible in the sky. As long as I clung to that piece of wood I wouldn’t drown, but I had no clue where I was, where I was heading.

“Day after day I produce rien—nothingness.”

And now I was thirty-six. Forty was just around the corner. I felt that by the time I turned forty, I’d have to secure my own unique artistic world. Forty was a sort of watershed for people. Once you get past that age, you can’t keep going on as you were before. I still had four years to go, but I knew that those four years might flash by in an instant. Painting portraits for a living had taken me on a wide detour. Somehow I had to get time on my side once again.

But if I had to give an opinion, I’d say they were paintings that weren’t really necessary. The kind of paintings that, if they disappeared somewhere forever, wouldn’t put anybody out. A cruel way of putting it, perhaps, but it’s the truth. From the present perspective, some seventy years on, I could see that quite well.

He must be living a life free of worries. But viewed from his perspective, looking at me from his side of the valley, I might appear to also be living a life of ease and leisure. From a distance, most things look beautiful.

Thinking, no doubt, about things for which there was no answer, no matter how hard you thought about them.

Everybody has something they speculate and wonder about, no matter how blessed their circumstances.

Our lives really do seem strange and mysterious when you look back on them. Filled with unbelievably bizarre coincidences and unpredictable, zigzagging developments. While they are unfolding, it’s hard to see anything weird about them, no matter how closely you pay attention to your surroundings. In the midst of the everyday, these things may strike you as simply ordinary things, a matter of course. They might not be logical, but time has to pass before you can see if something is logical.

As this sequence continues on and on, you no longer know what was the original cause. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Or people don’t care to know. And the story comes down to “What happened was, a lot of dominoes fell over.” The story I’ll be telling here may very well follow a similar route.

I felt close to the little owl. Both of us just happened to be borrowing this house and sharing it.

“The way I see it,” Menshiki said, “there’s a point in everybody’s life where they need a major transformation. And when that time comes you have to grab it by the tail. Grab it hard, and never let go. There are some people who are able to, and others who can’t. Tomohiko Amada was one who could.”

“It’s kind of weird,” Menshiki said. “Something that, on the face of it, shouldn’t be so lasting ends up having permanent value.”

He wasn’t afraid of loving someone. What he feared was growing to hate someone.

“That sometimes in life we can’t grasp the boundary between reality and unreality. That boundary always seems to be shifting. As if the border between countries shifts from one day to the next depending on their mood. We need to pay close attention to that movement, otherwise we won’t know which side we’re on. That’s what I meant when I said it might be dangerous for me to remain inside that pit any longer.”

In the silence of the woods it felt like I could hear the passage of time, of life passing by. One person leaves, another appears. A thought flits away and another takes its place. One image bids farewell and another one appears on the scene. As the days piled up, I wore out, too, and was remade. Nothing stayed still. And time was lost. Behind me, time became dead grains of sand, which one after another gave way and vanished. I just sat there in front of the hole, listening to the sound of time dying.

There are things people are better off not knowing, Masahiko had said. Maybe so. There are probably things people are better off not hearing, as well. But they can’t go forever without hearing them. When the time comes, even if they stop their ears up tight, the air will vibrate and invade a person’s heart. You can’t prevent it. If you don’t like it, then the only solution is to live in a vacuum.

The human brain is probably constructed that way. All the emotions and feelings you have are mobilized to blunt, or mitigate, fear and distress.

“You’re still young, so that’s why you say that. When you get to be my age, you’ll understand how I feel. How much loneliness the truth can cause sometimes.”

The two of us were motivated not by what we had got hold of, or were trying to get, but by what we’d lost, what we did not now have.

Think things over very carefully before you answer. Your answer will be the same no matter how much you think it over, but it is still best to think it over very carefully.”

Two lives had overlapped into one, and six years later had split apart again, that was it.

“A bit bizarre, I guess. Like you’re walking along as always, sure you’re on the right path, when the path suddenly vanishes, and you’re facing an empty space, no sense of direction, no clue where to go, and you just keep trudging along. That’s what it feels like.”

Nature grants its beauty to us all, drawing no line between rich and poor.

She sure hit that one on the head. I had attended art school, but loads of my classmates couldn’t paint their way out of a paper bag. However we thrash about, we are all thrown in one direction or another by our natural talent, or lack of it. That’s a basic truth we all have to learn to live with.

“Time steals some things, but it gives us back others. Making time our ally is an important part of our work.”

As I looked at his house, I thought of trust, respect, and etiquette. Especially etiquette. As I expected, though, none of those thoughts led me to any definite conclusions.

“I can’t answer that. But I do know there must be quite a few who are able to get used to it. People can become accustomed to almost anything, especially when they’re pushed to the limit. It may become surprisingly easy then.”

People can forget what they should remember, and remember what by all rights and purposes they should forget. Especially when death approaches.

“I was married for six years, and it didn’t turn out so well. I didn’t paint a single painting for myself during all that time. I guess people would say I squandered those years. After all, I was turning out one painting after another of a sort I don’t especially like. Yet, in a way, maybe I was fortunate to have gone through that. That’s how I feel these days.”

“It’s hard to put into words. I feel as if I lost track of something along the way, and have been searching for it ever since. Don’t you think that’s how everyone falls in love?”

“Tomorrow is tomorrow. Today is all we have right now,” Masahiko said. I found this idea strangely compelling.

First, I thought about my wife, who, I had been told, was about to give birth. Then it hit me—she wasn’t my wife any longer. No connection between us remained. Not contractual, not personal. From where she stood, I was now in all likelihood a virtual stranger, a person of no special consequence. It felt weird. Until a few months ago we had eaten breakfast together, shared the same soap and towel, walked around naked in front of each other, slept in the same bed. Now our lives bore no relationship to each other.

“But you know, it seems to me that reality itself has a screw loose somewhere. That’s why I try to keep at least myself in line as much as possible.”

Even if we had been able to divide the records, we could never have separated the memories attached to them. I had to leave them all behind.

At some point in my life, I had given up on new music. Instead, I listened to the old stuff over and over again. Books were the same. I reread books from my past, often more than once, but ignored books that had just come out. Somewhere along the way, time seemed to have come to a screeching halt.

Even the darkest, thickest cloud shines silver when viewed from above.

“My whole life may have been a mistake up till now,” Menshiki went on. “I feel that way sometimes. That I took a wrong turn somewhere. That nothing I’ve done has any real meaning.

“You have the strength to wish for what you cannot have. While I have only wished for those things I can possess.”

“I think it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who wrote that one should never trust people who claim they’re normal. It’s in one of his novels.”

But sometimes people must act against their nature, to rescue something important or for some greater purpose.

I guessed he was back in the twilight world, where thought and pain did not exist. I was happy for him.

“Your true heart lives in your memory. It is nourished by the images it contains—that’s how it lives,”

For everything around me was the product of connectivity. Nothing was absolute. Pain was a metaphor. The tentacle clutching my leg was a metaphor. All was relative. Light was shadow, shadow was light. I had no choice but to believe. What else could I do?

Still, maybe I should have secretly held on to at least one. To prove to myself she had really existed.

When it came down to it, though, could anything be completely correct, or completely incorrect? We lived in a world where rain might fall thirty percent, or seventy percent, of the time. Truth was probably no different. There could be thirty percent or seventy percent truth. Crows had it a lot easier. For them, it was either raining or not raining, one or the other. Percentages never crossed their minds.

Great music should be presented in its proper form. And listened to in a proper manner.

We all live our lives carrying secrets we cannot disclose.

“None of us are ever finished. Everyone is always a work in progress.”