Killing Commendatore

by Haruki Murakami

“This is how I think these days,” Yuzu said. “This is my life, sure, but in the end almost all that happens in it may be decided arbitrarily, quite apart from me. In other words, although I may presume I have free will, in fact I may not be making any of the major decisions that affect me. I’ve come to think my pregnancy is an example of that.”

“Perhaps nothing can be certain in this world,” I said. “But at least we can believe in something.”

Tomohiko Amada had poured just too much of his passion, his soul, into it for it to be exposed to public view. It was filled with his spirit. Thus, although it was a superb painting, it possessed some sort of vicious power—it could summon things from the other side.

I have no need, though, to challenge my life in such a troublesome (or, at the least, unnatural) way. That is because I am endowed with the capacity to believe. I believe in all honesty that something will appear to guide me through the darkest and narrowest tunnel, or across the most desolate plain. That’s what I learned from the strange events I experienced while living in that mountaintop house on the outskirts of Odawara.