Killing Commendatore Read online

  ALSO BY HARUKI MURAKAMI

  Fiction

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  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Translation copyright © 2018 by Haruki Murakami

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States

  by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in Japan in two volumes, titled Kishidancho goroshi: Dai ichi-bu, Arawareru idea hen and Kishidancho goroshi: Dai ni-bu, Utsurou metafa hen by Shinchosha Publishing Co., Ltd., Tokyo, in 2017. Copyright © 2017 by Haruki Murakami.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered

  trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Ebook ISBN 9780525520054

  Cover images: (blue canvas) Alis Photo /Alamy; (eyes) Science Photo Library /Alamy

  Cover design by Chip Kidd

  Title page images: (moon) Stocktrek Images, Inc./Alamy; (eye) Science Photo Library /Alamy

  v5.3.2

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Haruki Murakami

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part 1: The Idea Made Visible

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: If the Surface Is Fogged Up

  Chapter 2: They Might All Go to the Moon

  Chapter 3: Just a Physical Reflection

  Chapter 4: From a Distance, Most Things Look Beautiful

  Chapter 5: He Has Stopped Breathing…His Limbs Are Cold

  Chapter 6: At This Point He’s a Faceless Client

  Chapter 7: For Better or for Worse, It’s an Easy Name to Remember

  Chapter 8: A Blessing in Disguise

  Chapter 9: Exchanging Fragments with Each Other

  Chapter 10: As We Push Our Way Through the Lush Green Grass

  Chapter 11: The Moonlight Shone Beautifully on Everything

  Chapter 12: Like That Nameless Mailman

  Chapter 13: At This Point It’s Merely a Hypothesis

  Chapter 14: But Something This Strange Is a First

  Chapter 15: This Is Only the Beginning

  Chapter 16: A Relatively Good Day

  Chapter 17: How Could I Miss Something That Important?

  Chapter 18: Curiosity Didn’t Just Kill the Cat

  Chapter 19: Can You See Anything Behind Me?

  Chapter 20: The Moment When Existence and Nonexistence Coalesce

  Chapter 21: It’s Small, but Should You Cut with It, Blood Will Certainly Come Out

  Chapter 22: The Invitation Is Still Open

  Chapter 23: They All Really Exist

  Chapter 24: Merely Gathering Raw Data

  Chapter 25: How Much Loneliness the Truth Can Cause

  Chapter 26: The Composition Couldn’t Be Improved

  Chapter 27: Even Though You Remember Exactly What It Looked Like

  Chapter 28: Franz Kafka Was Quite Fond of Slopes

  Chapter 29: Any Unnatural Elements

  Chapter 30: It Really Depends on the Person

  Chapter 31: Maybe a Little Too Perfect

  Chapter 32: His Skills Were in Great Demand

  Part 2: The Shifting Metaphor

  Chapter 33: I Like Things I Can See as Much as Things I Can’t

  Chapter 34: Couldn’t Recall the Last Time I Checked My Tires’ Air Pressure

  Chapter 35: You Should Have Just Left That Place Alone

  Chapter 36: What I Want Is Not to Have to Discuss the Rules of the Game

  Chapter 37: Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining

  Chapter 38: He Could Never Be a Dolphin

  Chapter 39: A Camouflaged Container, Designed for a Specific Purpose

  Chapter 40: I Could Not Mistake the Face

  Chapter 41: Only as Long as I Didn’t Turn Around

  Chapter 42: If It Breaks When You Drop It, It’s an Egg

  Chapter 43: It Couldn’t End Like Any Other Dream

  Chapter 44: The Traits That Make a Person Who They Are

  Chapter 45: Something Is About to Happen

  Chapter 46: People Are Powerless Before a Sturdy, Towering Wall

  Chapter 47: “It Is Now Friday, Is It Not?”

  Chapter 48: The Spaniards Simply Couldn’t Navigate the Angry Seas Off the Irish Coast

  Chapter 49: Filled with Just as Many Deaths

  Chapter 50: It Will Involve Ordeal and Sacrifice

  Chapter 51: Now Is the Time

  Chapter 52: The Man in the Orange Cone Hat

  Chapter 53: Maybe a Fireplace Poker

  Chapter 54: Eternity Is a Very Long Time

  Chapter 55: A Clear Contravention of Basic Principles

  Chapter 56: It Appears That Several Blanks Need Filling In

  Chapter 57: Something I Have to Do Eventually

  Chapter 58: Like Hearing About the Beautiful Canals of Mars

  Chapter 59: Until Death Separated Us

  Chapter 60: If That Person Had Pretty Long Arms

  Chapter 61: I Have to Be a Brave, Smart Girl

  Chapter 62: One Can Stumble into a Labyrinth

  Chapter 63: But It’s Not What You’re Thinking

  Chapter 64: As a Form of Grace

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  A Note About the Author

  Reading Group Guide

  PART 1

  THE IDEA MADE VISIBLE

  Prologue

  Today when I awoke from a nap the faceless man was there before me. He was seated on the chair across from the sofa I’d been sleeping on, staring straight at me with a pair of imaginary eyes in a face that wasn’t.

  The man was tall, and he was dressed the same as when I had seen him last. His face-that-wasn’t-a-face was half hidden by a wide-brimmed black hat, and he had on a long, equally dark coat.

  * * *

  —

  “I came here so you could draw my portrait,” the faceless man said, after he’d made sure I w
as fully awake. His voice was low, toneless, flat. “You promised you would. You remember?”

  “Yes, I remember. But I couldn’t draw it then because I didn’t have any paper,” I said. My voice, too, was toneless and flat. “So to make up for it I gave you a little penguin charm.”

  “Yes, I brought it with me,” he said, and held out his right hand. In his hand—which was extremely long—he held a small plastic penguin, the kind you often see attached to a cell phone strap as a good-luck charm. He dropped it on top of the glass coffee table, where it landed with a small clunk.

  “I’m returning this. You probably need it. This little penguin will be the charm that should protect those you love. In exchange, I want you to draw my portrait.”

  I was perplexed. “I get it, but I’ve never drawn a portrait of a person without a face.”

  My throat was parched.

  “From what I hear, you’re an outstanding portrait artist. And there’s a first time for everything,” the faceless man said. And then he laughed. At least, I think he did. That laugh-like voice was like the empty sound of wind blowing up from deep inside a cavern.

  He took off the hat that hid half of his face. Where the face should have been, there was nothing, just the slow whirl of a fog.

  I stood up and retrieved a sketchbook and a soft pencil from my studio. I sat back down on the sofa, ready to draw a portrait of the man with no face. But I had no idea where to begin, or how to get started. There was only a void, and how are you supposed to give form to something that does not exist? And the milky fog that surrounded the void was continually changing shape.

  “You’d better hurry,” the faceless man said. “I can’t stay here for long.”

  My heart was beating dully inside my chest. I didn’t have much time. I had to hurry. But my fingers holding the pencil just hung there in midair, immobilized. It was as though everything from my wrist down into my hand were numb. There were several people I had to protect, and all I was able to do was draw pictures. Even so, there was no way I could draw him. I stared at the whirling fog. “I’m sorry, but your time’s up,” the man without a face said a little while later. From his faceless mouth, he let out a deep breath, like pale fog hovering over a river.

  “Please wait. If you give me just a little more time—”

  The man put his black hat back on, once again hiding half of his face. “One day I’ll visit you again. Maybe by then you’ll be able to draw me. Until then, I’ll keep this penguin charm.”

  * * *

  —

  Then he vanished. Like a mist suddenly blown away by a freshening breeze, he vanished into thin air. All that remained was the unoccupied chair and the glass table. The penguin charm was gone from the tabletop.

  It all seemed like a short dream. But I knew very well that it wasn’t. If this was a dream, then the world I’m living in itself must all be a dream.

  * * *

  —

  Maybe someday I’ll be able to draw a portrait of nothingness. Just like another artist was able to complete a painting titled Killing Commendatore. But to do so I would need time to get to that point. I would have to have time on my side.

  1

  IF THE SURFACE IS FOGGED UP

  From May until early the following year, I lived on top of a mountain near the entrance to a narrow valley. Deep in the valley it rained constantly in the summer, but outside the valley it was usually sunny. This was due to the southwest wind that blew off the ocean. Moist clouds carried by the wind entered the valley, bringing rain as they made their way up the slopes. The house was built right on the boundary line, so often it would be sunny out in front while heavy rain fell in back. At first I found this disconcerting, but as I got used to it, it came to seem natural.

  Low patches of clouds hung over the surrounding mountains. When the wind blew, these cloud fragments, like some wandering spirits from the past, drifted uncertainly along the surface of the mountains, as if in search of lost memories. The pure white rain, like fine snow, silently swirled around on the wind. Since the wind rarely let up, I could even get by in the summer without air conditioning.

  The house itself was old and small, but the garden in back was spacious. Left to its own devices it was a riot of tall green weeds, and a family of cats made its home there. When a gardener came over to trim the grass, the cat family moved elsewhere. I imagine they felt too exposed. The family consisted of a striped mother cat and her three kittens. The mother was thin, with a stern look about her, as if life had dealt her a bad hand.

  The house was on top of the mountain, and when I went out on the terrace and faced southwest, I could catch a glimpse of the ocean through the woods. From there the ocean was the size of water in a washbowl, a minuscule sliver of the huge Pacific. A real estate agent I know told me that even if you can see a tiny portion of the ocean like I could here, it made all the difference in the price of the land. Not that I cared about an ocean view. From far off, that slice of ocean was nothing more than a dull lump of lead. Why people insisted on having an ocean view was beyond me. I much preferred gazing at the surrounding mountains. The mountains on the opposite side of the valley were in constant flux, transforming with the seasons and the weather, and I never grew tired of these changes.

  * * *

  —

  Back then my wife and I had dissolved our marriage, the divorce papers all signed and sealed, but afterward things happened and we ended up making a go of marriage one more time.

  I can’t explain it. The cause and effect of how this all came about eluded even those of us directly involved, but if I were to sum it up in a word, it would come down to some overly trite phrase like “we reconciled.” Though the nine-month gap before the second time we married (between the dissolution of our first marriage and the beginning of our second marriage, in other words) stood there, a mouth agape like some deep canal carved out of an isthmus.

  Nine months—I had no idea if this was a long period or a short period for a separation. Looking back on it later, it sometimes seemed as though it lasted forever, but then again it passed by in an instant. My impression changed depending on the day. When people photograph an object, they often put a pack of cigarettes next to it to give the viewer a sense of the object’s actual size, but the pack of cigarettes next to the images in my memory expanded and contracted, depending on my mood at the time. Like the objects and events in constant flux, or perhaps in opposition to them, what should have been a fixed yardstick inside the framework of my memory seemed instead to be in perpetual motion.

  Not to imply that all my memories were haphazard, expanding and contracting at will. My life was basically placid, well adjusted, and, for the most part, rational. But those nine months were different, a period of inexplicable chaos and confusion. In all senses of the word that period was the exception, a time unlike any other in my life, as though I were a swimmer in the middle of a calm sea caught up in a mysterious whirlpool that came out of nowhere.

  That may be the reason why, when I think back on that time (as you guessed, these events took place some years ago), the importance, perspective, and connections between events sometimes fluctuate, and if I take my eyes off them even for a second, the sequence I apply to them is quickly supplanted by something different. Still, here I want to do my utmost, as far as I can, to set down a systematic, logical account. Maybe it will be a wasted effort, but even so I want to cling tightly to the hypothetical yardstick I’ve managed to fashion. Like a helpless swimmer who snatches at a scrap of wood that floats his way.

  * * *

  —

  When I moved into that house, the first thing I did was buy a cheap used car. I’d basically driven my previous car into the ground and had to scrap it, so I needed to get a new one. In a suburban town, especially living alone on top of a mountain, a car was a must in order to go shopping. I went to a used Toyota dealership outside
Odawara and found a great deal on a Corolla station wagon. The salesman called it powder blue, though it reminded me more of a sick person’s pale complexion. It had only twenty-two thousand miles on it, but the car had been in an accident at one point so they’d drastically reduced the sticker price. I took it for a test drive, and the brakes and tires seemed good. Since I didn’t plan to drive it on the highway much, I figured it would do fine.

  Masahiko Amada was the one who rented the house to me. We’d been in the same class back in art school. He was two years older, and was one of the few people I got along well with, so even after we finished college we’d occasionally get together. After we graduated he gave up on being an artist and worked for an ad agency as a graphic designer. When he heard that my wife and I had split up, and that I’d left home and had nowhere to stay, he told me the house his father owned was vacant and asked if I’d like to stay there as a kind of caretaker. His father was Tomohiko Amada, a famous painter of Japanese-style paintings. His father’s house (which had a painting studio) was in the mountains outside Odawara, and after the death of his wife he’d lived there comfortably by himself for about ten years. Recently, though, he’d been diagnosed with dementia, and had been put in a high-end nursing home in Izu Kogen. As a result, the house had been empty for several months.