I thought about what to have for dinner. I had asked the caretakers not to prepare meals for me. I hadn’t had lunch—or anything at all since the previous evening.

  I thought for a while, concluded that thinking was too much trouble, and reached for a bottle of cognac. Dangling it by the neck, I went up to the second floor.

  The nude of Akiko was waiting for me. I had already finished it and had no desire to touch it. Squatting down, I stared at it, conscious of my own breathing.

  How many years had it been since I had truly finished a painting? Usually I lost enthusiasm midway and took what I had to the gallery, which then sold it as finished work. Even so, no one had ever criticized my paintings for not being completed. I’d often fooled myself into thinking that my lack of enthusiasm meant that a painting was done.

  Finishing this painting had left me lifeless, empty. After only one day I knew that feeling all too well. It wasn’t just the end of a dream. It was as though my entire life, if not my flesh, had gone into that canvas, leaving me with nothing.

  I started drinking.

  Putting the bottle to my mouth, I guzzled the cognac. Before long I was roaring drunk.

  Everything was bearing down on me, crushing me: the painting, Akiko, my own self. I was obsessed with the thought that my soul was now trapped in Akiko’s naked body on the canvas.

  It became dark but I could still see the painting clearly. Why had I painted it? Why had I tried to splatter life, my life, on a piece of canvas?

  There had been a time when it made me glad to recognize life on a canvas. Somewhere along the line the joy had vanished. I wasn’t even painting proper pictures anymore.

  I was crying. The fact that I was crying struck me as funny and I laughed, as the tears streamed down. I brought the bottle to my lips and, tipping it up, quickly drained it. I got up, went down to the chilly room below and brought back another bottle of cognac.

  Squatting beside the painting, I kept drinking. Why did I not feel the cold or the passage of time as long as I was next to the painting?

  The glare was intense.

  I wondered if it was morning. Someone was calling to me. It seemed to be the painting speaking. I saw the canvas and Akiko’s face one over the other.

  “I’m glad I came. I called again and again, but you never answered. I thought you’d gone off somewhere and wouldn’t come back.”

  I dimly watched Akiko cry. Akiko was in the canvas again. In one corner of my mind I knew that Akiko had come to see me and was crying. In another I wondered when she would step out of the canvas.

  “You’ve been drinking, haven’t you? You’ve been drinking alone.”

  “I wasn’t alone.”

  I tried to say, “You’ve been with me the whole time,” but the words wouldn’t come out.

  Something was covering my body. I thought it might be a blanket, but I had no need of it. A pillow had been placed under my head.

  It grew dark. The light seemed to have gone out. That meant it was still night.

  I wanted to drink. I wanted to throw myself into the deepest pit of drunkenness. I pawed around; there had to be liquor somewhere. Another hand grabbed mine. I knew it was Akiko’s. It had a strange strength. I stopped moving my hand.

  “Why aren’t you in the canvas?” I tried to say, but sleep overwhelmed me.

  Light streaming in from outside woke me up.

  My whole body itched terribly. I tried to scratch, but something was restraining my hands. My mind felt turgid. It was like having, not just water, but thick, muddy water in my head.

  I wanted to drink alcohol. The intoxication was gone, leaving me itchy all over. But I couldn’t find any liquor.

  When I tried to get up, the muddy water stirred and I fell back, dizzy.

  I lay on the bed, motionless. I could see the ceiling—and Akiko’s face. I shut my eyes. I opened them again, but what I saw was not the Akiko on the canvas.

  Trying to sit up, I moaned.

  “Be still.”

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s almost noon. You’d better try to eat a bit of lunch.”

  “Do you think I can eat like this?”

  “Just a bit. I’ll make something you can eat.”

  “Just coffee is fine.”

  “I’ll make something easier on your system.”

  Akiko’s hand once again restrained mine. I shut my eyes. I had no feeling of hunger. I told myself I should be feeling hungry.

  Akiko released my hand. I itched all over, but I didn’t want to scratch. I would only make the itching worse, until it became unbearable.

  I wondered if I was still drunk. I had no way of telling. The itching could be a sign of either the absence of drink in my system or the final throes of whatever alcohol remained.

  I knew I ought to sleep. At least close my eyes. More than the dreadful agony of a hangover, I was afraid I would remember something.

  I closed my eyes. I tried to think of the winter scenery. The snow. The leafless branches. The clean, clear air. Suddenly I could see Akiko on the canvas. It was the painting I had finished. I groaned. Being awake and alert seemed unbearable.

  I sat up, sloshing the muddy water in my brain. I felt the silt being stirred. The effort of standing on my feet bathed my entire body in sweat. I fought the urge to collapse. Feeling as though I were walking on a wall, I left the studio and went down the stairs, one slow step at a time.

  Squatting down in the living room, I called to Akiko in the kitchen: “I’m taking a shower.”

  Somehow I made it to the bath. With Akiko’s assistance I undressed and showered in the hottest water I could stand. In the shower I vomited a brown liquid. Pounded by the hot water, it soon dissolved and washed away. Akiko had made some rice gruel for me. Though I had already vomited once, I still felt nausea. Resisting it, I scooped up a bit of gruel with a spoon and nibbled. With the tips of her chopsticks Akiko added a piece of pickled plum to my next spoonful.

  I finished a small bowl of gruel. Exhausted by this effort, I staggered to the sofa in the living room. A fire was burning in the fireplace. The fire alone was not warm enough, however, so Akiko had also turned on the fan heater.

  “If you had fallen asleep there you would have frozen to death. You really scared me. Your body was cold.”

  “I was just drinking,” I said, sipping the tea that Akiko had brought me.

  I no longer wondered whether I was still drunk. All that was left of my binge was the after effects.

  “I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Don’t say that. This is the only time I’ve seen you drunk like that. You usually have only one or two beers. You’re even working out.”

  “Sometimes I become an alcoholic.”

  “You can’t call yourself an alcoholic if you only drink sometimes.”

  “You were crying.”

  “I cried looking at you.”

  Akiko put a cigarette between her lips.

  “It was like I’d been stolen. This may sound weird, but I felt like I’d been whisked away into the canvas.”

  “Who stole you?”

  “I did. I stole myself. The idea made me cry.”

  I understood—at least I thought I did. When I tried to think too hard, the silt at the bottom of my brain stirred, muddying the water more.

  “While you were sleeping, the caretaker’s wife came to get the laundry. I told her I had come to look at your paintings and was waiting for you to wake up. It was such a fib. She started laughing.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re worried she’ll talk about us. She’s not that kind of person. I know a snitch when I see one, and she isn’t one. I met a lot of people in prison, but I was never wrong about that.”

  “Really?”

  Akiko sat in front of the fire. I didn’t feel like smoking and instead just stared absently at the smoke Akiko was blowing. It was being sucked into the fire. Akiko reached for an ashtray.

  “I’ve taken a hot shower, I’ve eaten something—I almost feel normal.”

  “That’s good, but don’t start drinking again after I leave. Now that you’ve finished that painting, you don’t have anything else to do, do you?”

  “I won’t drink.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve been drunk, and now I’m sober. Now that I’ve done it, I don’t have to do it again.”

  “I don’t trust you. I trust you on other things, but not this.”

  “If you had shown up a bit later I would probably still be drunk.”

  I laughed, and was hit by a wave of nausea. The silt had been stirred again.

  2

  You couldn’t exactly call it suffering.

  I sweated more than usual and my breathing was more labored, but that was all. I didn’t stop to rest, and I felt I was being cured of hydrocephaly.

  Hearing the sound of feet tramping through the snow, I felt as though something were cracking, breaking. It was pleasant to the ear. The past few days had been clear and fine, so the surface of the snow was starting to melt.

  When I returned to the cabin, my running clothes were heavy with sweat.

  While I was doing some light stretches, two men appeared, the detectives from the other day.

  “The snow here hasn’t become slushy yet. It’s already started to melt on the roads down below, Mr. Nakagi. If we have another day like the ones we’ve been having, the snow on this road will melt too.”

  I kept doing knee bends. I still hadn’t caught my breath.

  “Ah, well, take a shower first. But we’d like to have a word with you, if you don’t mind.”

  The young detective didn’t speak; he just stood behind the older one. Natsue’s lawyer must have applied some heavy pressure.

  “Our investigation is making progress. With your cooperation, we might break this case. We don’t intend to bother you any more than necessary.”

  Taking several deep breaths, I went into the cabin and took a shower. A complete recovery from hydrocephaly. I was even starting to feel hungry.

  Coming into the living room in my bathrobe, I put several logs on the fireplace. The fire moved from the remaining embers to the new logs and the flames rose up. I touched the yellow ribbon wrapped around my left wrist. It would be a good idea, I thought, not to have beer. The ribbon was a kind of charm Akiko had made to keep me from drinking.

  Akiko had gone back to her cabin the previous evening. She had made a light meal, wrapped the ribbon around my wrist and left. She probably didn’t believe I would quit drinking. She wanted to test me in some way. It was probably more accurate to say she wanted to take my measure—to find out how hopeless an alcoholic I was. How would I try to destroy myself? What direction would I be facing when I fell apart?

  But I was fully sober now.

  I left the window wide open. The cold air felt good.

  “What is it with the ribbon?” asked the older detective, stepping up to the terrace. His tone was polite, but he wasn’t any less insulting.

  “It’s a sign that I’ve killed a man with my own hands.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  The detective had decided to say nothing more about my past.

  “A man named Koichi Oshita was here, wasn’t he? Yoichi Nomura probably brought him.”

  The detective casually showed me Oshita’s photo. He didn’t ask if I knew him.

  “We’ve learned quite a bit since we saw you the last time. We went to Nomura’s house and found a lot of memos he wrote about you.”

  “He wanted to write a book about me. Not about me as a painter but as a murderer. He was just the man to write that type of book.”

  “He also wrote a memo about Koichi Oshita.”

  I lit a cigarette.

  “Oshita’s killed in the past. Three years ago. The judge ruled him mentally incompetent and he wasn’t brought to trial. How shall I put it? He’s been a case.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Why did Nomura want you to meet him?”

  “He thought we were similar. For someone who writes books, he didn’t have much of an imagination.”

  “We thought it might be something like that. We still don’t know where Oshita is.”

  “Even after a police investigation?”

  “We’re going around to the places where he might show up. We think there’s a good chance he’ll show up here.”

  “If he does, I’ll let you know.”

  I had a premonition he would come. If he did, I had no intention of telling the police.

  “We’d appreciate it. We’re not sure of his movements after he left Tokyo. It’s possible he might still be there.”

  “I promise I’ll let you know.”

  “Nomura wrote in his memos that you and Oshita had a lot in common. He had a list of points. Did you get that impression yourself?”

  “I didn’t talk to him, but he struck me as ordinary enough.”

  “Nomura wrote that when Oshita saw your paintings he was deeply moved. After Nomura heard that, he tried to pinpoint things you two had in common.”

  “For example?”

  “Isolation, hunger...by that I suppose he meant spiritual hunger, but I don’t know exactly. Here’s another one: explosive rage. Let me read you what Nomura wrote. Quote—‘I believe they may both have a kind of hunger’—unquote.”

  I lost interest in Nomura’s notes. If that was all he had in the way of insight, I didn’t need to hear it.

  All human beings feel some such hunger. Nomura had written that I had something in common with the whole human race. Then Oshita killed him in a fit of rage—if indeed it was Oshita.

  “I don’t have anything to tell you.”

  “Tell us if you hear anything. I’ll give you the number of the investigation headquarters. It’s in Tokyo. We don’t know if the murder was committed in Tokyo, but the body was found there.”

  The police had an estimated time of death and a toll receipt from the Chuo Expressway. Putting the two together, I thought, they ought to be able to determine the place of death with a fair degree of accuracy. Perhaps they deliberately wanted to leave it vague.

  “So if I find out anything I should report it to you.”

  “We’d appreciate it.”

  I didn’t know if that was the only business the cops had come on. They may have suspected that Oshita would be at my place.

  I put out my cigarette.

  “Is this Oshita person from Nagano?”

  “No, Tokyo.”

  “You gentlemen have come here twice already. You suspect me of something.”

  “Why should we suspect you? You must be joking,” said the detective, looking straight at me. His eyes said I was right.

  “Take care.”

  “We’d appreciate your help.”

  The detectives had nothing else to add. Bowing slightly, they left, trudging through the melting snow.

  I gazed at the distant mountains. I didn’t feel any need for beer. I had decided not to drink until the ribbon came off. I was good at obeying rules I’d set for myself. It was just that I rarely set any.

  I reached for the phone.

  “I’m getting hungry.”

  “You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

  “Will you help me take the ribbon off?”

  I hung up without waiting for the answer.

  3

  Every day I understood better what it was like to have finished a painting. It meant that I shouldn’t live any longer—in other words, I shouldn’t have completed it.

  No matter how hard I searched, I couldn’t find the energy to start a new painting. I had finished two at almost the same time, the one in Akiko’s cabin and the one in the second-floor studio.

  Did I need something new? I had no idea what it might be. I had heaved up my guts and was now empty inside. Anything could be necessary—or just as likely, unnecessary.

  After getting up in the morning, I ran. It was just a habit, but one that had insinuated itself into every cell of my body. If I kept running, I would gain the body of an athlete, but lose something else. I was not afraid of losing that thing, I realized. It was a strange feeling.

  I took up a new habit.

  In the evening I would go to Akiko’s cabin. For about one hour before dinner I would sit in a chair and stare into space while Akiko painted me. She used thin sticks I had whittled to apply the colors. It was hard for her to master this way of mine; irritated by her own slow progress, she shouted, and in unladylike moments, even snapped the sticks in two. I said nothing—it wouldn’t have been right to. All I could teach her was technique, and there had never been any need to teach it to her, not because she was accomplished in that regard but because her painting didn’t require it.

  Akiko spoiled three canvases. There was always a brand-new one on the easel when I went to her place.

  After applying colors to the new canvas for nearly an hour, Akiko became exhausted and fell silent. Looking sadly at the colors, she stood stock still, and showed no signs of moving.

  After exactly one hour, I stood up, went to the kitchen, and started making dinner. She always did the preliminaries, so all I had to do was add the finishing touches. I was done in less than thirty minutes.

  After dinner, I returned to my cabin. I’d had sex with her only once since she’d started to paint me. She had not resisted. In fact she had bared her lust, trying to escape into sex.

  “I don’t get it.”

  Akiko had said so twice. I didn’t reply, except with a smile, because her remark was not yet a groan or a scream but rather simply an appeal to me.

  Akiko was painting my portrait, but she was really painting her own heart. She knew it, just as she knew she had to find her own solution. Apart from the sighing remark, she didn’t say a word.

 

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