Winter sleep, p.20
Winter Sleep, page 20
I occasionally got calls from Oshita.
I had not been to Akiko’s cabin in a while; whenever I went out, the subcompact was there to tail me. At first the detectives were in the car, but now it was just Oshita’s younger brother. Even the cops had given up, it seemed.
“Akiko’s started to calm down. She still can’t paint, though. She cleans, does the laundry, goes to town to buy groceries. Now she’s trying to make her favorite dishes.”
“What about you?”
“I’m just watching Akiko. I’m not telling her to paint.”
“And you, are you painting?”
“I’m just looking out for Akiko. I know I can paint if I want to. I don’t know if my stuff amounts to anything, but I can say what I want to say. I know that. I’m cool with everything. I feel like I can really see myself, whatever I do.”
Akiko would have to go through another fit, I was sure. Oshita didn’t, provided he could and did paint.
“I’ll come over.”
“To see Akiko?”
“To see your paintings.”
“They’re no good.”
“I don’t want to see good.”
Expression. If you could feel that you were expressing yourself in your paintings, no matter how clumsy or childish, your suffering went away. Looking at myself, I could understand Oshita’s sort of suffering. The suffering had made me lose myself at times, but it had only been temporary. The experience had given me a way to think about my methods and polish my technique, beginning with the basics of drawing.
Oshita sought a more direct form of expression. Perhaps his expression was too solitary, lacking in the way of expressing himself to others; this however didn’t make his painting pointless. His cry, coming from his inability to adjust to society, was being healed through the process of self-expression.
When Oshita no longer felt the need to cry out from the pain, he would become an ordinary man who sometimes painted strange pictures, but otherwise lived in harmony with the world. If that ever happened, his murder warrant would become a terrible, oppressive reality.
After my phone conversation with Oshita, I went up to the second floor and faced the canvas.
The sensation that opened toward the canvas wasn’t acute. Nor was it dull. Flexible was my only word for it.
I didn’t know myself what it was that was so flexible, but I didn’t want to use the knife or the sticks I had whittled. Instead I chose a brush. I picked it up not knowing why I had chosen it of all my brushes, from the thin to the thick.
I had never used it before.
Grasping it, I spread a light, liquid white on the canvas. Faint hues issued at the tip of the brush. Nothing like an image came from them, but I continued to spread white paint. I was not restrained by color or form. With my eyes I could see color and form, but that was just physical seeing. There was another way of seeing that had no thought for either.
I quickly became absorbed in my work. Then I realized it was already two in the morning.
Putting on a coat over my sweater, I went outside and started the engine of the subcompact. After I drove off, there was no sign of a car behind me. Oshita’s brother had been watching me with an abnormal persistence, but only between the hours of eight in the morning and eight or nine in the evening.
I didn’t go by a roundabout route but instead drove straight for Akiko’s cabin. The lights were still on. In the dark the vague form of the Citroen 2CV emerged, huddled below the cabin.
When I got out of the car, the cabin door opened and I heard Oshita’s voice:
“You’re late.”
Without replying I climbed the wooden stairs and, on the front porch, scraped the mud off my shoes. The snow had melted and become stained with mud.
“Akiko’s just gone to bed.”
There was one painting in the living room. It was free from both color and form. But it was too direct. I could look into Oshita’s heart through the painting, but only because we had something in common. Anybody who didn’t would find it incomprehensible.
For Oshita’s art, though, none of that mattered. It took no account of the existence of others. No matter how much I freed myself from color and form, there were some pictures I couldn’t paint. I had trained myself thoroughly in drawing. For me a sketch was like a conversation with another person. However much I shouted my wordless cries, my paintings would express the passions I had been feeling at the time. They were cries of sadness, cries of anger—cries others could understand.
Oshita’s paintings, in which other people did not exist, were the first I’d ever seen of that nature. How many people could understand such paintings? The number was probably small, rather close to zero.
“Are you so lonely?”
“Don’t say that. I painted that picture just so I wouldn’t have to say that. But you understand it, don’t you?”
“I’m probably the only one who ever will.”
“That’s all right. I thought it would be all right even if you didn’t understand it. I still think I came from your heart, though. If I hadn’t seen your paintings, I would never have wanted to paint.”
I was also probably the only one who could understand what Oshita was trying to say. Oshita was me. But there was a side of me that wasn’t Oshita. My conventional side or whatever you called it—it allowed me to be a painter.
“I want a drink.”
“There’s some cognac.”
“Just one glass.”
“I’ll have one too.”
Oshita poured cognac into ordinary water glasses instead of brandy glasses, and brought them over. I drained mine in one gulp.
“If I can paint now and then, good. That’s how I’m starting to feel. It’ll help me calm down. Also, Akiko being by my side.”
“Akiko, huh?”
Akiko had probably calmed down after seeing the painting. The two had communicated through it, and having done so, she was at peace.
But it was time for Akiko to have her say. She’d truly find some peace when she finished her own painting.
“Is she asleep?”
“She was awake until just a while ago.”
“I guess that’s all right then.”
A girl who’d suddenly appeared before me. She’d stirred my heart a little, but I knew hardly anything about her.
She was sick. There was something that I had, that Oshita had, and that Akiko too had. If you called that something a sickness, then Akiko was indeed sick.
But right away, I felt a little ashamed of myself for thinking in those terms. I realized that only the part of me that didn’t overlap with Akiko and Oshita was growing larger each day.
“Let me say one thing, though. Your brother is still looking for you. He just won’t give up.”
“I can see that. That’s the sort of thing he would do.”
“You killed a guy named Nomura. Do you realize that?”
“If I’d already known how to paint, I probably wouldn’t have killed him. I guess it’s too late.”
“You want to go back with your brother?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course, you can wait until Akiko can paint again.”
“Are you telling me to get myself in an institution?”
I didn’t reply. If he was judged mentally incompetent at the trial, he would be entered into a mental hospital with no determination of guilt or innocence. Oshita knew that much. The one who would decide whether that should come to pass was Oshita himself. I lit a cigarette.
“I’m not sick. I don’t want to go to the hospital, even if I have to go to prison.”
No one had ever said anything about me being mentally incompetent. I had killed a man in the course of a fight. My opponent had been carrying a knife, and my court-appointed lawyer had claimed justifiable self-defense.
“Anyway, your brother is not going to give up. I wanted to tell you that.”
“I understand. I want to meet him and talk to him. If I can really talk to him he’ll understand.”
I swallowed my next words: it was too late for that and the police were after him. I felt, more strongly than ever, that I was just an ordinary guy—the sort you found everywhere.
2
I didn’t return to the cabin until past ten the next morning.
I had listened to Oshita talk about Akiko until morning. I could understand him, but if anyone else had listened to us, they would have laughed. Someone you communicated with through painting, someone whose heart you understood to the last nook and cranny. Oshita truly felt that, through his painting, he’d made Akiko see something about himself. He trusted that he’d see something about Akiko soon. I was ashamed that a conventional word like “loneliness” was all I could deduce from listening to him.
Returning to the cabin I went straight to the studio. I continued to smear white paint across the already white canvas.
Now and since the beginning, my paintings were nothing but cries of loneliness, I thought as I painted white upon white. But how deep was my loneliness? Was it really loneliness? Having just seen Oshita’s painting, I wondered.
“Loneliness” as a commodity—given the number of people who appreciated my work, hadn’t it come to just that? Perhaps I’d been playing up to them without realizing it.
The front doorbell rang.
I thought it might be Oshita’s brother. He must have noticed that I had spent the night away from the cabin.
I went downstairs, holding the palette and brush.
Natsue was standing in the entryway.
“You have a strange look on your face. What happened?”
“You always just show up. You’ve been doing it as long as I’ve known you.”
“Did something happen?”
“No.”
Without saying anything more, I went up to the studio. I continued to use the brush. The white paint was becoming fairly thick. The hues were also changing.
When I went downstairs, Natsue had already taken a shower and changed into a bathrobe.
“You’re well prepared.”
“I haven’t done anything different. It was you who stayed up in the studio. There was no fire in the fireplace so I made one. Those dried logs burn well.”
There were more logs in the fireplace than usual, with flames leaping up from them.
“Care to take a look?”
Natsue leapt to her feet as though she’d been waiting. I glanced at her white thighs as they peeked through the open hem of her bathrobe. I had a craving for Natsue. Without being aware of it, I had come to feel that way about her.
I pulled the tab on a can of beer I had taken from the refrigerator, but I didn’t feel like drinking it right away. I hadn’t run that morning, that may have been why.
“Amazing,” said Natsue, after coming down the stairs. I sipped the beer slowly, as though it were whiskey.
My cries were something Natsue could understand. Not just Natsue, even critics and dealers understood my cries. That was what made me a painter.
“Now I know you can paint with nothing but white.”
“When I finish that one, I’m leaving the cabin.”
“Oh?”
“I’m also leaving you.”
“That I don’t like.”
Natsue’s expression didn’t change. Glancing at the thick pubic hair under her bathrobe, I took another sip of beer. The flames in the fireplace were dwindling down. If I shifted the logs a bit, the flames would flare up again. Keeping the fire constantly burning took a lot of work. I didn’t move—instead I glanced at Natsue’s pubic hair again.
“I’ll do anything you want.”
“Don’t.”
“If you want a younger body, I’ll find one for you. Stay with me, the way we are now.”
“You’re a company president, managing all those people. How can you lower yourself like that?”
“I haven’t loved many men—maybe none. I don’t even know if I love you. But I love your talent. I’ve fallen in love with it.”
“Let’s think about it after I finish the picture.”
“That’s right. You change with every picture you finish.”
Natsue finally laughed.
Maybe she’d become the woman I needed. That was why I wanted to leave her. There was nothing logical about it. It was just the way I lived, to put it bluntly.
“Anyway, has anything bad happened?”
“The cops came, but they were polite—too polite. Polite to the point of rudeness.”
“Leave all that unpleasantness to me.”
“I met Koichi Oshita.”
“I thought that might happen. But it’s no crime to see him.”
“What if ‘Oshita’ were me?”
“It would be your second murder.”
Natsue was used to my way of talking. Because she was used to it—and nothing more—she was that much less able to understand me.
What did I want to do? Was I satisfied with just expressing myself through my paintings? With getting recognition for them?
I didn’t think I would become any freer than I was already. I had even been free in prison. I had more freedom than I knew what to do with. I had even allowed myself the freedom to kill a man.
“Could you die with me?”
“You mean literally?”
“You have a job, a kid, a position in society. Could you go off somewhere with a crazy artist and die in a ditch?”
“Are you being mean with me?”
“You sound like you’re my mother.”
“Maybe I feel that way toward you, though it’s less than half of what I feel. I have a son, so I know what you mean. Sometimes when I look into myself, I see I have maternal feelings for you, no question. But not as much as when we first met. You’ve become more like an normal person.”
“Have I become a bad painter?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. In the short time I’ve known you, you’ve changed a lot. The paintings are amazing. The one upstairs especially—I get the shivers when I look at it.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Maybe I could die with a man who paints like that.”
“Forget it. I was joking.”
“That’s how you’re normal.”
Natsue laughed softly. I finally finished the beer I was holding.
A log broke and made a crunching sound. The flames weren’t rising. Natsue shifted the logs a bit, just the way I might have.
After a while the flames rose up to lick the logs.
3
The chime rang. Some time had passed since Natsue had driven off in her Mercedes. I hadn’t realized a car had come. In the mountains car engines all sound a long way off.
Thinking that it might be the caretaker from next door, I opened the door. Standing in the gloom was Koichi Oshita’s younger brother.
“You met my brother last night.”
“Why do you think so?”
“You came back only this morning.”
“I have places I go. Sometimes I stay the night.”
“You met him, my brother.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I looked over his back, into the dark. There was still some light left in the sky, but that made the earth below look even darker.
The brother said something else. I couldn’t help thinking of him as, not Koichi Oshita’s brother, but a total stranger. His steady gaze was simply irritating.
“In any case, my business is my business. Don’t stick your nose into it.”
“I want to take my brother back.”
“You have my best wishes.”
“Tell me where he is. I know you know. My brother wanted to meet you and I’m sure he’s in contact with you now.”
I shrugged my shoulders and tried to close the door, but he wouldn’t take his hand away.
“Tell me. It’s better for him if I take him back.”
“Your brother is an adult.”
“You’ve met him, haven’t you?”
“You’re being stubborn.”
“I’ll be as stubborn as I have to be. The police may give up, but I won’t. I’m the only one who will take care of my brother.”
I tried to shut the door again. The young man pushed back, putting his strength into it. I grabbed his hand and flung it away.
“Don’t get violent.”
Before I could shut the door, the man reached out his hand again. I was seized by a fit of anger I couldn’t control. Everything went black. I had had the feeling once before, I thought. An urge to explode collided with the desire to restrain myself, and I heard a sound like waves crashing against rocks. I’d heard it before, too.
The strength left the man’s hand.
There was the sound of a car, and it stopped on the road below the cabin. It was the white Mercedes; Natsue had returned. The man’s expression changed.
“I’m going to find my brother,” he said, and let go of the door. I sat on the living room sofa and waited for Natsue to come in.
“I had a bad feeling—a very bad feeling. Just as I was driving out of the resort area, I decided to turn back. Who was here just now?”
“A total stranger.”
“A salesman wouldn’t come to a place like this. The police?”
“No.”
I stretched out on the sofa and lit a cigarette. Blowing out the smoke, I pondered the place I’d gone to just a while ago.
“I want to stay here. I told the office that I wouldn’t be back for two or three days. If that will inconvenience you, I can take a room in a hotel in town.”
“No need. Stay here,” I said, and became aware that I was afraid. Perhaps I was afraid of myself, perhaps of something else that I couldn’t begin to expect.
It was now dark outside and starting to get cold. On clear days the nights were chilly. If dark clouds came now, we would have snow again.
