The dining room was on the same floor as the study. The kitchen was in back of it. The dining room was a long room, with a large, long table in the middle. The oak table was about four inches thick, and big enough for ten people. A solid table that would look good hosting a banquet for Robin Hood and his men. But it was simply the two of us, Menshiki and myself, not a merry band of outlaws. A place was set for the Commendatore, but he wasn’t there. A place mat, silverware, and an empty glass were ready for him, but they were just for show. A courtesy to indicate that was his place.
Like in the living room, one long wall was entirely glass. It looked out over the mountain range beyond the valley. Just as I could see Menshiki’s house from mine, my house should be visible from his. The house I lived in, though, was nowhere as big as Menshiki’s mansion, and it was a wooden building whose subdued color didn’t stand out, so in the dark I couldn’t make out where it was. There weren’t many homes built here, but in each of the houses that dotted the mountains there were clearly lights on inside. It was dinnertime. People were with their families at the dinner table, about to enjoy a hot meal. I could sense that slight warmth in those lights.
In contrast, on the other side of the valley, Menshiki, I, and the Commendatore were seated at that large table, about to begin an eccentric, formal dinner party. Outside a fine rain continued to silently fall. But there was almost no wind, and it was a typically hushed autumn night. I looked out the window and thought again about the hole. About the lonely stone-lined chamber behind the little shrine. Even as we sat here the hole was there, dark and dank. Memories of that scene brought a special chill to me, deep inside.
“I found this table while traveling in Italy,” Menshiki said after I’d complimented it. He didn’t sound like he was bragging, simply stating facts. “I ran across it in a furniture store in Lucca, purchased it, and had it shipped here. It’s so heavy it was quite a task to transport it.”
“Do you go abroad very often?”
His lips twisted up a bit, then relaxed. “I used to. Part business, part pleasure. Not so many opportunities to do so these days. I’m doing a different sort of work now. Plus I no longer like to go out much anymore. Most of the time I’m here.”
To indicate more clearly what he meant by “here,” he motioned toward the house with his hand. I expected him to add more about this change in his work, but that’s all he said. As always, he didn’t seem eager to say much about his work, and I didn’t press him about it.
“I thought we’d start with some well-chilled champagne, if that’s all right with you. You don’t mind?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I’ll leave it all up to you.”
Menshiki made a faint motion, and the ponytailed young man came over and poured cold champagne into long narrow flutes. Pleasant little bubbles fizzed up in the glasses, so light and thin they seemed made of high-quality paper. We toasted each other across the table. Then Menshiki respectfully lifted his glass to the unoccupied seat for the Commendatore.
“Thank you so much for coming, Commendatore,” he said.
There was, naturally, no reply from the Commendatore.
As he enjoyed the champagne, Menshiki talked about opera. About how, on a trip to Sicily, he saw a spectacular performance of Verdi’s Ernani at the Catania opera house. The person seated next to him sang along with the performers, all the while snacking on mandarin oranges. And how he’d had some amazing champagne there.
The Commendatore finally made an appearance in the dining room, though not at the seat at the table prepared for him. Given his short stature, he would have only come up to nose level, hidden by the table. Instead he plunked himself down on a kind of display shelf diagonally behind Menshiki. He was about five feet off the floor, lightly swinging his feet clad in those oddly shaped black shoes. I raised my glass slightly to him so that Menshiki wouldn’t see. As expected, the Commendatore acted as if he didn’t notice.
The meal was served at this point. There was an open serving slot between the kitchen and the dining room and the bow-tied, ponytailed young man brought each dish placed there one by one to our table. For a first course, we had a beautiful dish of organic vegetables and fresh isaki fish. Accompanied by white wine. The ponytailed young man uncorked the bottle as carefully as if he were an explosives expert handling a land mine. No explanation of what kind of wine it was or where it was from, though of course it was superb. Menshiki wasn’t about to serve a less-than-perfect wine.
After that we were served a salad of lotus root, calamari, and white beans. Then a sea turtle soup. The fish dish was monkfish.
“It’s a bit early in the season for it, but I heard that down at the harbor they got hold of some excellent monkfish,” Menshiki said. The fish was certainly fresh and amazing. Firm texture, a refined sweetness, but still a clean aftertaste. Lightly steamed, then served with (what I took to be) a tarragon sauce.
Next came thick venison steaks. There was again an explanation of the special sauce, but it was so full of specialized terms I couldn’t remember half of it. At any rate, a wonderfully fragrant sauce.
The ponytailed young man poured red wine into our glasses. Menshiki explained that the bottle had been opened an hour before and decanted.
“It’s breathed nicely, and it should be just the peak time to drink it.”
I knew nothing about aerating wine, but it had a deep flavor. When your tongue first encountered it, then when you held it in your mouth, and finally when you drank it down, the flavor was different each time. It was like a mysterious woman whose beauty changes slightly depending on the angle and light. The wine left a pleasant aftertaste.
“It’s Bordeaux,” Menshiki said. “I won’t sing its praises. Just know it’s a Bordeaux.”
“It’s the kind of wine that once you started listing its good points, you’d have a long list.”
Menshiki smiled. Pleasant wrinkles formed at the corners of his eyes. “You’re exactly right. It would be very long if you listed its merits. But I don’t particularly like to do that with wines. I’m not good at enumerating the merits of things, no matter what they are. It’s just a delicious wine—that’s enough, right?”
I had no objections to that.
All this time the Commendatore watched us drinking and eating from his perch on the display shelf. He sat there, unmoving, diligently observing the scene there down to the smallest detail, but didn’t seem to have any reaction to what he was seeing. Like he told me once, he merely observes. He doesn’t judge, or have any partiality toward it. He’s merely gathering raw data.
This might be how he observed me and my girlfriend making love in bed in the afternoons. The thought unsettled me. He’d told me that watching people have sex was for him no different from watching morning radio exercise routines or someone sweeping a chimney. And that might very well be the case. But the fact remained that it was disconcerting to think of being observed.
An hour and a half later, Menshiki and I finally arrived at dessert (a soufflé) and espresso. A long but fulfilling journey. For the first time, the chef came out of the kitchen and over to the dining table. A tall man, in a white chef’s outfit. In his mid-thirties would be my guess, with a sparse black beard. He greeted me politely.
“The food was amazing,” I told him. “I’ve hardly ever had anything so delicious.”
Those were my honest feelings. I still couldn’t believe that a chef who made such exquisite dishes ran a small, unknown French restaurant near the harbor in Odawara.
“Thank you very much,” he said, smiling brightly. “Mr. Menshiki’s always been very kind to me.”
He bowed and returned to the kitchen.
“I wonder if the Commendatore was satisfied, too?” Menshiki said after the chef had left, a concerned look on his face. He didn’t appear to be playacting. He seemed genuinely concerned.
“I’m sure he is,” I replied with a straight face. “It’s a shame, of course, that he couldn’t enjoy the fabulous meal, but he must have enjoyed the atmosphere.”
“I do hope so.”
Of course I enjoyed it, the Commendatore whispered in my ear.
Menshiki suggested an after-dinner drink, but I declined. I was so full I really couldn’t manage anything else. He had a brandy.
“There was something that I wanted to ask you,” Menshiki said as he slowly swirled the brandy in the oversized glass. “It’s an odd question, and I hope you’re not offended.”
“Feel free to ask me anything.”
He took a small sip of brandy, tasting it. Then quietly laid his glass on the table.
“It’s about the pit in the woods,” Menshiki said. “The other day I spent about an hour in that stone chamber. No flashlight, seated alone at the bottom of the pit. The cover was on top, and rocks on top of that to hold it down. And I told you, ‘Please come back in an hour and get me out of here.’ Correct?”
“That’s right.”
“Why do you think I did that?”
“I have no idea,” I answered honestly.
“I needed to do that,” Menshiki said. “I can’t explain it, but sometimes I need to do that. Be left all alone in a cramped, dark, completely silent space.”
I was silent, waiting for his next words.
Menshiki continued. “Here’s my question to you. During that hour did you ever find yourself, even for a moment, wanting to abandon me in that pit? Tempted to just leave me behind at the bottom of that dark hole?”
I couldn’t grasp what he was getting at. “Abandon you?”
Menshiki touched his right temple and rubbed it, as if checking out a scar. “This is what I mean. I was at the bottom of that pit, a little less than nine feet deep and six feet across. The ladder had been pulled up. The stones in the wall were all densely laid together, and there was no way to climb up. And the cover was on tight. In mountains like these I could yell at the top of my voice or ring the bell, but no one would ever hear me—though of course you might. In other words, I couldn’t get back to the surface on my own. If you hadn’t come back, I’d have had to stay in the pit forever. Isn’t that so?”
“That could be.”
The fingers of his right hand were still at his temple. He’d stopped rubbing. “What I’d like to know is whether during that hour the thought ever occurred to you, even for a moment, I’ll just leave that man inside the pit. Leave him the way he is. Tell me the truth, it won’t offend me.”
He took his fingers from his temple, reached for the glass of brandy, and again slowly held it up and swirled it. This time, though, he didn’t take a sip. Eyes narrowed, he inhaled the aroma and put the glass back on the table.
“That thought never occurred to me,” I answered honestly. “Even for a moment. All I thought about was that after an hour I had to take the cover off and get you out of there.”
“Really?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Well, if I had been in your position…” Menshiki said, sounding confessional. His voice was quite calm. “I’m sure I would have thought of that. I definitely would have been tempted to leave you inside that pit forever. I would have thought, This is the chance of a lifetime.”
No words came to me.
Menshiki said, “Down at the bottom of the pit that’s what I was thinking about the whole time. That if I was in your position I would definitely consider it. It’s a strange thing. You were the one on the surface and I was the one at the bottom of the pit, but all that time I was picturing me on the surface and you at the bottom.”
“But if you’d actually abandoned me in the pit I might have starved to death. I might have turned into an actual mummy, ringing a bell. You’re saying you’d be okay with that?”
“It’s just a fantasy. Or delusion, perhaps. Of course I would never actually do that. I was just imagining the scenario. Just mentally playing with the concept of death. So don’t worry. What I mean is, I find it hard to fathom that you didn’t feel the same temptation.”
I said, “Weren’t you afraid, Mr. Menshiki, being down at the bottom of that dark pit all alone? Thinking that I might be tempted to abandon you there?”
Menshiki shook his head. “No, I wasn’t afraid. Deep inside me I may have actually been hoping you would.”
“Hoping I would?” I said, surprised. “That I would leave you down in that pit?”
“Exactly.”
“In other words, you were okay with being abandoned down there?”
“Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that I was okay with dying. Even I still have some attachment to this life. And starving to death or dying of lack of water aren’t the ways I’d like to go. All I wanted was to try to get closer to death, even if just a little more. I know that boundary is a very fine line.”
I thought about what he said, though I still couldn’t grasp what he meant. I casually glanced over at the Commendatore, still seated on the display shelf. His face was bereft of expression.
Menshiki went on. “When you’re locked up alone in a cramped, dark place, the most frightening thing isn’t death. The most terrifying thought is that I might have to live here forever. Once you think that, the terror makes it hard to breathe. The walls close in on you and the delusion grabs you that you’re going to be crushed. In order to survive, a person has to overcome that fear. Which means conquering yourself. And in order to do that, you need to get as close to death as you possibly can.”
“But there’s a danger to that.”
“Like when Icarus flew close to the sun. It’s not easy to know how close you can go, where that line is. You put your life at risk doing it.”
“But if you avoid approaching it, you can’t overcome fear and conquer yourself.”
“Precisely. If you can’t do that, you can’t take yourself to the next level,” Menshiki said. He seemed to be considering something. And then suddenly—at least it seemed sudden to me—he stood up, went over to the window, and looked out.
“It’s still raining a little, but not so hard. Do you mind going out on the deck? There’s something I want to show you.”
We walked up the steps from the dining room to the living room and then out to the deck. It was a large deck, with a Mediterranean tiled floor. We went over to the wooden railing and gazed out at the valley. It was like a tourist lookout, and we were afforded a view of the entire valley. A fine rain was still falling, more like mist at this point. The lights were still on in people’s homes across the valley. It was the same valley, but viewed from the opposite side like this, the scenery looked transformed.
A section of the deck was roofed over, with a chaise longue beneath it, for sunbathing or perhaps reading. Next to it was a low glass-topped table to put drinks or books on. And also a large planter with a decorative green plant, and a tall piece of equipment of some kind, covered in plastic. There was a spotlight on the wall, but it wasn’t turned on. The lights in the living room were turned down low.
“I wonder which direction my house is?” I asked Menshiki.
Menshiki pointed to the right. “It’s over there.”
I stared hard in that direction, but with the lights out and the misty rain I couldn’t locate it.
“I can’t see it,” I told him.
“Just a moment,” Menshiki said, and walked over to where the chaise longue was. He removed the plastic cover from the piece of equipment and carried it over. It looked like a pair of binoculars on a tripod. The binoculars weren’t big, but looked odd, different from normal ones. They were a drab olive green and the crude shape made it appear like some optical instrument for surveying. He placed this beside the railing, pointed it, and carefully focused.
“Here, take a look. This is where you live,” he said.
I squinted through the binoculars. They had a clear field of vision, with high magnification. Not your typical binoculars that you find in a store. Through the faint vale of misty rain the far-off scenery looked close enough to touch. And it definitely was the house I was living in. The terrace was there, the lounge chair I always sat in. Beyond that was the living room, and next to it, my painting studio. With the lights off I couldn’t make out the interior, though during the day you probably could. It felt strange to see (or peek into) the place where I lived.
“Don’t worry,” Menshiki said from behind me, as if reading my mind. “No need to be concerned. I don’t encroach on your privacy. I mean, I hardly ever turn these binoculars on your house. Trust me. What I want to see is something else.”
“What do you want to see?” I said. I took my eye from the binoculars, turned around, and looked at him. His face was cool, inscrutable as always. At night on the deck, though, his hair looked whiter than ever.
“I’ll show you,” Menshiki said. With a practiced hand he swung the binoculars slightly to the north and swiftly refocused. He took a step back and said, “Please take a look.”
I looked through the binoculars. In the circular field of vision I saw an elegant wooden house halfway up the mountain. A two-story building also constructed to take advantage of the slope, with a terrace facing this direction. On a map it would be my nearest neighbor, but because of the topography there was no road linking us, so one would have to go down to the bottom of the mountain and ascend once more on a separate road to access it. Lights were on in the windows, but the curtains were drawn, and I couldn’t see inside. If the curtains were open, though, and the lights on, you would be able to see the people inside. Very possible with binoculars this powerful.
“These are NATO-issue military binoculars. They’re not sold anywhere, so it wasn’t easy to get hold of them. They’re bright, so you can make out images well even in the dark.”
I took my eyes away from the binoculars and looked at Menshiki. “This house is what you want to see?”
“Correct. But don’t get the wrong idea. I’m no voyeur.”
He glanced through the binoculars one last time, then put them and the tripod back where they were and placed the plastic cover over them.
“Let’s go inside. We don’t want to catch cold,” Menshiki said. We went back into the living room, and sat on the sofa and armchair. The ponytailed young man sidled over and asked if we’d like anything to drink, but both of us declined.
“Thank you very much for tonight,” Menshiki said to the young man. “Feel free to go now.” The young man bowed and withdrew.
The Commendatore was now seated on top of the piano. The black Steinway full grand. He looked like he preferred this spot to where he had been sitting before. The jewels on the top handle of his long sword caught the light with a proud glint.
“In that house over there,” Menshiki began, “lives the girl who may be my daughter. I like to see her, even if it’s from a distance.”
For quite some time I was speechless.
“Do you remember? What I told you about the daughter my former girlfriend had, after she married another man? That she might be mine?”
“Of course. The woman who was stung by hornets and died. Her daughter would be thirteen. Right?”
Menshiki gave a short, concise nod. “She lives in that house with her father. In that house across the valley.”
It took a while to put the myriad questions that welled up in my mind in some kind of order. Menshiki waited silently all this time, patiently waiting for my reaction.
I said, “In other words, in order to see that young girl who might be your daughter through the binoculars every day, you bought this mansion directly across the valley. You paid a lot of money and a great deal to renovate this house for that sole purpose. Is that what you’re saying?”
Menshiki said, “Yes, that’s it. This is the ideal spot to be able to observe her house. I had to get this mansion no matter what. There was no other lot around here that I could get a building permit for. And ever since, I’ve been looking for her across the valley through my binoculars, almost every day. Though I should say that the days I can’t see her far outnumber the days I can.”
“So you live alone, keeping people out as much as you can, so no one interferes with that pursuit.”
Menshiki nodded again. “That’s right. I don’t want anyone to bother me. No one to disturb things. That’s what I’m looking for. I need unlimited solitude. You’re the only other person in the world who knows this secret. It wouldn’t be good to confess this kind of delicate thing to people.”
You got that right, I thought. And this thought occurred to me as well: Then why did you just tell me?
“Then why did you just tell me?” I asked Menshiki. “Is there some special reason?”
Menshiki recrossed his legs and looked straight at me. His voice was soft. “Yes, of course there’s a reason. I have a special favor to ask of you.”