(1985 – 28th September)
The three o’clock tea party was cancelled because of what happened to Negishi Fumie. The masked host informed his guests and told them they were free until dinner. Then he returned to his own quarters.
Yurie could not stay alone in the tower room, but didn’t want to go to her husband’s quarters either, so she spent her time sitting silently on a sofa in the dining room.
The sudden misfortune meant that Kuramoto Shōji now had to prepare dinner in Fumie’s place. After seeing that the guests were comfortable, he retreated to the kitchen and began looking through the cookbooks he had hurriedly taken from Fumie’s room.
The early evening wore on, and the wind and rain continued to howl down the valley outside. After a while, the police called to say that they’d had to turn back. Apparently the house was inaccessible due to a collapsed road. So now they were all imprisoned there together.
Masaki Shingo, Fujinuma Kiichi’s old friend, had been living in a room in the annex in the south-eastern corner of the house for six months. His room was on the first floor, closest to the stairs.
The guest rooms in the annex were numbered from 1 to 5. The three rooms on the ground floor were 1 to 3, starting from 93the southernmost room. Those on the first floor were numbers 4 and 5.
The four annual guests were usually assigned to the same rooms, with Ōishi in 1, Mitamura taking 2 and Mori 3. Normally, Furukawa would have room 4 on the first floor, but this year Masaki was using this room, so Furukawa was assigned to room 5 further down the hall.
The guest rooms were about 15 square metres and built in the Western style. A thick moss-green carpet covered the floors. The ceilings were bare wood planks and the walls were upholstered in ivory white. Two pivot windows were set in the outside wall of each first-floor room, evenly spaced. They were rather small considering the size of the room, but each also had a spacious full bathroom.
Masaki heard a gentle knocking at the door. At first he thought it was just the wind rattling the door in its frame, but a few seconds later, the knock came again.
He had been enjoying a cigarette, sitting at the desk at the back of his room. He turned his chair around and called out:
“Who is it?”
“It’s Furukawa.”
Masaki could barely make out the answer, but got up and opened the door anyway.
Furukawa Tsunehito was a mild-mannered person, thin and short. He had a shaved head, as one would expect of a Buddhist priest, and the absence of hair emphasized his angular features. He was actually quite handsome if you ignored his pallid complexion.
“I hope this isn’t an inconvenient moment?” Furukawa asked from outside the room. Masaki smiled and invited him in.
“Please take a seat.”
“Thank you.” 94
The humble Furukawa sat down in an armchair next to a small table. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt woven from hemp and a pair of creased black trousers. A faint unfamiliar smell hung in the air around him. Perhaps it was the scent of incense.
“There’s no particular reason for my visit. But with the storm and err, the accident, I didn’t really like being alone…”
“That’s all right, I was thinking about looking for someone to talk to myself,” said Masaki as he turned his chair towards Furukawa. “Were you burning incense in your room?”
Furukawa nodded in response to Masaki’s question.
“Does the smell bother you?” he asked.
“Oh, no, don’t worry. You’re a priest at a temple in Takamatsu, right?”
A self-effacing smile appeared on Furukawa’s lean face.
“It’s just a small, poor temple out in the country. But we also happen to tend to the graves of the Fujinuma family… That’s the only reason why someone like me gets invited here.”
“I was told your father was friends with Master Issei.”
“Yes, that’s true. That’s how I became captivated by Issei’s paintings. I’ve loved art since I was young and always dreamed of finding a job in that world, but of course I’m bound to being a priest, since I have to take over the temple.”
“Aha,” Masaki sighed understandingly.
Furukawa hunched over in his seat. He looked up at Masaki and asked: “I believe you used to be Issei’s disciple…?”
“Did someone tell you about me?”
“No, I remembered your name. I’m sure I’ve seen some of your work before, too.”
“Thank you.”
“Ah, I recall now. Didn’t you have a solo exhibition at a gallery in Ōsaka once? I think it was then that I…” 95
“That’s a long time ago.”
“But I still remember your work. Fujinuma Issei was impeccable in terms of using neutral colours to create the most remarkable fantastical landscapes, while you—how should I put it—used strong primary colours in unexpected combinations to…”
“That’s all in the past now,” Masaki quickly interrupted him. “It was more than a decade ago.”
“Oh.” Furukawa finally realized that he’d touched on a sore spot. He shuffled uncomfortably in his seat and tugged at his collar. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up…”
“It’s OK.” Masaki stood up, went over to the desk where he’d been sitting earlier and picked up the pack of Hi-Lite cigarettes he’d tossed onto it.
“I assume you know I put down my paintbrush twelve years ago. I haven’t worked on a single painting since.”
“Was it because of the accident?”
“Yes. Mr Fujinuma was driving, but I was in that car… and my girlfriend too.”
Masaki put a cigarette between his lips and sighed softly. The face of his girlfriend, Hotta Keiko, appeared before him.
“She died in the accident. Mr Fujinuma suffered injuries to his face, limbs and spine, and now he lives his life hidden in this house. And me? Miraculously I didn’t have any major injuries, but I was damaged too. Badly enough that I couldn’t paint any more.”
“But you look…” Furukawa started to say, but Masaki cut him off immediately.
“Oh, I look fine, do I?” With the unlit cigarette in his mouth, Masaki spread his arms wide, as if to mock himself. “Well, you couldn’t be more wrong. I was torn to pieces in that accident. There’s no meaning to my life any more. I’m just a broken toy.”
“But…” 96
“I apologize. I didn’t mean to take it out on you. It happened twelve years ago now, and I have learnt to accept it.”
Despite his words, Masaki bit his lip. He then noticed that Furukawa’s eyes were fixed on his left hand.
“Does my ring interest you?”
“Huh? Oh, no.” Furukawa looked away from the hand, but Masaki only smiled at him.
“These twelve years I have drifted around without a purpose. I did the complete opposite of what Mr Fujinuma has done, creating his own closed world and hiding himself away within it. A lot has happened in those twelve years… I used up every bit of the compensation money Mr Fujinuma gave me, and had nowhere to go any more. And that’s why this spring, I appeared here out of the blue, pleading for help. He owes me the world. And while I don’t know how he truly feels about me, on the surface he’s been very generous—he invited me to stay in the house.”
“Aha.”
“Still, I don’t have a penny left to call my own. All I have is this ring.”
Masaki lifted his left hand up to eye level and stared at the large cat’s eye on his ring finger.
“It’s absolutely stuck on my finger. I can’t get it off any more. It’s been there for every single one of these twelve years. Even though I considered selling it more than once as a last resort.”
“Is that an engagement ring, perhaps? And your girlfriend who passed away in the accident…” Furukawa asked.
“Yes. We were engaged to be married.”
Furukawa looked away awkwardly.
Masaki lit his cigarette and sat down again.
“Let’s talk about something else. Please tell me about yourself, and about your temple.” 97
“Absolutely wonderful. Even after all this time, that’s still the only way to describe these masterpieces,” Ōishi Genzō said loudly.
His voice echoed hollowly throughout the cold room, off the stone walls and the high ceiling.
“It’s a crime really, to have all these splendid works of art hidden away in a place like this. What do you think, Professor, and you, Mitamura?”
The three of them were in the small hall in the north-eastern corner of the house. After changing their drenched clothes and resting for a while in the annex, they had decided to have a look at the Fujinuma Issei paintings hanging in the galleries. They had started their tour in the entrance hall and proceeded clockwise. Issei’s paintings were displayed in chronological order in the galleries, beginning with the oldest work at the main entrance.
Many different landscapes of varying size hung on the walls. Almost every painting Issei had ever created could be found in this collection, including his earliest sketches and rough drafts. Whatever wouldn’t fit on the walls had been stored in the archive in the main wing.
“I wouldn’t call it a crime per se,” Mitamura Noriyuki said in reply to Ōishi’s comment.
He had his hands on his hips as he looked at the paintings surrounding him.
“You see, I don’t agree with the idea that outstanding art needs to be shown to as many people as possible.”
Mitamura grinned and glanced at the stout art dealer as he continued:
“If you ask me, the idea that the works of people like Van Gogh or Picasso are our shared inheritance is utter nonsense. 98This supposed consensus on artistic value is nothing more than a system designed to uphold an illusion. If you showed a hundred people a painting by Picasso, how many of them do you suppose would truly appreciate the beauty of his art?”
“Now you’re just being a snob,” Ōishi said.
“I know, I know, it’s childish and completely senseless to argue about this. I am but a surgeon. I’m not an art critic or sociologist, so I can’t explain this in technical terms, but I cannot believe there are more than a handful of people living in this world who are able to be as deeply touched by Issei’s works as I am. I refuse to believe that the masses can even hope to experience what I do when I admire these paintings.”
Ōishi seemed bored by the surgeon’s eloquent speech.
“So you are quite content being one of the few chosen ones?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“And you wouldn’t like to do something about Kiichi hoarding all these paintings?”
“Not unless it meant I could get them for myself.”
“But then you’d be the one hoarding them,” the dealer sighed.
“Indeed I would. But I’m sure that you and the professor feel the same as I do deep down.”
“Errm, I don’t think I do, you know,” Mori Shigehiko said from a few steps behind them, pushing his spectacles back up his nose.
Mitamura was right though, he thought. All three of them would have liked to be in Fujinuma Kiichi’s place; to be able to keep all these paintings for themselves. And Mori, too, considered himself one of the chosen. He believed he was one of the few people in the world who could truly appreciate Issei’s works.
In the end, people are only able to think and feel within the limits of the “system”, the specific culture of the society they 99belong to. Notions like artistic value and beauty are inevitably shackled by that system, and even the words we use are dictated by it.
The idea that one person alone can have the ability to truly understand a work of art might seem arrogant, or, like Mitamura said, even childish, but Mori still couldn’t fight the feeling that he was different.
Take the painting he was looking at now. The large canvas was hanging in the back of the small round hall. At first it seemed a strange painting. A “river”, or a thick tree trunk, flowed from the upper-right corner to the lower-left. Within the flow, oozing with light blues and greens, were three crooked “windows”.
The three windows were portals into different worlds, rendered vividly by firm yet delicate brushstrokes. Unrecognizable animals lurked in the shadows. A sailing ship foundered, about to sink. Red spider lilies bloomed brilliantly…
An inexplicable feeling would capture Mori whenever he looked at the painting as a single landscape. The sensation was so overwhelming that he’d forget to employ the critical eye of an art historian.
Even after reading everything his late father, Mori Fumio, had written about Issei’s work, and even though he applied everything he’d learned in his studies, Mori Shigehiko could not explain this feeling. At times he wanted to believe that these paintings defied “understanding” in the modern sense of the word. Issei’s work was beyond comprehension. And the inexplicable sensation Mori felt was proof that he was one of the chosen.
“Professor, do you have any idea how we could persuade Kiichi to change his mind?” Ōishi asked, changing his target. 100
“Change his mind about what?” Mori replied. The art dealer grinned, showing his yellow teeth.
“You know, the one we haven’t been shown yet…”
“Oh.” Mori knew instantly what Ōishi was talking about.
“I tried raising the subject when I got here…” the dealer began.
“Without success?”
“Yes. He brushed me off right away. I wonder why he’s so reluctant to show it to us.”
“Mitamura said the same thing on our way here. We’d better not push it for now,” Mori advised.
“I guess you’re right.”
Ōishi frowned and scratched his nose.
“Why is he so insistent on keeping it hidden from us?”
Mitamura had left the other two men behind and gone to the Eastern Gallery, towards the annex. Mori turned his back on Ōishi and concentrated on the painting in front of him.
After his chat with Furukawa Tsunehito, Masaki Shingo went downstairs. Mitamura called out to him from a sofa in the annex hall. The surgeon was smiling.
“I could never have imagined I would see you here today. Where have you been these ten years?”
Masaki was fed up with the questions about his past, but he answered calmly:
“A gentleman shouldn’t ask. I’ll leave it up to your imagination.”
“But you can’t blame me for being curious. How could I not be interested after what happened? You were the promising young artist studying under Fujinuma Issei, and then…” 101
“You are a rather cruel man, I see.”
“Don’t misunderstand me—I’m not prying just out of curiosity. I realize I didn’t choose my words wisely; I apologize. But I love your work from that time, and I actually own a few of your paintings. That’s why…”
“That makes your question even crueller.” Masaki sat down on the sofa and leaned forward, putting his fingertips together. “You of all people should know why I had to put down my paintbrush after what happened. Surely you must be able to figure out what happened afterwards, now that you’ve found me staying here.”
Masaki glared at the man sitting opposite him. Mitamura played with the ring on his left hand.
“Where are the other two guests? Are they looking at the paintings?” Masaki asked.
“Professor Mori has gone off on another round, starting at the beginning again. Ōishi said he was tired, so he went back to his room.”
Mitamura jerked his chin towards the corridor on the western side of the hall that led to Ōishi’s room.
“You seem tired too,” Masaki said.
“I do? We had an emergency patient last night, so I hardly slept and then we had to leave early this morning.”
Mitamura’s wide, narrow eyes were ringed by dark circles.
“An emergency?” Masaki asked.
“There was an accident. It was still fifty-fifty when I finished the operation, but there are other people keeping an eye on the patient now.”
“A surgeon’s work is never done.”
Masaki had spoken seriously, not meaning to mock Mitamura, but nonetheless he hurriedly changed the topic. 102
“By the way, I was talking with Furukawa just now.”
“Is he still upstairs?”
“Yes. I asked him if he was going to join you on your tour, but he said he wanted to go later by himself.”
“Hm. He’s always been like that, as if he has an inferiority complex when he’s around us,” Mitamura said.
“I think I understand what you mean. Just now, he seemed so self-deprecating. Talking himself down, saying he was nothing more than a priest of some unimportant country temple, that he has no talent…”
In his mind, Masaki saw the humble, spiritless look in Furukawa’s eyes once again.
“… I think he also mentioned having financial problems.”
Mitamura scowled and shrugged.
“A trivial thing to worry about. There are plenty of people with heaps of money who still manage to be vulgar brutes.”
He seemed to be alluding to the art dealer. Masaki grinned.
“A rich vulgar brute, eh? Then I guess being a penniless one is even worse.”
“I can’t believe how terrible this storm is,” said Masaki Shingo as he unwrapped a new pack of Hi-Lite cigarettes. “Will we be all right, with all this rain?”
“What do you mean?” the master of the house asked.
“I mean the house. What if there’s a landslide? We’re deep in the mountains and we know the road to town has already collapsed somewhere, right?”
“Aha.” 103
Fujinuma Kiichi’s reply was as expressionless as his mask. He turned to Kuramoto.
“It’s Kuramoto’s job to monitor these things.”
“Well, Kuramoto, how do things stand?” Masaki repeated his concern.
“We’ve had storms like these for the last ten years,” the large man stoically replied. “The house has never been damaged. You don’t need to worry.”
“That’s a relief then,” said Masaki, turning to look at the other five people seated around the table. “But it would surely be rather inconvenient for you if the storm continues, delaying the repairs to the road. I assume some of you will have to work the day after tomorrow, on Monday?”
“Things can be arranged,” Ōishi said with a loud laugh. “Might as well make the best of it while we’re stuck here, right? In fact, we’re lucky. It means we can stay just a little bit longer to look at Issei’s works.”
Masaki nodded understandingly.
“Then I guess it’s Mr Fujinuma who’s most inconvenienced by the storm.”
Everyone had gathered much later than the original plan of half past six, in the dining room in the main wing. The results of Kuramoto’s arduous struggles in the kitchen had finally been served.
There wasn’t much conversation during supper. Kiichi in particular was even more taciturn than usual. His silence made even the white mask seem melancholic. Ōishi Genzō’s raspy voice and hollow laugh was responsible for most of the noise at the dining table. Occasionally, Masaki would respond to him, but his contributions only emphasized the lifeless mood at supper.
Nobody dared to bring up Negishi Fumie’s demise that afternoon. Everyone knew that the accident was to blame for this 104heavy silence. Everyone, that is, except for the insensitive vulgar brute, Ōishi Genzō.
“I wonder how she could’ve fallen off that balcony,” he blurted out at one point, before falling silent when he saw the stern look in his host’s eyes.
It was completely dark outside now, and the wind was still blowing and the rain still falling. It had stopped thundering for the time being, but nightfall had only intensified the raging of the storm.
Fujinuma Kiichi picked up his brown pipe from the table, and looked silently around at everyone. His gaze made his four guests sit up straight in their seats.
“I will retire for the night now. I don’t feel quite right after my cold. You can view the works in the archive tomorrow.”
Kiichi put his pipe in the pocket of his dressing gown and backed his wheelchair away from the dining table, using the hand rims.
“Kuramoto, please see to our guests.”
“Yes, sir,” the butler replied.
Kiichi turned to his young wife, who had been sitting silently at the table with her head hanging.
“Will you be able to make your own way upstairs?”
Yurie nodded gently, her eyes still on the floor. Her long hair swayed slightly.
“If you don’t feel like going upstairs, you can come to my room. All right?”
“Yes, all right.”
“I bid you all a good evening then.”
Masaki got up immediately, moving behind Kiichi to push his wheelchair, but the masked host lifted a gloved hand to stop him.
“Don’t mind me. I can get to my room on my own.” 105
Kuramoto opened the double doors leading to the Western Gallery. After Kiichi had disappeared into the gloomy gallery, regretful sighs could be heard around the table.
“I guess we won’t get to see it tonight either,” said Ōishi with a wry smile.
“It?” Masaki repeated, puzzled.
Mitamura snorted.
“He’s talking about Issei’s The Phantom Cluster. Ōishi, you really don’t know when to give up, do you?”
“What fan of Issei’s works wouldn’t want to see that painting?” protested Ōishi, wrinkling his nose and glaring at the young surgeon.
He turned to Masaki.
“You were Issei’s disciple, right? Don’t you know what kind of painting it is?”
“Unfortunately not,” Masaki bluntly replied.
“But you seem quite friendly with our host. Would he happen to have told you where he keeps it?” Ōishi tried again.
“If I said I knew where it was, would you sneak off and have a look at it in secret?” Masaki queried.
“Oh, err, no, of course not,” the merchant hurried to say. Mitamura started to snigger. Masaki stroked his light stubble.
“I still have to disappoint you, I’m afraid. I don’t know anything about the painting either. I’m sure The Phantom Cluster is hidden somewhere in this house, though.”
“Aha…” The dealer puffed out his large cheeks and scratched the tip of his nose.
Then, still not ready to give up, he turned to Yurie.
“Err, so, Yurie, perhaps—” he started, but he was interrupted by Mori Shigehiko.
“Ōishi. Please drop the subject.” 106
“The professor is right,” Mitamura chimed. “It’s embarrassing to listen to you going on and on like this. You’re making a fool of yourself. Furukawa, what do you think?”
“Err, well…” An awkward smile appeared on Furukawa Tsunehito’s lean face. “I understand the desire to view that painting, of course, but…”
“Anyway, let’s not fight, OK?” Mitamura’s voice suddenly took on a softer tone. He turned to Yurie, whose head had been hanging lower and lower. “Please excuse us for causing a scene.”
Yurie did not react. Mitamura turned back to Masaki. “By the way, you mentioned you were teaching Yurie to play the piano. Is she any good?”
Masaki forced a smile in answer to the question. “She’s rather talented.”
“I hope we’ll have a chance to listen to you play then,” the surgeon said to Yurie. She blushed and softly shook her head. He looked at her and squinted.
“You really have grown even more beautiful in the past year. You’ll be twenty soon, right? Women are often at their most beautiful at your age. I envy our host…”