Killing Commendatore: A novel (16 page)

“I don't know how it's going to turn out, but once I know, I'll be in touch.”

“If it were me, I'd just wear earplugs,” Masahiko said.

After I hung up I sat in a chair in the living room and read the Ueda Akinari story. I read it first in the original classical Japanese, then in the contemporary-language version. A couple of details were different, but as Menshiki had said there was a strong resemblance between the story and what I was experiencing here. In the story the character heard the gong sounding at two o'clock in the morning, about the same time. But what I heard wasn't a gong but a bell. In the story the buzz of insects didn't stop. The protagonist hears the gong mixed in with the sound of the insects. But these small details aside, what I experienced was exactly the same as in the story. It left me dumbfounded, in fact, at how close the two were.

The unearthed mummy was completely dried up, just its hand doggedly moving, striking the gong. A terrifying vitality made the hand move almost mechanically. No doubt this priest gave up the ghost while reciting sutras and beating out a rhythm on the gong. The main character put clothes on the mummy and poured water on his lips. Before long he was able to eat some thin rice gruel and gradually put on flesh. Finally he recovered to the point where he looked like a normal human being. But you got no sense from him at all of a priest who had attained enlightenment. No intelligence or wisdom, and not a hint of dignity. And he had lost all memory of his former life. He couldn't recall, even, why he'd gone underground like that for so very long. He ate meat now, and had a considerable sexual appetite. He got married, and managed to make a living doing menial work. People nicknamed him “Nyujo no Josuke”—Josuke, the meditation guy. His pathetic figure made the villagers lose all respect for Buddhism. Is this the kind of wreck you end up as, they wondered, after all the strict ascetic training he went through, risking his life in pursuit of Buddhism? They started to despise faith, and stopped going to temple. That was Ueda's story. As Menshiki had said, the story reflected the author's cynical worldview. It's not merely some tale of the supernatural.

For all that, Buddhist teachings were in vain. That man must have been underground, ringing that gong, for well over a hundred years. Yet nothing miraculous came of it, and people were fed up that all that came from it were bones.

I reread the short story “Fate over Two Generations” several times and found myself utterly confused. Say we used heavy equipment to move the stones, dug up the soil, and what emerged was a bony, pathetic mummy, then how was I supposed to handle that? Would I be responsible for resuscitating him? Was it wiser, as Masahiko had advised, to not meddle, and simply plug up my ears and leave it all alone?

But even if I wanted to do that, I couldn't simply make it go away. I would never be able to escape that sound, no matter how tightly I plugged up my ears. And say I moved somewhere else; that sound might follow me. Plus, like Menshiki, I was curious. I had to find out what lay hidden beneath those stones.

In the afternoon Menshiki called me. “Did you get Mr. Amada's permission?”

I told him pretty much everything about my conversation with Masahiko. And how he'd told me to handle it any way I wanted.

“I'm glad,” Menshiki said. “I've arranged things with the landscape designer. I didn't tell him about the mysterious sound. I just asked him to move some stones out in the woods and then dig a hole there. It was a sudden request, but his schedule happened to be free, so if you don't mind, he'd like to come and look over the site this afternoon and start work tomorrow morning. Is it all right with you that he comes to check out the work site?”

“He can come over whenever he wants,” I said.

“After he inspects the site, he'll arrange for the equipment he needs. The work itself should be done in a few hours. I'll be present when they're working,” Menshiki said.

“I'll be there, too. When you find out what time they'll start, let me know,” I said. “By the way,” I added, remembering, “about what we were talking about last night, before we heard that sound…”

Menshiki didn't seem to follow. “I'm sorry, you mean—”

“It was about the thirteen-year-old girl, Mariye. You said she might be your real daughter. We were talking about her when we heard the bell, and that's as far as we got.”

“Ah yes,” said Menshiki. “Now that you mention it, we did talk about that. I'd totally forgotten. Yes, we should talk about that again sometime. But there's no rush. We can talk about it again once we take care of the matter at hand.”

After that I couldn't concentrate. I tried reading, listening to music, cooking, but all I could think of was what lay beneath those ancient stones in the woods. I couldn't shake the thought of a blackened mummy, shriveled up like a dried fish.

Menshiki called me that night to let me know that the work would begin the next morning, Wednesday, at ten.

Wednesday morning it was drizzling off and on, but not hard enough to delay the work. It was a fine rain, and a hat or raincoat with a hood was enough. No need for an umbrella. Menshiki had on an olive-green rain hat, the kind the British might use for duck hunting. The leaves of the trees, starting to turn fall colors, took on a dull color from the nearly invisible rain that soaked them.

The workers used a flatbed truck to move in a small backhoe. A very compact piece of equipment, with a tight turning radius, made to work in confined spaces. There were four workers altogether—one backhoe operator, one foreman, and two additional workers. The shovel operator and the foreman drove the truck. They all had on matching blue rainwear, jackets and trousers, and muddy thick-soled work boots, and wore protective helmets made of heavy-duty plastic. Menshiki and the foreman were apparently acquainted, and they talked for a while, the two of them beaming, next to the little shrine. I could tell, though, that the foreman remained on his best behavior toward Menshiki.

Menshiki must have had a lot of clout to arrange for this many people and equipment in such a short time. I watched this whole process half impressed, half bewildered. I had a slight sense of resignation, too, as if everything were already out of my hands. Like when I was a child and the little kids would be playing some game and bigger kids would come around and take over. I remembered that feeling.

They started the operation by using shovels and some material and boards to create a flat foothold for the backhoe to move, and then they began to actually remove the stones. The backhoe soon trampled down the thicket of pampas grass surrounding the mound. Menshiki and I stood to one side watching as they lifted the stones from the mound one by one and moved them to a spot a little ways away. There wasn't anything special about the operation. Probably the same sort of operation that takes place every day, all around the world. The workers looked ordinary too, like they were matter-of-factly following procedures they'd done a thousand times. Occasionally the backhoe operator would stop and call out in a loud voice to the foreman, but it didn't seem like there was any problem. They just exchanged a few words, and he didn't switch off the engine.

But I couldn't calmly watch the operation. Each time one of the square stones was removed, my anxiety only deepened. It was like some dark secret that I'd hidden away for years was being revealed, layer by layer, by the powerful, insistent tip of that machine. The problem lay in the fact that even I didn't know what secret I was hiding. Several times I felt I had to get them to stop the operation. Bringing in some large machinery like this backhoe couldn't be the solution. As Masahiko had told me on the phone, all “mysterious things” should be left buried. I was seized by the urge to grab Menshiki's arm and shout, “Let's stop this! Put the stones back where they were.”

But of course I couldn't do that. The decision had been made and the work begun. Several other people were already involved. A not-insubstantial sum of money was changing hands (the amount was unclear, but I assumed Menshiki was footing the bill). We couldn't just stop at this point. The work continued, beyond my will.

As if he knew what I was going through, at a certain point Menshiki came over beside me and lightly patted me on the shoulder.

“There's nothing to worry about,” he said in a calm voice. “It's going smoothly. It'll all be finished soon.”

I nodded in silence.

Before noon all the stones had been moved. The ancient stones that had been piled in a jumble in a crumbling mound were now piled up in a neat, official-looking pyramid a little ways away. The fine drizzle silently fell on the pile. Even after removing all those stones, though, the ground hadn't appeared. Below the stones lay more stone. These stones were flat and had been methodically laid out there like a square stone flooring. The whole thing was about six feet on each side.

“I wonder why it's like that,” the foreman said after coming over to where Menshiki was. “I was sure that the stones were just piled up on top of the ground. But they weren't. There seems to be an open space underneath that stone slab. I inserted a thin metal rod into a gap and it went down pretty far. Not sure yet how deep it goes, though.”

Menshiki and I gingerly tried standing on top of the freshly uncovered slab. The stones were darkly wet and slippery in spots. Though they'd been artificially cut and evened up over time, the edges had become more rounded off, with gaps between the stones. The nightly sound of the bell must have filtered out through those gaps. And air could probably get in through those too. I crouched down and stared through a gap inside, but it was pitch black and I couldn't make out a thing.

“Maybe they used flagstones to cover up an ancient well. Though for a well, its diameter is a bit big,” the foreman said.

“Can you remove these flagstones?” Menshiki asked.

The foreman shrugged. “I'm not sure. We hadn't planned on this. It'll make things a little complicated, but I think we can manage it. Using a crane would be our best bet, but we'd never get one in here. Each stone doesn't look that heavy. And there's a gap between them, so with a little ingenuity I think we can manage with the backhoe. We're coming up on our lunch break, so I'll work out a good plan then and we'll get to work in the afternoon.”

Menshiki and I went back to the house and had a light lunch. In the kitchen I threw together some simple ham, lettuce, and pickle sandwiches and we went out on the terrace to eat as we watched the rain.

“This whole operation is delaying what we should be working on, finishing the portrait,” I said.

Menshiki shook his head. “There's no rush with the portrait. Our first priority is solving this weird matter. Then you can get back to work on the painting.”

Did this man
seriously
want his portrait painted? I couldn't help but wonder. This doubt had been smoldering in a corner of my mind from the very start. Did he
seriously
want me to paint his portrait? Wasn't he just using the portrait as a mere pretext, and had some other reason for getting to know me?

But what could it be? I couldn't figure it out. Was his goal unearthing what was under those stones? This didn't make sense. He hadn't known about them. That was something unforeseen that only came up after we started on the portrait. Still, he seemed overly enthusiastic about digging them up. And he was shelling out quite a bit of money for the operation, even though it had nothing to do with him.

As I was mulling over all this Menshiki asked, “Did you read the story ‘Fate over Two Generations'?”

“I did,” I told him.

“What did you think? A very strange tale, isn't it?” he said.

“It certainly is,” I said.

Menshiki looked at me for a while, then said, “To tell the truth, that story has tugged at me for a long time. It's one of the reasons this discovery has aroused my interest.”

I took a sip of coffee and wiped my mouth with a paper napkin. Two crows, cawing at each other, winged their way across the valley, undeterred by the rain. Wet by the rain, their wings would only grow a deeper black.

“I don't know much about Buddhism,” I said to Menshiki, “so I don't understand all the details, but doesn't a priest doing a voluntary burial—this
nyujo
—mean he chooses to go into a coffin and die?”

“Exactly.
Nyujo
originally means ‘attaining enlightenment,' so they have the term
ikinyujo
—‘living
nyujo
'—to distinguish the two. They make a stone-lined underground chamber and insert a bamboo pipe to allow in air. Before a priest does
nyujo
he maintains a fruitarian diet for a set time so his body won't putrefy but will become nicely mummified.”

“Fruitarian?”

“Just eating grasses and nuts and berries. They eat no cooked foods whatsoever, starting with grains. In other words, a radical elimination of all fats and moisture from the body. Changing the makeup of the body so it can easily mummify. And after purifying his body, the priest goes underground. In the darkness there the priest fasts and recites sutras, hitting a gong in time to that. Or ringing a bell. And people can hear the sound of that gong or bell through the vent hole. But at some point the sounds stop. That's the sign that he's breathed his last. And over a period of time the body gradually turns into a mummy. The custom is to unearth the body after three years and three months.”

“Why would they do that?”

“So the priests could practice austerity to the point of becoming self-mummified. Doing that allows them to reach enlightenment and to arrive at a realm beyond life and death. This also connects up with mankind's salvation. So-called Nirvana. The unearthed enlightened monk, the mummy, is kept at a temple, and through praying to it people are saved.”

“In reality it's a kind of suicide.”

Menshiki nodded. “Which is why in the Meiji period the practice of self-burial was outlawed. People who helped in the process could be arrested for aiding and abetting suicide. The truth is, though, priests continued to follow the practice in secret. That's why there may be quite a few cases of priests being buried but never unearthed by anyone.”

“Are you thinking that stone mound is the remains of a secret burial of that kind?”

Menshiki shook his head. “We won't know until we actually remove the stones. But it's possible. There's no bamboo tube there, but the way it's constructed, air could get in through the gaps, and you can hear sounds from inside too.”

“And you're saying that someone is still alive underneath those stones and is ringing a gong or bell every night?”

Menshiki shook his head again. “That obviously doesn't make any sense.”

“Reaching Nirvana—is that different from merely dying?”

“It is. I'm not all that familiar with Buddhist doctrine, but as far as I understand, Nirvana is found beyond life and death. You could see it as the idea that even if the flesh dies and disappears, the soul goes over to a place beyond life and death. Worldly flesh is nothing more than a temporary dwelling.”

“Even if a priest were, through burial alive, to reach Nirvana, is it possible for him to rejoin his physical body?”

Menshiki said nothing and looked at me for a while. He took a bite of his ham sandwich, and a sip of coffee.

“What you're saying is—”

“I didn't hear that sound until four or five days ago,” I said. “I'm certain of that. If the sound had been there I would have noticed. Even if it was small, it's not the kind of sound I would have missed. I only started hearing it a few days ago. What I mean is, even if there's somebody underneath those stones, that person hasn't been ringing the bell for a long time.”

Menshiki returned his coffee cup to the saucer and studied the pattern on the cup. “Have you seen a real mummified priest?” he finally said.

I shook my head.

“I've seen several. When I was young I traveled around Yamagata Prefecture on my own and saw a few that were preserved in temples there. For some reason there are a lot of these mummified priests in the Tohoku region, especially in Yamagata. Honestly, they're not very nice to look at. Maybe it's my lack of faith, but I didn't feel very grateful when I saw them. Small, brown, all shriveled up. I probably shouldn't say this, but the color and texture reminded me of beef jerky. The physical body really is nothing more than a fleeting, empty abode. That, at least, is what these mummies teach us. We may do our utmost, but at best we end up as no more than beef jerky.”

He picked up the ham sandwich he'd been eating and gazed at it intently for a moment. As if he were seeing a ham sandwich for the first time in his life.

He went on. “At any rate, let's wait till after lunch for them to move those stones. Then we'll know more, whether we want to or not.”

We went back to the site in the woods just after one fifteen. The crew had finished lunch and were hard at work. The two workmen put wedge-like metal implements in the gaps between the stones, and the backhoe used a rope to pull those and raise the stones. The workmen then attached ropes to the dug-up stones, and the shovel hauled these up. It was time consuming, but one by one the stones were steadily unearthed and moved off to the side.

Menshiki and the foreman were deep in conversation about something for a while, but then he came back to join me.

“As they thought, the stones aren't all that thick. Looks like they'll be able to remove them,” he explained. “There seems to be a lattice-shaped lid underneath all the stones. They don't know what it's made of, but that lid supported the stones. After they remove all the stones on top they'll need to take off that lid. They don't know yet if they can. It's impossible to guess what lies beneath that. It'll take a while for them to remove all the stones, and once they've made more progress they'll call us, so they said they'd like us to wait in the house. If you don't mind, let's do that. Standing around here isn't going to help.”

We walked back home. I should have used the extra time to continue work on the portrait, but I didn't feel I'd be able to concentrate on painting. The operation out in the woods had me on edge. The six-foot-square stone flooring that had emerged from underneath the mound of crumbling old stones. The solid lattice lid. And the space that seemed to lie below it. I couldn't erase these images from my mind. Menshiki was right. Until we settled this matter we wouldn't be able to move forward on anything else.

“Do you mind if I listen to music while we wait?” Menshiki asked.

“Not at all,” I said. “Play whatever record you'd like. I'll be in the kitchen preparing some food.”