Killing Commendatore: A novel Read Free Page B

I’d never want to have a personal relationship with. But as a visitor who was with them for only a short time, in a set place, it wasn’t that hard to find one or two appealing qualities. Look deep enough into any person and you will find something shining within. My job was to uncover this and, if the surface is fogged up (which was more often the case), polish it with a cloth to make it shine again. Otherwise the darker side would naturally reveal itself in the portrait.
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    So, before I knew it, I had become an artist who specialized in portraits. And I became fairly known within this particular, rather narrow field. When I got married, I ended my exclusive contract with the company in Yotsuya, became independent, and—through an agency specializing in the art business—received individual commissions to do portraits for even higher fees. The agent in charge, a capable, ambitious person, was ten years older than me. He encouraged me to be independent and take my work even more seriously. After that point, I painted portraits of numerous people (mostly in the financial and political worlds, celebrities in some cases, though I’d never heard of most of them) and made a decent income. Not that I became a great authority in the field or anything. The world of portraiture is totally different from that of the artistic art world. And different from photography too. There are a lot of photographers specializing in portraits who are held in high esteem and whose names are well known, but you don’t find that with portrait artists. Very seldom is one of our works seen in the world at large. They aren’t featured in art magazines or hung in galleries. Instead they’re hung in reception areas somewhere, forgotten, gathering dust. If anyone happens to look at those paintings carefully (someone with time on his hands), they still aren’t about to ask about the artist’s name.
    Occasionally I’ve thought of myself as a high-priced artistic prostitute. I use all the techniques at my disposal, as conscientiously as I can, in order to satisfy my client. I possess that sort of talent. I’m a professional, but that said, it doesn’t mean I mechanically follow a set procedure. I do put a certain amount of feeling into my work. My fees aren’t cheap, but my clients all pay without any complaints. The sort of people I take on as clients aren’t the kind to worry about price. People learned of my skill through word of mouth, and I had an unending line of clients, my appointment book always jam-packed. But inside me I felt no desire whatsoever. Not a shred.
    I hadn’t become that sort of artist, or that type of person, because I’d wanted to. Carried along by circumstances, I’d given up doing paintings for myself. I’d married and needed to make a stable income, but that wasn’t the only reason. Honestly, I’d already lost the desire to paint for myself. I might have been using marriage as an excuse. I wasn’t young anymore, and something—like a flame burning inside me—was steadily fading away. The feeling of that flame warming me from within was receding ever further.
    I should have washed my hands of that person I’d become. I should have stood up and done something about it. But I kept putting it off. And before I got around to it, the one who gave up on it all was my wife. I was thirty-six at the time.

2
THEY MIGHT ALL GO TO THE MOON
    “I am very sorry, but I don’t think I can live with you anymore,” my wife said in a quiet voice. Then she was silent for a long while.
    This announcement took me by complete surprise. It was so unexpected I didn’t know how to respond, and I waited for her to go on. What she’d say next wasn’t going to be very upbeat—I was certain about that—but waiting for her to continue was the most I could manage.
    We were seated across from each other at the kitchen table. A Sunday afternoon in the middle of March. Our sixth wedding anniversary was the middle of the