Killing Commendatore: A novel

HOW MUCH LONELINESS THE TRUTH CAN CAUSE

It’s no simple matter to hold on to your mind in total blackness. Your thoughts become a tree of riddles whose branches trail off into the dark. (A metaphor.) Nevertheless, I had to focus on something to hold myself together. Any old something would do.

Thus did the Commendatore—or the Idea that had taken his form—meet his end. Tomohiko Amada had sunk back into his deep sleep. Standing next to the Commendatore’s body, Masahiko’s bloody knife in my right hand, I was the only conscious person left in the room. My labored breathing should have been the only sound. Should have been. But something was

“I think it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who wrote that one should never trust people who claim they’re normal. It’s in one of his novels.”

EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING

I believe in all honesty that something will appear to guide me through the darkest and narrowest tunnel, or across the most desolate plain. That’s what I learned from the strange events I experienced while living in that mountaintop house on the outskirts of Odawara.

For a time after she died I drew sketches of her, over and over. Reproducing in my sketchbook, from all different angles, my memory of her face, so I wouldn’t forget it. Not that I was about to forget her face. It will remain etched in my mind until the day I die. What I sought was not to forget the face I remembered at that point in time. In order

HOW COULD I MISS SOMETHING THAT IMPORTANT?

COULDN’T RECALL THE LAST TIME I CHECKED MY TIRES’ AIR PRESSURE

Menshiki looked me in the eyes. “But even if the painting’s never completed, I’d be very happy if, in some way, I’m able to help you change. Truly.”