Killing Commendatore: A novel by Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel, Ted Goossen

text. His head was peeking out from a lid in the ground that he had partially pushed open. The lid was square, and made of boards. It reminded me of the attic cover in this house. The shape and size were identical. From there the man was watching the people on the surface.
    A hole opening up to the surface? A square manhole? No way. They didn’t have sewers back in the Asuka period. And the duel was taking place outdoors, in an empty vacant lot. The only thing visible in the background was a pine tree, with low-hanging branches. Why would there be a hole with a cover there, in the middle of a vacant lot? It didn’t make any sense.
    The man who was sticking his head out of the hole was weird looking. He had an unusually long face, like a twisted eggplant. His face was overgrown with a black beard, his hair long and tangled. He looked like some sort of vagabond or hermit who’d abandoned the world. In a way he also looked like someone who’d lost his mind. But the glint in his eyes was surprisingly sharp, insightful, even. That said, the insight there wasn’t the product of reason, but rather something induced by a sort of deviance—perhaps something akin to madness. I couldn’t tell the details of what he was wearing, since all that I could see was from the neck up. He, too, was watching the duel. But unlike the others, he showed no surprise at the turn of events. He was a mere observer of something that was supposed to take place, as if checking all the details of the incident, just to be sure. The young woman and the servant weren’t aware of the man with the long face behind them. Their eyes were riveted on the bloody duel. No one was about to turn around.
    But who was this person? And why was he hiding beneath the ground back in ancient times? What was Tomohiko Amada’s purpose in deliberately including this uncanny, mysterious figure in one corner of the painting, and thus forcibly destroying the balance of the overall composition?
    And why in the world was this painting given the title Killing Commendatore ? True, an apparently high-ranking person was being killed in the picture. But that old man in his ancient garb certainly didn’t deserve to be called a commendatore—a knight commander. That was a title clearly from the European Middle Ages or the early modern period. There was no position like that in Japanese history. But still Tomohiko Amada gave it this strange-sounding title— Killing Commendatore . There had to be a reason .
    The term “commendatore” sparked a faint memory. I’d heard the word before. I followed that trace of memory, as if tugging a thin thread toward me. I’d run across the word in a novel or drama. And it was a famous work. I knew I’d seen it somewhere…
    And then it hit me. Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni . In the beginning of that opera was a scene, I was sure, of Killing Commendatore . I went over to the shelf of records in the living room, took out the boxed set of Don Giovanni , and read through the accompanying commentary. And sure enough, the person killed in the opening scene was the Commendatore. He didn’t have a name. He was simply listed as “Commendatore.”
    The libretto was in Italian, and the old man killed in the beginning was called Il Commendatore . Whoever translated the libretto into Japanese had rendered it as kishidancho —literally, “the knight commander”—and that had become the standard term in Japanese. I had no clue what sort of rank or position the term “commendatore” referred to in reality. The commentary in a few other boxed sets didn’t elaborate. He was merely a nameless commendatore appearing in the opera with the sole function of being stabbed to death by Don Giovanni in the opening of the opera. And in the end he transformed into an ominous statue that appeared to Don Giovanni and took him down to hell.
    Pretty obvious, if you think about it,