Killing Commendatore: A novel Read Online Free PDF

a cheap business hotel or run-down Japanese inn, flop down on the narrow bed, and sleep. Thankfully I can fall asleep right away just about anywhere, in any type of bed.
    On the morning of the second day, near Murakami City, I phoned my agent and told him I wouldn’t be able to do any portrait painting for a while. I had a few commissions I was in the middle of, but wasn’t in a place where I could do any work.
    “That’s a problem, since you’ve already accepted the commissions,” the agent said, his tone harsh.
    I apologized. “There’s nothing I can do about it. Could you tell the clients I got in a car accident or something? There are other artists who could take over, I’m sure.”
    My agent was silent for a time. Up till now I’d never missed a deadline. He knew how seriously I took my work.
    “Something came up, and I’ll be away from Tokyo for a while. I’m sorry, but in the meantime I can’t do any painting.”
    “How long is ‘for a while’?”
    I couldn’t answer. I switched off the cell phone, found a nearby river, parked my car on the bridge over it, and tossed that small communication device into the water. I felt sorry toward him, but I had to get him to give up on me. Have him think I’d gone to the moon or something.
    In Akita I stopped at a bank, withdrew some cash, and checked my balance. There was still a decent amount in my personal account. Credit card payments were automatically deducted…For the time being I had enough to continue my trip. I wasn’t using that much each day. Gas money, nights in business hotels, that’s about the size of it.
    At an outlet store outside Hakodate I purchased a simple tent and a sleeping bag. Hokkaido in early spring was still cold, so I also bought some thermal underwear. Whenever I arrived in a place, I looked for an open campground, set up my tent, and slept there, in order to save money. Hard snow still covered the ground and the nights were cold, but because I’d been spending nights in cramped, stuffy business hotel rooms I felt relieved and free inside the tent. Hard ground below, the endless sky above. Countless stars sparkling in the sky. That and nothing else.
    For the next three weeks I wandered all over Hokkaido in my Peugeot. April came, but it looked like the snow wasn’t going to melt anytime soon. Still, the color of the sky visibly changed, and plants began to bud. Whenever I ran across a small town with a hot springs I’d stay in an inn there, enjoy the bath, wash my hair and shave, and have a decent meal. Even so, when I weighed myself I found I’d lost eleven pounds.
    I didn’t read any newspapers or watch TV. My car radio had started acting up from the time I arrived in Hokkaido, and soon I couldn’t hear anything on it at all. I had no clue what was happening in the world at large, and didn’t care to know. I stopped once in Tomakomai and did laundry at a laundromat. While I waited for the clothes to finish I went to a nearby barbershop and got a haircut and shave. At the shop I saw the NHK news on TV for the first time in a long while. I say “saw,” but even with my eyes closed I could hear the announcer’s voice, whether I wanted to or not. From start to finish, though, the news had nothing to do with me, like events happening on some other planet. Or else some fake stories somebody had cooked up for the fun of it.
    The only news story that hit home was a report on a seventy-three-year-old man in Hokkaido who’d gone mushroom gathering in the mountains and been attacked and killed by a bear. When bears wake from hibernation, the announcer said, they’re hungry and irritable and very dangerous. I slept in my tent sometimes, and when the mood struck me I took walks in the woods, so it wouldn’t have been strange if I were the one who’d been attacked. It just happened to be that old man who got attacked, and not me. But even hearing that news I felt no sympathy for the old man who’d been so cruelly butchered by a