"I was the youngest child in my family and ended up becoming closest to this family-the Schmidts. My parents were particularly keen on having me remain bilingual, since we had lived in England, Canada, and the States until I was ten, and I was fluent in English. I wasn't a particularly studious child, but I loved making models, and when I wasn't doing that I played all day outside our house in the suburbs, where the natural surroundings were still quite beautiful, so physically at least I grew up strong.
"Every weekend I was sent to stay over at the Schmidts'. His wife was Japanese, and they had a grown daughter, and Mr. Schmidt did his work at home, in a separate cottage, and that's where I slept on an army cot they set up for me. It was during this period that you and I had our near miss at that plastic model competition. What you saw there was an indication of the vio- lence I was capable of. My sexual relationship with Mr. Schmidt started when I was ten and a half and continued until I was fourteen, when I took that poker in the cottage-the poker he used to show me how to build a fire and keep it going; he was my teacher in many ways-and I hit him in the back and thighs.
He suffered compound fractures and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
"My parents and Mr. Schmidt came to an understanding, though, and I wasn't hauled off to court. Mr. Schmidt was quite generous to me, and after he returned to working in his house he restarted our English conversation lessons. I can't believe my parents weren't aware of the sexual element in the background to all this. But my father was a self-centered, closed-in person, and he was relieved to let Mr. Schmidt's generosity and good intentions settle matters.
"So I kept going over for my lessons, though I didn't spend the night, and two years later Mr. Schmidt was going on a business trip to Vienna and Salzburg in the musical off-season-his job then involving reissuing a series of old LPs-and asked me to go with him to push his wheelchair. I think Mr. Schmidt sort of put the screws to my father to get his consent. I could tell because when we were leaving my father looked kind of depressed. Anyway, after a busy week in Vienna, on the day after we went to Salzburg, I clubbed Mr. Schmidt to death.
"I wasn't taken into custody by the police but taken to a hospital in Vienna, where one of the counselors was a Japanese specialist who was a pro- fessor appointed to the staff there and the other counselor was a professor who'd taken his degree at Stanford. I spoke a lot, both in English and Japa- nese. I tried my hardest to give them the impression that I'd been forced into killing Mr. Schmidt because I'd been victimized. They believed me. Later on I heard that one of the counselors had been quoted in the newspapers to the effect that the real criminal in this case was the murdered man himself!
"Police investigators dispatched to Japan unearthed another young man who'd been sexually molested by Schmidt, which was a plus for me. Natu- rally they asked me why I hadn't told anyone, but one commentator also noted how Japan isn't the kind of country where sexual victimization is part of ordinary discourse.
"At least I was able to lead the hospital and the police investigation in a direction that was advantageous to me, convincing them that the physical and emotional wounds I'd been carrying around for so long finally exploded, and that not only was the process whereby I was injured completely overlooked, but that no one-neither my parents nor my doctors-had detected the calls for help I'd been sending out since the first incident. In other words, I put myself forward as the tragic victim in this whole affair.
"This was the spin I put on Schmidt's death for adult consumption, but inside I had a different understanding of it-not that I was aware of it at the time-and this has been a major issue for me ever since. When Mr. Schmidt was in Tokyo he had no compunction about walking around town accompa- nied by a young boy playing the role of page. This turned out to be very try- ing for me when we were in Europe. In front of the hotel staff he treated me as he would in Japan, but when he was in a formal situation with his social betters he treated me like some Oriental valet.
"The day the murder took place there was to be a dinner with a famous conductor who would be presenting a limited-engagement series of concerts in Japan, and though someone was needed to push Mr. Schmidt's wheelchair, they assigned that job to a member of the hotel owner's family. I was ordered to stay behind in our hotel room and be content with a room-service supper.
"Mr. Schmidt was decked out in formal wear, waiting for them to come get him, and I was watching Japanese cartoons on TV when he called me to come over to the terrace of our suite's sitting room. It was still some time be- fore sunset, and because the hotel was situated on a hillside, you could see a broad vista, including the dark sky threatening thunder.
"Mr. Schmidt asked me if I recalled the sketch of the Alpine valleys in the copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Madrid notebook he'd told me to look at before we left Japan. The place where we were headed next was the area where his parents had been born and raised, from which they set off when they moved to America.
He said that place resembled the drawing, which is why he'd wanted me to see it.
"Like the view from our veranda, the drawing showed, beyond gentle hills and thickets, a sunken plain with clumps of houses and groves of trees.
And beyond that a dark, rainy ravine between two mountains, with a cap of clouds like a heavy lid on top. Farther up you could see the sunlit peaks of the clouds and the Alps ranging off into the distance.
"Recalling this, what I saw before me was something with a broader façade than the drawing, a wide-angled version, with a large castle on the mountain in the middle, light on one side, darkness on the other. To the right, farther back, range upon range of the Alps sparkled in the evening sun.
"After making sure that I did recall Leonardo's drawing and that I was mentally comparing it to the scenery outside the glass doors, Mr. Schmidt said, 'My parents were born on the slopes of the mountain far back in that ravine and were raised feeling the electricity that swells up there running through their whole bodies. Every time I look at da Vinci's notebook, that electricity my parents felt shoots right through me. For the people who crossed over to the New World from here, that's what this land meant to them. And in the art that European geniuses have created lies the same effect.'
"Twilight seemed to last forever that day, and as I ate my lonely hamburger and cucumber pickle, served on the same china as in the hotel restaurant but somehow tasting different, I looked at the scene outside for the longest time and thought. It wasn't long before I came up with the idea of beating Mr. Schmidt to death. I was enraged at him for making me study that heavy book of paint- ings, bringing me here to see the real thing, and then implying that-with no European blood flowing in me-neither one had anything to do with me.
"As young as I was, though, I knew getting angry like that was point- less. Instead, I was taken with the idea of feeling the electricity he'd mentioned.
I couldn't get this out of my head. Now I realize it was like I was aware that my soul was being charged with electricity. It was thrilling. I could see my- self from outside my body, high-voltage current running through me, my body emitting a phosphorescent glow. When Mr. Schmidt returned late that night and saw me seated in front of the large fireplace (though I didn't yet have the poker in my hand), he gave a start. But he didn't say a word, just had the blond young man with him push his wheelchair into the bathroom.