The Ghost Brush (47 page)

“Hokusai?”

He did not answer, but a small smile played on his lips.

“Are you playing a game?”

He did not answer.

I looked at his wiry, curled body on the mat and chose to think that he was resting. I sat beside him, and time passed. Now the little argument we had about moving on seemed remote. It had become impossible, without our noticing. Here was an old man gasping on the floor.

I rose, resolved to do what every housewife in Japan did on the last day of the old year—sweep the place clean.

But we didn’t have a broom.

I went out to the unagi seller who lived next door and borrowed one.

I followed the instructions. One hand over the other on the broom handle. One foot ahead of the other. Reach the arms forward. Pull back and scoop under. Flip up the grass ends of the broom to push the dirt away. Do this around in a circle, collecting the dirt in one place. And then—

Sweep, sweep, sweep. I was raising a storm. The dust was whirling around. It was in the air, creating a lovely haze in the daylight that streamed through our little door. But soon it would fall. Where did dust go? He would be dust. And I would be dust, one day.

His gums parted. He grunted, wanting shochu. I held it for him.

“I came into the world with nothing and I will leave it with nothing,” he said.

I had heard that before. But I did not like to hear any more about him leaving.

Two of the disciples made an appearance. They greeted my father, who struggled to sit up.

“Is the unagi grilled yet? Go get me some, Chin-Chin. I am hungry.”

“I’m going.”

The old eat like horses.

36

Friends

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.
The unagi woman was pounding the eels with her wooden mallet. I hurried past. It was icy in the temple square. I tucked my hands around my ribs, into the sleeves of padded coat. Tomorrow would be the beginning of warmer days; surely it had to be. Moving across the windswept open centre, beyond the protection of the trees, a man was bent low behind his barrow, using it to shield himself. He stopped and stepped out from behind his load, bowing.

“How is your honoured father?”

It was the kindness that unnerved me. My voice came out a wail. “Hokusai is on his mat. Hokusai will rise no more,” I said.

I was immediately sorry, as the man looked terrified. He muttered his apologies and went behind his barrow.

I bought some bonito and then begged two very special eggs to tempt the Old Man’s appetite. The fishmonger wrapped it for me.

“He is well today?”

He asked this every day, and he knew the answer. But I had had enough of scaring the neighbourhood.

“He is well, thank you. Telling me stories. Already has his brushes out.”

E
ating took all his energy. Watching him I lost my appetite. I took my usual seat beside him and picked up my brush.

I drank too much sake last night. I smoked my pipe too much last night. I stayed up too late. I cried to think of the new year and how we would live. Now my mouth tasted like ashes and my head was tight as the skin of a taiko drum. Meanwhile, the Old Man industriously crawled on the tatami with his bottom up in the air.

I went back to my painting of courtesans and lattice. Over the women’s heads I wanted stars like the ones I had seen in the countryside. Little sparks, like moth holes eaten in the fabric of a dense wrapper. I wanted light to come through them, light from another place. I didn’t know how to make stars on a night sky. I was trying when a scratch came at the door. Another New Year’s visitor.

I slid the screen away. She had a white cloth wound over her forehead and tight under her chin. It fell over her shoulders and her chest. Under it she wore an ordinary short coat, a padded skirt, white tabi, and thonged sandals. But nothing could disguise her, not the nun’s hood or the wet mud of the roads. She carried a bamboo flute.

She bowed low. I bowed lower. Hokusai remained on his elbows on the floor and did not look up. I was filled with emotion. I signalled the nun to enter the room.

“Hey, hey, Old Man,” I said. “You have a guest.”

He looked up. He could not stand.

Shino bowed low and congratulated him on his health, his home, his good fortune.

I noticed suddenly that it was too cold in our room, and that it was bare. We had nothing—only the orange crate nailed to the wall with the statue of Nichiren in it—and my hair was unkempt.

I stirred the fire. I called the neighbouring boy to bring tea.

“We can only burn the charcoal dust because anything else makes him cough,” I said.

Hokusai squatted, never letting go of his brush, moving it. He was silent.

“I was in my fifteenth year,” said Shino, “when I was sent to the teahouse to get a special tea for Fumi of the Corner Tamaya. When I was there I met an artist.”

“I was in my forty-fifth year,” said Hokusai. “I carried the child Chin-Chin on my shoulder. My new wife had given her to me. I was selling my pictures in the Yoshiwara.”

“I had been sentenced to the Yoshiwara to serve as a courtesan for raising my hand to my husband. In fact, I had sliced his ear. I had been a lady-in-waiting at the Shogun’s castle.”

“I never knew that!”

“There was a time I was to be a polisher of mirrors in the Shogun’s court,” he said.

He looked up, into her face. He made circles with his hand in front of his chest, then he stopped and peered into the circle that he had just rubbed clear, and he frowned and began to rub it again. He spit and rubbed, peered and rubbed, and pursed his lips.

“In the Shogun’s palace there were many idle women. The young ones were beautiful. And lonely.” He grabbed at his crotch and pulled and laughed. “There were many secret places in the Shogun’s court—rooms and rooms, corridors going on forever. You could slide into a cabinet.”

Shino was quiet, getting used to the way he was.

“Lots of laughing going on in the Shogun’s court,” he said, again gesturing obscenely.

“I know it,” I said.

“You don’t know it,” he accused. “What do you know about men? You are Oei of the strong jaw, who does not like men.”

“How can you say I don’t like men? I devote myself to you.”

He gave his gummy grin. We were trapped in our madness and showing it to our guest.

“Shino has come to see us,” I said.

“I am pleased.”

But his mind, on seeing her, had begun to speed backwards. “It was discourteous of me to turn down Nakajima after he adopted me,” said Hokusai.

“Why did you do it, then?” I asked.

“I didn’t want to polish mirrors.” He looked at me as if I were stupid. “Never again would I be responsible for the cleanliness of a thing, an object, or a place. Never again have to turn my back on people because they were powerful. So I got freedom.” He laughed. “Freedom to look, without hiding my face.”

We were silent.

“But the Shogun’s ladies, they were good. They bought the shunga. Without them we would have lost it all. Everything killed off by the censors.” He looked at Shino and came back to today. “Ei is my sun, and my moon. And you are Shino, my star.”

I
left them together and went out to the
ageya.

I passed the kitchen and, greeting the owner, left my outer jacket and went to the “fishing net room,” where, as usual, men sat at the low tables smoking and roaring with drink. I slid to a seat against the wall.

“There she is, the most famous woman artist in Edo. Of course, the field is not large,” came the voice. “How many women artists can there be?”

Hiroshige moved sideways to make room for me.

“As many as can be spared from the beds of the men of Edo,” I replied. “Beds where most of them toil in obscurity.”

He gave me a pained smile. He hated anyone to best him, even with a line.

“There are many women, you are right. But only Oei was chosen for the Illustrated Manual. I wonder why?”

“Could it be because of her parentage?”

The men’s foreheads gleamed in the lamplight, their eyes shone. But their mouths were lost in the dark. I drew smoke into my chest.

“No, it cannot. And anyway, who cares about old Hokusai? He has lived long, but he is no source of inspiration today.”

Hiroshige was my senior but only by a few years. Now he fancied himself the king of ukiyo-e, the famous printmaker of famous places. Of course, he was only copying what my father had done fifteen years before.

“Oei was chosen as a novelty: a woman to do the drawings, that’s a good idea,” he continued. “And it worked. But it can’t be repeated.”

“Yet I would welcome the chance to try,” I said.

“It is a beautiful book. Oei-san did a good job,” came another voice. Eisen. Always my defender.

I watched the samisen player, her white and downcast face intent on the strings. The sad words from a very old song.

Gallantry and love affairs

Are only while we live.

We will die at last, will die.

Come let us drink our fill, carouse,

We know no tomorrow.

I made my way out to the wooden walk above the sunken garden. A giant metal lamp, saved from the fire, cast its light down into the gnarled tree roots. A cat sprang up and brushed my legs; I picked it up and stroked it. Raindrops, half frozen, glittered on the ends of the pine needles. Fallen needles gave a copper sheen to the earth. Some were carried in the trickle of water that snaked between the great bulging roots.

A movement disturbed the dark at the far side. Two figures parted, men in bulky costumes. Lovers? Or samurai conspirators? One and the same, these days. Both were doomed.

I recognized one. It was Sakuma, Kozan’s teacher from Obuse. The conspirators had such bold plots: they would break the Tokugawa. More and more one heard of Western ships touching down on the eastern shores of Japan, of their sails trembling beyond the reach of our guns. Von Siebold had told me, twenty years before, that our system could not hold back time. But I had lived so long this way, it was hard to imagine it could ever end.

A taiko drummer burst laughing out of the ageya hall onto the walkway. He had removed his shirt in the heat inside. His skin shone, rich and bronze. The party followed him outside.

“Give us a verse, Oei!”

The men pulled me back inside. “I will,” I said. “I will.”

“Will it be lewd?”

“For lewd, you won’t beat the Old Man.”

In front of me appeared a small water dish, rice paper, some black ink. I pulled a brush from my folder of brushes inside my kimono.

“Try this,” said Eisen. He showed me a strange device. It had the hairs of a brush. But it had a thicker stem, not the usual lacquered wood. It had a hole and a tube you squeezed. He showed me how to fill it with ink.

“I got it from Hiroshige. He invented it so he could sketch on the road.”

Two boys dressed up as girls got up to do a song. It was very sweet. One played a little tinkling flute while the other minced.

You are divine.

You are perfect for marriage.

You have class.

I have only one thing to ask.

Do you take it in the ass?

Their faces were all angles, the lines of nose and eyes like warriors’. My fingers itched to draw them. But who would buy a drawing of these faces?

E
isen and I took a rickshaw to the Ryogoku Bridge to see the New Year’s fireworks. Bundled onlookers filled the long arc of the bridge, which stood on its many thick wooden legs high over the wintry Sumida. The surface of the river was placid and boats large and small were anchored, waiting for the show. We stood at the high point—the boat with the fireworks discharger was beneath us. At the signal balls of gold and red flew high over our heads, curved, and began to fall, shedding coloured fire.

Eisen brought his drinking flask up to his mouth. “I loved you once,” he said. “But you were spoken for.” The river flowed silently in the darkness, a black lacquer base for the flowers of light and fire that plumed above. Who had spoken for me? Hokusai, of course. My father.

“My father says he will not die. But death is approaching. And so we wait and pretend it isn’t.”

“It is the pretense that exhausts you,” said my good friend.

I looked farther over the railing into the black. “You’re insane!” my father shouted at me. But he was the crazy one. How could I say this without betrayal?

“He is not himself,” I could say. “The Old Man is not available.” That would be polite. Eisen was my old friend. Yet there would be no confiding. I tried it this way: “The repose of old age, he doesn’t experience. He forgets. He insists. He changes his mind. He tries to run. He cannot walk. I obey his every word; I don’t expect him to be wrong. He is mad. So I am mad too.”