The Ghost Brush (127 page)

The evening bell, solemn and bronze

In the grandfather temple down the hill

Sounds dimly here.

Slow beat of the mountain’s heart, perhaps,

Or determined pulse of pine tree (gift of the birds)

Growing out of a crotch of the slippery monkey tree.

All one, perhaps—bell, mountain, tree,

And steady cicada vibrato

And little white dog

And quiet artist-priest, carver of Noh masks

Fashioning a bamboo crutch for the ancient peach tree,

Symbol of strength, symbol of concern.

W
HEN SPRING CAME I WRAPPED THE PAINTINGS
of my father’s last years in the travelling bag and tied it on my back. The new paintings I had made, exorcisms in their own way—of cats, goats, trees, potatoes, anything that was alive—I wrapped in red cloth and presented to Shino.

“You will return to the world,” she said.

“I will.”

We said our farewells. I did not know if I would ever see her again. She was old, and I . . . I had nothing. But I wanted out of my monkey tree. I wanted to be an artist in my own right. To live by one brush.

52

Battles

I ENTERED THE ALLEY
walking with long strides, assisted by the walking stick
that my father had used. There was Yasayuke, enthroned on the stoop outside my house. He had gathered the neighbours to greet me.

“We’ve known for days that you were coming.”

“How did you know?”

He gave his round-shouldered, eloquent shrug. “It was the gossip of the Nakasendo. ‘The master’s daughter is returning home. She is cured of the madness that took them both in the last few years.’”

The unagi seller with her brown and wrinkled walnut face put her fillets of eel on the charcoal grill and offered me a homecoming gift. The cats wound around my ankles. Now, because of my time in the temple, I could see into their eyes and know their thoughts.

I sat down to eat and to listen as Yasayuke spun tales of his time in my alley. When he was gone, I stowed my very few precious things—the seal of age eighty-eight, the silk on which I was working, my new finished work—under the rotten old mattress. There was no other place.

T
HE APPRENTICES CLUSTERED
in my doorway. So many of them, more now than ever, it seemed. Dozens, three dozens, with their bits and pieces of my father’s names: Hokuba; Hokuju; Taito II, who was old and ill; Katsushika Isai himself, about whom I had been thinking. He had been a good friend to us and had even lived in our home for some years. But I did not know what to think about him, since the days when he’d visited us in Obuse. He brought good wishes from Iwajiro, my student, for which I thanked him.

Pre-eminent was Fukawa, to whom I had written when my father died. I had given him certain works to complete. Yet I was not sure I trusted him. Nor did I like Tsuyuki Kosho, the young man. To my great irritation, he had appropriated the name Iitsu.

“That name is not available,” I said. “Everyone knows the works signed Iitsu are by me.”

“He promised it to me,” Tsuyuki said.

He lied. I knew Hokusai would not have done that. But the master was not there to speak for himself. There were so many battles that this was one I chose to step away from, something I came to regret. At the time I simply thought, If this man wishes to be dishonourable, there is nothing I can do.

The apprentices were like an unruly family. They loved my father, but the Old Man had lasted so long. They were glad I had cared for him when he was ill. Yet they resented my nearness to him in death. And they all needed work. For years I had made decisions about the work we did. But then my father was alive, and I had clearly acted with his blessing. Now they questioned me. Could Hokusai’s daughter inherit the seal? Did the Old Man wish it? Would his memory not be lessened when his mantle passed to a woman?

They muscled through the door with a great show of reverence for the dead. But amongst them they said, in voices loud enough for me to hear, “She is just a daughter. She cannot inherit the seal. She is not the first amongst us.”

The seal was two things: it was the practical way of stamping a painting or print as being by Hokusai, and it was also the symbol of the artist’s power. I had the seal of eighty-eight, but to the disciples that did not mean I was to inherit the mantle of greatness. And with Hokusai nothing was simple: there was this other seal, of one hundred.

I explained that Hokusai had left nothing, that they should be content with the bits and pieces of his names. That they must find their own way.

“The Old Man was crazy in the end,” they said. “Otherwise you would not be the one to inherit the seal. Before he went mad he said I could have the—”

It tried my patience past its limit. I had spent every minute for five years with the Old Man as he declined. I suppose you could call him crazy. But it was the same habit of mind he had displayed all his life, only more extreme. I had ruled, in secret and by tricks. I had spared us all the bald truth, and it was now held against me.

“The master alone was in charge of this studio,” the Hoku-boys said. “You were only ever his helper.”

“He was palsied!” I said. “He was dying! Who do you think did the fine work?”

“Oh, the details, maybe,” said someone offhandedly.

Fukawa, a smooth man of about my age and a fair painter, raised his arm to still the rising voices. “Listen to the master’s daughter!”

They grudgingly fell silent.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Fukawa continued.

“We know you are responsible for much that has been produced. But you cannot do this work without him here to tell you how.”

It had been a very long time since Hokusai had told me how to paint or design. In the last decade it had been the reverse, if he had ever been working. And they knew it; they had seen him. I was insulted. I stood up and gestured that they should leave my home. It was another decision I came to regret. They muttered and moved off resentfully, and no doubt congregated elsewhere to complain about me.

To calm myself I went for a drink in the old teahouse. I smoked my pipe and wished for the counsel of Eisen or even the long-lost Sanba—someone who believed in me. There was no one left I could trust. In my heart I knew I could continue to lead the studio forward. How could I make the world listen?

I made my way home. It was dark. The moon had wandered off, and dawn was nowhere near. I saw a geisha sliding in her high clogs. She came to a standstill waving her long-fingered hands. “Oh, help me. P-please, I am sli-ding!” Useless creature. In a few hours the street would come alive: the outside men with their shovels and weather-darkened skin would come down the centre of the road.

Dirty old world—how I loved it.

M
y room was empty. I lit the lamp. It was in those small hours, one day after the next, that I completed the paintings I had promised my father I would finish. This one was a tiger bounding through a snowstorm. It was a portrait of the Old Man. The summer moors of his death poem had become winter fields. I made his claws. I made the needles of the pine branches to mimic them. I made the fine hairs of fur on his hindquarters. I made the soft pads of his feet, under his toes, modelling them on the toes of my cats. I gave him a beatific smile. Bending close to the silk, I made Hokusai’s signature, as I had so often done. I pulled out the stone seal from its hiding place, behind the statue of St. Nichiren in the orange crate, and with a little red ink stamped it on the fabric. “Hokusai, age
88
.” I blew out the lamp and went to bed. The sun was rising.

It was noontime before I woke up. The neighbours, those who did not see my lamplight, called me a lay-abed and scolded—affectionately, I add, but scolded nonetheless—that I was a drunken woman.

In broad daylight, I checked to see that the paint was dry. I rolled the silk and tucked it under my arm. Genial to all my detractors, I walked into the sunlight and straight to the shop of Sakai-san, outside the gates of the castle. He was the son of the wealthy merchant I had met in Obuse, a slim and elegant man, like a Noh dancer. He did not look like he could withstand a strong wind. But he had excellent taste. He held his hands in front of his chest to take the scroll from me. Then we unrolled Tiger in Snow. Sakai’s intake of breath made me proud and happy.

“I have other works from my father’s last years,” I said. “I’ll bring them one at a time.” We arranged that he would give me money when I needed it.

And in that way time passed.

“
WHAT WILL YOU DO?”
asked my brother Sakujiro.

He appeared in the doorway, surprising me. I was sitting in the kotatsu, tucked under the quilt, drinking tea, just waking. Feeling it necessary to achieve equality, I scrambled to my feet.

“What will I do?” I repeated.

As Hokusai’s oldest living son, he had inherited responsibility for me. It was a strange question all the same. What I had always done. What I was doing. “Work as an artist, live here.”

“But how can you, without the Old Man?” he said.

He was a good brother. He was not stupid or coarse. He was even a little cultured: he wrote haiku; he had a pen name. I put on my downward and sideways glance.

“I see that is my answer,” he said. “You can’t.”

“Of course I can. I am. I have been and I will be working as an artist.”

It was as if I hadn’t spoken. “Come to live with us,” he said. “We have taken over the house in Uraga. I have been promoted to accounting manager,” he said. He was paid eighty rice barrels every year.

“You could have helped us.” It came out of my mouth.

“He had you,” my brother said. “That was all he wanted.”

I looked into his face, astonished.

And he went away, scowling at my door as he went. “I will be back.”

So much had been hidden by the hugeness of Hokusai. Here were my brother and I, both in need—I to be freed of my father’s grip, and he to feel his father’s love.

H
e came again.

“Sakujiro!” I said, bending over my work and barely lifting my head. Would we ever recover from the imbalance created because I had too much father and he had too little? I was painting a miniature of flowers. So many petals, each one gold or orange. Each one like a slim tongue curling upward, red on top, yellow underneath.

“Ei, my sister”—he came straight to his point—“you cannot continue to live on your own. The studio has broken up and you cannot make a living as one brush.”

“What have I been doing? You can see that it is quite possible.” And I was not always on my own. I visited my students; I went to stay with patrons for whom I did commissions.

“I gave you time: I supposed you would have work of the Old Man’s to clear away . . . You are not getting younger.”

“A few years is no time at all.”

He threw up his hands in frustration. “You can’t afford to be choosing. I am offering to look after you.”

He paced in my small rooms. Three steps to the back wall, three steps to the front; three steps to the far wall, three back. His toes were at the edge of my fabric. I daintily moved it an inch away.

“What are you doing? Still trying to make a go of it as an artist in your own right?”

“I’m not trying,” I said mildly. “I am doing it. As I have done for a long time. Even while Hokusai was living.”

I begged him to sit, and he did. I called the boy next door to bring us tea. We sat with the bowls in the palms of our hands, warming them but not our hearts. I tried reason. I explained to him carefully that for the past many years, while Hokusai was alive, my work had kept us going. My work, not his.

It was the last time I tried to tell anyone this. Sakujiro simply did not believe it. He told me I was crazy. He put down his tea and leapt to his feet. He shook his fists at me. My words hung in the air. He batted them away. He stood over me. This meant he had to look down on the top of my head, which was inclined to my silk. I could feel him studying me. Crazy old woman, he was thinking; she suffers delusions.

I felt the blaze of humiliation. I was furious. I hated him then. I hated everyone for the way they saw me. My anger came bubbling up my throat. I opened my mouth.

But just in time I remembered Shino’s advice: dissemble. “Let them think you are entirely in their hands.” I sensed a way out, sniffed it out like a dog. My father had said I was the next best thing to a soothsayer. You should go to Uraga, a voice told me. Uraga is a nice place. Take up his offer. Satisfy his vanity. Just for a little, go along with this idea. Then he’ll leave you alone.