The Ghost Brush (83 page)

He brought out another: Tipsy Beauty. The courtesan was drunk and leaning over a black lacquer box. I’d had a hand in that one too.

Tsutaya laid a heavy hand on my father’s shoulder. “You’re bound and determined to show the dark side. Fine, if it suits you. But I can’t sell ’em. Not like this. Not unless I find a real connoisseur.”

I went to the back and watched the woodcarvers; if the publisher bought our designs, these men stuck the paper to the cherrywood to transfer the image, and then cut the lines into the block. Their carving tools were crescent-shaped or knife-straight, in sizes from baby finger to fist. The carvers were tucked cross-legged into low desks, digging out tiny bits of wood and blowing them off the edges of their knives, cutting the fine lines of our writing as well as every sensual curve of the figures. I marvelled at their dexterity. They nodded silently to me, never losing concentration.

When I came back, I could see that my father hadn’t made the sale.

“Why doesn’t he publish you anymore?” I said.

“He’s afraid I’m bad luck,” said Hokusai.

It was his good luck that had made Hokusai bad luck. His good luck was that—with Utamaro gone—he was now the most famous artist in Edo. How you could be both famous and poor was still a puzzle to me, but that’s how it was. His bad luck was that he was popular with foreigners, and the publishers suspected the authorities would turn on him. The Dutch were back in Edo, kept secluded in their strange house with its windows above eye level. Patient crowds stood along the bridge opposite. Every day, reports went out about who went in and out the tall door. Scientists and students of rangaku. Famous actors and courtesans, even Hana-ogi. It was she who sent word through one of the apprentices that Hokusai’s old clients were again looking for his work. The opperhoofd wanted to see him.

“Tell him if he wants to see me, he has to come to the North Star Studio,” said my father.

I
don’t know why he insisted on entertaining important people at home.

Our studio was like the scene of a crime.

It was only one room, identical in size to the adjacent room, where we lived. At least we no longer slept on the same mat. We all had separate mats, but they lay side by side, touching, around the hearth. In the morning we ate our food on the same spot. There were two of us females, my sister Tatsu and I, and the boy Sakujiro left at home: my older half-brother had been apprenticed to Nakajima the mirror polisher. It was the same family my father had been apprenticed to once, but he had not taken on the work, or the inheritance (another stick my mother used to beat him). Still, the Nakajima family remained curiously interested in us. Although my father—thinking himself too good to stand in the long hallways of the castle and rub the bronze so it was perfectly clean at all times—had flown in the face of their generosity when he was a boy, my half-brother had been conscripted to do the job. His labours brought in a little money—more than any of ours would have—so no one complained. My sister O-Miyo had married one of my father’s students. Tatsu and I worked in the studio. My mother took Sakujiro to school. The boy was her greatest pride, and he knew it.

The “studio” wasn’t big to begin with, just six tatami mats in size. The sides were packed with chests holding prints and studies. There were always students working with us, sitting on the floor or at low desks, drawing from life. There were chickens, monkeys, and rabbits in cages around and about. Someone usually had a bird in a cage or a fish in a bucket, and the cats—my pets—were always prowling and ready to pounce.

It was noisy too. O-Miyo returned to us by day, bringing her crawling son to the studio with her. He poked the cats with sticks and spilt the paint on purpose and laughed. I did not like that boy.

The work took over everything, and it brought us nothing: that is what my mother said. My parents still fought. My mother would not give up. She could not believe she wasn’t going to get what she wanted. They fought because my father was bad about keeping track of money. And he spent it on his own entertainments, whatever they were—painting parties, a little gambling. Nothing out of the ordinary, but she felt he was cheating her. And so the noise of their shouting added to the screech of the caged birds and the sound of O-Miyo scolding her son and my father’s mad, crazy laughter.

He kept us entertained. He painted with his left hand and with his right. He could paint above his head or, by reaching between his knees, on the floor behind him. He made paintings with his fingernails, laughing while he did it. Just now he was writing a book called Strange Food. He played around with rice, soups, sake, tea, cakes, vegetables fresh and dry, crustacean eggs, and he sang this little song about sake:

At first the man buys the sake.

Second, the sake buys the sake.

Third, the sake buys the man.

There is no limit to the way sake leads to disorder.

I
T WAS AUTUMN AND THE WIND BLEW
the fragile awnings—
bang,
bang
—against the shopfronts. The Mad Poets sat outside the teahouse by the Asakusa temple. I had a slate with me and was practising my characters. In the road, a thick figure appeared, wrapped up against the cold. Sadanobu. Again. The artists followed him with their eyes.

“Why does he come around here?”

“He’s haunting us.”

“Maybe he’s ready to publish his novel.”

But the jokes were thin.

“Maybe he too is frightened,” said Sanba. “He wanted to make history. But history makes itself. And it will not make him look pretty.”

The wind came down through the housetops and made the lamps swing. The glow passed over Sadanobu’s face, uneven, orange, white, then gone. It passed over all the other faces, simplifying them, making them stark.

“I do believe he wants to tell us something,” said Sanba.

Sadanobu moved in closer and, in that curious way of his, placed his body at right angles to become a silhouette, a caricature—soft paunch, hard chin, big nose. He took no notice of the jibes. His voice was low and reasonable. “I come to give a warning. A warning for the one they call Hokusai.”

The Mad Poets were not to be intimidated. “There is no one by that name. Hokkubei, Hokuba, Hokutsu, Hokuta? I don’t know who you mean.”

“There was an artist of that name, but he sold the honour to a student.”

Sadanobu appeared to laugh, silently, into his large belly. It rose and fell.

“Hokusai should know there are laws against giving details of Japanese life to foreigners,” he said.

Then he moved on.

I looked at my father. He took a drink. It had come. What would we do?

Nothing, apparently.

T
HERE WAS A DISCREET KNOCK
and the studio door slid open. Father became alert, showing no sign of recognition but going slightly pink.

It was Shino.

Her long, thin face had become sharper during her days at the low-class brothel. The scar on her cheek had healed and sat just along her jawbone, almost invisible. The great bundle of hair wrapped on top of her head and pierced with several pins seemed to have stolen the energy from the rest of her body. The wide sleeves of her kimono and a thick obi dwarfed her figure, but the narrow lower skirt clung to her legs and pooled at her feet. She still looked too genteel for the life she led.

How had she come out of the Yoshiwara? She must have been on business, but what business?

I went to her. I had not seen her for months. My father snapped.

“Ei! I asked you to look at Mr. Bohachi’s drawing.”

“I did. It’s not very good!”

The master gave an elaborate shrug. But he couldn’t hide his smile. “Do you see,” he said to Shino, “how she becomes more and more like me?”

“I thought I would take Ei to the bath, if you can spare her,” said Shino.

Tatsu and O-Miyo looked annoyed. They minded my special treatment.

“Why should she be excused? She has work to do.”

“She will discuss work with Miss Shino.”

“Why always Ei?” muttered Tatsu. She scowled as I edged to the door.

“You are too old to whine, Tatsu. Get to work,” said my father.

A
nd we were gone. At the feet of the bridges mendicants were chanting and holding out their bowls: “Praise the Sutra of the Lotus. Praise the name of the Founder.” They brought with them a scent of country air; they had parcels of mountain herbs tied around their necks. A mad-eyed soothsayer crouched with both fists holding a long bowl between her legs. “See your future,” she called. Shino dodged her, refusing apologetically.

“I don’t want to see my future,” she said. “If I can’t change it, why should I be warned?”

When she said that, I imagined the worst.

“Is there news? Is it bad?”

“News is whatever we make it,” she said. “We must always be hopeful.”

Life in the Yoshiwara was changing her. In the sunlight I could see wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and furrows beside her nose. Her beautiful hair did not shine as before, and the knot was wound in a way that looked several days old.

We reached the bathhouse. The entrance was marked with a carved wooden arrow; the sign read, “Adults,
10
mon. Children,
8
mon.” Shino counted out the square-holed coins. The men’s bath was next door, and the wife of the man who ran the men’s bath ran the women’s bath. The men’s assistant peeked around the wall into our bath; he needed soap powder, he said. But I think he wanted to look at Shino. She was someone you wanted to watch. She was still taller than me. While we both lacked beauty, she had grace. I was short and bowlegged, like my father. My chin stuck out when I asserted my will, which was often. But Shino was quizzical, with that piquant face and frequently downcast eyes. Men liked that. They were misled to think she was meek.

We got our washing cloths and kicked off our sandals, untying our sashes. We squatted with small wooden buckets and scrubbed under arms and between legs, splashing the suds onto the polished wooden floors. We doused off the soap. We stepped carefully along the slippery wooden platform and tested the steaming water. The bucket boy eyed us.

“Too hot, is it?” he said. He was always polite around Shino. Everyone was. “Too cold?” Other women banged on the side of the wooden tub to get his attention: not us.

“A little more hot would be wonderful. You are very kind,” she said.

The women looked up for a minute to hear her accent, before they went back to their pressing conversations.

Across from us were two wives, weirdly featureless, with no eyebrows and blackened teeth, complaining about their mothers-in-law. One had a good one, but she was old; the other had a nasty one who was unfortunately young and stood a good chance of living for many years to come.

“I wonder how mine will be?” Shino said bobbing her head significantly in their direction.

She had in her indirect way told me two things: that she would not be going back to the old husband, and that she would marry. I sucked air between my teeth. “Are you really going to marry? How can you?”

“I received word. My husband has died.” Her face was impassive.

“So you don’t have to send him money?”

“His brother now claims the money,” she whispered.

An old lady bent like a scythe came to the edge of the tub. She had no teeth. Shino stood to help her down to the water. The rinsing boy came up and took the hand away from her. “No, you don’t,” he said. “That’s my job.”

Shino sat down again. She scooped the steam up against her cheeks. She closed her eyes. It was what she did when she was thinking. Or crying.

“But I could be free to leave the pleasure quarter. The blind man—as you call him—has offered to pay my debts.”

I blew across the foamy surface. I slapped the water. “Hey, you! Cut that out!” said the married women in unison.

“In return for?”

“He would take me as a wife.”

The rinsing boy was pouring water on the bent woman’s back; she had small, round moxa scars all over it, from the burning of herbs we practised for healing. I stared gloomily at her.

“If that happened, would you be glad for me?” said Shino. “It would take some time . . .”

Why would I be glad, if she was crying? Why, if she was glad, had she said she didn’t want to know her future?

“It is the best possible outcome,” she said delicately.

I snorted. She was pretending to discuss with me what was already settled.

The woman beside Shino dropped her washing rag into the bath. It floated a minute, absorbing the water, and then disappeared. The bucket boy came, all gallantry, and dove into the deep. God knows what he saw down there.

“Better than what?”

The unspoken possibility of my father buying her, keeping her, freeing her sat in the air between us and then sank into the hot water as well. It would never happen.