Quicksand (2 page)

At first my husband was delighted and seemed to mean to do just that. But then maybe I began to irritate him; maybe he thought I was entirely too willful, because of my family's position. Anyway, he simply didn't know how to get along with people, no matter what, and he was so tactless, so blunt, That after he started to practice law he still had hardly any business. Yet he made a point of going to the office every day, and I was left to lounge around the house from morning till night. Naturally all those fading memories began coming to life again. Before, when I had time on my hands I used to write poetry, but that would only have stirred up even more memories. So it seemed to me I couldn't go on like that; I had to take up something, find
some
distraction. . . .

Perhaps you know that Women's Arts Academy in the Tennoji district? It's a third-rate private school, with departments for painting, music, sewing, embroidery, and all. They have no such thing as admission requirements—anyone can get in, adults or children. I'd had some lessons in Japanese-style painting and was still fond of it, though I wasn't very good, so I began going there every day, leaving in the morning with my husband. I say every day, but of course it was the kind of school where you could always take the day off.

My husband had not the slightest interest in art or literature, but he was quite willing to have me go to school. He even encouraged me, told me it was a fine idea, I should do my best! Although we usually left the house together in the morning, we went whenever I was ready—sometimes nine o'clock, sometimes ten—but things were so quiet at my husband's office that he would wait for me as long as I pleased. We'd take the Hanshin train in from Koroen to Umeda, then catch a taxi and drive along the Sakai streetcar line to the corner of Imabashi, where I dropped him off. I'd go on by taxi all the way to Tennoji.

He enjoyed our going out together like that.

“I feel as if I'm a student again,” he'd say, in high spirits, and laugh when I remarked: “Would a student couple run back and forth to school by taxi?”

He wanted me to call him when I was ready to leave in the afternoon too, and stop by his office, or meet him at Namba or the Hanshin station, to go to the movies at the Shochiku Theater or somewhere. That was how things stood. We were getting along very well. But then, maybe about the middle of April, I had a stupid quarrel with the director at my school.

It's strange, the way it happened. You know, they use models posed in various costumes for Japanese painting—you never work from the nude—and there was a so-called life class of that kind at the school. Just then they had a Miss Y, an eighteen-year-old girl said to be one of the most beautiful models in Osaka, and they had her pose in a gauzy white robe as the Willow Kannon—well, that was supposed to be close enough to naked to qualify as life study.

So I was sketching her one day, along with the other students, when the director came into the classroom and said to me:

“Mrs. Kakiuchi, your picture doesn't look anything like the model. Possibly you have a different model in mind?”

Then he gave a sort of mocking laugh, and all the rest of the students saw what was going on and began to snicker too. I was startled and felt myself blush, though at the time I had no idea why. Thinking back on it now, I'm not sure I
was
blushing, but somehow his remark about “a different model” struck home. Who could the model be? It seems that quite unconsciously, as I was looking at Miss Y there before me, I'd had another distinct image in my mind's eye. That image was reflected in the drawing—my brush seemed to be sketching it all by itself, without any intention on my part.

I'm sure you know who I mean. My model—it's all been in the newspapers anyway—was Miss Tokumitsu Mitsuko.

(
Author's note:
The widow Kakiuchi seemed unaffected by her recent ordeal. Her dress and manner were bright, even showy, just as they had been a year before. Rather than a widow, Mrs. Kakiuchi looked like the typical young married Osaka woman of good family, and she spoke in the mellifluous feminine dialect of her class and region. She was certainly no great beauty, but as she said the name “Tokumitsu Mitsuko,” her face became suffused with a curious radiance.)

At that time I hadn't yet made friends with Mitsuko. She was studying oil painting—painting in the Western style, that is—so she was in a different classroom, and there was no chance for us to talk. I didn't think she would even recognize me or would give me a second thought if she did. Not that I paid any special attention to her either, except that she seemed to be a strikingly attractive girl. Of course we'd scarcely said a word to each other, and I didn't know the first thing about her temperament, what she was really like. I suppose you could say it was just a general impression.

Come to think of it, though, she must have been on my mind a good deal earlier, since already, without even asking, I knew Mitsuko's name and where she lived: she was the daughter of a wholesale woolens merchant whose shop was in the Semba district of Osaka, and now they lived out in Ashiya, along the Hankyu line—things like that. So when the director made his snide little remark, it set me thinking. Yes, the face in my sketch looked like Mitsuko, but it wasn't something I'd done on purpose. Even if I
had
, why should I be expected to produce a facial likeness of Miss Y? She was posing as the goddess Kannon so that we could study her figure, the drapery folds of her white robe, and all that, and then just try to express the feeling of a Kannon bodhisattva, surely. Miss Y may have been a beautiful model, but Mitsuko was far more beautiful: as long as it enhanced the portrait, what was wrong with modeling the face after Mitsuko's? That was what I thought.

TWO OR THREE DAYS
later the director came in again while we were sketching the same pose. He stopped in front of me and stared at my work with his usual sneering smile.

“Mrs. Kakiuchi,” he said. “Really now, Mrs. Kakiuchi, there's something wrong with your picture. It's looking less and less like the model. Who exactly
are
you modeling it on?”

“Oh, is that so?” I answered sharply. “It doesn't look at all like the model?” As if the director had anything to do with teaching art!

. . . No, the regular painting teacher wasn't there. That would have been Professor Tsutsui Shunko, but he came in only occasionally, to tell us this or that was bad, or to do it a different way; ordinarily the students would just look at the model and draw anyhow they pleased. I'd heard that the director taught English, one of the optional courses, but he didn't seem to have a college degree or any real academic background; no one even knew where he had gone to school. As I found out afterward, he was no educator, just a shrewd businessman. A man like that could hardly be expected to understand painting, and he had no reason to stick his nose into it. Then, too, most courses were left to the specialists who taught them, so he rarely visited a classroom. And yet he went out of his way to come to
this
class and criticize my painting!

Then he asked me in a sarcastic tone: “Now, seriously, you don't really think you're following that model, do you?”

I pretended to be innocent “Yes. I'm afraid I can't draw very well, so maybe it isn't turning out right. But I'm trying to be faithful.”

“No,” he said, “it's not that you can't draw. You're rather talented, in fact. But look at this face—I can't help thinking it's somebody else.” He was back to that again.

“Oh, you're talking about the face, are you?” I said. “That's to express my own ideal.”

“And who might your ideal be?” he persisted tiresomely.

Then I told him: “It's an ideal, not any special person. I just want to make the face beautiful, to give the pure feeling of a Kannon. Is anything wrong with that? Do I have to make even the
face
look like that model?”

“You're putting up quite an argument,” he replied. “But if you're capable of expressing your ideal, you have no reason to come to this school. Isn't that why we have you sketch from a model? You don't need a model if you're going to paint any way you want, and if this ideal Kannon of yours looks like somebody else, I think you're being pretty deceitful.”

“I'm not a bit deceitful! And I don't see anything wrong artistically, as long as it has the divine features of a Kannon.”

“It just won't do,” he insisted. “You're not yet a full-fledged artist. Even if it seems divine to you, the question is how others see it. That sort of thing leads to misunderstanding.”

“Oh? And what kind of misunderstanding might that be?” I retorted. “You're always saying it looks like someone, so would you please tell me who it looks like!”

That rattled him. “Stubborn, aren't you?” he said. From then on, the director held his tongue.

I was elated. Facing down the director made me feel as if I had won a quarrel. But our argument in front of the students caused a sensation, and before long a nasty rumor began to spread. They said I'd made indecent advances to Mitsuko, that Mitsuko and I were altogether too close. . . . As I told you, at that time I'd hardly said a word to her, so the whole thing was nonsense, just an out-and-out lie. Of course I was aware that people were talking behind my back, though I never dreamed they were making such a fuss. But I had nothing on my conscience, so I didn't care what they said. It was all perfectly ridiculous.

Well, that's the way people are—they're always ready to spread rumors. Still, no matter how much they gossiped, to accuse us of being “altogether too close” when we'd had nothing to do with each other was so absurd that it didn't even make me angry. I wasn't concerned for myself—what bothered me was how Mitsuko might take it. It occurred to me that she must be distressed to be drawn into all this, and somehow whenever our paths crossed, going to school or leaving, I couldn't bring myself to look her in the face the way I used to. And yet to speak up and apologize to her—that might make things worse, cause even more scandal, and that wouldn't do either. Every time I happened to pass her I tried to seem apologetic, cringing and casting my eyes down, as if I wanted to escape her notice. All the same, I still felt anxious about whether she might be angry, or how she might look at me, so the moment we passed I would steal a glance at her. But Mitsuko's expression was the same as ever; she didn't seem in the least annoyed with me.