The Ghost Brush (110 page)

“Shino!”

She did not turn around. She did not stop, but slowed just perceptibly.

“Shino! It’s me, Ei.”

“I know,” she said. “One does not forget that voice.”

I understood then that she had been avoiding us.

“Don’t you want to look at me?” I said softly. I was so much older now, thirty-seven. That meant she would be forty-seven. She walked like a girl. “Have I angered you?”

She looked away, towards the lighted, busy streets. She reached into her sleeve as if looking for something. “Don’t stop here,” she said. “You’ll give us away.”

Give who away to whom? I did not understand. She was free, and probably wealthy.

“Walk past,” she commanded.

I walked past, a few feet from her body.

“My husband doesn’t know I’m here.”

I felt a surge of my old hatred of this blind man.

“But can we meet?”

“Not tonight. Come tomorrow. I’ll take precautions. Go to the house you saw me leave, at twilight. Cover your head. There will be candles. Follow them.”

A
s I approached the narrow canal, I noticed that the little noodle house I had thought abandoned had a shingle. It read, “The Sign of the Nighthawk.” The window papers glowed: there was candlelight within. I put my face near the door and scratched, and said a soft “Good evening.”

The door opened. Eight female heads turned in shock.

“It’s all right,” said Shino.

She stood amongst a clutch of haggard women. They were seated on old sake barrels. They held mirrors, and the tongues of candle flame reflected off the surfaces around the room, like yellow birds. She wore an apron. She hardly looked at me. With a paintbrush and a pot of rice powder she was buffing the cheeks of a woman much the worse for wear.

“Pardon me for the secrecy,” she said pleasantly. “But as the prostitutes are illegal, helping them is illegal too. My husband does not approve.”

I saw faces scarred, toothless, and pockmarked—blemishes that were indeed the sign of the nighthawks. But they were laughing and flushed; there was heat in the room from a charcoal burner. Shino’s helper was making rosebud lips out of narrow, lined mouths. One woman took softened wax from a candle, shaped it between her thumb and fingers, and set it on her nose, the end of which had been eaten away, I supposed by syphilis. She patted away with her wax, adding bits, squeezing with her thumb. I wondered how it would stay on.

“So this is your vice,” I said, taking refuge in the rough irony that was my father’s. “Good works. I knew you’d still be misbehaving.”

“Nor have you lost your edge,” she said.

I wanted to take her in my arms and embrace her. But eight women with half-made faces listened.

Shino’s long face was fuller and she had stopped hiding her strength: her gaze was frank and humorous and to the point. Her married status still surprised me, the shaved eyebrows and blackened teeth. Her hair had gone from its deep, rich black to grey—grey at the top of her head and over her ears, black in the large, loose knot.

“It suits you, married life,” I admitted. “Though I still feel, after all this time, unfairly cut out of it.”

“It was not my wish,” she said. “But necessary.”

To cut my father out, yes. But me? Why me? Was the blind man so vindictive? I didn’t ask.

“Are you happy?” We both said it at the same time. Our audience of haggard and half-made faces laughed. It was strange speaking in front of them, but I could see Shino would not be moved from her task.

“I am very happy,” she said.

“I too. And your esteemed husband?” I said without a trace of irony.

“He remains well, the gods willing. And your father?”

“The Old Man is often on the road. He has had success with his Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji and is in excellent health despite his years.”

“Astonishing,” murmured Shino, “and I would love to hear more about you. But the women must get ready. They need to be out for the evening soon.”

The woman who was trying to fill the hole in her nose called out for help. But Shino was doing hair, rolling tangled lanks of it and pinning it up. I stepped in, and that was how I found myself rolling tiny bits of warm wax and plugging them into an eroded nose. When I was finished, both the nighthawk and I were pleased.

“You’re good with a brush. Draw some lips—make them tiny and red.”

I supposed the women had once been beautiful, at least beautiful enough to sell themselves. Now they could not practise in a brothel. Shino helped make them presentable enough to catch a client on the street for a few small coins. When they left, cheerfully enough, for their evening’s work, I sat on a rice caddy and took the tea she offered.

“They’ll eat tomorrow,” she said.

“You keep them working,” I observed.

“If they had any choice, they wouldn’t be doing it. And every day brings hope—the makeup brings hope.”

I listened. Shino’s eyes were glowing. She had plans: she was trying to convince a brothel owner to let her open a hospital.

“Please excuse the drama of our little subterfuge. But my husband sometimes has me watched.”

I supposed that he was ashamed she had been a courtesan.

“No,” she said, “it’s because he gets his licence from the Shogun. I endanger him with the work. My friendship with you would be even worse. The North Star Studio is always under suspicion. Hokusai paints in the Western way. He sold to foreigners.”

“You’re not afraid to help the nighthawks, but you are afraid to see us?” I was wounded, and tears came to my eyes.

“I haven’t forgotten you,” she said. “I buy every little piece of work you do—a print or a handbook, even the shunga.”

“Under my father’s signature?” I said.

“I know the difference.”

I
REFUSED TO ACCEPT SHINO’S BAN
. I went past the little house now and then. I drew rosebud mouths in crimson, and with a tiny razor I cleaned up the napes of women who needed hair to grow in the two points that marked a virgin. She always pushed me out of there as quickly as she could. The last time she was truly angry with me.

“I said you must not come!”

I stayed away for a long time. When, months later, I walked along the narrow canal, I saw that the house was dark. The Sign of the Nighthawk was gone.

And there were no more commissions for paintings of Yoshiwara Beauties. The fashion then was for Chinese legends—safe subjects, nothing to do with the regime. I was lucky to find a rich patron who wanted one.

37

The Chinese General

REBECCA LEARNED
that
guan-yin’s arm,
the second of the five existing paintings signed by Oei, lived within striking distance of Toronto, in the Cleveland Museum of Art. No one could have been more astonished than its creator. How did my Chinese general end up there?

C
leveland was only five hours from Toronto and the highway was good, if you went before winter set in. Rebecca wanted to take Jenna, her daughter, but she was in school. Andrew offered to drive.

As they set off west, the sun was setting, an orange ball on the horizon directly ahead. Its perfect circle dropped into the grey, transparent fence-line of leafless trees; they seemed to dive into it.

“Tell me again why we’re going to Cleveland?”

She told him. Andrew had to ask. Why, if this woman was such a great artist, had he never heard of her? If she painted all her life, wouldn’t more of her works still be around?

“For them to be around, there had to be a collector. And the work had to be known as hers in the first place.”

Andrew turned down the sun visor over the steering wheel. He wasn’t entirely convinced that a truly great artist could go unknown. “Talent will out,” he said at one point.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Rebecca said. “That is so bloody typical.” She stared at the fields going by. How could he be so dim? “Her talent did ‘out.’ That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about her work lasting. Her name lasting. It was next to impossible for women. On top of that, she was the daughter of a very famous artist. Yes, he was a good teacher, but she was always in his shadow. We know she painted for fifty years; we know the work existed once.”

He went silent. Wise. Or convinced.

“Of course, it’s inextricably mixed with Hokusai’s. So how do you sort that out? How can you establish her style, her palette? How can you identify her brushwork? You start by looking at those few signed works that somehow have escaped the general fate of women’s art. That’s why we’re going to Cleveland.”

T
he sun set. They arrived in the dark and got lost on the way to their B&B in Little Italy. Then they walked out to a bar called La Dolce Vita. The film of the same name was projected onto the wall, its black-and-white images of people throwing back cocktails and sliding into horizontal positions in stylish Italian salons, flickering, senseless; there was no sound. English subtitles played on the wall.

They sat at the bar. Andrew ordered a Campari and soda. The bartender looked bewildered. She went off. She returned to say the drink was not available. “We don’t know how to make it because most of the people who work here are Muslim, and they don’t drink.”

Andrew offered instructions. Rebecca opted for wine, and they sat there peacefully enough in the shadowy pulse of the film. The bartender brought Andrew something.

“Why are you a bartender, since you don’t drink alcohol?” Rebecca asked.

“I’m not,” she said. “I’m a pharmacy technician just helping out.”

“Is this film always going on?”

“No, because we get so sick of it we turn it off.”

“You must know it by heart.”

“No, I don’t even know the plot.”

T
he museum was closed until
2011
for renovations, but Rebecca had an appointment. An assistant curator met them in the lobby. They went past the barriers to the areas that would be closed for years to come, passing bits and pieces of Egypt, Greece, ancient India. A woman went by pushing a trolley with a small icon crouched on it. They nodded to a carved wooden warrior with his lance, propped in a corner.

The painting had been hung in preparation.

Guan-yin’s Arm
—acq. Christie’s
1998

Christie’s
84

Oct.
27
1998

1998
–
17
/bO

B
3
–
356

Artist: Katsushika, Oei. Gender: male

Rebecca pointed out the error in gender. “That’s a bit ironic.”

The curator peered. “Oh, you’re right. I’ll see that we fix that.”

It had been well cared for. So well cared for that although it had been requested in London as part of an exhibition, Guan-yin’s Arm wouldn’t be travelling. It had been declared too frail.

It was a fierce and gory work, an illustration of a Chinese legend. Guan-yin, the Chinese general, has been wounded and is being bled. Blood flows out of cuts on his arm in a series of small waterfalls. An attendant has a large bowl and is capturing the blood. The doctor holding the knife has a kindly face. Food is being brought, and the general is playing a game of Go. The others turn away, aghast at the sight of the blood, but the general is composed and concentrating on his game.

Guan-yin’s Arm was previously owned by a museum in Japan. The museum closed and sold it at Christie’s. The Cleveland gallery bought it when they had a Japanese expert on staff, but that expert had been laid off. Questions that the now-vanished expert could have answered, like where the Japanese museum had got it, and why no one else in Japan had wanted it, were to remain unanswered.

“So any guesses?” asked Andrew. “Why did she sign this one and not others? Why would she paint this weird scene?”

“It must have been a commission. From a wealthy patron. Someone she knew. She signed it because someone wanted a work by her in particular, and not just from the North Star Studio.”

The scroll was vibrant. The blue was unfaded. The silk had been well mounted onto a panel of heavier silk and had flakes of gold leaf in it. You couldn’t see the back, as it was glued onto the silk panel, but some of the paint had been applied on the wrong side of the silk, so it seeped through and gave a softer effect to the painting. This was a very difficult technique.

The composition was brilliant. While all the other bodies and forms moved to the left, the general was set firmly against the flow, to the right. The lines in the painting were firm, even, and smooth. Some, in the details, were extremely fine.