The Ghost Brush (10 page)

“You will find someone to cook it for you.” He thrust the packet at her and she took it from his hands, bowing low, although he could not see.

He stumped along the corridor and felt his way down the stairs, hilarity following.

“You can’d cook that thing in yur room! Id’ll stink, wone it?” some girl shouted through the wall.

Shino professed delight with her gift. Then she presented it to me.

“Take it home. Your mother will prepare it.”

“I wone eet’ id, ’cause it came from that.” I knew it infuriated her when I talked brothel talk.

I took the damned fish and put on my padded jacket. We went into the hall. In the next room two shinzo were playing a game of cards. A man emerged from a closed screen at the far end.

“Who’s that?” I was curious about everyone here.

“A publisher’s censor, a gyoji,” said Shino.

I hadn’t seen one before, had only heard of them. The gyoji turned his head as he descended the staircase. He had a small beard. Government men usually had small beards. He hadn’t even tried to disguise himself.

“He’s a spy!” I said.

“You’re so harsh!” chided Shino. “Have compassion. He used to sell prints from under the counter, but now he has to inspect them. He had no choice. We all live in the same world. We do the best we can.”

“I am too harsh, but you are not harsh enough.” Then I relented: “You’re tired.”

She cast me a reproving look. “You yourself must become very tired, with such passions.”

“Okay, then, what is he doing here?”

“The same thing the others are doing.”

“He is our enemy and a spy for the bakufu—and he also patronizes the brothels?”

Her face got that infuriating look of amusement, the one she often got when I—or my father—was most aroused by injustice. “Look at it another way. How can he be a censor of the art of the brothels if he hasn’t visited one?”

“My father hates gyoji,” I said.

“Ah,” said Shino, “but he is harsh too. And no excuses for him: he should understand life more than you do.”

Shino ruffled my hair.

“A gyoji is simply a man. A man in fear like all the rest. He is forced by fear to be a spy. If, even while he’s inspecting pictures, he’s making an assignation with a courtesan,” said Shino, “he sees no conflict. In fact he sees a continuity between the two. He has his feet in two rivers.”

“One flows one way, and the other, the other!” I pressed one leg forward and the other back until I toppled sideways against the wall. A petulant female voice rose up complaining. They lived in a house of paper. I picked myself up. “Stupid way to stand.”

“He must be careful or the current will take him, true,” said Shino. “But we are all forced into difficult positions.”

“You aren’t. You are good.”

“How can I be good?” Shino laughed softly. “I am a courtesan.”

“The pictures are beautiful. If I was in charge, I would want pictures made.”

“But if you were the powerful, you would not see things the same way the artists do. You might suspect that the pictures told stories against you and your ways.”

“A picture can’t do any harm. It’s not like a man with a sword.”

“Is that what you think?” She shook her head. “Then they are smarter than you are.”

“To be afraid of a picture?”

“Oh, yes.” She had walked me to the door. She was making me leave.

“What can a picture do?” I said, to keep her.

“You are asking me to think as they do,” said Shino, exasperated. “I can only guess. Perhaps they are frightened not of the picture itself but of the thoughts it gives rise to.”

“Thoughts are invisible, like ghosts,” I said. “They can go anywhere. They won’t be stopped by men with little beards.”

“Maybe not, but men with little beards will still try. Ghosts, and thoughts, seep in, and before you know it people lose respect.”

“People laugh at Hokusai.”

“Yes, and he wants them to. Perhaps laughter will get him through.”

“He will get through because he is stronger than the bakufu.”

Shino put her finger on my mouth. “You are passionate, child. But you are foolish. I know this trait, because I was that way not so long ago. And look what happened to me!” She gave that light laugh.

“My father fears no one, especially not the bakufu.”

“You can’t say such a thing.”

“My father says it.”

“Your father also is unwise,” she said firmly. “Before, he could get away with his crazy ways because he was not very popular. Now his name is growing. Everyone knows it. The bakufu choose whom they punish. Always it is the most famous.”

“He says we’ll leave Edo.”

She seemed to brighten. “He’s not at home in the licensed quarters. Not anymore. And you shouldn’t be either.”

“Wouldn’t you be sad? If we left Edo?” I watched her face for signs and saw nothing. “Who do you love more, me or my father?”

That made her laugh. “You’re too bold. You speak of adult matters.”

“Tell me.”

“I’ll tell you this much: he asks me the same thing.” Then she looked embarrassed. Her low-lidded eyes went blacker than normal, and her narrow chin ducked into her kimono. She drew in her lips, and the long tip of her nose dipped modestly. She reached up a hand to her heavy topknot, as if it too were destabilized.

As good as an admission.

“If we had money we could pay your debts and buy your freedom,” I said. I said it without thinking.

She chided me gently. “Your father has a wife and you have a mother.”

“But he doesn’t have a courtesan—except you.”

“He can’t afford a courtesan, not even a plain one like me!” She laughed. “I won’t be leaving the Yoshiwara anytime soon.”

“Unless a man buys your freedom.”

“He would have to be a wealthy man. And a wealthy man would have his pick. He wouldn’t want me.”

The blind man’s bland, attuned face swam into my mind. But I knew he was not wealthy, so I was relieved.

I took the fish to the painting room my father rented sometimes in the temple, when we had lots of work to do. The apprentices were busy. I put it on the hibachi. Its skin frizzed up nastily and stuck to the grill. Its flesh fell off the bones into the fire. The apprentices laughed at me. I was hungry then. I was left with a skeleton of many tiny bones, each one of which could catch in the throat and choke me.

I decided I was not a cook.

8

The Dancing Lesson

IT WAS THAT DAY OF THE MONTH
when the prostitutes had free run of the kitchen. Kana was out; she wouldn’t sit with them, she said, and watch them stuff themselves.

The girls dug in.

“Thaz rich. She’s already fat, and we’re so skinny. She duzn like to see us eat?”

“Oooh, passa tofu.”

“Doan take it all, hey.”

“I wone, I wone, just one more . . . oooh.”

There had been a fight in the brothel the night before. Yuko was holding a cold cloth over her swollen jaw.

“Can yu b’leeve this guy? He wuz such a yob. I wannud to throw him out, but I wuzen strong enuff. I mean why’d they let this todal yobbo in here? I told him if he didn’ stop pushing me I’d get Jimi to come. But he woodn lissen. An’ I had nuthen to threaten him with.”

“You need somethin’ hard or sharp, or poinned.”

“They woodn let us have stuff like that in here.”

“I spose yu culd use yur meer?” said one of them, sucking a finger.

“My meer? But whud ’f I broke it?”

“Then yu cdn see yourself.”

“Whud a relief!”

Yuko dove across the table and slapped her. “Very funny!” she said, putting the compress back on her chin.

“At home,” Shino said slowly, “we were all taught to defend ourselves. My brothers as young as ten had swords. Women were taught also, just in case.”

“In case what?”

“We might be attacked by a friend who suddenly became an enemy. We might be accused of disloyalty and have to kill ourselves. My father said we should know how to kill even a friend who was seated having tea or walking with us. There were special kata for these times.”

“What were they called?” said dreamy Yuko.

“Oh, let’s see: Rain and Thunder, the Monk’s Walk, and Walking Talking Between Friends.”

“Didja have a sword?”

“I had a long pole with a blade on the end, yes. My naginata. But now”—she gestured towards the Great Gate—“Shirobei’s got it. Anyway, you don’t really need a sword. You can use almost anything to defend your honour—a cooking pot, even.”

They all laughed like crazy.

Shino reached into her hair and pulled out her metal bin-sashi. She held them up in front of her face: “You could even use your hairpins.”

“Ooooh!”

She jabbed with them in the direction of one girl’s eyes. “Go away! Hssss!” She feinted and jabbed again. The girls looked blank. Then they looked impressed.

“Sort of like that,” Shino murmured sweetly, putting the pins back into her hair.

But Yuko got a glimmer in her eye.

“That’s wizard . . . Can you teach me?”

They were drunk on food. That’s how it started. They went up to their rooms and pulled the pins out of their coifs. Rolls and rolls of straight, black, oiled hair fell on their necks. Bin-sashi were about ten inches long and came to a long, sharp point. The higher ranked the courtesan, the more she had. Shino had six now. Fumi had eight. On days when she was dressed up, they were all in her hair. Shino’s were lacquered red; she had a taste for pretty things and she had bought them, adding to her debt.

I had none and had to borrow. The thing was long and thin in my hand. It was not heavy or strong but very sharp.

“This is a feebul weapon.”

“You think?” Shino said.

The first thing she taught us was how to pull out our hairpins swiftly and subtly. You did this crosswise, the right hand pulling the pin from the left side of the head and the left hand pulling the pin from the right side of the head. You did it simply, with no extra movement, quickly removing the pin from the hair and sliding it up the sleeve, turning the wrist; you swept it across your face with conviction. This could be mistaken for a gesture of vanity. That was the point.

We practised. Shino showed us how to keep strong but flexible fingers. She moved her pins in circles. It was easy to imagine them as small knives, for instance.

“We could do a dance with them,” she said.

She held one in each hand. She walked around in a circle, dipped, went backwards. “Always keep them up close around your faces,” she instructed.

Fumi was laughing.

“Close to your face. It’s no good out there.”

“We shuddn cover our faces. Our arms should only be a frame to them. Remember what Kana says? ‘The face is a picture to be seen and enjoyed.’”

“Just so. But if you don’t protect it you’ll get hurt!”

That made sense to them. “Remember when that yobbo broke Takao’s nose?”

“An’ after, it didn’ heal straight? An’ she hadda go home?”

“He said he was sleeping when he did it. Just rolled over and cracked her on the bridge of her nose.”

“I never believed that,” said Shino softly.

She showed each of us how to hold a hairpin so it lay inside the palm of our hand and extended underneath a finger, almost invisible. She showed us each how to walk slowly around in a circle, preparing our weapon, sliding it into our palm. To cross our arms and shoot a fist each way—a block. To strike a balance on one foot with the other tucked behind the knee. This was called the Crane.

“This my father taught me. He never imagined where I’d find those lessons useful,” she said sadly. She showed us how to lunge forward with our hands out front and jab the hairpins into an ear, or both ears, one on either side. “It is not necessary that we ever turn our skills on anyone. Just to have them makes us feel stronger, izn it? Only to save your own life,” she said.

The women loved it when she used their talk.

We were all together making circles with our hands, circling, dipping, rising from and sinking gracefully, we hoped, to our knees.

Kana came in.

“Whatz going on here?”

Shino did not lose a step or a breath. She expertly slid her hairpin inside the palm of her hand and up her sleeve.

Fumi slid the pins back into her hair and smoothed it.

I found that my obi was coming loose and was suddenly involved in the knot.

“I am just teaching the girls a little dance my mother taught me. It is what the noble girls do on festival days.”

Kana loved to hear about what the nobles did. And if the girls at the Corner Tamaya knew a certain dance, it meant they could raise the fees. “It’s about time you came around,” she told Shino, patting her shoulder. “I am so pleezed,” she said emphatically, and she walked back downstairs.