The Ghost Brush (104 page)

The Dutch scholars who gathered there were not sympathetic. They pronounced the Miracle Doctor’s powers evil. He had committed many transgressions. Measuring the height of Mt. Fuji was perhaps the worst. These were men who had flocked to his door—publishers, medical men, merchants. Artists who had tried to sell him their work. How quickly they deserted their hero. It was, I realized, a form of self-hatred. The all-knowing Dutch doctor would now fall into the hands of the same powers that kept us ignorant.

“But I saw you lined up outside the windows of the Nagasakiya,” I said to one of them.

“You must be mistaken.”

I understood that these men thought there were spies amongst us. But could I be one? They went on listing his crimes.

“He had a detailed map of Edo.”

“He had a linen cloak bearing the imperial coat of arms.”

Collective gasp of horror.

“How did he get that?”

“Genseki gave it to him in exchange for medicine to dilate the pupil of the eye.”

He had a copy of the Shogun’s secret map of the island of Karafuto at the edge of Russia. The Europeans called the place Sakhalin and thought it was a peninsula. Von Siebold’s copy was even better than the one held in the Imperial Library, they said. Mogami made it, and Mogami traded it. Now he had confessed and called von Siebold a spy.

But why had Mogami turned?

Because he himself was caught.

Mogami accused Globius as well. Globius had been discovered with a book about Napoleon and a map of St. Petersburg. This was taken as proof that he had been supplying Japanese maps to the foreigners. He had been thrown in jail. His teeth had been smashed in the initial beating. This was so he could not bite off his tongue.

The court astronomer’s crime was punishable by death. He was under watch so he could not kill himself.

Ah yes, that pleasure would belong to the Shogun.

T
HE CIRCLE OF THOSE UNDER SUSPICION GREW.
Soon, fifty people—half the learned entourage of the Shogun—had gone to jail.

The Miracle Doctor was taken in handcuffs on the long journey back to Edo. The old information that von Siebold had gone to school in Germany and spoke High German better than he spoke Dutch was dredged up. He must be a spy, they said. He had aimed his telescope and his sextant at Fuji-san. He had been in the Shogun’s library. He was asked, again and again: “Are you spying for the Russians?”

“I have never met a Russian.”

“Why have you stolen the linen coat decorated with the imperial coat of arms?”

“I have not stolen it. It was given to me.”

“Who gave it to you?”

Von Siebold would not name Genseki the court physician or explain what they already knew: that it was given in exchange for the recipe for the medicine that dilated the pupils of the eye, so Genseki too could perform the magical eye surgery.

“Why did the court physician want your medicine? Is it superior to Japanese medicine?”

He knew there was a wrong answer to that one. All cures came from the divine, with the Shogun’s permission.

“It will work with a little skill and your gods’ permission.”

“Why did you measure the height of the sacred Fuji-san if you are not a spy?”

“I propose no illegal use for this knowledge,” he said. “I measured it for the pleasure of knowledge.”

It went on for a year.

W
E WERE NOT THERE
to see the end. Our temporary rooms far east of Honjo were not far enough out of the way. Our trade with the foreigners—always an irritant to the authorities—had become an offence. One day a messenger from the Shogun came looking for my father. He unrolled a picture. It was one of the studio works.

“Why did you paint the walls of the castle and give it to the foreign spy?”

Hokusai was insulted. He had never seen this painting. It was one of those that were intended to illustrate how we lived. It was not very good, I knew. The black stone walls loomed and in front of them was a fire, that was all. In my mind it was a fire of woodcut blocks; it had to do with the censors. My father had never paid any attention to it, in truth, as I had painted it. And it just so happened that his symptoms were rather bad that day. “Thz pchr not me-me-my-mine,” he said. “’Tz bad. You c’n see, no”—he rattled his hand as if he were signing his name—“n-n-no.” He made the gesture for stamping. His eyes looked ill that day, round and popping. It was clear he could not have done the work.

I sat with my head bent and my eyes cast down: the gloomy, divorced daughter. When the messenger was gone I laughed and clapped, and my father rolled on his back and kicked his feet. What a joke.

Nonetheless, that night we walked out of Edo. We had discussed it: while one messenger might be embarrassed to accuse a sick old man and his strange daughter, the next might not. And now that it was known where we lived, there would surely be more visits.

Hokusai was feeling lucky that we had no possessions.

“You see, Daughter, we would just have to carry them on our backs,” Hokusai said. He was markedly improved.

We turned our backs on the sprawl of wooden houses and the black, curving walls of the Shogun’s palace. We took the ferry as far as we could. Then we began to walk, as we had walked before. We passed the jail. We passed the Punishment Grounds. There was a body on the cross. The birds were crazed with it. Strips of flesh lay around its feet, too big for their mouths.

Hokusai laughed. It was this laughter that had confused me when I was a child. He had compassion, but he was ruthless. He had no feeling for the dead but a great deal for the dying. The dead were completed. Only the dying were in pain. And the living.

I wept for the loss of my window on the world.

He made that gesture with his shoulders, bringing them up to his ears. It was comical. Defiance gave him energy. He was suddenly himself. He staggered and stuttered no more. He put his elbow in my ribs.

“The spirit of protest is in you, Chin-Chin. I breathed it into you. That is why you look so funny.”

Tears ran down my cheeks. He shook me by the elbow. He peered into my eyes.

“What have you done? Did you fall in love with another man you cannot have?”

I began walking furiously.

W
e were on the Tokaido heading for the sea at Uraga. The Old Man did not hurry and he did not slow. He did not tire and he did not stop. Perhaps he leaned on that long stick of his, perhaps he pushed himself forward with it, but he maintained an excellent pace. At the top of the hill he turned around and walked backwards, fixing the city in his gaze. I sped up and passed him. When we came to the checkpoint he performed a perfect imitation of himself in his palsied state, staggering and slurring. I held him upright and became invisible, one of the nameless women who helped the aged. The guards waved us through. We walked until the city was nothing but a soiled spot in the distance.

I protested our leaving. “We won’t hear what happens to him.”

“Yes, we will,” said Hokusai. “I’ll return by night and hear the gossip.”

M
ONTHS LATER THE MIRACLE DOCTOR
was judged and found innocent of spying. His crimes were committed “in an excess of scientific zeal.” Takahashi, known as Globius, died in prison before the sentence of death could be brought on him, and his son was banished. Genseki the court physician was removed from his post, and his son was punished.

Von Siebold was extremely lucky: he was merely expelled. He left Edo in disgrace and was ordered never to return. I could not explain this clemency to the barbarian when the Japanese were so terribly punished, but perhaps the truth was what von Siebold had always said—that the laws did not apply to him.

Rumour said that back at Deshima, the doctor had searched the walls for the maps he had hidden there, only to discover that rats had eaten his cache. Incredibly, the crates of Japanese objects that had been seized in Nagasaki were restored to him. But—I asked my father—what about my paintings? Where were they?

“You must dream the answer to that,” Hokusai said to me. “Otherwise we will never know.”

I tried to dream, but I wanted less than the knowledge of my paintings’ fate to see my tall, golden man again, he who spoke to me of Shakespeare and women’s lives. Maybe my false pretenses were the reason why the dreams did not come.

I tried calling the paintings. What has become of you, promenading courtesan? Samurai horses? Some of you were seized, I know, because the picture of the castle walls was in the hands of the guards. Were you returned to the doctor, as the gossip said? And now where are you? Decorating the Shogun’s inner chambers? In the belly of the great sailing ship returning to Europe?

In the fire?

But my inner eye remained closed.

In the depths of December, the Miracle Doctor sailed away from Nagasaki on the frigate Jawa, bound for Batavia. His wife and daughter came out in a small fishing boat to watch. They said that he carried their portraits bound into his shirt next to his chest, and that as the sails filled with wind, the Miracle Doctor hung over the rails and wept.

I wept too.

Part 4

34

Dark Days

MY FATHER STAYED IN URAGA
and I returned to Edo. He was perhaps in danger, and we spoke of it as if he were in exile. But I think he wanted to see the ocean, and Mt. Fuji. He was ready to start the series he’d planned of the sacred mountain. I had to take such work as was available—nothing much.

The first thing I did was move back into our old quarter of Asakusa. There, I was not lonely. I could resume teaching some of my old students. I took my tea and rice and small grilled fish on the street. Breakfast, enjoyed before nerves interfered with my digestion, was my favourite meal. Sometimes I had a “dancing unagi,” an eel grilled and then fried so it wrinkled. It was crunchy outside but, once the crust was gone, smooth and sweet on the tongue.

Delicious. I sucked each finger and let it go with a pop. I said good morning to the candy seller, who was my father’s friend. I got back home just as the students were arriving.

Mune was still with me, and although she did not have the talent her mother had, she was a good painter. She had directed her friends towards me. I set them to work, sketching, copying, designing. I moved amongst them on my knees, edging the cats off the papers, telling them to be exact, making them repeat and repeat. We smiled together.

“You will learn to move the brush through the air without thinking, as a swallow moves its wings.”

One of them would bring me lunch from the stalls—eggplant, if I was lucky. But it was expensive and I always demurred unless they insisted.

Sometimes pictures flew into my head. But a student would look up with a question. I tried to save the idea in my mind’s eye. But the next day would be the same: no time to put my pictures on paper, full of teaching and commissions (thankfully, commissions).

The times were difficult, of course. Hokusai’s old apprentices began to show up, looking for work—Hokuri, Hokuryo, and Hokusen. Even the pupils of pupils made their way to see me some days—Kakusen, who was a pupil of Hokumei’s, and Keiri, who had studied with Hokkei. But I was on my own and strangely content. I did a series called Lives of Flourishing Women, thinking, for once, that I too was flourishing. Some people compared it to my father’s work and said Hokusai was getting old. But he wasn’t getting old; he was growing younger.

He crept into the city now and then on moonless nights, arriving by boat at the fishing piers at the mouth of the Sumida. From there, wearing a bumpkin’s hat and leaning on the bo, he mingled with the crowds heading north on the riverbanks. He kept his head down, He chanted constantly to keep his palsy at bay. “Atanda, atanda, atanda-bate.”

In the alley the neighbour women might be sitting on the edge of one of the houses, keeping out of the way of their drunken husbands. They were not fooled by the hat. “Hey, hey, Old Man,” they would said. “Old Man coming!”

He really was Iitsu now: “one again.” “You are blessed to have such a father,” said the candy seller, awestruck by Hokusai’s great age of seventy years. He had left so many lives behind him. He had begun his magnificent series of views of Mt. Fuji. The cost of beru had dropped, so we could afford to have prints made in it. I thought of the blue eyes of my lost Dutch doctor every time we did.

I
T WAS AN EARLY WINTER TWILIGHT
. My students folded up their bundles and chimed their goodbyes. Mune was the last. She touched my hand affectionately. “You’ll be all right?” were always her final words.

I pressed more charcoal into the kotatsu and settled under the blanket. I asked the boy next door to bring me tea. I now had a few hours to paint for myself. But someone coughed discreetly at my door.

“Who’s there?” I threw my best low, masculine voice across the room.

“Eisen, come to see you.” I heard his laughter. He was not fooled by my manly tones.