The Ghost Brush (28 page)

“Wha’s vir-tue?” said Hokusai.

“Acceptance of defeat?” I guessed.

He shook his head.

“Fidelity?”

No. This made my father scoff. “N-nnn-no.”

“What is it, then?”

“S-s-ssim-plishty.”

Simplicity.

What was his message to me? That I was the warhorse—there when all else was lost? That I should forgo further battles, and further dreams, and head home? That “simplicity” should be mine—in heart, in art, in thought?

Would he do the same? Was he giving up?

It puzzled me, and I thought about it for many days.

I had no liking for simplicity. Tomei was simple. He reached for me, and when I pulled away from him, he smiled anyway and put his hands behind his head so he could watch me.

“Why are you watching me?”

“I think you are beautiful.”

How could he? I knew I was ugly.

Another symptom of his simplicity was this: he could not see ghosts. That was lucky, because I never lay down with him without the ghost of Sanba alongside. It brought with it his familiar scent of leaves and pine needles, of something half-burned, a wood smell. I suppose it was the scent of Sanba’s quack remedies. I loved it.

My husband was a gem, a genuine fine fellow. He was fond of life and free of anger. He was not conventional: he would have accepted anything I gave him. Yet I had nothing for him but a cruel streak that was entirely new to me.

22

Family

I WENT TO VISIT MY MOTHER
.

Her cheeks had fallen in on her gums. Long-suffering but never silent, she had declined to a garrulous, greedy poverty. There were no riches for her in the artist’s life: she cared for neither prints nor books. She wanted food and warmth, which Hokusai disdained. He became gentle with her, as if she were an old dog.

She was at her sister’s, bundled on a mattress. There had been a crisis. My aunt was crying. The cats were mewling and children stood in corners. My mother had fallen, standing in a crowd at the fishmonger’s. She had to be carried home.

We sent a child for a bonesetter. He put his hands on her and said there was a broken circle in her pelvis.

“It must knit and mend. She must be absolutely still, or it will grow crooked and she will never walk again.”

My father stammered his question: She appeared to be quite dead, but could she come back to life if she wanted?

“Western medicine knows about broken bones. But for broken spirit, the gods of Japan are better,” said the doctor.

“She broke her spirit in a fall at the fishmonger’s?”

“Earlier,” said my aunt.

My mother moved.

“She ’eears us,” said Hokusai. “Sh-she-shee sa-ay she will c-c-c-come ba’.”

“Are you a mind reader now, Old Man?” I said.

“I’m a re-re-ree-ader of faaa-ces.”

“Then what is my mother’s face saying?”

Hokusai hung his head.

“Talk to her. Maybe you can change her mind.”

“I c-c-caan’ t-taalk—”

The gods had taken away his eloquence when he needed it.

I became the translator.

“My father wishes to say, ‘Wife, come back to me. My life will be better with you. I am not ready for you to die,’” I said woodenly.

Hokusai waved his hands. Apparently he did not like my love words.

My brother Sakujiro was there. He had become a solemn young man and adept at accounts, something unusual in our family. Yet humour was in his eyes; he clearly was Hokusai’s son. He alone could tease me. “What would you know about love words, Chin-Chin? You who laughs at her husband?”

“You’d be surprised what I know.”

Hokusai blinked.

“Maybe she is right to want to die,” I said.

Sakujiro looked at me quietly. “You and our mother are one and the same.”

That surprised me. My mother was an ordinary drudge who understood nothing. But I had her face, it was true.

“This is the one who cast you away,” he said. “The one who said strong spirit must be broken. Now you would cast her away?”

“I don’t cast her. I only want her spirit to rest.”

M
y mother lay on her mat. Her eyes darted on the inside of her eyelids. My aunt nursed her. My father remained wordless. There would be no reconciliation.

What did she watch, inside those eyelids? The landscape of her life had been grey. There would be, on that curtain, no festival fireworks, no boat rides on the Sumida, no great processions, no ribald ditties, no laughter and cups of sake to warm her. No unfolding of red-striped velvets or canopy of sakura, even in the imagination. She would only see the inside of that sac that enclosed her. What did it look like?

I had seen my sister give birth. I knew colours—blood red, black waste, and the afterbirth with its rainbow shimmer. I had seen death too: the flesh-wrapped bones at the Punishment Grounds; the defiant, flat face on the march of the doomed; even fish at the fishmonger’s. Fish were the last thing she saw—lying on their sides; silver, green, or blue, with arcs of pink; fading hour by hour as their cool, watery spirit ebbed away.

Most likely she was still watching the weigh scales; life was in the balance.

“Say loving things,” I told my father. “The kinds of things you said to Shino. Say them, if you want to change her mind.”

For once I had shut my father up. Hokusai opened his lips. They moved in silence. “I c-c-aaan’t.”

We both stared down at her. This object had produced me, then handed me off. I knew the reason. From the very start, she had recognized me: I was her. She had been wilful. And with what miserable outcome? She had sought to spare me.

“Poor Hokusai,” they said. “Another wife to die on him, and now who will keep house?”

A
HUSBAND COULD LEAVE HIS WIFE
for being barren. But Tomei didn’t blame me. To him, the fault was Hokusai’s.

“Your father is your baby,” he said.

More than once his simple logic hit its mark.

Still, nearly ten years of childlessness did not ruin our marriage. I’ll tell you what ruined our marriage. It was food: the getting of it and the serving of it. I had thought we would be artists together, whereas Tomei wanted to be served his home-cooked meals.

I loved the food market. That’s where I got our meals. It was divine. There were eggplants covered in miso paste. There were ruffled dumplings and crimson pomegranates and tiny grilled whitefish with bronze skin. Curled blush shrimp with their transparent shells and fine whiskers; shaved purple cabbage in vinegar; cubes of bean curd swimming in squid ink—it was all so beautiful. One day I had a little money from a commission. I came back with grilled fish and eggplant and deep-fried tofu squares, his favourite dinner. I was proud to be providing it.

But he tossed away the banana leaves that wrapped it.

“Why?” I said, my mouth full and open. The food was hot.

“You didn’t cook it for me.”

Did he want me to stand outside on the hard earth and bring him his plate on bended knees? “No, but I bought it.”

“It’s not the same. A wife cooks.”

“Why would I do that? I am an artist who earns our keep.”

Tomei began to shout and wave the broom around. “You serve him.” He jerked his head towards my father’s house. “Serve me too.”

I did laugh then. Not at his bad art, but at his crazy idea that I would keep house.

L
aughing at an angry man is never wise.

Usually when a husband was dissatisfied, he took a broom and swept his wife out the door. To be banished like that was lucky: he might have killed her. The punishment for a crime of passion—or is it a crime of possession?—was not severe. The babies remained with him, so all he had to do was get a new wife to care for them, while the first wife returned to her family in shame.

When Tomei reached for the broom, I decided to save him the trouble. I tucked my brushes in my kimono, put on my quilted coat, and slid out the door. I was very sad to leave the dinner.

T
here was a saying: “See a woman running in Kamakura, no need to ask where. Just point the way.”

The Temple of Refuge was called Tokei-ji. A woman of a noble family had founded it, and its courtiers wore the imperial crest. It was the only way for a woman to get a divorce by herself. You had to run. If you reached the temple before your husband caught you, you were safe. The pictures we saw of this place featured a woman throwing her sandals ahead of her through the temple gates, her husband making a grab for her hair from behind.

I stormed through the crowds on the streets of Shitamachi. I felt the wind on my face. I felt alive. I was angry. I was often angry, but this time my anger was outside, free, in the world. How exhilarating it felt! To think that Tomei might divorce me. My pride was offended. This in itself was amazing. I took so much grief from the Old Man that I had not known I had pride. I crashed into a porter with a heavy burden and he screamed at me. My face was wet. I slowed. I needed to think. My life was at a balance point; it could tip either way—into disaster or back into tedium and mediocrity.

“Use your sense, Chin-Chin,” I said. “Not your bile.” Shino would have said that. “You are not being pursued by demons. Slow down.”

I was not even being pursued by my husband. I knew that. And yet I felt like a fugitive. I had nowhere to go. If I stayed in Edo, I would have to go back to my home. If I presented myself to my family, they would tell me to go back: “We don’t need another divorce! Look what happened to O-Miyo!” I knew what their advice would be. And so I did not seek it. I decided to go to the Temple of Refuge.

It was five stops along the Tokaido to Totsuka. At Totsuka you turned off the route and went over the mountains to Tokei-ji. I had to get there.

I couldn’t get out of Edo alone. That was the law: “No women out. No guns in.” I would need help. Who could I go to? I could only think of Mune.

I
t was winter and snow began to fall, wet snow that melted on the stones. I walked on, pleasantly invisible in the white downpour, which thickened by the minute. It muted the noise of carts and made people seem far away. A strange euphoria took me. I must have walked all day. I was walking away from all the confinement I had felt, for years. My joy at escaping carried me all the way to the Ichibee bookstore, where the
rangaku-sha
gathered.

In the warm glow of this little shop, scholars sat in groups with their domed heads and fluid draperies, drinking tea. They spoke of ideas. How different their world was to mine. I pushed aside the door and entered.

The owner, who had once given me a boy’s haircut, had not forgotten Hokusai’s daughter. He made me welcome, although the solemn scientists hardly slowed their gossip to glance in my wet direction—hair soaked and straggling, hem heavy. He gave me a chair by the stove and a bowl of tea.

“Is the master in good health?”

“Oh yes, indeed,” I said, as I always did. His true condition was a secret.

Outside the snow redoubled itself, piling on the edges of fences and on the top of every branch and twig. A black cat hating to get his feet wet jumped from post to fence and then went under the awning.

Finally the door chime tinkled for the last time and the rangaku-sha were gone.

“Now tell me. What brings you?” said the storekeeper.

“I must leave Edo. I need help to get past the checkpoint.”

“May I ask why?”

No one was allowed to aid a runaway wife. “Better for you if you don’t,” I said. “A student will help me if you can send a messenger.”

The bookseller’s boy trudged in with his pack of volumes on his back. He got a scolding for letting the snow get onto the books. His umbrella was so heavy with the white stuff he let it drop, he said. He was given another errand to do: to find Mune and give her a letter.

I slept as my father so often slept, draped over myself beside the heating table. Outside and in my dreams the snow fell and fell, covering my footsteps. In the morning I was dry and warm, and the bell tinkled. In came a figure wrapped in a black travelling hood: Mune.

I told her where I wanted to go: Tokei-ji. “My poor Oei,” she said. “I had no idea.”

“Please, no pity. My husband does not abuse me. I abuse him, more likely,” I said. It was comical, and we both laughed.

In Mune’s sedan chair with its curtained windows the two of us approached the checkpoint at the edge of Edo. The bearers had been instructed to say that there was only one noblewoman inside. But the guards with their swords saw the effort it took the bearers to hold the chair up.

“Wait! You are smuggling! What is in there?”

I was ordered out and stood shivering in front of two boorish inquisitors. They hacked and spit and scratched their private parts. Clearly they sat too long with nothing to do but harass passing women. “Where are you going? Why do you try to leave with no papers? What is your reason?”