The Painting

by Nina Schuyler

  AYOSHI STEPS INTO THE Western room. There is the smell of the thick, musty books that line the bookshelves. Here are the polished walnut tables and red velvet sofas, the lamps with golden light and cream lampshades with gold fringe, an Italian cabinet made from tortoiseshell, a desk with a fall front.

  The chaos feels vital and abundant to her; the room pulses with life. She likes to sit on the plush couch and read, and as a treat, she lets her eyes drift around the room. She has a special affinity for the painting on the left wall. A portrait of the painter’s wife. The painter is looking at his wife through a window, the curtains pulled aside. She stands outside in the snow. A brilliant red scarf wrapped around her head. Ayoshi peers into the deep colors of the painting; the brownish greens and dark blues, the starkness of the white snow and the red scarf hold her eye. The woman clutches her coat around her neck. Her eyes are forlorn, as if she’s been banished from her home. When she looks at this painting, Ayoshi does not feel so alone.

  The Western room has a small window alcove that looks out onto the garden. She sits there, hunched over, and reads. The house creaks and sways. When the period for annulment passed, and her husband did not request it, she became more brazen. She spent more time in these rooms or painting in the studio. She did things she preferred to do; and the things she didn’t, she delegated to the maid.

  There is another large painting. Even now, she averts her eyes from it. The pearly blue sky, the sprite green grass and rolling hills; there’s a large old oak tree on the right side, its branches providing shade for what lies in the foreground. A beautiful, young woman with straw-colored hair. She is holding a baby in her arms. Her head is tilted to the left, and she is gazing at the child with a soft, fluid look. The woman and infant are sitting on a red and white picnic blanket. When Ayoshi walks into this room where it hangs, she swivels her head the other direction, to the overstuffed orange chair or the bookshelf and finds something to read.

  Now that he is gone, she heads outside to the studio and closes the door. Grabbing a brush, she finds the image waiting. Later, when the maid taps on the door, bringing her green tea and a bowl of seaweed soup, she doesn’t look up, too intent on following her hand as it travels along the paper. The image before her is speaking to her; the image before her is painting itself.

  HAYASHI TAKES HIS PLACE at the long stretch of polished oak table. Five other men dressed in Western clothes are already seated. Hayashi waits, sitting through the tedious agenda, staring out the window at the colorless sky. Right before the meeting adjourns, he rises from his straight-backed chair, and with his heart hammering in his ears, tells them his teahouse was burned down in the middle of last night.

  The man at the end of the table clears his throat. He has a broad chest and blunt lips that seem persistently to pout. As the country changes, there is bound to be more violence, he says, diplomatically, tapping his long nails on the tabletop. Change frightens some people. Most people. They lash out to keep things the same.

  We have to deal with the ignorant segments of the population who refuse to Westernize, says another.

  A servant comes in and pours everyone a cup of English tea. One of the men pulls out a pack of cigarettes and passes it around the table.

  There is also your father’s legacy, says another, blowing smoke up to the ceiling. The man’s face is dispassionate, except for the glint of self-importance that he betrays by the upward tilt of his narrow chin. Your father believed so strongly in ending feudalism, such an early supporter of restoring the emperor to power. But not everyone agreed with him. He puffs on his cigarette and blows gray smoke. Such as the samurai. Perhaps a samurai has unleashed his anger at you; it’s your legacy, if you will.

  The men nod in agreement.

  Then there is you, says the official at the head of the table, who is clearly in charge.

  Excuse me, sir, says Hayashi.

  Perhaps someone felt the need to warn you.

  About what?

  The room is still, only the sound of cigarette ash dropping on the hardwood floor. Who can say for sure? It could be your successful trade with the West that makes someone jealous or angry. He pauses and sighs. Or it could be the new government no longer views Buddhism as the official religion. We were quite generous when we let you keep the temple standing. As you know several of us wanted it to be torn down. But you convinced us that it is a historical building that should remain. We never dreamed you’d hold services there.

  Hayashi begins to protest that he only opens the door, he doesn’t lead them in prayer.

  The official in charge holds up his hand, halting his interruption. That townspeople still come to pray—despite the new decree that the official religion of this country is Shintoism, which is pure Japanese. You certainly know of this decree.

  Hayashi looks around the room. The men are staring at him. They already know the answer, thinks Hayashi. Why must there be more humiliation?

  These are dangerous times, continues the head official. We must keep a united front or the enemies will smell weakness, like a predator hunting his prey. We must work together or we will fail. You must think again about keeping the temple open for services. The man shakes his head. Perhaps this is what the fire was about—to make you think again. The person who set the fire wants to make sure you know he is watching your decision.

  SHE TAKES OUT HER notebook and writes, It did happen. There was a man with round eyes like the full moon. With the strength of the sun. Hair on his face and chest. He was here once. So was I. We had one shadow.

  FROM THE STUDIO WINDOW, Ayoshi sees Hayashi hobble to the front door and step inside. She walks to the house and hears him shut the bedroom door. For a moment, she stands in the hallway, listening. Water is running. He is preparing for bed, she thinks. I’ll paint the entire night, all morning, if need be.

  She returns to the studio, takes out a new sheet of paper, and sets it on her large oak desk. Tenderly, she picks up a brush and puts the tip in her mouth, coats it with her saliva, and finds the perfect point.

  The blue. What was it? Her lover adored blue.

  Blue, midnight blue, angry ocean blue, bruise blue, calm lake blue, periwinkle, the purple blue of an oyster shell, the wing of a blue jay, blue ginger. Her mind skips across the blues, like a flat stone on water. A brush made from the tail of her father’s horse dips into a pool of bruise blue and prances across the white sheet of paper.

  She paints his kimono and whittles some yellow, brown, and red from her blocks of dried ink. With drops of water, she makes the color of dried wheat.

  After a while—how long, she does not know—she looks up. The first light of the morning is peering through pale yellow sky. She inadvertently glances over to his side of the studio, to his potter’s wheel and clay. A big lump of brown clay sits next to the wheel, wrapped in a wet burlap cloth. What an ugly color and a messy craft, she thinks. She feels a prick of guilt, just a hint, something that can be quickly trotted back to the recesses of her mind. He is probably in the kitchen, waiting. Let him wait. There, on her paper, her lover is gazing at her, brilliantly alive.

  Hello, she whispers. Hello, my sweet love.

  HE REMOVES THE WHITE Wrappings from his feet and rubs them with a towel. The maid has worked on his feet all morning. He glances toward the studio. A brown thrush sits on the window ledge and picks at the sunflower seeds he left out. She spends so much time in there, and yet he never hears her talk about her paintings. He has only seen a handful—rice paddies, a setting sun, the turning of a maple tree during autumn, a single twig of cherry blossom, a spray of rock azalea. They are pretty, he supposes, in their own way, but how could any of that be so compelling as to demand hours and hours?

  WHAT MAKES HER GLANCE up, a stir of wind, a branch scraping against the studio window, a hum in her blood stream?—she’s not sure, but he is coming. There is his strange walk, so spasmodic and jouncy, as if his legs only reluctantly give in to the task. His arms lurch forward then back, his rhythm off.
She should have tended to his feet. She is a bad wife, she knows.

  The black ink soaks into the white paper. She blows on it to dry it faster.

  His hand is on the doorknob. It turns. She slips her painting underneath her desk. The paint is mostly dry. She covers it with another sheet.

  He opens the door.

  Good morning, he says.

  Good morning.

  He asks if she’s already eaten breakfast.

  No. That’s where I’m off to, she says, standing. Are you here to work?

  I thought I might try.

  Her cheeks flush, and her eyes dart to the door. You didn’t feed the fish. Should I take care of it? I can do that. If you want.

  He looks at her puzzled. You never feed the fish. I thought you didn’t like to. The smell of the fish food. He dismisses her offer with a toss of his hand.

  There is a pause. They look at each other; he feels bold today, though he doesn’t know why. I was hoping to see your painting. You’ve been in here so long. It must be remarkable, your painting.

  She steps away, the back of her heel scrapes the door. Oh, no. It’s not done yet. Maybe later. Maybe when I’ve finished it. But I couldn’t. Not yet.

  That would be nice, he says, and then just as quickly as it came, his courage leaks from him. He doesn’t want to stir things up, not when he’s settling down to work.

  HIS HANDS ARE DEEP in blue clay. The other day, he had the gardener travel to the Tamagawa River and bring back buckets of this smooth mixture, so fine on the fingertips. Crushed sand, he thinks. He smells the rich earth. The wheel will sing to him, a sound that’s been with him for almost thirty years. He thinks of it now as a voice. Sometimes he imagines it’s the voice of the old woman healer; sometimes it’s his mother’s. He loves the making of the bowl. It is only later when he looks at it that he finds so many mistakes.

  He pumps the pedal, which, in the beginning, only slightly hurts his foot. The wheel begins to turn. There is the hum now. He feels peacefulness wake and stretch inside, and the watery clay undulates in his hands. A beautiful bowl, he thinks, different from anything he’s ever made, a bowl that makes people stop and stare, commands them to halt and forget where they are going, what was important a moment ago. Look! Look again. It will be a resplendent bowl, better than anything he has ever made.

  The humming rings different today, not high-pitched, but lower, a bass tone. Who? he wonders. His fingers sink farther into the mound of clay, as if searching for the source. Then he gives a small cry. The tone, a tenor voice. His father. He rarely hears him when he works and now the clay feels too sticky. He tries to form a shape to the sound. The clay twists and contorts in his hands, like a slick animal trying to escape. The noise grows louder. The clay lashes to the right and leaps in between his fingers. And now he realizes the rumbling matches his own, the one he has been trying to ignore.

  He stops pumping. The wheel’s whir slows to a dullness, then stops. The angry clatter subsides, disappears. He sinks his feet into a bucket of clay to ease the growing pain.

  A warning, the men said. If his father had received such a threat, he would not be sitting in his shop selling green tea or hoeing his field. He would hold meetings with the townspeople, argue over the best way to counter the attack. Repercussions for such actions, his father would say. There must be consequences. The burning of the teahouse cannot go unanswered. Nor the request to close the temple.

  He looks at his wheel, the nascent shape. A mess of clay, he thinks. He punches his fist into the emerging bowl and sits, brooding. He will address it, he tells himself, but he can’t ignore the other voice—how long must he go on addressing?

  HAYASHI WATCHES THE BUILDER haul away the remains of the teahouse. The burned boards are gone, but the plot of land underneath is scarred, blackened by the fire. Swiping his sandal along the ground, he tries to cover up the stain. Soot rises up, and he smells the smoke and bitter ash.

  The gardener rolls up a wheelbarrow full of dirt.

  I’ll do it, says Hayashi, grabbing the shovel. He must do something.

  The gardener looks at him perplexed.

  Hayashi asks for two more wheelbarrows full of soil. The gardener pauses, shrugs, dumps the dirt, then returns to the compost. Hayashi almost stumbles over as he shovels the new soil onto the black spot. The other night, when he woke and saw the flames, he stood on the cold floor in bare feet. His legs locked, paralyzed by an irrational fear of the flames; they were searching for him. Silly, he says out loud now, and tries to shake off the memory, but the image is still there; they leaped into the air, wildly and erratically, hunting for him, grazing the night sky in search of his scarred flesh.

  Ayoshi comes out and stands beside him, holding work gloves. I thought I’d help, she says.

  He is sweating and his face is pale. She grabs a rake from the tool shed and smoothes out the dirt, concealing the black soot. And though he nods and looks appreciatively at her, it is not from a generous spirit that she’s helping; she knows if he works too long, his feet will throb, and she might be stuck the entire evening tending to him.

  How often did you and your family come here to the temple? she asks.

  Over in the far gardens, my father grew green tea, he says, certain he’s told her this before, but grateful to talk about anything but the teahouse. My entire family almost lived here during the growing season. This house was home to about thirty monks. My father was poor. In exchange for free green tea, the monks let him use their land.

  She carefully draws her rake, carving perfect lines into the dirt. If she presses too hard, there is the black from the fire. They work until there is an inch layer of new soil, the scar of the fire no longer a blight to the eye.

  That night, it rains and he sleeps deeply to the sound of splashing water on the windowpane. In the morning, he stands at the window and stares, his face ghostly white, the line between his brows a deep fold. There, the black stain, the impregnable darkness where the teahouse once stood. The new dirt has washed away.

  HE SITS AT HIS potter’s wheel, his unfinished bowl on a shelf behind him covered with a wet cloth. Don’t look yet. It’s not done and you’ll only make yourself upset. There is her painting desk. Small bits of color dot the wood where the brush inadvertently slipped off the paper.

  I think she’ll soon leave me, he says aloud, without thinking. He sits perfectly still, a clutch in his throat, held by the raw truth of this utterance. For how long he sits, he doesn’t know. She walks into the studio.

  I’m sorry, she says with a start and steps backward to the door. I didn’t know you were still in here.

  Don’t go, he says. I was just thinking about something, but I’d rather tell it to you.

  She nods uncertainly and sits at her desk, fumbling with her paintbrush. He grabs his Emerson book and reads from his notes in the margins.

  Here, what an amazing mind, he says. When this book is finally translated into Japanese, it will change everything. He says about experience that we live in a dream. In the murk. Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir tree. Put down your brush for a moment.

  She looks at him, surprised by his firm tone.

  He almost stops himself, aware of his desperate effort to engage her.

  The lords of life, the lords of life,—

  I saw them pass,

  In their own guise,

  Like and unlike,

  Portly and grim,

  Use and surprise,

  Surface and dream,

  Succession swift and spectral Wrong,

  Temperament without a tongue,

  And the inventor of the game

  Omnipresent without a name;—

  Some to see, some to be guessed,

  They marched from east to west:

  Little man, least of all,

  Among the legs of his guardians tall,

  Walked about with a puzzled look:—

  Him by the hand dear nature
took;

  Dearest nature, strong and kind,

  Whispered, “Darling, never mind!

  Tomorrow they will wear another face,

  The founder thou! these are thy race.

  Please be quiet, she thinks, but what about that intriguing line, the one about the puzzled look, and the little man?

  Out the window, he sees a brown swallow fly from limb to limb, back and forth, as if caught in a wind current. He wants to throw himself into work and he longs for her to say something about the poem, something magnificent and worthy that will link them in this moment.

  Isn’t he wonderful, he says. How we live in a fog. What do you think it means?

  I don’t know, she says, staring at an oak leaf on the floor. It has as many colors in it as a field of wildflowers, she thinks.

  Don’t you think it means all we have is our own perspective? We are locked into these bodies, these histories with their circumscribed views. We can’t get out, can we? It’s like a prison. We need each other to get out.

  She wonders why he is speaking with such urgency. I’ve never thought of it as a prison, she says.

  No?

  No. But I guess it depends on one’s perspective.

  Maybe, he says.

  The long pause becomes awkward. His head bows with disappointment and his wheel begins to turn. The hum fills the room. She drops her gaze to the leaf, the veins, the lifeblood of the leaf.

  He reaches up to the shelf and pulls down his unfinished bowl. This gives him peace, he thinks, his hands immersed in clay. What did Emerson prescribe? Muscular activity? Yes, that’s it. To fill the hour and leave no crevice for repentance or approval. And so, if he could, he’d sculpt every hour of the day, and finding contentment, she could leave him, yes, she could, and perhaps he’d be so absorbed, he’d barely notice. A hiccup in an otherwise calm life. But there is a time when his hands fall silent to his side, his feet hurting too much, he must stop. She is lost in her painting. Who is she? He watches her head, the top of it facing him and her hand moving with the brush, her steady, trancelike breath, and thinks she’s somewhere underneath the layers and folds. When she walked into the room, she was tucked in a dream, her eyes coated with a soft haze. She sets down her brush, raises her hands, and presses her fingertips to her temples. When she picks up her brush again, there is a red ring at the corner of her eye. He’s seen that gesture before, but can’t place it. He watches the redness slowly fade, still trying to recall where he’d witnessed that gesture. Only after many moments pass does he realize she is speaking to him.