The Painting

by Nina Schuyler

  Daudet sidles up to Jorgen. The painting is exquisite. I hate to part with it. I must tell you, I’ve shown it to a couple of my artist friends and they were duly inspired. They begged me to sell it to them. But Daniel told me your interest, so out of deference to Daniel, I come to you first.

  I’ve got the money, says Jorgen. The words from her lips, if he collects them, what will they mean? Everything he has loved has been taken, but he will have this and then he will have Natalia.

  What is your price? Daudet asks.

  What price? thinks Jorgen. How much? He knows how much is in his pocket. Some or all; all or nothing; some and everything. What price?

  Daudet breathes heavily.

  How to price something that rises up to greet you, as if lifting away from a neutral background to welcome you again? What is she whispering?

  Sir?

  Yes, says Jorgen, sighing. He says a number.

  Daudet clutches his stomach and his laughter is thunderous. When he keeps laughing, Jorgen feels his shame turn to anger. Jorgen fights the desire to grab the painting and run. Just take it and be done with this. How much humiliation does a man have to suffer?

  Please, says Daudet. I don’t mean to offend, but you are joking, aren’t you?

  His face red and hot, Jorgen shifts on his heel to the ball of his foot.

  Don’t tell me Daniel bought it from you for such a low price. Is that your gauge?

  He glares at the man and leans his hands against the table to steady himself. Maybe if he turns around and doesn’t look at the painting, he could walk out of this room, down the hallway, into the chaos of the sidewalk. If he could turn right now, save a bit of his shredded dignity. Just turn his gaze, turn right now, but he can’t keep his eyes off it. She is there, leaning into the man’s ear, her silks parted, whispering her words, whispering in his ear.

  Daudet pulls up a chair and sits in front of the painting. He asks if that is the best Jorgen can do.

  In his calculation, Jorgen set aside some money for food. But there are boxes of canned food. He could steal those from Pierre. Yes, he says. I can raise it. Another hundred francs.

  Daudet smiles disappointedly. Poor boy. This must be altogether a new world for you.

  Jorgen looks at him confused.

  Do you know I have someone offering three times that? Daudet sighs loudly and sniffs. Daniel says you’ve been through a lot. You came here from Denmark to fight for France. Tell you what. You seem like a good man. I think we can put together something.

  Jorgen’s weight shifts, fresh heat rises from his skin. He will do this, after all. A deal will be made.

  In exchange for a map of Pierre’s supply route, and your stated price, I will sell you the painting.

  Jorgen pauses only momentarily. Yes. Fine.

  Daudet pulls out his black book. You can draw it right here.

  He hands Jorgen his pen.

  He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t weigh and ponder the terms or the consequences, though he senses everything is about to change as he grabs the pen and sketches the city and the entry point for Pierre’s treasures. And he offers more: when the next delivery is due. At least two or perhaps three loads are being transported tonight, with one box of jade, some bolts of Oriental silk, and that sharp Danish cheese, of which Pierre has grown particularly fond. Daudet says, That will do. Jorgen smacks the bundle of money from his pocket into Daudet’s fleshy hand.

  I trust you, says Daudet, but to be sure, you will escort me tonight, and together we will watch the first unloading. After that, you may go. I’ll handle the rest.

  Daudet reaches for the painting.

  Jorgen stops the chubby hand midstream. Daudet chuckles. Jorgen carefully rolls up the painting and gently fits it inside a cardboard cylinder.

  DAUDET CALLS FOR HIS carriage. Two black horses trot up to the sidewalk, pulling behind them a carriage. The horses stamp and Daudet pets their noses, reaches into his pocket, and flattening his palm, gives them each rolled oats.

  The gate to Daniel’s house shuts behind them with a finality that only Jorgen hears. As they trot down the street, he stares out the window, the painting across his lap. He turns the cardboard tube around and around. He can’t sit still; the painting, he wants to pull it out and look again. He shouldn’t have done it, parted with all his money. How will he live? What will he do? Slowly it comes to him. Nothing is the same anymore.

  Daudet sighs. The problem with Pierre is that he deals with only a limited clientele, he says. Those with enough money. But there are many more who would do anything for food. An entire bargaining and exchange market to be tapped into. Think of yourself as helping the common man on the street.

  The air is cold and has turned the grass into a silvery white glow. He directs Daudet to park the carriage across from a small white house with a large porch. The shades are drawn and the front metal gate swings with the wind. It seems abandoned, except for the red cross hanging out front and the candlelight glowing inside. It appears to be a makeshift hospital. Next to the house on the street is one of the main openings to the sewer system.

  A light snow begins to fall and Jorgen puts his hand out and catches a flake. Daudet opens a flask.

  After a while, two men come around the back, leading a carriage with horses. Another two men come out the front carrying a coffin. They step into the house and load another seven.

  Daudet chuckles and rubs his belt buckle. He lights his pipe and fills the carriage with blue smoke. Ingenious, he says. Who would open a closed coffin?

  When Pierre’s delivery boys have ridden away, Jorgen clutches the cardboard cylinder and opens the carriage door. I’ll walk home from here, he says.

  PIERRE WATCHES THE BOXES come in through the front door and smells one wafting of rich chocolate. There is an indescribable pleasure in the boxes, and Pierre loves the mixture of smells and tastes, the exotic meats and the ordinary canned soup from England. The whole array is wonderful: the common bar of soap, the jewelry of rare stones, the rifles, the bullets, the vests and tan trousers, the imported ceramics, and the pickled cucumbers from Italy. With so many goods, it is easy to love life. War, he thinks, is such good business.

  He opens the box of chocolate and takes out a bar. Sent by a small manufacturer in Fontainebleu. He bites into it; the rich flavor coats his tongue.

  Hurry up, he shouts, and the hired men stomp up the stairs, carrying the boxes.

  He follows them up. Twenty boxes in all. They are all here. He opens his wallet and pays the men. In the inventory room, a single candle burning, Pierre rips apart the box from Japan. He unwraps a tea cup, the color of midnight blue. Lovely, he says, crumpling the paper into a tight wad and tossing it back in the box.

  JAPAN

  STOP. STOP. STOP, STOP, stop, stop stop stop!

  It must stop, but he can’t shout it, not even whisper it, and now midway through the funeral services, Hayashi is trembling so badly from fright that he must leave.

  How could—but why and how—and he didn’t ask, the monk never asked, no permission for such a thing, thinks Hayashi, pacing frantically around the garden. He stops. Glares at the teahouse, the exquisite teahouse. He heads toward the lake. But I let it go on, never did tell him about the meeting, the danger, the impending danger, the soldiers who at any moment will arrive with their rifles—perhaps now—he stops abruptly and stares at the black iron gate. He rushes back to the temple. He must stop this. As he approaches, the front door opens and there is the monk escorting the family outside. Hayashi retreats, sighing, but there is little relief; the monk is ringing that bell again. Hayashi presses his hands to his ears; still the sound reverberates. Twice in one day. Something horrible is certain to happen.

  Hayashi escapes into the studio. Soon this day will be over and there will be the deep hole of night. Will they come again under the cloak of darkness? Burn down the temple this time? Sneak through the front door and kill him with a sword? Kill everyone? He sits at his wheel, picks up a handful
of clay, and kneads it. Maybe he should send everyone to town. He’ll stay. He should be the one they take. When he thinks of this, there is a certain familiarity to the thought. As if it is preordained, not by some implacable external force, but by a trajectory running through the course of his entire life.

  Excuse me, says Sato.

  Hayashi jumps.

  I’m sorry I startled you, says Sato, stepping into the studio. What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a bad spirit. Sato steps inside, sits in Ayoshi’s chair, crossing his ankles. I’m surprised they let you hold a Buddhist funeral.

  Hayashi can barely speak the words. No, he says. In fact, I’m supposed to close the temple.

  When?

  A while ago. I was given an official notice.

  Sato pauses. I don’t understand.

  I shouldn’t have let it happen.

  It’s very dangerous, says Sato.

  I know, says Hayashi, putting his hand to his forehead. Do you think the bell was heard in town?

  Sato raises an eyebrow in disbelief. If not the first time, then the second.

  Maybe the officials weren’t in town. They’re not always there. Maybe they won’t know it happened.

  Sato shrugs. I was going to stop it, but then I saw you rush over to the temple, and I thought you’d do it. But you let it go on. You are much too lenient with the monk. It’s almost as if he runs the house and the temple and the gardens. You’ve let him take over.

  Hayashi stands and looks out the window, watching for a flash of a uniform, the glint of a rifle. The wind of the oncoming evening rattles the door. Hayashi’s feet are throbbing. He looks down and sees streaks of dark blue, bright purple, and red.

  Maybe we shouldn’t stay in the house tonight. The temple probably isn’t safe either.

  If they come, I’ll speak to them, says Sato. Tell them it was a mistake. I’ll say the ringing of the bell was to announce the temple’s closure.

  Do you think it will work? he asks, his face briefly clears of worry. But the overwhelming panic returns. Hayashi sits again at his potter’s wheel and drops his head in his hands. I’ve made so many mistakes.

  The evening settles in, the light changes and falls off. I’ll speak to them, he says again, watching Hayashi. When they ask, I’d like to tell them the monk no longer lives here.

  Hayashi slowly lifts his head. He does feel it, doesn’t he? He’d never admit it to anyone, but at the thought of the monk leaving, he feels as if stones are being removed from his chest.

  Now that the teahouse is done, the monk should be sent on his way, says Sato. He only brings trouble to your home.

  Hayashi twists a piece of towel in his hands, feeling guilty; how could he wish the monk to leave? How could he do that to the mountain monks? They are the ones who sent the monk here.

  Sato glances toward the door. You know as well as I do these are unsettled times. It’s for the best.

  Hayashi sits expressionless, the veins on his forehead bulging. He looks at the floor, trying to find his balance. I’m not sure you know the position I’m in, he stammers. The things I owe.

  I have some sense of it, says Sato.

  Hayashi reaches for the bucket of leftover clay and buries his feet.

  Sato twirls a paintbrush and sets it back down.

  The mountain monks, says Hayashi, pulling clay between two fingers, they are my family. He feels a tumult of emotion. Hayashi scrapes away the dried blue clay encrusted in his fingernails. Night begins to saturate the room. He digs his feet deeper into the clay. Hayashi glances at Sato, whose dark eyes dart furiously around the room, then looks away.

  Sato tries to control his rising anger. So you would put your entire household in jeopardy because of this monk? What is so great about this man? Surely he isn’t one of the mountain monks who took care of you. Sato exhales loudly, filling the room with his disgust. I guess I don’t understand, he says. He’s tempted to blurt out the true contours of the danger, but there is Hayashi’s pale face, his hands, clenching and unclenching. What harm would the truth bring to Ayoshi? He has seen brief flashes of Hayashi’s temper.

  Hayashi’s face flushes and sets stubbornly. I appreciate your help, he says, rubbing his hands back and forth, unable to look at him. He breathes deeply and gathers his strength. It is what he wishes he’d said so long ago. Now it must be said. But I’d rather you not interfere with my affairs.

  Sato rises and pulls his hands behind his back. Fine. Fine. Fine. Let’s talk about anything else but your affairs.

  Hayashi lets his shoulders drop back down, away from his ears. Good, he says, relieved.

  The weather? Shall we talk about the weather? How the season seems to be changing? Or what? The rice crop this year?

  Hayashi frowns and narrows his eyes.

  Or poetry? Perhaps the Heian period?

  Hayashi feels his anger rise, and before he can contain it, he flings back, You can be a very disagreeable man.

  Sato leaps out of his chair, smiling brightly, and claps his hands. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  THE CEREMONY ENDED A while ago, and the family helped carry the casket outside to the cemetery, then left for town to receive condolences from their neighbors. The temple is quiet, the scent of incense still heavy in the air. He will have to build the bonfire soon and cremate the body. But not now.

  He pulls out the painting. He shouldn’t have stolen it, shouldn’t have snuck into the studio last night after he finished the teahouse, but there are so many paintings and he wants to know, who is this man who holds her, as if she is his, and he is hers? He told himself as he walked into the studio, he is just curious. He can’t stop staring at the blue and red swatches of kimonos splashed against each other, the pale limbs intertwined. He sees so much more this time as he traces the man’s hand skating on her thigh. Their thick sensuality, an escape, he knows now. Her hand on his chest and another wrapped behind his back. He knows the racing of the heart, the warm skin, the breath persecuting the ear.

  He walks back to the center of the temple to sit and say his prayers, but fidgets and returns to the painting. His throat constricts; fury and despair and humiliation tangle there. Their faces, blissful; and this is what is confusing. This is the most confusing part of all. This is what is tightening his lungs: She seemed this way with him. Her face radiant, and he felt the flush of heat in his cheeks. Her voice swooning. So what does it mean or does it mean nothing at all? He can’t separate himself from this heart-stabbing question, but throws himself at it again and again. The first rip in the painting is done without thought. He tears through the clouds racing through blue sky, mutilates the searing sun, he cleaves until he reaches the top of her head, then stops. He drops it on the floor.

  He stands there stunned, staring at the ruined painting, his mind lodging into the need to escape. Run to town, to the carriage with the black horses, and ride away from these people, from her; a thickness falls between him and the world, through which he sees that nothing at all belongs to him. In his innocence he has never had that thought, never desired to own anything. But here, in the valley below the mountain, it is different, and in the home of Hayashi, who owns so much, he feels utterly deprived. That wretched feeling burrows down and pulls up another thought, that he is unworthy and that is why he has nothing. He tries to soothe himself by remembering that Hayashi’s soul will be assessed after death and his lavishness will relegate him to rebirth as a beast or worse, the demonic regions of Jigoku. But even those thoughts bring no peace. He finishes ripping the painting, right down the middle of Ayoshi and that man. He is astonished at himself, at his actions. He did not know he could destroy so easily. He crumples up the man and shoves the paper inside the opening of a vase. He holds the image of her in front of him, imagining that her loving eyes are for him. But she’s not looking at him; her gaze drifts off to the side. He jams her image into a bag of rice.

  SHE COMPELS HER HAND to draw his face slowly with a black-inked brush. The forced hand creates the
oval outline, the hair, each strand, but even with that much done, she knows it is not Urashi’s face, and as she goes on, it’s not the line of his nose, the shape of his lip, the curve of an eyelid, the fall of his dark hair; nothing about him rests on the paper. For weeks, she’s tried to find his features. Ayoshi sets the brush down. She remembers the woman’s face after the funeral service, the etchings of grief gone, a vision of tranquility. The woman walked with her children to the gate, the deep disturbance removed, her shoulders composed, her breathing steady.

  She finds the monk in the temple polishing the Buddha statue. He feels the air shift the moment she walks in. At first he won’t look at her.

  She won’t go away.

  He finally turns.

  She asks him to conduct a burial ceremony. How long has she known?

  Of course, he says, his body softening. His eyes brighten. Of course. His tone is warm now, filled with understanding and a tinge of excitement.

  There won’t be a body to wash, she says, her voice flat and empty. It is for Urashi, she says. The man in the paintings.

  Whatever you need. He’s about to say more. She raises a finger, turns, and walks out, expecting to fall down.

  HAYASHI REMOVES ONE FOOT and then the other from the bucket. He pauses for a moment, looking at his mangled feet, before he wraps them in cool, wet towels.

  It can’t be that hard. Just tell the monk it is time.