Beauty and Sadness (6 page)

“Then why did she want to paint such pictures?”

“Hmm.” Realistic or not, a picture expressed the inner thoughts and feelings of the artist. But he was afraid to pursue that kind of discussion with his wife. Perhaps her first impression of Keiko’s paintings had been unexpectedly accurate. And perhaps his own casual impression of lesbianism had been accurate too.

Fumiko left the study. He waited for his son to return.

Taichiro had begun to teach Japanese literature at a private college. On days when he had no lectures he would go to the departmental library at his school, or do some research at home. He had originally wanted to study “modern literature”—Japanese literature since Meiji—but because his father objected he was specializing in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. His ability to read English, French, and German was unusual in his field. He was talented enough, but so quiet he seemed rather glum, the very opposite of his aimlessly cheerful sister Kumiko, with her smattering of flower arrangement, dressmaking, knitting, and all kinds of arts and crafts. Kumiko had always regarded her older brother as eccentric: even when she asked him to go skating or to play tennis he never gave her a decent answer. He would have nothing to do with her girl friends. He invited his students to the house, but he scarcely introduced them
to her. Kumiko was not the sort to bear a grudge, but sometimes she used to pout because her mother was so solicitous toward her brother’s students.

“When Taichiro has guests all we do is serve tea,” her mother would respond. “But you make a great fuss, rummaging around in the refrigerator and the cupboards, or going ahead and having food brought in.”

“Yes, but he has only his students!” she would reply, sniffing.

Kumiko had married and gone to London with her husband; they only heard from her two or three times a year. Taichiro was not yet financially independent and had never talked about marriage.

Oki himself began to worry at how long Taichiro had been gone.

He looked out the small French window of his study. At the base of the hill behind the house a high mound of earth, dug out during the war in making an air raid shelter, was already hidden by weeds so modest one barely noticed them. Among the weeds bloomed a mass of flowers the color of lapis lazuli. The flowers too were extremely small, but they were a bright, strong blue. Except for the sweet daphne, these flowers bloomed earlier than any in their garden. And they stayed in bloom a long time. Whatever they were, they could hardly be familiar harbingers of spring, but they were so close to his window that he often thought he would like to take one in his hand and study it. He had never yet gone to pick one, but that only seemed to increase his love for these tiny lapis-blue flowers.

Soon after them, dandelions also came to bloom in the thicket of weeds. They were long-lived too. Even now in the fading evening light you could see the yellow of dandelions and the blue of all the little flowers. For a long time Oki looked out the window.

Taichiro still had not come home.

O
toko was planning to take Keiko to the temple on Mt. Kurama for the Festival of the Full Moon. The festival was always held in May, but on a different date from that of the old lunar calendar. Early in the evening before the festival, the moon was rising in the clear sky over the Eastern Hills.

Otoko watched it from the veranda. “I think we’ll have a fine moon tomorrow,” she called in to Keiko. Visitors to the festival were supposed to drink from a sake bowl reflecting the full moon, so a cloudy, moonless night would have been disappointing.

Keiko came out on the veranda and put her hand lightly on Otoko’s back.

“The moon of May,” said Otoko.

Finally Keiko spoke. “Shall we go for a drive along the Eastern Hills? Or out toward Otsu, to see the moon in Lake Biwa?”

“The moon in Lake Biwa? There’s nothing special about that.”

“Does it look better in a sake bowl?” Keiko asked, sitting down at Otoko’s feet. “Anyway, I like the colors in the garden tonight.”

“Really?” Otoko looked down at the garden. “Bring a cushion, won’t you? And turn off the light in there.”

From the studio veranda one could see only the inner garden—the view was cut off by the temple’s main residence. It was a rather artless oblong garden, but about half of it was bathed in moonlight, so that even the steppingstones took on different colors in the light and shadow. A white azalea blooming in the shadow seemed to be floating. The scarlet maple near the veranda still had fresh young leaves, though they were darkened by the night. In spring people often mistook its bright red budding leaves for flowers, and wondered what kind of blossoms they were. The garden also had a rich cover of hair moss.

“Suppose I make some of our new tea,” said Keiko. Otoko kept on gazing at her familiar garden, as if she were not used to seeing it at all hours. She was sitting there with her head slightly lowered, preoccupied, her eyes fixed on the moonlit half of the garden.

When Keiko returned with the tea she mentioned reading somewhere that Rodin’s model for
The Kiss
was still alive, and around eighty years old. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”

“That’s because you’re young! Must you die early if an
artist immortalized your youth? It’s wrong to hunt out models like that!”

Her outburst had come from being reminded of Oki’s novel. But Otoko, at thirty-nine, was beautiful. “Actually,” Keiko went on calmly, “it made me think of asking you to paint me once, while I’m young.”

“Of course, if I could. But why not do a self-portrait?”

“Me? I couldn’t get a good likeness, for one thing. Even if I did, all sorts of ugliness would come out, and I’d end up hating the picture. And still people would think I was flattering myself, unless I made it abstract.”

“You mean you’d like a realistic one? But that’s out of character.”

“I want
you
to paint me.”

“I’d be happy to, if I could,” Otoko repeated.

“Maybe your love has cooled—or are you afraid of me?” Keiko’s voice had an edge to it. “A man would be delighted to paint me. Even in the nude.”

Otoko seemed unperturbed. “If that’s how you feel, suppose I try.”

“I’m so glad!”

“But a nude won’t do. A nude painted by a woman never turns out very well. Not in my old-fashioned style, anyway.”

“When I paint my self-portrait I’ll include you in the picture,” said Keiko insinuatingly.

“What kind of picture would that be?”

Keiko giggled mysteriously. “Don’t worry. If you’re
going to paint me, mine can be abstract. No one will know.”

“It’s not that I’m worried,” said Otoko, sipping the fragrant new tea.

It was the first tea of the season, a gift from the tea plantation in Uji where Otoko had been going to sketch. None of the girls picking tea appeared in her sketches: the whole surface was filled with the soft undulations of overlapping rows of tea bushes. Day after day she returned to make more sketches, in various kinds of light and shadow. Keiko always went along with her.

Once Keiko had asked: “Isn’t this an abstraction?”

“If you had painted it, yes. I suppose it’ll be quite daring for me, all in green, but I want to try to harmonize the colors of the young and old leaves, and the soft, rounded wave patterns.”

She had made a preliminary version of the painting in her studio, on the basis of all the sketches.

But it was not merely from pleasure in the undulating waves of light and dark green that Otoko had wanted to paint the Uji tea plantation. After the breakup of her affair with Oki she had fled to Kyoto with her mother, and then gone back and forth several times to Tokyo, but what especially lingered in her mind from those days were the tea fields around Shizuoka, seen from the train window. Sometimes she saw them at midday, sometimes in the evening. She was still only a high-school student, and had no idea of becoming a painter; it was just that at the sight of the tea fields the sadness of parting suddenly
pressed in on her. She could not say why these rather inconspicuous green slopes had so touched her heart, when along the railway line there were mountains, lakes, the sea—at times even clouds dyed in sentimental colors. But perhaps their melancholy green, and the melancholy evening shadows of the ridges across them, had brought on the pain. Then too, they were small, well-groomed slopes with deeply shaded ridges, not nature in the wild; and the rows of rounded tea bushes looked like flocks of gentle green sheep. But it may have been simply that Otoko, sad even before leaving Tokyo, reached the peak of her sadness the first time the train passed Shizuoka.

When she saw the Uji tea plantation, Otoko’s sadness returned. She began going there to sketch. Even Keiko seemed not to notice how she felt. To be sure, the spring tea fields at Uji did not have the melancholy of those she had seen from the train window; the green of the young leaves was too bright.

Although Keiko had read Oki’s novel, and had heard all about him during their long talks in bed together, she still seemed unaware that the sketches of the tea plantation harbored the sadness of Otoko’s old love. She herself delighted in the pattern of softly rounded overlapping rows of tea bushes, but the more sketches she turned out the further they were from reality. Otoko found these rough sketches amusing.

“You’re going to do the whole picture in green, aren’t you?” said Keiko.

“Of course. The tea fields at picking time—variations in green, you know.”

“I’m trying to make up my mind whether to use red, or purple, or what. I don’t care if people can’t tell it’s a tea field.”

Keiko’s preliminary study was propped up against the studio wall alongside Otoko’s.

“Such delicious new tea,” said Otoko, smiling. “Do make some more—in the abstract style.”

“So bitter you can’t drink it?”

“Is that what you call abstract?” She heard Keiko’s young laughter from the other room. Her voice hardened slightly. “When you went to Tokyo you stopped in at Kamakura, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“On New Year’s Day Mr. Oki asked to see my paintings.” She paused, then went on coldly, “Otoko, I want to get revenge for you.”

“Revenge?” Otoko was shocked. “Revenge for me?”

“That’s right.”

“Keiko, come sit here. Let’s talk about it over some of your abstract tea.”

Silently Keiko knelt at her side, her knees grazing Otoko’s, and picked up a cup of green tea. “My, it
is
bitter!” she said, frowning. “Let me make a new pot.”

“Never mind,” said Otoko, restraining her. “Why on earth are you talking about revenge?”

“You know why.”

“I’ve never thought of such a thing. I have no wish for it.”

“Because you still love him—because you can’t stop loving him, as long as you live.” Keiko’s voice choked. “So I want revenge.”

“But why?”

“I have my own jealousy!”

“Really?” Otoko put her hand on Keiko’s shoulder; it was trembling.

“It’s true, isn’t it? I can tell. I hate it.”

“Such a violent child,” said Otoko softly. “What can you mean by revenge? What are you planning to do?”

Keiko was looking down, motionless. The band of moonlight in the garden had broadened.

“Why did you go to Kamakura, without even telling me?”

“I wanted to see the family of the man who made you so unhappy.”

“And did you?”

“Only his son Taichiro—I suppose he’s the image of his father when
he
was young. It seems he studies medieval Japanese literature. Anyway, he was very kind to me, he showed me around the Kamakura temples and even took me down the coast, to Enoshima.”

“But you’re a Tokyoite, surely those places weren’t new to you?”

“Yes, but I never saw much of them before. Enoshima has changed enormously. And I enjoyed hearing about the temple where women could escape their husbands.”

“Is that your revenge, seducing that boy? Or being
seduced by him?” Otoko let her hand drop from Keiko’s shoulder. “It looks as if I’m the one who ought to be jealous.”

“Oh, Otoko,
you
jealous? That makes me happy!” She put her arms around Otoko’s neck and leaned against her. “You see? To anyone but you I could be wicked, a real devil!”

“But you took two of your favorite pictures.”

“Even a wicked girl wants to make a good impression. Taichiro wrote to say my paintings are hanging in his study.”

“Is that your revenge for me?” said Otoko quietly.

“The beginning of your revenge?”

“Yes.”

“He was only an infant, he didn’t know anything about me and his father. What hurt me was later, hearing about the birth of his little sister. Now that I look back on it, I’m sure that’s how I felt. I suppose she’s married by now.”

“Shall I break up her marriage?”

“Really, Keiko! You’re much too vain, even joking like that. You’ll get into trouble. It’s not just a piece of harmless mischief.”

“As long as I have you I’m not afraid. How do you suppose I’d paint if I lost you? Maybe I’d give up my painting—and my life.”

“Don’t say such an awful thing!”

“I wonder if you couldn’t have broken up Mr. Oki’s marriage.”

“But I was only a schoolgirl … and they had a child.”

“I’d have done it.”

“You don’t know how strong a family can be.”

“Stronger than art?”

“Well …” Otoko tilted her head, looking a little sad. “In those days I didn’t think about art.”

“Otoko.” Keiko turned to her, holding her gently by the wrist. “Why did you have me go to meet Mr. Oki, and see him off?”

“Because you’re young and pretty, of course! Because I’m proud of you.”

“I hate your hiding things from me. And I was watching you carefully—with my jealous eyes.”

“Were you?” Otoko looked into Keiko’s eyes, sparkling in the moonlight. “It’s not that I wanted to hide anything from you. But I was only sixteen when we were separated, and now I’m middle-aged, beginning to thicken around the waist. The truth is, I didn’t feel much like meeting him. I was afraid he’d be disillusioned.”

“Shouldn’t he have been the one to worry? I admire you more than anyone I’ve ever known, so I was disillusioned by him. Since coming to live with you I find young men a bore, but I thought Mr. Oki would be more impressive. As soon as I saw him I was utterly disillusioned. Your memories gave me the impression of a much finer person.”