Beauty and Sadness (9 page)

“Let’s leave before it gets any heavier,” he urged her. “Your clothes must already be damp.”

“That was fun!”

In the car Oki remarked that schools of dolphins sometimes came in on the other side of the bay, a little beyond Ito. “They get chased close to shore, and then men strip down and catch them in their bare arms. Dolphins can’t resist if you tickle them under their fins.”

“Poor things.”

“I wonder if a nice young girl could resist it.”

“What a repulsive thought! I suppose she’d scratch and claw and lash out.”

“Probably the dolphins would be gentler.”

The taxi arrived at a hotel on a hilltop overlooking Enoshima. The island was gray too, and the Miura Peninsula stretched out vaguely to the left. Rain was coming
down in large drops, and the usual thick haze of the season hung in the air. Even the nearby pines were misty.

By the time they were shown to a room they felt thoroughly wet and sticky.

“We can’t go back,” Oki said. “The fog is too thick.”

Keiko nodded. He was surprised at how readily she agreed.

“We ought to have a bath before dinner.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “Shall we play dolphin?”

“You do say repulsive things—mentioning me in the same breath with a fish! Must you be so insulting? Playing dolphin!” She leaned against the frame of the window. “It’s a dark ocean.”

I’m sorry.

“You might say you’d like to see me naked. Or just take me in your arms.”

“You wouldn’t resist?”

“I don’t know—but asking me to play dolphin is an insult! I’m no slut, after all. You seem so depraved.”

“Do I?” he said, and went into the bathroom.

Oki took a shower, gave the tub a quick rinse, and began filling it. When he came out his hair was disheveled and he was rubbing his body with a towel. “I’m drawing a hot bath for you,” he said, not looking at her. “It must be half full by now.”

Keiko was gazing out at the ocean, her face set. “It’s turned into a heavy drizzle. You can barely see the island or the peninsula.”

“Are you sad?”

“I hate the color of those waves, too.”

“You must feel sticky all over. Go and have your bath, why don’t you?”

She nodded, and went into the bathroom. There was no sound of splashing. But she came back looking freshly bathed, and sat down at the vanity table and opened her handbag.

Oki went over behind her. “I washed my hair in the shower, but all they had was pomade, and I don’t care for the smell of it.”

“Try some of my perfume.” Keiko handed him a small vial.

Oki sniffed at it. “Am I supposed to sprinkle this over the pomade?”

“Only a tiny bit!” she said, smiling.

He grasped her hand. “Keiko, don’t put any makeup on.”

“You’re hurting me!” She turned toward him. “Naughty, aren’t you?”

“I like you just as you are. Such beautiful teeth, and eyebrows.” He pressed his lips to her glowing cheek. She gave a little cry as her chair tilted over, and she fell with it. Now Oki’s lips were on hers.

It was a long kiss.

He drew his head back to take a breath.

“No, no, don’t stop!” Keiko held him closer.

Concealing his surprise, he tried to make a joke of it. “Even pearl divers can’t stay under water that long. You’ll faint.”

“Make me.…”

“Of course women have more stamina—–” Again he
kissed her for a long time. Short of breath once more, he took her up in his arms and laid her on the bed. She curled herself into a ball.

Although she did not resist, he had difficulty uncurling her. Meanwhile it became obvious that she was not a virgin. He began to handle her more roughly.

Just then Keiko cried out plaintively from beneath him: “Oh!… Otoko, Otoko!”

“What?”

Oki had thought she was calling out to him, but his strength ebbed when he realized she was actually calling Otoko. “What did you say? Otoko?” His voice was sober. Keiko pushed him away without answering.

A
mong the many famous old stone gardens in Kyoto are those of the Moss Temple, the Silver Pavilion, and Ryoanji; indeed, the latter is almost too famous, though it may be said to embody the very essence of Zen aesthetics. Otoko knew them all and had images of them in her mind. But since the end of the rainy season she had been going to the Moss Temple to sketch its stone garden. Not that she thought she could paint it. She only wanted to absorb a little of its strength.

Was this not one of the oldest and most powerful of all stone gardens? Otoko had no real desire to make a painting of it. The stone landscape on the hillside had none of the gentle beauty of the so-called moss garden below. Except for the sightseers passing by, she would have liked just to gaze on and on at it. Perhaps she sketched to avoid arousing the curiosity of the people
who saw her stand looking at it from one angle and then another.

The Moss Temple was restored in 1339 by the priest Muso, who refurbished the temple buildings and had a pond dug and an island constructed. It is said that he would lead visitors up to a look-out pavilion at the top of the hill to enjoy the view of Kyoto. All those buildings had been destroyed. The garden must have been restored many times, after floods and other calamities. Apparently the present dry landscape symbolizing a waterfall and a stream was constructed along a path lighted by stone lanterns leading up to the look-out pavilion. Since it was a stone arrangement, it had probably remained unchanged.

Otoko came here only to sketch and to look at the stone garden, and had no interest in its historical associations. Keiko followed her like a shadow.

“All stone compositions are abstract, aren’t they?” Keiko remarked one day. “There’s something of that strength in Cezanne’s painting of the rocky coasts at L’Estaque.”

“You’ve seen that? Of course it was an actual landscape—not huge cliffs, perhaps, but massive outcroppings along the shore.”

“Otoko, if you paint this stone garden it’ll turn out to be abstract. I couldn’t even attempt it realistically.”

“I suppose you’re right. Though I’m not suggesting I’ll paint it.”

“Shall I try a rough sketch?”

“That might be best. I liked your picture of the tea plantation—it seemed so young. You took that one to Mr. Oki’s house too, didn’t you?”

“Yes. By now his wife may have ripped it to shreds.… I spent the night with him at a hotel near Enoshima. He seemed awfully depraved, but when I called your name it quieted him down immediately. He still loves you, and he has a guilty conscience. It’s enough to make me jealous.”

“But what on earth were you up to?”

“I want to break up his family, to get revenge for you.”

“Revenge again!”

“I hate it. You’re still in love with him, in spite of everything. Women are such fools—that’s what I hate!” She paused. “It’s why I’m jealous.”

“Are you?”

“Of course.”

“You spent the night with him out of jealousy? If I still love him, shouldn’t
I
be jealous?”

“But are you?”

Otoko made no reply.

“I’d be so happy if you were!” Keiko began sketching swiftly. “I couldn’t get to sleep at the hotel, though Mr. Oki seemed to fall asleep quite contentedly. I can’t stand men in their fifties.”

Otoko found herself wondering if they had had a double bed.

“He was sound asleep. It was a marvelous feeling, to know I could strangle him there.”

“You
are
dangerous.”

“It was just a feeling. But it made me so happy I couldn’t sleep.”

“And you say it’s all for my sake?” Otoko’s hand trembled as she went on sketching. “I can’t believe it.”

“Certainly it’s for you!”

Otoko was beginning to feel even more alarmed. “Please don’t go to that house again. There’s no telling what might happen.”

“Didn’t you ever want to kill him yourself, when you were in the hospital?”

“Never. I may have been out of my mind, but as for killing anyone …”

“You didn’t hate him, you were too much in love with him?”

“Then there was my baby.”

“The baby?” Keiko hesitated. “Maybe I could have one by him.”

“Keiko!”

“And then ruin him.”

Otoko stared at her. Frightening words were coming from that beautiful throat. “I suppose you could,” she said, controlling herself. “But do you understand what that means? If you had his child I couldn’t look after you. And once you had a baby you wouldn’t talk like that. Everything would change for you.”

“I’ll never change!”

What had actually happened at the hotel with Oki? Otoko suspected that she was hiding something. What
was Keiko trying to conceal behind such violent words as jealousy and revenge?

Otoko asked herself if she could still be jealous over Oki, and shut her eyelids. The stone garden lingered like a shadow in the depths of her eyes.

“Otoko! Are you all right?” Keiko hugged her. “You’re looking so pale!” Then she pinched her hard under the arms.

“That hurts!” Otoko reeled, and Keiko steadied her.

“Otoko, you’re all I want. Only you.”

In silence Otoko wiped the cold perspiration from her forehead. “If you go on like that you’ll end up unhappy for the rest of your life.”

“I’m not afraid of unhappiness.”

“You’re young and pretty, so you can say that.”

“As long as I can be with you I’ll be happy.”

“I’m glad—but after all, I’m a woman.”

“I hate men.”

“That won’t do,” said Otoko sadly. “If that’s true, the longer we’re together … Besides, our tastes in art are completely different.”

“I’d hate to have a teacher who painted the same way I did.”

“You have lots of hates, haven’t you?” said Otoko, somewhat more calmly. “Let me see your sketchbook a moment.”

Keiko handed it over.

“And what is this?”

“Don’t be mean! The stone garden, of course. Look
closely. I’ve done something I thought I couldn’t.”

As Otoko studied it, her expression changed. A rough ink sketch was hard to interpret, but it seemed to vibrate with a mysterious life. The sketch had a quality hitherto lacking in Keiko’s work. “So there
was
something between you and Mr. Oki at the hotel.”

“I wouldn’t say so.”

“Your sketch is like nothing you’ve ever done before!”

“Otoko, to tell the truth, he can’t even manage a long kiss.”

Otoko was silent.

“Are all men like that?… It was my first time with a man, you know.”

Disturbed by the implications of that “first time,” Otoko went on looking at Keiko’s sketch. “I wish I were a stone myself,” she said at last.

The priest Muso’s stone garden, weathered for centuries, had taken on such an antique patina that the stones looked as if they had always been there. However, their stiff, angular forms left no doubt that it was a human composition, and Otoko had never felt its pressure as intensely as she did now. She felt as if she were under a crushing spiritual weight. “Shall we go home?” she asked. “The stones are beginning to frighten me.”

“All right.”

“I can’t just sit here and meditate.” Otoko’s step faltered as they started down the path. “I know I couldn’t possibly paint them. They
are
abstract—maybe you’ve caught something with your reckless sketching.”

Keiko took her arm. “Let’s go home and play dolphin.”

“Play dolphin? What on earth do you mean?”

Keiko laughed mischievously and headed off to the left toward a bamboo grove. It looked like the beautiful grove seen in photographs of the temple garden.

Otoko’s expression seemed more strained than unhappy. As she walked along the edge of the grove, Keiko called to her, and came up and tapped her on the back. “Have you been hypnotized by that stone garden?”

“No, but I’d like to come here and do nothing but look at it for days and days.”

“They’re just stones, aren’t they?” Her face was as bright and youthful as ever. “I’m sure you see a kind of power and mossy beauty radiating out of them, the way you look at them. But stones are stones.… I remember an essay by a haiku poet, something about looking at the sea day after day, and then moving to Kyoto and understanding what a stone garden really means.”

“The sea in a stone garden? Of course if you think of the ocean, or great crags and cliffs, a stone arrangement in a garden is only man-made. Anyway, I’m afraid I couldn’t paint this one.”

“But it
is
only man-made! It’s abstract. I feel as if I can do it in my own style, and use any color I please.” After a moment she said: “When did they begin making stone gardens?”

“I don’t know, probably not till the fourteenth century.”

“And how old were the stones?”

“I have no idea.”

“Would you like your pictures to last even longer?”

“I could never hope for that.” Otoko looked troubled. “But don’t you think that even this garden, or the garden of the Katsura Palace, has changed a great deal over the centuries? Trees grow and die, storms ravage it, and the like. Though probably the stone arrangements haven’t changed much.”

“Otoko, maybe it’s best if everything changes and disappears!” Keiko exclaimed. “By now my tea-field picture must be torn to shreds, because of that night at Enoshima.”

“But it was such a marvelous picture.”

“Was it?”

“Keiko, do you intend to take all your best work to Mr. Oki?”

“Yes … until I finish getting revenge.”

“I’ve told you I don’t want to hear any more about revenge!”

“I understand,” said Keiko cheerfully. “What I don’t understand is my own spitefulness. Or is it feminine pride? Or jealousy?”

“Jealousy?” Otoko repeated in a low voice, grasping one of Keiko’s fingers.

“Deep in your heart you’re still in love with him. And he keeps you hidden deep in his own heart too. I could tell already on New Year’s Eve.”

Otoko was silent.

“I suppose even a woman’s hatred is a kind of love.”

“Keiko, how can you say a thing like that, here of all places?”

“To me, that stone garden symbolizes the powerful feelings of the men who made it. Yet I can’t understand now what was in their hearts. It’s taken centuries for the stones to get that patina, but I wonder how they looked when the garden was new.”