The Painting (34 page)

Shivering, he joins the line. A bit of bread will help, he thinks, not remembering when he last ate. He’s thinking how he could break into Daniel’s house, perhaps climb in through the back window, when he hears something and turns.

What? he asks. What did you say?

Bazaine surrendered at Metz.

Other people wake up from their isolated daze. News is so scarce.

The man says a group of soldiers staggered in last night, emaciated and weary. They walked all the way from Metz. There’s a bunch of soldiers at the plaza.

Jorgen hurries along Avenue de l’Imperatrice; cows graze alongside horses and sheep. He passes by soldiers wearing faded coats and dirty boots and playing galline. Beside them, their pitched tents and open fires. Someone shouts to his right; at his feet, an old woman in rags begs; a soldier rides by on a horse, his arm bandaged and his face weary. It all passes by him, around him, a churning of events that have nothing to do with him.

At the Hôtel de Ville a mob has gathered. Rain begins to fall and umbrellas pop like bomb bursts. Jorgen bumps into a National Guardsman. He quickly apologizes in his best French and asks if he’s spoken to anyone returning from Metz. The guard tells him to try the hospitals.

Jorgen walks rapidly to the first hospital in view and almost tumbles out, the smell of blood and sweat and fear too sickeningly familiar. The room is spilling with a fresh wave of injured soldiers. Rows of cots, soldiers sitting on the floor, lying on the floor, in chairs. By the door, there’s a soldier with a head wound; his bandage is soaked through. It’ll be hours before someone has time to take care of that, thinks Jorgen. Jorgen asks him whether he came from Metz. The man shakes his head mutely and points to another soldier, sitting in a chair, his head in his hands.

Jorgen bends down. Excuse me.

The soldier groans and asks Jorgen for a cup of water. Jorgen finds the man’s canteen resting on the floor. He tips the man’s head back and puts it to his parched lips. The soldier tells Jorgen that Bazaine will be punished for this. He will probably hang.

Did you see women soldiers? asks Jorgen.

The whole thing a mess. A damn mess.

Jorgen asks again.

Women? Several died up there. Can’t remember. We didn’t have time to bury them. Birds and feral dogs picking away at the dead bodies. Stacks of bodies. No one knew what they were doing. Damn Bazaine.

Jorgen describes Natalia. He’s surprised at how many details he remembers. The color of her hair, her face, soft but pensive, as if always thinking or listening intently. Sometimes her face open, like an animal sunning itself. Her eyes, the same eyes, blue and intense.

I don’t know. Maybe.

The injured soldier rubs his face with dirty, blood-stained hands and asks Jorgen if he’s got any food. Jorgen walks around the makeshift hospital and finds a side room. There are bags and coats. Probably the doctors’ and nurses’. He fishes around in one of the bags, grabs an apple and a strawberry scone, and heads back to the soldier. The soldier bites into the apple, closes
his eyes, and tries to savor it, but ends up eating it voraciously. Jorgen hands the man the scone. He stuffs it in his mouth.

We ran out of supplies. Days went by without food. Lived on roots, slop for hogs. Sometimes we lay still in our trenches for hours. Didn’t have any energy to move. The bastards let us run out of ammunition. Seventy days. Seventy days of battle and not enough guns, bullets, food, or water. That goddamn Bazaine.

She had a powerful gun, says Jorgen. This woman, Natalia.

The soldier drinks from his canteen. Maybe. No, I remember. There was a woman who had a good, solid rifle. Good shooter.

Jorgen grips the edge of his chair. Is she alive?

Last I saw of her she was.

Did she return to Paris?

I don’t think so. The soldier slumps in his chair and closes his eyes. Jorgen rises to go; the soldier grabs Jorgen’s arm and says he just remembered something. He asks Jorgen to pull out his handkerchief from his knapsack. Jorgen snatches the bag and digs out the blue cloth, tied up in a knot. Open it! says the man. Open it! Inside a last crust of bread. He shoves it in his mouth.

JAPAN

T
HE MONK STEPS INTO
the studio.

She looks up from her painting but is still deeply engrossed in what she is doing. Her eyes widen with alarm and she quickly leans over her painting, concealing it.

He holds up the tray with a teapot and cup. I’m sorry, he says, bowing. The maid was bringing you tea. I thought, he says, then stops. He’ll only stay a minute, he thinks, he shouldn’t have interrupted her; look at the pained expression on her face. How impulsive of him to barge into her private place. I’m so sorry.

He sets the tray on the edge of her desk. When she reaches for the tray, he catches sight of the painting. A man, a young man embracing a woman who looks like Ayoshi. She’s painted a man wearing an elegant blue kimono and the couple is standing under a flowering plum tree. He feels a peculiar fluttering in his chest and doesn’t know what to say. He thought she painted seascapes and mountains, jays and waterfalls. Does she spend these hours in the studio painting this man?

It’s someone I once knew, she says, darting an anxious look.

He grips the edge of her desk, turning crimson. Do you usually paint this subject? he stammers.

She dabs the edge of a cloth, soaking up a puddle of blue paint on the man’s kimono, and slides the painting onto a stack under her desk.

Thank you for the tea, she says, her voice, a whisper. She sits there, her hands folded.

He fidgets with the button on his sleeve and ducks his head to avoid her eyes. I’m sorry I intruded, he says, backing out of the studio.

H
E LOOKS OVER AT
the studio. She’s still bowed over her painting. She shouldn’t be imagining such things. Such lust-filled images, he thinks. It’s not proper, soaking herself in desire. He recalls what his teacher said: Desire is like a drink of salty water, which only causes thirst to grow more intense. Desire for that man. Not Hayashi; the man in the painting, too young, too strong, and his face, open and filled with unmistakable dignity and poise. It wasn’t a picture of him either.

She is in there. Painting another man.

He begins pounding in the nails for the wooden frame of the roof. He sets the hammer down and feels a sense of deepening despair. What can he do? He glances up to the top of the mountain. What is up there now? Did anything survive? Perhaps a small statue. Maybe a scroll or part of a hut. By now, the path to the mountain monastery is closed.

He walks over to the temple to pray.

I
N THE MORNING, THE
monk’s tools are coated with dew, and the garden is emptied of sound. He’s finished the roof, everything except the black tiles. She hasn’t seen him all morning. After he saw her painting, he looked so flustered, so ashamed for her. She should have immediately slid it under her desk, as she does with Hayashi. Why hadn’t she done so? She thought, no she hoped, of all people, he would view it without judgment. But he said nothing and looked at her with what? Disdain? Jealousy? She doesn’t know. Didn’t his eyes have a sense of disquiet about them? He should have said something. If he had said something, she would have told him she no longer can paint this man, can’t find him anymore, the memory nearly effaced. She stands again to look for him from the kitchen window.
A woman and three children are walking down the pebble path, the tallest boy pushing a wooden cart. Ayoshi steps outside. There’s something, she thinks, a spurt of green grass underfoot and the first quake of the bulbs underground.

Hello, says Ayoshi, smiling faintly.

Please, says the woman, rushing toward Ayoshi, a storm of gray and black. Tears streak her dusty face. Please.

Ayoshi backs away. The woman’s eyes are glassy and flaring. Her age, indistinct, she is so worn down. Dirt smudges her cheeks and forehead. Strands of hair have escaped her bun and shudder around her face. And now she is so close, her knuckles are chapped and red squiggly lines streak the whites of her eyes. She smells of something kept for a long time in a tight box. The woman says she’s traveled from temple to temple all morning, but they are closed. No one will hold a proper Buddhist burial for her husband. She grabs Ayoshi’s wrist; her freezing hand singes Ayoshi’s skin. Ayoshi yanks her arm away and stumbles back. She glances toward the house. Where is Hayashi? He should attend to this hysterical woman.

The woman scrambles over to the cart, her eldest son standing beside it, a guardian of sorts. Ayoshi doesn’t want to follow, but the woman is reaching in, as if she might lift her husband’s body and bring it over. The husband is wrapped in a white sheet. Around his midsection, the stain of blood. The woman begins to weep, and the children, crouched in the pebble path, look up wide-eyed from their game. Ayoshi woozily grips the side of the cart and stares mesmerized at the red-brown bloom. The sight sickens her, but she can’t tear her gaze away. The woman is saying something, what is she saying?

The temple doors swing open. The monk stands at the entrance, wearing his old brown robe again, the twist of twine around his middle, as if he had been expecting this woman’s arrival. His face is stern, composed, revealing nothing.

The woman dashes over to him. He places his hand on her head. Ayoshi closes her eyes and shakes her head to toss off the memory, rising in sharp shards.

The old woman’s house was tucked behind a tall bamboo fence. Her father took her there. Opened the gate. Dragged her from the cart. She fell on her
knees in the old woman’s front garden. She remembers the wind scurrying dried leaves around her, as if encircling her, holding her there. In the heat of that summer day, the old woman came out and placed her clawlike hand on her head and clutched her arm. Took her inside, a bright white sheet swathed a board. As she listened to the leaves outside, that claw of a hand ripped out her insides; the pain tore off the top of her head. Below her, the red blossoms, fire flowers, slippery, one after another, a never ending emptying. Her thighs covered in them, a whole row, a field, an endless field of fire flowers and the old woman mopping.

Ayoshi. Ayoshi?

Ayoshi turns to the monk. He frowns, steps inside, and returns with a glass of water. With his finger, he places water on the dead man’s lips.

Who did it? he asks the woman, his voice formal and commanding.

The woman pulls her two youngest to her side. The oldest son still stands by the cart, staring at his dead father.

Please, she says. Please.

The older boy says his father was involved in a protest against the government over the new land tax. The government no longer permits the tax to be paid in kind with soybeans or other grains. They want money, he says, solemnly. My father said we didn’t have any money to spare. A soldier smashed his rifle over his father’s head. Then he took a sword and sliced his stomach. I saw it. He fell to the ground, and the soldier took his sword and did it. I saw it.

The woman begs the monk to wash her husband’s body.

The grief surrounds the woman as cold as a cave; Ayoshi wore such a mist when she left the old woman’s house, her insides on the woman’s floor. She grew sick and frail and felt death rapping at her heart. Too many red blooms, the rip too deep, beyond repair. Her mother knew how to help her, but afterward, she refused to look at Ayoshi. Afterward, she walked right past her. What? I have no daughter, she told her husband. Outside her bedroom, Ayoshi heard the women of the village come to their house, seeking her mother’s healing hands. In the six-tatami room, they stretched out on the floor, and her mother ran her hands an inch above their bodies, smoothing
out their energy. Her mother did this day after day, but never for her nonexistent daughter.

The monk is saying something. She looks at him. Please take her over to the bench, he says. She must sit or she will faint.

She must stop staring at the crumpled figure. But there is the red-brown clotted in the white sheet. For weeks afterward, she dreamt of hot red flowing in her veins. How much fell out? Where did it go? Nightmares of swimming in red, viscous flowers, a baby submerged, she kept diving to save it from drowning.

Not long after that, her father contacted the go-between. She was a whisper of herself when Hayashi appeared. In a fresh new kimono, he held out a cask of sake for her family, wrapped in gold-speckled rice paper, a red ribbon around the bottle’s neck for good luck, and dutifully long for a long life together. His eyes widened when he saw her. She felt nothing, except her insides gone, an emptiness smoldering. Her bags were packed; she didn’t understand; where was she going?

Do you need something to drink? asks the monk. You look pale.

No, thank you, says Ayoshi.

It takes her a moment to understand he is not speaking to her but to the widow.

Here, he says to the woman. She will give you some water.

She stares at the monk. His body is stiff and rigid, like a tight boot.

T
HE MONK SITS IN
front of the Buddha. The woman left her husband’s body to be prepared for its passage. As he walked the woman and her children to the gate, he told her to return tomorrow for the formal Buddhist funeral. Hayashi promised he’d speak to the officials, but what has he done? Nothing. He will conduct the funeral, no matter how much Hayashi protests, no matter what harm it might bring.

He hears a tap on the door. His legs tremble, wanting to run to the door and see if it is Ayoshi. Ask her about the man in the painting. Where is this man? Does she care for him? Does he live in the village? Does she kiss this man the way she kissed him? But he won’t let himself leave this cushion. He
has swung so far from his chosen path, he barely recognizes himself. Who has he become? This new man, thrown this way and that by desire or jealousy; he despises this new man. He tries to meditate, to focus on the serene expression of the Buddha, but his heart aches so.

He stands and looks around the temple, as if seeing it for the first time. The woman’s screams are dark rings inside him; she cried out for her husband. And before his life at the bottom of the mountain, he would not have understood the depth of her misery; but now he feels it howling under his skin.