The Mask Carver's Son

by Alyson Richman

  Yet we all knew that, not until we were successful in reproducing these anatomically perfect creatures of stone, would we be able to work with a live model. Deeply frustrated, I recalled how I endured the same sort of struggle back in Tokyo.

  For that first year with my mentor, my hands only clasped a stick of graphite or a lump of charcoal. We sketched in monochrome, and we were instructed in black and white. Only after class could we find color again.

  We’d find it in a café. In a glass of claret. This red wine refilling our tired veins. William, the only other student who was not French, would tell us of his life in London. Where the English equivalent of the café was the pub. Where the maids were flushed and friendly. Where friends and brothers drank till dawn. I, of course, remained quiet and shy, my stories stored in my interior, the warmth of the drink never bringing them to the surface. I smiled when appropriate and learned to laugh with an open mouth and a hearty guffaw. But I never learned to reveal myself.

  My brushes, in the meantime, remained in their jars at home, liberated from their glass cisterns only after I returned each evening. Then I would paint on my own, still somewhat clumsily. The color of paint was one of the few things that could alleviate my loneliness and keep my ghosts at bay.

  My spirit nearly collapsed during my first year as a student with Collin. There was so much I struggled with; my confidence sagged, my belief in my talent nearly shattered, and my bouts of loneliness often debilitated me. I rarely saw anyone outside my class. I spent hours inside the atelier or at a museum working on figure drawings. Finally, the first year came to an end, and Collin announced that he would allow us to begin working with oils. I rejoiced at the opportunity to start experimenting with such silky, rich emulsions under the guidance of my teacher. There was so much to learn about handling the pigments properly. Soon I was learning how to mix certain proportions, layer the paint, scumble it so that all brushwork seemed to vanish, and even apply it in a thick impasto. Suddenly my canvases seemed to take on a new dimension. They finally began to reflect light and the figures appeared voluminous and fleshlike. I felt as though I had entered the canvas through the hairs of my brush. I felt as though I had finally begun to understand what Collin had spoken of, and for the first time all the sacrifices I had made to come to France appeared to have been worthwhile.

  My surroundings began to inspire me. I looked at the sky and realized that it was full of colors other than blue. I gazed at the fields of grass and wondered how an artist could articulate each blade. Everything around me caused me to wonder how to portray it with paint.

  Inevitably, I saw less and less of Takada and Hashimoto. Takada, however, appeared one rainy afternoon after I had finished class, standing outside the atelier.

  “Why do you stand here without an umbrella?” I asked him, shocked to see him soaked through.

  “I didn’t notice it,” he said absently. The black of his hair fell over his face like threads of seaweed, and his face was shiny like melted wax after it has cooled.

  I was carrying a canvas wrapped in cheesecloth and I bent over it, trying to protect it from the rain.

  “I thought we might get a cup of tea,” he muttered.

  I stared up at him. First, at his white shirt, now transparent, his brown skin revealed through cloth. I noticed his lips were turning a purplish shade of blue.

  “Sorry,” I uttered as apologetically as I could. “I have to finish this canvas by tomorrow. Even if I stay up to all hours of the night, I’ll be hard pressed to complete it.”

  “I see,” he said, unable to mask his dejection.

  “Perhaps, I could manage just a quick cup of tea,” I muttered. “But let us find a place not too far from here. My canvas is heavy and I have mountains of work to do before morning.”

  * * *

  In a café on the Rue de Sèvres, not far from the Jardin du Luxembourg, we ordered two cups of steaming tea and settled into two roped iron chairs. Several large Frenchmen had gathered in a nearby booth, their table noticeably littered with empty carafes of wine, their voices and peals of laughter annoyingly loud.

  The rain had left Takada dripping. Like a snuffed candle, a thin veil of breath rose from his skin, and tiny droplets rolled down his cheeks. Had I not believed him to be such a formal Japanese, I could have mistaken them for tears.

  “Father has insisted I return next week,” he said, as he pulled at his drenched shirt and ran a small handkerchief over his damp hair.

  “You could stay, you know. You could try to get a job, or you could move into a smaller place to minimize your expenses.”

  “It’s far more complicated than that, my friend.”

  “Yes, of course it is, but you must try.”

  Behind me, the noise of the crowd was growing increasingly distracting, and I tried with great effort to tune out their voices and the swirl of their tobacco smoke wafting through the air.

  “Someday you will be in the same position as I,” he said, and I knew I would remember those words forever. As I do now, even as an old man.

  “We belong to neither world now. We live here and revel in a freedom that before was unknown to us. You find your spirit in color and line. I, in a stanza of Molière or a verse of Rimbaud. But we are fools to think that they accept us.” He paused. “Look over there.” He pointed to the crowd. “They mimic us behind our backs. Tell jokes at our expense and consider us unutterably beneath them.”

  I turned my head, as he urged me to do. To see what I so desperately did not want to see. There they sat in clusters. Wineglasses raised to their lips. Their cravats loosened around their necks, their white shirts billowing out from their wristbands.

  “Voyez les Chinoises!” one said as he pointed his crooked finger in our direction. “Ils sont vraiment dégueulasses!” another cried mockingly as he used his two forefingers to push up his eyes into tiny, thin slants.

  “They think we are Chinese,” Takada said as his lips touched the rim of his nearly empty cup. “To them we are all the same.”

  I sat there, my heart now sinking, my spirit nearly crushed.

  “You are a bit naive, my friend,” he said with a half smile. “The walls around your house in Kyoto must have been incredibly high.”

  I smiled, as I could feign no other reaction. I had hoped that those walls would crumble with this journey. But I knew that I still carried with me my own pain. My own guilt and my own hauntings. For Father would never leave me. I carried with me the unfinished Ishi-O-Jo mask as penitence. To wander forever with it as a reminder. A symbol of my betrayal, perhaps never to be reconciled.

  “You have a canvas to complete,” he said. “I shouldn’t have kept you this long.”

  “No, no,” I insisted. “It is fine.”

  “Tonight has helped me with my decision,” and once again he took out his handkerchief and patted at his brow.

  “Such a shame about the surroundings, though,” I said apologetically.

  “It’s not your fault, Yamamoto-san,” he said, his voice once again sounding sad. “Things like this are beyond our control.”

  I walked him outside, where we bowed to each other as we said farewell.

  “Maybe we can get together again tomorrow,” I hollered out to him.

  But he did not answer me. He had already turned to leave. And I watched as his rain-soaked form walked into the distance, his back strangely slumped forward and his shoulders sloping toward the ground.

  The sound of his shoes tapped over the cobblestone, until all I could make out was the lower half of his shadow, his echo surrendering to the wind.

  FORTY-SIX

  Takada hanged himself on the fourth day of November 1897, when I was in my thirteenth month of studies with Collin. Hashimoto, in the same black clothes he was wearing the day I first met him, met me outside of Collin’s studio and informed me of the bad news.

  I felt
myself sinking as I stared back at him, felt as though my feet had suddenly succeeded in melting the stone. There was the initial ache I had experienced before. The sense of loss. The disbelief. But also a creeping feeling of anger.

  Hashimoto began to retreat, sliding his feet backward over the cobbled street, bowing his head in departure. I listened, stunned, as he made an excuse for his departure—a figure-drawing class at the Beaux-Arts.

  I found myself standing completely alone, rubbing my face furiously with the sweaty palm of my hand. I continued to do this absurd motion for what seemed like several minutes. I began at my forehead, running roughly over every one of my features until I reached my chin.

  I wanted to convince myself that I wasn’t wearing the same look of vacancy that I had just seen on the face of Hashimoto. I wanted my face to look red, swollen, miserable, shocked. Angry.

  Takada was dead.

  The sunny yellow painting I had begun for him during my first few days in Paris was now complete. It had been lying for several weeks now in my room, and I was only waiting for a free moment to drop it off at Takada’s apartment. I stood outside, leaning against the cold stone of Collin’s building, and felt a swelling nausea flow from the pit of my stomach into every one of my veins. I banged my fist into the rock-hard surface of the outside walls, and wished for once that this city were built of paper and wood so that I might tear the whole thing down or set it ablaze with one strike of a match.

  Takada had come to me for help and I had selfishly put my art before him. I had responded as I imagined Father would have, and I hated myself for it.

  The day I discovered that Takada was dead, I cried. I cried from tear ducts that should have dried up long ago, in a way I could not cry for my father’s death. There no longer seemed to be any sense to my world. I did not care if anyone stared. I did not care if it was an act of weakness or cowardice.

  So I wept. Wept like a child who never cried for the loss of his mother, the death of his father, who lived with him twenty-some years before he was buried at the base of a pine. As all Yamamotos are, the needled branches covering their tablets with broken yellow thatch.

  That evening I went to Takada’s apartment and found that Hashimoto was already there, boxing his things. I began helping him pile the volumes of French literature and criticism into cardboard crates and address them to be sent home to his family. The room reflected the image of the dead man, restrained and monochromatic, with white walls and dark brown furniture.

  “The police report said he hanged himself from the ceiling. He used a pair of brown leather suspenders,” Hashimoto reported dryly. As he spoke, he was rolling a poster from the ballet Le Rev`e that was printed in the style of a Japanese woodblock print. I had seen that poster plastered all over the streets—the image of the Western woman in a tutu with a kimono thrown over her shoulders and a chopstick in her hair. Hashimoto placed it in a box and sealed it tightly with tape.

  “Supposedly they confiscated a small rapier.”

  “Takada attempted seppuku as well?” I found all of this too much to comprehend.

  “I don’t think so. He probably contemplated it and then decided that the suspenders would suffice.”

  I thought of Takada’s brown trousers, the ones he always wore with his tweed. I pictured him stringing himself up to the ceiling. The suspender loops knotted, his yellow-brown head strung through the self-made noose. His jacket slipping from his shoulders. Falling to the floor. His feet finally dangling free.

  And now the brown wooden boxes were all taped, stacked, and labeled in a room suffocating in its own silence. In that room in Paris, where two Japanese, in brown shadows and the setting sun, packed with few words between them what remained of their fallen friend.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  He had been my closest friend in Paris, and although he was no substitute for Noboru, I had seen myself in him. The fact that he had chosen death as the only means of escaping his demons terrified me. It was not that suicide had never occurred to me, but my dream to achieve artistic excellence was always stronger. I needed to be pure to myself. To my father and in the memory of my mother. I could not rest until I had tried. After that, I did not know what would happen.

  With Takada gone, my loneliness increased. The letter I received from Noboru intensified this.

  January 4, 1898

  Yamamoto-kun,

  The days in Tokyo are cold. I have had to sleep with two hibachis next to my futon.

  It is wonderful news to hear that you are now studying with Raphael Collin. I trust that you will be in good hands.

  The Meiji Fine Arts Society has a few reproductions of Collin’s work, and I was greatly impressed. I especially like the 1886 painting Floréal. His rendering of the Western female figure seems to be executed with precision and an acute appreciation for detail. His choice of palette is soft, subdued, and elegant. It appears that he is experimenting with the Impressionists’ style of diffused light. Is this correct?

  Things have begun to change for the better here at school. It was announced that Kuroda Seiki will head the school’s new Western Painting Section this year. We students had pressed hard for the creation of this department, and we are quite pleased with the results. There will be approximately twenty of us studying under him at the beginning of the fall semester, and some of his former students from his private atelier will be joining us.

  I am confident that you are receiving a far better education in the techniques of Western painting than I am, however. You deserve such privilege. I am struggling to become an accomplished painter. It is difficult, as you know.

  I will not be able to join you in Paris and this saddens me. I must wait here for your return.

  Noboru

  He feigned modesty in the letter. He also never mentioned missing me, as I so desperately missed him. It was all so difficult. I could not gauge the intimacy of his feelings through his letters. They were always somewhat formal, written in the traditional Japanese manner in which the weather is most sensitively described and the information that follows is relayed in a skeletal framework in which one must fill in the flesh to sense the true meaning of the words.

  What I did learn was that he would not be coming. He had begun his life anew. The new program under Kuroda’s guidance would ensure his success in Japan and his absence from me.

  His mind would be elsewhere now. Lost in the pigments, consumed by the canvas. Never struggling to search the sea, to find me.

  If anyone knew of the obsessive relationship between an artist and his work, it was I. I had lived it for the first twenty years of my life.

  There is little room in an artist’s life for anything but his work. Father had shown me that. I had been born the son of such a man, and my behavior toward Takada showed me that I was becoming such a man. Each day I fell deeper and deeper into my paintings. As if the brushstrokes I made could reach out and grasp me.

  But still the memory of Noboru came to me. Most often at night, as I imagined Mother had come to Father.

  I would see him in the fluttering of the curtains. The wind twisting them to create his form, the shadow of the lamplight playing tricks to create his face. And I would feel my heart swell with longing, because I knew that there was still a chance to love him. To hold him again. For Noboru was not yet a ghost.

  My bed was cold and my body twisted in the damp white sheets. Where Noboru was, now it was already day. The sun was shining and surely he was already dressed in his kimono, his brushes gleaming in his polished hands. Did he think of me? Dream of me? Or had his passion for his painting replaced me, as Father had done with me. For love had abandoned Noboru when I left him at the gangplank. When I chose painting over him, when I opted to journey across the sea.

  How I longed for him some nights. This night in particular. I had to believe he would remain true to me, as I would to him. My letters had become increasingly emoti
ve. Perhaps the vivacity of France was rubbing off on me.

  Dear friend,

  I received your letter today. It seems the post is very slow and I wait impatiently for a letter each day.

  Life here continues to be a struggle. Painting has become my life, my sustenance, and I miss you and our time together in Tokyo. How I still wish you could be here! To see all the beauty, the art, to meet Master Collin and become his pupil. I know he would be impressed with your talent. You would put me to shame!

  There is no one here like you. Takada’s death has made me lonelier than ever. And I fear I am becoming like my father. All of my life siphoned into my craft.

  It seems you have been working as obsessively as I have. Congratulations on being accepted into Kuroda’s program. You will be his favorite student, no doubt.

  As much as I love the beauty of Paris, I look forward to the day when I can return to Tokyo. I can’t wait for you to look at my canvases. Your opinion means so much to me, as does your friendship.

  Faithfully,

  Yamamoto Kiyoki

  I had not revealed the true extent of my loneliness and longing in my letter. It would have been inappropriate for me to be any more emotional.

  Several times I picked up Noboru’s last letter and reread it. Each time it seemed more distant. Perhaps he was only distracted by the exciting news about Kuroda’s class. I desperately wanted to be happy for him, for he would finally receive the education he deserved. But my heart still mourned his absence—and even more so because of Takada’s suicide. Now I truly had no one in Paris, except Hashimoto, who was far too elusive to form a friendship.

  Although Hashimoto had originally expressed excitement for a new Japanese arrival in Paris, his enthusiasm toward me had waned as my second year in Paris approached. I soon realized why Hashimoto had so little time for me. His interests lay in other areas besides the cloistered and serious walls of the Beaux-Arts.