“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.”
“You can’t tell on such short acquaintance.”
“I certainly can.”
“How can you?”
“I’d have no trouble seducing Mr. Oki or his son.”
“You frighten me!” exclaimed Otoko, blanching. “Keiko, that kind of conceitedness is dangerous.”
“Not in the least,” said Keiko, quite unperturbed.
“It is,” Otoko insisted. “And aren’t you being terribly predatory? No matter how young and beautiful you are.”
“I suppose most women are what you call predatory.”
“Indeed. And is that why you took your favorite pictures to Mr. Oki?”
“No. I don’t need pictures to seduce him.”
Otoko seemed appalled.
“It’s just that I’m your pupil, so I wanted him to see my best work.”
“I’m grateful. But you say you only exchanged a few words with him at the station. Was that any reason to give away your pictures?”
“I promised. Besides, I wondered how he would react to them, and I needed a pretext for going to meet his family.”
“It’s a good thing he was out!”
“I imagine he saw the pictures later, but he probably didn’t understand them.”
“You’re being unfair to him.”
“Even in his novels he never wrote anything better than A Girl of Sixteen.”
“That’s not true. You’re fond of it because he idealized me in it. A youthful novel like that appeals to young people. I can see why you wouldn’t care for his later works.”
“Anyway, if he died today it’s the only novel he’d be remembered for.”
“Stop talking like that!” Otoko’s voice was stern. She drew her wrist out of Keiko’s grasp and edged away.
“Are you still so attached to him?” Keiko’s voice was also harsh. “Even though I said I’d get revenge for you?”
“It’s not attachment.”
“Is it … love?”
“Perhaps.”
Abruptly Otoko got up and went inside. Keiko stayed out on the moonlit veranda, sitting with her face buried in her hands.
“Otoko, I’m living for someone else too!” Her voice trembled. “But when it’s a man like Mr. Oki …”
“Forgive me. It all happened when I was so young.”
“I’m going to get revenge.”
“That wouldn’t destroy my love.”
Keiko was weeping on the veranda, still with her face in her hands. “Paint me, Otoko … before I turn into the kind of woman you said. Please! Let me pose in the nude for you.”
“All right. I’d love doing a portrait of you.”
“I’m glad!”
Otoko had stored away a number of sketches of her dead baby. Years had passed, but she still intended to use them for a painting to be called The Ascension of an Infant. She had searched through albums of Western art for pictures of cherubs and of the Christ child, but their plump good health seemed inappropriate to her sorrow. There were several famous old Japanese paintings of Saint Kobo as a boy that touched her with their typically graceful expression of restrained emotion. Yet the saint was neither an infant nor was he ascending to heaven. Not that Otoko wanted to show the ascension as such, only to suggest that kind of spiritual feeling. But would she ever finish it?
Now that Keiko had asked to be painted, Otoko thought of her old sketches for The Ascension of an Infant. Perhaps she could portray Keiko in the manner of the paintings of the boy saint. It would be a purely classical Portrait of a Holy Virgin. Though works of religious art, some of the saint’s portraits had an indescribably seductive charm.
“Keiko, I do want to paint you,” said Otoko, “and I’ve just thought of a design. It’ll be in the Buddhist tradition, so I can’t have any sort of improper pose.”
“Buddhist?” Keiko shifted uneasily. “I’m not sure I care for the idea.”
“Well, let me try. Buddhist paintings are often very beautiful—and I could call it A Girl Abstractionist.”
“You’re teasing me.”
“I’m serious. I’ll do it as soon as I’ve finished the tea plantation.” Otoko looked back at the studio wall. Over their pictures of the tea plantation hung her portrait of her mother.
Otoko let her eyes rest on the portrait.
Her mother looked young and beautiful in it, even younger than herself. Perhaps that reflected Otoko’s own age of thirty-one or -two at the time she painted it. Or perhaps it had just turned out that way.
When Keiko first saw it she had said: “Lovely. This looks like a self-portrait.” Does it really? Otoko had wondered.
Otoko resembled her mother. Was it out of longing for her dead mother that so much of the resemblance was captured in this portrait? At first she had made a great many sketches based on a photograph, but none of these had moved her. Then she decided to ignore the photograph—and there was her mother sitting before her. Rather than a phantom, it was her living image. Over and over she made new sketches, swiftly, her heart overflowing with emotion. But frequently she paused, eyes clouded with tears. She realized that the portrait of her mother was becoming more like a self-portrait.
The final result was the picture now hanging on the wall over the studies of the tea plantation. Otoko had burned all the earlier versions. The remaining one looked most like a self-portrait, but Otoko thought it would do. Whenever she looked at it, there was a hint of sadness in her eyes. The picture breathed with her. How long had it taken her to fix the image into this portrait?
Until now Otoko had painted no other portraits, and only a few small figure paintings of any kind. Yet tonight, pressed by Keiko, she suddenly felt like doing a portrait. Otoko had never thought of her Ascension of an Infant in that way. But that long-cherished wish must explain why she was reminded of the portraits of the boy saint, and wanted to paint Keiko in classical Buddhist style. Her mother, her lost baby, and Keiko—were they not her three loves? Different as they were, she should paint all three of them.
“Otoko,” Keiko called. “You’re looking at your mother’s picture, and wondering how you can paint me, aren’t you? You think you can’t possibly have that kind of love for me.” She came in and sat close beside her.
“Silly! I’m dissatisfied now when I look at it—I’ve improved a little since then, you know. Anyway, I’m still fond of the picture. For all its faults, it’s one I devoted myself to heart and soul.”
“You needn’t go to such pains over my picture. Just dash it off.”
“No, no,” said Otoko, her thoughts elsewhere. Looking at the portrait had brought a flood of memories of her mother. Then Keiko had called to her, and Otoko was reminded once again of the old portraits of the boy saint. Some of the figures looked like pretty littl
e girls or beautiful young maidens, in the elegant, refined manner of Buddhist art but also with a certain voluptuousness. They could be taken as symbols of the homosexual love at medieval monasteries where women were forbidden, of the yearning for handsome boys who could be mistaken for beautiful young girls. Perhaps that was why the saint’s portraits had come to mind as soon as she thought of painting Keiko. The hair style was not unlike the bobbed hair and bangs worn by little girls today. However, one no longer saw such resplendent brocade kimonos except in the No theater; they would seem much too old-fashioned for a modern young woman. Otoko recalled Kishida Ryusei’s portraits of his daughter Reiko. They were oils or water colors minutely drawn in a meticulous classical style influenced by Dürer: some of them were like religious paintings. But Otoko had seen an extremely rare one, in light colors on Chinese paper, that showed Reiko in a red underskirt naked above the waist. She was sitting in a formal pose. It was hardly one of Ryusei’s masterpieces, and Otoko wondered why he had portrayed his own daughter that way, in a painting in classical Japanese style. He had done similar things in Western style.
Why not paint a nude of Keiko, then? She could still follow the design of the boy saint’s portrait, and there were even Buddhist figures that gave the hint of a woman’s breasts. But what of the hair style? She had seen a superb portrait by Kobayashi Kokei, of exquisite purity, but that too had the wrong sort of coiffure. Pondering various solutions, Otoko felt all the more keenly that it was beyond her powers.
“Keiko, shall we go to bed?” she asked.
“So early? With such a lovely moon?” Keiko turned to look at the clock. “It’s only five minutes of ten.”
“I’m a little tired. Can’t we talk lying down?”
“All right.”
While Otoko was at the dressing table Keiko prepared their beds. She was very quick at it. After Otoko got up, Keiko went to the mirror to remove her makeup. Leaning over, curving her slender neck, she stared at the face in the mirror.
“Otoko, I’m not the right person for a Buddhist painting.”
“That depends on the artist.”
Keiko took out her hairpins and shook her head.
“Are you undoing your hair?”
Beauty and Sadness Page 5
