Oki was also thinking of the unborn child that she was carrying, and of what might become of it if he were suddenly to die. That was something Otoko learned later, when she read his novel.
When her mother had remarked that Otoko seemed to waste away in the summer, perhaps she was also thinking that by now her daughter was surely not losing weight because of memories of Oki.
Although Otoko was delicately built, with fine bones and sloping shoulders, she had never been seriously ill. Of course she became worn and thin, with a strange look in her eye, after all the troubles caused by her love affair. But she soon recovered physically. The youthful resilience of her body made her still wounded feelings seem incongruous. Except for her melancholy look when she thought of Oki, no one would have been aware of her sadness. Even that occasional shadow, the expression of a young girl’s yearning, only enhanced her beauty.
Otoko had known since childhood that her mother lost weight in summer. She often wiped the perspiration from her mother’s back and chest, and knew very well, though she did not mention it, that her thinness came from susceptibility to the heat. But Otoko was too young to worry about having inherited that weakness, until she heard it from her mother. She must have had a tendency to it for years.
From her mid-twenties Otoko always wore a kimono, and so her slenderness was not as obvious as it would have been in skirts or slacks. Still, there was no denying how thin she became every summer. In later years it reminded her of her dead mother.
Summer by summer, Otoko’s weakness and loss of weight seemed more severe.
“What kind of tonic is good for this?” she once asked her mother. “There are lots of medicines advertised in the papers—have you tried any of them?”
“Well, they must do some good,” her mother answered vaguely. After a pause, she went on in a different tone: “Otoko, the best medicine for a woman is getting married.”
Otoko was silent.
“A man is the kind of medicine that gives a woman life! All women have to take it.”
“Even if it’s poison?”
“Even then. You took poison once, and you still don’t realize it, do you? But I know you can find a good antidote. Sometimes you need a poison to counteract a poison. Maybe the medicine is bitter, but you have to shut your eyes and swallow it. You may even gag, and think it won’t go down your throat.”
Otoko’s mother died without having seen her daughter follow her advice. No doubt that was her last regret. It was true that Otoko had never thought of Oki as a poison. Even in the room with the barred windows she felt no resentment or hatred toward him. It was only that she was half-crazed with love. The powerful drug she took to kill herself was soon completely purged from her body; Oki and his baby were gone from her too, and the scars they left might have been expected to fade. Yet her love for Oki remained undiminished.
Time passed. But time flows in many streams. Like a river, an inner stream of time will flow rapidly at some places and sluggishly at others, or perhaps even stand hopelessly stagnant. Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.
As Otoko approached forty she wondered if the fact that Oki remained within her meant that this stream of time was stagnant, rather than flowing. Or had her image of him flowed along with her through time, like a flower drifting down a river? How she drifted along in his stream of time she did not know. Although he could not have forgotten her, time would at least have flowed differently for him. Even if two people were lovers, their streams of time would never be the same.…
Today too, as she had been doing every morning when she awakened, Otoko massaged her forehead with her fingertips, and then ran her hands over the back of her neck and under her arms. Her skin was damp. She felt as if the dampness oozing from her pores had soaked into her night kimono.
Keiko seemed to be attracted by the odor and the sleekness of Otoko’s damp skin, and sometimes wanted to peel off whatever she wore next to her body. Otoko hated intensely to smell of perspiration.
Last night, though, Keiko had come home after twelve-thirty, and had sat down uneasily, avoiding Otoko’s eyes.
Otoko was lying in bed, shielding her face from the ceiling light with a round fan and gazing at the half dozen sketches of a baby’s face that were tacked on the wall. She seemed absorbed in them, and merely glanced over at Keiko. “Late, aren’t you?”
Otoko had not been allowed to see her premature baby, but was told that it had had jet-black hair. When she wanted to know more about the baby her mother had said: “She was a sweet little thing, and looked just like you.” That was only to console her, Otoko felt. In recent years she had seen photographs of newborn babies, but they all seemed ugly. There was even an occasional photograph of a baby being delivered, or still attached to its mother by the umbilical cord, but these she found quite repulsive.
Thus she had no idea of the face and form of her baby, only a vision in her heart. She knew very well that the child in her Ascension of an Infant would not look like her dead baby, and she had no wish to paint a realistic portrait. What she wanted was to express her sense of loss, her grief and affection for someone she had never seen. She had cherished that desire so long that the image of the dead infant had become a symbol of yearning to her. She thought of it whenever she felt sad. Also the picture was to symbolize herself surviving all these years, as well as the beauty and sadness of her love for Oki.
Otoko had not yet succeeded in painting an infant’s face that satisfied her. The holy faces of cherubs and of the Christ child were usually firmly outlined, either artificial-looking or like miniature adults. Rather than such a strong, clear-cut face, she wanted to portray a faint, dreamlike one, a haloed spirit neither of this world nor of the world beyond. It should convey a gentle, soothing feeling, and yet also suggest a brimming pool of sorrow. Still, she did not want it to be too abstract.
And how was she to paint the wizened body of a premature baby? How should she treat the background, the minor motifs? Again Otoko looked through her albums of Redon and Chagall, but these delicate fantasies were too alien to stimulate her own imagination.
Once more the old Japanese portraits of a saintly child came before her eyes: portraits based on the legend of the youthful Saint Kobo dreaming that he sat on an eight-petaled lotus talking with the Buddha. In the oldest of them the figure seemed pure and austere, but later it softened and took on a voluptuous charm, until there were even “boys” that could be mistaken for beautiful little girls.
On the night before the Festival of the Full Moon, when Keiko asked to have her portrait painted, Otoko had suspected that it was her own deep concern for the Ascension of an Infant that made her think of doing a classical Holy Virgin in the manner of the portraits of the boy saint. But afterward she began to wonder if her attraction to the portraits of Saint Kobo might not have an element of self-love, of infatuation with herself. Perhaps in both cases she had a hidden desire for a self-portrait. Might not these sacred visions be nothing other than a vision of a saintly Otoko? The doubt stabbed like a sword, plunged by herself against her will into her own breast. She had to draw it out. But the scar remained, and at times it hurt.
Of course Otoko had no intention of copying the portraits of the boy saint. Yet obviously that image was lurking in the depths of her heart. Even the titles Ascension of an Infant and Holy Virgin suggested that through these pictures she wanted to purify, indeed to sanctify, her love for her dead baby and for Keiko.
Keiko had taken the youthful portrait of Otoko’s mother for a self-portrait when she first saw it. After that the picture always reminded Otoko that Keiko, besides mistaking the woman in the picture for her had said how lovely she looked. It was out of longing that Otoko had painted her mother as young and beautiful, but perhaps there was an element of self-love there as well. Their natural resemblance could hardly account for it. Perhaps she was actual
ly portraying herself.
Otoko still loved Oki, her baby, and her mother, but could these loves have gone unchanged from the time when they were a tangible reality to her? Could not something of these very loves have been subtly transformed into self-love? Of course she would not be aware of it. She had been parted from her baby and her mother by death, and from Oki by a final separation, and these three still lived within her. Yet Otoko alone gave them this life. Her image of Oki flowed along with her through time, and perhaps her memories of their love affair had been dyed by the color of her love for herself, had even been transformed. It had never occurred to her that bygone memories are merely phantoms and apparitions. Perhaps it was to be expected that a woman who had lived alone for two decades without love or marriage should indulge herself in memories of a sad love, and that her indulgence should take on the color of self-love.
Even if she had been led into her infatuation with her pupil Keiko, so much younger and of her own sex, was that not another form of infatuation with herself? Otherwise, she would surely never dream of portraying a girl like Keiko—a girl who seemed to be turning predatory, and who had asked to pose in the nude for her—as a Buddhist Holy Virgin sitting on a lotus flower. Had Otoko not wanted to create a pure, lovely image of herself? Apparently the girl of sixteen who loved Oki would always exist within her, never to grow up. Yet she had been unaware of it.…
Otoko was extremely fastidious, and on a morning like this, when the sticky heat of a Kyoto summer night had left her kimono damp with perspiration, she would normally have got out of bed as soon as she awakened. But instead she lay there with her head turned toward the wall, looking again at her sketches of a baby. She had had difficulty with them. Although her own baby had lived in this world for a brief time, Otoko wanted to paint a kind of spirit child, a child who had never entered the world of human beings.
Keiko was still sound asleep, her back turned to Otoko. The top of a thin summer linen coverlet was wrapped tightly around her body but had worked down below her breast. She lay on her side, legs together, both feet sticking out below the coverlet. Since Keiko usually dressed in Japanese style, her naturally slim, straight toes had seldom been cramped into high-heeled shoes. Her toes were so fine-boned and slender that Otoko felt as if they belonged to a different sort of being, not quite human. She had come to avoid looking at them. But when she grasped Keiko’s toes in her hand she took a curious pleasure in the thought that they could hardly belong to a woman of her own generation. It was an eerie feeling.
A scent of perfume wafted to her. It seemed too rich a fragrance for a young girl, but Otoko recognized it as one that Keiko wore occasionally. She began to wonder why she had worn it last night.
When Keiko came home after midnight Otoko had been too engrossed in gazing at the sketches to pay any particular attention. Keiko hurried to bed without even bathing and promptly fell asleep. But perhaps Otoko thought Keiko was sleeping because she herself had soon dropped off to sleep.
As soon as Otoko got up she went around to the other side of Keiko’s bed, glanced down at her sleeping face in the dim light, and then began opening the wooden shutters. Keiko was always cheerful in the morning, and would jump up to help the moment she heard Otoko sliding back the shutters. But this morning she only sat up in bed and watched. Finally she rose, and said: “I’m sorry. It must have been almost three before I could get to sleep.” She started to take up Otoko’s bedding.
“Did the heat bother you?”
“Mmm.”
“Don’t put away my night kimono, please. I’d like to launder it.”
With the kimono over her arm, Otoko went in to bathe. Keiko came along to use the wash basin but seemed to be hurrying even as she brushed her teeth.
“Don’t you want to take a bath too?”
“Yes.”
“Apparently you went to bed still wearing yesterday’s perfume.”
“Did I?”
“Indeed you did!” Otoko was suspicious of her vacant air. “Keiko, where were you last night?”
There was no reply.
“Do take a bath. You’ll feel better.”
“Yes, later on.”
“Later?” Otoko looked at her.
By the time Otoko came out of the bathroom Keiko was selecting a kimono from the chest of drawers.
“Are you going out?” Otoko asked sharply.
“Yes.”
“You’ve promised to meet someone?”
“Yes.”
“Who is it?”
“Taichiro.”
Otoko did not understand.
“Mr. Oki’s Taichiro,” Keiko explained without hesitation, but omitting “son.”
Otoko’s voice failed.
“I went to meet him at the airport yesterday, and today I’ve promised to show him around the city. Or maybe he’ll show me around.… Otoko, I never hide things from you! First we’re going to the Nisonin Temple—he wants to see a tomb on the hill there.”
“To see a tomb?” Otoko echoed faintly.
“He says it’s the tomb of an old court noble.”
“Oh?”
Keiko slipped off her night kimono and stood with her naked back to Otoko. “I think I’ll wear a full underkimono after all. It looks as if it’ll be hot again today, but I wouldn’t feel right without it.”
Silently Otoko watched her dress.
“Now to get the obi nice and tight.” Keiko put her hands behind her back and gave a tug.
Otoko looked at Keiko’s face in the mirror as she applied some makeup, and Keiko noticed Otoko’s reflection too. “Don’t stare at me like that.”
Otoko tried to soften her expression.
Peering into a wing of the dressing table mirror, Keiko toyed with a lock of hair over one of her beautifully shaped ears, as a finishing touch. Then she started to rise, but sat down again and picked up a bottle of perfume.
Otoko frowned. “Isn’t last night’s perfume enough?”
“Don’t worry.”
“Rather fidgety, aren’t you?” She paused. “Keiko, why are you seeing him?”
“He wrote to let me know he was coming.” She got up, went over to the chest of drawers, and hastily put away several extra kimonos she had taken out in making her selection.
“Fold them neatly,” Otoko told her.
“All right.”
“You’ll have to fold them again.”
“All right.” But Keiko did not look back at the chest.
“Come over here, please,” said Otoko sternly. Keiko came and sat down with her, looking straight into her eyes. Otoko glanced away, and suddenly asked: “Are you leaving without breakfast?”
“It doesn’t matter. I had a late dinner last night.”
“As late as all that?”
“Yes.”
“Keiko,” Otoko began again, “why are you meeting him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re the one who wanted to meet.” That seemed clear enough from Keiko’s uneasiness. “May I ask why?”
Keiko did not answer.
“Must you see him?” Otoko looked down at her lap. “I’d rather you didn’t. Please don’t go.”
“Why not? It has nothing to do with you, has it?”
“Certainly it has!”
“But you don’t even know him.”
“You’ve spent a night with his father, and yet you don’t mind seeing him?” Otoko could not bring herself to utter the names “Oki” and “Taichiro.”
“Mr. Oki is your old lover, but you’ve never met Taichiro. He has no connection with you. It’s just that he’s Mr. Oki’s son—he isn’t your child.”
The words stung Otoko. They reminded her that Oki’s wife had given birth to a daughter shortly after her own baby died. “Keiko,” she said, “you’re seducing him, aren’t you?”
“He wrote me that he was coming.”
“Are you on such good terms wit
h him?”
“I don’t like your choice of words.”
“What should I say? That you’re involved with him?” Otoko wiped her damp forehead with the back of her hand. “You’re a fearful person.”
There was an odd gleam in Keiko’s eye. “Otoko, I hate men.”
“Don’t go. Please don’t. If you do, you needn’t come back! If you go out today, you needn’t ever come here again!”
“Otoko!” Keiko began to look tearful.
“What are you going to do to Taichiro?” Otoko’s hands were trembling in her lap. It was the first time she had spoken his name.
Keiko stood up. “I’m leaving,” she said.
“Please don’t go.”
“Hit me, Otoko. Hit me the way you did the day we went to the Moss Temple.” She stood there for a moment as if expecting a blow and then hurried out.
Otoko was bathed in a cold sweat. She sat looking out at the garden, her eyes fixed on the leaves of the square bamboo glistening in the morning sunlight. At last she got up and went into the bathroom. The rush of water startled her—perhaps she had turned it on too hard. Hastily she shut off the faucet, and then turned the water on again to a thin stream and began washing. She felt somewhat calmer, but there was a lingering tension in her head. She pressed a wet towel to her forehead and the back of her neck.
Returning to the other room, Otoko sat down facing her mother’s portrait and the sketches of her baby. A shudder of self-loathing passed over her. That came from living with Keiko, but it affected her whole existence, draining her strength and making her utterly wretched. What had she lived for, why was she still alive?
Otoko felt like calling out to her mother. Then she happened to think of Nakamura Tsuné’s Portrait of His Aged Mother, his last work before preceding her in death. Otoko found it deeply moving, in part because this final painting was of his mother. She had never seen the original, so it was hard to tell what it was really like, but even a photograph of it stirred her emotions.
The young Nakamura Tsuné had painted powerful, sensuous pictures of the woman he loved. He used a great deal of red and was said to have been influenced by Rouault. His Portrait of Eroshenko, one of his masterpieces, was a quiet, reverent expression of the noble melancholy of the blind poet, but in warm, lovely colors. However, in that last Portrait of His Aged Mother the colors were dark and cold, and his style was very simple. One saw a stooped, emaciated old woman seated in profile against the background of a half-wainscoted wall. A water pitcher stood in a niche in the wall just before her head, and a thermometer was hanging on the other side of her. Of course the thermometer might have been merely added for the sake of the composition, but Otoko was much impressed by it, as well as by the prayer beads dangling from the old woman’s fingers, which were resting on her lap. Somehow they seemed to symbolize the feelings of the artist—himself on the verge of dying—toward death. So did the picture as a whole.
Beauty and Sadness Page 13
