Burntcoat

by Sarah Hall

  For the first few weeks Shun would walk over to collect me, kind and insistently paternal. Umeko would make our breakfast, and their children, Ayumi and Eiji, would stare, giggle when I sipped silently from my bowl, and be chastised by their parents. Then Shun and I would cycle to his workshop.

  As his father and grandfather had, Shun worked with traditional pipe kilns, a variety of brushing methods and oils, but he also used industrial flamethrowers, state-of-the-art equipment – I was expected to become proficient with both. He worked only with cedar, the wood most receptive to deep burning, and was amused by my immediate questions, my keenness to experiment. He knew by looking at the cut trunk and quality of bark which wood was best. I was given a heat-repellent jacket, though Shun did not wear one. He squatted close to the kilns, kept a careful distance from the blue tongue of the torches. There was incredible skill to it – collapsing the cell walls to strengthen the wood, preserving its integrity while enhancing its beauty. Too much heat and the piece was ruined, too little and the wood wasn’t sealed, could not achieve the finish. Shun called this experience.

  The wood is experiencing fire now. It will be improved.

  A slight, whimsical smile, as if I was being instructed in life philosophy too. Sometimes he was half playing a part. He’d lived in America, seen the films; he understood what was expected of a master. I would tease him gently.

  Shun, shouldn’t you wear an eyepatch, like Chihuly?

  Shun, shouldn’t you grow your beard longer?

  When I asked if I could play music in the workshop he had a long list of requests from the life before his restoration to the land of ancestors.

  I’ve since taught others shou sugi ban. It’s counter-intuitive – damaging wood to protect it. Trust comes only after patience; to begin with I had neither. Shun’s grandfather had made the panels of the local temples. Shun was respected across Japan. I watched him extinguish with water in a way that looked half holy, half menial; he knew exactly how to control the blurting flames, how to time the fire’s afterburn. In a matter of hours he would achieve fossilisation, that which would take river mud or peat a thousand years.

  But it was in the brushing stage that his artistry showed. He would turn back his sleeve, never soil it. The motions were beautiful. Under the charred coat, the true grain was revealed, in dark vectors and knots, patterns so suggestive they became stories. Once the surface was sealed and finished, Shun would apply one single drop of water, a perfect sitting bead. Then he would step away, as if encouraging my private moment of consideration.

  Do not force the fire. Respond to it.

  Do not drown the wood. Moderate rain, as the English say.

  The brush should travel only natural roads.

  At the end of each day we would cycle back to the house and eat dinner. Aromatic curries and soft rich eggs, red-bean cakes enclosed in leaves cut from Umeko’s lovely garden. She spoke almost no English so Shun translated.

  Umeko asks if you are warm at night?

  Yes, very comfortable.

  Would you like to use the telephone to call England?

  No, thank you – my mother never answers the phone. I’ll write to her.

  I liked being lost. I liked the routines, times when solitude was expected, bathing, reading, the lighting of lamps. I was immersed but couldn’t access something innate, something intangible. Umeko could see. Once, she smiled at me and held up a hand, its fingers splayed. She wove the first finger of her other hand between them – an imaginary weft thread. Ayumi was nine and fascinated by my clothes, the dyed T-shirts and silver jeans, my blue fringe.

  My daughter says you are a peacock with no tail, Shun told me.

  After dinner I would help clear and wash, then play with the children, running after them, meowing and cawing. I would walk back to the grandfather house in the arboreal dusk, the leaves above luminescing and murmuring like the low voice of a woman. The morning sun behind the forest was golden and open, the mouth of a fish.

  At weekends I sometimes travelled to the cities, where architecture changed almost overnight, modernist buildings regenerating beside paper houses and narrow alleys, and I made trips out to the islands, to the galleries and museums.

  Be ready to accept both states together, Shun said. They are not opposites. You’ll see!

  He advised me to go to certain gardens, designed for retreat, for rain or serenity. I carried communication cards, held them up like a mute. I sat at the back of empty buses, pressed into commuter trains where the sweat of strangers slicked my arm. The country was fast and still, ancient – and advanced beyond anything I’d known. It folds outward and inwards in my memory. Inversions and parallels, upper and lower worlds. The mountains and trees were symbols, their own imperial shrines. The temples were perfectly maintained, even the oldest, with mist arranged at their wings. Everywhere, the red arches, the sacred borders, as if at any moment I could pass through to some unreachable place.

  And from silent spaces to streets so frenetic; no one looked me in the eye or smiled, no one held doors, yet the politeness was faultless, so inherent it could not be called etiquette. I repeated phrases, sorry, my fault, excuse me, and faces lit up. In eating rooms I had to point at the menu and choose, or shrug and say, you decide. Men offered me drinks. The women were curious, stunning. Everything I’d read and anticipated seemed like a fetish.

  I went to Storm House. Adachi. Haguro. When I entered Teshima, a domed installation Shun had insisted I visit, I understood some form of perfection had been achieved. The space was total, its own mind. Through the oculi, sky itself was art, and light travelled in moons across the wall. Groundwater rose through a million pressure holes in the floor, and droplets shifted towards others, joining, trickling, playing with their own constant difference. It was chaos and peace. Nothing had prepared me for the emotion I felt there, the acceptance, finding myself in tears and becoming part of the flood.

  Then, back to the forest, its radiant enclosure, and back to the workshop where I learnt to destroy to create. I began to think I might stay beyond the residency.

  One morning, as I was using a wire brush on the burnt timber, I felt a presence behind me. Shun had taken to leaving me alone. We’d dispensed with the many rituals, and once I was adept he considered it impolite to observe my work and would wait until everything was complete before discussing it. I turned. Umeko was there with Shun – she did not usually come to the workshop. I kept brushing. The charcoal skin was soft and unset.

  Shun waited until I had cleaned the swarf. He looked stiff with concentration and was wearing a different coat, formal, fastened to the neck, though it was July and very humid. He came towards me, stopped two arm-lengths away and asked for my forgiveness. I’ve done something wrong, I thought, offended. He lowered his head, then looked at me and told me that my mother had died. The news had only just been relayed to him. Umeko walked forward and stood beside me. Without touching me, she moved me to the bench to sit.

  Most of my life I’d been expecting it. I’d grown out of the panic of the first years, running into her room, checking for breath, searching for her figure on the moors; I’d found ways of holding the possibilities internally. At some moment, every day of my life, I had considered the chance. Not yet that morning, or, if I had, the thought had passed unnoted, a bird’s swift reflection crossing the river. I told Shun.

  I haven’t thought about it today.

  He misunderstood, assumed some kind of failed conveyance.

  It is a shock. A terrible accident.

  I thought about it yesterday. When I woke up.

  It was in the evening.

  No.

  He apologised again, was braced for discomfort, possible failures of language and failure of care towards the young woman so far away from home. But it was not words or culture that caused the confusion. Naomi had died in a car accident. She had not been the driver. Shun had to repeat it several times, and each time it was worse for both of us.

  On the plane hom
e I kept thinking, no, it’s not right, the autopsy will show the truth, another rupture, she must have fitted in the seat while the friend was driving, instigating the crash. I was too angry to cry. The idea that Naomi’s fate had not been delivered properly was impossible to accept. The universe had corrupted their deal.

  England looked as vibrant as Japan as the plane flew over. On the ground it seemed ugly, dirty and in disarray. People were loud and careless. The bins overflowed and the transport system was torpid. The director of the Malin had been contacted by the police, and she’d been the one who had spoken to Shun. She’d arranged the new travel tickets, though Shun had insisted on paying the fare himself, stewarding me discreetly through the procedure of getting home, reversing our first journey, expecting me at any moment to shatter. At the airport, unusually overcome, he had bowed and walked away. I slept on the slow train north, hot summer air buffeting through the top window, my rucksack propped on the seat next to me like a shield. In its front pocket were two blue paper birds the children had made for me.

  I took the key from the nook in the stonework. The cottage smelled of Naomi’s clothes, her skin and pheromones. A week-old cup of tea was next to the sink, half-finished, its meniscus white and thick. I lay on her bed, wakeful, my body clock set to another zone, and imagined Ayumi and Eiji running in her overgrown garden, out onto the moorland and up to the waterfalls. I wanted to walk back into Teshima, take off my shoes, stand mindlessly and find no significance in any risen tear.

  You stopped at the staircase and looked up, confused, the first time you came home with me. We’d walked again along the river in the cold graphite hours after midnight. What would happen was unspoken. Burntcoat was notorious and formidable, not the kind of place where anyone would reside.

  Do you live in a han?

  You quietly read a few of the words painted by Jonah on the brickwork.

  They have escaped their mud turrets and flown upwards. They have moulted and hardened, blue-black and golden, treasures from the Pharaoh’s tomb.

  The handwriting looked faint, spectral. I took you inside via the fire escape, and you didn’t see the studio.

  As we went up the narrow iron steps, you touched my back, then my hip, my calf. You’d taken off your glove and your hand was the only point of warmth in the eye of winter. The bag you were carrying scraped gently on the wall like stiff feathers. The streetlight barely reached the industrial border of the city and the sky was seeded with stars. If I’d turned, I would have seen an empty space filled with shadows instead of your face.

  There’s blindness to new lovers. They exist in the rare atmosphere of their own colony, trusting by sense and feel, creatures consuming each other, building shelters with their hopes. Other worlds cease. I know I felt something as it began, an understanding, foreboding, ordinance, even. Love is never the oldest story. It grows in the rich darkness.

  There was no exact event. Everything bleeds together, can’t be separated. I remember breathlessness, elation climbing through my body, charging all the nerves, unbearable restraint. The series of breaches, exquisite touches – the hollow below your ear, your mouth preparing me, your hands holding my head as the smooth tip pushed past my lips, sliding to the back of my tongue, along its live muscle. The second, third attempts, until we worked together like skinned machinery. On our sides, your forehead on my breastplate, the nipple grooming your face. My body pinned, your fingers reaching under, slick, coated.

  It was impossible not to look. Your bones were prominent at the edge of the pelvis, your upper spine. Scars, along the line of your chest, the midsection, the groin, in white resolute folds.

  What happened here?

  Appendix.

  And here?

  My lung collapsed. They made a mess. Sorry.

  Don’t hide them. Lift your arm.

  We were reckless, unprotected. I gripped you towards the end, desperate for depth, the latch. You began coming and reared back, only just in time, spilling on my belly, my shoulder.

  After, you washed, and we ate food you prepared, falling on it like predators before sleeping. The white product dried on my skin, crisp and tight. You would call to me in the bath.

  Do you like garlic? How much salt shall I put? I can take out the covers inside the onion – what are they called?

  Membranes?

  Yes. If you don’t like them.

  It’s fine – I like onions.

  Emine, my mother, she loves them but they give her too much acid.

  Oh. My mother once ate an onion like an apple.

  What! Why?

  I began to tell you about Naomi.

  I knew almost nothing about where you came from, the conflict and divided identity. There were deep, kind lines at the sides of your eyes, a crease of frustration in the centre of your brow – the chef’s cut, you said. In your first language you were considered funny, a wit, speaking rapidly like a sports commentator; in English the humour was gentle, delivered. Who can say what a good match is. Through small exchanges, we built a foundation – the world is fundamental, varied, but its struggles are repetitive and similar. We both had grandfathers who had mined. Yours had been killed in a collapse along with two hundred men; mine had been photographed before the closures, walking up the return, his face filthy and fatigued as it hit the daylight, already emphysemic. When I showed you the photo, you said,

  I feel like that. This winter has been so hard, not enough sun.

  You pulled me to you.

  What is this perfume? It’s like a drug. I can’t stop going there.

  Your mouth against my collarbone, lips brushing my neck as softly as you could, torturing to gain permission. You pulled up my shirt. There’s a crescent scar on my lower abdomen, with a rucked hole where the suture missed; you inserted a thumb, didn’t comment, but asked,

  What was your worst pain?

  I don’t know. What was yours?

  Kidney stone – I take too much salt. I wanted to die. I lay on the floor of the taxi on the way to the hospital. I’m glad you can’t remember.

  I do remember. It was when they removed a drain from my stomach. I’d had emergency surgery. It felt like a knife sliding out – a blunt one.

  Blunt?

  Not sharp.

  Ah, blind, we say the knife is blind. Would you like me to sharpen yours?

  The next night you brought a whetstone from the restaurant. You dripped water from a hand, bent over the counter and worked the blades at an exact degree, replacing them in the drawer one by one, lethal silvered weapons I was too afraid to use.

  When I was surer, I invited you into the studio.

  Would you like to see what I’m working on?

  Of course. Shall we go tomorrow?

  I opened the door to the interior stairs – you’d stayed in Burntcoat only a few times and were confused, imagining the space below to be abandoned. You were very serious entering, as if walking into a hallowed building. It was as cold as a crypt. I handed you a scarf from my winter work pile. I tried to explain a little; talked about the metalworker who’d taught Picasso to weld, and Brâncuși, microbial decay. There is no good way to present what is, I know now, uncommon, almost alien. A piece was under construction in the workspace – based on the fable of the wolf and the crane, commissioned by a wealthy medical trust. The structure looked grotesque, chunks riven apart, almost like an autopsy. There were black timbers propped against the walls. I saw it through your eyes, suddenly, the occult craft room.

  This is …

  Aesop’s Conundrum.

  The wolf was lying submissively on its back, shingles of grey elder bark for fur, its mouth wide open – the long beak of the crane would be inserted down its throat.

  Do you know the story, I asked.

  Yes. But I feel like I am intruding.

  I invited you. I don’t mind people coming in.

  No, I mean these two. It looks like this should be a private matter.

  I laughed.

  It is quite
erotic, I suppose. There’s a real bone in there. Once they’re fixed together it won’t be seen.

  You went over to the cooker where I boiled resins, and I sat on the bench and watched.

  We use the word microbe for germs, all germs. Why won’t anyone see the bone?

  I was used to different questions – personal or financial. I was used to walling off my identity like a dangerous cyst, being told that I was too intense, uncanny in capability; the work was too momentous for a normal partner. But you seemed comfortable around the materials, around me. Even with the brazed, formal signature on the sculpture’s plinth.

  It’s about trust, I said. The wolf could eat the bird. But the wolf can’t eat until the bone comes unstuck. What if it’s a trick? What if there’s no bone? The crane won’t know until its head is inside, past the teeth.

  You were still smiling.

  We have to trust? Help each other. Find a cure. Is it OK to look?

  Yes.

  You peered into the wolf’s hollow gape.

  It’s beautiful, like glass.

  It’s a fossil. It belonged to an archaeopteryx – a prehistoric bird.

  She made the problem even better!