Read The Memory Painter: A Novel Online
Authors: Gwendolyn Womack
A few minutes later, two orderlies entered Bryan’s room. They held him down and administered an injection.
Bryan’s body went slack and he stared up at the ceiling as his psychomotor functions began to fail. He was trapped in limbo, and his mind climbed aboard a powerful ship as the drug took him out to sea.
It had taken Linz two doses of Renovo and four hours to recall the life of Katarina Rota. Katarina was born in Vienna in seventeen hundred and moved to Cremona with her parents as a young child. It was there that she met and fell in love with Bartolomeo Giuseppe Antonio Guarneri and her life charted a new course. She became a violin maker’s wife.
It was not a glamorous or well-paying trade; Katarina and Giuseppe struggled with finances their whole life. She would have been shocked to know that one of the violins he’d created had survived history and become the most expensive musical instrument in the world.
For two hours, Linz stayed in her bedroom, giving the memories time to settle in her mind. Now she was not only fluent in German and Italian but was also the only person in the world who knew that Katarina had helped her husband make his violins in the years toward the end of his life.
Desperately needing to hear one of his instruments, Linz got out her iPod and shuffled through her collection, studying it in a new light. Over the years, she had unknowingly purchased recordings that had a violinist who had played a del Gesù. It seemed that her subconscious mind could still recognize her husband’s violins three hundred years later.
She put on Vivaldi’s Concerto in G Minor and closed her eyes. It had been one of Giuseppe’s favorite scores. He would often test his instruments by having a violinist come to his workshop, and he would always request that the violinist play something by Vivaldi.
Vivaldi had been a contemporary and was a violin virtuoso, and he had understood just what the instrument could do. Giuseppe would hand the newly made instrument over to the violinist like a parent who was letting his child leave home for the first time. He would then watch the performance with a sharp eye and a stern face and only when he began to close his eyes would Katarina know he was satisfied.
A true perfectionist, Giuseppe always told Katarina that some trees had more music in them than others, and he would devote huge amounts of their resources to purchasing the finest wood. He had a well-connected brother in Venice who helped him get access to select maple and spruce from Eastern Europe. Giuseppe believed that, by giving his love and passion equally to the wood itself, he could coax the soul of the instrument to sing.
Over the years, he also made creative adjustments to his families’ violin-making traditions. His grandfather had apprenticed with the great Nicolò Amati, and the Guarneri family of violin makers adhered to the “Grand Amati” design. But as he grew in his artistry, Giuseppe chose to deviate from his lifelong training by letting the wood decide the violin’s shape. In that way, each of his violins was an original. They were full of power, able to withstand the greatest strain from the hand-driving passion of any player. His varnish was another one of his great secrets, and he took its recipe with him to the grave.
When he became too ill to work, Katarina would have someone come to his bedside each day to play Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
. While she tidied up his workshop, she would listen to the passages from “Spring,” “Summer,” “Autumn,” and “Winter” coming from the bedroom and pray once more for God to give them more time. No one in the world could ever replace Giuseppe, with his incredible genius, his reckless passion, and his artistry. The Lord had put him on this earth to make instruments that could play heaven’s music. And here God was taking him away, with no one to inherit his workshop or his secrets.
Katarina didn’t know what to do. The unfinished violin sitting on Giuseppe’s workbench echoed her silent grief. She went over to it and sat down, wiped away her tears, and got to work.
On the day he died, she roused him and put the last violin in his hands. “Bartolomeo,” she whispered. It was what she called him in their most tender and private moments.
He opened his eyes and looked at her, then turned to the violin, studying its craftsmanship, and laid it on his chest with a sigh. “Grazie, amore mio,” he whispered.
The violin rose and fell with his breath until he drew his last, and Katarina knew his spirit was gone. Every instrument has a story to tell, and this violin would tell Giuseppe’s.
* * *
Linz killed the music, ruthlessly pushing Katarina’s memories aside. She didn’t want to remember her life or mourn the loss of Giuseppe. Neither held answers to the one question burning in her heart: Did her father kill Michael and Diana?
In frustration, she reached for the vial again, refusing to think about what a triple dose might do. She knew she should call Bryan to let him know what she was doing; otherwise, no one would think to check on her for days. She imagined her father walking in to find her dead on the floor with the vial beside her. She didn’t know why the thought gave her satisfaction, but it did.
Linz lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, waiting for the Renovo to take effect. Twenty minutes passed and still nothing happened. Maybe she would take a nap instead. Her breathing slowed, and her body began to feel heavy as sleep drew its blanket around her. She was wondering if the third dose would even do anything when she was hit by a stomach cramp.
Linz moaned and rolled off the bed. She felt dizzy and nauseated as the pain inside her grew.
She remained on the floor and slowly crawled to the bathroom. Her only concern was that she didn’t throw up the drug.
JAPAN
DECEMBER 20, 1702
Oishi hunched over, unsure of whether he was finished being sick. The sake at the inn had been poor—and today marked the thirtieth night in a row that he had been incredibly drunk. It was a desperate and necessary ruse to ensure that the loud public rumors of his downfall were kept alive.
“The spies are gone!” Hara, his most trusted man, was running toward him, carrying a lantern.
Oishi stood up. When he spoke, his voice sounded gruffer than he intended. “You’re sure the surveillance has been lifted?”
“Shiota and Tomimori followed them all the way out of the city. They are returning to Edo.”
Oishi smiled. So they had taken the bait and no longer considered him a threat. “Now we are finally free to act. Order all the men to gather in Edo.”
Even though almost two years had passed since his lord, Asano, had been forced to commit seppuku, Oishi had been secretly plotting his revenge with a patience few men possessed. All odds stood against him and his men, for their clan’s castle, wealth, and lands had been given over to the Shogun after their lord’s death. The men had become r
ō
nin—homeless and jobless—and their enemy, Lord Kira, was under the protection of the powerful Uesugi clan. He was now the most guarded man in the country. However, Oishi knew the Uesugis would retract their guards if they believed he no longer posed a threat. Now that they had, Lord Kira’s defenses would be penetrable.
Oishi and his small band of followers disguised themselves as silk traders and began the march to Edo. Although it was risky, Oishi needed to gather the rest of the men as a group at their safe house, if only to reaffirm their unity before the attack. But when Hara went to inform everyone of the upcoming meeting, he returned with devastating news.
“Oishi-sama, a third of our forces have deserted us. Now only forty-five others remain.”
Oishi nodded. Most leaders would have been disheartened by this latest setback, but Oishi was a master strategist and had planned for such contingencies. The House of Asano had once numbered over three hundred samurai. After the disbandment, the men who were still committed to serving the clan had shrunk to seventy. To hear that now they were even less … Oishi was not surprised. If he and his remaining men were caught, they would be executed. He would have continued on with even less.
He looked at Hara and gave him a grim smile. “Forty-seven will do.”
* * *
On the night before of the attack, Oishi ate a modest supper of
onigiri
rice balls with his son in their small room above the soba shop where they had been staying in secret. He swallowed bitter grief with every bite of rice—how he missed his wife and his other children. He had publicly divorced her so that his family would not be punished for the crime he was about to commit, but his eldest son, Chikara, had begged to accompany him. Oishi had agreed, knowing it was a death sentence for the boy. Only in moments such as these did he feel the depth of his men’s sacrifice.
They sat close to the fire to stay warm and waited while heavy snow fell outside. This winter had been Edo’s worst, and the capital had received record-breaking snow. The harsh elements would make their attack even more difficult.
All his life, Oishi had been taught that hardship either atoned for the misdeeds committed during a past life or was necessary to obtain enlightenment during the next. He did not know which would prove true in this case. He only knew that he could not bear to live under the same sky as Kira.
At midnight, a knock sounded quietly on the door. Two men escorted Oishi and Chikara to the safe house where the rest of the forty-seven ronin dressed in silence. They draped cloth capes and hoods over their armor, which they would later discard. But for the moment, their disguises made them look like a fire brigade on patrol, in case anyone stopped them on the way to Kira’s and questioned their actions.
It was almost 4 a.m. when they began to walk in formation down the deserted streets. Their lantern boxes cast shadows on the snow, reminding Oishi of a Bunraku puppet show—stories that most often ended in tragedy. He tried to brush off these thoughts but worried that they would not reach Kira in time before his men called for help. If they were forced to fight the Uesugi clan, there would be no chance of victory. As it was, the odds against them were mighty. Kira had forty master samurai and one hundred eighty mercenaries protecting his fortress.
When they arrived at Kira’s estate, they split into two groups to attack the front and back gates. Oishi led one group and had his son lead the other.
They took out the outer guards without raising the alarm. But they gave themselves away in the courtyard when they broke down the inner door. The house erupted into screaming chaos as guests and servants attempted to escape. The forty-seven pushed past them and battled Kira’s guards, fanning out through the dark maze of rooms to find their man. Kira’s house had been renovated due to his paranoia, and it now had countless hidden doors and secret rooms—he could be anywhere.
As desperation set in, Oishi saw his son facing off against one of Kira’s master samurais; he left the boy to fend for himself. It defied every fatherly instinct he had, but he needed to find Kira before he escaped. Spurred on by the thought, Oishi overcame every samurai and mercenary in his way. Of his men, so far only Hara had sustained any injuries. He had taken an arrow in the chest but broke it off himself, determined to fight on.
After they had searched the entire house, Oishi and his band reconvened in the main hall. It was a miracle they were all still alive. Eighty-nine men lay dead around them, and the rest of the mercenaries had abandoned the fight.
Oishi ignored the moans of the wounded enemy on the ground. It was dawn now, and Kira had not yet been found. The Uesagi clan most likely had heard of the attack and was en route.
For the first time in his life, Oishi felt the weight of his armor. “We stand so close only to fail?”
Then a lone whistle sounded in the distance: Kira had been found.
The men rushed to the back courtyard. There was Kira, kneeling in the snow with his captor beside him.
A strange calm washed over Oishi. At last, here was his enemy.
Oishi and his men dropped to their knees out of respect for Kira’s station. They waited in silence for him to address them.
But Kira did not speak. He looked feeble and old. His body shook with fear.
Oishi finally broke the silence. His words were soft but measured. “Vengeance does not bow to time. We have come to avenge the House of Asano.” He pulled out his sword and offered it to Kira. “I will allow you to kill yourself with honor, as my lord did, and I will stand as your Second.”
Shivering, Kira stared blankly ahead—any hint of arrogance or belligerence had gone. Oishi frowned, wondering if Kira’s mind had become afflicted by disease in the two years since Asano’s passing. Or perhaps the man was simply too frightened to die.
Hara stepped forward. “He won’t do it. We must take matters into our hands.”
Oishi nodded and stood, sword in hand. His enemy still refused to engage him. “I, Oishi Kuranosuke Yoshio, Chief Retainer to the House of Asano, will now take your life.”
With one swift move, he severed Kira’s head.
For a moment, no one seemed to move or breathe. They couldn’t believe they had done it—Kira had been forced from this Earth. The men wrapped his head with extreme care so they could take it with them. Their mission was not yet over.
Maneuvering through side streets to avoid detection, the forty-seven ronin reached Sengaku-ji temple. They washed the head in the temple’s well and brought it to Lord Asano’s grave. No one spoke. Oishi placed Kira’s head next to the stone, and everyone bowed in unison, making new ground for the snow to fall on their backs.
Oishi gazed at the head of his enemy as it lay on his lord’s final resting place and, with fierce satisfaction, breathed in the cold air, letting it soothe the fire that had been burning inside him for so long.
He bowed to Asano for the last time and left. Kira’s head could remain on the grave. He did not need it anymore.
Linz woke up kneeling in the bathroom, doubled over in pain. Her hands gripped her middle as she gasped for breath. The memories bombarded her: she had been a samurai, plotted for two years to kill a man, beheaded him and then, satisfied, had committed seppuku. Her men had died with her—their actions restoring the House of Asano.