He grunted.
“You will get out.”
Then Utamaro said, “The only things that escape from prison, besides farts, are tears.”
We laughed and nodded, unseen by Utamaro, on the other side of the wall. This too was appropriate behavior under the circumstances: to make a joke.
Utamaro went on, “There’s nothing of beauty here.”
“Ah,” said my father, “I am sorry.” I suspect he felt pity then, that other emotion we were not allowed because it took away from the pride of the one who was pitied. I stifled mine. But it was strange to hear Utamaro talking that way, his voice fluting up from the cesspool on the other side of the wall.
“Don’t be sorry. In a strange way it is restful. There is nothing I care about.”
“People say you’ll be released before long. You’re being made an example of, that is what they say.’’
“Of course, it’s what I expected. I am the best.”
“Yes,” my father agreed. “You are the best.”
“They will punish me so the rest of the artists can see. Probably I will have to live on as an example of one who has been dealt with.”
My father and I walked on. He held me by the hand. “We’re getting out of here. We’re going to the sea,” he said.
We came to the Punishment Grounds on the edge of town. The smell of death hung over them. The tattered bodies on stakes were not recognizable as human anymore. One had been pulled down by the dogs that gathered here; they were fighting over it. In the dirt there were some heads too, which I could hardly recognize because the crows had been at them. More corpses were coming in: we saw the outcasts carrying heads on a pole.
“Pickled in salt,” said my father, “so they don’t escape the punishment that comes after death. Do you understand? The
bakufu
preserve them first so we can all see the criminals rot here.” He loved to tell me these details. “But you don’t need to look.”
“Of course I’m going to look if you keep telling me!” I knew pickled plums. But pickled heads? Were they also sweet and sour? Certainly they were wrinkled.
The walls of the High City dwindled behind us while the splendid white cone of Mount Fuji winked ahead. We were now on the Tokaido, the road to Kyoto. It took us past the Ichibee bookstore. This was a favorite place of the Dutch scholars
,
the
rangaku-sha.
Hokusai knew the owner, and we went in. The bookseller gave us tea, and we rested. Then we looked at the books for sale. There were many guidebooks and pictures of famous places along the big roads of our country.
“Who is buying these?” my father said.
“Pilgrims. Everyone is a pilgrim now. They come in pairs and in dozens. At certain seasons they come in armies. They’re going to Ise or all the way to Fuji-san. That’s why we moved our store out here.”
“Such an outpouring of religious feeling,” murmured Hokusai. He fingered a booklet with pictures of the two rocks at Ise that were said to be married. The rocks were tied together with twine. There were prints of fields and wide marshes full of grass and open hillsides. There was also a picture of a cozy inn along the way to Ise. Two beautiful women stood in front of it.
The bookseller burst out laughing.
“On the way, perhaps. But on the way back, the pilgrims are carousing and fornicating and committing every sin on the list. They’ve been washed clean by their visit—might as well start over.” He shook his head. “My wife wants to go on one. I tell her, ‘Would I let you? Are you crazy?’ Not with what I’ve seen! People just want to be on the road. Any road, going anywhere.”
My father picked up one book after another.
“Famous places,” he said slowly. “Not famous faces. That’s what they want to see now.” He had a look that I knew, the look of a man with an idea dawning.
Then he said, “We’re going out of the city ourselves. As far as Uraga.”
“You know you cannot take her.”
“Why not?”
“No women allowed out of Edo.”
“She’s not a woman. She’s a child.”
“A
female
child.”
My father looked at me; this idea had not crossed his mind. I was afraid he’d send me back. “I suppose. But she’s my helper.”
“Do you have to get out?” said the bookseller. “Is it so important?”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. Have you seen my new book, about General Disorder?”
The bookseller said nothing more. He led us out the back of the store, crossing the little courtyard to his house. He told us to wait in his tearoom. When he came back, he had a set of boy’s clothes and a pair of scissors.
I screamed when they let down my hair and cut it ragged over my ears and brow. It stuck up from the top of my head like a wiry brush. But I was happy to take off my kimono, which was dirty and binding. The boy’s pants were loose at the knees but narrow at the ankle; the top hung just to my thighs, tying with a sash. I had a coat to go over it. I couldn’t see myself, but my father was laughing and so was the bookseller.
“They’ll never know!”
And they didn’t. When we came to the sentry post that marked the exit of the city, everyone had to stop. My father showed his pass card. The guards looked down from their tower.
“Why are you going out?”
“To see my wife’s mother in Uraga.”
“And this one is?”
We were on the muddy road below them. My father jerked his head in my direction. “My son,” he said. “He’s my apprentice.”
“Pass.”
We walked on. I felt curious; the cool air filtered across my scalp. I was light, as if I’d forgotten something. We’d left my girl clothes in the bookstore.
“When will I get them back?” I said. I didn’t miss them much, but I could see people thought I was a funny-looking boy.
“When we go home again, we can stop.”
We passed a drummer with small gongs tied to a belt around his middle. He had spread a mat on the grassy ground beside the road. He was dancing, and as he twisted, tassels with small, hard knots at the ends played a tune on the gongs. He banged on the skin drum in his arms. All the while he had his face fixed on an audience of three who sat on the edge of his mat.
I pulled on my father’s hand and we watched for a bit. Hokusai made a little drawing of the man. We did not throw coins into the small collection that was on the mat.
“Can’t we give him a coin?”
“That would be an insult.”
But I could see the man’s lip turning up. “He wants one.”
“He may want it, but it will demean him to take it,” said Hokusai.
We set out again on the road. I was tired and night was coming. All of a sudden this long walk did not make sense to me.
“Are we fleeing Edo?”
“Never,” he said. “We are quitting it. I’m tired of the city. Everyone there wants money.”
“Is it because you have debts?”
Hokusai was offended. “What do you know about debts?”
“Shino also has debts,” I relayed.
“People pay plenty of money for my work. My work is popular. I sell to the Dutch traders. No, it is not because of debts.”
I chattered on. “Shino has to pay out money she earns to the waiters and for the sake and to the housekeeper.” She didn’t pay the hairdresser because he loved to fix her smooth, endless black locks. I didn’t mention that. “She even has to pay for the makeup she hates. She has to share her money with the other courtesans, and she gives some to the teashop where she meets her clients. And to her family also; she sends some home every month. She even gives some to her husband, who sent her to the chief magistrate,” I said. “That’s why she has debts.”
“Her husband is a wicked man who only wants money now that she is a well-paid courtesan.” He stormed ahead of me in his bowlegged way, fuming. “Why should Shino’s husband get her money?” he muttered as he stomped ahead. “He sold her, in truth.”
We marched along.
“You see, that’s just it. People sell anything. What they love. Their labor. Then they take the money to the next place. Each time it changes hands, the money becomes dirtier. It is an abomination,” he said. “Someone admires my print; they give it a value in this dirty money. I don’t like it,” he said to the road in front of him. “So I don’t pay attention.”
We passed a man with a slow donkey. He stared at my raving father, pitying me.
“How can you not pay attention? We need money. Without it we’ll get debts too.”
“I won’t give coins the courtesy of my attention. I don’t know their names. They are evil spirits.”
He was faking. He did know their names. But his hatred was real. It was another of his ways to be different. Everyone else liked money. Waiters and cleaners picked up coins from the gutters. The courtesans pretended they didn’t see the folded papers that were left by the tea sets. But they were very quick, as soon as eyes were turned, to unfold and count the money.
But I didn’t believe this was why we were leaving Edo.
I ran to catch up. “Is it because you have to hide from the
bakufu
?”
“Hide? Me?” He snorted with scorn. “You must be crazy.”
That silenced me. I was bad for having angered him. He was moving quickly. But now I stormed ahead.
It was a revelation to be able to move.
In the city we were stopped at every turn. There were crowds you had to dodge. The canals had small, crowded bridges. Our district was closed by a stockade with guards. Locked gates divided neighborhoods from each other. Every way forward was blocked. You had to dodge and dart.
Now there was open space as far as I could see.
I began to feel the wind.
I set off past women carrying faggots on their backs, fishermen with two baskets over the sides of a horse, pilgrims in white. It was fun to run in boys’ trousers. I imagined that there was a face on the back of my head, and it was making huge and hideous expressions at Hokusai. My eyebrows—the ones on the back of my head—were pinched together. My mouth was stretched into a square, my tongue dangling from the middle of it. My eyes were crossed, the pupils down and in the center, looking down my nose. I was the villain. When Hokusai peered through the crowds ahead to see where I was, this mask face would leer back at him. Hah!
But when I looked back, he was gazing off into the distance. Indifferent to my insolence. I was ashamed. I thought of something to frighten myself. It was a habit I had. I learned it from his stories. First the pickled heads. Now I imagined again that he might sell me.
I hung back and found him. “Would you sell me, Father?”
He gave that rattle of scorn he was so good at. He let his lower jaw drop, and he forced the air out so it hissed and stuttered as if it were going up a rusty old pipe. “I would not find a buyer.”
Was I so ugly? So useless? Hadn’t he just said I was his apprentice?
I ran ahead of him again and hid in a clump of pines. I watched him. Hokusai bounced and zigged and zagged along the road. He stopped to sniff the air. He talked to himself or to absent me. Or to nobody: he needed no excuse to keep talking. He was like a crazy person, it was true. I wished I could run away and not have to follow him. But his voice reached me in my hiding place.
“At the sea we will look outward.” He sounded not at all angry. “It will bring peace.”
His pleasant voice wooed me. I couldn’t leave him. Maybe he could have left me, but I was not prepared to wait and see. I fell in step beside him.
Night was falling as we came to a crossroads.
“Will there be money at the fishing village where we are going?” I asked.
My father gave me a stern look.
“I have told you we are leaving the city because of money,” he said. “Would I take you to a place where money is also the god? No, there will be no money.”
“How will we eat?”
“We’ll trade my work for lodging. We’ll take our food from the sea and the earth. We’ll sleep in the homes of your mother’s family.”
We trudged along.
“The shogun’s men won’t find me in a fisherman’s hut!” he blurted.
Hah! I knew we were fleeing. It was just as Shino had said. But I understood we were not to say so.
“I’m tired of the pleasure quarter anyway. Everyone’s working there. I want to see the other famous places.”
The next post town was ahead. We found an inn where they fed us and let us sleep in exchange for my father making a scroll painting of a Buddha. We went to sleep on clean straw.
T
HE NEXT DAY
the road ahead was just as long. I looked at the people going by on packhorses, but I did not ask my father if we could have one. We moved aside when the
kago
of the rich merchants hove up behind us, carried on the shoulders of men whose eyes and arms bulged. After a long time we sat beside the road. I lay in the grass while my father drew three fat peasant boys running with a kite in the field.