He shifted over onto his knees and elbows. His bottom end was now up in the air. He picked up a brush and pulled a roll of rice paper out from under my stack. I noted with irritation that he was now painting while my brush was idle.
“Unfortunately, those who must pay us are not so numerous.”
“That is likely true,” he mused, almost in spite of himself.
“Perhaps the publisher has money for me from the sales of the
Illustrated Manual for Women.
”
“When did I make that?”
“You didn’t. I made it.”
“Ah, yes. I recall it. The one that shows the correct way for women to behave on every occasion in life. As if you would know!” He cackled into his chest.
“I didn’t say I made the rules. I only drew the pictures,” I said testily.
“Ah.”
All of a sudden, his brush, which had been poised—perfectly, ominously poised—woke up and darted back and forth, circling, spitting, on the surface of his paper in a burst of furious energy.
“And of daily exorcisms? What are we owed for them?”
“But you threw them in the street, don’t you remember?”
T
HINGS WORSENED IN
our country. Foreigners were circling without, and within the battle between Western-leaning samurai and those who wished to keep us closed accelerated. One of the porters from Juhachi-ya came to our home. He bowed to the floor in the doorway. I had become careless of my appearance; I must have looked mad. My father’s battle to live or to die had left signs of scuffle in me.
“He speaks only rarely,” I said. I didn’t want other people to hear how badly he slurred and stuttered.
“It’s you I’ve come to see. We’re going back to the mountains. The business is bankrupt. This is our last trip. We will take you if you wish. The gods are against us. Edo will burn again, burn to the ground. There will be robbings and killings. It will not be safe, miss.”
I rolled up eighty-six sketches that I had rescued and hidden after Hokusai threw them out. I had to be secretive because it made him angry. He believed it to be part of the efficacy of the charm to throw them away. Now he believed them sold.
“Take these to Kozan. It is all we have.”
The porter left.
Silence. The brush again: furious, jabbing, delicate, twisting, splayed—then still. I hated to be cross with him. I hated to remind him he was not powerful anymore. We love the arrogance of the strong and hold it dear no matter how it crushes us. I could not bear to see him humbled; I would rather humble myself. I would rather live under his mad regime.
“No more for the festival cart ceilings, then?”
“Last year.”
He lifted a bony buttock cheek and farted again.
“There was the Saint Nichiren . . .” he began.
He was right. There was one. He had painted it for the temple. And a strange painting it was. Saint Nichiren sat on a cloud and beneath him in rows cringed a hundred balding believers. A dragon’s scaly tail circled under the saint, but he was too busy reading his scroll to notice.
I was excited for a minute. “You’re right. We never saw any pay for that picture.”
“I could not ask. The temple.”
“No.”
“But someone may come.”
“Yes, someone may be sent. Is there any more?”
“Did you sell dolls?”
“When I did, I took the money and we spent it on food.”
And that was it: our tally.
“What do we owe?”
“The largest amount to the temple for the rent of this room. The second-largest to the vendor for our food. The third—”
“The third to the drinking house,” he said. “I never go there. You do.”
“I buy your
shochu.
”
“And are we ahead or behind?”
“We are behind, Father. You must know that.”
He brightened. “We could move on.”
I knew he would say that. I had tried at the time of the last move to make a list of our living places, got to the number ninety-three, and stopped.
“What is this? One hundred views of Edo?” I asked. “One hundred filthy lodgings? No, Old Man. I won’t move again. It is enough. Three times last year! The paintings to pack. Our bedding. The pot and teacups.”
“I don’t know why we have that pot. We never use it.”
True again. I fell silent.
“We like our rented houses, do we not?”
“I don’t.”
He looked mortally wounded.
“You don’t? But it is our way.”
“I’m tired of our way.”
“Then you would stay behind?”
Was he really suggesting he move off by himself? “No, Old Man, of course I wouldn’t.”
“Then good. Let’s go.”
It was an obsession with him. Our houses, like so many sketches for a final work, like so many lotus-leaf food wrappers, used and discarded. Such restlessness! Running from the censors. Running from Monster Boy. Running from the
bakufu
because we were labeled as lovers of the West. Running from time and age. No more running for me.
I pretended to be lazy. I yawned. “It all seems like such a bother. Why not just stay here?”
A picture was beginning to grow under his brush. He was painting the tiger again. All last year he painted tigers, in rain, in snow. Their paws were soft, their bodies powerful but muted somehow, turned upon themselves, as if they did not know which way to go with all that energy. But his hand shook and his brush fell to the mat.
“If we just owned our little house,” I began. I don’t know why I bothered.
“Chin-Chin!” he cried in frustration. “There are none but rented houses in this world. Why should we try to keep one? Our true home is north, at the North Star. If we kept a home on earth, we would only have to give it back. We rent the house of this body, do we not?”
This was Hokusai in his pious mood.
“If we rent our bodies,” I grumbled, “I have a complaint for the one who gave the lease on this one.”
He laughed. This was the type of joke I was supposed to make, and he was supposed to laugh at it. Yet I really had no complaints of my body. I patted my stomach: rounded. My legs: strong and wiry. I did not sicken. I did not tire. I painted all day and caroused in the teahouses until the small hours of the morning.
“I agree that any home we have on earth is temporary.”
He nodded approvingly.
“But that is not a reason for us to make it more so.”
My father subsided—and this sent a tiny splinter into the wall of my chest. He cocked his head, half listening, now trying to pick up his brush again. His tiger was prowling in the most wonderful shape, head to the right, tail swooping from right to left, mottled torso forming a diagonal mound between.
“You do it,” he said, reaching out toward me with his brush.
The tiger got a white yap in perfect profile and an open mouth. Hokusai eyed it and jerked his finger. To the brush, then the ink pot, then the center of its face. I added a black dot for the tiger’s nose.
I had never seen a tiger. We had no tigers in Japan. The creature was one of myth to us. But I knew cats. This tiger was like any of the cats that had followed me since I was a little girl. I made the tiger pace, as a cat would, switching his tail dangerously, roaring in silence, stilled anger as the rain poured on him and softened every hair on his body so it appeared to be velvet.
Hokusai sat up and slurped his tea. His lips were sharp and stretched over the edge of the cup. Such old lips, lined and dry. They could live forever.
“Today,” I said, “instead of moving to a new set of rooms, we will clean these ones.”
“Huh,” he said. “You will. I have the palsy.”
My father grinned, his toothless, wrinkled face lighting with some kind of gladness: he was giving me what I wanted. He swiped his fist out toward me and took the brush from my hand. Conversation closed.
It was my turn to resist. “I don’t know how to sweep.”
“I’ll show you,” said Hokusai.
“Will you? Have you known all this time? You could have taught me.”
“That was for your mother to do.”
“She tried. In the same way she tried to teach me to sew.”
We laughed over that one.
He took a piece of the paper that had wrapped the rice balls I bought for last night’s dinner, dipped his brush in my ink, and began.
First he drew hands on the broomstick. He had never been any good with fingers, and I couldn’t help noticing the thumb was inside out. Then he made a quick set of footsteps, like the instructions for the latest dance. First the feet, then the whole body. A figure appeared with a few strokes. The figure was me, short and spry, knobby of knee and elbow. I turned this way and that, the broom ahead of me, the broom flying, circling, possessed. The dust flew out of invisible corners.
“This is not sweeping,” I protested. “This is drawing.”
“Ah,” said Hokusai, eyes twinkling in the old way, “always the confusion.”
And just by the way, he had done a better—funnier, more lively—illustration of a woman’s activities than I could do. And just by the way, since the moment he yawned his first words, I had not made a single brushstroke on a work of my own. I had only finished his tiger.
There is room for only one brush in a household.
Admittedly, it was late in life for me to discover this.
And then Hokusai doubled over, softly, because his body had almost no weight to it now—it was all light and fire—and fell to the mat. His eyes closed and he was breathing heavily.
“Hokusai?”
He did not answer, but a small smile played on his lips.
“Are you playing a game?”
He did not answer.
I looked at his wiry, curled body on the mat and chose to think that he was resting. I sat beside him, and time passed. Now the little argument we had about moving on seemed remote. It had become impossible, without our noticing. Here was an old man gasping on the floor.
I rose, resolved to do what every housewife in Japan did on the last day of the old year—sweep the place clean.
But we didn’t have a broom.
I went out to the
unagi
seller who lived next door and borrowed one.
I followed the instructions. One hand over the other on the broom handle. One foot ahead of the other. Reach the arms forward. Pull back and scoop under. Flip up the grass ends of the broom to push the dirt away. Do this around in a circle, collecting the dirt in one place. And then—
Sweep, sweep, sweep. I was raising a storm. The dust was whirling around. It was in the air, creating a lovely haze in the daylight that streamed through our little door. But soon it would fall. Where did dust go? He would be dust. And I would be dust, one day.
His gums parted. He grunted, wanting
shochu.
I held it for him.
“I came into the world with nothing and I will leave it with nothing,” he said.
I had heard that before. But I did not like to hear any more about him leaving.
Two of the disciples made an appearance. They greeted my father, who struggled to sit up.
“Is the
unagi
grilled yet? Go get me some, Chin-Chin. I am hungry.”
“I’m going.”
The old eat like horses.
W
HUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.
The
unagi
woman was pounding the eels with her wooden mallet. I hurried past. It was icy in the temple square. I tucked my hands around my ribs, into the sleeves of my padded coat. Tomorrow would be the beginning of warmer days; surely it had to be. Moving across the windswept open center, beyond the protection of the trees, a man was bent low behind his barrow, using it to shield himself. He stopped and stepped out from behind his load, bowing.
“How is your honored father?”
It was the kindness that unnerved me. My voice came out a wail. “Hokusai is on his mat. Hokusai will rise no more,” I said.
I was immediately sorry, as the man looked terrified. He muttered his apologies and went behind his barrow.
I bought some bonito and then begged two very special eggs to tempt the Old Man’s appetite. The fishmonger wrapped it for me.
“He is well today?”
He asked this every day, and he knew the answer. But I had had enough of scaring the neighborhood.
“He is well, thank you. Telling me stories. Already has his brushes out.”
Eating took all his energy. Watching him, I lost my appetite. I took my usual seat beside him and picked up my brush.
I drank too much sake last night. I smoked my pipe too much last night. I stayed up too late. I cried to think of how we would live in the new year. Now my mouth tasted like ashes and my head was tight as the skin of a
taiko
drum. Meanwhile, the Old Man industriously crawled on the tatami with his bottom up in the air.