It shamed me that money was all my people thought about. I continued washing my small bowl. I sank it in the water and lifted it up, swirling the water so, in circles. The dried red paint came off the sides and began to sweeten the clear water in transparent crimson.
I was acting like my father. I had considered his balking very unfair when I was a child, when I had to do the social easing. But the indignity of my poverty and my pride in my work were too much in conflict for me to speak.
The young man came walking out. He looked across me, scanning right, scanning left. His eyes met mine.
“It is a pleasure to meet the daughter of the great master, Hokusai,” he said in poor Japanese.
I found some lost graces. “I knew your father.” I smiled. “You are his double.”
Von Siebold the younger extended both his hands to me, and I gave him mine. I stood awkwardly, my arms and hands sticking straight out in front of me from the waist like handles on a cart. I had adopted my father’s strange habit of refusing to bow. Or, rather, I had given up the strange habit of bowing.
“He will be very pleased to know that I have found you,” he said.
I looked into his stark blue eyes, which were only the second pair of blue eyes I had ever met. They were not the same as his father’s. They were cold.
“Extend him my best wishes,” I said.
The Dutchmen left soon after.
Only a few days later the little troop of tall men appeared again. There were two von Siebolds among them. And the people of the quarter who were standing outside watched this encounter between the yellow-haired barbarian and the daughter of the famous painter—who was herself as famous a painter as a woman could be.
His hair was now white. It was even more beautiful.
They led us to a teahouse and made us sit. I was grateful that this did not have to happen in my poor room. Nonetheless, the son would not sit, nor would he take tea.
I did not ask von Siebold about his Japanese wife. I asked about his Japanese daughter, Ine. Von Siebold told me she had become a midwife. He was proud of her. But I could see her existence troubled his fully European son.
Our talk flowed. There were few people in this life with whom I could talk. There was Sanba. There was Eisen. Strangely, too, there was von Siebold. All that time ago I had been able to speak my thoughts to him, and he understood. We had looked kindly on each other. We had disagreed; we had warmed to each other.
But that had been under the nose of the
bakufu.
His words had been my first messages from the outside. You are not like other Japanese women, he had said. He did not understand why they settled for so little. I had clung to that idea. Instead of being a man, as my relatives accused me, I might resemble some woman of a larger world. Some woman who was not willing to settle for only a little.
Now we met again—not in a new world or in the old but someplace in between, where a new world was being born. I was almost nostalgic for the dangers of those days, so much simpler than the dangers now.
“I love them both very much,” he had said about his Japanese family. And I had asked him if he had a European wife too, and he had laughed and said no. Only one wife. But I supposed he did take a European wife afterward; this white-skinned son was proof.
As we spoke, I could see him puzzling: Why is this daughter of the great master working down this mud alley? Why is she in poverty?
“Your father, Hokusai,” he said, “lived to a very great age. He had tremendous energy and a stubborn nature.”
He grew animated when speaking of the man. But he had never met Hokusai! I was always the one who came to the Nagasaki-ya.
Isai and the disciples stood around nodding. Now that my father had become a national hero, it was impossible to say anything negative about him.
“How were his last years?” von Siebold asked. “What was it like at the end?”
“Difficult,” I said.
“Ah, but you were with him,” he said.
To my great alarm, tears were welling again. And why? My brother had made me feel this way when he said he recognized that my attentions had kept our father alive. Was this what I needed? To be acknowledged? But that was a Western need, was it not?
This was the frightening thing about foreigners: in their presence one began to feel foreign emotions.
“Vast ambitions. And yet, I must suppose that by the great age of ninety, he was ready to pass away?” said von Siebold.
“No,” I said. “With his dying words, he begged for ten more years.”
I would have liked to say he asked for my forgiveness and asked me to continue to make pictures. That too had happened—but by the time he died, he had recanted.
There was silence between us then, as if my father had just entered the room. After a moment von Siebold spoke.
“And, Oei-san, how is your husband?”
“He is no longer living,” I said. “But before that, we were divorced for many years.”
I could see him making a note in that way he had of observing my race. “Unusual.” His face furrowed.
“It was not so unusual,” I protested with a laugh. “My sister divorced too. I lived with my father from the time I last saw you. Together, we painted and taught at the North Star Studio.”
“And now? Where do you live?” he said.
“I have many homes. I make my living with one brush.”
He did not ask to see my work.
“Do you have children?”
“I have none,” I acknowledged. “But I have students. The disciples of Hokusai are also concerned with my welfare.” I nodded to Isai. This was true. I did not have to say in exactly what way they were concerned.
“Hokusai is the most famous Japanese artist in Europe now,” he said.
I let my head sink to its customary angle above my right shoulder. “I have heard the works are popular.”
“More than popular. They have taken Europe by storm!” Now as in the past he waxed enthusiastic and sprang from his seat. “They are influential. Many artists, especially in Paris, praise him and look at the
manga.
”
Isai and Tsuyuki Kosho—the one who called himself Iitsu II, to my great annoyance—were taking careful note. I did not feel their presence was friendly.
“A designer named Félix Bracquemond found the
manga
sketchbooks in Paris and soon copied motifs from them. He praised Japanese design among his group of artist friends. He showed the sketches to them—all great artists—and began to make work based on them.”
I said I hoped my father was listening from the next world.
Von Siebold walked around in a circle on his long legs. “Of course I knew this long ago. Hokusai was a genius. I knew it before the great artists of Europe got on to the fact. That’s why I bought those paintings from you. I am collecting, still,” he said. “I would be interested in anything you have of your father’s work.”
Here came my dilemma.
If I said, “There is nothing; all is gone,” he would have gone away without buying. And there would have been no sale for the disciples. Tsuyuki and Isai were watching me carefully. I might as well call them what they were: forgers.
“He has been dead now many years,” I said, stalling for time.
Right there, I could have told him.
I could have said, “Dr. von Siebold—Philipp—my father’s work is my work. It has been so for a long time. In fact, as long ago as when you bought your
Promenading Courtesan,
I was the painter.”
But would he believe me?
“Those pictures weren’t signed,” I could say. “And you never asked.
A Fisherman’s Family
and the
Two Women and a Boy
—the picture of the nursing mother. My father was ill those years; he wasn’t working. I drew the straight lines with your pencils and I used Dutch paper. Those are the works you call Hokusai’s. They are my works. I made them for you. Especially
Promenading Courtesan.
My whole heart went into that.”
I could have said that.
But I did not. I was under the eyes of Isai. I was under the nose of Tsuyuki. And something more—another reason—stopped me from speaking the truth.
Was I afraid of them? I think not. They needed me. I was the only one who could imitate the master so the imitation could not be detected. Naturally, because in most cases, I was imitating myself. Furthermore, I had the seal of eighty-eight.
Why, then?
I was afraid of myself.
Why did I pass up this chance to save myself? From simple embarrassment? From long habit of being a ghost? Had I developed a preference for being a ghost? Become disgusted, as my brother Sakujiro suggested, with the whole idea of fame? Yet I had wanted so much for Philipp to know me and know who I was, truly. Now that I had the chance, I ducked.
Somehow I didn’t want all that noise in my life. It sounds strange. I do not understand it. I only know I did it.
I said, “You must be careful. There are many forgeries. Especially since his death. The picture must be signed. And it must have the seal on it. And his signature.”
I said, “It is very difficult to find something by Hokusai. But I can look in the private homes where I have stored the work. I hope that, for you, I might find something. Because of your long relationship with us, yes, I will try.”
He ran the tip of his tongue along his lips in a gesture I remembered. His eyes widened and smiled at me.
“But I will need a little time. Please, may we meet in another month?”
“Of course,” he said. “Of course.”
Von Siebold took the bait so easily. And then I felt sad. Had I nurtured the belief all these years that this golden-haired god would be my champion? Surely not.
He was pleased and bowed to everyone around the circle. I walked him to the end of the street. On parting, he kissed my ink-stained hand.
“My dear Oei, you should know that the whole world is excited by things Japanese: your fans, your kites, your umbrellas. People love your porcelain. And especially your kimonos. Oh, the exquisite patterns in the fabric! Of all these, the
ukiyo-e
are first in line of magic-making.”
“How beguiling we are,” I said brightly. “We had no idea.”
It seemed so ordinary that we would walk side by side down a street. The strictures that had governed my life were collapsing, and the oddest part was that once they had collapsed, it was as if they had never been there at all.
I
STAYED FOR A
time with Mune at her home on the eastern edge of Edo. Then I left, writing to Tachi that I had gone to paint the inn at Totsuka.
I set off very early in the morning. As always, I put the Hokusai seal in my sleeve, along with my brushes. I took my case of pigments. I rolled my paintings that I had stored there into a cloth bag. I had my long
bo
for a walking stick.
Totsuka was the sixth stop on the Tokaido. With luck, I could be there by nightfall. The inn was a big one—rustic, unprepossessing. Hiroshige had made a print of it in his Tokaido series. I might indeed, to amuse myself, stay there, though I had invented Bunzo’s commission.
In the print, the inn was a friendly place, its thatch roof overhanging the wooden veranda just steps off the road. A carved gray milepost marking the Tokaido was beside it. A stone lantern marked the foot of a small humped bridge. A waitress stood in front, welcoming. It was obvious that Eisen drew her, when he was working with Hiroshige. She was short even on her raised clogs, with the large head that was his style.
In the center of the print was the back end of the horse (a steal from Hokusai); the horse’s tail blew sideways in the wind. The arriving travelers were hunched as the wind struck their backs, an inshore wind off the sea.
Totsuka was a flat, marshy place, but just beyond it a steep hill rose straight up from the water. Over the bridge, the road wandered into dark woods. Despite the friendly inn with its beckoning waitress, the place was forlorn; the ocean beyond was fine on a sunny day but harsh in winter.
It was still afternoon when I saw the inn ahead. Bunzo would welcome me with a room and a meal.
But as I approached, I felt the cold, clammy air of a tomb. I saw horses being led around the back. I thought I spied Tsuyuki. But why would he be there? Suddenly the scene—the open door, the bright banners, the beckoning waitress with the head of an Eisen courtesan—made me cold.
It is not for nothing I am called a witch.
It was the twelfth year after the earthquake of 1855. In the Western calendar, 1867. I was sixty-seven years old. My hand went into my sleeve pocket and curled around the Hokusai seal. I hesitated. I had a little more daylight.
I made a sudden change of plan.
I turned back. Ugly clouds arose, and in minutes there was a rainstorm. It was a bombardment, as if the world were angry that I had escaped. The drops clattered on my umbrella and smacked on the path. As I walked, the clouds blew off. It was clear and cold.