Beauty and Sadness (8 page)

The corridor beside his study was a wide one, with a writing table and chair in the corner. He wrote either there or at a low table on the matted floor of the study.
The couch in the corridor was very comfortable. When he stretched out on it his difficulties vanished from his mind. It was uncanny. While he was writing a novel he tended to sleep poorly at night and to dream about his work, but on the couch in the corridor he quickly fell into a deep sleep that blotted out everything. When he was young he never had a nap. Often the whole afternoon would be taken up by callers. He wrote at night, usually from midnight till dawn. Now that he worked during the day he had begun taking naps, but not at any fixed time. Whenever he felt blocked in his writing he lay down on the couch. Sometimes it was in the morning, sometimes almost evening. Only rarely did he feel, as he used to when he worked at night, that fatigue stimulated his imagination.

My naps must be a sign of age, Oki thought. But the couch was magical.

Whenever he rested on it he fell asleep and awakened refreshed. Not infrequently he could find a new pathway through the difficulties that had brought his writing to a standstill. A magic couch.

Now they were in the rainy season—the season he disliked most. Their house was some distance from the ocean and separated from it by hills, but extremely damp. The sky hung low. Oki felt a dull blurring and heaviness over his right temple, as if mold were growing on the folds of his brain. There were days when he slept twice, morning and afternoon, on the magic couch.

One afternoon the maid announced that someone
from Kyoto called Sakami had come to see him. Oki had just awakened but was still lying on the couch. “Shall I say you’re resting?” she asked.

“No. It’s a young lady?”

“Yes, sir. She was here once before.”

“Show her into the parlor, please.”

He let his head sink back again and closed his eyes. The nap had lightened his rainy season dullness but the thought of Keiko was even more refreshing. He rose and washed and went out to the parlor. As soon as she saw him, Keiko got up from her chair. She was blushing slightly.

“I’m sorry to drop in on you like this.”

“It’s good of you to come. I was out for a walk the other time and just missed you. You should have stayed a little longer.”

“Taichiro saw me to the station.”

“So I hear. I believe he showed you around Kamakura.”

“Yes.”

“Since you’re from Tokyo, that must have been nothing new. And of course it doesn’t compare with Kyoto or Nara.”

Keiko looked straight into his eyes. “There was a beautiful sunset over the ocean.”

Oki was surprised to learn that his son had gone all the way to the shore with her. “I haven’t seen you since New Year’s Day,” he remarked. “Half a year has gone by already.”

“Mr. Oki, is that a long time? Does half a year seem long to you?”

He wondered what she was getting at. “I suppose it depends on how you think of it,” he said. Keiko was unsmiling, as if disdainful of his reply. “If you couldn’t meet a lover for half a year, wouldn’t it seem like a long time?”

Keiko remained silent, with the same disdainful expression. Her greenish eyes seemed to challenge him. Oki became a little annoyed. “After half a year of pregnancy you can feel the baby move in your womb,” he went on, trying to embarrass her. She did not respond. “Anyway, we’ve come from winter to summer, though it’s still this miserable rainy season.… Even philosophers don’t seem to have any satisfactory explanation of time. People say time will solve everything, but I have my doubts about that, too. What do you think, Miss Sakami? Is death the end of it all?”

“I’m not such a pessimist.”

“I wouldn’t call it pessimism,” said Oki, to be contradictory. “Of course the same half year for me and for a young woman like you would be very different. Or suppose someone had cancer with only half a year to live. Then again, some people have their lives cut off suddenly in a traffic accident, or in war. Some are murdered.”

“But you
are
an artist, Mr. Oki, aren’t you?”

“I’m afraid I’ll leave behind only things I’m ashamed of.”

“You needn’t be ashamed of any of your works.”

“I wish that were true. But maybe everything I’ve done will disappear. I’d like that.”

“How can you say such a thing? You must realize your novel about my teacher is going to last.”

“That novel again!” Oki frowned. “Even you bring it up, knowing her as you do.”

“It’s because I do know her. I can’t help it.”

“Well, perhaps not.”

Her expression livened. “Mr. Oki, did you ever fall in love again?”

“Yes, I suppose so. But not the way it was with Otoko.”

“Why haven’t you written about it?”

“Well …” He hesitated. “She made it clear she didn’t want me to put her in a book.”

“Really?”

“Maybe it indicates a kind of weakness on my part, as a writer. But I don’t imagine I could have poured out that much emotion a second time.”

“I wouldn’t care what you wrote about me.”

“Oh?” This was only his third meeting with her—indeed, you could hardly call them “meetings.” How could he possibly write about her, except to borrow her beauty for one of his characters? She did say she went down to the shore with his son. Had anything happened then?

“So I’ve found a good model,” said Oki, laughing to hide his suspicions. But as he looked at her, the strange, seductive charm of her eyes stilled his laughter. Her eyes were so moist that she almost seemed to be in tears.

“Miss Ueno has promised to do a portrait of me,” Keiko said.

“Has she?”

“And I brought another picture to show you.”

“I can’t say I know much about abstract paintings, but I’d like to see it. Let’s look at it in the next room, where it’s not so cramped. My son has the two you brought last time hanging in his study.”

“He isn’t home today?”

“No, this is one of his days at the university. My wife went to the theater.”

“I’m glad you’re alone,” Keiko murmured, and went to the entryway to get her painting. She brought it in to the Japanese-style sitting room. The picture was in a simple frame of unpainted wood. Its dominant tone was green, but she had boldly dashed on a variety of colors to suit her whim. The whole surface was seething and undulating.

“Mr. Oki, this is realistic for me. It’s a tea field at Uji.”

He crouched to peer at it. “It’s a tea field that looks like surging waves—a tea field swelling with youth. At first I wondered if it symbolized a heart bursting into flames.”

“That makes me so happy! To have you see it that way …” Keiko knelt behind him, her chin almost on his shoulder, as he studied the picture. Her sweet breath warmed his hair. “I’m so happy,” she repeated. “Happy you could see my heart in it! Though it’s not much as a picture of a tea field.”

“It’s really youthful.”

“Of course I went out to the tea field to sketch, but it
was only for the first hour or so that I saw it as rows of tea bushes.”

“Oh?”

“The plantation was very quiet. Then all those rounded, rolling waves of fresh green began to stir, and finally it came out like this. It’s not abstract.”

“But I should think a tea field would seem rather subdued, even when the new growth is sprouting.”

“I never have learned how to be subdued! Not in art, nor in my emotions.”

“Not even in your emotions?” As he turned toward her his shoulder touched the softness of her breast. His eyes stopped before one of her ears. “If you keep on at that rate, you may find yourself cutting off one of those pretty ears.”

“I’m not a genius like Van Gogh! Someone will have to bite it off for me.”

Startled, Oki twisted sharply around to her, and Keiko caught hold of him to steady herself.

“I detest subdued emotions,” she said, not shifting her position. With the least pressure she would have collapsed helplessly into his arms, ready to be kissed.

But he did not move. She remained motionless too.

“Mr. Oki,” she whispered, her gaze fixed on him.

“Your ears are lovely,” he said, “but there’s a kind of eerie beauty to your profile.”

“I’m glad you think so!” Her slender neck flushed slightly. “I’ll never forget that, as long as I live. But how long will beauty last? A woman feels sad to think of that.”

He had no reply.

“It’s embarrassing to be stared at, but any woman would be delighted to seem beautiful to a man like you.”

Oki was astonished at the warmth of her response. She might have been uttering words of love. “I’m delighted too,” he said gravely. “Though you must be beautiful in many ways I’ve never seen.”

“Do you think so? I don’t know, I’m not a model, just someone who’s trying to paint.”

“A painter has a right to use a model. Sometimes I envy that.”

“If I’m any good to you …”

“That’s very kind.”

“I said I wouldn’t care what you wrote about me. I’m sorry I can’t equal the girl of your imagination, that’s all.”

“Should I be realistic?”

“Whatever you please.”

“An artist’s model and a writer’s model are entirely different, you know.”

“Of course.” Keiko blinked her rich eyelashes. “But my tea-field sketch isn’t just a scene from nature. It’s turned out to be about myself.”

“All pictures are like that, aren’t they? Even abstractions. But a model has to be another live human being. Novels need human beings too, no matter how much you write about landscapes.”

“Mr. Oki, I’m a human being!”

“A beautiful one,” he said, helping her up. “But even a nude artist’s model only has to pose. That’s not quite enough for a novelist.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

Oki found the girl’s boldness inhibiting. “I suppose I could borrow your looks for a character in a novel.”

“That doesn’t sound like much fun.” She seemed deliberately coquettish.

“Women are odd,” he said, to extricate himself. “Two or three of them have told me they’re sure I modeled one of my characters on them. And they were complete strangers, women I’d had nothing to do with. What kind of delusion could that be?”

“Lots of women are unhappy, so they console themselves with delusions.”

“Isn’t there something wrong with them?”

“It’s easy for a woman to go wrong. You can make a woman go wrong, can’t you?”

Her question left him at a loss. “Do you just coldly wait for it to happen?”

He tried to change the drift of the conversation. “Anyway, being a novelist’s model is different. It’s an unrewarded sacrifice.”

“I love to sacrifice myself! Maybe that’s my reason for living.” Again she had astonished him.

“In your case it’s willful, as if you’re demanding the other person’s sacrifice.”

“That’s not true. Sacrifice comes from love. It’s from yearning.”

“Are you sacrificing yourself to Otoko?”

She did not answer.

“That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Maybe I was, but Otoko is a woman, after all. There’s nothing pure about one woman devoting her life to another.”

“That’s something I wouldn’t know.”

“Both of them may be destroyed.”

“Destroyed?”

“Yes.” After a moment she went on: “I hate to have the slightest doubt. I don’t care if it only lasts five or ten days, I want someone who can make me forget myself completely.”

“That’s asking a lot, even of marriage, isn’t it?”

“I’ve had marriage offers, but that kind of devotion doesn’t count. I don’t want to be concerned about myself. As I said, I detest subdued emotions.”

“You seem to feel you ought to commit suicide a few days after you fall in love with someone.”

“I’m not afraid of suicide. The worst thing is being sick of life. I’d be happy if you strangled me—after you used me as a model, that is.”

Oki tried to dispel the feeling that Keiko had come to seduce him; perhaps she was not such a designing woman. In any event, she might be quite an interesting model for a character. Yet it did not seem unlikely that a love affair followed by a separation would drive her, as it had Otoko, into a psychiatric ward.

Early this spring when Keiko had brought her other two pictures Taichiro had received her, and then left the house to go out with her all the way to the ocean beyond Kamakura. Obviously she had captivated his son.

But she’d ruin him, Oki thought. He told himself he was not merely being jealous.

“I hope you’ll hang this one in your study,” Keiko said.

“Suppose I do,” he replied half-heartedly.

“I want you to catch a glimpse of it in a dimly lit room at night. Then the green of the tea fields will sink into the background, and all my gaudy colors will come floating out.”

“I imagine it would give me queer dreams.”

“What kind of dreams, I wonder?”

“Well—young dreams, no doubt.”

“How nice of you to say so! Do you really mean it?”

“You’re young, after all,” said Oki. “Those rounded waves of tea bushes reflect Otoko’s influence, but the colors seem to be you yourself.”

“One day will be enough, I don’t care if it gathers dust in your closet after that. It’s a bad picture. Before long I’m going to come and slash it to ribbons!”

“What!”

“I mean it,” she said, looking curiously gentle. “It’s a bad picture. But if you’ll just hang it in your study for a day …”

He did not know what to reply. Keiko hung her head. “I wonder if this funny picture really will bring you any dreams.”

“I’m afraid I’ll be tempted to dream about you.”

“Please do, dream whatever you like.” An unexpected flush tinged her beautiful ears. “But Mr. Oki,” she said, looking up at him, “you haven’t done anything to make yourself dream about me.” Her eyes clouded slightly.

“Let me see you off, then, the way my son did. There’s no one at home, so I can’t offer you dinner. I’ll call a taxi.”

Their taxi passed Kamakura and went along the Shichiri Beach. Keiko was silent.

Both the sea and the sky were gray.

Oki had the taxi stop at the Enoshima Marineland across from the island.

He bought cuttlefish and mackerel to feed the dolphins. The dolphins leaped from the water to take the bait out of Keiko’s hand. She became more daring and held the bait higher and higher. The dolphins kept jumping higher after it. Keiko was as delighted as a child. She did not even notice that it was beginning to rain.