The Ghost Brush (135 page)

I could say now of my father that in aid of “making pictures,” he hurt people, especially those who loved and served him.

“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 he waxed his old enthusiasm 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 it. He praised Japanese design to the sky amongst his group of artist friends. He showed the sketches to all his friends, who were all great artists, and he 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—Phillip—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.

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? With the celebrity that drove men to distraction and devilry? Yet I had wanted so much for Phillip 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 kimono. 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.

60

A Fireball, of Sorts

REBECCA WENT TO THE SCRUFFY UPSTAIRS OFFICE
where Yusuke worked, with its empty corridors, paper boxes holding doors open, and ancient office chairs rolling around. Yusuke assured her it was about to be renovated.

She brought bento box lunches. They ate and then pushed them aside; the paper wrappings from their chopsticks, folded into triangles and spotted with soy sauce, lay on the tabletop.

Yusuke pulled his thick glasses out of his thick, unruly hair and placed them on the desktop.

“More research?” he said. “You don’t need to do this. You know enough. There is no more to know, for sure. You can make up the rest.”

“There are some parts of Oei’s life that I can make up, but her death is different,” said Rebecca huffily. “I can’t really mess with it.”

“Yes, you can, because nobody knows how it happened. By disappearing, Oei did you a favour.”

Rebecca laughed. “People have said that. ‘You can have her do anything. You can have her come over here.’ This was the curator in Cleveland. All Americans think people would be really happy if they got to America in the end.”

Yusuke scoffed.

“But it’s possible, just barely. I checked. There was a schooner called the Ida D. Rogers that was plying regularly between San Francisco and Japan in the
1860
s. It carried cattle and later a man called Risley with a travelling circus. The Ida D. Rogers returned to the U.S. with a troupe of Japanese acrobats. Maybe a woman named Ei or Oei, who made their posters, went along.”

“Don’t do it,” said Yusuke.

“There was even, by
1867
, a passenger ship called the Colorado, chartered by Pacific Mail Steamships, that carried three hundred first-class, two hundred second-class and ‘an almost unlimited’ number of third-class passengers through Shanghai to California.”

“Or maybe she came to Canada. She could have gone to northern British Columbia with an old fisherman she met on the beach at Uraga.” She said that because she knew it would annoy him.

“That is not realistic. An old woman like that?”

“What do you mean, ‘old woman’? She was only in her sixties. She had walked miles every day of her life. She was fit; she had lived on her own. Why not?”

“It was old then.”

Rebecca stuck out her chin. “You ask me to make it up and then you don’t like the way I make it up,” she grumbled.

She handed him the paperback edition of Hokusai Den. This was the new version recommended by Sakai Gankow in the chill, vast museum of ukiyo-e. It was hard to find. Kubota-san had sent it to her.

Yusuke picked it up. Under protest.

“I’m told it has ‘interesting’ new footnotes. Please read. First, did Hokusai or did he not drink?”

Yusuke flipped through the pages. “Okay, here is the testimony of Iijima, a friend and fellow artist and writer.”

Considering Hokusai’s behaviour in daily life, I first thought for sure that he must have been a drinker, because he was a famous artist and his works sold for a high price; however, he lived a very poor life. These things should show that he drank a lot: his laziness, the untidiness of his house, his dressing in miserable clothes and spreading bamboo leaves and charcoal barrels around him. When it became extremely filthy, he moved out to another house. This is often seen among heavy drinkers. This is why I thought old Hokusai must be a drinker.

But Shisei Sekine, an old friend of Hokusai’s, once visited me and said Hokusai was a teetotaller, not a drinker. Seihuu Shimizu agreed with this, saying Hokusai liked sweets.

Only an old man called Sakurai, the owner of the Eel Tavern, said Hokusai was a drinker. But later I sent someone to him and asked the same question. Then his response was the opposite. So he turned out not to be a reliable person.

Still I was not convinced. A couple of days later, I ended up in a good store in Asakusa and saw about sixty works of Hokusai’s. There I found a poorly made book by him. I stared at it. Its signature indicated, “
Hokusai Suichuu Ga
” (Painted by Hokusai in drink).

Later, Mr. Maezono of Yokohama showed me Hokusai’s
Suioko Ga Den
with the same signature. He challenged me, “Do you still insist that Hokusai did not drink?” Mr. Maezono also asked Mr. Azuma, the president of Touyou Do Publishing, and brought to me a letter that proved Hokusai was a drinker.

Yusuke stopped for a breather. “It seems there is considerable controversy around the drinker/not drinker thing,” he said. “There’s more.”

On March
13
,
1879
, there was a
ukiyo-e
fair. Over thirty collectors brought over one hundred collections. Among them was a book owned by a
rakugo-ka
—a comic storyteller . . .

Her ears pricked up. “Go on,” she said.

The book was a collaboration between Keisai Eisen and Hokusai. Keisai painted an actor; Hokusai painted a prostitute and put on it the same “Painted in Drink” signature. I then became very suspicious of the “sober” theory Another artist intervened and said, “I personally know that Hokusai was not a drinker. Signing ‘in drink’ was a joke—a witty excuse to cover mediocre work.”

[The answer did not emerge from the testimony.] The answer was on the top of my desk. One day I looked into Hokusai’s manga, eleventh volume. Its preface reads: “Old Hokusai was the only artist who kept painting for fifty years without drinking sake, without drinking tea. His paintings cannot be found anywhere else but in reality, transcribing truth.”

Rebecca shook her head. “But Hokusai did not collaborate with Eisen. Oei did.” She thought further. “And the introduction is not proof. We know the artists and authors wrote their own prefaces.”

Yusuke waggled his head from side to side. In other words—inconclusive. “I told you. Make up your own mind.”

She thought of Koike Makiko’s fingers intertwined, not to be pulled apart. She decided that they both drank. It was myth that the Old Man was pure and his daughter impure. “My failures will all belong to you,” he’d said.

“Do the new footnotes reveal what the disciples thought of her?” Rebecca said.

He found the testimony of the student Tsuyuki Kosho.

Hokusai was lazy in his nature and hated to clean up the room. However, Oei was not as lazy as Hokusai. The reason why she did not clean up the room seemed to be that she obeyed the Old Man. She kept her hair neat. She was decent in her behaviour. I never heard any bad rumours about her. She always stayed with him and did not fail to be dutiful to him. I highly appreciated her.