The Ghost Brush (67 page)

My father took a seat at the teashop next door. The waitress set a cup of tea in front of him and gave me an almond cookie. Hokusai was cold, dirty, and thirsty. But he could not drink; his mind was occupied. I wanted him to at least put his hands around the warm cup. He told me to be quiet. I made myself small.

A balding, worried individual appeared beside us, polishing the top of his head with a hand, the hair there being sparse; maybe he thought it was dust and he was trying to rub it off.

“You disappear for weeks on end, and now you come to dig me out at my grandmother’s teahouse?”

“If I don’t ‘disappear,’ how can I get my work done? I have new designs.”

The publisher paced to the door. “If I had any sense I’d drop you.”

My father dimpled in a way calculated to charm. “But you won’t because I’m good, correct?”

“Let’s see what you’ve got. Then I’ll tell you if you’re any good.”

My father bristled, but he opened his satchel. He put the designs on the table out of my reach. I could feel the tension. The bald man came and stood over us. The pictures were of courtesans under the moon, courtesans with flowers, courtesans walking by the canal. “Hmmm,” he mumbled reluctantly. And “Hmmph” and “Hmmmph.”

More pictures, then: of foreign men riding on horseback—Koreans, they must have been. Of teahouse girls.

“Give me lovers’ suicides,” said Tsutaya.

Hokusai lifted some papers. Boys gathering leaves. Children at the seashore. Tsutaya cleared his throat with impatience.

This man was an adopted son of the great publisher Tsutaya Juzaburo, whom the artists still lamented. He had died ten years before. The artists said he was a genius. I had heard the men talk about him. Myself, I thought he was a fake. He was the son of a brothel owner. They were mean, greedy men, I knew that. His father had had a bright idea, that was all. He bought the rights to publish the saiken guidebooks, with their tiny writing and columns full of symbols giving a prostitute’s rank, how much it cost to buy her for a night, and what she would do.

The saiken were popular. Here is why: because when a tsu—that is, a sophisticate—comes in the gate, he wants to know about the courtesans for sale. He buys one of these little books. You can see him walking along, his head bent over the pages, his ears red with excitement, his breath coming shallow and fast. He could collide with a lamppost, or even with the famous courtesan Hana-ogi on her way to a teahouse, and not know it.

We watched them often enough, my father and I. My father would yell out, “Fool! Reading the map when you should be enjoying the view.”

The guidebooks sold not only to newcomers but to regular customers as well, because they wanted to know how their sweethearts stood up in the ratings.

And naturally the saiken were of interest to the prostitutes themselves. They had to look themselves up to discover if their value was rising or—more likely—falling. They were always getting older, and as they got older this was noted in the saiken, even though the ages were off by a few years. The guidebooks didn’t exactly speak the truth because they were made for advertisement. They didn’t exactly have the best interests of the customer at heart. They represented the best interests of the Yoshiwara merchant.

So the little book would say something like this: “Misty Moon is eighteen years old and has rounded breasts but a slim figure and teeth with a space between the first two. Her look is demure, but her temperament is fiery . . . Easy to please and passionate in her response . . .”

This was a load of night soil, but never mind. You had to buy the book to read it, and everyone wanted to read it. And if you’d already bought one you probably bought another and another, because you had to have the latest. The saiken had to be edited twice a year. New girls debut, and old ones die or—rarely—retire.

Of course if you knew anything you knew that the saiken’s truthfulness was limited, to put it nicely, because Tsutaya had a lot of people to please: the brothel owners, the teahouse owners, the clients themselves. But the tsu didn’t think of this. He read and his mouth gaped and his mouth watered and he believed.

It takes no genius to make money publishing that stuff. In fact it takes a certain stupidity. And this wasn’t even the first Tsutaya, but a pale son. Why should a man like that have power over my father?

I
glared at the publisher’s head as if I could put holes in it. I fidgeted. He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no. What was so difficult? Hokusai was as good as and better than any other artist Tsutaya published. But there was one thing about my father: he made no effort to please anyone but himself. “I won’t pretend to love doing what I hate doing.”

Our needs were modest. He hardly ate anything and wasn’t a gambler, and he worked from early morning until late at night. Earlier, Tsutaya had encouraged him. Now he tried to tell him what to do.

“Now that one—that could work. Take that girl, isolate her from the surrounds, take the other people out, lengthen her out, and show her looking in a mirror. Then it will sell.”

Hokusai’s face turned red. I pressed myself alongside his legs. He gathered his drawings. He made ready to leave. I pressed harder into the side of his thigh. Tsutaya folded his arms in the way of a stubborn boss. I was ready to provide a distraction by running away when a girl appeared in the doorway.

She saved us all, this apprentice courtesan.

“Who let you out?” snapped Tsutaya.

The prostitutes weren’t supposed to go outside the gate. But the gate was just a few yards away, and the guard was watching her.

“Excuse me. I am very sorry to disturb but—”

“What is it?”

“I am to get the very special tea leaves that O-Fumi wants, to please her client who has made an appointment to see her.”

She bowed respectfully and spoke with an elegant, clear, high voice. I knew right away she was new: she was funny-looking, gawky, and nervous. She had a thin neck and a face that tipped up, as if she had questions for the whole world. That made her heavy knot of hair topple over one ear. Her feet were bare, her nose was long and red at the tip, and it was running.

Plus, she was different. Her language marked her as nobility. The usual apprentice prostitute was a poor girl from the country sold into this life whose bumpkin accent was disguised by witty Yoshiwara slang.

Tsutaya snorted. “Wait. My mother will serve you.”

She bowed again. She was very graceful. “Your mother? That would be excellent. But could you please let her know that I am in the shop and need her help?”

Tsutaya laughed, including my father in his smirk. “If it isn’t Lady Murakami herself.”

She inclined her long neck. “I beg your pardon, sir, but I am not entirely certain we have met,” she said, with courtesy so exaggerated it was an obvious slap in the face.

Tsutaya looked down at her. He looked through her to the street. On the Edo side of the bridge, the city was teeming. But the gate to the pleasure quarter was empty of people. This did not improve his mood. His voice was ice.

“Yakko!” he said scornfully. “You don’t know me, but you soon will. I know every house in the Yoshiwara. I know the inmates, the housekeepers, the owners, the entertainers, the caterers. I know them all and their reputations. In fact, I make their reputations,” he said, “because I publish the Guide to the Green Houses. You plan on surviving here? Take note of me. I can ruin you. If, when you debut as a courtesan, I give you a good write-up, you will have plenty of customers. If I say that you are not pretty—and you are not, by the way—things will not go well.” He grinned, enjoying his little lecture. “That’s who I am.”

The girl had listened. When he was finished she sank slowly and beautifully to her knees, placed her hands on the ground, and bowed. “Please accept my humble apologies,” she said.

She stayed face down for a long time. We were looking at that large knot of hair; it was shiny and fine, and wisps of it came out at the sides. When she looked up her face was a picture of humility. Her eyes melted with sorrow. Or did they? They had intelligence, and something more—a deep spark, like coal in our hearth that continued to glow under the ash.

I grinned. She was not really sorry, not at all.

I don’t believe Tsutaya saw the look in her eyes. He didn’t lower his gaze that far. But something irked him nonetheless. “Get over here,” he said.

The girl hooded her eyes. I knew she wanted to refuse this rude order. And I wanted her to. I hated the publisher now. I could tell my father did too. So much for the sale. We would have to do without this man.

The yakko couldn’t, however. She was trapped. Unless I did something. I ran for the door.

“Oh no, you don’t!” my father shouted, running after me.

My tactic worked. Tsutaya was momentarily amused.

“If you are not a good artist, you are at least the best mother in the Yoshiwara!” he called after Hokusai. We were out the door when I heard him speak to the girl again.

“You will not do well here,” he repeated. He would keep his temper and settle for a cooler cruelty. “After all, your face does not offer the onlooker the perfection of symmetry, nor your body a pillowy peace.”

Saiken talking. I guessed he was already working on his write-up.

“You have one thing going for you, as far as I can see,” he said. “And that is your excellent manners.”

She returned to her face-down position, from which, naturally, she could not speak.

“Rise,” he said.

She stood. My father and I watched her without seeming to watch. Wide-apart eyes, long nose, tiny mouth. Hers was a trouble face, my mother would have said. Not biddable, anyone could tell.

“I think she is charming. I would like to paint her,” Hokusai said.

“You think people want to look at that?” Tsutaya snorted.

She was very thin. Her long legs and back formed a slight curve; her too-big kimono puddled at her feet.

“Her spirit is quite unquenched. She has humour too.”

The girl looked down as now even my father discussed her face, her nature.

“And grace. Look at the hands—large but lovely,” my father was saying.

“Maybe you think so,” Tsutaya shot, “but your pictures don’t sell, Sori II.”

“Sori II is not my name.”

The two men glared at each other: standoff. Tsutaya looked away first.

We went back in. My father sat down again and raised the teacup to his mouth. The teacup went down. The tea was cold. He looked over his designs. Then he raised the cup again. Again it did not get to his lips. The publisher rubbed his poor hair. He peered at the seal and signature on the new paintings.

“What is your name now, then?” he said with an air of weariness.

“Hokusai. North Star Studio. Do you like it?”

Tsutaya groaned. “People know you as Sori II. We’ve made your name. You can’t change it now. Sori II is worth money.”

My father grinned. “Why do you think I sold it? I needed that money.”

The man threw up his hands. “But I’ll have to launch you all over again.”

“I’ll put the two together on my pictures for now. ‘Sori II, changed to Hokusai.’ In time I’ll drop the Sori.”

In the end Tsutaya reached into his belt for money and bought two of the designs. The transaction only took a few minutes. My father didn’t count the coins; he never did.

B
y this time Tsutaya’s mother had given the apprentice her tea. We all escaped together.

“Nice girl,” the yakko said, and she touched my cheek. For old times’ sake, my father hoisted me on his shoulders, where I rode, my legs dangling on his chest. I began to scold him for selling his name.

“Terrible girl,” he said patting my leg, and we all laughed. We walked over the bridge and through the Great Gate.

“I have a new name too,” said the girl. “They took away the name I had in the outside world. My new name is Shino.”

“Well, Shino, if you think this girl is nice,” my father said, “do you want to buy her?”

I was six years old and looked like four. People who didn’t know us sometimes assumed my father was starving and needed to sell me. I was just the right age for that. But Shino didn’t. She told me this later, often told me this—she noticed the way, as I rode triumphantly on his shoulders, his hands grasped my shins. And she thought he would never let me go.

She smiled and said she knew he was joking and hurried away from us down the street.

I kicked his chest. “Put me down.”

He did and I ran after her.

“Ei!” Hokusai called. “Oh no you don’t.”

He ran to scoop me up; I screamed with delight, and he shuffled back to a bench like a monkey swinging me between his knees, scolding: “You behave or your father cannot work, and when your father cannot work, then you, not I, will be Sori II!”

Shino turned back to see his antics. I liked what happened to her face when she laughed, liked to hear that pealing. Then quickly she covered her mouth.

“Come here, new-named young lady, Shino, who before was someone else. Will you help me? Do one thing for me? Look at my pictures. See if you like them,” my father said. “Tell us what the noble ladies want.”