Tales of Blood and Ink

Blood and Ink

Blood and Ink

Morinaga Shiori sighed and shifted her son on her lap. It had been her decision to nurse him, a secret lest the other ladies of Heian-kyo consider her more provincial than they already did, but the never-ending summer heat made it a miserable experience. His sweaty flesh was pressed up against her just when she most longed for nothing touching her but a soft breeze, or perhaps any icy mountain spring like the one back home.

The memory washed over her. She played with the sensations in her mind, and she knew just what brushstrokes she would use to try to convey the coolness of the water, thick to thin and curving just so. She reached for her writing desk to pull it nearer, but her son grunted in complaint and she sat still and let him eat.

Later. She could paint later.

She looked up at the whisper of silk on the polished wood floor and saw her mother hurrying in with her careful steps.

“I will take Yoshi now,” she said. “Sakura is here to call on you.”

Shiori gently pried her son’s mouth off her breast, kissed the top of his hot but soft head, and handed him to his eager grandmother. Then she ran her hands over the many layers of her juni-hito, trying to make them all perfect. The silk was wrinkled from where Yoshi’s sweaty body had lain, but at least there were no telltale drops of milk staining the outer layers.

She had just taken up her fan and settled her hands on her lap, getting that Heian-kyo look on her face like she had done nothing all day but wait for someone to call on her, when Sakura came in.

“Good morning, Morinaga Shiori,” she said with a bow.

“Good morning, Meiji Sakura,” Shiori said. “It’s good to see you.”

“It’s been too long,” Sakura said, opening her fan, every angle of her fingers and wrists just so, although there was no one but Shiori to see it. “I’m having a poetry recital tomorrow evening; do tell me you’ll come.”

“Oh, Sakura, you know I have no skill for poetry,” Shiori sighed. She didn’t add that she suspected the other ladies were ridiculing what attempts she made behind her back; Sakura would only tell her she was imaging things.

“Perhaps you could show some of your kakemono instead. I’m sure the others wouldn’t mind,” Sakura said with a pretty flutter of her fan. Shiori was about to answer but was obliged to wait as a servant brought in the sake, setting it on a little table nearby before disappearing once more. Shiori held her tongue as she poured for both of them, trying to hold back the full sleeve of her juni-hito with at least a hint of artfulness. She didn’t have Sakura’s flair for gestures; she was always in too much of a hurry. Only when Sakura had taken a sip of the sake and gently set down her bowl did Shiori finally speak. “Perhaps you would help me to choose which kakemono to bring to your poetry reading?”

“It would be an honor,” Sakura said with a smile. Shiori went across the room to the wood boxes which held all of her tightly rolled scrolls. She dug around only for a moment before she found the two she had painted just the night before and brought them to Sakura.

“Ah, this is your husband, Fujiya Takehiko, no?” Sakura said, fanning herself as she examined the ink portrait. “Did he sit for you to paint this?”

“No, I did it from memory,” Shiori said. She did not add that she had not seen Takehiko since shortly after their son was born, seven months ago. She unrolled the second kakemono.

“This is also your husband,” Sakura said. Her eyebrows drew down in a slight frown. For once Meiji Sakura did not know the proper thing to say.

“Yes, but they’re different. Don’t you see?” Shiori asked. Sakura looked from one to the other.

“I confess they seem the same to me, but I am no judge of painting. It is so odd, painting just someone’s face like this; I have never seen it done. And why did you do two? Are they to be a matched set?”

“They are different,” Shiori said, turning the scrolls in her hands so that she could look upon them. The difference was clear in her eyes: one was Takehiko with fiery passion in his eyes, the other was Takehiko, cold and remote. How had she failed to convey it? But then even with the real Takehiko before her, she couldn’t always tell which state he was in until he began to speak.

“Perhaps a painting from nature? I know you could do something lovely,” Sakura suggested.

“I was just thinking of a new one,” Shiori admitted. “I was thinking of the spring near my home in Nagano. It’s been so hot in Heian-kyo, I would love to paint something cool.”

“That would be lovely,” Sakura said. “Only don’t say ‘my home in Nagano’. The others may find that too countrified.”

“Of course,” Shiori said, grateful that the white powder on her face was thick enough to cover the sudden flaming of her cheeks. “Heian-kyo is my home.”

“Of course,” Sakura smiled and fluttered her fan.

Night brought no relief; if anything, it became more stiflingly hot than before. Shiori had set aside her juni-hito, wearing only the sleeveless garment of a peasant - and a male peasant at that - but she needed her arms bare and free to paint. By the flickering light of her candles, she ground her ink stick and mixed it with water until the blue-black pool was the perfect consistency. Then she took up the brush she had left soaking. The bristles were now saturated with no air bubbles trapped within, but there were three hairs that had been bent and refused to lie with the others.

Shiori took her little knife to trim the hairs, but she could not see them against the dark wood of her table by candlelight. She picked up the brush once more, letting it rest against the side of her thumb and gently trimming away the errant bristles.

Yoshi gave a sudden shriek in the still night and Shiori jumped, slicing her own knuckle with the blade. Several drops of blood dripped into her ink before she put her thumb to her mouth, sucking the wound as she went to help her mother calm Yoshi. It was just a little cut; it would not keep her from painting.

It was very late when she at last returned to her work; the candles had burned down low. If she were going to paint this night, she would have to start at once. There was no time to mix fresh ink.

She closed her eyes and put herself back home in Nagano, at her favorite spring. She listened to the chatter of the water dancing over the rocks, the burble as it pooled in the deep places. She felt the chill of the air that followed the water down the mountain and smelled the sharp, sticky aroma of the pine trees that grew along its banks.

She opened her eyes and began to paint.

Shiori sipped sake and tried not to look bored. She hated poetry. She knew she missed the nuances that delighted the others; she could not tell a good poem from a bad one. In Nagano there were many ways to pass an evening together, but in Heian-kyo with its insistence on formalities, things were more limited. The screen that separated the women from the eyes of the men divided any party in half and made poetry recitals one of the few entertainment options. One could scarcely play go around a screen that went from floor to ceiling. And her kakemono was still tightly rolled in the corner where Sakura had placed it on Shiori’s arrival.

“Greetings, Morinaga Shiori,” said a woman whose name Shiori could not recall. Luckily the woman’s intent was gossip, not social politeness, so she went on without waiting for Shiori to respond. “I hear Fujiya Takehiko will be here tonight. Is this true?”

“I don’t know,” Shiori said then was instantly certain that had been the wrong thing to say. Now all of Heian-kyo would know her husband no longer called on her.

“He often attends Meiji Sakura’s poetry recitals. He has a fine gift with words, doesn’t he?” the woman went on.

“Many seem to think so.”

“Meiji Sakura is also a wonderful poet, isn’t she? Perhaps this evening the two of them will have a poetry contest like they had a fortnight ago. That was a wonderful time; it’s a shame you weren’t there! I think Meiji Sakura had the upper hand in the end, but Fujiya Takehiko left determined to best her in the next match." The woman fluttered her fan and gave the falsest of smiles. And then she was gone, to Shiori’s immense relief.

“Morinaga Shiori, I think now would be the perfect time to view your kakemono,” Sakura announced, and the room was filled with polite murmurs of agreement. Shiori bowed then went to retrieve her scroll. She had scarcely slept last night, for even after she had finished painting the spring, her mind had been alive with sensations she had to commit to paper. She had filled scroll after scroll with twisted trees and stately cranes and dancing fish before at last falling asleep with her elbow in her nearly dry ink well.

She unrolled the kakemono and then turned to show it to the others. Her stomach was rocking like a typhoon, too much anxiety and sake on top of too little food. The women gathered around, their white faces giving no hint to their thoughts. They nodded and made little murmurs, but each was careful not to actually express an opinion until Sakura had decided whether or not the piece was good.

Sakura stepped forward to examine it more closely. Her face was intent as her gaze followed the curving lines of the painting. Then she closed her eyes with a blissful smile.

“Can’t you feel it? Oh, it’s wonderful. So cool...”

The other women looked at each other nervously. One brave soul drew nearer to stand next to Sakura. For a moment she just continued to fan herself as she stared at the painting, but then the studious look left her face and she too was throwing her head back, loosening the folds of her juni-hito as if to enjoy some breeze only she and Sakura were feeling.

Now all the women were rushing forward, pushing each other aside to stand before Shiori and her scroll. Shiori felt like crying. She knew they didn’t like her, but this mockery was really too much. She was just about to throw the kakemono to the ground and leave, no matter how unseemly such behavior would be judged, when a voice carried from beyond the screen.

“May I see your kakemono, Morinaga Shiori?”

So, he had arrived at last.

“Yes. Yes, of course,” Shiori said, rolling up the scroll and sliding it under the screen. Takehiko reached out to take it from her, deliberately letting his fingers slide against hers. And her heart did a little leap. At that moment, Shiori would have gladly taken both her leaping heart and typhoon stomach and buried them deeply in the earth. Useless traitorous things.

The women were all laughing and talking together, fanning themselves lazily as if in a languorous mood. Shiori reached for her sake bowl and drained the whole thing in one long swallow. The silence on the other side of the screen was tormenting.

Then there was a happy childlike laugh that she was startled to realize came from Takehiko himself.

“This is divine!” he cried, and one of the other men began to laugh as well.

“How do you do it?” one of the women asked Shiori. “Did you have an onmyoji cast a spell on it for you?”

“No, I just painted it,” Shiori said. Her hands were twisting together in her lap, and she realized she was rubbing the cut on the side of her thumb.

Takehiko went home with her after the party and even stayed in the morning to watch little Yoshi play in the garden. He was still there when her father returned home. It was over rice and pickled greens that Takehiko finally made his announcement.

“My father wishes me to take a second wife,” he said, his eyes on Shiori although he was speaking to her father.

“Meiji Sakura,” she said softly.

“Yes,” he admitted. “Her social connections are needful for the progression of my career, my father says.”

“Of course we understand,” Shiori’s mother said. “Shiori is just a provincial girl. She is not much help to you.”

“It was my father’s idea,” Takehiko said, and Shiori saw the fire was back in his eyes. “I will always honor Shiori as my first wife.”

“That is very good to hear,” Shiori’s mother said. She looked intently at her daughter, and Shiori at last realized she was supposed to say something.

“Thank you, Fujiya Takehiko,” she said with a bow.

Part of her wondered if he would ever call again now that he had such a fashionable and lively wife. Part of her wondered if she had just lost her only friend now that they would share a husband.

Mostly she was waiting for him to leave so she could get back to painting.

It was nightfall again before she was alone with her ink and paper. She soaked her brush then gently ground her ink stick, all of the rituals of preparation she enjoyed nearly as much as the painting itself. Then, without really thinking to herself what she was doing, she picked up the knife and pricked her thumb, adding several drops of blood to the ink well.

She closed her eyes and imagined a plum tree. What brushstrokes would show the silkiness of the plum blossoms? What would convey the hum of the bees overhead, the roughness of the bark, the sweetness of the fruit? The imagined brushstrokes flowed through her mind, curling and spiraling, growing thick and dark then thin and watery. This one meant the purple tartness of a plum; that one was the blue splutter of a dragonfly’s wings.

She painted.

The heat faded and summer gave way to autumn. Yoshi could pull himself up on the edge of her writing table and toddle about, tugging at his mother’s long hair as she bent over any of an endless stream of scrolls. She would smile at him, tickle his chin or kiss his fat cheek, but only for a moment. Then she was back in the painting. She could not paint fast enough to keep up with her racing thoughts, and there was so much in her head that she had to get out.

Sakura had indeed become Takehiko’s second wife, but Shiori didn’t care much. The two of them made sure she had all of the ink and paper and brushes she could possibly need. They also made sure that all of Heian-kyo stood in front of Shiori’s kakemono to experience her unique art. Takehiko had even written a poem about her painting, about how one’s eyes followed the curves and angles of her brushstrokes and suddenly one was tasting plums or hearing the mournful call of the crane.

Shiori didn’t go to the parties anymore. She still wasn’t entirely sure that all of Heian-kyo society wasn’t playing some elaborate cruel joke on her. And yet it was for Heian-kyo society that she painted, to show them the value of the rest of the world, the provincial world they had such disdain for. She hadn’t accomplished that yet. Although her kakemono were in great demand and every fashionable home had to have one or two hanging from its walls, no one had yet gone out to experience the real thing.

Her parents would not look at her kakemono or allow her to hang any of them from the walls of their home. She seldom saw her father, gone as he was most of the day, but her mother was a constant presence, nagging that Yoshi needed feeding, or Shiori’s hair needed washing, and just where was she getting all of these cuts?

Shiori stopped cutting her hands to get blood for her ink. She also stopped painting in peasant’s garb, wearing her oldest juni-hito instead. She did not tie the long sleeves back, she just let them drag about as they would, and soon they were blotched all over with deep blue-black ink.

Autumn was beginning to turn to winter when her mother made a most unwelcome suggestion.

“I want you to stop painting.”

Shiori sat back on her heels, uncertain at first that she had heard correctly. When she was caught up in the world in her head, the world outside her head came through distorted or not at all.

“Why?” she asked at last. Her mother reached out and pulled back one of Shiori’s sleeves, exposing a forearm criss-crossed with cuts old and new, the newer ones longer and deeper.

“It’s nothing,” Shiori said, smoothing the ink-stained sleeve back into place.

“It is, I think, why the others love your kakemono so much,” her mother said. “Because of what you put into them from yourself. But even the most glorious kakemono is still just ink on paper. I don’t wish to watch you fade away before my eyes. I don’t wish to be left with nothing but ink on paper.”

“I am well, mother,” Shiori insisted, although she knew that wasn’t true. She was tired, so tired, and yet she could not sleep.

“Shiori, you are a good mother. A better mother than I was at your age. I don’t think I even spoke to you until you were six or seven. Too busy going to poetry recitals and perfume parties. Ah, to be fifteen again! But you’ve never done such things. I know you love Yoshi. He loves you too, but he misses you. Even when you’re with him, you’re not really there.”

“I know,” Shiori said. “But I have to finish this. I’m working towards something, I can feel it. Do you remember when Yoshi was born? My pains started in the evening and went all night then all day and into the evening again. All of these things I’ve been painting, they’ve been like those labor pains, a necessary process to work through but not the true purpose. I’m close to the end. I don’t know what it’s going to be, but when it happens, it will be sublime.”

Her mother sat quietly for several long minutes before speaking once more. “When you have painted this last great kakemono, then you will stop?”

“Yes, for there will be no more reason to paint,” Shiori said.

That night the brushstrokes would not come. She had painted all she could think of over the last few months, every bird and tree and mountain she had ever seen. What was left to paint? What was still burning in her mind, what experience did she still need to convey to the people of Heian-kyo?

Should she try again to capture the subtleties of Takehiko’s moods in a portrait? But the idea held no appeal for her any longer. Takehiko had moved on, and she had no feelings on the matter, ill or otherwise.

Then she knew, she knew what to paint in a rush of inspiration that left her weak and trembling, dizzier than after the strongest sake, more vibrant than after the most passionate night in her husband’s arms.

She closed her eyes. Warm, sweet smell. That perfect size to hold in your arms, small enough to cuddle but big and plump enough to squeeze without worry. Tiny fingers always inexplicably sticky. The musical tones of his wordless voice.

The perfect brushstrokes lit up like a fire in her mind; she only copied them. Stroke after stroke, scroll after scroll she painted. Her ink well went dry and she mixed more, then more, then more again.

Yoshi, she thought, as the fire in her mind spread through her body and she began to melt. Here is Yoshi.

Her mother found her there in the morning, laying on stacks of kakemono, each one painted with ink a bit more brownish-red and less blue than the one before. Her paintbrush was still clutched in one scarred hand, and there was a smile of perfect peace on her face.