Read Online The Ghost Brush by Katherine Govier - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Katherine Govier
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tattooist, who now made beautiful little drawings and poems.
The courtesan Yuko carried a telescope; she kept lifting it to her eyes. It was trained on the distant racecourse at the edge of town. She murmured the name of the horse her lover had bet on. If it won, her lover would buy out her contract and free her. She believed that. She was silly and a bit pathetic but not a bad poet.
Like a courtesan’s
vowels the green strands
of a willow tree
stretch out extra long.
It wasn’t true what the brothel-keepers said: that people did not want to hear courtesans’ thoughts. Courtesans were very stylish. All Edo was keen to know the details of their lives in the Yoshiwara. And everyone went there, even though it was forbidden. They came in disguise, people from all walks of life. The pleasure district was a great vat of soup that way, and even though the bakufu insisted that the higher classes disdain us, it turned out that the samurai wanted to mingle with merchants and their daughters found it exciting to sit down with peasants.
Because they were so strange, these proximities were titillating. Waki the tattooist sat beside Akemi, a merchant’s daughter. Her father was paying the bill, which meant we had plenty to eat. Everyone was drinking wine from stemmed glasses, making like Europeans. They were planning their next publication: the poets would write and the artists would illustrate a book, which the publisher would print. It was all very convenient.
Below us in the riverbed were wide, dry spaces on either side of the water. A dance troupe had set down a mat, and the women were tuning up their instruments. Soon they would perform. From our position on the bank above we had a good view.
I rolled in the weeds listening to the cicadas and the crickets. Their lifetime was nearly over; soon cold would silence them. When anyone looked at me I crossed my eyes. That wasn’t very often. The Mad Poets were completely involved with themselves, timid when sober but now drunk and boasting. The serving girls were about my age and didn’t want to wait on me. The poems were always about sex. “More so than the maiden flower which is charming from the front I prefer the purple trouser plant best seen from the rear.”
It was my father’s verse that made the poets laugh: purple trouser plant, ha, ha. I laughed along with them.
Hokusai looked up as if he’d just remembered I was there. Did he think I was too young for little rhymes about woman-fleers? I made a face at him. Give me a break, Old Man. I heard this kind of stuff all the time. It was nothing to me.
He went back to his composition.
I decided to make a painting. I got a brush and paper and painted an inlet with a little sailboat crossing it. I wasn’t very happy with it. Something was wrong with the distance and the shapes. I couldn’t make it appear on paper the way it was in front of me. I took it across to my father, who showed me how to correct it. He sat up and paid attention then.
“Now make a poem that goes with it,” he said.
I started writing something about the opening being narrow, and when they saw it they laughed even harder. Their minds are nowhere but in the gutter, and I told them so. “That’s not what I meant,” I said. “I am ten years old.”
“You are ten years old when it suits you,” my father said. “And when it suits you better, you are twenty.”
I told him I had no idea what he meant, izn it, and he told me to stop talking like a courtesan; I certainly did have an idea what he meant. I said, in the voice of a nighthawk, “Hey, hey, Old Man. How about it?”
Everybody laughed. I felt pleased with myself.
“Has she no innocence, your daughter?” said one of them.
Hokusai just looked at me as if he was seeing someone new.
“Look at the beautiful hornets,” said Sanba, adeptly diverting him. “Yellow and black, with such long legs. Watch they don’t sting.”
“Too bad we’ve already done a book about sex and
The courtesan Yuko carried a telescope; she kept lifting it to her eyes. It was trained on the distant racecourse at the edge of town. She murmured the name of the horse her lover had bet on. If it won, her lover would buy out her contract and free her. She believed that. She was silly and a bit pathetic but not a bad poet.
Like a courtesan’s
vowels the green strands
of a willow tree
stretch out extra long.
It wasn’t true what the brothel-keepers said: that people did not want to hear courtesans’ thoughts. Courtesans were very stylish. All Edo was keen to know the details of their lives in the Yoshiwara. And everyone went there, even though it was forbidden. They came in disguise, people from all walks of life. The pleasure district was a great vat of soup that way, and even though the bakufu insisted that the higher classes disdain us, it turned out that the samurai wanted to mingle with merchants and their daughters found it exciting to sit down with peasants.
Because they were so strange, these proximities were titillating. Waki the tattooist sat beside Akemi, a merchant’s daughter. Her father was paying the bill, which meant we had plenty to eat. Everyone was drinking wine from stemmed glasses, making like Europeans. They were planning their next publication: the poets would write and the artists would illustrate a book, which the publisher would print. It was all very convenient.
Below us in the riverbed were wide, dry spaces on either side of the water. A dance troupe had set down a mat, and the women were tuning up their instruments. Soon they would perform. From our position on the bank above we had a good view.
I rolled in the weeds listening to the cicadas and the crickets. Their lifetime was nearly over; soon cold would silence them. When anyone looked at me I crossed my eyes. That wasn’t very often. The Mad Poets were completely involved with themselves, timid when sober but now drunk and boasting. The serving girls were about my age and didn’t want to wait on me. The poems were always about sex. “More so than the maiden flower which is charming from the front I prefer the purple trouser plant best seen from the rear.”
It was my father’s verse that made the poets laugh: purple trouser plant, ha, ha. I laughed along with them.
Hokusai looked up as if he’d just remembered I was there. Did he think I was too young for little rhymes about woman-fleers? I made a face at him. Give me a break, Old Man. I heard this kind of stuff all the time. It was nothing to me.
He went back to his composition.
I decided to make a painting. I got a brush and paper and painted an inlet with a little sailboat crossing it. I wasn’t very happy with it. Something was wrong with the distance and the shapes. I couldn’t make it appear on paper the way it was in front of me. I took it across to my father, who showed me how to correct it. He sat up and paid attention then.
“Now make a poem that goes with it,” he said.
I started writing something about the opening being narrow, and when they saw it they laughed even harder. Their minds are nowhere but in the gutter, and I told them so. “That’s not what I meant,” I said. “I am ten years old.”
“You are ten years old when it suits you,” my father said. “And when it suits you better, you are twenty.”
I told him I had no idea what he meant, izn it, and he told me to stop talking like a courtesan; I certainly did have an idea what he meant. I said, in the voice of a nighthawk, “Hey, hey, Old Man. How about it?”
Everybody laughed. I felt pleased with myself.
“Has she no innocence, your daughter?” said one of them.
Hokusai just looked at me as if he was seeing someone new.
“Look at the beautiful hornets,” said Sanba, adeptly diverting him. “Yellow and black, with such long legs. Watch they don’t sting.”
“Too bad we’ve already done a book about sex and
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