Sea of Ink Read Free Page B

he told himself, until I die on this mountain.
    Then he recalled his life as Zhu Da, as a young prince, and he recalled his wife’s black hair and his son’s first smile.
    But these images were not memories, rather the dream of a life never lived.

 
    12 The following day he woke with a terrible heaviness in his heart. Somebody seemed to be calling him; he thought he could hear a distant voice but could not understand it. Gripped by an inner urge, he went to his desk, where every day for years he had completed the drawing exercises the master had set him.
    He poured some water into the hollow of the rubbing stone, took the hard block of ink and rubbed it. Then he selected one of his finer brushes and dipped it in.
    He had laid a square piece of yellowy-white paper on the desk, which was around four hand’s widths in size. At the lower edge and slightly to the left, he set down the paintbrush, drawing it upwards in a gentle curve, half a finger’s width, which started to the left then changed direction halfway up the paper. A second later he applied a little more pressure to the brush and veered it back to the left. He let this thickened line run to a black point that almost touched the edge of the paper and, without lifting the paintbrush, cocked his wrist, whereupon the tips of the bristles pirouetted; and now the brush glided back down the line in the opposite direction, and beyond onto the blank paper; then with another turn of the wrist he brought his hand down towards himself, lifting the brush from the paper in a slow but fluid movement so that the bottom of his line tapered as evenly as the top had.
    And without adding more ink to the brush, he immediately covered the bottom third of the paper with wave-like shapes stacking up to the right, either with a flick of his wrist or by pressing down his hand to leave black streaks which came out darker or lighter depending on the pressure. Just before the paintbrush ran out of ink he took it to the upper right-hand corner of the paper and, holding it vertically, signed the picture with the name Geshan – single mountain.
    Then he put his brush aside. To finish, he printed his seal in red ink beneath the signature.
    He went out onto the terrace, gripped the balustrade and closed his eyes.
    Geshan had painted his first picture.
    After a while he returned to his desk and looked at the lotus flower which had appeared on the paper. Its black-painted bloom looked white and lit up his signature in the corner.
    Why did he think he could recognize himself in the line of the flower stem and the outlines of the petal?
    When he placed his right hand on the white, unpainted part of the paper he noticed that the stem and the lower part of the flower traced the outline of his thumb and wrist almost exactly. With ink he had painted a flower, and with the area he had left blank he had depicted part of his hand.
    The flower grew out of the swamp and slime into the air above, there to unfurl its beauty in clear, sharp outlines.

Lotus flower
     

 
    13 Geshan alias Xuege alias Chuanqi alias Zhu Da brought the lotus flower painting to Master Hongmin for appraisal. He said, ‘I can see that you have grasped much already. You have understood the sense of form and three-dimensional shape; your brush is able to express the curve of the stem and the surface of the petals; it can portray light and colours. You have learnt to see blackness not as an obstacle, but as a source. Here the black depicts a shining white; there, a muted brown or a transparent greenish-blue. You have, moreover , made good progress in understanding the essence of things. Your brush suggests some of the floweriness of the flower and the wateriness of the water. That is much already. But there are still lessons you need to learn to master the black ink.’
    ‘Which ones?’
    ‘It is not my place to tell you that. You must happen upon it for yourself. But you will know when the right moment has come. That I do not