The Ghost Brush Read Free

be closed.
    “Blah, blah, blah,” said my father to the women. “Here we go. I’ll just get on to the end for you.”
    They shifted and protested: they wanted to hear it all.
    “I’m skipping all this part,” he said, pointing to columns of characters. “After this it degenerates into a harangue.”
The Senior Councillor repeats his determination and asserts the rightness of the Old Way. We are losing the distinction between the esteemed and the despised. You people desire to imitate your betters, and to raise yourselves. This must end. We will root out corruption and laxity, and enforce austerity and morality. We shall rid Japan of private interest, and the destructive powers of passion and desire.
    That was the end. He turned around and made a deep theatrical bow. The people were caught between fear and laughter.

3
    The Seven Stars
    WHATEVER MY FATHER DID , he did with a kind of double, lunging in but also holding back, as if he were his own shadow. He loved the crowd, but he also liked to stand aside, watching himself, the entertainer amongst us, remarking on how it looked. He saw himself eating or lying, making love. He was hugely amused by himself and all the rest of us. He was an artist first and last, an ordinary man rarely, in between.
    That night he went inside, put me down, and lay beside my mother.
    “What did the edict say?”
    “No more pillow pictures. No more picture books. No more libraries.”
    My mother shrieked and covered her head with a cloth.
    “Be still, woman!” He yawned, as if it were not important. It made her hysterical.
    For a time he had made his living painting calendars. He delineated the long months and the short months; they changed every year. But an edict had made it illegal for common people to own or sell such a calendar. Calendars could be issued only by licence of the Shogun; the Shogun alone was responsible for counting days and months, for celestial movement and changing seasons. He issued the only calendars that were allowed. Who could afford one of these official calendars? Only a lord or a lady.
    But my father had not despaired. “A calendar is a handy thing. People want to know what day it is. It’s a good market, and we won’t give it up. There is a way.”
    He began to make calendars that looked like simple pictures—a rooster or a chrysanthemum. Hidden inside the swirl of the flower petals or in the rooster’s feet were the characters giving the number of days. The townspeople would spot these and understand, and even enjoy the little game. The officials failed to notice, and we were saved, for a time.
    But now it was books—picture books, storybooks, history books. Our mainstay.
    My mother wept. “The bakufu have taken away the last thing. The last strand by which we cling to life . . .” She had her own dramatic flair.
    “Just a moment!” said my father. This was a thing he often said. He had borrowed it from the kabuki stage. It created a dramatic pause, heralded a grand gesture. A wordless grimace and a moment to make strategy.
    He jumped out of bed and pounced, legs and arms wide apart. He made us laugh. “We will make a new thing that he hasn’t thought to censor yet!”
    We felt reassured; we would get around this one too.
    We children all went to sleep. It was the best way to keep warm.
    A nother night:
    The Old Man was working. It was rude to call him that, but that is what he was. Forty years already when I was born. Most men died by the time they were forty-five. I was with him. My mother had put the three older children down on the mat and lay sleeping beside them. She would wake up very early, when he was just lying down, and pluck at him to come to her for sex. This was not wise: how did they feed us four children who had already made our appearance? I never knew. But she was an impetuous soul. She must have been to marry him.
    From my close proximity I could smell my father’s frustration.
    “Look at this picture—it’s hopeless.