Read The Painting for Free Online Page B

chin tilted up and to the left. He chewed on his pencil and, like the man, spit out the pink eraser tip. He held his tea cup with both hands wrapped around it, as if he might crush it. As a boy, he insisted on a fork and knife and spoon. He fashioned a hat out of a piece of cloth and wrapped it around his head, like the pale man’s cap. He scratched letters on a chalkboard until the chalk scorched his hand. When it was time for the Dutchman to leave Japan, he left the boy with one book, Emerson.
    He heard his parents argue at night. His mother worried the boy might be injured if anyone in the government discovered what he was learning. It’s against the law, she hissed. His father said he was preparing the boy for the future.
    He sets his books down now. What good came from his father’s efforts? What has become of him? Only a mediocre potter who can make only one bowl well—the one the monks taught him how to make so long ago. How many years has he been making it?
    He is ruminating, falling deeper into sadness when the maid comes in and says there’s an old man standing at the temple door knocking and knocking.
    Hayashi puts on his slippers and steps outside. Excuse me. May I help you?
    The man scurries toward him. My son, he says, his face lined with distress.
    Hayashi freezes.
    You must give my son a proper Buddhist burial.
    I’m sorry, says Hayashi. But it’s impossible—
    The old man says his son died of a fever in the middle of the night and he was so young, only seventeen, and such a funeral would help him pass through the other side so he could quickly return.
    Hayashi stands rigid with fear, hearing the echo of the government men—the threat, the smell of burning still so fresh in the air, the panic—but he thinks, Here is this poor man, look at his face, deeply creased with such desperation, and his pleas, and the way he looks at me, as if I am the only one to save his son. But it is impossible.
    I’m sorry, he says. The temple is closed for such things.
    He cringes as the old man looks at him, dumbly, incredulously, and wishesit were otherwise, wishes he had the courage to say, to tell the townspeople, tell this poor man the temple is open and we will hold a grand funeral for your son. But he can’t; he’s a quiet man who prefers his solitude, who doesn’t want trouble; and the old man is shaking his head.
    He tells the man to try the temple on the outskirts of town. I don’t believe that one has been closed, he says, though he doesn’t really know. There is a long awful pause. The man doesn’t move; his face is still open with hope.
    My son, says the old man again, the pleading in his voice louder.
    Seconds pass; to Hayashi, it feels like hours. Finally the man turns and begins walking away, and Hayashi is flooded with regret and guilt and must fight the urge to run after him, stop him, and begin the services immediately.
    Go to the other temple, he shouts.
    The old man shakes his head dolefully, opens the heavy iron gate, and shuts it with a bang. Hayashi jumps at the sound and rushes back to the house.
    S HE TILTS OVER HER painting and falls into the colors of memory, mixing in more red and black, wrapping the image of herself in a blood-red kimono.
    They met at the fast-moving river. She arrived and stood at the river’s edge, skipping stones, and before she saw him, she saw his reflection in the water, as if he were emerging from the depths, coming straight to her. Five times she visited the river. On the sixth visit, with the sun pouring down on their patch of grass at the riverbank, they leaped across the water and climbed the hill to the flowering plum tree.
    His hand, a thick, calloused hand, in hers. She feels his hand now, pulling her into the painting. His fingers stroke her cheek. They are on a terraced hill above the rice fields, the place where they met in secret until they found the empty hut.
    Up on this hill, they are alone. There is the farmer down below, his back bent, his head