The Hell Screen (17 page)

“I am glad,” he said. “He will do well. Look at how many friends he has made already.”

She smiled. “At first the boys wouldn’t come near him. They thought the demons had caught him and eaten his arm and were going to come back and eat the rest of him. But in time they took to him because he’s so clever with his top. He’s a good boy.”

The incident depressed Akitada further and he left the temple compound, glancing up with a shudder at the great hall which loomed dark and forbidding above the scrambling humanity. The temple of the flesh-eating demons!

At the gate, Akitada asked directions to the Bamboo Hermitage from an old man selling incense sticks. He pointed down a narrow side street across from the temple.

“Is it far?” Akitada asked, eyeing the unpainted row houses with small shuttered windows dubiously. He got no answer. The old man was making rasping noises in his throat and pointed to his mouth. He was dumb, another cripple. Akitada put some coins in his bowl and walked away.

The narrow street resembled more an alley than an ordinary thoroughfare. It looked empty except for some debris and garbage, but Akitada kept his eyes open and soon noticed some furtive movement up ahead where a tangle of trees and the corner of a shed obscured the view. He felt sure that someone was hiding there and slowed his steps, cursing himself for setting out alone after having been warned. Suddenly there were quick steps behind him. They were accompanied by a familiar flapping sound, and Akitada whirled around. The bearded giant with the pockmarked face was blocking the lane behind him. Trapped! So much for the local warden, thought Akitada, and backed against a house wall.

“Looking for someone?” the giant asked, smirking a little.

Akitada looked him over. He appeared even bulkier than before, and infinitely more threatening in these surroundings. Looking to the right and left, Akitada searched for a weapon. There was nothing but a loose piece of lath a few steps away. It was shorter than a man, part of a broken fence, a puny weapon, but Akitada had some skill at stick fighting. He inched toward it, asking, “What do you want?”

The giant followed his eyes and made a strange rumbling deep in his chest. It sounded exactly like a dog’s growl, and Akitada moved a little faster toward the thin length of wood. The pockmarked face split into a broad, gap-toothed grin and the growl became a chuckle. “I mean you no harm,” the giant said, raising both hands to show he carried no weapon. “Just making sure you’re all right. This place is a bit rough and we don’t get rich gentlemen very often. If you’ll tell me where you’re going, I’ll walk with you.”

It was an impasse. The man could, of course, be lying. But there was something about him worth taking a chance on, and after a moment, Akitada detached himself from the wall. “Thank you. I thought I saw someone hiding up ahead. I am on my way to a place called Bamboo Hermitage.”

The warden raised bushy brows. “So! Old Noami’s got another customer. Well, come along, then. We think a lot of Noami around here. He’s got an open hand when it comes to the poor.”

Akitada felt himself flush. He reached into his sash and produced a string of coppers. “I have been thinking about that youngster’s family,” he said. “Perhaps you might give them this to help bury the little one.” -

The big man looked astonished, but he took the money, saying, “Thank you, sir. May the gods reward you for your kindness. It was the only time that boy’s ever been in trouble and he’ll never do it again. Well, let’s be on our way, then.”

He strode off, his torn boot soles slapping the frozen ground. Akitada followed.

When they got to the shed, two rough characters jumped out into the street, barring their way. The moment they saw his companion, their ferocious scowls turned to horror and they bolted.

“Hah!” shouted the warden after them. “Come back here! I’ve seen you bastards! Don’t think that you’ll get your ration this week, you dirty scoundrels!” They paid no heed, and he muttered angrily, shaking his fist.

“Do you know them?” Akitada asked, astonished.

“Do I!” he grumbled. “They’ll be sorry! Well, there you are! That’s Noami’s place over there! Excuse me, but I’ve got to go catch those two. Don’t hang about till dark, and take the other way out. There’s a busy street that way.” He gestured ahead, the way the two would-be robbers had gone, and strode off after them, boots flip-flapping in a purposeful manner.

The Bamboo Hermitage had been named for the dense growth of bamboo around the thatched buildings. A tall fence woven from bamboo canes surrounded the property. Next to the gate a small sign, beautifully lettered in Chinese, proclaimed its name and identified it as an “artist’s studio.” Both gate and fence were in excellent repair and reinforced with beams and sharpened bamboo spikes along the top. No wonder Noami took precautions against thieves in this neighborhood, thought Akitada. Considering the fortifications, he was mildly surprised when the gate swung open at his touch.

He entered, calling out, but got no answer. It was very silent here. Only the dry bamboo leaves rustled in the cold air. Bamboo grew so thickly and so tall that the tops screened out the sky, and Akitada walked in their shade between the dense, thick canes to the front door. When he reached it, a raucous cry overhead made him jump. A chain rattled above him, and then another cry sounded. Akitada peered up cautiously and saw a huge black crow on a projecting roof beam, eyeing him with its beady eyes and fluffing up its feathers. The chain around one claw was fastened to the beam and clinked again.

Apparently the bird was a primitive yet effective system for announcing visitors. Akitada waited for the artist to appear, but nothing happened. He could see through the open door into a large dim hall. Scrolls hung suspended from rafters, and long tables held pots of paints and stacks of papers. A half-painted screen stood near a set of sliding doors at the back.

Akitada called out again, the crow joining in his effort. When this noise produced no better results, he took off his boots and stepped onto the wooden floor of the hall to look around. Almost instantly an irrational feeling of danger seized him, and the hairs on the back of his head rose.

Too much talk of demons, he thought, and forced himself to look around. The wooden floor of the hall was dull with dirt and splotches of paint and ink. New rolls of paper and silk lay stacked in a big pile in one corner. From the low, smoke-darkened beam in the center of the room hung a heavy bronze lantern, suspended by a chain from a massive hook. The studio had the appearance of belonging to someone who cared nothing for comfort or cleanliness, and everything for his work.

Akitada strolled over to the half-finished screen and saw an autumn scene in the forest. In the foreground some large rocks had been sketched in with elegant strokes of black ink, and the background was a misty wash of blue and gray, subtly hinting at wooded mountainsides. But a leaning maple tree in the center was already outlined and painted in all its crimson glory, every leaf daintily detailed, so real that one could almost see it trembling in the breeze. A similarly realistic large black crow, a double of the one outside, perched on one of the rocks, and a few sparrows were pecking at seeds in the foreground.

Small dishes of paint and containers of water stood about in front of the screen, along with bowls containing remnants of dried food and half -eaten pickles. Brushes of all sizes lay everywhere. Akitada bent to touch one dish filled with crimson paint. It was still moist. So the painter had been at work here not too long ago. Where could he be?

Akitada slid open one of the back doors. They led to a garden behind the house. A vast wilderness of vegetation had closed in on the building here also. He thought he could hear faint sounds from the far corner of the property. “Hoh! Is anyone home?” bellowed Akitada. “Master Noami?” He thought he heard a shout, but nobody came and Akitada turned back to his exploration of the studio.

Idly, he wandered around, picking up loose sketches of flowers and birds, marveling at the painstaking skill of execution. Toshikage had not exaggerated. This man was a consummate, even obsessive artist.

He was just bending over the large stack of sketches which had been piled higgledy-piggledy into a dark corner when there was the sudden sound at the back door. Almost simultaneously he heard a string of curses and rapid slapping footsteps across the floor.

Akitada turned quickly. A short, wiry individual in a dirty, paint-smeared monk’s robe glared at him from a head shaped like a kickball, his skull shaven but covered with a thin stubble, the eyes like dark berries on either side of a flat nose, and the mouth a mere slash above the thin strands of a chin beard. He was neither young nor old, indisputably ugly, and indefinably menacing.

“Get away from there, you whoreson piece of excrement!” the odd creature screeched at Akitada, waving his arms in the air as if he were shooing away dogs. “Away, I say! Don’t touch anything!”

The unexpected crudity, exceeding as it did even the most extreme example of disrespect, shocked Akitada. Looking at this astonishing being, he had the disconcerting feeling of having walked into some demonic tale, so unreal seemed the encounter and so grotesque the person’s appearance and manner. Perhaps the man was mad.

He stepped quickly away from the sketches and raised his hands into the air. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “No one answered my calls when I arrived.”

The wiry man said nothing, just stood scowling and studied him with his beadlike eyes as if he were memorizing every line of his face, every hair or fold of his robe. He was barefoot, his feet liberally caked with mud, his hands covered with earth. Akitada decided that this must be the painter’s assistant, evidently a half-wit. “Where is your master?” he demanded.

The man said in his strange high voice, “I’m Noami. Who wants to know?”

Akitada suppressed his surprise and introduced himself, explaining his errand.

“A screen?” asked the painter, relaxing visibly. “Like that one?” He jerked a thumb toward the autumn scene.

“Yes. Very much like it,” said Akitada. He walked back to the screen and looked at it again. “You are to be commended for your skill with the brush.” Surely, he thought, he could transact his business quickly and leave this unpleasant place, hopefully never to return. “I expect my wife to join me soon,” he continued, “and would like to surprise her with something to remind her of her garden. She loves flowers. When I saw the screen you painted for my brother-in-law, Toshikage, I thought of it. Only, could you have the flowers growing in a garden? Perhaps different ones for every season on each panel. And some birds or small creatures that live in a garden? I like the crow and sparrows in this one.”

The artist had come to join him. “Maybe.”

Akitada looked at him with raised brows. “How do you mean?”

“To paint all the seasons will take a full year, for I must study plants and animals in their proper time. It will therefore be expensive. Ten bars of silver for each panel.” His earlier vulgarity notwithstanding, Noami spoke like an educated man.

“Ten bars of silver?” Forty bars altogether! That was four times what Toshikage had paid for Akiko’s screen. Akitada said so, and Noami explained coolly that Toshikage’s screen had been assembled from existing sketches. He seemed disinclined to accommodate a new customer.

Seeing his long miserable errand wasted, Akitada said, “I had hoped to surprise my wife now. Do you have something ready which might please her? Then we could perhaps negotiate about the screen later?”

Noami pursed his thin lips. “I have no flowers. Only a scroll with dogs.”

They walked across the room. The painting was of a small boy playing with three black-and-white spotted puppies. The child, a little older than Yori, looked vaguely familiar and the entire scene was charming. Having agreed on a fairly reasonable price, Akitada paid.

As Noami took down the scroll and rolled it up, Akitada asked, “How do you manage to find your subjects and have them hold still for sketching? That little boy with the dogs, for example?”

The artist froze for a moment and stared at him blankly. Then he bent to tie the scroll, saying in a flat voice, “People are very poor around here. Most are outcasts. The children are willing to model all day for a copper and some food. The dogs are free for the taking.” He paused and his thin lips twisted. “It’s the getting rid of them that becomes a problem.”