Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata Read Free Book Online

harmony among the colors, either.Yet it was unusually passionate for a picture in the classical Japanese technique. Of course there was nothing random or haphazard about it. Being untitled left it open to any interpretation, perhaps because the artist’s seemingly hidden subjective feelings were in fact revealed. Oki searched for the heart of the picture.
    “Just what is she to Otoko?” his wife demanded.
    “A student who lives with her.”
    “Is that so? I want to destroy those pictures.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous! Why are you so violent?”
    “She’s poured out her feelings about Otoko. They’re not pictures we should keep in this house.”
    Startled by this lightning flash of feminine jealousy, he said quietly: “Why do you think they’re about Otoko?”
    “Can’t you see it?”
    “That’s only your imagination. You’re beginning to see ghosts.” But as he spoke a tiny flame lighted up in his heart.
    It seemed clear that the plum tree painting expressed Otoko’s love for him. And so even the untitled one seemed to have the same theme. In it Keiko had also used mineral pigments, heavily overlaying them to blend with moist pigments a little below and to the left of the center of the picture. He felt he could glimpse the spirit of the picture in the strange, windowlike bright space within that overlaid portion. One could think of it as Otoko’s still glowing love.
    “After all, it wasn’t Otoko who painted them,” he said. Fumiko seemed to suspect that he had been with Otokowhen he heard the temple bells in Kyoto. However, she had said nothing at the time, perhaps because it was New Year’s Day.
    “Anyway, I detest those pictures!” Her eyelids quivered with rage. “I won’t have them in the house!”
    “Whether you detest them or not, they belong to the artist. Even if she’s a young girl, do you think it’s right to destroy a work of art? In the first place, are you sure she’s giving them to us, and not just letting us see them?”
    For a moment Fumiko was silenced. Then she said: “Taichiro answered the door. Now he must have taken her to the station, though he’s been gone awfully long.” Was that bothering her too? The station was not far away, and trains left every fifteen minutes. “I suppose he’s the one being seduced this time. A girl that pretty, with an evil fascination …”
    Oki put the two paintings back together and began wrapping them. “Stop talking about being seduced. I don’t like it. If she’s all that pretty, these pictures are just herself, a young girl’s narcissism.”
    “No, I’m certain they’re about Otoko.”
    “Then maybe she and Otoko are lovers.”
    “Lovers?” Fumiko was caught off guard. “You think they’re lovers?”
    “I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they were lesbians. Living together at an old temple in Kyoto, both of them insanely passionate, it seems.”
    Calling them lesbians had given Fumiko pause. When she spoke again, her voice was calm. “Even if they
are
, Ithink those pictures show that Otoko still loves you.” Oki felt ashamed of having brought up lesbianism to talk himself out of a difficulty.
    “Probably we’re both wrong. We both looked at them with preconceived ideas.”
    “Then why did she want to paint such pictures?”
    “Hmm.” Realistic or not, a picture expressed the inner thoughts and feelings of the artist. But he was afraid to pursue that kind of discussion with his wife. Perhaps her first impression of Keiko’s paintings had been unexpectedly accurate. And perhaps his own casual impression of lesbianism had been accurate too.
    Fumiko left the study. He waited for his son to return.
    Taichiro had begun to teach Japanese literature at a private college. On days when he had no lectures he would go to the departmental library at his school, or do some research at home. He had originally wanted to study “modern literature”—Japanese literature since Meiji—but because his father