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.”
Akitada nodded. The artist’s willingness to employ the unemployable would bring with it the frustration of their importunities. The children, no doubt, interfered with his work as well as his paints. Akitada suddenly realized that this might be the man who had been a benefactor to the crippled boy in the temple courtyard. The big warden had spoken highly of him. Noami, a successful artist living in the midst of this slum, was in a rare position to do good to his poorer neighbors. Ashamed of his earlier dislike for the man, Akitada said more warmly, “I can see that the offer of payment and food is enough to fill your house with all sorts of needy creatures and provide you with useful models at the same time.”
Noami stared at him again and then cast a glance around the room. “Why do you say that?” he asked sharply. “There is no one here but myself.”
Again Akitada felt an irrational hostility in the man. He said soothingly, “1 merely meant that your neighbors surely appreciate your generosity to their children.”
“My neighbors?” Noami’s voice rose shrilly. “They are all liars and thieves!”
“Never mind.” Akitada extended his hand for the scroll, adding coldly, “My name is Sugawara Akitada. If you decide to accept a commission for a screen, you may come to see me. Lord Toshikage can tell you how to find my house. But I should like to see some sketches before I approve a commission of that size.”