The Printmaker's Daughter by Katherine Govier

Author:Katherine Govier [Govier, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780062000361
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

25.

The Gift

I RETURNED WITH PAINTINGS. Von Siebold smiled more kindly on me each time I saw him. He cleared the room of his learned hangers-on. We fell into conversation, as if we’d done this often.

He liked Sudden Shower: the peasants bracing themselves as a cloudburst broke over their heads. It was a common enough scene in Japan, but he didn’t know that.

“An instant so fleeting only a genius could have caught it,” I said, showing him the gestures of self-protection against wind and water, the onslaught so frequent in our land. I enjoyed the charade. It was a picture Hokusai had designed but left to me to put in the color.

We discussed my father’s genius. So unconventional! How refreshing his vision was; how, of all the Japanese artists, Hokusai was the one whose name would one day be known in Europe.

Von Siebold’s secretary wrote down the particulars of the sale. The doctor smiled warmly at me, which gave me the confidence to ask my question.

“You are a learned man,” I began.

He nodded. No argument there.

“In England,” I said, “there was a great writer, name of Shakespeare. Do you know him?”

He was surprised by my topic. “Any educated man knows the works of Shakespeare. We studied him in school.”

He struck a pose.

“ ‘What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and motion how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!’ ”

Oh, he was like an angel himself. It was the one word of English I understood. I clapped my hands. It made tears spring to my eyes, that man reciting the strange words that rolled and tumbled together. The secretary chuckled. I had never heard the language before. Sanba loved Shakespeare; that’s how I had heard of the greatest playwright in the world. Perhaps a few of his plays were read here, by the scholars in Dutch. But Sanba was no scholar; he was a scavenger of names and fame and knew nothing of the man’s work, only that he was great.

“That is wonderful,” I said carefully. “Can you tell me about the man?”

“What?”

“Can you tell me, for instance, if this Shakespeare had a daughter?”

I don’t know what question he had expected next, but it was not this one.

“A daughter?” he said. “He has been dead two hundred years.”

“Yes,” I said, “but . . .”

“Little is known about his life.”

One of the other Dutchmen in the room came and spoke in von Siebold’s ear. Perhaps he understood my question.

“It is possible that he did have a daughter,” said von Siebold.

I smiled. “And she wrote for the stage also?”

No need for consultation this time.

“No.”

“But she helped him with his writing?”

“No, no.”

I was shocked and disappointed. “Why not?”

“Maybe she didn’t know how to write.”

“The daughter of the great master was not taught to write?” I had thought these Westerners were highly civilized.

“I doubt it. Shakespeare was a simple man from the provinces.

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