Winter Sleep by Kenzo Kitakata

Author:Kenzo Kitakata [Kitakata, Kenzo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kodansha USA
Published: 2023-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

The Color of Ice

1

A stack of bills was on the table.

Natsue had cashed the check. I’d shown no interest in it. She may have feared I’d forget about it and lose it.

After leaving the money, Natsue had returned to Tokyo, without either having sex, talking about my next painting, or even seeing the one in the studio.

I thought about what to have for dinner. I had asked the caretakers not to prepare meals for me. I hadn’t had lunch—or anything at all since the previous evening.

I thought for a while, concluded that thinking was too much trouble, and reached for a bottle of cognac. Dangling it by the neck, I went up to the second floor.

The nude of Akiko was waiting for me. I had already finished it and had no desire to touch it. Squatting down, I stared at it, conscious of my own breathing.

How many years had it been since I had truly finished a painting? Usually I lost enthusiasm midway and took what I had to the gallery, which then sold it as finished work. Even so, no one had ever criticized my paintings for not being completed. I’d often fooled myself into thinking that my lack of enthusiasm meant that a painting was done.

Finishing this painting had left me lifeless, empty. After only one day I knew that feeling all too well. It wasn’t just the end of a dream. It was as though my entire life, if not my flesh, had gone into that canvas, leaving me with nothing.

I started drinking.

Putting the bottle to my mouth, I guzzled the cognac. Before long I was roaring drunk.

Everything was bearing down on me, crushing me: the painting, Akiko, my own self. I was obsessed with the thought that my soul was now trapped in Akiko’s naked body on the canvas.

It became dark but I could still see the painting clearly. Why had I painted it? Why had I tried to splatter life, my life, on a piece of canvas?

There had been a time when it made me glad to recognize life on a canvas. Somewhere along the line the joy had vanished. I wasn’t even painting proper pictures anymore.

I was crying. The fact that I was crying struck me as funny and I laughed, as the tears streamed down. I brought the bottle to my lips and, tipping it up, quickly drained it. I got up, went down to the chilly room below and brought back another bottle of cognac.

Squatting beside the painting, I kept drinking. Why did I not feel the cold or the passage of time as long as I was next to the painting?

The glare was intense.

I wondered if it was morning. Someone was calling to me. It seemed to be the painting speaking. I saw the canvas and Akiko’s face one over the other.

“I’m glad I came. I called again and again, but you never answered. I thought you’d gone off somewhere and wouldn’t come back.”

I dimly watched Akiko cry. Akiko was in the canvas again.

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