The Ghost Brush Read Online Free PDF

only person amongst us townsmen who could buy a licence. Handling money was a despised activity, officially, and the bakufu assumed that this shameful occupation would keep the blind in their place.
    But who cared about the official position? Money was running wild. Merchants were not ashamed to exchange it. They were, every year, louder and prouder. They dressed in fine coats and sported like lords. The real lords, we heard, were threadbare in their homes as well as in their hearts. Surviving on loyalty, duty, and the labour of others was harder and harder for the high and mighty. And so the blind moneylenders were busy. There was demand for their services. And they too became rich. Rich enough to eat and drink and spend a night at the Yoshiwara, to buy a courtesan.
    But this particular blind man was not wealthy. There were a few other ways of life open to the blind of our city. These were hairdressing or otherwise working with the body. One way was to be a masseur. I decided that the blind man worked soothing the muscles of sumo wrestlers. That explained why the beefy hands—draping off his wrists in front of his chest—flexed and pulsed while the rest of him was still. He was watching the parade intently. The expression on his face was assessing, appreciative, like the faces of the sighted men beside him. He was thinking of skin, of flesh, of heavy men’s bellies slapping against thin girls’ thighs: I knew it.
    The slit of visible eye was white; he had no pupils. Maybe those were rolled up to the inside of his head. His lips were apart, and top and bottom together made almost a circle; they too were fat and short. His nose was broad and stopped above his lip, leaving a wide, blank space there. It was a blank space that was the same as the blank space that was his entire face.
    He could have been praying. But I doubted it; he didn’t look religious. He was sucking in the courtesans’ presence; he smelled them, he heard their breath, he felt their tension. He was taking them into his body.
    It gave me a cold feeling. The women could not hide, even from the sightless.
    A NOTHER TRIP NORTHWARD . I was older now. I ran alongside as he strode to the dock. I jumped from the shore onto the ferryboat he was boarding, taking my chances over the span of cold, dirty water. He put out his hand to steady me without really looking. I sank down into the bottom of the boat between his knees to keep warm.
    It was nearly winter.
    We stepped back onto land and, hunching against the wind, headed away from town towards the Yoshiwara.
    The publisher’s shop was just outside the Great Gate. I peered across into the brothel quarter. The street was grey and wet. The moat was brown, stirred up because of the rain. One courtesan was picking her way home, clogs covered in mud, bare feet white with streaks of dirt. Courtesans were not allowed to wear tabi, socks. Mine were not clean, but at least I had them. It was a strange hour, before midday, the Hour of the Snake. Normally no one of any importance was around. But today the caterers were lugging crates of tofu from the shop. Mitsu was washing her front steps, and men from the neighbourhood association were stringing lanterns amongst the bare branches of the trees.
    My father took a seat at the teashop next door. The waitress set a cup of tea in front of him and gave me an almond cookie. Hokusai was cold, dirty, and thirsty. But he could not drink; his mind was occupied. I wanted him to at least put his hands around the warm cup. He told me to be quiet. I made myself small.
    A balding, worried individual appeared beside us, polishing the top of his head with a hand, the hair there being sparse; maybe he thought it was dust and he was trying to rub it off.
    “You disappear for weeks on end, and now you come to dig me out at my grandmother’s teahouse?”
    “If I don’t ‘disappear,’ how can I get my work done? I have new designs.”
    The publisher paced to the door. “If I had any sense