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The thought that he would have to come back the next day to get his stitches taken out spoiled his joy in the late summer weather. Unhappily he shuffled through the yellow linden leaves under the trees to the tram stop.
When the tram arrived, he hesitated a moment to cast an eye over the passengers before climbing in. Shaking his head, he got on. Never again would he be able to use a streetcar without this uneasy feeling. The bump over his ear throbbed and Bärger rubbed the hard lump on his head with the flat of his hand.
When he arrived home, he took the mail from his mailbox and opened the window. Then he took a long shower, soaping himself twice and sniffing his wrist suspiciously, as he thought he could still smell the hospital on his skin. Finally he turned the water off, put on his Japanese robe, the yakuta with the bamboo pattern, and sat out on the balcony in the sun.
He could hear the shouts of the school children playing ball in the high school yard across the street.
The school possessed two large gymnasiums. Sometimes in the evening from his balcony, he watched the various sport teams while they trained.
Training, thought Bärger. In the winter, we always trained with the bow in a gymnasium. Where could I really train now, if I wanted to begin again?
Interesting question, he admitted to himself.
Through the open door, he heard the telephone ring.
He waited until after his message, recognized the voice of the caller, hesitated a moment, and then finally went back inside to pick up the receiver.
“Hallo Jürgen,” said Bärger, “Still snowed under with work?”
“I’m glad you’re there,” said the voice on the telephone.
“Right now I’m on my way home from the construction site, and I thought I might drop by and see you. Weren’t you supposed to be somewhere in Japan now?”
Bärger looked out the window. That question was going to be around for a while: Weren’t you supposed to be in Japan? Did you have an accident? What are you going to do now?
I don’t want to deal with those questions, thought Bärger, in any case, not now. But then he said aloud, “Come on over, and I’ll tell you all abut it.” He hesitated a moment, “I missed the flight”.
They sat together and he made a pot of the Frisian tea mixture, which was also Jürgen’s favorite. They took the cups out onto the balcony and Bärger told him what had happened.
“You ought to get away for a while,” said Jürgen after a bit.
“Go somewhere where there is no cultural program to attend, no hotel, and no tourist group. Somewhere where you like it, I mean where you used to like it. Feel the fresh sea breeze in your face until your head is clear again. Right now, you’re good for nothing.”
“What do you mean?” Bärger was surprised by the urgency he detected in Jürgen’s words.
You’ve changed completely,” said Jürgen. “I don’t really know you any more. In the shape you’re in, you’re not going to be able to finish anything properly no matter what you start. I tell you again. Pack a suitcase and get out. Disappear for a couple of weeks, and leave your cell-phone at home.”
“But I don’t have a cell-phone,” said Bärger.
“So much the better,” replied Jürgen, and they grinned at each other.
“Is it too early for red wine?” asked Bärger.
“It’s never too early for red wine,” replied Jürgen. “Well, let’s say that depends on what kind.”
It was a light California red wine that he took out of the drawer under the refrigerator. It tasted of vanilla and black currants. At first, they thought that it was a little too warm, but they agreed that that only intensified the bouquet. After the second glass, neither had anything against either the temperature or the bouquet.
Instead they talked about holidays.
Bärger recalled vacations in Spain and Provence. Jürgen talked about Sweden, Norway, and Brittany.
The sun had dropped low in the hazy sky. Bärger leaned back with his hands on his neck and stared into the deepening twilight. No cloud reflected the shining evening red on the skyline. Instead, the straight contrails of two crossing jets began to shine brightly as intersecting straight lines.
“Technology inscribes its symbols over the city,” said Bärger. “Even in the heavens.”
Jürgen looked at him uncomprehendingly. Bärger pointed at the slowly blurring light streaks and they watched them a while in silence.
“I wonder why no one ever got the idea of making clouds rectangular for advertisements?”
“I can tell you,” Jürgen grinned and held his wine glass up in the last rays of the dying sun. “It wouldn’t pay.”
They both laughed.
“I just recalled something,” said Jürgen after a while and looked at the row of four scroll paintings that Bärger had hung close together over his slip-covered sofa bed.
“A good contractor shouldn’t have a problem with recalls,” said Bärger earnestly.
“You used to be funnier. Do you remember that you promised me an ink painting a long time ago? How long ago was that?”
“A long time,” said Bärger, “far too long. Do you have some idea of what you want?”
He looked at the narrow paintings, each the same size, mounted on silver-gray, matt silk, displaying the classical theme of the “four nobles”, along with the plants that represented the four seasons in China. The sequence began with a twig of flowering winter plum. Spring was represented by an orchid next to a bizarrely shaped stone. Bamboo represented summer, with needle sharp leaves motionless and stiff in the midday heat. The last picture in the series, which stood for autumn, was of chrysanthemum blossoms, heavy and full among irregularly shaped leaves.
“Aside from the fact that we don’t have any flowering winter plum trees here in the winter, I really think it’s right to begin the year with winter,” said Jürgen.
Bärger nodded. Spring, summer, fall, and winter – this series of seasons was the biological sequence of birth and death. But was it really necessary to impose a beginning and end on an eternal cycle?
“Bamboo,” said Jürgen. “ I would really like to have a picture of bamboo.”
Bärger emptied his glass.
He looked at Jürgen for a while, who seemed to be sunk in a reverie looking at the scroll painting of the bamboo and stone.
They had known each other for a long time.
They had been students at the same university at the same time, but they hadn’t met there. They both liked early jazz from the twenties –Jürgen played the trumpet, Bärger the banjo and drums. They had both been active in the martial arts, karate for Jürgen and Judo for him. Jürgen had a black belt, but Bärger had never taken it that far.
That was long ago.
Long ago once again? Why did things keep occurring to him that were over? Gone, over, never again – was that it? Were his thoughts beginning to run backwards? If so, then the pictures of his past would become stronger than promises for the future. Bärger was startled. Was this what happened when you got old?
Jürgen leaned back. Seated there with his left leg over the arm of the chair with his shock of graying hair, disheveled as usual, and his large nose, he always reminded Bärger of the famous photo of Einstein sticking out his tongue.
“How much time do you have?” asked Bärger. Jürgen never had any time. Every telephone conversation ended with a promise that they really had to get together for a long uninterrupted conversation.
Against expectation, Jürgen didn’t look at his watch.
“It depends on what you have in mind – the day is almost over anyway.”
“If you want, I’ll paint your bamboo for you.”
Jürgen looked at him dubiously. “Now? How long will it take?”
Bärger shrugged his shoulders. “A half hour. Maybe not that long – if we don’t count the preparation of the paper and the ink.”
“Then why did you make your second-best friend wait for it for over a year?”
“Do you know the story of how a famous painter made the emperor of China wait for more than a year for a picture of a rooster?”
They went into the next room and, while Bärger began his preparations, he told the story of the painter who had made the emperor of China wait.
The emperor of China, they say, had heard of the master’s great skill. At that time, it was a special honor to receive a commission for a picture from the emperor. The emperor expected that his commission, which wasn’t very different from an imperial order, would be carried out immediately. That didn’t happen. After several weeks, the emperor sent one of his officials to demand the delivery of the picture, but the painter informed him that he needed more time.
When the painting hadn’t been completed after several months, the emperor sent one his ministers to emphasize the urgency of his imperial wishes. Once again, the painter said that he needed more time.
After half a year, the emperor was so angry with the painter that he ordered him to be brought before him to be executed.
This time, the painter invited the emperor’s messenger into his studio, placed a piece of rice paper on a table, prepared his ink, and right before the messenger’s eyes, painted a picture of a rooster in a few minutes that was so life-like, the messenger almost expected to hear it crow.
The emperor’s messenger rolled up the painting that the painter handed him and, as a few minutes no longer mattered, they drank a cup of tea together.
Then the messenger asked why the painter had made the emperor wait half a year for a painting that he could do in a couple of minutes.
The painter answered that he had never had so little time for a painting.
From morning to night, he had done nothing but watch roosters; how they moved when they crowed, when they ate and drank, when they fought, and when they slept.
He did this, he said, until he understood the essence of a rooster as thoroughly as if he had been one himself. Only then, and not one minute sooner, was he able to paint a picture of a rooster worthy of an emperor.
7
They went into the next room.
Bärger’s drawing table was directly in front of a north-facing window that reached from floor to ceiling. He picked up a pile of journals and project folders carelessly, placed then on the floor and then, pushed them under the bed in the corner of the room with his foot.
Jürgen grinned.
“A place for everything,” he said.
Bärger didn’t answer him. He pulled a rolled-up white felt mat out of a cupboard, placed it on the surface of the low drawing table and carefully flattened it. On closer inspection, the felt mat was more gray than white and showed irregular spots ranging from light gray to black. The spots were concentrated on the right side.
He took a flat covered dish from a mobile office cabinet behind him. The dish was black with a dull surface and fine even grain. It reminded Jürgen of a sharpening stone, but the round shape wasn’t right for that. Bärger put the round dish on the table at the place where the spots were thickest.
Next he produced a white porcelain plate with a broad, flat rim. Remnants of dried ink had formed streaky patterns on the bottom with deep black edges, which looked like a thin network of roots. A disorderly meshed pattern of intersecting brush strokes covered the rim of the plate. Bärger placed the plate on the felt mat next to the black abrasive dish.
Carefully, from the bookshelf behind him, he took a cup-shaped bamboo container in which rattled a good dozen brushes of different sizes. Even the brush handles were of bamboo, spotted black from use. The brush hair was either brownish or white, but mostly the color of the felt mat; light gray from long use. Some were short like watercolor brushes; some were thin and almost the length of a finger, others short and thick.
Now Bärger took a flat wooden case the size of a cigar box from the mobile cabinet. When he opened the lid, Jürgen saw a collection of black ink bars, some new, some used. Some were the size and shape of certain brands of granola bars, other were smaller. Most bore stamped labels in relief or gold colored letters. Jürgen thought that he detected a weak pine scent.
The large jam jar full of water, placed next to the plate on the right side of the table, seemed almost trivial amid all these exotic things.
Bärger inspected the working area spread out in front of him and seemed satisfied. He went to another cabinet with three shallow drawers in its lower section, opened the top drawer and, after brief consideration, took a sheet from one of two piles of different size paper.
The sheet seemed to be twice as long as it was wide, and when he placed it lengthwise on the felt mat, it reached all the way back to the top of the working space. He weighed down the top and bottom edges of the sheet with bronze castings of a bamboo shoot.
Unnoticed by Bärger, Jürgen had gone back into the living room. He poured himself another glass of wine and returned with one of the folding armchairs. He set it up behind Bärger, not too close, but where he could watch the sheet of paper spread out on the drawing table. He sat down silently with a feeling that he should no longer interrupt.
In the meantime, the evening twilight had grown darker and Bärger turned on the drawing lamp over the table. Both men blinked for a moment when the lamp threw a bright circle on the light surface and at the same time the pale traces of the last of the daylight vanished from the window, now an unrelieved black.
For a while, nothing happened.
Bärger seemed to be looking at the calligraphic inscription that hung above his working area. There were four large black symbols under each other, heavy black on coarse paper, painted very hastily with a broad brush; or so it seemed to Jürgen. But Bärger wasn’t really looking at the symbols, but at something else, something somewhere beyond them.
Jürgen cleared his throat carefully.
Then he asked, “Is that really rice paper?”
Bärger didn’t seem to hear him. He didn’t answer, but instead took one of the white brushes from the bamboo cup and used it to drip a little water into the round, black dish in front of him. He picked up a bar of ink and, holding it in his fist like a knife, began to rub the ink, applying considerable force. He rubbed it in steady circular motions, occasionally adding a little water. The bottom of the dish began to fill with a dark black, shiny ink, and a strong pine scent spread through the room.
Finally, Bärger seemed to have enough. He placed the ink bar to one side, carefully selected a brush with long brownish hair and dipped it deeply into the jar full of water. Then he squeezed out the water over the plate with his thumb and forefinger, and dipped the now almost dry brush into the ink dish and let a couple of drops fall onto the plate.
Slowly, carefully, and using only the point of the brush, he mixed the water and ink. The glistening grey color of a storm cloud spread across the bottom of the plate. He added a little water once, which lightened the gray unnoticeably. Finally, after drawing some quick lines on a small sample piece of rice paper, he seemed to be satisfied. Then he turned back to the piece of paper in front of him.
Jürgen watched him carefully.
Bärger seemed to be totally focused and at the same time completely relaxed. He projected a feeling of immense confidence as he sat, the right elbow supported on the table, the brush loose in his hand. It seemed as if he were waiting for a signal that would be given to him by the blank sheet of paper.
Abruptly, Bärger dipped the brush in the water jar and lightly drew it down a linen cloth, which had been folded several times, to remove excess water. Then he rolled the brush across the flat rim of the plate with a circular motion to pick up a little of the rain cloud gray ink mixture. Finally, he dipped the point of the brush into the shiny black in the rubbing dish.
Near the lower left corner, he angled his brush across the paper and, holding it this way, moved it perhaps a hand-breath toward the top.
Jürgen was fascinated. It was one brush stroke, painted in a fraction of a second. But even so, he now saw the stem of a strong bamboo stem, so clearly that he felt he could touch it. The clear line had a dark shadowy edge, fading gradually away, and was lightest in the middle of the brushstroke and a little darker on the opposite edge. The rapid stroke had left a couple of long white streaks, like streaks of light falling on the stem of the bamboo. At its beginning and end, the brush stroke that had become a bamboo shoot thickened slightly to show the places where there were knots.
Without hesitation, Bärger applied his brush a second time, a little above the knot, and without touching the first stroke. He repeated this rapid motion a second, third, and fourth time, interrupted by carefully refilling the brush point, until the fifth and last stroke came to an obvious end toward the top of the sheet of paper.
Only now did Jürgen see that the brush strokes were not the same, but each stage was longer than the one below it, while at the same time, they seemed to become narrower. The line was not straight but was inclined slightly toward the right.
Bärger filled his brush again: dip in water, squeeze, take thinned ink from the rim of the plate, concentrated ink from the rubbing dish. On the picture, a second bamboo shoot rapidly grew right next to the first; a little more slender, and bending a little more to the right. This one also appeared to growing upward through the top of the painting.
The third was even more slender, placed next to the other two but a hand breadth further to the left, bent so strongly that it was covered by the other two as their stems crossed in the upper third of the picture, and then it reappeared behind them.
Bärger sat back to examine the picture. Quite obviously, it wasn’t even partially finished and yet, even at this phase, it already seemed to be a harmonious picture, full of tension and life.
Bärger rinsed out the brush in the water jar, dried it with the linen cloth and dipped it once again in the black ink in the rubbing dish, which had noticeably diminished.
He began to draw heavy jagged broken lines from the center of the picture toward the lower right edge. The shape of a cliff, or rather a large slender stone, leaning into the picture toward the left, seeming to grow gradually from the ground. The side of the almost dry brush wiped rough scratches in a seemingly hard surface. Now the three bamboo shoots stood in front of a stone, which seemed to have emerged at their feet.
Once again Bärger washed out his brush and wiped it dry.
While he had been painting the stone, the brush strokes of the bamboo had dried and become a little lighter. He dipped the point of the brush into the unthinned ink and now painted the knots in the same sequence as he had drawn the segments of the stems. The point of the brush made a little hook downwards and then swung in a flat curve to the right, continued, and then finished in another little upwards hook.
Now the three bamboo stems appeared to be strongly joined, full of tension against the edged rock.
This time, Bärger laid the brush to one side after washing it out. He picked up the bar of ink, dropped some water on the rubbing dish, and began to scrape ink again. Jürgen sat silently next to him and watched. His glass of wine sat untouched on the bookcase.
Bärger began to paint the leaves. He had prepared a very dark mixture of thinned ink on the plate, in which he now dipped his brush. He painted the leaves from their base to the points with an accelerating stroke which ended in the air above the paper and which gave the leaves a needle sharp point. They were groups of three and five of the lanceolate leaves, all pointing in more or less the same direction; a flat angle toward the right.
Wind, thought Jürgen. There was a strong wind and he saw that the shoots all bent in the same direction that the leaves pointed. He could almost hear their dry rustling.
The groups of leaves grew variably thicker. Bärger thinned the ink several times, and the leaves he drew became lighter, seeming to sink back into the picture. Brush in hand, Bärger leaned back and stared at the picture in which three thickly leaved bamboo stems leaned against the wind in front of a rock. He hesitated then dipped the brush in the ink dish again and began to dab loose groups of points on the paper, which ran into fringing clumps of moss.
For the last time, he used the thinned ink on the plate. Short vertical strokes in front of the rock and in the area of the bamboo roots became clumps of grass, making the ground visible. Then he washed out his brush, dabbed it dry, put it back in the cup, and turned around slowly to Jürgen.
“Here’s your bamboo picture,” said Bärger.
“Fantastic,” said Jürgen, and shook his head slowly. “Just fantastic,” he said again.
Bärger laughed.
From the cabinet, he took a small round porcelain box with the picture of a dragon on the lid, and a small, cubical, polished stone on top.
There was a vermillion paste in the box, which seemed to have fibers running through it. The cubical stone was a seal with a simply cut inscription in Chinese script.
Bärger looked carefully at the picture, which still looked wet and a little wavy. Then he pushed the seal forcefully into the red color and set his stamp in a small opening at the lower left of the picture next to the foot of the rock and the roots of the three bamboo stems.
“If I were any good, I would also be able to write a line from a poem for you. It would go here!”
With his finger he traced a line from the upper right of the picture down to about the middle.
“Perhaps you can find a Japanese to do it.
I call it, Bamboos in the Morning Wind.”
8
“It won’t be ready for quite a while yet,” said Bärger as they went back into the living room.
The light from the streetlamps shone onto the ceiling through the huge, curtainless window and bathed the room in a milky half-light.
“Leave it off,” said Jürgen as Bärger reached for the light switch. So they sat for a while, until their eyes could make out the details around them again.
Jürgen still hadn’t said anything else.
“I can’t make a real scroll picture out of it for you,” began Bärger once again. “First of all, I have no picture silk and second, I could only guess at how they were made. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any literature covering the process. All I really know is that, in China, the creation of scroll pictures is a separate craft.”
He finished his glass, poured some more, and leaned forward to fill Jürgen’s glass as well. However, Jürgen held his hand over his glass and shook his head.
“It still has to dry,” Bärger continued, “and you’ll find that it gets a little lighter.”
Then he explained that the extremely thin paper had to be reinforced by bonding it to a second lamination of the same kind of paper.
When Jürgen began to talk, at first he seemed to be searching for words.
“All the time, I had the feeling that you saw the finished picture in front of you before you painted the first line.”
“That’s more or less so,” Bärger nodded in confirmation. “But when the first line is drawn, the process runs by itself and each additional step influences the next one. It is as if the picture has a life of its own, as if it grows by itself, and I’m just there to help it along.”
“Help it along,” repeated Jürgen. “I suppose you could call it that. Why ever did you become an architect?”
Bärger was surprised.