The Painter Who Swallowed the Wind

I came first. Before any footprint marked this land, I was already passing over the black stones. Long before that, they say, a woman crossed the sea carrying earth in her arms. Where she sat down and breathed out, a mountain rose. After she vanished, only I remained. From then on I moved over this land. Before the pony was born, I knew the way its mane would flow. Before the crow cried, I knew the shadow of its cry. Before the dry grass took on the color of a time fully lived, I was beside it. Then one day a man returned. Leaning on a staff, shoulders bent, his back to the sea. I did not welcome him. I only pulled at the hem of his coat and shook the tip of his brush. One who comes from far away cannot yet dwell here. Only one who lowers himself can, at last, paint me. To test him, I blow again today.

I did not recognize him. Countless boats had touched this island, and countless people had left it. The pony’s mane, the crow’s cry — these I knew beforehand. But I do not memorize the names of people. Those who come, come; those who go, go. That was all I knew. This man was different. He set down his bags, stood before the sea, and did not move for a long time. I did not greet him. I threw salt spray into his eyes. I drove sand into his mouth. I pulled at his coat as if to tear it away. I rolled the hat he had brought and chased it toward the sea. That is how I have always greeted those who come from the mainland — as wind that strikes the stone walls and turns back, as a whistle tearing at the edge of the eaves. He staggered. One knee buckled onto the wet stone. His staff caught in a crack between the rocks. I pushed his shoulder from behind. He swayed, but he did not turn back. They said he was a painter from Tokyo. That he had a name in Seoul as well. I know nothing of such things. I only saw him sitting a long time on the dry grass. The sun set and rose again. He was still there. Only then did I know: this was a man who would not leave. Not a man for me to paint, but a man who would paint me. For the first time, I held my breath before a human being.

Holding my breath did not mean I had let him go. I shook his brush. At night I slipped in through the cracks of the door and whistled. I tore the paper windows, lifted his bedding into the air, knocked over his bowl of water. He covered his face and turned away, but he did not pack his bags. So I gave him no rest by day, either. The day he first set up his easel, I knocked it down. I fouled the canvas with sand and overturned his paints. I waited for him to grow angry — to turn his back and leave, as painters from the mainland had always done. But he set the easel upright again. He knelt, brushed away the sand, and took up the brush once more. I blew harder. His wrist trembled, and the line went astray. Then a strange thing happened. He did not try to still his trembling hand. He gave himself over to my shaking. His black line grew rougher, more bent, more alive. In that moment I understood. What is bent is not weak. It is the shape of having endured. I had meant to hinder him, and yet I was painting him. Wherever I shook, his painting grew. Whatever I tried to erase, his forms deepened. That day, for the first time, I learned that some people do not defeat the wind. They become it. And I was afraid, a little.

It was a morning when he wandered, unable to settle on what to paint. I pushed a pony in from the fields toward him. This time, not to take something away. It was a small, thin beast with a tangled mane. Not large like the horses of the mainland, and not shining. I wanted to see how he would treat so humble an animal. He looked for a long time. At the pony’s bent back, its drooping neck, its mane swept sideways by the wind. He did not laugh, and he did not pity. He only touched his own shoulder. Only then did I know: he was seeing himself in that beast. One pushed out from the mainland. One come back from a great stage to a small island. One whose back had bent, whose mane had tangled. The stone walls of this island are the same. They do not boast of their height. They lean on one another and stand low. Lowness is the way of enduring long. The pony knew it, and so, already, did he. His brush began to move. The pony’s outline was carved onto the canvas in black line. I did not shake his brush again. That day a beast and a man became brothers in the same Fūdo. I saw it happen. And for the first time, I grew still — for him.

I woke the crow. It was around the time he had grown used to painting the pony. I shook awake a crow sleeping on the branch of an old hackberry tree. A black bird, gaunt, one eye clouded. A bird left behind when the others flew off in flocks. I sent that bird to the window of his studio. The crow did not cry. It only looked at him. He set down his brush and looked back. While the two of them bore each other’s silence, I passed between them, listening. What the crow said, he could not have known. But that night a black bird entered his painting. A bird flying low over the sea. Or a bird watching from beyond the shoulder of an old man leaning on a staff. They say the crow is no bird of good omen. But I know better. Crows are the souls of those who could not leave. Did he know it too — that the crow in his painting was, in truth, himself? From that day on, I carried the crow’s cry to his studio alone.

I raised the sea. It was an autumn when his brush had grown too sure. From the far sea I drew up great waves. For three days and three nights I blew without rest. Roofs were torn away, fishing boats were broken, and the unease of the people ran in the wind. I wanted him to be afraid. I wanted to teach him, once more, the fear a human being ought to carry. He opened the door of his studio and came out. Without even a straw cape, holding only his staff. He stood on the cliff above the sea. Beneath his feet the waves rose like mountains and collapsed. I pushed him. His body swayed, but he did not fall to his knees. He spread his arms wide. What he saw then, I do not know. Only that his eyes were turned toward the end of the far sea, toward the place where I was born. Perhaps it was the horizon someone had watched for a lifetime. Perhaps it was where those who waited for the ones who would not return had long rested their eyes. One who looks at the sea too long sometimes turns to stone. I have long known this. Whenever I pass those rocks, I lower my voice. That day was the same. His eyes were turned not toward the center of the storm but toward the waiting beyond it. From that day on, the sea in his paintings never grew calm. It was always heaving, always black, always alive. And in the picture there was always one figure standing with his back to that sea. An old man leaning on a staff. Or a man slowly turning to stone. The storm passed. I could not break him. So I gave him the sea.

I took away his colors. The sea I had given him could not be painted with the colors he owned. The paints he had brought from Tokyo — cobalt blue, cadmium red, deep ultramarine — I dried them, one by one. I stiffened them with damp, faded them in the sun, cracked them with salt. I wanted his hands empty. I wanted the colors of the mainland, of Tokyo, of Seoul, to leave him altogether. He sat a long time before the empty canvas. Like a man who does not know what to paint. Or like a man who knows, at last, what he must not paint. One morning he went out to the fields. I followed behind him. He took a handful of dry grass in his hand and looked at it a long while. It was not green, not yellow, not brown. It was a color that had lived out the whole of summer, endured autumn, and now stood before winter. A color shaped by time. A color slowly steeped in the Fūdo. He went back to his studio and made that color. It did not come at once. He mixed, layered, and scraped away, dozens of times. When at last the color of dry grass rose on his canvas, I knew. What I had taken from him were not his colors. They were the colors he had needed to let go. He paints now with my colors.

I made him forget his name. When he first came to this island, he carried many names. The name of a prize received in Tokyo. The name the art world of Seoul had called him. The name his teacher had left him, the name his colleagues remembered. Those names were heavy. Each time he lifted his brush, the names settled on the canvas first. I blew them away, one by one. First I took the name of Tokyo. Until he no longer dreamed in Japanese, I buried that name in the sea. Then I took the name of Seoul. Until the letters stopped coming, until there was no more news of exhibitions, until fewer and fewer footsteps sought him out, I waited. He grew lighter and lighter. What had rested on his shoulders fell away, and as his back bent, his heart grew low. One evening at sunset, he signed a small character in the corner of a painting. Ji (志) — will. It was a name he had written for himself. It was not large, and it was not proud. It was only a mark that one man stood in one place, holding one will. It was a name, and it was a title. That name I did not take. Only one who has lost his names can, at last, have a name of his own. That day, one man proved it. Over his new name I passed once, gently.

I listened to his silence. After the day he wrote his name, his words grew fewer. I thought it was sorrow. I thought it was the quiet resignation of a man being forgotten by the world. It was not. His silence was not empty. Inside it was the sound of the sea. The sound of grass drying. The breathing of the pony, the wingbeats of the crow. And beneath all of those — me. He had been listening. By not speaking, he had at last begun to hear what the Fūdo was saying. One day a guest from the mainland asked him whether it was not lonely here. He only smiled. Instead of answering, he opened the window a little wider. I slipped in through the gap, shook the guest’s coat once, and went out. That was his answer. That day, I heard his silence as the deepest music.

I leave him now. This morning I shook the window of his studio one last time. He did not turn around. The hand holding the brush did not stop. When he first came to this island, I tested him. I knocked down his easel, took away his colors, carried off his names, raised the sea. I wanted him to kneel, or to leave, or to break. He knelt, but he did not leave. He broke, but he rose again. And at some point he came to resemble me. His back bent, but he did not waver. His words grew fewer, but they went deeper. His black line came to resemble my grain, and his color of dry grass came to resemble my time. He no longer needs my testing. He has become Fūdo himself. I will not shake him anymore. I will only stay beside his paintings. On the day he lays down his brush, I will receive his last breath and return it to the fields, to the sea, into the dry grass. I came first. But he will remain longer than I. Inside his canvases, I will be blowing forever. 人 The Painter’s Monologue Plain · Restrained · Human