Jay Rubin

You know, our hands reach out by themselves for the things we like. There’s no way to stop them

Another time, when construction of the Nagara Bridge seemed to be running counter to the will of the local deity, His Lordship offered up a favorite boy attendant as a human sacrifice to be buried at the foot of a pillar. And then there was the time when, to have a growth cut from his thigh, he summoned the Chinese monk who had brought the art of surgery to our country. Oh, there’s no end to the tales! For sheer horror, though, none of them measures up to the story of the screen depicting scenes of hell which is now a prized family heirloom. Even His Lordship, normally so imperturbable, was horrified by what happened, and those of us who waited upon him – well, it goes without saying that we were shocked out of our minds. I myself had served as one of His Lordship’s men for a full twenty years, but what I witnessed then was more terrible than anything I had ever – or have ever – experienced.

In order to tell you the story of the hell screen, however, I must first tell you about the painter who created it. His name was Yoshihide.

Then one day, as Yoshihide’s daughter was gliding down a long outdoor corridor to deliver a note gaily knotted on a branch of red winter plum, the monkey Yoshihide darted in through the sliding door at the far end, in full flight from something. The animal was running with a limp and seemed unable to climb a post as it often did when frightened. Then who should appear chasing after it but the Young Master, brandishing a switch and shouting, ‘Come back here, you tangerine thief! Come back here!’ Yoshihide’s daughter drew up short at the sight, and the monkey clung to her skirts with a pitiful cry. This must have aroused her compassion, for, still holding the plum branch in one hand, she swept the monkey up in the soft folds of her lavender sleeve. Then, giving a little bow to the Young Master, she said with cool clarity, ‘Forgive me for interfering, my young lord, but he is just an animal. Please pardon him.’

Temper still up from the chase, the Young Master scowled and stamped his foot several times. ‘Why are you protecting him?’ he demanded. ‘He stole my tangerine!’

‘He is just an animal,’ she repeated. ‘He doesn’t know any better.’ And then, smiling sadly, she added, ‘His name is Yoshihide, after all. I can’t just stand by and watch “my father” being punished.’ This was apparently enough to break the Young Master’s will.

‘All right, then,’ he said with obvious reluctance. ‘If you’re pleading for your father’s life, I’ll let him off this time.’

The Young Master flung his switch into the garden and stalked back out through the sliding door.

After this incident, Yoshihide’s daughter and the little monkey grew close. The girl had a golden bell that her young mistress had given her, which she hung from the monkey’s neck on a pretty crimson cord. And he, for his part, would almost never leave her side. Once, when she was in bed with a cold, the monkey spent hours by her pillow, biting its nails, and I swear it had a worried look on its face.

Then, strangely enough, people stopped teasing the monkey. In fact, they began treating it with special kindness, until even the Young Master would occasionally throw it a persimmon or a chestnut, and I heard he once flew into a rage when one of the samurai kicked the animal.

Oh, that screen! I can almost see its terrifying images of hell before me now!

Other artists painted what they called images of hell, but their compositions were nothing like Yoshihide’s. He had the Ten Kings of Hell and their minions over in one small corner, and everything else – the entire screen – was enveloped in a firestorm so terrible you thought the swirling flames were going to melt the Mountain of Sabers and the Forest of Swords. Aside from the vaguely Chinese costumes of the Judges of the Dark, with their swatches of yellow and indigo, all you saw was the searing color of flames and, dancing wildly among them, black smoke clouds of hurled India ink and flying sparks of blown-on gold dust.

These alone were enough to shock and amaze any viewer, but the sinners writhing in the hellfire of Yoshihide’s powerful brush had nothing in common with those to be seen in ordinary pictures of hell

oshihide was a man who simply hated to have anyone pry into his business, and – the snake I told you about was one such case – he would never let his apprentices know what kinds of things he had in his studio. Depending on the subject he happened to be painting at the time, he might have a human skull perched on his table, or rows of silver bowls and gold-lacquered stands – you never knew.

Being attacked by the owl, however, was not what most frightened the lad. What really made his flesh crawl was the way the master Yoshihide followed the commotion with his cold stare, taking his time to spread out a piece of paper, lick his brush, and then set about capturing the terrible image of a delicate boy being tormented by a hideous bird. At the sight, the apprentice was overcome by an inexpressible terror. For a time, he says, he even thought his master might kill him.

Yoshihide, however, was not his usual self. Somewhat hesitantly, and with a doleful look on his face, he made a surprising request: ‘I want you to sit and work beside me while I sleep.’

The apprentice thought it rather odd that his master should be worrying about dreams, but it was a simple enough request and he promptly agreed to it.

‘All right, then,’ Yoshihide said, still looking worried, ‘come inside right away.’ He hesitated. ‘And when the other apprentices arrive,’ he added, ‘don’t let any of them in where I am sleeping.’

‘Inside’ meant the room where the master actually did his painting, and as usual on this day, the apprentice told me, its doors and windows were shut as tightly as at night. In the dull glow of an oil lamp stood the large folding screen, its panels arranged in a semi-circle and still only sketched out in charcoal. Yoshihide lay down with his head pillowed on his forearm and slipped into the deep sleep of an utterly exhausted man. Hardly any time had gone by, however, when the apprentice began to hear a sound that he had no way of describing. It was a voice, he told me, but a strange and eerie one.

He saw the owl, too, beating one wing in apparent pain as it flopped around the room. On the far side of the table, looking stunned, Yoshihide was raising himself from the floor and muttering something incomprehensible. And no wonder! That black snake was tightly coiled around the owl from neck to tail and over one wing. The apprentice had probably knocked the jar over as he slumped to the floor, and when the snake crawled out, the owl must have made the mistake of trying to grab it in its talons, only to give rise to this struggle. The two apprentices gaped at the bizarre scene and at each other until, with a silent bow to the master, they slipped out of the room. What happened to the owl and snake after that, no one knows.

‘No, My Lord, I am afraid the news is anything but excellent,’ said Yoshihide, his eyes still fastened on the floor in a way that hinted at anger. ‘The work may be largely finished, but there is still a part that I am unable to paint.’

‘What? Unable to paint?’

‘Indeed, sir. As a rule, I can only paint what I have seen. Or even if I succeed in painting something unknown to me, I myself cannot be satisfied with it. This is the same as not being able to paint it, does His Lordship not agree?’

As His Lordship listened to Yoshihide’s words, his face gradually took on a mocking smile.

‘Which would mean that if you wanted to paint a screen depicting hell, you would have to have seen hell itself.’