A huge tree stood over my new position of vantage, screening me from the sun and making me feel chilly. Near the water’s edge, on the other side of the pond, was an overhanging camellia tree in full bloom. There is something very heavy and dull in the green of camellia leaves, even when seen in the sunshine, and I would have never known this particular plant but for its blood red flowers, which are never attractive, though fiery and striking. I never look at camellia flowers in a deep forest or mountain without wishing that I had not seen them; their red is not a common red, but a red with something weird in it like a she-demon in a fair woman’s mask, who fascinates you with her black eyes and beauty and breathes poison into your pores before you know it. The pear blossoms in rain never fail to arouse a sentiment of pity; the aronia in pale moon light awakens love; but the camellia’s cheerless red bespeaks a dark poison and something ominous.
As I was looking at those dark red flowers, as if under a spell, one of them fell into the water below, absolutely the only thing in motion in the still Spring day. Presently another dropped. The eerie thing about the camellia flower is that it never breaks up when it falls, as do most other flowers, but keeps compactly together, never to let its secret out, as it were. But one more fell, followed by another, after an interval, by still another, and still another, like the minute gun. Surely, I thought, the whole surface of the pond would turn red, by and by. I fancied the water looked slightly reddish already where the flowers were floating. Would they ever sink? Their red would melt, they would rot, become mud and fill up the pool, until there would be no more Kagamiga Ike, but a dry land after thousands of years. Hoy! one more extra-big blood red flower fell, and drop, drop, drop, followed by others, never ceasing to pass into eternity.
I now became seized with a queer idea, how it would look to paint a pond like this, with a beautiful woman floating in its water. I went back to the spot where I first stopped and there continued to think on the imaginary picture. Then with a tingling sensation, rushed back to my memory, the joking remark of Nami-san of the hot spring hotel, yesterday, that she should like to have me paint her dead, but floating with a pleasant face in the water. Suppose, I thought, I made her float in the water under that camellia. I wondered if I could make my brush tell that the blood red flowers were forever dropping, dropping, dropping into the water on her, and she was forever lying in her watery bed, in her eternal peaceful repose. But it was no easy matter, I told myself, to give expression to the idea of superhuman eternity, without rising above the level of mortal humanity.
Besides, the greatest difficulty lay in the choice of the face. Nami-san, with her usual expression of a discordant mixture of derision, impetuosity and soft heart, would never do, I thought. The face must bear no trace of mental or physical agony; but one with effulgent lightheartedness would be worse. Perhaps I had better borrow another woman’s face; but the racking of my head revealed to me none to fit my imaginary picture, so that I felt that it must be Nami-san, after all. Yet there was something lacking in her to suit my purpose, and the tantalising part of it was how to make up for that something, it being impossible to work my whilom fancy into it to fill up what was lacking. How would it do to give the face a touch of jealousy? But that would make it look too uneasy. How about hatred, then? That would again be too strong. Anger? No, it would spoil the whole effect. Resentment for some particular cause is sometimes poetical and acceptable; but as an every day feeling, it is too commonplace.
I thought and thought and thought, and it suddenly flashed upon me that what was missing from Nami-san was pity and compassion. Compassion is a feeling unknown to the gods, and yet is one that makes man as near gods as possible. This was one sentiment which I had never yet seen reflected in Nami-san, and I was convinced that my picture would become an accomplished fact, the moment I saw it aroused by some impulse or other and flashed across her handsome face. For the moment, however, I had absolutely no idea as to when or if ever, I should have the good fortune to see it in her.
A bantering sort of smile and a knitted
