Requiem

abstracts in graphite; some have been done in pen and ink. The larger acrylics were done at home in my studio. My upcoming show will be a mixture of the three.

I add a second sketch pad, though it’s a joke to think I’ll fill two. This isn’t a trip to the other side of the planet. The overseas work was done—sporadically—during the decade before the idea became a proposal. River themes was the way Lena referred to my project, long before the work revealed its true shape to me.

I cast my memory back over countries visited, histories read, tales of rivers listened to and told. Not to mention the stack of drawings and paintings that has accumulated. My friend Nathan, who owns the gallery where I exhibit, suggested the show while I was still seeing the work in its separate parts.

“Join them up,” he said. “Why not?” And then he began to talk quickly, as if he had a plan, as if the words might stop if he slowed down. “Put the ink drawings and some of the acrylics together,” he said. “Just the river series. You select, you decide. The theme is fabulous, Bin, it’s a great sequence. Every painting, every drawing is different, but with a mood or form that sets it apart. Totally recognizable as an Okuma abstract. I especially love the sensation of movement. The work is poetic, lyrical. And we can link the exhibit with publication. Otto will do the catalogue, I’m sure of it—he has the money. You can add short personal accounts if you want text. Leave that part to me; I’ll discuss it with Otto. He’ll probably want to write the introduction himself, he knows your work so well. We’ll have the show and launch the book at the same time. We can celebrate, have a grand opening.”

Nathan’s gallery is close to the market, a modern building with three rooms and great lighting, great space. He and Otto have collaborated this way before. The exhibition I’ve agreed to is scheduled for the last week of November, seven months from now, and it’s true that most of the work is complete, drawings and paintings delivered. But Otto has begun to ask for extra information, details, discussions on individual pieces. I haven’t settled on a title yet, for the catalogue or the show—though it will be the same for both. We’ve tossed ideas back and forth since fall, and both Nathan and Otto are waiting for me to make up my mind.

All of this has become a disturbing weight in my head. But I’m thinking clearly enough to know that the trip, sudden though it might be, has to be a good idea. I need to get away from here, if only for a few weeks. I’m not in the mood for the company of friends—Basil excepted—and I don’t want to fly. It will be better to get behind the wheel and point the car west. I’d drive non-stop if I thought I could stay awake.

I recognize the buildup of energy that has to be released, energy I should be putting into my work. So, I argue with myself. Run away. You aren’t going to hurt anyone. Again, I have a flash of the old surge through the limbs, a feeling that I should be working on three canvases at once, an urge so strong, I could run in any direction and create while on the move. Until I’d be forced to stop and think, and then I’d start to feel like an imposter. There’s a fragile line between the desire to create and the act of creation. An idea can so quickly lose its lustre—and so easily disappear.

I look down at Otto’s most recent note, lying on my work table.

Would you add half a dozen lines to this, Bin—so we can write up a brief description for the jacket? Send it back as soon as you can. Your own words. We’ll tidy it up and do the rest.

He has already begun:

RIVERS (working title only, I know, I know)

EXCITING NEW OFFERING FROM CELEBRATED ARTIST

BIN OKUMA

After that, blank space.

Trying to reassure, no doubt. I’m betting that Nathan was in the background when the note was sent out. If I were to imagine conversations between the two men, I’d be weary. Uncertain. About the entire project—dual project, as it’s now become. But they are both loyal; I know this. And now that the momentum is underway, they’ll see the project through to the end. Even with Otto distracted by his new girlfriend.

Twice divorced, Otto readily admits his weakness for phases. The present phase began with dreams of geisha, he told me. And involves all things Japanese, including Miki, who emigrated from Japan a year ago and has now moved in with him. She is teaching him to make sushi on weekends, he says, and he’s become an expert. They eat out in Japanese restaurants twice a week, and I’ve joined them a couple of times. A month ago, Miki brought along a friend, a woman who works at the Japanese embassy. I didn’t comment when Otto called me, next day. He has also begun to track down woodblock prints, and attends auctions seeking more. He’ll be travelling to a Buddhist retreat for two weeks this summer while Miki visits her family in Japan. I swear he would turn Japanese if he could. I think of the years I looked into the mirror, never liking the person I saw, wishing to be anything—anyone—but. And marvel at the leap through time. So many Japanese Canadian men of my generation turned away from Japanese women. They made friends with and married hakujin— ”white” girls. And I found Lena. In Montreal. We found each other.

I should be happy to have the support of Otto and Nathan, happy that the show will take place at all. And it is time for a show. My work has been changing over the last four or five years. A natural evolution, Lena told me a couple of years ago. Look at you. An idea, a shape, a brushstroke, a mood: one begets another, begets another. It’s so organic, so much about form. It’s all about challenge and risk with you, isn’t it?

Challenge and risk. That sums it up. Or did. Because, lately, my biggest worry about the project, the one that has gnawed up the side of me with depressing persistence, is that the spirit of the whole has not been realized. Not on paper, not on canvas, not at all.

There was a time—it now seems long ago—when I cared about all of this.

I did not complete the catalogue description for Otto, nor did I send it back.

I think of Otto at the funeral, a quick pat on the arm, his hand resting on my sleeve. “It will be good for you to finish the river project, Bin. Get it done once and for all. You’ve dragged it behind you long enough. You need to sink into it again. It will give you something to do.”

His use of the word sink unnoticed by him, even as it was uttered. He didn’t mean to discourage or offend, I know. But while he was speaking, I could see over his shoulder the rectangular box that held Lena’s ashes, three feet behind him on a polished wooden stand. That was immediately after the service, before everyone assembled to walk through the cemetery’s convoluted paths that led to the “garden” where the ashes were to be interred. There was initial confusion before people fell into some sort of procession. Feet moving in different directions until a leader emerged and order prevailed. Who was that leader? Someone to the left of me, someone from the funeral parlour, perhaps. Voices were subdued, people half-nodded to one another. My brother and sister had arrived, and Lena’s family, of course. They had to be there. They were there. It must have been Greg on my left. We were trying to look out for each other. Keep moving. Silently. No obligation to say anything to anyone. Made insensible, insensate, made useless by grief.

I go to the rolltop desk in the corner of my studio and open the long drawer beneath its extendable surface. There’s a small Japanese scroll in there and, beside it, a manila folder with printing along the top edge: FRASER RIVER CAMP / REMOVAL FROM PACIFIC COAST. Lena gathered and compiled the contents. Her signature— familiar, flowing, at a forward slant—is written across the bottom. All the differences between us are blatant in that signature. My own, in comparison, resembles hidden tracks. I take the folder out of the drawer and shove it into my pack. A folder I have not, until this moment, intended to bring. Now it will be with me, whether I decide to look at it or not.

Keep river as your focus, Lena said, often enough. She repeated it like a mantra. Through the weeks and months and many summers that she, and sometimes she and Greg, accompanied me on my travels. This is an important project for you, Bin. Keep river as your focus and the work will get done.

I do a final check of the room from the doorway, glance back and see what I have not been looking for. Along the windowsill, my array of smalls, collected over the years. From Long River in Prince Edward Island, a sandstone quill holder, brownish red, plucked in its natural state. A tiny glass whale with jagged flukes from the Saguenay. A palm-sized burl picked up on a trail near the Saco River in Maine. A delicate