After he had been spray painting in the park for a few months Utei acquired two apprentices and changed his routine.
On his days off he would come to the park earlier and sit and wait by his blanket. Then his apprentices would show up, each in a homemade black robe. They would move at Utei obliquely, carefully circling rather than approaching the master directly, and they would bow in his direction, more or less, and end up, one on either side leaning against him. One Sunday, the MWL noticed that the black girl whose name was Cindy had a little table of her own. Then a few weeks later that the other apprentice, Gregory, had a table of his own.
On the girl's table was a sign in Japanese script that the MWL could see had taken prodigious labor. It said "little painting" as far as the MWL could tell. Gregory's table had a fragment of a mirror standing up, pressed into the wood, On the back of the mirror scratched into the reflecting surface were the Japanese characters for "photograph" or "facsimile copies."
The MWL was somehow not surprised that Utei had attracted an apprentice or two. After spending some time with the master the MWL had considered asking if he could become an apprentice himself, but Utei anticipated the request just as he was ready to make it, and said something like, "your path is to be an apprentice without a master." Utei had a habit of speaking obscurely when it served his purpose even though he had an excellent grasp of colloquial English. It was not clear exactly what he said except that it came down to no.
The Man with the Ladder was surprised at the particular apprentices that Utei finally acquired. He once asked Utei why he had selected these two people as his apprentices.
"Didn't pick them," he said, "were picked for me. Very little to say about it," he lamented. "I would have liked a Swedish blonde," he said, making sharp, well defined gestures describing the shape of the apprentice he would have preferred.
"Apprentices are picked to continue the education of the master. They are always chosen so that both the apprentice and the Master learn, one from teaching one from being taught. "Who does what?" he asked, merely posing the question and not expecting or waiting for an answer. "It is a great gift to someone who is learning to have a student from whom he can learn."
None of this explained what the MWL wanted to know, and he couldn't get over the feeling that Utei had chosen his apprentices badly. One was a black girl he remembered seeing only once in the park. She was on a skateboard with bright yellow earphones that swallowed her head but she seemed familiar beyond what his memory could account for. The second was a slight, intense boy who swaggered and postured as he roamed the park. The MWL thought they were unlikely apprentices to a Zen master who painted on air.
The MWL tried to spend some part of every Sunday in the park but inevitably there were Sundays when the claim of accumulated, postponed work at home had to be honored and he spent Sunday piecing together the jig saw puzzle of fallen tiles or painting a wall.
It was when he returned to the park after one of these hiatuses, that one of the other park workers he knew, brought him a letter from Japan that was addressed simply, The MWL, The Park, New York City, N.Y.
The letter seemed beautifully typed on rice paper and it was only after he read it a few times that the MWL realized that it was not typed at all but done with a tiny brush.
"I have come and gone and not left at all," it said. "My apprentices are better than their master. I have learned all I could stand to learn from them. Would you please keep an eye on them while they are in the park. I hope your journey is completed well. Utei." Actually there was no signature on the letter only the reproduction of the little sign that Utei kept on his table when he was doing his spray painting.
After he received this letter from Utei the MWL spent a much time with the young masters as he could. It was during this in loco parentis role, that they told him how they came to become Utei's apprentices. He learned the girl's story first.
"You remember the time I nearly hit him with the skateboard?" Cindy asked. "That was the beginning. Actually I wasn't after him. I was after you and that damned ladder. Only there he was, and he was a better target than you. I thought, damned Jap. Just sitting there. So I headed for him. Only I couldn't quite hold the skateboard to where I had set it. I didn't really want to hurt him, only skid by him and throw up some dust. I had this beat going in my head from the earphones.
"A weird thing happened. I mean besides the fact that I couldn't hold the skateboard straight, which never happened before. When I went by him the earphones went dead and there was the loudest, longest quiet I ever heard. It was as if the earphones were producing pure silence. I thought they broke, but when I got past him, the sound poured in again just where it had left off.
"It was spooky. I went home and I swore to stay away from the Jap. I thought he was a man witch. But I was drawn to him. For a while I just would circle him on the skateboard when he was sitting in the park. Every once in a while I would test out the spook, you know, get close enough to kill the sound in the earphones. It worked every time. Then I started to sit way off to the side and watch him. It was the first sitting I did for a long time. Couldn't sit in school. Tossed me out when I was eleven. When you learn to sit come back, they said. I never did.
"I didn't know what I was doing watching this Jap shooting paint into the air. He was getting three bucks a squirt so I figured it wasn't a bad hustle, but thinking about it I felt angry. Why should a Jap rake in all that money for squirting paint in the air? They have the cars, the T.V.'s, the cameras, why should they have the painting too? I painted a little," she confided in the MWL. Suddenly the MWL remembered where he had seen her before and shuddered, but tried not to let the memory interfere with his listening.
"I moved a little closer and got a little noisier," she continued.
"For two Sundays whenever someone would come up to him I would yell, 'it's just a trick Jap paint that's all, save your money.' The third week it was overcast and looked like rain, you know. The park was nearly empty. I yelled at him for most of the day. Then in the early afternoon he turned to me and made moves like he wanted me to come over. I was scared but I went.
"He didn't say anything and there was that quiet. 'What kind of trick paint is that?' I asked straight out.
"'Not a trick paint.'
"'Bull,' I said, 'it's a trick jap paint.'
"'You think so,' he said quietly. He reached down and rummaged around that satchel of his and pulled out a glass. "Go to the fountain. Fill this with water.
"I went and did as I was told. Somehow I wasn't afraid, only angry at the hustle. He was so cock sure of himself. I brought the water back. 'Watch,' he said, and filled his mouth with water. He turned and emptied his mouth in the finest mist I ever saw. He made his mouth into a can of spray paint. There was no sun in the sky to speak of that day. But the water he sprayed out of his mouth hung in the air and broke into the brightest sun colors I had ever seen.
"'It's a trick,' I yelled. I was terrified. I had never seen any colors like the ones that hung in front of me. They made a pattern I remembered, but couldn't pin down.
"'It's a trick,' I yelled again. 'There was something in the glass. You're a sneaky jap,' I screamed.
"'Yes, and you don't know how sneaky,' he said.
"'You think it was something in the glass,' he said to me quietly.
"'Yeh,' I insisted. 'You put something in the glass.'
"'You're sure?' I was a sure as I was terrified, if not more so. 'Sit,' he told me. I sat.
"You know that robe he always wore," she continued. "He untied the belt that held it together. At first I thought he was going to hit me with the belt for being a bitch. Then he hoisted up the robe and it dawned on me what he was really going to do.'No, No,'I yelled. 'I take it back, it's not a trick.' But I couldn't stop him. He hoisted that robe up nearly over his head. He was facing away from me into the wind and I thought, 'shit', I wanted to look away but I couldn't. And there was this naked Japanese behind, wiggling in the wind and in the other direction, again, a mist was being sprayed into the air, more brightly colored that the water he had sprayed from his mouth. It hung there and made the same pattern of gorgeous colors and this time recognized it.
"I cried after that. And he put his hand on my shoulder but it didn't help and he let me cry until I couldn't cry any more. After I stopped he just pointed with his head to the misty curtain in front of me and we both sat there until it dissolved. Then, in a sly voice he said to me, 'when you know how to spray paint, you know how to spray anything', and got up and bowed a little bow, collected his table and went off without saying another word.
"Next Sunday I was waiting for him when he came to the park. I sat about ten feet away from him through the afternoon, through all of the painting he did that afternoon. We didn't say a word. When the last customer had gone and it was clear that he would make no more paintings that day he looked in my direction and made a move I interpreted as his wanting me to come over. He didn't say a word, just rustled around in that satchel and pulled out one of those little hand brooms and handed it to me and pointed at the ground. I had no idea what he wanted but he refused to give me directions and waited until it dawned on me that he wanted me to sweep the grass. It seemed stupid to sweep grass which was covered with spray paint but as soon as it was clear that that was what he wanted me to do, I did it. It was odd. The paint came off the grass as if it were flour. It had very little color. I picked it up, and we put it in a cup someone had conveniently discarded and threw it away. After that I was his apprentice for real.
Utei's second apprentice was completely different. He about the same age as Cindy, scrawny, with bright red hair. There was an intensity about him that made him seem as hard as the wooden table he sat behind. He swaggered instead of walking, as if he owned the park. His name was Gregory.
"The very first time I saw the master," Gregory told the MWL, "he was in the middle of a painting. I saw exactly what he was trying to do but I couldn't understand why he was doing it so badly. There was this 'thing' in front of him . It was there clear enough, even though I could not make out exactly what it was, and there was this little Japanese man, trying to cover it with paint. It was writhing and twisting and I could see that covering it all over was not easy. But he was leaving out what seemed a big piece of it.
"I walked over to him. I didn't want to interrupt but it was so clear that he had completely overlooked a section of it that I just couldn't hold myself back. 'Hey', I yelled, 'you missed a piece'. He just ignored me.
"He never did cover that piece. What fascinated me was how he could avoid it. There was paint everywhere. He had forced it into crevices of the thing, whatever it was, and he had managed to cover spots that were wispy and tenuous and weaving in and out like a snake. Yet here was a flat, tilted, obvious section like the top of a box that didn't have a spot of paint on it. It fascinated me. I watched him for the rest of the day and there was some piece of every painting he did, an obvious piece, that he left unpainted.
"I came back each Sunday after that, taking a seat at what seemed to me to be a show of incompetence. I yelled at him a couple of times that he had missed a piece, but he didn't take any notice. I even tried to talk to him once or twice but he paid no attention to me, as if I were speaking a foreign language. Finally I decided enough was enough and I would just show him.
"It was simple enough. I made up my mind that the next time he was almost finished with a painting I would just go up and take a can of paint and cover the section he had left uncovered and that is what I tried to do. He had just finished one of his paintings and was in the middle of a conversation with his customer when I strolled by and picked up one of the cans of paint from the table and turned to cover the piece he had left unpainted.
"I don`t know how he did it. His back was towards me. He reached up and grabbed my hand. I have never been held that way before. I could not move my hand, or the body that was attached to it. I stood there for what seemed like an hour in the grip of this little man who turned his head and looked at me over his shoulder. 'Not yet,' he said, 'not yet' and he held me while he finished talking. Then after the person went away he seemed to spring up in a single motion. 'Look,' he whispered to me, 'look,' and he pointed my hand with the can of paint in it, to the section I had intended to spray.
"What looked so solid before, appeared, as he held my arm and pointed to it, more like an open window from which the paint he had sprayed, seemed to come. It was not flat and fixed, but moving in on itself, as if it were the orifice of a living thing. It was, from this perspective, my own hand pointing it out to me, the only shifting moving place in a curtain of fixed surfaces. 'You do not see what is out there. You see your imagination. You must learn to see before you paint,' he insisted, 'really see.'
"He let go of my wrist and I put the paint can down and ran off. I was confused and embarrassed.
"I came back the next Sunday and watched him, and the Sunday after that. The third week, after he was done for the day, he motioned me over and picked up a can of paint from the table. Then he turned to me, 'This is the way you hold the can of paint,' he said. 'Do you see?' I saw nothing.
"'You hold it this way,' he said, 'otherwise accidents can happen.' He repeated, accidents and as if to demonstrate, he 'accidentally' hit the cap sending a spray of paint off to the side of me. I did not notice anything there except the paint hung in the air forming a pattern which shifted and glided next to me. It seemed to be misshapen, ugly, and fearsome. He pointed off to my side. 'Accidents,' he repeated.'
"'You believe there is something out there; it is not true,' he insisted. 'There is nothing there. You mistake your imagination for something out there thrashing.' He repeated, again and again, that painting on air was not covering something that was out there with paint and I insisted more vehemently that there was something out there and that only a blind man could miss it, and that painting on air didn't seem to be to be anything else than putting paint all over it, no matter what you said you were doing.
"I learned to hold a can of paint to avoid accidents. With Cindy, who was his other apprentice, I swept up, shook the cans, cleaned out the nozzles and wiped off the table. Mostly we watched Utei. As much as I learned, he and I disagreed fundamentally about what was where.
"I think he almost gave up on me. Then one Sunday morning he called me on the phone. It was 4 a.m. 'Meet me at the park,' he insisted. 'It's the middle of the night,' I said. 'I know what time it is,' he replied. My mother was furious and suspicious, and didn't want to let me out of the house, but I went.
"It was still pitch dark when I got to the park. He was sitting there behind the table as if it were 2 o'clock on a sunny, Sunday afternoon. I could hardly see him.
"'You believe that you see something out there which you spray paint over.'
"'Yes, I am certain of it, I replied.'
"'Can you paint what is out there now?' he asked.
"'It's pitch black,' I answered. 'You can't see a thing.'
"He did not say anything only grabbed my arm and pushed me gently to the ground. 'Watch,' he said quietly.
"From the table he took two cans of paint and began to dance in front of me spraying the air. I could not see him or the paint, only hear his feet doing a little dance on the ground, and the imprisoned paint being liberated into the air.
"He moved rapidly and surely in the pitch darkness. Then he was by my side. 'We will wait,' he said.
"We sat there for two hours. I was sleepy but he kept me up telling me stories about his childhood in Japan. I was sure he was making them up. He talked that way until the sun peeked into the sky. We had been facing west and the sun made its appearance as shadows of the trees by our back. 'Now,' he said, grabbing my arm, 'now look.' I turned.
"In front of me was a painting on air. The paint covered something like skin covers a person but there was no something there. I believe not a molecule had moved since he put it there. Its outlines were clearly defined by an edge of paint. The colors were magnificent. I couldn't take it. I cried like a baby.
"'Don't concern yourself, You will learn to see,' he said. 'Painting is not clothing a naked body, or covering a form with color, or filling in an outline. It is something else. Do not concern yourself. You will learn.' He seemed to let the painting go because at that moment it collapsed as if he had been holding it up. 'You must forswear illusions even your own especially your own, he said.'"
The MWL made a copy of the Utei's letter and cut out the reproduction of the sign that was his signature and pasted it on a envelop and sent him a letter.
"Dear Utei. I have kept my eye on your apprentices as you asked. They have comforted me in return. I have learned from them that a large object may be illuminated by the smallest lights. Sometimes you see objects by the way they cast shadows and sometimes by the way shadows fall on them. Your apprentices have convinced me that spraying on air is easy but spraying on what Utei sprays on, is impossible. Yours, the MWL."