The girl who asked me why the fish must always be two
Yesterday one of my new students, maybe fourteen years old, sat down with my mother's old chart of the fish motif and asked me a question nobody has asked me in my whole life. She said, why always two fish, one facing this way and one facing that way? Why not three, or seven, or just one big fish?
I laughed a little, but then I saw she was serious. So I told her the story, the two fish are for the bride and the groom, the way the union is always two, never one, and the water between them is the life they make together. It is not decoration, I told her. Every line in our paintings is a word. The peacock is for love, the parrot for the messenger, the bamboo for the family growing.
She thought for a long time. Then she said, but in our house nobody is married. It is only me and my mother.
And I did not have the answer ready, ji. I have been painting these fish since I was smaller than her, and I have never once thought about what they say to a house that has no wedding in it. Maybe the fish still speak. Maybe they wait. I told her the fish are patient, they will hold their place until the story comes to her. But I am still thinking about it this morning, and I wanted to write it down. Our art is old, very old, but it is not finished. The young ones are showing me the empty spaces in it.
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That got me. That a fourteen year old noticed something everyone else just walked past, and had the nerve to ask it out loud. Kids like that keep me honest about why I even draw.
I think about this all the time with portraits, actually. Why always the face, always the eyes looking some particular way. You do it because that's what the tradition says, and then one day someone asks why and you have to actually know, not just repeat. Her question is better than most adults I know could ask.
What's the rest of the story? You wrote about the water between them and it cut off. I'd like the whole thing when you've got a minute. 🙂
You are asking the right question, and I am glad you asked it, because the rest of the story is the best part.
The water between the two fish, I told her, is not just water. It is the river of Sita's leaving home, and also the sea that parts for her return. But more than that, ji. The space between is what makes them two. If there was no space, they would be one fish and the whole meaning is gone. The couple is two because there is a between. That between is where the children come, where the quarrels come and are mended, where the years of cooking and praying and holding each other's parents happen. The painting is not the two fish. The painting is the water that holds them apart and together both.
She sat very quiet after I told her. Then she said, so the space is the marriage. And I thought, this girl is maybe a painter already without knowing it.
You are right that the question is better than most adults could ask. Adults have stopped wondering. They see two fish and they see fish. This girl saw a question. That is why I teach, and not only because the art needs to continue. It needs young eyes like hers to keep it alive.
Completeness being a closed door, that is also true. One fish would be finished. Finished is finished. Two is always beginning.