Kintsugi
A short original fiction by Florence Castle. If you enjoy this piece, please consider supporting me with a ko-fi donation. The pottery wheel beside them lay still and clean, but the desk was coated in newspaper, stained with splatters of brown. Broken shards of a smashed charcoal grey dish were arranged carefully before them, and her lined hands, spotted with age, caressed the smooth fragments as she waited patiently.
‘It’s called kintsugi,’ the young girl sat beside her said. The girl’s hair was cropped short, a wave of dark curls just skimming over one eye, her nose ring glinting in the light. It was amazing how young ladies dressed now. ‘I learnt about it at college,’ the girl continued as she mixed a glittering powder into a resin. ‘Rather than try and hide the damage, it just becomes part of the story of the object - embracing the flaws and illuminating them. I think it’s quite lovely - thought we’d try it this week.’
The older woman frowned slightly at the girl. She was extremely familiar, and now that she said that, she was certain she had been here last week. ‘I’m sorry, my dear, I don’t recall who-?’
‘Lucy,’ the young girl reminded her, with a pleasant smile.
‘Yes. Of course. I did know that,’ she replied, waving a slightly flustered hand. She peered down at the little pot of resin. ‘And that’s gold, is it?’
‘That’s right. Biggest piece first?’ Lucy suggested.
She nodded, and held up the largest fragment of the bowl; it had shattered down the middle, one side into several smaller shards, but this side was untouched. She held it steady as Lucy delicately applied the golden resin onto the edge with a small brush.
‘I must say,’ she remarked, ‘I’m glad to see make do and mend coming back into fashion.’
Lucy grinned. ‘Yes. Nice to not just throw it away.’
She nodded sagely. ‘Everyone throws things away nowadays. I remember my mother helping me unpick one of my father’s old jumpers, so that we could reknit it into something trendier.’
Lucy raised her eyebrows, though she didn’t look up from the careful application of the gold. ‘What did you knit from it?’
‘A nice new cardigan for me; I told all my friends it was out of a catalogue though.’
She burst out laughing. ‘Did they believe you?’
‘Naturally.’ She picked up another fragment, and at Lucy’s nod, held it against the resin. Lucy leaned forward, continuing the repair. ‘We were very poor then,’ she told her vaguely. She could remember it quite clearly, the smell of the coal dust from the fire, the ancient mangle in the corner, the long queue outside the phone box on the street and the excitement when number fourteen got a telly. ‘Getting something new from a catalogue… that was… well, that was something worth lying about. A bit of glamour.’
‘I suppose they wanted to believe you,’ said Lucy.
‘Yes, I suppose they did.’ She looked down at the bowl, steadily coming back into shape, the resin hardening into golden streams across the smooth landscape of the bowl. ‘Everything was so exciting then, but that’s childhood really, isn’t it?’
‘Aren’t things exciting now?’ Lucy prompted.
‘Oh, well, I’ve seen it all, love,’ she replied. ‘And it moves too fast for me now to keep back. But I think back on those times a lot lately.’
‘Do you?’ asked Lucy quietly. ‘Like what?’
‘I think about my mother sometimes,’ she said. The fragment she had been holding was set enough to be released now, so she shifted her fingers to hold up another piece for Lucy, the thick blue lines of her veins sprawling across the back of her hands. ‘And my old school friends. And even the teachers sometimes. They just wander through my thoughts. I can remember my mother sitting by the fire, showing me how to unpick the threads from my father’s old jumper so we could reknit it into something new.’
Lucy blinked at her and nodded before looking back to the glistening gold roots that were growing steadily across the bowl. ‘That’s a lovely memory to have,’ Lucy said at last.
‘Yes,’ she said, remembering the mewl of the cat as they ignored its batting paw, the soft muttering of the radio, the glowing coals of the fire, the taste of the tea. Her mother’s hands, careful and precise, painstakingly picking away at the jumper.
‘Like this,’ she had said. ‘That’s it.’
‘All my friends were so envious,’ she continued, remembering Judy Mayhew’s wide eyes and parted lips, and how Binky Conlon had run her hands over the outstretched sleeve of the cardigan, secretly born from a tattered old jumper. Binky’s eyes had narrowed as they noticed the buttons, familiar from the window of the drapers, betraying that it was not brand new from a catalogue, but she had pretended not to notice her friend’s suspicion, parading up and down the cracked pavement as though in a beauty pageant. It had been her pride and joy, that cardigan.
‘One more piece,’ said Lucy, jolting her out of her memory.
‘Oh… yes…’ She kept her fingers pressed against the cool ceramic, with just a little pressure to keep the pieces in place, her gaze tracing the seams of gold that shone between the fragments. ‘You were right,’ she said. ‘It’s very pretty.’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Lucy brightly, holding the last piece in place. ‘Even more precious than it was before.’
‘Yes… I really am sorry for breaking it.’ She had just remembered, suddenly, the bump against the table that had left the deep purple bruise on her hip, the high pitched crash of the bowl on the floor. She supposed it had been last week.
‘Don’t be silly! I’m glad you did - I’ve wanted to try kintsugi for ages.’
Lucy took the bowl in careful, steady hands, and raised it onto a high shelf to set.
She rose too, her slow bones aching, but then paused, gazing around the studio. The clay splattered sink, the surfaces covered with old newspapers, the shelves and shelves of ceramics, some half-finished, some beautifully glazed, pots and plates and vases and sculptures of unknown figures or animals.
‘Did you make all these?’ she asked.
The moment hung like the clay dust in the air, swirling in the light that fell through the window. Lucy’s voice was steady, reassuring, calm. ‘You did, Nana,’ she said. ‘Remember?’
She looked down at her hands, and for a brief moment they were slick with wet clay, gently pinching the sides of a growing vase, feeling it shift and move like a living, breathing thing, born from her hands. ‘Yes,’ she said, her eyebrows raised as she continued to stare down at her hands. They were quite dry again, marked only by the dapple of age spots and occasional flecks of resin that had escaped Lucy’s paintbrush. ‘Of course I do.’