The Ink-Keeper's Apprentice (11 page)

"This has to be the most wonderful place in Tokyo," said Sensei, bending down and looking into the glass display case. "Every time I come here I feel like a boy in a toy store."

He was looking at the expensive English watercolors and French oil paints.

"Isn't it Noro Shinpei?" asked the clerk behind the counter.

"I'm afraid it is. I can't seem to stay away from your marvelous store."

"It's a pleasure to have you, sir. We received a large shipment of bristol boards since I saw you."

"I'm well supplied with those, thank you."

"Is there something special you're looking for then?"

"These oils here—I'd like two of everything."

Tokida nudged me with his elbow.

"Two of everything, sir?"

"Yes, meet Tokida and Kiyoi, so-called disciples of mine, two aspiring painters."

"This is indeed an honor." The clerk smiled at us. Tokida and I bowed to him.

"Have you been painting long?"

"They're only starting," answered Sensei. "What's a good brand these days?"

"Of course the French make the best, but if the young gentlemen haven't worked much in oils I should think the domestic paints would be quite adequate, and not so expensive."

"Then the domestic brand it is. Let me have two of these boxes, but if you don't mind I'd like to choose the colors myself. I also don't like the look of these brushes in the kit."

"No problem, sir. This kit is for display purposes, though a lot of beginners prefer it with our special discount. But then you're entitled to our twenty percent professional discount, sir. I'll get the boxes from the back room while you make your selections."

Tokida and I were speechless. We stared at the two walnut boxes the clerk brought out of the back room. Each had a metal lining inside, with compartments for brushes and paints and oil pots. Inside the cover was a folding palette with a thumb hole. Sensei called out the names of colors he wanted in the boxes, all English names that sounded strange and delicious—lemon yellow, carmine, rose madder. They sounded like the names of something cool to eat, like jellied fruit.

When everything was packed Sensei sent us out of the store with our packages. From the doorway we saw him produce a big wad of money from his kimono sleeve.

"How much do you think all this came to?" asked Tokida.

"I don't know, but a lot. He doesn't want us to know," I said.

"Well," said Sensei, joining us. "The rest is up to you."

"Thank you, sir." Tokida and I started to bow.

"No ceremonies. A token of my appreciation for all your hard work. Come, a celebration is in order. We're a few days early, I think, but let's celebrate Kiyoi's birthday," said Sensei and took us to a cafe.

It was obvious that Tokida talked a good deal to Sensei when I wasn't around, for I hadn't mentioned anything about my birthday to Sensei. I felt a little jealous of their closeness, but then it was mostly through Tokida that the master knew certain things about me—the things I would hesitate to tell him myself.

Tokida and I wasted no time. The very next weekend we took a train south, to a place from where we could see Mount Fuji. We walked on the country roads with our paint boxes slung from our shoulders and looked at farmhouses. Tokida was not impressed with the scenery; everything looked too ordinary, he complained. And I wasn't interested in painting the great mountain. We were looking for some exotic scene, some place that looked like the south of France van Gogh had painted, with windmills, red tiled roofs, and cypress trees that looked like flames. But in the end we set up our traveling easels and painted the drab farmhouses.

"This is harder than I thought," I said to Tokida. He came over and looked at the mess I was making, but for once he couldn't give me advice. We sat on the grass and laughed. He was happy in the sun, talking about van Gogh. I thought how good it would be to have a studio of my own one day, with a tall ceiling and big window that faced the north. Portraits are the hardest things to paint, and that was what I wanted to paint most of all.

***

At the end of August I turned fourteen and Mother gave me a camera. I'd been wanting a camera for a long time and the gift delighted me. It was a small camera with a black leather bellows, a small prism for a viewer, but no range finder. Hoping I was
focusing on the right place, I had to guess the distance between me and the subject to set the camera.

School began a few days after my birthday. I took up Abacus's offer and started to use the art room after classes. It was large and quiet, and I felt comfortable there. Many easels stood stacked in one corner, and along the tall wall were the statues of the discus thrower, Michelangelo's
David, Brutus, Venus de Milo,
whose nipples someone had blackened, and a couple of others I didn't know. It was the nearest thing to having my own studio. Though Venus was familiar to me, David was the first piece I tackled. I wanted to draw a male face for a change. His curly hair was hard to draw, and I was determined to learn to draw faces.

One day as I was drawing David with great concentration, a strange thing happened to me. I heard a kind of buzz inside my head, as if something had plugged up my ears, and I felt suddenly cut off from everything around me. My body went numb. I watched my hand holding a long stick of charcoal, moving up and down against the paper like the hand of a marionette. Then I felt myself wafting upward, leaving my body on the stool. Up and up I went, floating up to the ceiling. I was now a big eyeball, hovering against the ceiling, looking down at the room below me. I felt nothing, and saw everything—the cracks on the walls, paint smudges on the easels, the wide gaps between the wooden slats where the nails had come off. But strangest of all, I was watching myself, drawing like a mechanical man, with my right hand working on the paper.

I didn't know how long I had been up there when the sharp shrill of a whistle startled me. As in a dream I floated, falling and falling, back into my body. Suddenly I felt the weight of my raised arm. Like a sleepwalker I shuffled to the window and looked out to the playfield. Boys in striped shirts were playing soccer and the gym teacher was running with them, blowing his whistle. Had I been dreaming? Was I going mad? But there, leaning against the easel, was the drawing. It wasn't finished, but the rough shading and the outline looked like they'd been drawn by an expert. A shudder went through my body. It was the best drawing I had ever done and I had no idea how I had done it.

After that I locked myself in the art room every afternoon to see if it would happen again. It didn't happen often, but when it did, my drawings seemed too good to be my own work. It was as if I'd discovered something in me that I didn't know was there. Power to work magic. Did all artists experience such a thing? I wondered. If so, why hadn't I heard about it? Maybe it was too insane to tell anybody. Maybe it was the secret of art. I felt a great elation. Whatever it was, I would keep it to myself.

Also I was beginning to manage my time better and to concentrate on my studies more. But my social life at school, except for my casual friendship with Mori, didn't improve much. Mori and I occasionally had coffee together, and he taught me what he said was the proper way to drink it. He said a good cup of coffee had to be strong and rich enough to hold cream on the surface without mixing, and the coffee was supposed to be drunk through the layer of cream. According to him there were only three places in Tokyo where they served such coffee. He took me to all three, and teased me about some girl who was supposed to have a crush on me. But whenever I asked Mori who it was he would mention a different girl, so after a while I stopped asking him. We talked mostly about books, especially love stories, like
Lady Chatterley's Lover.
Mori paid a small fortune for a copy of that book, for it was banned in Japan, and lent it to me. I read one passage over and over until I could recite it backward. I kept the book three weeks.

At the end of October all the students in the second year went on a day's outing to the seashore of Chiba, a prefecture north of Tokyo. There were three classes in my grade, with about fifty students each, and it was only on those excursions that the students from the classes mingled with one another.

I took a whole roll of pictures that day, guessing distances and lens openings, hoping for the best. The girls posed for me willingly, and even many of the teachers asked me to take their pictures. But Mori was the most eager subject of all, though when I first showed him my camera he said it was a primitive piece of machinery.

I was happy and excited when all the pictures turned out well, and I pored over them with satisfaction. Mori was in many of the shots, always clowning with his big eyes. One picture in particular came out clearer than the rest—a photograph of three girls from Mori's class on the beach with the white sky in the background. The chubby girl on the right was grinning, holding a dead crab,
and the girl on the left had her eyes closed. I stared at the tall girl in the middle; her name was Okamoto Reiko, and she seemed to look back at me with a faint smile. I'd seen her many times before, but never paid much attention to her. Now I looked at her carefully; her hair came down to her shoulders, and the wind had caught it, revealing the oval shape of her face. There was stillness in her eyes, and her broad lower lip curved out. In my mind I rearranged her hair and gave her a big bun at the back of her head, then put a black velvet dress on her, with a plain round collar. My heart began to beat fast. The Degas painting! I had to see Reiko.

But it was Friday afternoon. Two whole days before I would see her in school. Then I remembered the little book the school had issued us when I was first admitted. The book had all the addresses and telephone numbers of students and teachers. A private telephone was expensive, but most of the students came from wealthy families. I was in luck—she had a telephone. I ran out of the house and rushed to the nearest public phone booth.

I wasn't used to calling people on the phone. I'd used it no more than a dozen times and felt like an idiot every time I had to talk into the machine. What should I say to her? Calling up a girl was almost unheard of. Maybe her mother or a housemaid would answer and report me to the principal; I was shaking from nervousness as I put a coin in the slot and dialed the number.

"Okamoto residence," said a woman's voice.

"Hello, may I trouble you to let me speak with Reiko-san?" I said in my best voice.

"May I tell her who's calling, please?"

"Kiyoi, no, I mean Sei. My name is Sei."

A pause.

"One moment, please," said the voice.

Sounds too formal, must be the maid, I told myself. She's taking an awfully long time coming to the phone ... probably lives in a mansion ... Looking out the glass panel I saw yet another man join the waiting line.

"Hello?" said a female voice.

"Okamoto-san?" I asked. She had a deeper voice than I expected, and I had a hard time putting her face to the voice.

"Yes?"

"This is Sei. I'm in Mr. Sato's class, you know, Goldfish."

"Yes?" she said again. She sounded as if she didn't know what I was talking about.

"Do you remember the picture I took of you on the beach the other day? Well, I got it back today and I'd like to give it to you."

"That's very nice of you. I'm sure the other girls would like to see it, too."

"I thought you might like to have yours first. It's really a good picture of you."

"Couldn't you give it to me at school?"

"Yes, but I didn't want to do it in front of other students."

"Couldn't you send it to me then?"

"I could, but I wanted to give it to you in person."

"How do you mean?"

"I thought perhaps you could meet me somewhere."

"Oh ... Mother wouldn't approve...."

"No, I suppose not. But couldn't you see me anyway? Without telling your mother?"

"I don't know ... Where?"

"You live in Setagaya, don't you? I can come to the station."

"Someone might see us."

"What about Shibuya then? In front of the dog statue."

"I don't know."

"I only want to give you the picture. I thought maybe we could have coffee somewhere."

"Oh, Mother wouldn't approve of that sort of thing."

"No coffee then. Can you see me just for a few minutes?"

"When?"

"Tomorrow morning?"

"I have a piano lesson."

"In the afternoon then?"

"I'll have to think about it."

"Look, I'll tell you what. I'll be at the dog statue at three tomorrow afternoon."

"I'll have to think about it."

"Three o'clock. I have to hang up now. I hope you'll come. Good-bye."

There were now six people lined up outside the booth and they greeted me with stony silence. Did they hear me trying to arrange a date with a girl? Well, I would never see them again.

I walked slowly back to my room, trying to remember what her voice sounded like. It would be thrilling to hold hands with her, even for a brief moment. Small children do it all the time. So do adults. But we weren't children anymore, and not yet fully grown. For us holding hands or meeting on our own simply wasn't done. But were all girls as dense as Reiko? Why couldn't she make up her own mind? Her mother wouldn't approve! Piano lessons! She was probably taking tea lessons and flower arranging, also. It was all too bad. She was the only girl I knew who looked like Degas's painting.

***

I arrived at the Shibuya station at two, full of hope and anxiety. I positioned myself next to a telephone pole across the square so I could keep a sharp lookout on the dog statue. And leaning against the pole I pretended to read a newspaper while rehearsing all sorts of lines in my head. Should I give her the picture right away, or wait till we got to an art gallery, or even a cafe? But then I didn't want to alarm her. I wouldn't think of doing something her mother wouldn't approve. A stroll through Meiji Park? A museum in Ueno? A movie would take too much time. If I could only see her for a moment perhaps I could talk her into meeting me again.