The Ink-Keeper's Apprentice (2 page)

"Then I accept you as my pupil. But there's one thing, Kiyoi. Any talk about money and out you go; is that clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Don't worry, Kiyoi, I'll make you earn your keep." He laughed. "Tokida here is three years older than you. At least that's what he tells me. Think of him as your partner, an older brother."

Tokida gave me a thin smile. I knew very well he resented me for barging in to share his master. I had read about him in the paper, the youngest budding cartoonist.

"If you have nothing else to do, stay for supper," said my new master.

"Thank you, sir, but my family is expecting me," I lied, and bowed several times to the two of them and walked out of the door as calmly as I could. I floated down the dusty staircase, swam through the hallway, and burst out the front door.

Puddles were still there on the pavement, but now the rainbow of the oil slick caught my eye. The speaker was still blasting away, but now it sounded as though it was celebrating my triumph. I looked up at the ugly building and somehow the shabbiness of it seemed wonderful.

Grandmother was surprised to see me. I didn't visit her often, except to receive my monthly allowance and to see my mother when she visited her once a month. Grandmother was wearing her usual dark kimono. Even in the heat of summer she would always wear dark garments. She was a tiny woman, but in spite of her fragile appearance her steely eyes frightened many people.

"Why do you waste your money on such things?" she said when I handed her the box of chestnut cakes.

"I thought you might enjoy them, Grandmother," I said, knowing her weakness for them. Not even her usual gruffness was going to annoy me today.

"Shall I make a pot of tea for you?" I asked.

"Put the kettle on; I will pour the tea," she said.

Grandmother never allowed anybody to pour tea in her house. Besides, I was not good at it. I went into the kitchen and saw two gleaming sardines on a piece of newspaper by the sink. A bunch of spinach lay next to the fish.

"Stay for supper," she ordered when I joined her in the tea room.

"I can't, Grandmother, I'm only staying for a few minutes."

"One would think you had something important to do. And what's the occasion? Why the visit?" she asked suspiciously.

"No occasion. I thought I'd come and see how you are. I'm in good health, and I still have most of the money you gave me."

"Don't be fresh. You're too thin. Not eating properly. And look how pale you are."

"I've been studying too hard," I said.

"Ha! That's what you say. Drawing again, I'm sure. I didn't give you permission to live alone so that you could draw silly pictures. Studying too hard, indeed. I wept over your last report card, Koichi. I wanted to crawl into a hole, when I looked at your dreadful scores in front of all the other parents. Dreadful!"

"I'm trying my best, Grandmother, really I am. Have you heard from Mother?" I changed the subject.

"Yes. She'll be here at the end of the month. She's a hard-working woman, Koichi."

"Yes, I know," I said, and opened the package of sweets. Grandmother could never resist the jellied chestnuts. I got the kettle of boiling water from the kitchen and Grandmother took out the tea things from the cupboard. She poured the hot water into one pot, let it cool for a moment, and then poured it into another pot with tea leaves in it. It was always the same. Grandmother sipped the brew noisily. Drinking tea was one of the few things that made her happy. She bit into a chestnut cake and for a moment I thought her eyes softened. I felt like I was watching a tiger. She would never be more relaxed than now. I took a chance.

"Grandmother, have you ever heard of Noro Shinpei?" I asked her.

"What kind of name is that?"

"A pen name. He's a famous cartoonist."

"What a disrespectful name. Slow Soldier ... it's not even amusing. Slow Soldier? Was there something about him in the paper recently? And a boy from Osaka?"

"Yes, the same one," I said quickly. "Tokida is the boy's name. Do you remember, he walked for sixteen days to come to Tokyo and Sensei—I mean, Noro Shinpei." In my mind I was already beginning to refer to Noro Shinpei as a sensei, a master.

"Yes, I remember," said Grandmother. "It was an unusual story. Why do you ask?"

"No reason. I wondered if you know who he is. I think he's the best cartoonist there is."

"And who cares about a cartoonist?"

"Don't you think I should become a cartoonist?" I asked.

"Don't talk rubbish. Your mother is not sending you to a good school so you can draw silly pictures. A cartoonist, indeed! Remember your blood, Koichi."

"I'm only joking," I said.

That was her favorite expression, Remember your blood. She came from an old samurai family. So had Grandfather. His ancestors had been proud warriors for four hundred years. But the Second World War had made my grandparents paupers. Grandfather was dead now. My mother was supporting Grandmother and me. And Grandmother still held on to old traditions. Such things as a good family name, genteel upbringing, and good schooling were important to her. And most of all, our lineage.

Suddenly I wanted to leave Grandmother's house at once. I
had
to tell someone about my sensei.

"May I take another set of sheets?" I asked. "I think there's an extra set upstairs." Grandmother nodded without looking up.

I went upstairs to the small six-mat room and found a set of sheets and a pillowcase in the closet. The room was the way I'd left it almost a year ago. It had been my room since I'd come to Tokyo to go to school, and now the only trace of my stay there was some thumbtack holes in the wall where I used to pin my drawings.

"Stay for supper; I bought two fish today," said Grandmother when I came downstairs.

"Thank you, but I really should be going," I said, and looked at my watch. "I have some studying to do."

"I thought this was spring vacation."

"Yes, but they gave us a lot of homework."

"Do as you wish. But make sure you eat something."

"Yes, I will. I'll see you at the end of the month," I said, and left her.

It was a great relief to leave Grandmother's house. Sometimes I felt like shouting at her. I didn't know why I had gone to see her in the first place. I was used to being alone, but today I felt the need to talk to someone. Grandmother was the only relative I had in Tokyo, and I didn't have a close friend. I had thought perhaps there was a chance Grandmother would understand that I wanted to be a cartoonist. I should have known better.

But even so, nothing could dampen my spirits. Perhaps Grandmother will soften someday, I thought as I walked on the busy street toward the train station. I traced in my mind every detail of Sensei's studio, repeated some of the things he had said, and chuckled to myself.

For no reason I stopped in front of a restaurant and stared absentmindedly at the sample dishes in the window. There were rows of plastic noodles, meats, and fish cakes made out of rubbery material, looking ghastly in the milky light of fluorescent lamps. Ordinarily the sight would have sickened me, but suddenly I felt hungry. I'll order the most expensive dish, I said to myself, and walked in.

***

It was dark when I got home. I squeezed around my bicycle that took up most of the porch, kicked off my shoes, and went in. I'd been living there by myself since I'd left Grandmother's house. The square eight-mat room, about twelve by twelve feet, had a flush toilet by the porch, a washbasin, a tiny closet, and a big sliding window. There were no cooking facilities so I ate all my meals out. It was housing for the poor, the kind of place the old-time residents of Tokyo used to call the eel's bed.

With a good deal of satisfaction I looked around my room in the harsh light of the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was quiet. The only noise came from the round alarm clock with
two bells on top, beating like my heart. I looked in the chipped mirror above the washbasin and grinned at myself. Then I filled the kettle and turned the hot plate on. Grandmother had given them to me; she said the hot plate would keep me warm on cold winter nights.

I lit a candle and turned out the overhead light, and thought about the day. Often I read the books I liked by candlelight. Grandmother would never have allowed it. Also she never let me stay up late. It was good to live alone.

I had nearly fallen asleep at my desk when I heard a knock on my door. It was my next-door neighbor, Mr. Kubota. There was a slight tinge of red around his eyes. Drinking, I thought. He was about twenty-one, and his short hair was always neatly parted in the center. He was studying literature at a university, and he also held a second-degree black belt in karate. I had been to his room several times and had beer with him, but this was the first time he came to see me.

"How goes it, Sei-san?" he asked. "Something the matter with your lights?"

"No, I was just thinking," I said, turning on the overhead light. "Can I pour a cup of tea for you?"

"No, thank you, that would sober me up. I'm on my way to the Ginza. A little drinking with some bad friends, you know. I saw your candle burning and thought you'd blown a fuse or something."

Suddenly I thought of Sensei.

"Mr. Kubota, you know who Noro Shinpei is, don't you?"

"The cartoonist?"

"Yes. I'm his pupil."

"What do you mean?"

"I went to see him today and asked him if I could study with him and he said yes."

"Remarkable. Wait a minute, I'll be right back," he said and was gone. In a moment he was back with a half-filled bottle of port wine.

"This calls for a celebration. Here, have some, it'll get your
circulation going." He handed me the bottle. I poured him some wine in a teacup.

"Tell me what happened," he said as he drank from the large cup. I told him about Sensei with great excitement. It was wonderful to have a good listener.

"Remarkable," he said again. "I feel as though I'm hearing a story from another age—master and disciple. If you want to learn something, seek out a master. Congratulations. Enjoy what's left in the bottle; I must be off," he said and left me.

I returned to my desk and looked in my diary for the entry I'd made the night I'd moved into the apartment.

I am going to be a famous cartoonist,
read the entry.

The next day I arrived at the studio at ten in the morning. Sensei and Tokida were already at work, sitting in the same places, wearing the same clothes. Sensei's small eyes were bloodshot and his face bristled with a heavy beard.

"You've come just in time to give us a hand. Tokida and I have been going nonstop since you left. Have you had breakfast?"

"Yes, sir."

"Pour yourself a cup of tea. A magazine reporter is coming over at two to pick up this installment. We'll relax after that. Here, I'll have another cup," he said and handed me his mug. Already I was beginning to feel useful, pouring tea for the master.

"Ready to work, Kiyoi?" Tokida spoke to me for the first time.

"Yes, what can I do?"

"Don't worry, you'll have plenty to do. You don't know what you got yourself into," Tokida said. He spoke with a slight Osaka accent, which is softer and more melodious than the sharp, staccato speech of the Tokyo natives.

It was exciting, and a little eerie, to watch one of the best-known comic serials come to life in front of me. Tokida penciled in the frames on thick bristol boards with a ruler, and Sensei sketched in the rough figures with a soft-leaded pencil. He drew with tremendous speed and energy. Even when his pencil wasn't touching the paper his hand moved round and round as if drawing hundreds of small circles. I kept looking at his hand and noticed a pea-sized callus on the middle finger, and I wondered how many hundreds of hours I had to draw to work up a callus like Sensei's. I looked at Tokida's drawing hand and saw a budding pea, stained yellow from tobacco. Then I saw that half of the little finger on Tokida's left hand had been lopped off.

Sensei didn't draw in any orderly way, but skipped from one frame to the next, as if he was working on his favorite scenes first. A steady stream of ideas seemed to rush through his head and flow out from the tip of his pencil. How did he know what size to make the balloons before putting in the words? I wondered, but was afraid to ask.

Sometimes the bristol boards became so heavily penciled it was hard to tell what was going on. Sensei would scribble a few words here and there inside the balloons and chuckle to himself. Then he would put a new nib in a pen holder and start to ink over the drawings. He used the pen as quickly and freely as he did a pencil, except with the pen he never went over the same line twice. He worked so fast I was afraid he might ruin a drawing, but he never did. The nib slid over the smooth paper effortlessly, and the gleaming streak of black ink flowed with ease and power. Suddenly a cartoon figure would emerge, almost leaping out of the page. It took my breath away.

"Do you know what a baseball player's uniform looks like?" asked Sensei.

Tokida and I looked at each other and nodded.

"Draw one for me."

It's another test, I thought. Tokida seemed as puzzled as I was, but we each drew a baseball uniform. Sensei glanced at our drawings.

"So you thought you knew what it looks like," he said. "You hardly know anything about it. You don't know where the seams come together, you're not sure about the length of the sleeves, and you don't know how many loops there are to hold up the pants. Soon I'm going to have you draw the backgrounds, and I want you to know what it is that you're drawing. For instance, when I ask you to draw a Shinto temple, I don't mean just any old temple, but a Shinto temple. Most of the time no one will know the difference, but I want
you
to know it. If you're not sure, look it up; don't rely on your memory."

Tokida and I said nothing. When Sensei asked us to draw the uniform I thought he was being silly. Baseball was the most popular sport in Japan, and of course everybody knew what the uniform looked like, or so I thought. Now I understood why so many books and magazines cluttered the studio. They were research materials. I wondered if I could draw anything from memory. The only consolation was that Tokida's drawing wasn't much better than mine.