The Ink-Keeper's Apprentice (4 page)

"Did your father see you do it?"

"I did it right in front of him. That shut him up. He was drunk as usual, and probably thought I was going to use the axe on him, and he stopped raving. He knew I always carried a knife. I used to be a
yakuza,
" Tokida said, almost proudly, and sat back to see how I'd react. I felt a chill. A
yakuza
is a hoodlum who swears a lifetime
brotherhood with a group of gangsters who think nothing of murdering people with samurai swords.

"So what happened the second time you ran away?" I asked, not wanting to hear about his
yakuza
days.

"I made sure I wasn't going to get caught," he said. "I walked during the night and hid during the day."

"Did you have money?"

"Of course not. I dug up potatoes and turnips and ate them raw. You'd be amazed what you can live on when you have to."

"What did you do once you got to Tokyo?"

"First I went to a newspaper publisher's office to find out where Sensei lived. A couple of reporters started asking me questions, and for a while I thought they were going to turn me over to the police. Then they tried to reach Sensei but no one knew where his studio was. Like Sensei said, he was constantly moving in those days. Anyway, they gave me food and pumped me for information, and the next day they did that front-page story about me."

"I know, I read it."

"Well, around noon that day this wild-looking man came into the office. He looked weird in that long kimono of his; nobody wears something like that anymore. And those clogs. I couldn't believe it when he said he was Noro Shinpei; he's so famous I thought he'd be an old man. Do you know what he said to me? He said if
he
was good enough for me he'd be glad to take me on. Imagine that."

"He saved you," I said, and realized what a stupid thing I'd said. "What do you think would've happened if Sensei hadn't come?" I asked quickly.

"I thought about killing myself before my old man got to me," he said coolly, drawing on his cigarette.

"Somebody would've helped you. If it wasn't Sensei, it would've been somebody else."

"Maybe, but I doubt it." Tokida opened his sketchbook and began to draw me from across the table. "And what about you?" he asked. "That took a lot of nerve, walking in on Sensei like that."

"Well, for one thing I read about you in the paper. That was
where I got Sensei's address. I cut out the article and saved it. You don't know how many times I read it. I always thought I was the only one who wanted to be a cartoonist."

"If you come from a rich family, cartooning is not supposed to be respectable. But who cares? If you really want to do something, you should do it no matter what. You know why you want to be a cartoonist?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "Sensei asked me that too. All I ever wanted to do was to draw cartoons. I think it's good to make people laugh. And everybody reads comics."

"That's right," agreed Tokida. "Cartooning is an art, like painting or calligraphy or anything else, but that's only for you and me. I couldn't even talk about comic books in front of my old man, and he's not the type to worry about being respectable—far from it. Your pa is rich, right?"

"No, he isn't really," I lied.

"All right, respectable then. And you say he doesn't care if you become a cartoonist?"

"I never told him. I never told anybody, but don't tell Sensei. My father would have a fit if he found out what I was doing; I told him I was taking painting lessons. He thinks it's a nice hobby."

"Well, sooner or later you'll have to tell him. And then what?"

"Maybe I'll run away like you did. Would you like to see a movie?" I changed the subject.

"Yes, sure, it's early," he agreed.

We left the cafe and walked across the street to the train station. I was glad Tokida didn't ask me any more questions about my family.

The three-room suite in the old inn at the edge of the residential district in Tokyo called Takata-no-Baba was the sort of old mansion I had imagined when I first went to look for Sensei. Tokida slept in one of the smaller rooms, and Sensei in the other whenever he couldn't go home because of a deadline rush. We worked in the spacious twelve-mat room on the second floor that looked out onto a traditional garden with pines and Japanese apricots and maples, and a carp pond with a stone bridge over it. The big tiled tub in the bathhouse was filled with hot water all hours of the day, and food could be ordered from the kitchen almost anytime.

On our first day there, Tokida and I hopped over the balcony railing and went scuttling barefoot over the waves of roofing tiles. The highest point on the roof was almost four stories high, and the clothes-drying platform stood on top of that.

"What a place to fly a kite," said Tokida, lighting a cigarette.

Perched on the platform, we stood taller than anything in the
neighborhood. We felt like a couple of young warlords looking over our domain.

"Look at those people down there," he said. "They look like little bugs."

He hopped off the platform and went down to the ridge of the main roof. "Let's have some fun," he said, hurling a small piece of mortar down onto the street below.

"Duck, you fool, do you want us to get caught?" he hissed at me. I crouched next to him.

"It's your turn." He handed me a clump of dirt. I hesitated.

"Go on, throw it; you're not going to kill anybody."

I tossed the dirt ball halfheartedly over the ridge.

"Coward! You didn't throw it hard enough. Take a bigger piece, here, like this," he said, aiming a walnut-sized dirt ball at a man walking a dog. We followed the missile with our eyes and ducked as soon as it shattered on the sidewalk, missing both the man and his dog.

"It's your turn," said Tokida and handed me a big clump of dirt. I threw it down toward the street as hard as I could.

"Ouch!" a voice shouted.

We didn't dare stick our heads out. I crouched next to Tokida, killing my breath. Tokida was holding his mouth with both hands.

"You ... you..." he said between muffled laughter. "You're a pretty good shot."

"I wasn't even aiming at anybody," I whispered.

"That's why you're a good shot."

After a while we slowly slid down the roof like crabs and into the safety of our room, where we howled with laughter.

"Hey, what's going on?" said Sensei, standing behind us in the doorway. We sat up straight, but when we saw him we roared. There he was, in his usual kimono, hugging a life-sized plaster statue of a naked woman.

"I'm glad you find her amusing, but not for long, I assure you. She's going to give you two some pain, a lot of grief, I hope. Meet Venus de Milo," he announced and set the statue on the floor.

"We were telling jokes, Sensei," said Tokida, wiping his tears. "Did you know Kiyoi is a good shot?"

I glared at him.

"I bet. Up to no good, I'm sure. Are you two ready for some work?"

"Yes, sir," we said eagerly.

"Good. If we finish the first two pages I'll treat you to an extraordinary meal."

"Where?" asked Tokida.

"A high-class restaurant. Tokida, see if you have a pair of socks with no holes in them. They serve live loaches in a shallow pan. Have you ever tasted them, Kiyoi?"

I shook my head.

"You have a treat coming. They take a pan, put a little water in it, and then set a block of bean cake in the middle, with the fish swimming all around the cake. Then they put the pan over a fire right on your table, and as the water begins to get hot, the fish begin to look for a cold place, which is the bean cake, of course, and they swim into it. Thus the fish get cooked in this neat package. A delightful dish."

"That's barbaric!" I cried. "I never heard of such a thing."

"Kiyoi, barbarism is a word unknown in gastronomy. Tokida, do you have a pair of shoes?"

"Just my tennis shoes, Sensei."

"Remind me to get you a pair."

"You must have been paid today." Tokida grinned.

"How did you guess?" Sensei said and went to his room to change.

"Good thing it wasn't Sensei you hit," said Tokida, throwing an eraser at me. I ducked and began to laugh again.

"All right, a little work," said Sensei, sitting down at the low table in a light kimono the inn had provided. He lit a cigarette and was silent for a while. Tokida and I watched the great man think.

"Wasn't it Napoleon who said that the word 'impossible' had no place in his dictionary?" asked Sensei.

"Yes," I said.

"That's why it was cheap," said Tokida.

"Think of something that's impossible to do."

"There's no medicine to cure a fool," said Tokida, quoting an old saying.

"Not bad, but something less tragic."

"You can't fish where there's no water," I said, paraphrasing another old saying.

"Very good, but too philosophical. Give me something more mundane."

"I know," I exclaimed. "You can't lick your own elbow."

Immediately Sensei rolled up his sleeve and tried to reach his elbow with his tongue.

"You're quite right. Tokida, see if you can do it."

So the three of us sat there, trying to shove our elbows toward our mouths.

"That's it! Tokida, line up the boards."

Quickly he began to lay out a story about Napoleon in Japan looking for something impossible to do.

"How do you come up with your ideas?" I asked.

"You were the one who gave me the idea."

"Do you always know beforehand what's going to happen in the next installment?"

"Never. Something always happens. I'm not saying it just happens out of nowhere. Something like your idea would get my mind going and the story unfolds itself. Pay attention to all that goes on around you. Remember, memory is the most important asset to an artist. What we call imagination is rearrangement of memory. You cannot imagine without memory. Then there's intuition. If you pay attention, in the end your intuition will come into play; you have to learn to trust your intuition."

"Do we all have intuition?" asked Tokida.

"No question. Some more than others, but we all have it."

"But how can you come up with all your ideas time after time," I persisted.

"By paying attention. If I didn't pay attention to what you said, I'd still be struggling with Napoleon."

"But you asked us for the idea in the first place," Tokida pointed out.

"Quite right, Tokida. An old Chinese sage said that you don't ask a question unless you're near the answer."

Is that true? I wondered. And if true, there had to be an answer to every question. Did it mean every time I questioned something the answer was just around the corner? And since I was asking
that,
the answer must have been within my grasp. It didn't seem possible. Besides, it was all too confusing. I would have to think about it later, when I was alone.

Sensei took us to the Ginza for our night out. We walked the neon-bright boulevards and back alleys with thousands of office workers on their way home from work. The narrow streets were crammed with eating and drinking places, reeking of roasting fowl and meats. The cafe hostesses stood in front of doorways and beckoned us inside. They looked harsh and beautiful under the blinking colored lights.

Sensei led us into a restaurant with a small entrance in front. We removed our shoes on the porch and a woman attendant put them in a shoe box and ushered us upstairs. The restaurant was one huge room. People sat around low tables and the waitresses in kimonos raced around them, carrying stacks of dishes, steaming pans of fish and broth, sake and beer, and the tea things.

"You can relax, Kiyoi, this is not the loach place," said Sensei as we sat on the floor. "I felt daring tonight, so I decided to live dangerously.
Fugu
is the specialty of this house."

"Blowfish?" asked Tokida.

"Have you ever had it?"

We shook our heads.

"It's a great delicacy, a classic dish that requires a good deal of skill to prepare."

"It's poisonous," I said.

"The glands are lethal, but the flesh is delicious."

"People can die eating it," said Tokida.

"Therein lies the titillation. Come, where's your sense of adventure? I told you I was feeling daring tonight. The chef here is
a good friend of mine. To my knowledge he hasn't killed anyone yet."

"A wise man avoids danger," said Tokida.

"So said Confucius. I say what does a vegetarian know?"

"Was Confucius a vegetarian?" I asked innocently.

"He who refrains from eating a delicate fish is a vegetarian. But order anything you wish. I recommend either a crab or a shrimp dish."

"I'm going to try the
fugu,
" announced Tokida.

"So will I," I said.

"That's more like it. Here, this will give you courage." He offered us hot sake.

By the time our waitress brought our food, Tokida's face had turned bright red.

"Kiyoi is going to be a strong drinker," commented Sensei, reddening around his eyes. Unlike Tokida's, my face didn't change color with sake.

The deadly fish came in a clear broth and tasted like any ordinary fish, like red snapper or halibut. After all the buildup it was a disappointment.

The two weeks went by quickly.

On the last Saturday before school began I went to the inn in the midmorning. The place was empty. I called Tokida's name several times before I heard a muffled sound from his room. As I slid open the door I saw him sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, facing the
shop
screen. For a moment I thought he was meditating. Then he turned his head.

His whole face was covered with streaks of blood!

"What did you do to yourself!" I shouted at him, horrified.

Tokida didn't answer. He was holding a small pocket mirror in one hand and a naked razor in the other.

"What are you doing!" I shouted again.

"Pimples. Stupid pimples. I pinch them and squash them and they keep coming back, so I decided to cut them off."

"You're crazy! Your face is going to be scarred for good!"