"You haven't been ill, have you?" asked Sensei, lying on the floor with a book in his hand.
Tokida, who was drawing Venus de Milo, looked up and told me with his eyes not to mention anything about the demonstration.
"I had to run some errands for Grandmother," I lied. I hadn't been to the inn since the day of the riot, and felt a little guilty about it.
"Do you think we're ready to paint in oil?" I asked Sensei.
"So you've come down with van Gogh fever, too. Tokida's been pestering me for three days. Maybe I ought to see the exhibit myself."
"You really should, Sensei," said Tokida. "You really can't tell what the paintings are like by looking at reproductions. They have one of his palettes in a glass case. It's got paint all over it, so you can really see how he worked. I like it better than some of his paintings. You could tell he was mad."
"His violence appeals to you," said Sensei. "You must like Sesshu's late works then, the same kind of masculine staccato strokes. I know what you mean about the palette. I like to look at unfinished works of masters; they tell you more about the artists than the finished works. There's something human about them."
"Do you like Degas?" I asked.
"I had my Degas period. You're in good company, Kiyoi. Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, and me. Degas was strongly influenced by the invention of the camera. Next time look at the way he composed his canvases. You'll notice a lot of things going off the edges, like in a bad snapshot—something we cartoonists have since perfected."
"I like his pastels and drawings better than his oils," said Tokida.
I knew nothing about Degas's composition, though I understood that he was a great draftsman. As far as Tokida was concerned, van Gogh was the painter. Neither Sensei nor Tokida mentioned Degas's girl. I would keep her to myself.
It was dark when we left the inn. It had stopped raining and the lights of the city reflected off the wet pavement. Sensei walked briskly as if he had a destination in mind. Maybe he's taking us to a cafe, I thought, even a bar. But it was an artists' supply shop he took us to, the largest I'd ever seen. There were more things there than I ever thought artists would need or use. Frames and statues and cheap prints hung on the walls. There were little collapsible easels, and the big studio easels that rolled on wheels, canvases that came in rolls and those that were already stretched, shelves and shelves of watercolors and oil paints, gouaches, papers, on and on and on.
"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.