“If you have the funds to make this journey, Kiyoki,” he said softly, “I suggest you do it now and not wait for me.”
“What?” I asked incredulously. “I would never do such a thing. I’ll wait as long as it takes,” I insisted.
“I will never have enough money, Kiyoki. I cannot imagine how you ever thought I would be able to gather such a sum of money.”
His tone betrayed his embarrassment.
“I did not mean it like that,” I said. “I will help you, I will do something to gather more funds.” My voice rushed, revealing my desperation.
Noboru, however, continued to gaze at me, his demeanor resigned, his mind already leashed in practicality.
“Kiyoki, you know that my uncle subsidizes my studies here in Tokyo and that he could never afford to send me to Europe. Nor would I ever ask him. I am grateful for what I have here.”
“And our dreams? Our aspirations to study abroad, to walk through the Louvre and paint the Seine?” I was the one sounding betrayed. My words were rushing, and my face was flushed with confusion.
“Kiyoki, it is simple. You must go for both of us. I will stay here and finish my studies. Now that Kuroda Seiki has returned, perhaps I will have the opportunity to join his atelier. Do not worry for me. I will find a way to receive the education I need.”
I stared at the beads of condensation forming on his upper lip and forehead. I wanted to offer him my handkerchief, but I knew it would make the moment even more awkward.
“This isn’t how I imagined it would be,” I whispered. I picked up my tea and discovered it was now cold.
In my mind, I wanted to tell him that I would miss him, to reiterate once more that I couldn’t imagine what the journey and the experience would be like without him. But I chose to remain silent for the rest of the evening. I thought that if he could read my silence, he would understand more fully.
Later I would tell him once more that I would not make the journey without him.
“Kiyoki, you are acting ridiculously! This is your chance to receive the education and experience you need to be a great painter.” His eyes were glowing in the twilight. “I feel very rude in admitting this to you, but Morita sensei confided to me that if all goes well next year, I will be promoted to the accelerated class. You, Kiyoki, are extremely talented. In my eyes, far more talented than I, but Saito sensei has an acute dislike for you that will hurt your chances of entering the classes that focus on the new style. If, however, you go to France, you will receive the training that you deserve. I see absolutely no question on the matter, especially since you now have the money to make the journey.”
As much as his words pained me, I knew he was right. My chances of being accepted to the accelerated program were slim at best.
Noboru assured me that he would help me make the necessary arrangements. My journey would require several months of preparation, and Noboru encouraged me to start working on my plans at once. First, I would have to begin studying the French language immediately. He promised he would look in the school library for a good text. But before everything, Noboru urged me to write a letter to Takada Ryuiichi, a student whom his uncle had tutored and who was presently studying French language and history in Paris. “Takada will be your guide,” Noboru whispered to me that evening. “He has already gone through what you are about to venture.” It was evening and I dragged the futon from the closet and onto the floor. We both untied our kimonos and slid underneath the heavy white blanket. I discovered his bare arm gliding over my naked chest. I shivered.
I was drowning in his exquisite perfume. The smell of smoked birch and overripe persimmon was rising off his skin. Intoxicated, I swam into his embrace, as I had imagined myself countless times before in the waters of my mother’s womb. I wanted to forget that I would be on a ship, casting off to another place all too soon. It all seemed too far away to conceive at that moment. So I closed my eyes and took comfort in the company of my dearest friend as I desperately tried to push the approaching morning out of sight.
THIRTY-FIVE
It took ten months to settle all of the necessary arrangements. I received a response to my letter to Takada in the spring, and we continued the correspondence through the summer. He was extremely helpful, and assured me that once I arrived in Paris he could introduce me to a friend who was studying at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. This man, Hashimoto, would perhaps be able to introduce me to an instructor who might be willing to take me on as a student. There were already quite a few Japanese in Paris studying art, he explained, and I should try to meet them in person. They were an unusual crowd, very mixed in temperament. Some, he added, would go out almost every night, spending countless hours discussing art. In one of Takada’s letters, he described how he had been sitting in a small café on the Rue du Bac, when he realized he was hearing his own language from a nearby table. The melody of the Japanese, however, was continually broken by a strange word—impureshunisumu. Takada could not discern whether it was a French word or just a word that he was unfamiliar with in his own language. He soon realized that the word impureshunisumu was in fact the word “Impressionism” converted into a Japanese word. These four Japanese men, who donned only black clothing, had adopted the word into their own vernacular, as it was now something in their everyday life.
Like Noboru, Takada encouraged me to study French as much as my spare time allowed before I departed. And thus, after I had completed my second semester at school and registered at the administrative offices for a temporary leave of absence, I began, with great academic fervor, my study of this foreign language.
My relationship with the French language was one of great frustration and little reward. The few textbooks that were available at the time were sufficient in teaching me the alphabet and the rudimentary grammar, but gave little instruction on pronunciation. But unlike many Japanese who arrived in France after having studied the language at home, and found themselves in a state of shock when no one could understand them, I knew beforehand. I knew that I could not say madame, demain, Je voudrais aller à Paris. My tongue was unable to roll the r, and I had absolutely no idea how to pronounce the letter v. When I spoke, it sounded like “Mahdom, dehman, Je boodlay ahler a Pali.”
Noboru could not help me. He had never heard French spoken, and since it was the middle of the summer holidays, we could not ask anyone at the college. I decided to write again to Takada and tell him about my difficulties. He responded with a short note:
August 11, 1896
Paris, France
Dear Yamamoto-san,
The heat continues here, yet I am still able to find beauty in this magical city of carved stone walls and geranium-laced windows. I am so happy to hear that you will be arriving in September; it will be so nice to have another Japanese here in Paris. You mentioned in your last letter that you are having difficulty speaking French. I fear that there is little advice that I can give you except to keep trying. When you arrive in France, that persistence and dedication to the language will be tremendously beneficial to you.
I assume that you will be taking the boat from Yokohama to Marseilles and then the train to Paris. Please send me the time of your arrival and I will be more than happy to meet you at the station.
Regards,
Takada Ryuiichi
It was a comfort to know that Takada would be there to meet me. It would be a three-week journey by boat until I reached the port of Marseilles; thereafter, the train to Paris would require another full day of traveling.
I had exactly two weeks before my departure. I had accomplished most of my errands and completed all of the necessary arrangements, but had yet to come to terms with leaving Noboru in Tokyo. It remained an abstract reality, one that I knew would be all too real when he said good-bye to me at the boat. Because of my self-delusion, the days in between were spent without any overhanging clouds of melancholia. I truly believed that if Noboru co
uld not leave for France with me on the day of my own departure, he would come eventually.
He would come. I would find him at my doorstep, his eyes would be bloodshot, and his body would seem even smaller from the strain of the long journey. But he would be there with his sketchbook, his paints, and his small leather suitcase. He would be there, in my living room, telling me that they had canceled the accelerated program and he knew that he had to follow his heart and come to France. He would ask if it was an inconvenience if he stayed with me until he found a place of his own. And I, remembering the sensation of his arm on my chest, would insist that he should stay with me forever, that his own place was not at all necessary.
In the mornings, we would walk to our teacher’s atelier together. The Parisian sunlight would bathe us in its warm golden light; the wet, balmy air that rose from the watery veins of the Seine would clear our nasal passages and invigorate our lungs. We would carry our leather portfolios, heavy with our bounty of sketches. Our footsteps would echo on the pavement of this great city that almost every great artist had trod upon. Our shadows would hang on the walls of all the fashionable cafés, while our bodies reclined among the intellectuals, the struggling painters, and the poets, our lips touching the rims of champagne glasses. With Noboru at my side, I would not feel obliged to talk; he would entertain the others with his inexhaustible charm and wit. In my silence, I would be lost in my own world of happiness and freedom. Everything would be in harmony.
* * *
I was scheduled to sail to France at three in the afternoon on the first Saturday of September in the year 1896.
The boat docked in the port of Yokohama the night before I was to leave. That evening, as I lay awake in my futon, my satchels already packed, I could imagine the sound of the anchor dropping. The heavy iron chain falling into the ocean, the long twisting ropes glistening like golden cords.
I saw myself at the gangway, dressed in my brown woolen suit, waistcoat buttoned, shirt white and unfamiliar billowing under my jacket, like the white clouds of smoke puffing from the great chimneys of the steamer.
The next morning I found myself at the dock, my reflection mirroring the image I imagined. I wore a black bowler that partially covered my ears, and the glare of the midday sun swept over my face like a fierce brushstroke of white.
Noboru had come to meet me. Such contrast. He in his dark blue kimono, wrapped as tightly as a small package, standing by my side.
“You look so elegant in your suit,” he mused. He had helped me pick it out the week before at one of the stores in the Ginza that specialized in Western clothes and accessories. It was his way of turning the conversation away from my imminent departure. He looked strained, his sadness waxing across his face like a large black shadow over a once shining moon.
I stared at him from the corner of my eye, hoping to capture one last memory of him before my departure. I wanted to press his image into the files of my mind, the ruby color of his lips, the thickness of his lashes, the cowlick curling ever so slightly among his sea of razor-sharp locks. I wanted to capture the sweetness of his fragrance in a clear glass jar. To seal it away forever, like a child who wishes to preserve the light of fireflies. I wished to hold on to everything of him, for always.
But he stood there stoically. I saw the wind travel into the sleeves of his kimono and undulate in small ripples down the ocean of his cloth. His strong jaw, cocked high, echoed the sharp lines of the ship. His eyes looked above the steaming smokestacks, far away to the distant horizon, the whiteness of his complexion a canvas absorbing all the colors around us: the blue of the ocean, the orange of the sun, the bright yellow of the women’s straw hats.
I was clutching one of my three furoshiki, and my new suitcase rested by my knee. The sensation of wool against my calf was strange and uncomfortable. The fabric felt coarse and unrefined to the touch. Boiled wool. Scratchy. I was surprised by my longing to slip into a comfortable and familiar cotton kimono for the journey ahead. The humidity of the summer still held fast in the September air. The sun reflected in the shimmering steel of the boat’s belly, the portholes casting a glare, making the heat all the more intense. I felt a fire growing underneath my woolen layers, my perspiration leaving a wet shadow on the outline of my spine. I wiped my brow with a square of white cloth that I had tucked into my breast pocket and offered it to Noboru.
He refused the handkerchief with the shaking of his head, the light motioning of his hand.
All around, the sight of foreign passengers, the porters lugging their parcels, steamer trunks, and recent purchases, overwhelmed me. Entourages of thirteen to fifteen persons clustered by the entranceway. Women with large hats, overblown like huge flowers, leaned on folded parasols. The most colorful fabrics I had ever seen cascaded from their tightly sashed waists. Lavender-printed flowers, their insides beaded with seed pearls and accented with lace, danced on duchess satin. Boned bodices heaved in the heat of the sun; handkerchiefs dabbed at perspiring brows. Expensive French perfume intermingled with the scent of raw cabbage and shiitake. Such smells suffocated us in the thickness of the air. The squalid odor of fowl. The fishy smell of mollusks and oysters still sliding alive in their shells. Caged birds, whose resplendent feathers echoed the paintings of Ito Jakuchu, shrieked, and nets of wriggling shrimp and bending snappers were strewn on beds of ice, carted through the third-class-deck entrance to await their imminent fate—to be eaten by the first-class passengers that evening.
The whistle sounding the ship’s departure was loud and blaring. Around me, the soft whisperings of Japanese farewells contrasted with the loud cheers and festive bustle of the Westerners boarding. Tobacco smoke mingled with the smell of the ship’s coal-burning engines. Silk flowers disengaged from ribboned bonnets, and petticoats were lifted, revealing thin ankles laced in boots, as the crowds rushed toward the entranceway. Heels clicked over the gangplank, steadied by the outstretched arm of a gentleman. With black bowler and white shirt, like me. But different.
Noboru’s head turned to me slowly, revealing his face one last time. I saw my reflection in the wet glass of his eyes.
We stood there in silence for what seemed like several minutes. Neither of us knew how to formulate our innermost thoughts into sentences. Our eyes were focused on each other’s feet; his slippered in tabi and sandals, mine in woolen socks and heavy brown shoes. He bowed deeply, his head nearly grazing his knee. And I reciprocated.
“Good-bye, my friend,” he said, while extending his arms to offer a small gift, wrapped tightly in white rice paper. “Do not open it until you have reached Marseilles.”
I remained still, my feet like roots anchored to the earthen floor. The package was as light as ash, weighing heavy on me, filling me deeply with its sentiment.
“Thank you,” I managed to mutter softly. “I promise to write.”
Nodding to me, acknowledging the difficulty of the situation with the bowing of his head, he walked me to the gangplank of the boat, the loud sound of the ship’s horn once again serenading the cavernous silence between us. I entered through the dark entrance for second-class passengers and made my way to the lower deck, and as the ship broke away from the dock, I waved good-bye to him once more.
He stood waving in his dark kimono, waving until the fog rolled off the sea and I could no longer see him.
When my ship had finally faded from his sight, he left the port in a hurry. As was the case since his childhood, the smell of the sea again had not been kind.
Part Three
THIRTY-SIX
I was born under the canopy of loss and created under the union of sacrifice. I was trained as a child to fear the gods and encouraged to channel the spirits of the dead. But as I left Noboru standing on the pier, my heavy European shoes moving me over the gangplank, I realized something that unnerved me. Whereas I had been the one abandoned throughout my childhood, I entered adulthood by leaving those in my life whom death had
not yet claimed. First Father, now Noboru. I was the one now causing the pain.
In the background I heard the sounding of the ship’s horn and felt the heavy breathing of the passengers behind me. Such confusion stirred inside me! Excitement tinged with regret. Sadness at leaving my beloved friend, nervousness over my future as an artist. I stood in the great Western ship’s sparkling salon, a naive Japanese, clothed in woolen garments, perspiration trickling down my temples—unmistakable in my foreigness.
Around me, the brass handrails sparkled, the mahogany walls gleamed a deep red. My eyes squinted, unaccustomed to such brightness. Above, a grand chandelier hovered, glistening with crystal beads and tiny pearls of light.
A French steward, in a crisp white cotton uniform with gold buttons, showed me to my quarters. This was my first direct encounter with a Westerner and, to my surprise, I found him eager to assist me. He knew no Japanese, but he guided me about my cabin, busying himself with fluffing my towels and opening my small chest of drawers. After several minutes, he seemed to wait in anticipation of something. Realizing I had forgotten about the custom of tipping, which I read about in one of my handbooks on European culture, I handed the young steward a few coins. He smiled back and offered me a bow. Such a gesture—from a Frenchman, no less—struck me as charming.
The Western bed took up the largest amount of space in my small cabin. I had heard of several ships that sailed from Yokohama to Europe that offered Japanese accommodations, but I thought it best to begin my initiation into European culture at once. I wanted to blend in with the others as soon as I arrived in France.
The ship’s itinerary was outlined on the ticket. We would make several stops along the way to pick up other passengers and food and fuel for the remaining portion of the journey. Our first stop would be the port of Shanghai, then on to Hong Kong, Saigon, and Ceylon. The trip was considered quite a feat of modern technology at the time. With the opening of the Suez, a journey that had previously taken months could now be completed in three weeks’ time.
The Mask Carver's Son Page 20
