by Allen Say
School dragged on.
***
Sensei did enroll me in the life drawing class, and I was glad of Tokida's company on my first night there.
The class began at seven, but we arrived there half an hour early. The studio was in a big building with a pointed roof that had a skylight on one side. It was modern and European-looking, and seemed out of place among the Japanese-style houses.
Inside, the studio was like a stage set, with a platform in the center and chairs all around. A potbelly stove was roaring in the corner, though it wasn't a cold night, and three spotlights cast pools of light on the platform. Some serious-looking adults, mostly men, stood in silhouette near the platform. They talked in soft whispers, and the blue smoke from their cigarettes rose in coils, catching the spotlights. They were talking to a young woman in a dark robe, sitting limp on a chair. Her hair was tied in a ponytail so her face was fully exposed. She wasn't especially pretty. She had on a pair of house slippers, and half hidden by the felt of the slippers I saw the naked toes and the bare skin of her ankle.
"Is she the model?" I whispered to Tokida.
"I've drawn her a couple of times," he said casually. "She's one of the better ones."
My heart began to beat fast in anticipation. In a few minutes I would be looking at her without any clothes. I asked Tokida where the toilet was and he nodded toward the back of the studio. Whenever I was nervous I had to run to a toilet, like a little dog.
"We'd better take our seats," said Tokida when I came out.
"Can we sit in the back? I don't want to sit by the platform," I said.
Tokida gave me an odd look, a kind of leer, then shook his head and chuckled.
"All right, let's start," said a man with a beret cocked on his head. The crowd broke up and took seats around the platform. The young woman put out her cigarette, stood up, and let her robe fall on the chair. I was taken by surprise. She was stark naked. Somehow, I had expected her to disrobe gradually, underwear and all, but there she was, with nothing on, looking as cool as anything. Then she shook off her slippers and stepped onto the platform. She put her hands on her hips, with her legs slightly parted, and turned her head a little to the side and stared straight ahead. Her armpits had been shaven clean, like women in Western movies. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking, but that was just as well—I was busy with my own thoughts. The potbelly stove behind me felt like an open furnace. I was glad of the large sketchbook I'd brought, and held it in front of me to cover my groin.
"Sit down somewhere and start drawing," Tokida hissed in my ear. I couldn't believe his nonchalance. First he polished his glasses, slowly, then he took out a package of cigarettes, took one out, and tapped it against his drawing pad. He was always tapping his cigarettes, and for once it got on my nerves; I wanted to kick him in his shin. Finally he opened his sketchbook to a clean page and began to draw. I couldn't bring myself to look at the model, so I watched Tokida to see what he was doing. He drew the woman's head at the top of the page. I did the same.
I knew I was acting like an idiot, but couldn't help myself. I had seen naked women before, mostly in public baths, hot spring re-sorts and such, where people bathe together. But this was different. No matter what Tokida said, staring at a grown, naked woman on a platform wasn't natural. It was exciting. I began to think perhaps I should become a painter so I could have models in my studio. The thought made my ears hot.
There was a woman in the group in her forties who looked like a hawk, with piercing eyes and hair pulled straight back on her skull. And just as I wondered how she felt about looking at a naked woman, she barked at the model for not holding her pose. The woman's voice was rough, and her rudeness surprised me. One would've thought she was drawing a horse.
During the breaks the model walked around, looking at everyone's drawings. It must have been a strange experience for her to see how people saw her. I held my sketchbook tightly on my lap, with the cover closed. But Tokida seemed cool and confident, leaving his drawing on his chair for everyone to see, and of course everybody stopped to look at it. I admit his drawing was the best, and he knew it.
"How are you doing?" Tokida asked me. He was being smug, but I felt too unnerved even to ask him a question.
"Don't try to draw her hands and feet. Forget the face, just worry about the outline and volume," he suggested. He sounded as if he were drawing a house or a car.
After three hours of drawing I did get used to looking at the model without feeling embarrassed.
For the last half hour the model did a series of five-minute poses and we had to draw quickly. I didn't have the time to worry about the hands and toes, and drew frantically. I'd never drawn so hard in my life, and was exhausted when we left the studio.
It was ten-thirty when we got off the train at Shibuya, from where I was to take a bus home. The neon lights were still blazing and the streets bustled with taxis and people who didn't seem to know how late it was. Tokyo hardly ever sleeps, and that was one of the things I was beginning to like about the city.
"How about a cup of coffee?" asked Tokida.
"It's late," I said. "And coffee keeps me up all night."
"Then have tea or something."
"All right, one cup then." I gave in reluctantly. We walked among university students and drunks, the late shoppers and lovers strolling hand in hand. Suddenly I noticed something new in myself: I was looking at women in a way I'd never done before. Pretty faces, especially eyes, attracted me still, but I was beginning to see more. I stole quick glances at their kimonos, blouses, skirts, yet they no longer hid from me their breasts and hips and thighs. I felt hot inside.
"Look," said Tokida and grasped me by the arm. He led me to a shop window full of knives and daggers with exposed blades. He was pointing at a long switchblade knife with a bone handle.
"Have you ever seen one of those?" he asked me. I shook my head.
"They really work. A friend of mine used to have one back in Osaka. Let's go in and have a look."
"It's almost closing time, Tokida."
"It'll only be a minute. I've always wanted to see one," he said and marched inside.
The place was empty except for a tired-looking clerk sitting at the far end of the shop. Two walls were covered with knives and scissors and straightedge razors of all sizes. Tokida pretended to look at some shaving things, though he probably shaved twice a week at the most.
"Is there something I can show you?" the clerk asked politely.
"What kind of a straightedge would you recommend for a beginner?" asked Tokida.
"Well, of course the imported blades are superior to anything we make, but they're also quite expensive. I have some decent domestic blades, though. You don't seem like a person who has to shave every day," he said and took out several razors from under the counter. Tokida picked up one, opened the long blade and put its edge against his tongue.
"What are you doing?" I said in alarm.
"This is how you tell if a blade is sharp," he answered. "If it's really sharp you can taste it, a kind of sour taste. Isn't that right?"
"I've seen people do that, yes, but personally I find it a little risky," the clerk said and pulled out a hair from his head and sliced it with a razor.
"That's really sharp," said Tokida, "but I think I'll stay with my old safety razor for now. My father gave it to me when I first started shaving, the kind that has a floating head on it. I think it's German."
"That's the best kind. You'll never see one of those anymore; that's a prewar item. You got yourself a real treasure."
Tokida surprised me. This was the first time I had heard him say "father" instead of the usual old man, or Pa.
"By the way, I noticed a switchblade in the window. Do you mind showing it to me?" Tokida finally came out with it.
"Of course, I have one right here. It's an interesting gadget," said the clerk, producing a knife in a slender case. Tokida held the knife in his right hand and stroked the catch release w
ith his thumb. He turned it this way and that, admiring the smooth bone handle on the six-inch knife. Then suddenly he pressed down on the release and the slim blade fanned out in a flash, and locked itself in position with a loud click. I flinched involuntarily, as from a gunshot. The sleek blade looked like a surgical instrument, ma-chinelike and sinister. It had none of the beauty of a classic suicide dagger. I saw excitement in Tokida's eyes as he folded the blade back and shot it out, again and again.
"You notice how the blade locks in place once it's all the way out," the clerk pointed out. "It's a nice safety feature."
"How much does a thing like this cost?" asked Tokida.
"That one goes for three thousand yen, and that's a bargain. But I'll tell you what. It's late, and you being my last customer I'll give it to you for two hundred less."
"Four hundred," bargained Tokida.
"Well, how about an even ten percent discount? Two thousand seven hundred."
"I don't have the money right now, but I will in a few days. Will you hold it for me?"
"Well," said the clerk, "what can I say? It's yours when you come back with the money."
"You won't forget about the discount, will you?"
"Don't worry, a bargain is a bargain," the clerk assured Tokida and put away the knife.
I thought Tokida's face was a bit flushed when we came out of the shop.
"You're not going to get that knife, are you?" I asked.
"Of course not. I only wanted to see if it really worked. It's beautiful, though."
"I think it's ugly, a gimmick, and it's probably made out of cheap steel. I bet you anything the spring will break after a while."
"But it's fast and small and light. You can carry it in your pocket and nobody will ever know it. Swish! When you're in a fight you don't have the time to fumble around. One time I thought a fight was coming on and I started to take off my glasses when this stiff hit me in the face. What if he had had a knife, I ask you."
"You're not going to carry a knife again, are you?"
"I just like knives, I guess. It would make me feel better if I had one of those on me."
"That's stupid. They say if you carry a weapon sooner or later you're going to use it."
"Don't worry. I only wanted to look at one, so forget it, will you?"
Somehow I felt uneasy; I'd never seen Tokida quite so excited, and the wild look in his eyes frightened me. We went into a cafe and ordered our drinks.
"Where did you learn to bargain like that?" I asked.
"How's that?"
"You know, when you talked that clerk out of three hundred yen."
"Oh, that. I should've gotten him to go down even lower. You never pay the price they tell you on anything. You're a fool if you do. Everything is marked up twenty, thirty percent."
"Why wasn't there an instructor tonight?" I asked, not wanting to talk about the knife anymore.
"What are you talking about?" said Tokida irritably.
"Nobody came around to instruct us how to draw."
"You mean the Master," he said sarcastically. "He comes around about once a month. He walks behind you, and most of the time he doesn't say a thing. You'd think he was a little god or something the way he struts around. Sometimes he says things like, 'Five years,' and walks away. And that's supposed to be a compliment. It means you show promise, and he'll talk to you again in five years. Who needs it? Talk to Sensei, he's the best."
"Are they any good? I mean the people who were drawing tonight."
"They're all amateurs; they don't know what they're doing. There's one fellow there, the one in a school uniform, who's flunked the entrance exam at Ueno three years in a row. Can you imagine anybody trying to get into some stupid art school for almost four years? The fool ought to know he's never going to make it. Schools are a waste of time, anyway. I'll tell you what most of them go there for. They go there twice a week to ogle at the models."
"What about the women then? What about that woman with the strange hairdo?"
"She's a dancer. Wants to know more about the body. She likes to walk around with paint smeared on her hands to show she's an artist."
"Do you think you'll ever change your mind and become a painter instead?"
"I don't think so. It's cartooning for me. Why do you ask? You think you might want to become a painter?"
"I don't know, but I'd like to learn to paint in oils. Wouldn't it be good to have a studio of your own, like the one we were in tonight?"
"So you can have naked models in there? Why don't you learn to draw first?" he sneered and crushed his empty cigarette package.
"Do you know how late the stores stay open?" he asked.
"You're still thinking about that stupid knife, aren't you?" I got back at him.
"Just curious. Let's get out of here."
We said good night at the station and went on our separate ways. I couldn't shake the feeling Tokida was holding out on me, that he had enough money to buy the switchblade and was going to go back for it.
EIGHT
"Use your eyes," said Sensei, looking at my drawings of the nude. "Then your head, and then your hand. Right now you're using only your hand."
"Yes, sir."
"Pay attention to what you see. Concentrate. Look at the model, then look down on your paper and imagine how that picture inside your head is going to fit on the paper. Then draw the head first. That's how you determine where the rest of her body is going to go."
"What about hands and feet, Sensei? They're so hard to draw."
"For now think only about the large shapes. Think of the human body as something that's made up of a series of large shapes. Head is one shape, then the torso, the hip area, the thighs. Look at her as though she's made of bricks."
"Why do we have to draw nudes in the first place?"
"Because the human body is the most beautiful thing to draw. So much of cartooning is drawing figures, and because it's cartooning doesn't mean you can draw anatomically incorrect figures. A cartoonist has to be as fine a draftsman as a painter. And who knows, you may decide to become an illustrator or a painter someday. I consider drawing to be the most important thing I can teach you. One of these days I'm going to send you two to watch an autopsy so you'll understand how the body is put together."
"Prop me up when I start to faint, will you, Kiyoi," said Tokida. "You've seen an autopsy, Sensei?"
"It was a required course when I was in school."
"You went to an art school?" asked Tokida. He seemed surprised.
"I'll have you know that I even earned a degree from Ueno, that illustrious institution. It took me four years of schooling to discover that the world was run by a bunch of demented minds. You might say that political cartooning saved me from going insane."
So Sensei had been trained to become a painter, and the Ueno Academy was the art school in Japan. I was impressed.
"How long do I have to practice before I can draw hands and feet, Sensei?" I asked.
"A bad word, Kiyoi. Drawing is never a practice. You discover something new every time you draw. Discovery is what drawing is all about. Remember that."
"Yes, sir."
So whenever we would be caught up with our work, Tokida and I would draw Venus de Milo, using long sticks of charcoal and erasing with fresh bread. I had never used charcoal before and had a hard time working with it at first. The first few drawings turned out like some messy caricatures of a very black African, and one couldn't tell whether the subject was a man or a woman. But Tokida, who had been using charcoal for some time, was very good. His drawings had the look of the hard white plaster. I couldn't understand how he got the light gray tones, but I wasn't about to ask. Sometimes when Sensei wasn't around Tokida would lean over my shoulder and say, "Look at the statue. You see any black there?" I resented him, and wished I could work in a separate room. Once I sat behind him and watched him draw for a long time. He enjoyed that. The statue was pure white, and so was the paper, and Tokida was using solid black
charcoal to bring the two together—drawing white on white. It didn't make much sense at first. The lightest shade Tokida made was far darker than the darkest shadow on the statue, and yet his drawing looked real and three-dimensional. I saw that he was creating an illusion. It was a big discovery for me.
***
Mother came to Tokyo one weekend a month. She always came with gifts and Grandmother fussed over her like a housemaid—as if to make up for all the years she'd punished Mother with silence and neglect. There was always a lot to say after a month's separation, but our conversations were mostly gossip and small talk. I'd been waiting for an opportunity to tell Mother about Sensei, but Grandmother was always hovering in the background, not giving us a chance to be alone.
In the end I decided to visit Mother at her shop, which was in a fashionable shopping area in Yokohama. It was a small place with three glass counters and mirrored walls, with a storage room and a tiny windowless office in the back. Walking in there was like walking into a cloud of smells, fragrances of the things women use—face powder and perfume, cold cream and nail polish. The two girl clerks who worked for Mother gave me a friendly smile. One of them was pretty and it embarrassed me to look her in the eye. I didn't know why.
"Is she expecting you?" she asked me in a whisper. I shook my head. It gave me a strange feeling to realize that she was my mother's employee. Clumsily I waved to her not to bother and knocked on the office door.
"Come in," I heard Mother's voice say.
She was leaning over her neat desk, with an open ledger in front of her. An abacus lay across the ledger. As she looked up her face broke into a smile.
"Koichi, what a surprise," she said and leaned back on the swivel chair, and nodded at the empty chair in front of her. I went and sat in the chair, feeling like someone on a job interview.
"What a nice surprise," she said again.
