The Ink-Keeper's Apprentice by Allen Say Page B

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