by Allen Say
"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.
SIX
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!"
"So what? Why should you care? You don't have pimples."
"Stop it, right now! Stop cutting yourself!"
Tokida squinted severely at me with his nearsighted eyes. Blood oozed on his face like beads of sweat. I felt nauseated looking at him. He took a crumpled handkerchief out of his pocket and covered his face with it. In an instant the white cloth was soaked.
"I'll get you some iodine."
"Don't bother. Sit down."
"But your face is going to get infected."
"It's all right, I tell you. Come and sit."
I sat down, facing him. He kept wiping his face and after a while the bleeding stopped. His face was crosshatched with razor slits. He put his glasses on and smiled.
"See this?" He pointed at the gas outlet. "I wonder how long it'll take to kill me. They say it's the best way to commit suicide. You don't feel a thing. You just go to sleep and never wake up."
Then he lay down on the floor, stuck his face right up against the outlet, and turned the gas full blast. Thinking it was a joke, I sat still and said nothing, waiting for him to turn the gas off. Soon the small room was filled with the heavy smell of rat poison. Tokida lay perfectly still and showed no sign of turning the gas off. I knew he was testing me, but I didn't know how to react to it. The steady hissing of the gas seemed very loud now, and Tokida lay there like a dead man. I panicked. I bolted out of the room, calling frantically for Sensei. I rushed down the staircase and out into the garden in my stocking feet, and for no reason ran around the carp pond. Then I charged into the bathhouse. No one in sight. Like a wild man I ran around the inn. No one. Not even the old innkeeper.
I rushed back to Tokida's room. The smell was unbearable now. Holding my breath, I lunged at the gas outlet and turned it off. Tokida lay very still, his eyes closed. An awful thought crossed my mind: It's too late. I shook him violently.
"Wha—what happened?" he stirred and whispered in a stupor. I rushed to the shop screen, jerked it open, and spat out the air in my lungs.
"Idiot!" I shouted. "You ass!"
Seeing that he was alive, I let out my rage. "So your old man's a drunk! So you had to walk three hundred miles! So your face is lousy with pimples! So you think you're somebody special! You're an idiot!"
"Quit screaming. My head is splitting."
"Good! I hope your head cracks!"
"Hey, take it easy. I was only experimenting. Go see if you can find some pills. Look in Sensei's room.... My head..."
"If you want to experiment, do it when there's no one around," I said and went to look for the pills.
When I returned with a glass of water and four aspirin tablets, Tokida sat up and gave me a sheepish grin.
"Let's go eat. I'll buy you a bowl of noodles," he said, popping the pills in his mouth.
My knees were shaking and I felt sick to my stomach, but I was so relieved that Tokida was alive I felt weightless. But I kept scowling to show him how angry I was. After a while we staggered out to a small restaurant. It was good to be out and breathing fresh air. We ate our lunch in silence, avoiding each other's eyes. His face was a mess.
"How's your head?" I asked finally.
"Almost back to normal." He gave me a weak smile.
"Why don't we go over to my place?"
"You still mad at me?"
"No. Do you want to come?"
"I don't want to see anybody."
"Nobody's home. There won't be anybody to admire your face."
"Is it that bad?"
"A little makeup would help. How about it, Tokida? We're all caught up with work and my school doesn't start till next week. It would be good if you could come today."
"You're sure nobody's going to be home?"
"I promise."
"Aw, all right." He sounded as if he were doing me a favor, but that was his way.
The district where I lived had been hit hard in the war, and most of the shabby houses had been built helter-skelter four or five years ago. The unpaved roads and alleys turned into a soupy mess after a good rain. Tokida seemed surprised—even a little pleased—to see that I lived in such a neighborhood.
My room seemed starker than usual. The somber light through the milky windowpane made the place look like a room in a Zen monastery. Even the dull aluminum kettle on the hot plate seemed bright in the shadowy light. There wasn't even a radio, and the old alarm clock ticked loudly on the writing desk.
"This is it, my eel's bed." I waved my arm around.
"I don't believe it," Tokida said in amazement. He looked around as if to find more rooms hidden somewhere. "Are your ma and pa dead? I mean, who takes care of you?"
"I'm not an orphan, if that's what you're wondering. Why don't we sit down. How about a cup of tea?"
"Sure. So who takes care of you?" He seemed bewildered. I was enjoying myself.
"I do. Well, my mother gives me money to live on. My parents are divorced."
"Divorced? I never heard of such a thing. Nobody gets a divorce."
"I know. I never told anybody. No one at my school knows about it."
"Do they know you live alone?"
"Of course not. I've never brought anybody home before."
"All right, I'm honored. But where are they? Your parents."
"Mother has a small shop in Yokohama—she sells cosmetics. And my father is in Kyushu. We moved there after the war because our house was burned down in the war, and my father couldn't find work in Tokyo. He's remarried and has a family. My grandmother is supposed to be in charge of me; she has a house here in Tokyo. I lived with her until about a year ago, but we didn't get along too well, so she rented this place for me. Are you interested in all this?
"
"Sure, but why didn't you tell me before?"
"I didn't want Sensei to know."
"Let me tell you, Kiyoi, you can tell Sensei anything."
"That's because you know him better than I do. I lied to him about my parents because I didn't think he'd take me on if he knew I didn't have my parents' permission. And who's ever heard of someone my age living alone? They'd probably throw me out of school if they found out I lived in a place like this."
"What do you mean a place like this? It's a fine place. And who cares anyway? Let them go to the dogs. You go to Aoyama, right? Sensei says it's a school for the rich. I hate those snobs. If you're smart enough to pass the entrance exam, why should they care where you live? Schools are a waste of time anyway. All I did in school was fight and draw cartoons. I like your place."
"I do too. Sometimes, though, I wake up in the morning and I don't know where I am. You know that feeling? But I can read and draw all I want."
"You're lucky to have a place of your own. What does your old man do?"
"He sells pearls."
"He's rich then. Did you say you were born in Yokohama?"
"Yes, but during the war, when the B-29's started to bomb us, Mother and I went to live with her people in Yamaguchi. Father stayed behind to earn money. He was working in Tokyo."
"Yamaguchi? That's just the other side of Hiroshima, isn't it?"
"That's right. It's only an hour's ride on a train."
"You remember the bomb?"
"I remember a lot of it. I was eight when it happened. There were mountains all around us so we didn't see the flash, but we felt it. It was like a big earthquake; I thought our house was going to fall down. Mother read the paper in the afternoon and said an atomic bomb had been dropped in Hiroshima. And you know, nobody knew what that was."
"I remember that," said Tokida. "I must have been about eleven. We didn't know what it was either. Nobody knew."
"My cousin used to work in Hiroshima and we worried about her, but she came home late in the afternoon. She was on a train full of people running away from the city. It was awful."
"Is she still alive?"
"Yes. She still has gravel and bits of glass in her skin. She used to make me feel them with my hand. And she has no hair left on her body. She smelled awful when she came home, with her skin all burned and blistered. She screamed and raved all night and two men had to keep her pinned down on the bed because she was begging for a sword.... The men yelled at me and Mother to hide all the knives and scissors and anything sharp so my cousin couldn't kill herself.
"Later, my cousin told me that after the explosion she had dragged her girl friend from the fallen building where they worked and they were stumbling around in fire and smoke. Her friend kept begging for water and finally my cousin found a burst water pipe and gave her some. She drank the water and died. So my cousin wouldn't touch water after that."
Tokida stared at me for some time.
"Didn't you hate the Americans?" he asked, almost in a hiss.
"I hated those B-29's, and do you remember those black Grum-mans that flew so low and sprayed machine gun bullets? It's funny, but I always thought Americans were airplanes. Stupid, isn't it? I never thought they were people."
I remembered the first time I saw American soldiers. The war had been over for only a few days, and Mother and I went to the seaport town of Sasebo to join Father. It was a long and terrible journey, but we were happy, eager to see Father after our long separation. As we got off the train we saw Americans all over the station. They were enormous. Most of them were sailors, and many of them had pistols strapped around their waists. When we passed them by they pointed at Mother and laughed. She was dressed like a peasant woman and they probably thought she looked ugly. They talked loudly, lighting cigarettes, and flicked the long butts on the platform. A couple of laborers in tattered clothes dived after them, and the Americans roared with laughter. I was ashamed for my countrymen, and the size of Americans frightened me.
"My father is a Korean," I said, suddenly deciding to tell Tokida everything.
"So?" He cocked his head as if he didn't understand what I was saying.
"Well, aren't you surprised?"
"Why should I be surprised? What difference does that make? He's your pa, isn't he?"
I was a little disappointed in his reaction. I expected him to react the way he had when I told him my parents were divorced.
"I never told this to anybody before," I said. "Mother's family disowned her for marrying my father. That's about the worst disgrace, you know, for a woman from a samurai family to marry a Korean."
"People are so stupid," sneered Tokida.
"Actually my grandmother was the one who disowned my mother, and now Mother supports her. It really makes me angry sometimes. Did you know that all Koreans were stateless during the war? I mean my father was a man without a country. The military police thought he was a spy and tortured him. So now he wants to make a lot of money and emigrate to another country. He says the Japanese did some terrible things in China."
"They all did," said Tokida. "That's war. But it's funny you remember all that. While you were talking about your cousin, I was thinking about the day the war ended. We got ready to go to bed early that night, and all I could think about was that we didn't have to run out of the house every time we heard sirens. That's what Ma said, no more sirens. Then we heard somebody shouting outside. Ma and my little brother and I peeked out from behind the rain shutters to see what was going on. There was nobody out on the street except for this man sitting cross-legged in the middle of the intersection, ranting and raving about something. But he was so drunk we couldn't make out what he was saying. He'd shout something over and over between swigs till all of a sudden I realized he was quoting the emperor's surrender speech. After a while he started to sob out loud and nobody went to help him. It was terrible. Then he started yelling, 'Tomi, Tomi!' How weird, I thought. Tomi is Ma's name. And the next thing I knew, Ma yanked open the shutter and ran out of the house. It was Pa. We couldn't believe it. He'd been a teetotaler all his life, and he's been a drunkard since. He always wanted me and my brother to die for our country, but now he didn't have anything to live for."
"I'm glad we weren't old enough to be soldiers," I said.
"So am I," Tokida agreed. We sipped our cold tea and said nothing for a while.
"Show me some of your drawings," said Tokida.
"I don't want to show them to you; they aren't any good."
"Don't be silly. Let me see them."
I showed him two sketchbooks I'd been using at school. It was terrible to have to sit and watch Tokida politely pore over every page. It was like having your diary read in front of you.
"They're all right, but you should draw more. You can fill up a pad like this in one afternoon. Have you ever done any life drawing?"
"What do you mean?"
"Nudes."
"No. Have you?"
"Sensei enrolled me in a night class. Tuesday and Thursday nights."
"Are the models really naked?"
"Of course. They're stark naked, pubic hair and all."
"Don't you get embarrassed?"
"At first I was, but you get used to it. It's like going to a public bathhouse, all natural; do you know what I mean? Sensei's probably going to make you take the class too. You'll see."
"But I'm not ready yet."
"You've got to start sometime."
"Yes, I suppose so," I agreed. The idea of drawing a naked woman excited me, but I didn't want Tokida to know it.
"Would you like a sip of this?" I brought out the bottle of port wine.
"You drink this stuff?" he asked suspiciously.
"I have a capful now and then. My next-door neighbor brought it over the other night, to improve my circulation, he told me."
"Sure, I'll have a sip. What does your neighbor do?"
"He's studying literature. He also has a black belt in karate."
; "Is he good?" Tokida asked with interest.
"I've never watched him, but anyone who has a second-degree belt must be deadly."
We each drank a capful of the cheap wine.
"This is good," Tokida said. I poured him another drink.
"Are you going back to the inn for supper?" I asked.
"No, this is my night off, and Sensei went home for the weekend. He said for us to visit him anytime, but I don't want to bother him."
"No, let's not. How about some curried rice? I know a good place in Shibuya, only eighty yen."
"How's my face now?"
"Your face is fine. It's a dark place so no one will notice."
"Let's go." Tokida stood up and stretched his arms. "How about letting me borrow your bike sometime?"
"Take it anytime you want. I hardly ever use it."
SEVEN
It was hard going back to school. I was never a good student, and studying seemed more boring than ever. At times I was convinced there were more teachers at my school than students, and they loaded us down with homework. I didn't know how the other students managed; most of them seemed happy and mindless. I didn't have a close friend and never shared my thoughts with anybody.
I was the tallest boy in my grade, and that didn't make things easy for me. I always sat in the back of classrooms, trying not to be too noticeable, but that didn't stop the teachers from calling me frequently to translate passages into English, or name some obscure historical names and dates. They always caught me by surprise. I had to stand up to give my answers, and the whole class would turn to watch me make a fool of myself. Then there were the morning assemblies where we had to sit in the cold auditorium and listen to moral stories and meditate. I hated school.
Time passed slowly. I was worried about breaking the news of my apprenticeship to Mother, and worse still to Grandmother. As it was, I was near the bottom of my class, and there was no way I could hide my grades from Grandmother. My school had a cruel way of announcing our grades. What they did was to invite all the parents to school after each midterm examination to inspect the exam papers themselves—not only the papers of their children, but anybody else's they chose to see. And being my guardian, Grandmother saw my grades even before I did. What would she say if she found out I was studying to be a cartoonist? The worst thing she could do was to make me give up my apartment, and that was unthinkable.