and do what she told me to do.
No one else in the class was asked to stand and say the name of a parent.
Miss Paxton was not able to make me cry.
That was my first week in my new school.
CHAPTER 25
I had never had a school art lesson until the year I was in grade eight. It was 1950, and an announcement was made at the beginning of the year that art classes were to start on Friday afternoons in late November. When I heard this, I felt an excitement that was physical, an excitement I had not known before.
On that first Friday morning, my heart beat faster. I raced through morning lessons. The clock slowed, intentionally. No one in our class knew who would be giving the lessons, but it was rumoured to be one or the other of two veterans, each of whom had fought overseas during the war and had returned to take up teaching again.
I had already had an encounter with one of the veterans, Mr. Abbott, and I was hoping he would not be the one to teach art. His regular class was geography, and he was also responsible for physical education. After gym class one day the previous June, a boy complained that his wallet had been stolen from a bench in the locker room on the main floor. I was accused of the theft. Mr. Abbott believed the boy and, despite my protests, took me to the principal’s office, where both he and the principal tried to force me to admit my guilt. But I would not; I was innocent. My pockets were turned inside out and my desk was searched, but the wallet was not found. “I’ve dealt with these Japs before,” Mr. Abbott told the principal. “I’ll get it out of him yet.”
While I was being threatened that a letter would be sent home to my father and that I would be expelled, an older boy came running into the office and said the wallet had been found in another boy’s locker. Mr. Abbott turned and left the office. No apology was made. The principal sent me back to my classroom. I never learned if the real thief was punished. I do know that for several days, in the schoolyard outside, the boys chanted, “Stealer! He’s a stealer!” when I came near.
I recounted none of these events to Okuma-san. Nor did I tell him that the covers of war comics occasionally turned up in my desk drawer in the classroom. There was always a Japanese soldier depicted on these covers. A soldier with an ugly yellow face, large buck teeth, eyes squinting behind thick glasses. I ripped up the covers and learned not to react. If someone started a fight outside, I did not run away. I did have a few friends, boys my age, and though they did not join the taunting, they did not come to my defence. It was too risky for them.
Occasionally, letters arrived from Mother. Keiko wrote, as well. She and Hiroshi were both in high school and doing well. Our camp school had not let us down. I had kept up my own marks, and was at the top of my class every year. When Mother wrote and asked about my grades, I reported back. But whenever a letter came from her, I fell into a dark mood and brooded for days. Our old lives were far away. I had not seen my first family since 1946. No one had the money to travel.
Okuma-san was saving money to move us to Ontario the following year and had been promised work in Ottawa as a music teacher. Letters had been coming and going. The job was at a small college, teaching music to students of high school age. He would be giving both group and individual lessons. One of his conditions was that I would be able take my high school studies at the same college. Of course, a piano would be available to him. Okuma-san had always kept up his practice on the plank keyboard, which had a permanent place against one wall of our chicken coop. After years of listening to Beethoven rapped out on ponderosa pine, I could tell almost as soon as he began which piece he was playing.
One day in the early fall, when I came home from school scuffed from fighting, I walked into the chicken coop and saw a small refrigerator tucked in behind the door and plugged in overhead. Okuma-san had purchased it secondhand. Mr. Boyd had picked it up in his truck and had helped to carry it in and set it up.
We had nothing to keep cold in the refrigerator that afternoon, except for one egg. We set the egg on a shelf by itself and laughed as if it were the funniest thing we’d ever seen. The refrigerator rattled and buzzed every time we opened the door. Okuma-san said he would buy cold food the next day, milk and butter and meat. He did not comment on my appearance, though it was obvious that I’d been in a fight. The two of us kept opening the door to look at the egg. During the night, I was wakened by the rattle and I heard Okuma-san in the kitchen, opening the fridge door again. I pictured the lone egg in that cool and empty space.
Another afternoon, Okuma-san had a secondhand turntable to show me when I came in from school. He had bought it that day, along with a great find, a record of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto that someone no longer wanted, though it was almost new. Okuma-san prepared our supper and I set the table, and the two of us sat in silence while the music surrounded us. Okuma-san could not keep his fingers still. Every inch of space in the room was filled with glorious and noble sounds. Hands and fingers played real keys. The second movement was so beautiful it seemed to float into the walls of the chicken coop. When it was over, we listened again as if for the first time. Had we been seated in one of the grand concert halls of Europe, we could not have enjoyed it more.
That evening, Okuma-san told me about the
“It is a sad document,” said Okuma-san. “Very sad. Because in it, Beethoven finally accepted his permanent infirmity, his deafness. Imagine, at thirty-one and with the kind of genius that was inside him. Who knows how he was able to triumph over those devastating conditions? Maybe his deep love of life and his love of God allowed him to continue.”
The kitchen was almost dark by then, and I went to bed feeling that the music was still inside me. I did not want the feeling to escape.
On the Friday that art classes began, I had begun to worry about the possibility that Mr. Abbott, the gym instructor, would walk into our classroom and announce that he was the teacher. I knew he could make my life as difficult and as complicated as he wished it to be. It was a relief to me when the other veteran—there wasn’t a student in the school who did not know which two teachers had fought in the war—Mr. Owen, walked through the doorway and announced, “Today we will begin the study of art.”
Mr. Owen had fought in the Battle of Hong Kong and had been wounded. A bullet had gone through his cheek. There was a large scar on the left side of his face. His left eye was lower than the right, as if it had been mangled in the process of being wounded. He had been taken prisoner in Hong Kong by Japanese soldiers and was sent to Japan to work in a factory. Everyone knew how weak and sick he had been at the end of the war, when he’d finally returned home.
Our first class was a drawing class, and that was fine with me. Mr. Owen wanted us to draw either a horse or a dog. He handed out art paper and then he began to draw on the board with chalk, demonstrating a model of ovals and circles that could be created into a horse’s head and belly and back. The outer lines could be erased after a likeness had been found.
The demonstration of the dog began with two ovals and a circle. The circle was positioned behind the oval and transformed into a long, floppy ear on each side of the head. Another oval was positioned on its side and became the dog’s seated body. Legs and tail were added at the end.
I drew the horse, but did not need circles and ovals to help me. From memory, I drew one of the wild horses from the camp.
Mr. Owen walked up and down the rows of desks, looking over our shoulders. He was impressed with what I had done.
“It’s good, Ben. It’s really very good. You didn’t need any of my teaching aids to get started. And as you already know, there are many ways to draw a picture.”
He asked me to stay after class that day.
“Ben,” he said, “have you ever looked at real paintings in a gallery? Would you like to borrow some of my art books? I have quite a library at home. It’s important, when you are an artist, to look at the work of others and to know what has been done before.”
