Masks (13 page)

Harumé experienced intermittent nausea similar to that of early pregnancy, until her plump white flesh became so lean that it was as if she had removed a layer of clothing. Viewed in dim light, her face with its haggard eyes became startlingly like that of Mieko. As Harumé sat in the bay window of her room, staring out absently at the crimson-leafed branches of an old cherry tree, Yū would look on that face and feel her breast contract with pity.

One evening after bathing Harumé and putting her to
bed, Yū entered Mieko’s room noiselessly. She knew that Yasuko, having gone out earlier that evening on an errand for Mieko, would not be there.

Mieko was kneeling on the tatami at a low table in a corner of the room, scribbling in a notebook with a ballpoint pen. Sensing Yū’s presence, she turned quietly and faced her.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, ma’am, but I would like a word with you about a certain matter.” Lately grown hard of hearing, Yū seated herself so close to her mistress that their knees almost touched.

With her customary indulgence, Mieko nodded and murmured close by Yū’s ear, “It’s Harumé, I suppose.”

“Yes, ma’am. You must have noticed by now. It hardly seems possible, but she’s missed her period twice in a row, and after tonight’s bath I’m afraid there can be only one explanation.” Yū’s voice was desolate, her eyebrows twisted in a frown.

“I quite agree.” Mieko nodded slowly. Yū found her mistress’s composure frustrating, but she managed to transform her irritation into an apology.

“I’m sorry. I should have been more careful.” She looked down and wiped away her tears. The identity of the culprit was a mystery to her. Her eyes and ears were failing rapidly, and much of the past winter she had been laid up with flu, powerless to know what devil might have descended upon her charge. Now, search though she might, she could detect no one among Mieko’s followers or other visitors to the house who might be the cause of Harumé’s shame.

While certainly not a moron, Harumé was nonetheless very far from being a responsible adult, however charitably one looked upon her. A man who would force himself on someone so helpless epitomized evil in Yū’s mind. To imagine Harumé’s bearing the child of such a monster made her quite beside herself.

“You must take Miss Harumé to a doctor soon, ma’am. And if we are right in what we think, then something has got to be done right away. It would kill me to see that poor child have a baby in her condition.” Down Yū’s wrinkled and faded cheeks rolled large, unattractive tears.

“Yes, I’ll do that. I’ve been thinking the same thing.” One elbow on the table, Mieko gave a casual nod. Her detached, preoccupied look was dry-eyed and totally unresponsive. Yū was queerly repelled.

“Ma’am, don’t you have any idea who did this to her? I can’t help thinking you do.” She gently lifted Mieko’s hand from her lap and wrapped the cool fingers, white as silkworms, in a fast grip.

“I really can’t imagine.”

“Can’t you? I don’t think you’re being quite honest.” Yū gazed at Mieko’s face—a face well known to her from years of service—and watched its features begin slipping into a cloud of obscurity. As if to force the elusive face to return, she tightened her hold on the cool fingers in her hand.

“Please don’t compound the evil you’ve already done. I’ve known you since you were a little girl, and it makes me tremble for the human race to think that such a sweet and intelligent child could have ended this way. I’m old now, and soon I’ll be dead. More than two-thirds of my life I have spent in your service. Please don’t make me suffer more than I already have. After Master Akio died, I thought you might mend your ways, but I see now you haven’t finished yet with your plotting and scheming. What you are doing is too shameful to bear the light of day. Next to you, the late master and that woman Aguri who tortured you so were nothing, nothing at all.”

“Yū!” Mieko covered her ears and shook her head. “You mustn’t speak to me of those awful days.”

“No, ma’am, tonight I’ll have my say. Before the twins
were born, I spoke my mind often enough, didn’t I? But you wouldn’t listen. You gave birth to them against all my advice—and only you and I knew that they weren’t the master’s seed. That was thirty years ago. Now Master Akio has died a violent death, and just look what’s become of Miss Harumé. Your revenge has come full circle. All those years I stood by you faithfully and never told anyone the truth. I kept it sealed up inside me. Everything you’ve suffered I’ve suffered, too; I’ve been like the shoes on your feet. Please, I’m old now; don’t make me go through more pain and misery.”

Still clutching Mieko’s hand, Yū bent forward until her head was bowed on her knees. She stayed that way a long time, motionless, her tears falling cold and wet on the back of Mieko’s hand, while Mieko only stroked and patted the sadly thin back with its jutting shoulder blades, keeping a distracted silence.

Several days later Mieko, accompanied by Yasuko and Yū, took Harumé to Dr. Morioka’s hospital.

After the examination Dr. Morioka informed her that Harumé was in the third month of pregnancy and that she had a severely retroflexed womb. Unless delivery were by cesarean section, neither mother nor child could be expected to survive.

“Termination of the pregnancy is generally the best course in cases like this—all the more so considering her mental capacity, although such women often do bear surprisingly healthy, normal children.” He laid out the facts simply and straightforwardly, having been told merely that Harumé was a relative’s daughter.

Yasuko stole frequent looks at her mother-in-law, but Mieko’s expression remained mistily vague and impalpable.

“It is a new life, just under way, and I feel that it
deserves a chance to live.” Mieko spoke quietly, paying no heed to the doctor’s look of mild surprise. “Will there be complications in the pregnancy itself?”

“No, I should think not. Most important is to keep up the mother’s strength.”

“Her parents are under a great deal of strain, as you can imagine. For the time being I will take her home and talk it over thoroughly with them.” Leaving Yasuko to take Harumé by the hand, Mieko proceeded to the taxi where Yū was waiting. Yasuko and Mieko then got into another taxi and headed for a meeting of their poetry circle.

“Mother,” began Yasuko, without further mention of Harumé, “this morning a letter came from Sadako Ibuki.”

“Oh?” Mieko did not turn her head. “What does she have to say?”

“Here, see for yourself. She says Mikamé knows everything.” Yasuko handed her mother-in-law a thick envelope. After calmly surveying the writing on it, Mieko opened it, took out the letter, and began to read. The taxi was driving up a broad slope, moving away from Akasaka-mitsuke. Rows of cherry trees lining the street were in full blossom, loose petals adance in the dusty breeze.

“She does say she told him, doesn’t she?”

“She says she hired a private investigator. Peculiar sort of woman. I’ve only set eyes on her once or twice—”

“But she
is
his wife, and she’s entitled to her say.” Mieko carefully folded the letter and put it back in the envelope.

“You see that she says her fill about you, too.”

“A woman in her position is lucky to be able to say and write as she pleases.” Mieko’s cheek curved as if in a smile. She seemed quite untroubled by Sadako’s name-calling. “Tell me your feelings, Yasuko. Do you intend to marry Mr. Ibuki?”

“No, if I marry anyone, it will be Toyoki Mikamé. I don’t want to break up the Ibuki home. And he has no intention of leaving his wife and child for me, either.”

“No, I suppose not. But she felt obliged to speak out anyway, as his wife—and he couldn’t keep her from finding out, could he? So there you are.”

“In the letter she calls me a witch who has a magical power over men. But I know she’s wrong. I was never anything but a medium for you.” Yasuko tilted her head ingenuously and looked at Mieko, the dimple in her cheek showing briefly. Against the storm of petals outside, Mieko’s profile had a quiet, dignified beauty.

“You’re going to go through with it, Mother, aren’t you? You’re going to see that Harumé has that child. It’s inhuman of you to make a woman like her, with so many physical and mental handicaps, risk childbirth, but your plan stands a good chance of succeeding. And it has a strong fascination for me, too, I’ll admit; I’m as excited as you by the prospect of a baby with Akio’s blood in its veins. That instinctive feeling underlies all the strange things I’ve done. You and I are accomplices, aren’t we, in a dreadful crime—a crime that only women could commit. Having a part to play in this scheme of yours, Mother, means more to me than the love of any man.”

Mieko listened with eyes focused on the untidy scattering of petals as Yasuko murmured softly in her ear. Loose wisps of hair brushed against her cheek, stirred by Yasuko’s close, excited breathing. She meditated on the deep and turbid female strength within her that had all but taken possession of Yasuko, wondering silently what power on earth might deliver her from the heavy load of karma that weighed upon her. The road down which she must blindly grope her way, helplessly laden with that unending and inescapable burden, seemed to stretch before her with a foul and terrifying blackness.

A vision came to her of an ancient goddess lying stretched out in the underworld, prey of death. Her flesh was putrid and swarming with maggots, her decaying form covered with all manner of festering sores that smoldered and gave off black sparks. The luridness of the sight sent the goddess’s lover fleeing in horror, and the moment that he turned and ran, she arose and swept after him in fury, all the love she had borne him transformed utterly into blinding hatred. A woman’s love is quick to turn into a passion for revenge—an obsession that becomes an endless river of blood, flowing on from generation to generation.

A faint tear wet Mieko’s eye, so slight a bit of moisture that it passed unseen by Yasuko. Yet all the anguish of which she never spoke was compressed into that single drop.

Mikamé and Ibuki sat face to face in a small room on the seventh floor of the same hotel as before. The shade of the upholstery and carpeting was now a powder blue, but not as any concession to the coming of spring; color schemes were determined by floor number.

The hollowness of Ibuki’s cheeks was more pronounced than usual, and his eyelids had a sharp and wasted look. His slender, bamboo-shaped fingers, yellow as old ivory, contrasted sharply with Mikamé’s ruddy and increasingly well-fed look.

“You’re emaciated, do you know that? You look like Ch’iao Sheng in that Chinese ghost story.” Mikamé was drinking beer and helping himself to sandwiches sent up from the hotel restaurant. He had intended the remark sarcastically, but it carried little sting. Only his eyes resting on Ibuki had their customary anxious gleam.

“Making fun of me?” Seated on the wall sofa with legs crossed, Ibuki laughed dryly, wrinkling the tip of his elegant
nose, and lit a cigarette. He made no move toward either beer or sandwiches.

“Your research in spirit possession seems to have backfired on you.”

“Only because I have such an idiot wife.” Ibuki’s voice had its usual cold and mocking ring. “A rational woman is as ridiculous as a flower held together with wire. Why should she try to expose everything in a world she couldn’t even see? Whatever may have happened between Yasuko and me, I never flaunted it in front of my wife. And after she went and called in that detective—of all the preposterous, old-fashioned things to do—and then confronted me with a list of facts, what could I say? I’ll grant I owe you an apology. But you’ll have to admit that I was the one who made a first-rate ass of myself, not you. So, please, don’t be too hard on me.” His tone radiated self-scorn.

Sadako’s report on the Toganō household had held few surprises for Ibuki, but the news of Harumé’s pregnancy had shocked him like an icy hand around the heart. Neither had he known of Harumé’s retardation, which Yasuko had never mentioned. That, he reflected, would account not only for the treatment Harumé had received as a child but also for the precautions that Mieko and Yasuko always took to keep her from appearing before him.

Out of the many nights that he had spent with Yasuko in that Western-style room, twice, he was sure, he had made love to Harumé. The bright red mark like a camellia petal on his skin, so amusing to his daughter, was proof that such a thing had indeed happened. The moment when Sadako held out the mirror and confronted him with that vivid mark, he had all but cried out in icy fear. When Yasuko came to him that night, she had been wearing no makeup (of that he was certain), and so it must have been that for a while he had embraced another woman, foolishly
supposing all along that it was Yasuko in his arms. It was an easy guess that the other woman had been Harumé. But he could not fathom what strange configuration in Yasuko’s heart might have prompted her to bring another woman into the bedroom and to switch places with her so adroitly.

He wanted to ask her directly, but each time they met, the delicate, silken atmosphere she spun would obliterate the words of any such clumsy questions, leaving him happy just to be with her. In all this time he had yet to discover anything of her real self, yet he was strangely unconcerned. Alone with Yasuko, he experienced a kind of ecstasy that was like dwelling in a world apart from reality. Small wonder that Mikamé had likened him to the youth in
Peony Lantern
who was seduced by a dead beauty: Yasuko might not be a spirit of the dead come back to life, but she was indeed a fairy enchantress, thought Ibuki.

“Don’t tell me it was you who got that beautiful halfwit pregnant, was it? That was what upset Sadako the most. It gave me a jolt, too.”

“I told you I was the fool,” said Ibuki, crinkling his lean eyelids. He fell moodily silent. Before him floated Harumé’s face, the space between her eyes contorted with passion exactly as in the Nō mask Masugami. The very feel of her body in his arms flooded through him, reddening the corners of his eyes.

“Then it’s true? You’re the baby’s father?” Mikamé became peculiarly excited, leaning his heavyset body forward almost eagerly.