Masks (15 page)

“I can’t help remembering that day when your brother tried on masks for us,” said Yasuko with a sigh. “Your father was in bed then in the back of the house, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” said Toé, turning her head down and pressing back tears with a slender finger.

“What does the name of the mask mean?” asked Yasuko, peering at it over Mieko’s shoulder. Mieko looked at Toé.

“It’s called Fukai, and the name can be written either of two ways: with the characters for ‘deep well’ or ‘deep woman.’ It’s used in roles depicting middle-aged women, especially mothers. The Kanze school takes the name to mean a woman of ‘exceedingly deep heart’—that is, someone mature not only in years, but also in experience and understanding. My father had his own interpretation, though. He liked to think of it as a metaphor comparing the heart of an older woman to the depths of a bottomless well—a well so deep that its water would seem totally without color. Of course, I don’t pretend to understand it myself.” Toé’s voice was energetic, a perfect complement to the clarity of her gaze and the flowing smoothness of her gestures. It was as if she had made a conscious resolution
to ban from her person all trace of the veiled, evocative quality of the masks.

After Mieko had taken the mask Fukai in her hands and studied it, the sunken-cheeked, sorrow-stricken face traveled around the circle, from hand to hand. All of the young women, married and single, were gaily dressed and vivacious, but as each one held up the mask and gazed at it in turn, her features would be crossed by a look of lonely solemnity that seemed to mirror the shadows in the mask. As if to escape that solemnity, they were lavish with praise, exclaiming over the mask like foreigners. “What an exquisite, sad sort of beauty it has! Women today have lost this quiet gracefulness.”

When the students left, Mieko and Yasuko persuaded Toé to stay with them and to tell them details of her father’s death. She declined their invitation to have supper with them, however, and so they escorted her to the front door, walking together down a short hallway lighted by rays of the setting sun.

Suddenly the silence was broken by an infant’s crying, accompanied by the sound of an old woman crooning a lullaby. The atmosphere of chill and desolate refinement that normally hung over the large house was shattered by the baby’s wails.

“My! Is there a baby here?” asked Toé automatically, forgetting her natural reserve.

“Yes, it’s the child of a relative of ours. The mother died giving birth, and Yasuko felt so sorry for the poor thing that she offered to bring it up as her own.” Mieko spoke casually, with a sideways glance at Yasuko.

“It’s a lot of work, but he’s a dear creature, even if he does take up almost all my time now. Actually that’s one more reason we decided to move to Kamakura: it’s a healthier environment for the baby.”

Toé’s eyes fell sympathetically on the beautiful pair, both widows. With no man in the house to look after, she reflected, it was only natural for them to seek out such means of feeling needed.

Yasuko went with Toé as far as the gate. When she returned, Mieko was gone and Yū was pacing the hallway with Harumé’s child in her arms.

“How is the little one?” said Yasuko, peeping at its tiny face. Not yet three months old, the infant surveyed her guilelessly with its shiny black eyes. She drew back in momentary fear, seeming to see in its innocent look the stare of both Harumé and Akio.

“Yū, the baby does look like Harumé after all.”

“No, ma’am, this boy is the image of Master Akio.” Yū looked up, blinking sorrowfully. “If only I could tell you how miserable it makes me. I held Master Akio and Miss Harumé this very way when they were babies, and now both of them are gone. But this new life is here in their place; I have got that to be thankful for.” She wept easily these days. Great tears trickled down her cheeks. “Not that I ever wanted to hold this child in my arms. Heaven forgive me, but when Miss Harumé died of heart failure after it was over, I was glad. I couldn’t have borne it to see her with a little one, the way she was. I told the mistress so, too, but she didn’t pay any attention. She was determined to see this child brought into the world, in spite of anything I could say.”

“Yes. Once Mother has made up her mind, there’s no stopping her,” said Yasuko. “I love the baby, too. He looks so much like Akio I could almost believe he is mine.” Gently she lifted the white bundle out of Yū’s arms and cradled it in her own, laying a tender kiss on the soft cheek. Harumé’s death had filled her with a great wordless pity. Her constant prayer that this child of Harumé’s womb
would turn out not like his mother but like Akio or Ibuki gave her expression the earnest intensity of a small girl.

“Mieko must feel a keener blend of anguish and joy at Harumé’s death than any of us,” she thought. Then the vast, mysterious depths within Mieko that had always so fascinated her seemed suddenly to become bottomless. A helpless bewilderment overcame Yasuko, and her gaze moved searchingly through space with the distraught air of someone left standing on a pier, seeking a final glimpse of a loved one’s face even as the ship disappeared from view.

Mieko was kneeling on the floor in the slowly deepening dusk. She had lifted the mask Fukai from its box again, and was studying it in solitude. The pale yellowish cast of the mournful thin-cheeked mask in her hands was reflected on her face, the two countenances appearing faintly in the lingering daylight like twin blossoms on a single branch. The mask seemed to know all the intensity of her grief at the loss of Akio and Harumé—as well as the bitter woman’s vengeance that she had planned so long, hiding it deep within her….

The crying of the baby filled her ears.

In that moment the mask dropped from her grasp as if struck down by an invisible hand. In a trance she reached out and covered the face on the mask with her hand, while her right arm, as if suddenly paralyzed, hung frozen, immobile, in space.

F
UMIKO
E
NCHI
was born in Tokyo in 1905, the daughter of the great Meiji scholar Ueda Mannen. She is the author of many novels and stories, and has produced a ten-volume translation of
The Tale of Genji
into modern Japanese.
Masks
was first published in Japan in 1958.