The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (42 page)

It was still dark when Akira stepped outside and quietly closed the door to the barn, the October air cold and crisp. He knew winter wasn’t far off and checked again to see that he’d stacked enough wood by the side of the barn. It was just before dawn and dark shadows moved with the wind, the rustling branches waving as he turned back once and headed toward the main road that led down to the village of Aio. Akira felt an ache in his chest that traveled down to where his hand used to be. He moved with slow, careful steps, as if the darkness and the rutted road were deliberately slowing him down. He saw the road that lay before him like his life, scarred by long winters, the harsh, dry summers. Akira swung the bag with his few possessions over his shoulder. He left behind a note, the cat Nazo, who was too old and settled to travel such a distance again, and the finished
Okina
mask. Kiyo would take good care of Nazo and the mask.

As dawn’s light slowly brought everything into focus, Akira walked faster, knowing that each step took him farther away from Emiko and Kiyo. He stopped a moment when the sun rose to reveal a breathtaking sight; all around him the pine trees stood silent and the red-orange leaves of autumn blazed as they reached upward toward the light.

It was never the same with Emiko after her visit to the barn that night. They hardly spoke and danced around each other politely, acting like two guests at an inn. He kept to himself in the barn, cut the wood, and did the chores, but there was a lingering sadness to everything he did. What little hope he’d had for a family life had vanished. So many times he had wanted to give in to the comfort of Emiko and Kiyo and their praying-hands house. They might have been happy as far as lives go. But he couldn’t stop asking himself, Wasn’t there supposed to be more to life? Hadn’t he felt it before with Sato? Only once did Emiko refer to that night. And even then
she offered it as an apology, as if everything were her fault. “I’m sorry to have bothered you, Akira-san. It wasn’t my place.”

He bowed to her. “It
is
your place, Emiko-san,” he said softly. The rest of his words sat on the edge of his tongue and never emerged. He saw her eyes imploring him to go on, and how the deepening lines that etched her face made her appear beautiful to him. “Thank you for allowing me to stay,” he said instead.

Emiko smiled thinly and bowed back to him.

It wasn’t long before Kiyo knew something was wrong. “Why are you both acting so distant, so strange?” she asked, stroking Nazo’s stomach as he lay on the table in the barn. He was old and no longer spent his days chasing squirrels, or leaping at low-flying birds.

Akira laughed it off and went on cleaning out the barn. “What are you talking about?” he said.

She eyed him closely. “My mother seems so sad,” she said.

He knew she was waiting for him to say something. “I’m sorry,” was all he could think of.

“Did something happen?” she asked.

Akira shook his head. “We all get sad sometimes.”

He watched her pick up Nazo, rocking him back and forth in her arms. The aloof cat that once had hated to be carried was completely different with Kiyo.

“I hope I never get that sad,” she finally said.

He didn’t look at her then. There was nothing he could say. Kiyo was going to be fifteen and life was just beginning for her. Akira wanted nothing more than to protect her always from life’s sadness, shield her from the hurt she’d invariably experience, but at that moment, he knew he wouldn’t be the one to do that. These thoughts played over in his mind as he made his way down the mountain to the village of Aio. From there, he would find a ride down to Oyama and catch a train back to Tokyo. He would be there by evening.

From the moment she stepped off the train, Haru was in love with Nara. During the four-hour journey, she read about the city as soon as she was in the compartment by herself. All thoughts of loneliness disappeared in the pages. Nara was once the ancient capital of Japan, where Buddhism grew and thrived, and the Todai-ji temple housed the largest bronze statue of Buddha in the world. There was also Nara Park, which covered half the city, and was famous for the deer that roamed freely, deer once believed to be messengers from the gods. Most called it Deer Park. Nara was lovely in a way that she hadn’t expected—much smaller and quieter than Tokyo—filled with temples and shrines, and in the middle of it all stood Nara Women’s University. While Haru missed her father and Aki, even the sumo stable, she found a certain relief in being in a new place where the difficulties of the past were far away and she could glimpse her future right in front of her, spread out far and wide like Deer Park.

Haru spent the two days before the start of classes walking around Nara, visiting shrines and temples, looking forward to seeing Nara Park. Each morning, she was out of the dormitory before anyone else was up. It was late autumn and cool in the early mornings, the leaves falling all around her, blanketing her footsteps in a soothing quiet. She left visiting the park for last, the afternoon before her classes were to begin. A calm before what she hoped wouldn’t be a storm. She had had enough storms in her life.

Haru wasn’t disappointed. Nara Park was a world of its own. A wall of tall pine and oak trees protected it from the noise of the outside. Stepping into the park, she felt an immediate sense of comfort that swelled in her chest. There was a multitude of paths to follow. With every step, she discovered a new plant or unfamiliar foliage that she sketched quickly in her notebook. She hoped to see deer roaming in the park when she came to a flat, open expanse of green grass, where they were fed by visitors and taken care of by park attendants. But there wasn’t a deer in sight. Haru followed the empty path and wondered where the deer were hiding. Were they tired of being put
on show? From the corner of her eye, Haru saw shadows by the trees, a small group of deer standing perfectly still, watching her. She stopped and smiled, held out her hand to them. After all, she had entered their world, and she was the one on display.

Haru walked around the park until sunset, watching the sun disappear behind the tall trees before she returned to her dormitory, exhausted. After a quick meal, she fell into a deep sleep. Even the strange hollowness of the dormitory and the whispering voices of excited students all around her didn’t wake her. Instead, she dreamed she, too, was a messenger from the gods, standing among all the deer that roamed freely through the park, their warm breath against the palm of her hand as she fed them deer crackers, made of plain rice flour. Haru stood with them, surrounded by the sheltering trees, waiting to hear what the next message was.

By November, with money he borrowed from Hiroshi, Kenji finally found a small shop with a two-room apartment over it that he could afford to rent. Many of the spaces he looked at were just small hovels, abandoned casualties of the war. This particular shop needed work, but it wasn’t far from Akira Yoshiwara’s old mask shop, and was quiet and unobtrusive with a sizable front window to display his masks. Kenji also liked the neighborhood, tucked away in an alley, so that the actors would have to seek him out, just as they had Yoshiwara. He would remain just invisible enough. Everything else would have to be a compromise. The front room was small, even more so when he built shelves to line the walls, but the back room provided ample space to set up the saw and two tables where he would work, much as Yoshiwara had. He felt a tug of sadness at not having his sensei there to give him the skill and technique to be a truly distinctive mask artisan. That Kenji would have to learn on his own.

Kenji bought blocks of Japanese cypress from the same lumberyard where he used to buy balsa wood for his architecture classes. He used his money sparingly, not wanting to take advantage of Hiroshi’s generosity. A diet of noodles and rice and vegetables would suffice. If he needed more sustenance, he had only to visit his grandparents.

Slowly the shop was becoming his. When Kenji came downstairs every morning, the rooms held the subtle sweetness of the cypress wood and paints. But his shelves remained empty, one
Zo-onna
mask finally finished and waiting to be painted. It took him days to get through the simple steps his sensei had accomplished in hours. He couldn’t afford to make too many more mistakes. His first cuts with the table saw were disasters, uneven or off the mark. A small tragedy every time he wasted any wood. As the weeks passed, Kenji learned to adjust his strength, guide the wood and not force it in order to get the shape he desired. He remembered the words Yoshiwara-sensei told him from the very beginning. “Think of the wood as a living thing, warm to the touch. Never push; let your hands guide the wood.” As Kenji relaxed, the cypress wood came alive in his hands. He began to see the masks that would slowly emerge from the remaining blocks of wood.

Kenji went for a walk every evening, shaking off the stiffness of chiseling and sanding all day. The cold December air revitalized him. The alleyways were filled with people again and twice a week he went directly after work to visit his grandparents. On this particular evening, Kenji found himself jumping on a train and getting off near the university. When he was going to classes every day he dreaded the trip, but now that he had graduated, it felt somehow soothing to return to the familiar. He crossed one street and headed for the old architecture studio when he saw her, Mika Abe, dressed in dark, Western-style clothing, crossing the road and going into a small restaurant. Just by the way she walked, he knew it was her.