Masks (10 page)

Had Mieko herself shown any resolve to end the marriage, the Toganōs could scarcely have argued, under the circumstances; but she had not.

Dr. Morioka, his hair now white with age, summed it up this way to Mikamé: “Mieko always was an undemonstrative person, able to take things in stride, and Masatsugu was certainly an expert at handling women, so I suppose they came to some sort of understanding. From then till the day he died, there never was word of any more trouble between them. Of course, for a woman of her day Mieko did get around quite a bit, to her poetry meetings and whatnot, but Masatsugu must have been willing to overlook
that in view of what had happened. Their son, the one who died in that mountain-climbing accident a few years ago, was born several years later. I guess it all goes to show that the Toganō family wasn’t meant to have an heir.”

“Was he the same doctor who delivered Akio?” asked Ibuki, seeking indirectly to ascertain whether Mikamé knew of the existence of a twin.

“No, he told me he was out of the country at the time, so Mieko had to go somewhere else. But just think for a minute of the power of a woman’s hatred! It’s frightening. I don’t know what became of the woman called Aguri, but it’s almost as if her bitterness sent poor Akio to his grave.”

“If Aguri had cause for bitterness, surely Mieko did too. An innocent young bride suffers a miscarriage because of a nail planted strategically on a staircase—that certainly is unjust.”

“Yes. I suppose that makes them even, since both lost children. The real villain is Masatsugu Toganō, then.”

“Still, if it was in the family blood for generations, you can’t very well blame him either. Men are susceptible to that sort of thing. Our society gets so worked up over it now, always siding with the woman, that no one dares examine the matter fairly, that’s the way it is.”

“Like Louis the Sixteenth or Nicholas the Second: paying for the excesses of our predecessors.”

“Yet the more outspoken and aggressive women become, the less attractive they are. You can see it in university coeds; there’s nothing in the least appealing about a young woman who tells you she’s feeling excited because it’s her time of the month.”

“Oh, no?” said Mikamé, grinning. “You seem to be saying that the mental striptease doesn’t suit your taste. In matters of the flesh my own preference is for total nakedness.
There’s a tawdriness to the abuna-e
^*1
—their bare feet poking out beneath silken petticoats—that I just don’t like.”

“Nakedness is hardly Yasuko’s style, though,” said Ibuki mockingly, looking sidelong at Mikamé and blowing a stream of cigarette smoke through pursed lips. “Besides, the very idea of a mental striptease is barbaric. Why do you think the human race spent thousands of years inventing clothes?”

“At the other end of the spectrum, I suppose, is Mieko Toganō—and living with her is bound to influence Yasuko. Ah, but there aren’t many women who are intellectual the way Yasuko is, yet soft and clinging as a pussycat, the way she is, too.” Mikamé sighed.

“I suspect that sensuality of hers comes from Mieko. There’s something awfully suggestive to me about the relationship between those two.”

“They’re lovers, you mean? Lesbians? Hmm, I doubt it.” Mikamé shook his head skeptically.

“Never mind that,” Ibuki said. “There’s something else I wanted to tell you. ‘An Account of the Shrine in the Fields,’ that essay Mieko wrote, claims the Rokujō lady never intended to become a possessive spirit—that try as she would to suppress it, her introverted psyche would turn outward and act on the object of her emotions in spite of her. Well, so far as I can tell, it’s exactly the same with the dog spirit and the snake spirit in Japanese folklore. There doesn’t have to be the slightest intention to do mischief. It simply happens that every time a person of latent psychic power experiences intense feelings of love, or hate, or even desire for someone, that person responds by breaking out in a fever or groaning out loud in his sleep
or showing some other sign of suffering. The one who’s responsible never has any idea of what’s going on. It’s a good illustration of the way one person’s mind can cast a spell on another.”

“Do you suppose Mieko Toganō has that sort of power to influence people—to charm them? That would explain her fascination with the Rokujō lady.”

“To be honest, until I read that essay, I had her pegged as just another high society lady, the sort that likes to play at writing poetry; but if that’s her own work, then I will admit I’m impressed. In fact, I can’t understand why it went out of print. I wonder if she only lent her name to something somebody else wrote.”

“I thought of that too. But when I suggested as much to Yasuko, she insisted that it had to be by Mieko.”

“Yasuko? When did you see her? I thought you said she’d stopped coming to class. Don’t tell me there’s something going on between you two.” Clearly, despite his words, Mikamé had no suspicion of the deepening entanglement between Ibuki and Yasuko. Though irked at his friend’s disparaging tone, Ibuki did not feel entitled to divulge the truth on his own. He dodged it with a skillful phrasing of the facts.

“You mentioned at Akio’s memorial service that you’d lent me the essay, didn’t you?” he said. “Mieko told her to find out what I thought of it. She came over the other day to ask me.”

Mikamé’s face grew serious. “If I proposed to Yasuko, do you think she would accept?”

“I don’t know. First you’ve got to ask her. But unless I’m wrong, Mieko’s not going to let go of her. It’s not only selfishness, either, but something else, something deep and powerful holding those two together.” His thoughts returned to that snowy evening in the old parlor of the Toganō
house, and it seemed to him that the relationship between Mieko and Yasuko possessed a quality of moistness, of cling-ingness, like that of something animal; he was reminded of a spider’s web. Then, entangled in that web, soft and white as marshmallow, the image of Harumé’s face floated up in his mind.

As Ibuki pushed his way through the revolving door of the hotel and stepped outside, the north wind attacked him mercilessly, forcing him to hunch his shoulders and grimace. Over supper in the basement grill, Mikamé had talked incessantly of his plan to propose to Yasuko, but afterward, when they came back up to the lobby, a young woman with dyed red hair, wearing a striped suit and mink stole and standing in an affected pose—a fashion model, perhaps, or a dancer—had caught sight of Mikamé and signaled to him with her eyes.

“You’re early!” Mikamé had said, taking a camera from her hands. To Ibuki he explained, “We drove to Hakone the other day, and I forgot to get it back from her.”

Propelled by the cold wind, Ibuki hurried toward the Japan National Railway station. Once he had said to Yasuko that Mikamé’s taste in women was good, but this one today had been too flashy. And for all her outer flashiness one sensed a dryness inside—a flimsiness, as though her joints cracked.

On that recent evening he had not been able so much as to hold Yasuko’s hand. Under such circumstances it was not a man’s place to protest, he felt with dignity, but it troubled him that there had been no word from Yasuko since then. Inasmuch as he was the first man she had been with since Akio died, it did seem she might show greater attraction to him. Although she treated him with every sign of the warmest affection when they were alone, once
they parted she never made the slightest attempt to seek him out. Her attitude was not that of an innocent and moral woman, but, indeed, that of an experienced whore—one who had mastered every skill.

Yasuko had belonged completely to Akio, and now she was learning again, from Mieko, how to go on with her life as a woman.

But why, he wondered, had the unhappy episode in Mieko’s own marriage—and, even more, the loss of her only son—carved no lines of sorrow into her face?

It struck him then that despite his frequent encounters with Mieko, he had oddly no clear mental image of her face. Partly it was because he had never seen her alone, but always with Yasuko nearby to engage his attention; but beyond that, the pale and gently curving silhouette of her face was all that remained in his memory. It was a face like a Nō mask, while the impression it gave was one of even greater obscurity and elusiveness. Mieko, too, was human, she must smile and frown like other people, but he had no memory of ever seeing her expression come alive. To have once been the victim of a ruse by her husband’s mistress—one that had caused her to suffer a miscarriage, no less—and then to stay tamely on with the same man and bear him another child, showed a want of spirit that any modern woman would find scandalous. Might it not be said of her, then, that she abided faithfully by the feudal code of womanly virtue? Try as he would, however, to think of Mieko as someone like Osan or Osono of the puppet plays, a woman whose mainstay in life was a quiet resignation, Ibuki could sense in her none of that pathetic aura of self-sacrifice.

Yet this seeming shallowness of character, or weak-willed stupidity, could not be reconciled with the beauty and richness of the verses she wrote. And what, even more,
of the crisp and rigorous prose of “An Account of the Shrine in the Fields”?

The essay had, in fact, made an even profounder impact on Yasuko than on him or Mikamé; but never once, she said, had she seen a copy of it around the house, and, of course, Mieko had never spoken of it to her. In response to a guess he once hazarded that Mieko’s essay might be what had prompted Akio to undertake his own study of spirit possession, Yasuko had pronounced herself certain that he had died unaware of its existence.

Mieko was then, as Yasuko had once said, a woman whose heart was as secretive as a garden of flowers at night: the mingled scent of unseen blossoms trailed from her every gesture. Since hearing Yasuko speak these words, Ibuki had found himself haunted by the phrase “flowers of darkness”—a fragment of a T’ang poem he had once read. Amid the flowers breathing their mysterious perfumes into darkness floated the face not only of Mieko but of Yasuko—yes, and of Harumé as well.

The north wind lashed pitilessly at his cheeks, even though he shielded them in the collar of his overcoat. At the station he looked up from the platform and saw, just above the clock dial that had seemed from the hotel window to glitter like brass, the moon, shining like a chip of splintered ice.

During his New Year’s vacation Ibuki went to Ito, taking with him the incomplete manuscript of a book his publisher had asked him to write. His relationship with Yasuko was becoming a painful drain on his purse, but he had resigned himself to paying whatever it might cost to explore the unknown depths of her heart. Despite her promise, though, she failed to appear at the lodgings he had taken.

Returning home, his inner gloom concealed by an air of
nonchalance, Ibuki spotted Mikamé’s Hillman parked outside the house and rang the doorbell with the intense relief of one who has been narrowly saved.

Sounds of animated laughter came from inside the house. Looking over the low fence beside the gate, past a dark and wrinkled red rose at the end of a withered, wirelike tendril, he saw Mikamé seated in profile in a rattan chair on the veranda.

Sadako wore a cheerful smile as she let him in the door. “You’re back! Just in time. Dr. Mikamé is here, waiting to see you.”

“Thanks for stopping by.”

“Thank
you
for showing up while I was here. Happy New Year!”

“The same to you.”

Never one to display bad humor, Mikamé seemed in especially good spirits today.

“He brought us a present. Something you’ll like, dear.”

“For your garden border,” said Mikamé with a laugh, pointing outside to a row of whiskey bottles buried bottom side up along the garden edge.

“He says it’s a very good brand.”

“What is it?”

“It’s called Old Parr.”

“Well, thanks very much,” said Ibuki, adding dryly, “even if it probably is something one of your patients gave you for Christmas.”

Mikamé looked at Sadako, grinning. “Listen to him—stealing my lines!”

“What are we waiting for?” said Ibuki. “Let’s have a glass. I’d offer you some of ours, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t be up to your standards.”

Sadako brought out a black bottle and set it on the table.

“Where’s Ruriko?”

“She went to Grandma’s. I was just enjoying the quiet around the house when Dr. Mikamé came. Dear, he’s getting married.”

“Married? That’s news.”

“Now hold on, Sadako, it’s not certain yet. All I did was start the negotiations.”

“Who’s the lucky girl?” said Ibuki, forcing a smile into his narrowing eyes.

“Who do you think?”

“It’s Yasuko Toganō,” said Sadako. “You’re so fond of her yourself we were just trying to decide if you’d laugh or cry when you heard the news.”

“Who, Yasuko? Good for you; you’ve been dropping hints long enough. Finally worked up your nerve, did you?” Ibuki mixed his whiskey with water and took a sip before looking at Mikamé.

“That’s right. I made it my first resolution for the new year.”

“When? Did you go over there?”

“No, nothing so ceremonious. I’ve got better sense than that. First, I invited Mieko and Yasuko to go with me on a drive.”

“Ah, of course. Your money and your car—fine bait for trapping a woman.” Ibuki spoke mockingly as always, but today his humor was tinged with acrimony. “Where did you take them?”

“To Atami, to see the plum blossoms.”

“A bit early for that, wasn’t it? My, my—sounds like a page from
Demon of Gold.
^*2
All I had to do was throw a
cape around my shoulders and run after you, and presto! you’d have been Toyama the villain.”

Mikamé laughed. “A fine Kan’ichi you make, saddled with wife and child.”

“Yes, well, Omiya is a widow, so she’s seen better days herself.” Sadako spoke with unaccustomed venom.

Beneath his joking, Ibuki was severely shaken to learn that while he had been waiting impatiently for Yasuko in Ito, she had been as close as Atami with Mikamé.

“Did you stay the night there?”

“Even if we did, those two never left each other’s side. You know you’re quite right, Ibuki, they do act as if they were lovers. Yasuko alone is enough, but with both of them hanging on to each other, it gets to be damned suggestive.” Mikamé narrowed his eyes and dragged on his cigarette, remembering.