Masks (5 page)

Mieko’s late husband was descended from a line of powerful and wealthy landowners in Niigata; in keeping with his background, the house, which he had built on the old outskirts of Tokyo in the first quarter of the century, stood on spacious grounds and was so large that its upkeep required a considerable staff of servants. Mieko herself was the daughter of the head priest at a well-known temple in Shinshū, so the furnishings and decor of the house were also marked by an old-fashioned lavishness and even a certain ostentation. After the war had come land reform, and Mieko, by then a widow, had been forced to sell off the family possessions (including, she said, most of the land and the main house on the estate); even so, the house where they now lived—formerly a private retreat—was surrounded by an old-fashioned garden of nearly a quarter of an acre, complete with miniature lake and artificial hill: a great rarity in postwar Tokyo.

With fireflies the theme of the evening, most of the women had come dressed in colorful kimonos. A candle was lit in the “snow-viewing” lantern on the hillock, and from time to time the new moon peered down through rifts in the clouds. After the professor’s talk the guests helped themselves to beer and Heian-style delicacies, and wandered informally through the garden.

As long as Professor Makino remained seated on the tatami, Ibuki was obliged, as his former student, to stay and keep him entertained. He was unable even to get in a quiet word with Yasuko. Finally, hearing Mikamé call him, he seized the chance to be excused, and slipped out into the garden.

“So these are Genji fireflies,” said Mikamé. “They’re bigger than the ones where I grew up, and brighter, too.” Attempting to grab the bluish yellow circle of light as it vanished into nearby darkness, he tottered and nearly fell
off the stone on which he stood perched. “This house and garden belong to a different age, don’t they?”

“They certainly do. The whole idea of a firefly hunt goes back to the Tokugawa era. The
Morning-glory Diary,
^*5
to start with.”

“They still let out fireflies in the garden at the Chinzansō restaurant a few days every year. Once someone gave me a few tickets, and I went over with some guys from the hospital; but as I remember, the fireflies were overshadowed by the other entertainments.”

“That’s it. Fireflies alone wouldn’t create the same mood. Who but Mieko would think of something so old-fashioned and romantic as having Professor Makino come and talk about the ‘Fireflies’ chapter in
The Tale of Genji
?”

“His talks have a certain charm, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought he was Prince Hotaru and Yasuko was Tamakazura.”
^*6

“Don’t make me laugh,” said Ibuki sourly, knowing all too well that Professor Makino had designs on Yasuko and had from time to time made open advances to her.

The large garden seemed to be imperfectly maintained, after all: the night air contained the musty odor of rotting leaves. The men picked their way across stepping-stones in the empty pond and walked in the direction of the hillock. On the way they spotted the figure of a woman seated alone in the arbor, gazing toward them. Light from the stone lantern cast a hazy circle on the umbrella-shaped pines. The woman’s face, beside the lantern, was arrestingly
beautiful. She was like a large white flower bathed in light, magnificent in her isolation.

“Who could that be?”

“Beautiful, isn’t she? There was nobody like that at the house.” Mikamé’s steps quickened automatically.

“Leave her alone,” muttered Ibuki behind him.

The woman in the arbor was so still that they could not be sure whether she was watching their approach. Then, before Mikamé could reach her, Yasuko appeared seemingly out of nowhere and stood before the arbor as if waiting for them.

All the other women were wearing kimonos, but Yasuko’s choice had been a Chinese-style gown of white brocade, worn with green jade earrings that were shiny drops of melting softness. Standing there in front of the arbor, the lines of her body plainly revealed by the drape of the sleeveless white gown, she seemed a delicate image of the Buddha sheltering the woman behind her.

“What are you two doing here? Professor Makino is asking for you, Tsuneo.” She smiled, waving lightly with an oiled-paper fan at a large firefly as it flitted past her face.

“He was getting so dull that I came out for some fresh air.”

“A fine way to talk. Mother sent me to find you and make you come back. As soon as the professor has had a little beer, you know, he starts telling those stories of his. She’s beside herself, and doesn’t know what to do.”

“There’s not much she
can
do, since she invited him. Wherever there are ladies, he does his best to make them blush. A kind of hobby of his.”

“Yasuko, who is that behind you?” said Mikamé. “I wasn’t introduced.”

Yasuko looked around and gave an exclamation of
surprise, as if only then becoming aware of the presence of another person. Her reaction was suspect in view of the direction from which she must have come, but to both men her surprise appeared real.

“This isn’t a guest. This is a distant relative of Mother’s.” She looked at the beautiful woman as one might look at a small child. The woman’s expression did not alter under Yasuko’s gaze, but as she became aware of Ibuki and Mikamé standing there, she blinked slowly, moving her lashes like a dark butterfly beating its wings in time with its respirations. In the same slow way her face, white as marshmallow, broke into something like a smile. The interior of her mouth was dark and strangely alluring.

After a moment she got up, turned her back on them, and walked slowly down the far side of the hill. Ibuki had soon forgotten about her, but now, on the train, Yasuko’s mention of the firefly party brought the woman’s extraordinary face back to him. A persistent feeling nagged him that the face resembled something else, though what he could not say; then he realized that her face might be perfectly inlaid on the Zō no onna mask they had seen the day before. He blinked, like one awakening from a dream.

“You remember her, don’t you?” said Yasuko, as if she could see the image floating up in his mind. “That woman in the arbor, the one you and Toyoki were so curious about: that was Harumé.”

“Really? I don’t remember much about her except that she seemed very beautiful. Is she married?”

“No. She and Akio were raised separately. He told me he never even knew about her until after he’d grown up.”

According to Yasuko, in the Toganō family multiple births were looked on with some distaste as being vaguely beastly and unpleasant. Mieko’s husband (who, after attending
college in Tokyo, had become a banker) had no use for such old superstitions, but his parents in the countryside had objected strenuously to raising the babies together. In deference to their wishes, Mieko’s parents had taken in Harumé, and officially she was registered as the daughter of a widowed aunt. She had never before returned to the home of her natural parents, even after the death of Mieko’s father. Yasuko had learned of her existence from Mieko only after she had married into the family.

“If she and Akio were twins,” mused Ibuki, “then that puts her at thirty. Maybe it’s because I saw her at night, but to me she looked barely twenty.”

“She’s a very striking woman.”

“Why doesn’t she marry?”

“I wonder.” Yasuko inclined her head vaguely.

“Does she have some way of supporting herself?”

“No. Perhaps growing up in that out-of-the-way temple made her feel too privileged, like an old-fashioned princess.”

“Yes, that was just how she seemed: like a typical young lady of Meiji who had drifted into our times without aging a day. There was something unusual about her. Will she be staying here long?”

“Yes. For good.” Yasuko glanced up, moving only her eyes.

Mieko’s mother had also died, it seemed, and after the war the family had fallen on hard times; certain of the relatives were even fighting one another in court over settlement of the estate. Finally, on the pretext that her brother, Akio, was dead now anyway, Harumé had been sent back to her mother.

Ibuki puzzled over the strangeness of the woman’s destiny, to be shuttled hither and yon, like a child, at the whims of other people. He wondered if there might be something wrong with her. And Yasuko’s wish to be free of
the Toganō family seemed bound up in some way with Harumé’s return.

“Does Mieko seem fond of her?” he asked. Yasuko slowly shook her head.

Before he could learn any more about Harumé or about Yasuko’s own intentions, the train emerged from a long tunnel.

Outside the window, lights of the resort town of Atami sprang up in the evening dusk, spilling down the hillside toward the sea like a scattering of jewels.

Watching idly as a porter manhandled someone’s luggage, Ibuki was seized suddenly by an idea. He leaped to his feet.

“Yasuko, let’s get off here.”

“What?”

Ignoring her dubious expression, he grabbed their suitcases from the overhead rack and hastily placed her scarlet coat around her shoulders.

The train had stopped. Carrying their two suitcases in one hand, he pushed her ahead of him out onto the platform. No sooner had they stepped off the train than it began to glide away.

“What are you doing? Where are we going?” Yasuko stood huddled next to Ibuki’s tall frame, looking up at him, her head on his chest. Her small body glowed with the excited agitation of a stolen bride. Ibuki transferred the bags lightly to his other hand and wrapped his left arm firmly around her shoulders, squeezing her arm with his fingers as they walked down the platform stairs.

One afternoon a week later, Ibuki was seated importantly at his desk in the department office, correcting proof sheets for a new book. Professor Makino had no classes that day, and his other two colleagues had already gone home, leaving Ibuki with the room to himself.

Sounds of footsteps and the ringing of a phone came to him occasionally through the thick wall separating his office from the library next door. Now and then he would flick a cigarette ash into the ashtray and let his gaze wander out the third-story window, where yellow bird-shaped ginkgo leaves swayed on the branches with the soft heaviness of blossoms at their peak, almost ready to fall and scatter. At five o’clock the steam in the pipes was shut off, and the room grew steadily colder.

The feel of Yasuko’s agile, fairylike body in his arms that night in the Atami hotel came to him time and again like a shifting beam of light, leaving him restless and unsettled. With a tremor he recalled the pliant smoothness of her waist and the backs of her hands, the way she had withstood positions so contorted that he had feared her wrists or arms might pull apart; and then, abandoning the dry and colorless world of the dusty books and folders spread before him on the desktop, he gave himself over to the fantasy that he was soaring birdlike, through a void of such brilliant intensity that all color had blended into pure light.

Only after parting with her did he realize that he knew no more about the goings-on at the Toganō house, or about Yasuko’s own private plans, than what she had told him already on the train.

Roused by her casual admission aboard the train that she intended to marry Mikamé, he had acted impetuously, seeking by force to make her his, yet the only result had been a sensual feast of astonishing richness, and in the end she had gone away, leaving nothing of herself behind.

Back home, he sighed despondently at the sight of his small daughter toddling about, and his slender, immaculate wife; he saw neither sweetness in the one nor neatness in the other, aware only of the bonds they represented, holding him tightly in their grip.

Both today and the day before yesterday he had given
lectures, but neither time had Yasuko appeared in the classroom. He had told her to call his office whether or not she came to class, so again today he lingered, even canceling a lecture at another university which would have required him to leave by three. To telephone the Toganō house himself would have been the simplest thing to do, but his conscience would not let him.

He checked his wristwatch and found that it was already ten minutes past five. There seemed no point in waiting any longer for her to call. He gathered up the proof sheets and stuffed them into his briefcase, then took his overcoat from the corner coatrack and put it on.

Suddenly the telephone on his desk began to ring. Ibuki, normally slow-moving, dashed back in comical haste and grabbed the receiver, only to drop his elbow dejectedly on the desktop at the sound of a man’s deep voice.

“Oh, it’s you.” The voice belonged to Mikamé, who seemed quite unconcerned about Ibuki’s disappointment.

“What kind of a greeting is that? Listen, I found something in a bookstore near the hospital that I want you to see.”

“More of your pornography?”

“Wrong. It’s a reprint from an old edition of
Clear Stream.
Prewar. An essay by Mieko Toganō called ‘An Account of the Shrine in the Fields.’ Did you ever read it?”

“Hmm, no. The Shrine in the Fields…isn’t that the place that comes up in
The Tale of Genji
in connection with the Rokujō lady?”

“That’s it. I’ve read the novel once or twice myself, in modern translation, to find out what it has to say about spirit possession, and as you know, everything hinges on the Rokujō lady. In all the time I’ve known Mieko, she’s never mentioned having written anything like this, so I never even knew it existed, but this proves she was involved with the subject long before Akio. I found it fascinating, and I thought that as a specialist you’d appreciate it even more.”

“Thanks. You’re right, I’d like very much to see it. I’ve been thinking I’d like to know more about Mieko Toganō anyway.”

“Remember that time in Kyoto Station when you told me she and Yasuko could be thought of as different in scale? I disagreed then, but now I’m beginning to see your point.” Plainly the essay had impressed Mikamé deeply. It appeared to have absorbed his interest so completely that he neglected to ask about the remainder of Ibuki’s visit in Kyoto with the two women. Only when Ibuki confessed rather sheepishly to having come back alone with Yasuko on the next afternoon’s express did Mikamé’s interest in her seem to reawaken.