The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (67 page)

Akira worked on the old gardener and ghost masks, which would both be worn by Otomo Matsui. He maintained his habit of working in the early hours of the morning when the shop was quiet. He picked up the ghost mask, which felt light and almost fragile in his hand. Everything would have to be perfect. He knew Matsui wasn’t well and had especially chosen to play the old gardener and his ghost, roles he hadn’t played since he was a young man. After thirty years of making masks for the great actor, Akira felt they’d come full circle together. He held the mask up and peered out through the eyes, his vision
narrowed to what was right in front of him. He turned the mask around and could almost see traces of the actor himself in the carved features, the impressions of his high forehead and deep-set eyes.

He and Kenji had worked through the summer trying to finish all the orders. It was a great honor and a lucrative commission for them. Only now, after months of work, did he see that they would make their deadline. Akira felt his entire body relax. He glued the last of the beard onto the old gardener mask and gently returned it to the shelf to dry. He unlocked the front door. Kenji would be in at any moment by the looks of the lightening sky, and he returned to the back room to make hot water for their tea. Over the years, it had become a ritual for them to sit down, sip their tea, and discuss the coming day, a specific mask they were working on, or any problems. Akira felt fortunate to have this time with Kenji each morning.

He was relieved Kenji was content again. There were a few difficult years when he and Mika remained childless and he’d been upset with Mika away so much, traveling all over Japan for her father’s growing textile business. Akira would appease him by saying, “A marriage isn’t like water that slips through your fingers. It’s solid and hard like stone and can be grasped on to. Don’t let your pride get in the way.” Then slowly, Kenji would relax and smile, talk about the masks they were working on, and forget his loneliness.

When Akira heard the front door open, he called out to Kenji. “Ah, you’re just in time.”

But it was a woman’s voice that answered him. “I’m sorry, you must be mistaken.”

Akira stepped out of the back room to find a young woman dressed in a plain green kimono. “I’m sorry,” he apologized, “I thought you were someone else. How may I help you?”

“Akira-san,” she said, as if she knew it would be him stepping out of the back room.

Her voice carried the same inflection he’d never forgotten. Suddenly, one of the ghosts that hovered on the surface of the river was standing right before him, full of life, flesh and blood, traces of the young girl from the mountains of Aio instilled in the young woman standing before him.

“Kiyo-san,” he said, without a second thought.

She smiled and bowed low to him.

They stood for a moment, frozen in time. Akira cleared his throat and suddenly felt shy.

“I hoped you would be here,” she said.

He invited her into the back room for tea and offered her a stool. “How is your mother?” he asked.

Kiyo hesitated. “She died last year.”

The news was like a blow to him. And Akira wondered how he could still be standing when his legs felt so weak. He could no longer think of Emiko-san in the same way, sitting by the hearth in the praying-hands house, stirring the contents of the black iron pot. His grief was as dark as that pot.

“It was so unexpected,” Kiyo continued. “She developed a cough that wouldn’t go away. Within months, she could barely get out of bed. It wasn’t much longer after that.” Kiyo looked down at her hands.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He saw more and more of the young girl he’d left behind.

“She spoke of you,” Kiyo added.

Akira didn’t ask of what she spoke. He felt as if his throat had closed. Instead, he heard the water boiling and thankfully turned away.

Unlike other mornings when Kenji entered the mask shop, it was unusually quiet. Not the hissing of hot water, the sharp shrill of the saw, nor even Yoshiwara-sensei’s low humming emerged from the back room. For a moment he wondered if something had happened to him; perhaps he was ill again and hadn’t come downstairs. Then, from the back room he heard soft and teasing words, followed by Akira’s voice calling out, “Kenji-san, is that you?”

Who else did he expect at this time of the morning? Kenji walked to the back room, surprised to see a young woman perched on the stool next to Yosihwara. He lowered his eyes to keep from staring.

“Hello.” He bowed.

Yoshiwara stood up. The young woman did, too, bowing low to Kenji. “This is Kiyo-san,” his teacher introduced. “She and her mother were very good to me when I lived in Aio.”

Kenji paused a moment. As much as he always wanted to know about Yoshiwara, his sensei hardly spoke of his private life, and Kenji had always respected his wishes. But to see him sitting with a young woman so early in the morning felt unexpected and out of place. He bowed back to Kiyo-san and noticed that up close she wasn’t as young as he first thought. She was in her late twenties, very pleasant looking with a slim, wiry build and large, expressive eyes. Her long black hair was tied back in a thick braid. She was dressed simply and it was her hands he noticed, worker’s hands, tanned and veined, yet not unattractive.

“Are you visiting Tokyo?” Kenji asked.

She nodded shyly.
“Hai.”

Yoshiwara-sensei added, “Kiyo-san is in Tokyo for just a short time. She returns to Aio in a few days.”

“I was hoping to find Akira-san,” she said.

“You didn’t know he was here?” Kenji asked. He wanted to ask so many more questions but swallowed his curiosity.

She looked at Yoshiwara-sensei and then back at Kenji again. “Over the years, I lost track of Akira-san,” she said. “But it seems he left a trail for me to follow.”

His teacher cleared his throat and his fingers tapped playfully against the table.

“And what was that?” Kenji asked.

“He left me a mask,” Kiyo said.

It wasn’t until the theater lights dimmed that Aki leaned back in her seat and relaxed. The low beating of a drum filled the cool, high-ceilinged room and calmed her. She hadn’t been outside of the house and garden for almost a month, not since the middle of August, and
it made her nervous to be among so many people, so many different scents and sounds. She sat protected between Haru and Hiroshi in front-row seats. His brother, Kenji, had given them tickets for the Noh production of
The Damask Drum
with Otomo Matsui, and Haru insisted it was time she stepped out of the house. The famous actor was to retire at the end of the season and all of Tokyo wanted to see him in his last performances. Haru took such good care of her and Takara that Aki couldn’t say no to an evening at the theater.

She closed her eyes and let her mind follow the rhythmic beating of the drums. When the courtier began chanting the story, Aki opened her eyes to the light-filled stage as Otomo Matsui dressed as the old gardener entered, circled the stage as if he’d walked a great distance around the pond, and stopped to stare offstage. His mask tilted up in surprise when he glimpsed the princess, and the courtier told of his instantaneous love for her. From that moment, Aki couldn’t take her eyes off Matsui. Each move he made was like a slow dance and the mask he wore took on a life of its own, changed expressions with the simplest movement of his head. She saw both Otomo Matsui and Kenji-san’s great talents at work. The tragic story mesmerized her, the drum hanging from the laurel tree that the gardener banged to no avail, his subsequent suicide over his unrequited love for the princess, followed by his return as a ghost. It all left her breathless.

“Are you all right?” Hiroshi leaned over and asked her.

Aki swallowed and nodded. She smiled at him reassuringly and felt a warmth move through her body. The truth was, she hadn’t felt so well in a long time. She turned to see Haru just as deeply involved in the story.

When
The Damask Drum
ended and the lights came on during intermission, Hiroshi was called away by some business associates, while Aki felt freed from the dark cloud and the shadows that lingered around her. The Kyogen would be next; a comic piece that would balance the more serious Noh plays. But it was
The Damask Drum
that would stay with her, that provided the answer to stopping the shadows from overtaking her. Aki turned to talk to Haru and then stood up and gazed across the room until she found Hiroshi.

The train rattled on toward Tokyo as Mika sat next to her father, exhausted, thrilled at the textile designs she’d seen in Kyoto. She couldn’t wait to tell Kenji of the rich colors, the vibrant reds and startling greens, her mind alive with designs and patterns. At last they’d reached a comfortable point in their life together and she longed to be home. She might even bring up the idea of having a baby again, though it no longer governed her world. Now that Otomo Matsui had given his last performance, they were finally taking a long-planned vacation to Toya-ko Onsen, the hot springs resort on the shores of Lake Toya in Hokkaido. Mika could already feel the initial shock of stepping into the heated water, the moment of hesitation before her body adjusted to its warm embrace.

There was a low drone of voices all around them. The train was filled, but they’d booked early and had good seats in the first car. Her father was reading the paper, nodding off behind his glasses. Mika glanced down at her watch; less than an hour to go. She closed her eyes as the train rocked her gently from side to side and a childhood lullaby filled her head.

Mika’s eyes opened instantly at the shriek of the brakes, metal grinding on metal, the lights flickering on and off, the frantic voices. She had awakened to a nightmare. There was no time to do anything; to be frightened or react, to turn and see if her father was still sitting beside her. Instead, in the split second before the crashing impact, Kenji flashed through her mind as she watched the entire car crush inward toward them; like an accordion, she thought, like a silk fan closing.

Kenji walked through the courtyard and let himself into the dark house. Mika still wasn’t home and he felt the cold of her absence as
soon as he slipped out of his shoes and stepped into the hallway. There was already the damp-tatami smell of winter, though they were barely into November. She’d gone to Kyoto for three days with her father, visiting other textile designers. “To see what the competition is doing,” she teased. Once in a while, he still felt hints of the boy Kenji the ghost resurfacing, all those unsubstantiated fears. He swallowed that part of his childhood back down. Her trips away no longer bothered him. Kenji knew how happy she was learning her father’s business, and how successful her fabric designs had become. He smiled to himself. Theirs was a marriage of equality and Mika wouldn’t have it any other way. She’d be home any time now.

She was scheduled to return on the evening train so Kenji had purposely stayed late at the shop, eaten a bowl of noodles with Yoshiwara-sensei, talked about the masks in hopes of containing his anticipation. He hoped to return and find her already home. In a canvas bag, he carried all the masks he had carved of her during the past ten years. Until now, he’d kept them to himself. He wanted to enter the warm house as if he’d been the one away, to show her he was fine with her gone, as long as she returned to him.

Instead, the house stood dark and empty. He moved quickly from room to room, turning on all the electric lamps so that the house blazed with a warm light.
“I’m here, I’m here,”
each one seemed to say as he snapped the lamps on. And just as his fingers found the switch on the last lamp in an upstairs room, he heard the gate creak open. Kenji stood a moment and thought he heard her wooden sandals click-clacking across the courtyard. He imagined the smile on her lips at the sight of all the bright lights guiding her home, and he could already hear her rush of words telling him about the trip. He thought about the sound of her voice, the smooth song of it, and hurried downstairs to meet her.