Masks by Fumiko Enchi Read Free Book Online

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 ofsurprise, 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 attendingcollege 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