Read Online The Mask Carver's Son by Alyson Richman - Free Book Online

from underneath their coverlet, careful not to disturb him, and gather herself and her robes. Then, with steps as light as a spirit, she would walk into the garden to scoop the miso paste from one of the earthen jars and pull two or three fish from their salty box. She would steep his rice in citron and rice wine. She would lay a branch of blossoms, to wait beside him and his bowl.
    On the days when her early departure left a coldness and an aching emptiness in their bed, he would rise minutes after her. He would walk toward their small paper window and slide it ever so slightly to one side. Just to watch her, if only for a moment, as she glided through the garden as ethereal as a ghost.
    He could hear the sound of the latch closing, the gentle whipping of her hair. To him nothing was more beautiful—not even a mask, dare he say it?—than his wife wrapped in her morning robe.
    The black of her hair falling like the smooth feathers of a raven bird, the shine of her alabaster brow. He could anticipate the sound of her footsteps, he could watch her for hours and never tire of the sweet melody of her voice. With great voracity, he consumed his breakfast as if it were manna delivered to him by the gods. He saw her image in the cloudy broth of miso, and her tenderness in the wilted greens.
    *   *   *
    As much as his superstitious mind hated to admit it, the first month of their marriage was nothing short of blissful. Every morning she prepared his meal for him, and his afternoons were free so that he could carve. His father-in-law converted the small room on the second floor into a studio so that he could work uninterrupted on his masks. When he had imagined himself adopted into a household, he never dreamed that one as prestigious as the Yamamoto family would be as kind and as warm as he discovered them to be.
    Since their first meeting at the
o-miai
, Father had known that Etsuko felt no love for him. He knew that he was not beautiful and that the years spent in isolation had prevented him from cultivating any charm. He only hoped that she would learn to love him, as his father-in-law promised she would.
    “I believe it is far easier for a woman to learn to love her husband than it is for a man to learn to love his wife,” Grandfather had told him before his wedding day. “I know my daughter, Ryusei, and I know that she will learn to love you.” Father remained skeptical, convincing himself that their marriage was acceptable because it fulfilled desires within both parties outside the world of love. But as much as he knew he should avoid all feeling for the material world—one of his master’s strictest rules—he could not help being captivated by its enticing powers.
    He knew his wife was particularly fond of the love poems of Ono no Komachi. Those words of a woman who cannot sleep, whose love burns inside her like an inextinguishable flame, how they captivated him too! Only in his most fanciful dreams could he imagine his wife ever feeling that way toward him.
    He recognized in himself that he appeared staid, almost passionless. Yet he had been told that his masks had the capacity to move audiences to tears and the finest actors to cries of awe. His spirit was in each and every one of those masks, infused with what he could never convey with words. He worried that his wife could not recognize that. Would she always think of him as just a man of the wood?
    *   *   *
    Despite her initial resignation, Mother did learn to love the man who was chosen for her. And perhaps that made the remainder of Father’s life all the more painful. For eventually she grew to love him deeply.
    As no one else ever did.
    Her love for him grew slowly, beginning almost as an abstraction. Undoubtedly, Mother loved that which gave joy to her family. In the beginning, her feelings toward her husband were defined by a sense of duty. For now she had given her parents a sense of completion in their old age. Her father seemed to breathe a