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

one from her hand as she sat in the garden one day, her hair loosely tied in a bun.
    “But why, Ryusei?” she asked, puzzled.
    “Hasn’t your father told you?” he asked, equally perplexed that his father-in-law had never divulged the story of his past. “No good can come from them. You must trust me. Promise me your lips will never touch one,” he pleaded. Not wishing to scare his wife with his former misery, he pretended his superstition was grounded in an old wives’ tale he had heard long ago.
    “I promise,” she whispered, looking down at his kneeling form. “I would do anything to ensure our son’s arrival into this world.
Anything
.”
    As she watched him return to the house, it occurred to her that she had eaten a plum on their wedding day. The night of the child’s conception. She considered whether she should divulge this to her husband. “No need to worry him,” she decided. “It is only a silly old wives’ tale.”
    *   *   *
    Father’s interest in carving waned over the months of my mother’s pregnancy. It seems she was the only one in the world who had the power to distract him from the wood. The orders for his masks continued to pile up even though the number of performances the theater was producing began to decrease. His masks became almost rarities, limited editions that demanded far higher prices than the theaters could afford.
    “Don’t forget your carving,” Grandfather began reminding him after the family dinners. “The actors in the theater are beginning to wonder if you have given up on your craft.”
    “Don’t worry,” Grandmother comforted him. “It is just the baby’s impending arrival. Once he is born, all will return to normal.”
    “I hope you are right, Chieko,” he sighed with the day’s exhaustion. “It would be a shame to let a talent like his go to waste.”
    *   *   *
    Mother, however, enjoyed the attention that her husband lavished upon her. Never in her most colorful dreams had she imagined that he would be so attentive to her. Although he seemed uninterested in lovemaking, his hands would find themselves on her expanding belly. Like a blind man, he would trace the gentle rounding, the sloping that began beneath her breasts and then gently merged with her thighs. At night he would thread his fingers through her hair, gently caress her cheekbones, her eyelids, the soft line of her lips. As if to memorize her.
    Indeed, she began to believe he truly loved her, and subsequently her love for him blossomed. No longer did she feel that she was preparing his meals or attending to his needs only out of a wifely duty. Now she truly desired to make him happy.
    His sweetness grew. He spent less time carving and more time at her side. When he did carve, he often called for her to come and see something he had just completed.
    On one day in particular, he asked her to come to his studio. When she arrived, an exquisite female mask rested on a piece of silk cloth.
    “It is you, Etsuko,” he whispered to her as she knelt beside him, the strips of cypress curling under her knees.
    She recognized the mask as the beautiful Ko Omote mask. White as rice powder. Lips as demure as a doll’s.
    He placed the mask in her outstretched palms.
    “I have made her for you, my wife,” he said, almost shyly.
    Mother remained silent. She knew that if anyone could interpret her lack of words, it would be her husband.
    “She is
you
and you are
she
,” he said, pointing to the mask.
    Deeply moved, tears beginning, she turned the mask over to examine the lines of the carver. Her husband.
    The strokes were deep. Lines like furrows. Channels that wound in a pattern almost too complex to convey. It was now she truly saw him for the first time, not as she had seen him when they first met, when she was limited to the masklike quality of his face. Now she saw beyond it.
    “You have shown me your soul, my darling,” she said, her words almost lost in her sobs.
    He placed his hand on