* * *
The clean-shaven head of the priest appeared at the gate of our empty house the following day. He was silent as I slid open the outer shoji, his gaze firmly rooted to the ground.
Clad in white robes, fastened by a silk-corded girdle and overlaid by a black jacket, a
kesa
hanging over his left shoulder and around his waist, wearing a straw hat and straw sandals, the priest had arrived to offer the Buddhist rites to my father.
He followed me through the narrow halls of our home, the lantern illuminating the rice-paper walls. The heat of our breath formed clouds around our faces. I heard the shuffle of the priest’s sandals echoing behind me; I heard his prayer beads rattling between his pious hands.
The lantern glowed like a warm orange ball of fire, and I held it far from my body as we scurried to the ice-cold tatami room where my father’s remains lay.
The morning light of the garden had illuminated the room that I had gazed into briefly the night before, but now I could see Father all the more clearly. It had been nearly six months since I left for Tokyo, yet now he seemed wholly unlike the man I left that day at the threshold. He seemed almost regal, stretched out on the wooden platform. As if finally there was no longer any pain.
The priest and I hovered over the silver-haired head of my father, his eyelids smooth in sleep; his skin, now an even deeper shade of blue, betrayed a thin fan of wrinkles, its surface spotted with tiny brown moons. Once again I was reminded of the brittle bark of a century-old cherry tree.
Stroking a bell and withdrawing a long silver razor, the priest commenced the Buddhist Rites of the Dead.
The razor slid over Father’s scalp, the wisps of hair falling languidly over his ears and onto the straw-mat floor. White curls, like blond strips of cypress.
I shuddered. Outside, the leaves in the garden tumbled in the night air, their dried surfaces rising like floating paper cranes temporarily suspended by the wind.
The priest continued to recite the scriptures and punctuate his long chants with the stroking of his bell until the moon filled the room with its great white light.
“We must now wash the body,” he said as he finally set down his bell. The priest revealed his long, slender arms from the billows of his generous white robe, and reached over the corpse of my father.
“We will clean each of his limbs,” he whispered quietly before excusing himself to our kitchen. When he returned, he carried with him a bowl of steaming water and a broad swatch of cloth.
Following the priest’s instructions, I assisted in the washing of my father’s shrunken body. Lifting each of his limbs reminded me of the weightlessness that one finds among dying trees. His gray, ashen skin fell away from his bones like the papery parchment of silver birch bark.
I can still envision myself taking the cotton cloth and cleaning between each of his once skilled fingers, respectfully paying close attention to his hands. I washed his palms as carefully as I would have an expiring emperor. I smoothed the cloth over the flesh of each palm. There was the initial resistance of death. But in the end, he surrendered himself to my care. And I accepted my duty as his only son. It was a moment that could have existed only with one of us gone. I wished so hard that he would open his eyes and see that I had come home to be beside him. But his eyes remained forever closed and his body stiff as stone. Yet in the end my hands finally rested over his. Mine pink and flushed, his the palest shade of blue.
The hands of the mask carver were entwined, if only briefly, finally, with those of his son.
* * *
That night I held my father for the first and last time. I cradled his tiny shaved head in the basket of my arms, and grazed my cheek over his. After the priest maneuvered the cotton shroud over his shrunken form, I released my father into the simple wooden coffin whose only adornment was the faintly carved insignia of our ancient family crest. It was a scene that I knew had occurred within the walls of this room several times before. And I imagined it was a scene that Father had done too many times for his liking. Beginning with the day he buried his master Tamashii in the forest. But this evening was the first to which I bore witness. And I did it alone.
I remained there with Father until the morning. I listened as the priest continued to drone the Scriptures, and I watched over my father as his coffin lay illuminated by the light of several small white candles. The incense floated through the room, and for the first time in my memory, the scent of cypress no longer clung to Father’s hands.
I wondered where his soul now mingled and with whom. And I hoped that he was finally returned to the company of his parents, his master, and his beloved wife, my mother, and that their eternity would be spent together in a place without sadness or pain.
But for now I was the one who was left alone in this lonely world of guilt and sorrow. I would need to prepare myself for the approaching burial. The guests would soon arrive, the actors secretly whispering that it was I who had caused my father’s—their revered mask carver’s—sad and untimely death.
T
hey arrived in their kimonos, having memorized the proper masks of mourning. They followed me as I led the march behind the litter carrying my father to the cemetery. The priest continued to recite the Scriptures as the rest of us walked silently through the streets of Daigo.
Behind me, a stream of actors, wearing the traditional white mourning kimonos of the theater, trailed me like a long train of pale satin. Their faces, revealed to the autumn sunlight, shone like faces for the first time unmasked. Their jowls fell forward freely, like aging Buddhas, their eyelids weighed like the thick hoods of forest toads. The sounds of their sandals echoed my own. Slow and heavy. And the funeral procession moved on.
Iwasaki led the actors in their final walk of respect for my father. From behind, I heard his soft moans. His red ankles were swollen underneath the hem of his robe, his knees barely able to support his aging form.
Upon arrival at the gates of the temple, the body was taken by the novices of the temple and prepared for cremation. One hour later my father was returned to me, and I dutifully returned him to the earth.
When I laid down the ceremonial urn next to Father’s inscribed tablet, I knelt beside the grave of both my parents. And there, with the rock dust coarse and painful under my knees, I withdrew the shard of plum wood from my sash and buried it beside Father. Deep in the brown-gray earth. His lifelong pain finally to perish. To be carried by either of us no more.
* * *
When I stood up, I turned to my mother’s grave and wiped her tablet clean with my handkerchief. My grandparents’ tablets stood neatly behind. And it occurred to me that my entire family lay here within my gaze, their Buddhist names articulated in broad strokes of calligraphy, their wooden grave markers shaded by a sweeping branch of a pine.
They had all left me behind. I stood there alone, wondering who would eventually stand beside my grave and bury me in a tall bronze urn. Who would wipe my tablet clean?
I was now the sole bearer of the Yamamoto name. There was no one left to guide me, as Grandmother had done, and no one to feel I had left behind, as I had with Father. In one breath, I could extend my arms and declare, “I am free!” and, in another, I could fall to my knees and see what remained of my family, a stretch of graves shaded by the long green needles of a pine.
The only thing that comforted me at that moment was that Father was finally returned to the side of his beloved. Where he could sleep for an eternity beside her. Where a man who lived his life more spirit than man could finally be released.
And with a heavy heart and a deep sense of loneliness, I left our family grave site, where my entire family would now rest for an eternity. Where they would forever sleep at the base of a bending pine.
* * *
The actors and their wives followed me home. It was the custom for me to invite them inside, as they had come to pay their respects to my father by offering money or food in his honor. Many came and knelt with their Buddhist prayer beads, silently praying for Father’s safe journey to the next world. Each actor who arrived seemed more ancient than the next. I knelt in the center of the most central tatami room and received their offerings with strained politeness and a few formal replies.
After several hours of sitting, I rose to offer some of the guests a pot of tea. There, within the confines of our modest kitchen, I received their many artfully phrased insults. Their faces could not disguise their obvious disdain for me.
“It is a shame that your father took his craft with him to his grave,” one of the actors said to me, his thick voice rising from a cup of steaming tea.
“Ah, so, young man, you are at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. Do you do mask carving there?” the creaking voice of an actor’s wife pressed.
Their words floated through the home like carving blades, but I did not answer them. I refused to make myself vulnerable, to make myself the scapegoat for their disappointment.
I knew I had left many things with my father unresolved, and I regretted it. But these were issues between him and me. I refused to feel guilty for my dreams.
So I remained steadfast in my mind. I would honor the customary fifty days of mourning before returning to Tokyo.
* * *
There was much to do before I could return to Tokyo. I had to clear the house and decide either to sell it or board it up until I could return.
I had yet to enter my father’s studio. I knew it would be extremely difficult to see the place where he spent the majority of his time, the place where he created and dared to unleash his spirit, day after day.
The steep, narrow flight of stairs that led to his sacred space had always intimidated me. I had never wanted to interfere with his process of creation. I was the disappointing child born from a split and weary womb. There, in contrast, he was surrounded by loyal children of his own creation, their wooden faces resting lovingly in his palms.
When I entered the room, I knew I would discover that I had not been left an orphan. And as I expected, when I finally did enter the sanctuary of Father’s small studio, it was true; I had not been left alone. Father had left me over a dozen brothers and sisters, created by his own hand.
The masks rested on the shelves. Some were completely finished and others barely started.
Those uncompleted masks were the most disturbing to me, their faces like tiny embryos whose features were only half formed. They slept there, lonely and somewhat pathetic, born from a god who could no longer complete their missing features. And I, the traitor to their destiny, felt powerless to help them.
I looked around the room for a long time before I held one. I recognized each mask, knew which character each one was intended to become. Despite our separation, my father’s world was still deeply rooted within me.
I recognized the slightly downturned mouth and diamond-shaped eyes of Yase-Otoko, the mask worn by the ghost of Lord Fukakusa in
Kayoi Komachi
. I could see the hours of work it had taken my father to smooth the planes of its forehead, carve out the hollowed pockets of flesh over and beneath the eye sockets, and create the sunken cavities beneath its cheeks.
I could see the aggression with which the old man must have attacked the wood when he began carving Aka-Hannya, the mask intended for the Snake Spirit in
Dojoji.
He had nearly completed this mask, having plowed with great power into the soft block of cypress wood and dug out the furrowed brow, the bulging eyes, and the enormous gaping mouth. He had masterfully whittled the demon’s large fangs and broad-surfaced teeth. He had smoothed out the sharpness of the chin and carved out the large cavernous ears. He had not begun the horns, however. He always saved that for last.
But the masks that were the most haunting, and which terrified me the most, were those that my father had barely touched.
From the mask that had only a mouth, I heard only screams. From the one that had only a broad, flat nose and the pierced holes meant for nostrils, I heard muffled breathing. But the most disturbing of all was the one that had only eyes.
I believed that these eyes were intended for another Ishi-O-Jo mask. They were the eyes of an old spirit, the wizened, thinly incised eyes looking both downward and within at the same time. But because Father had already given one of these masks to the theater, I was puzzled why he would have begun another version. As the theater would have no need for another, I thought perhaps Father had intended it for me. The eyes burned with intensity as they met my gaze, the rest of the face empty and sad in its incompleteness.
I packed up the collection of Father’s masks in its entirety with the exception of that one. That mask, the Ishi-O-Jo mask, I carried down to the room where I was sleeping and laid it next to the Semimaru mask he had sent to me in Tokyo.
The Semimaru mask looked rather grave as it lay on the tatami. I thought of how Father had always told me it was cruel to deny a mask its true destiny on stage. For that was where the spirit, infused by the carver, was finally liberated. As I held the mask up to the light, it occurred to me that, in honor of my father and his lifework, I should give my father’s last masterpiece to the theater where it could live and breathe. Where its sadness, its pain, and its resignation could finally be released. To be played out on the stage. To appease the spirit of the troubled dead as only a Noh mask truly can.
I would, however, keep the incomplete mask for myself. To remind me of him. Of our relationship, never reconciled and never completed. But also of my destiny, for now deferred. This mask was the only mask that I could not shake from my conscience. And it would be only this mask that I would take with me back to Tokyo.
I
was sitting in the kitchen during my seventeenth day of mourning, having prepared myself a bowl of miso soup with boiled cabbage and some pickled radishes for my rice. The wind was howling and the wind chimes were rattling in song.
I had forgotten how cold Kyoto could be in the winter. I ate my breakfast with the charcoal brazier underneath the low lacquer table, the futon over my shoulders, and remembered how I had eaten here with my father in the same unnerving silence.
I looked into the basin of my soup bowl and hoped to see my mother emerging like a lotus flower from the dark swamp of liquid. When she failed to appear, I forced myself to remember her visage. I wanted to see her magnificent face, translucent as gossamer, looking at me. I needed to see her omniscient eyes, black as burned ginkgo nuts, comforting me in my struggle and beseeching me to find my way.
The day before, I had visited Iwasaki at the theater. Shrouded in swatches of raw silk, I carried the Semimaru mask that Father had sent me close to my chest.
“I would like to give this to the theater in honor of my father,” I told him as I bowed my head to the floor and pushed the covered mask in his direction.
He unwrapped my offering and frowned.
“Why do you give away something that is a reminder of your father and his craft?” he questioned, his voice betraying his disappointment in me.
“Father always taught me that masks belong to the stage. To the theater,” I said softly. “I am sure that Father would have wanted it there.”
And then in the painful silence between us, I added, “I believe Father wanted his masks to be his legacy.”
“No, Yamamoto Kiyoki-san, I believe he wished
you
to be his legacy.” I looked away from him, to the corner where the stretch of stage began.
This was the same room where I had first met Iwasaki and the other actors when I traveled with Father years earlier, when he came to offer his masks to the theater.
“Go,” he told me, before I could answer in my defense. “Leave me this mask,” he said, and his voice was cold.
“Return to your home and your own reflection,” the great patriarch said. He did not lift his eyes in my direction. He did not rise to see me out, nor did he offer me a bow.
I did rise and, out of respect for him, my father’s mask, and the stage that supported the feet of my ancestors, I bowed deeply. I bowed to a place I believed I would never return to again.
* * *
In my heart, I also knew it was time to leave my childhood home. To finally put to rest my ghosts and my memories.
The following morning I rose invigorated and refreshed. I folded the futons and cleaned the braziers. I wiped the lacquerware with a damp, soft cloth. I swept away the frozen leaves in the garden and emptied the
tansu
chest of its years of stored memories.
Grandmother had carefully placed tiny bundles of chrysanthemum leaves tied in miniature sachets of white gauze. She had hoped to ward off insects and tiny moths from feeding on the heavy silk brocade. As I went to withdraw my beloved mother’s wedding dress, one of the sachets came undone. I stood there with the cloth close to my cheek and marveled as a flurry of dried leaves, stored away so long ago by Grandmother, floated through the air and then fell to my feet. The pale green leaves, the color of dried sage, crackled beneath my sandals as I continued to withdraw my mother’s heirlooms from the shelves of the deep
tansu
chest. I removed her box of gilded combs, the
tsuno-kakushi
, the ceremonial wig, and the red petticoats.
I remembered that Mother’s fan remained in the
butsudan
, placed there by Grandmother so many years before. I had not visited the family altar since I returned home, but I wished to include the fan with a few other treasured articles I would carry with me when I returned to Tokyo.
The main tatami room seemed so empty, this room where Father’s corpse had lain only just a few days before, this room where the family
butsudan
was enshrined. On many occasions during my time in Tokyo, I had wondered what would become of the family altar, now that I had abandoned my responsibilities to the household. I had expected my father to ignore the old shrine, as he did most of the domestic chores that did not affect his carving. It was not his nature to remember things outside of the world of Noh. But when I walked and opened the heavy black doors of the shrine, I did not find the altar in a state of disrepair as I had always imagined. To the contrary, Father had painstakingly maintained it.
Mother’s wedding fan had been spread out and leaned like a silver wing on a pyramid of Asian pears. Still golden. Perfectly round and only now beginning to show the first signs of blemishing. Father must have picked them the week before he died. Pale candle wax, its drippings permanently dried in the shape of tiny tears, formed at the base of three short, stubby tapers. Yellow chrysanthemum flowers, their many slender petals turning brown on the edges, stood tall in the hollow-bamboo vase. An inch of water remained.
Before me, carefully placed on the shining altar, were all of those tiny fragments of my family’s past. I could not stop myself from trembling.
With reverent hands extended, I picked up Mother’s fan. I opened the fragile spine and revealed the gilded sides, one silver, the other gold. The sun and the moon in their entirety. How Mother must have looked that day as her face peeked demurely from above the pleated folds. I carefully folded the fan and delicately set it down beside me.
I noticed the familiar sight of the program from Grandfather’s last performance. Grandmother had placed that there years before. Now the paper was brittle and had turned a deep shade of ochre.
I read the scrolled calligraphy and inhaled the musty smell of dried parchment. I moved my right hand to turn the page and felt something slide underneath my fingers. Out from the inner fold, another program, bright white in contrast, fell to the floor. I reached down to read it: “November 14, 1895, the twenty-ninth year of our most revered emperor’s reign. The Kanze troupe of Noh is most honored to perform Kanze Kojiro Nobumitsu’s masterful play,
Dojoji
. . . ”
There could be no other reason why the two programs had been placed together. The symmetry was obvious and so beautiful. Father must have known that it would be the last performance he would ever attend at the Noh theater, and when it was over, he had brought the program home and placed it inside the one that had belonged to Grandfather.
I immediately could envision him sitting in one of the front pews. I saw him staring up into the stage and containing his pride upon seeing one of his Hannya masks freed on the stage. And with all my heart I hoped that he felt joy that night. That when he went to sleep he did not think of me. That he did not allow himself to reflect that his connection with the theater would end with him.
It was almost impossible for me to imagine Father kneeling beside the
butsudan
. I closed my eyes and tried to picture him in prayer, a position of reverence. My head battled with the memories contained in my heart, to visualize him in a way I could never see him before, without the company of a mask.
I had stared into his face, white with death, as the priest chanted his rites. I had not seen any signs of sadness. No wrinkles of regret. Underneath the flesh, all that had once been contained, all that had been carefully restrained, had already left.
Life is fleeting. Only Noh and wood are eternal
.
And as I kneeled in front of our family altar, I truly saw my father for the first time. I finally saw his tragedy. For he had buried his parents, his master, his beloved, and the dreams he held for his son.
“Father,” I said aloud, “if only it were true that you loved only the wood.”