Masks Read Online Free PDF Page B

move events in whatever direction she pleases, while she stays motionless. She’s like a quiet mountain lake whose waters are rushing beneath the surface toward a waterfall. She’s like the face on a Nō mask, wrapped in her own secrets.”
    “Go on.” Ibuki looked at Yasuko with interest. Beyond her head he could see the American woman’s flaxen hair swaying playfully against the man’s shoulder. They were asleep, leaning against one another like a pair of tame animals. “What do you mean? How does she move other people without giving any sign?”
    “You’re an example yourself. You’re following exactly the path she’s laid out for you.”
    “I am?” Ibuki shook his head and looked at her un-comprehendingly.
    “You don’t know it, do you? I only realized it myself a little while ago. It goes back to what you said before: if I started seeing you, it would hardly offend her. On the contrary, that’s precisely what she wants. Getting us to ride alone together on the train like this is part of it. It wasn’t only that she had to go to Nara all of a sudden, I’m sure of that.”
    “Wait a minute. I suppose it’s obvious that Mikamé and I are both in love with you, but why should she want you to take up with me and not him? Is it because I already have a family, so she thinks there’d be no risk of your marrying me and she could keep you with her for as long as she liked?”
    “I suppose that’s part of it. But there’s something more devious going on in her mind. I don’t understand it yet myself….”
    Still talking, Yasuko dropped her hand casually in Ibuki’s lap and took his hand, cigarette and all, in hers; then skillfully she pried the cigarette from his fingers and lifted it to her mouth. He looked on in startled silence as her small lips, round and pink, tightened on the cigarette which moments ago had been his. Through the cloud of smoke that veiled her profile momentarily, he watched a slow smile settle on her face.
    Ibuki took her hand and pressed it tightly in both of his, as he had done once before in the dark of the séance. “I’m surprised at you, Yasuko,” he said. “No self-respecting bar hostess would do a thing like that.” His hands, curiously at odds with his words, moved gently back and forth, fondling the smooth skin of her palm and the back of her hand. “Tell me, the day of the séance, what made you reach out suddenly and hold my hand? Mikamé remembers it, too.”
    “I don’t know why myself. Oh, of course I do like you, Tsuneo, but when I act this way, it’s as if some outside force has taken over my mind and my body.”
    “Are you saying that this force is the will of Mieko Toganō?”
    “No, I’m not. Just because I’m studying spirit possession doesn’t mean that I think I’m under the spell of my own mother-in-law.”
    “Good. Then I’ll assume you’re acting on your own.” He reclaimed the cigarette, which she had taken from her lips, and inserted its lipstick-stained end in his mouth. “Not much of a kiss…All this talk about spirit possession is affecting you, Yasuko. You’ve got to pull yourself back into the real world. One minute you threaten to marry Mikamé, the next you’re seducing me; it’s you who’s acting strangely, not your mother-in-law.”
    “But it’s true; I
am
thinking of marrying Mikamé. If I hadn’t wanted to tell you so, I probably wouldn’t have come with you on this train ride today. Still, it does seem queer—here we are talking, and all of a sudden I do a thing like that. Perhaps underneath I do want you to love me. But somehow I can’t help feeling that these things happen because she’s there in the background, arranging for them to. That’s what I hate.”
    “I don’t follow you. You say she stayed in Nara deliberately, so you and I could be alone. But why should a person like Mieko Toganō play silly games like that?”
    “It’s no game. Believe me, she is a woman of far greater complexity than