The Mask Carver's Son Read Online Free PDF

eyes like two shining stones. When he lay in his futon, the night separating their bodies, he could imagine each peak and plateau of her cheekbone, each thread of her eyelash.
    Theirs was a love marriage. Their union, rare and precious, defied custom because their parents had not introduced them or arranged for them to marry. Instead, the sacred walls of the theater had cloistered them, led them to each other.
    In his sleepless nights, her sweet melodic voice would come to him, whispering into his heart the words of the ancient Heian poem: “If not for you, then for whom shall I undo my hair?”
    He ached. He yearned. He envisioned himself swept into the blue-black sea of her hair. When he performed on the stage, with the mask veiling his eyes, he searched for her in the audience. She was there, as promised, with her mother sitting beside her fragile frame. The kimono bound her straight, her head cocked toward the stage. She allowed her body and soul to separate for those three hours. Her ears opened to the sounds of her father’s drum, and her heart to the magic of my young grandfather.
    *   *   *
    The afternoon his family and he traveled to Grandmother’s home to ask her parents for her hand in marriage, he was so nervous that perspiration seeped into his undergarments. He tried to comfort himself that he had nothing to worry about; it was a family alliance that benefited both parties.
    Both he and his wife, Chieko, had been born into established Noh families. Although they specialized in different areas of that segmented world, they were forever tied by the same traditions. His father was an actor, as his father’s father had been, as had those before him. The Yamamoto line could be traced back nearly seven hundred years, a time when his ancestors performed
Gagaku
for the imperial court.
    Her family, by contrast, contained a long line of musicians. For three hundred years her ancestors had played the
otsuzumi
, the hip drum that accented the Noh actors’ chants on stage. Each child born to that family, his wife included, contended that the beating of the drum was the first sound they ever heard. They believed they heard it through their mother’s womb, that the walls reverberated with each beat, and that the rhythm was born into their veins.
    During the brief and fleeting moments of their courtship, when they found the time and privacy to meet, he would produce a small
otsuzumi
from the folds of his robe and playfully tease her by pounding the skin of the drum. She in return would pull up the hem of her kimono, only an inch or two above the ankle, circle round him, and slide her sandals over the earth as if to imitate the movements of a Noh actor. In her mirth, she would feel compelled to cover her mouth, as the force of her laughter would pry her budding lips open and expose her flash of white teeth. Grandfather, however, was always relieved that she chose to continue dancing for him, rather than surrendering to a silly rule of hiding her smile.
    As her combs loosened and the tresses of liquid black hair fell down her back, he beat the drum harder and faster. He pounded the drum until they both fell to the earth, their bodies exhausted from releasing such an uncontainable amount of joy.
    *   *   *
    Her family accepted his proposal of marriage. “It is with great pleasure that we give our daughter to your family in marriage,” her father said, his head lowered in a courteous bow. “It is a strong union that will fortify our families as well as the theater.”
    The two families exchanged gifts in the traditional Yuino ceremony to show their support of the marriage. They sat across from each other, each family offering their gifts on exquisite black lacquered trays. Grandfather’s family gave envelopes of money. Grandmother’s family gave a beautiful spice set comprising five porcelain jars covered in a deep purple lacquer with the Yamamoto crest painted in red and gold. In addition, her family made a