The Mask Artisan
By Ana Padilla Fornieles
I
I wake up in the middle of the night, startled. In the dream I was taking my morning walk and came upon the remains of a bird tangled in a shrub. Its wings draped the branches like shredded fabric over curtain rods. I cremated the bird and took its bones home in the pockets of my coat, which I then forgot to take off as I went about the rest of the day. It’s only when I am immersed in a hot bath that I realized this. The bones rattled somewhere inside the soaked garment. I couldn’t find them, and fear, thick and heavy, took hold of me. I worried that I would have to always carry the bones with me, out of sight but ever-present.
I lie still drawing the turnover of the kakebuton closer to my chin. My feet are frozen cold, as if brushing the frayed seams of my bad dream. My eyes get gradually used to the darkness surrounding me. When it’s clear that I won’t fall sleep again, I get up and slip into the kitchen, where I pour myself a glass of water.
“I think Miwako is still struggling with bedwetting.”
“I finished the novel yesterday. I found the ending somewhat disappointing, what about you?”
“You know, that idiot would rather eat his tie than admit he’s done wrong. But he’s the manager, so we have to bow down to him.”
“The girls are going to love it there. Wait until Chieko sees all the farm animals.”
Yoko and I used to wind down in the kitchen during the week. We were mostly homebodies, with money being generally tight during the first years of our marriage and then having children. Still, we managed to set up some time for ourselves every now and then. We would share a modest bottle of wine from the neighborhood konbini and have whichever decent music we could find on the radio playing on the background as we talked about everything. It was our way of overcoming ourselves and the traps of everyday life.
“I am scared of turning senile over the years, Yoko.”
For the most part I am no longer scared of death, not since her own passing two years ago. It is the decay of my own self that I fear. On the occasions that her void suddenly elongates into the spaces we once cohabited, I seem to catch a glimpse of my own heart and its relentless deteriorating. Chieko, our eldest, reproaches me for going through the motions, but this doesn’t really pose a problem to me. It is my dignity that I would like to retain, for whatever time I have left. A mind bound together by lucid pain. Grief, however, has turned me into a silent Sisyphus.
II
Chie calls home in the evening, barely hours after we parted ways at the train station. We have spent the whole Saturday together, so I am a bit surprised to get her phone call.
“Yes, dear?”
“Turn on the TV, quick!”
I only understand the excitement in her voice when the screen comes alive. A documentary on the world of Nōh theater. Even if I hadn’t watched it already, the general look of it would date it to at least a decade before.
“You know which one it is, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Who would have thought they repeat old gems every now and then? I had it as background noise until I noticed what it was.”
“Back when watching TV was still mildly interesting.”
“Anyway, I thought you might want to watch it. I have to leave now… I’m meeting Suzu for a drink. Dad?”
“Hmmm?”
“Thanks for listening to me today. On Masahiro and everything else.”
“It’s alright, dear.”
I turn the TV off, only to change my mind seconds later. It feels like ancient history now, but this old documentary awakened Yoko’s interest in Nōh just like many other tiny things did – organically, driven by a need to explore whatever piqued her curiosity. The documentary led to her being the household authority on the genre – the plays, the many varieties of masks, and the craftsmanship behind them. She even wanted me to carve one for her, something to which I would never oblige, much to her disappointment.
We are the sum of so many factors while we are still here, and then we are reduced to zero. I watch the documentary until the end, and my mind feels restless when I go fix dinner.
III
I check the address once again – 3-1-1 Shinjuku, 160-0022. I am grateful for the red and green kanji emerging from the sea of neon signs. I have never been known for my sense of direction.
SEKAIDO
I hesitate in front of the façade, with its white and red tiles and its store windows. A row of advertising banners with replicating Mona Lisa’s in a monochromatic pattern decorates the entrance. They look at me with their wry smiles. The decision, they seem to say, is mine to make.
I might as well turn back and think again about it. Materials won't be cheap, and it's highly unlikely that a single attempt will be successful. Besides, I must look rather inadequate in my summer suit and my old-fashioned necktie. A clueless old man foolishly hoping to tackle a project out of his league, fancying himself an artisan after he watched some NHK documentary. Indeed, I would fit this description perfectly, just as the handle of my leather briefcase fits my hands now. It's been so long, after all. A salaryman who once carved okimono figurines and furniture for villagers is still a salaryman nonetheless.
I could always come back on the weekend. It's an hour train ride to downtown Tokyo from our family home in the suburbs. I start to turn away, but then I see the sign on the door.
“Welcome to Sekaido Art Supplies Store.”
Once inside, my fears are somewhat subdued. The range of merchandise is overwhelming, but the clientele navigating the aisles is just as diverse. A few customers do have the unmistakable look of an artist upon them, going from one corner to another with self-assured efficiency and a basket either full of supplies or simply carrying the couple of products they already ran out of. However, there are others. A kindergartener squeals with excitement as he is raised by his father to the upper shelves in order to pick up a set of tempera in primary, bright colors. At the DIY section, two high-schoolers giggle while they check one item after another, their school uniforms combined with unique-looking street apparel. A middle-aged woman fills in a receipt next to a heavy-looking frame and then hands it to the clerk along with a large black storage tube, her eyes beaming with pride behind the rim of her glasses. A foreigner tries to make himself understood in broken Japanese to his friend on the topic of traditional calligraphy. An aspiring manga artist leafs eagerly through a handbook on the basics of the genre.
“Excuse me, where can I find the woodwork section?”
The clerk, a skinny young man with multiple piercings in both ears and a slightly absent look, doesn’t seem to be quite sure, either. He turns to a female colleague who is busy over the easel display.
“Hey, Hisakawa, where’s the woodwork section?”
“Down the aisle, third row,” she replies, before turning back to the easels with a flip of her ponytail.
I follow the male clerk, trying my best not to look sheepish.
“Are you looking for any particular items?” He asks.
“Yes. In fact, I brought a small list. Perhaps it will help. It's all I could come up with, so please help me check anything that could possibly be missing.”
He takes the list that I scribbled on his hands and reads it, slightly squinting his eyes. “A Nōh mask. Are you an artisan?”
“Oh, not at all.”
“This won't be an easy project.”
“It isn’t. I think it will take a lot of effort. Frankly, I am not entirely sure I can do it.
He glances at me without trying to hide his curiosity. “I know a little bit about Nōh,” he then says. “A few basic facts. My grandfather was very much into it. The books had some nice prints, so they would catch my attention as a kid.”
“How interesting. Much like my wife.”
“What kind of mask are you planning to carve?”
“A fukai.”
He raises his brows, then nods silently. He does know about Nōh, and I like that he's honest and inquiring, but not dismissive of my intentions.
“Well, let’s see what we have here.”
It is only then that I can read the surname tag on his uniform apron. Sasaki. He follows my eyes and smiles briefly. I wonder how old he is – surely even younger than Miwa, although not very much.
“I am only a trainee, but I will do my best to help you,” Sasaki says earnestly.
“Thank you so much.”
As the young man climbs a ladder and starts browsing the shelves, I let my mind wander. There's something in his manners, straightforward yet gentle, that makes me remember my early hopes of having a son and my subsequent disappointment when our firstborn turned out to be a girl. This would be one of the few things that I never voiced to Yoko. I had no right to my selfish complaints after all that her body went through to deliver a perfectly healthy child. In a way, still, she knew. I remember her smile in the hospital room, reclined in the bed as she held Chieko in her arms, tiny and wrinkled like an elderly spirit. Many years later, that very same smile would float in her lips as we came out of the doctor’s office with the diagnosis that would prove to be fatal. Gentle, yet slightly dampened, as if she were, in fact, blaming herself for things out of her reach.
Back home, the only place where it makes sense to unload my bags is the sun room where Yoko would go to read, work on her herbarium or practice any other of her many, sometimes transient, hobbies. The girls and I used to call it “Mama’s Studio”, which would never fail to make her laugh. She thought naming it like that was a superfluous vanity – she simply went there to do her stuff. This made teenage Miwako upset once. Mom is so self-deprecating sometimes. Chieko, on the other hand, never seemed to have much trouble thinking of Yoko exclusively as a motherly figure. I was aware of Yoko’s point behind her apparent lack of self-importance, but I respected that there were regions of herself that she did not wish to let the girls in on.
“Do you think my mom would be upset that I’ve never told them the truth about their grandfather?” Yoko once asked me, her father’s suicide a topic she rarely mentioned in the time I knew her.
“I thought you both agreed it was better not to.”
“That was only while they were too young to understand, though. And then she died before we could go back on it.”
Elbows on the desk, I look at Yoko’s picture that I’ve kept next to my study drawings. It’s one that I took of her during our trip to Germany, months before she was diagnosed with her illness. Once there, as we traced her mother’s past in that foreign country, Yoko started showing some early symptoms that we then attributed to the change of environment.
It will sometimes occur to me, everything is tied to death if we look close enough at it.
“It’s a good thing we’ll be back home in Japan on Sunday morning, don’t you think?” Yoko asked once we were in bed in our last night in Berlin. We had not been very successful in filling the gaps of her mother’s stay there.
“Yeah, a day to take everything in quietly before returning to normal,” I answered, stroking her hair while thinking of how I had lost the memory of the exact time when she cut her shoulder-length hair into a more sober, sophisticated bob.
“I hope you know I fully expect ham and eggs for breakfast.” Her remark made us both laugh.
Yoko did not particularly enjoy being a housewife, even though we had no choice while the girls were little. Come Friday night, she would hang her apron and say to herself, “Good job!” From that moment until Monday morning, she considered herself checked out of work. Needless to say, she still very much engaged with us, but this and everything else she would do on her own terms. If she were up for it, she’d suggest a family getaway somewhere nearby. If, instead, she needed some quality time for herself, she would arrange for it in whichever way she pleased. Meanwhile, the girls and I were to fend for ourselves, including the cooking. Dad’s ham and eggs thus became a weekend-only special breakfast.
It can sometimes be weird, how things used to be but no longer are. I take a pencil to the block of wood.
IV
My father discarded my dreams of becoming an artisan like one would a child's plan to move to the moon, but I bear him no malice now. He led a very harsh life himself. The only thing he could manage to salvage from all that hardship were his aspirations, which he then handed down to me so that they would not wither and die.
“A wood artisan? A carpenter, you mean. You aren’t going to waste your life in pipe-dreams and fantasies. I didn’t slog my guts out for you to play artist in the village. Forget it.”
In a way, he was right. Had I stayed in our small town, what would have been of the life that I have lived? A life that extends behind and upon me, a life like a vast landscape, a life like a woolen blanket, wrapped tight and warm over the years. A life where Yoko awaited under the golden gingko trees in front of the Aizu Museum at Waseda University. A life where most of the people we used to call friends are now held still in photographs.
Yoko and I met on a double date with common friends that broke up soon after introducing us to each other. In due time, she confided to me that she was the daughter of a beautiful, elegant German teacher who had spent nearly all of her formative years in Europe before returning to Japan. Here, domesticity and misfortune awaited Yoko’s mother in the shape of the man who would become her husband, a frustrated pianist who committed suicide when Yoko was barely ten years old.
“I am sorry that you lost your father in such a tragic way. Mine won't let me do as I please with my life.”
“Why so?”
“Because he’s terrified of poverty, I guess.”
“Mine was terrified of mediocrity. How ironic that I, his daughter, desire that very fate as a direct result of his actions.”
“You aspire to mediocrity?”
Yoko paused to concentrate on her cup of barley tea before going on with what suddenly felt as a subtle statement of intentions that required my approval.
“I wouldn’t go as far as that, but my family history influenced me enough that I could no longer pursue anything at the expense of my peace of mind. My mother went through all that effort to end up married to my father, whose frustrated dreams made him a broken man who ultimately brought disgrace upon us. Wouldn’t you rather just do your best and live life one day at a time, instead of all that suffering?”
“So you basically wish for a quiet, peaceful life?’”
“Yes,” she smiled. “One where I can create my own brand new world that won’t be easily disturbed.”
We fell in love somewhere in the overwhelming ease of our reciprocal honesty.
She would wear her seersucker dress in the summer and there would be a misleading sense of fragility all over her small frame. I would bury my nose in French poetry while I pretended to study next to her in the library. I had chosen to major in Literature as a strange, cryptic form of revenge to my father, whose dreams’ frontiers could only reach the university gates, but not the marketability of the knowledge I would acquire past them. I probably didn't deserve to end up liking it as much as I did. It was 1975 and I was only then reading Paul Éluard greeting sadness. You are inscribed in the lines on the ceiling / You are inscribed in the eyes that I love. When Yoko and I first settled into our newlywed apartment in Yanaka, we would discover weird creatures where the ceiling had flaked and unexplored territories in the stains of the old tatami.
My dreams I ultimately let go of and forgot, and I became who I am instead. I hold no grudge against my father. I had thought the life he moulded me into would be hollow and purposeless. Instead, I experienced a feeling of wonder over my quiet, unexpected happiness. It was a source of inner warmth that would radiate throughout our early years as a family and then gradually adjust to the routine of our everyday life, ensuring that I no longer felt cold or bitter.
My father died shortly after Miwako was born. I hope he, too, was finally content with his lot.
V
At work, close to the end of the day, someone knocks on my door.
“Come in, please.”
Nakamura, one of the very few colleagues that I truly consider as friends in the entire company, walks in with two paper cups and leaves one in my desk.
“Sato brought this nice coffee and you aren’t going to taste the only good thing he’s ever done for his colleagues?”
I laugh and thank him while taking the cup, still piping hot.
“You’re welcome. You look like a walking corpse today. What’s wrong? Is Fujii not willing to grant you freedom?”
“My retirement, you mean? I’ve been checking stuff lately. About one more year to go, I think.”
“Could be worse. So what’s up, Harada? Wanna bare your heart to me over some drinks tonight?”
Shortly after drinks, on my way to Sekaido, my refusal of Nakamura’s concern becomes another burden wearing me down. None is heavier, however, than the one I carry on a cloth tote.
“Hello, Mr. Harada. Hey, you brought your stuff today. Let me take a look at it”, Sasaki greets me, but drops his voice immediately upon seeing my face. “Something’s wrong.”
“It is.”
“Well, let’s take a look, shall we?” He insists, carefully taking the mask out of the bag and placing it on a counter. I don’t want to look at it. We both stay in silence for a while, until Sasaki takes the lead.
“I…I was expecting some serious mistake.”
I open my mouth to reply and close it again immediately when I realize I’m overcome by the same emotion of this morning. If I’m not able to behave like a man in front of someone who could be my son, then I might as well give up altogether. Sasaki furrows his brow.
“Mr. Harada. It doesn’t look that bad, really.”
“It doesn’t have anything of hers. Not any more than any regular mask. All of a sudden it looks…wrong.”
“Well, this… what happened? It was looking great.”
“I don’t know. I was very busy at work, but I…couldn’t really stop working on it…”
“So you rushed and lost control of the whole thing.”
For a kid his age, he’s good at analyzing things.
“So what, you know. If it makes you feel better, I’ve been screwing up things left and right lately, myself.”
It’s only when I hear this that I notice his distraught look. By coming here repeatedly over the past few months, we’ve ended up knowing the basics of each other. Sasaki came to Tokyo a year and a half ago, all the way from Shimane, hoping to eventually be admitted into one of the prestigious art schools here. He’s left behind everything he has known his entire life.
“…And then she just left me over the phone. She won’t wait for me any longer, she said. ‘What the hell, honestly? What century are we in?’ I told her this was my dream, how long did she think it was going to take? Right before this round of exams. Fuck. Sorry, Mr. Harada.”
“No, it’s OK. I am sorry that things have been hard for you, too.”
“Life sucks,” Sasaki says, shaking his head, before going back to the piece of wood between us on the counter. “Mr. Harada, you know what? If you’re not happy with this, too bad, but you have to start again.”
“I imagine so.”
“Forgive me for being so blunt, but how long had it been since you last worked on a project?”
“Why, decades.”
“Well, what did you expect, then? Besides, this is…,” he hesitates. “This is a big deal for you, right?”
“Of course it is.”
“Then think about it. Think about, I don’t know, the stuff this brings to your mind, and then focus on it. Take it seriously.” Sasaki stops abruptly, seemingly flustered. “Don’t dive into this until you are ready. You understand what I mean?”
That night I bury the botched mask in the garden, soiling my suit, shivering in the cold but not crying like I did this morning. I place the new block of wood next to my futon. It remains there, untouched but not unnoticed, for the following weeks.
VI
April is halfway through when the doorbell at home rings on a Saturday morning. When I open the door, I find myself staring at my youngest daughter, standing on the porch with only a little carry-on.
“Dad! Happy birthday!”
Incredulous, I can barely reciprocate her tight hug. She goes inside with a childlike spring in her step and kicks her shoes off.
“Are you freaking out yet? I hope big sister didn’t ruin the surprise. She said it was silly to do things like that. Isn’t she boring sometimes? Do you have cold water in the fridge? I’m so thirsty, it’s such a warm day. Have you seen the cherry blossoms outside? I told Chie we should go picnic together, like we did when mom was here.”
Yoko used to say that Chieko and Miwako were like the moon and the sun so that they would truly need each other as years went by. Their relationship was never as smooth as we’d have wanted it to be, but it has certainly improved as they’ve grown older.
“How are you doing in London, Miwa?”
“Not too bad. I feel like I’m finally starting to blend in. It’s so hard to go out there and mix with people, dad. I was so embarrassed that I would commit mistakes and make a fool of myself.”
“You have always been the bravest member of the family.”
“Even so… Hey, talking about bravery. Did you know that Chie dumped her boyfriend for good, dad?”
I remember Chieko and I’s talk back in the autumn, when she mentioned her problems with Masahiro as if in passing.
“Well, she broke up with him in the winter. She didn’t tell you? Classical Chie. But you know what, dad? I’m kind of happy that she did.”
“Yes, me too. I never really got the impression things were going anywhere.”
“She’ll tell you more tomorrow, we have booked a table for us at… oh, crap. Now I spoiled the fun.”
Miwa favors me physically, but her demeanor and attitude towards life is much closer to Yoko’s, although perhaps an even brighter shade. She doesn’t lose her smile, not even when she rubs her eyes at the family butsudan..
“Hey, what are these, dad?” Miwako points at the tiny wooden figurines on the living room’s shelf.
“Well, take a close look.”
“They are…,” her voice breaks briefly again. “Dad, are these all mom?”
“Seems like I am improving. You can take one, if you want to.”
“Dad, they’re so beautiful. Make one of each of us. Then it would feel complete.”
“That’s a really good idea, dear.”
“I think I’ve never really seen you doing this. You once told me it was your dream job, right?”
We sit together in the garden, just like when she was a young child who liked to roll in the grass and play with the insects.
“You really seem to be doing better, dad.”
I tell her about my recent efforts to come to terms with everything, my arrangements for retirement next winter and my everyday life, but for some reason I refrain myself from sharing anything about the new mask with her. I tell myself I won’t do it because it’s in a very early stage, but it’s not the truth. Not entirely.
“…Dad?”
“Hmmm?”
“If you retire next winter, this time around I might be here to take care of you.”
I look at the green buds sprouting everywhere in the garden.
“You know there’s no rush to come back.”
“It’s my own decision,” Miwako replies firmly. “Not for good, maybe, but just for a while. Because I want to.”
She leans her head on my shoulder pensively.
“I ran away and now I want to come back, and it’s all because I want to, because she told me that’s the way it should be. I know it’s selfish.”
“No, it’s not. Your mother and I also talked about this, even before she fell ill.”
“You did?”
I nod.
“I’ve always been a bit of a helicopter over both of you, but I still agreed with Yoko that your lives are yours and nobody else’s, let alone ours.”
“All these years I’ve been looking out for something, dad, and I still am not really quite sure I know just what it is.”
I pass an arm around her shoulders.
“I’m afraid that feeling won’t go away as time goes by.”
VII
“Oh, hello, Mr. Harada! Back for some stuff?”
“Yes, I'm here to pick up the last things I need.”
“I think Sasaki was over the canvas section. If you can't find him, do let me know. It's his last day here, you know? How nice that you came over precisely today.”
“Oh, really?”
Over the year, I have become accustomed to Sasaki’s many hairstyles. This evening he's sporting a strand of ocean blue in his otherwise black hair, now reaching his shoulders. As he hands a tube of acrylic paint to another customer, I see the hint of a tattoo in his left wrist, barely distinguishable under his long sleeve shirt. Children nowadays can get away with lots of things.
“Mr. Harada! I wondered whether I'd be able to see the end of your project.”
“Your colleague said you're leaving today.”
“Yeah. Do you remember that arts school I had applied to? Back when you had to start all over again and I was so down? Well, I got in. I will be very busy, so I'm taking my time until I figure out my new routine.”
“That is wonderful news. Congratulations.”
“You know, it's a second tier school. It's all I could manage. But hey, it's still cool, right?”
“You just keep working hard and things will happen, if they're supposed to.”
“Right? Speaking of which, let’s take a look at your stuff.”
Sasaki is still the only person who knows of my latest project. I still can’t really pinpoint why. I do plan to eventually tell both Chie and Miwa all about it, because I feel it’s something that they will own, too. Up until now, however, I have confided everything in this young man, who was preparing to soon step out and away, going through his own transition.
“You probably don’t need me to tell you, but this has been worth starting all over.”
“Yes, I think so, too.”
“Soon enough you'll need some colors. Come, I'll show you the best. We got those fancy ones the other day, but honestly, they're not really worth the price. I get the same results for cheaper with the ones I'm gonna show you.”
By the time I get everything I need, it's already almost closing time.
“Well, thank you very much for everything.”
“I should be the one to thank you for your encouragement in my applications. Well, what will you do once it's over?”
“I'm not too sure,’ I smile. I'll just carry on with my life, I guess.”
Not that I wasn’t doing that before. Perhaps, however, I’m only aware of it now.
“Good luck, Mr. Harada. Hey, this is my email. Drop me a line every now and then. I’ll still be in Tokyo, you know.”
“I will. Good luck to you, too.”
It's past eleven when I get home. Being Friday, though, I need not worry about waking up early. Besides, I am a night owl, even now that the nightmares have gradually subsided.
“I'm home.”
Every day now I greet Yoko’s absence, for I believe it has a shape and weight of its own, just like the leather armchair or the books on the coffee table. I change into my well-worn lounge clothes and make myself a simple sandwich in the kitchen. It's too late for a full meal and I'm too excited to eat, anyway.
As soon as I'm finished, I slip quietly into the studio, carrying the supplies I bought today. The moon is full in the sky tonight as I approach the old table and pose my hand over the flowered shawl that covers the mask. I'm about to uncover it when I realize that I forgot to turn the light on. As I am about to retrace my steps, a corner of the cloth slips under my fingers and an eye stares at me from beneath. I stop and stare back at it, as if under a sudden spell.
It's taken me almost a whole year to make this happen. One year of going back and forth, of endless efforts that still haven’t quite matched up to the final result, of inner thoughts and emotional work. When I ruined the first attempt, it was a big setback for me. Wood is unforgiving and my skills are rusty after years of abandonment. The night when I buried the mask I thought I would not cry anymore, but I was wrong. Later it occurred to me that perhaps I was catching up on all the tears that I had not shed since some three years ago, when we learned that Yoko's illness had reached a point of no return.
I uncover the mask while still looking at that eye, the face is then bathed in the moonlight. It reminds me of past nights, past mysteries, past moons. What an unexpected reward this moment is.
Nōh derives from the word for “skill” or “talent”. An art where both are essential for the mask artisan and the shite, or main actor, to convey a powerful message.
“Well, thanks for everything. Take care of yourself. Stay close to the girls and be happy. Then come back to me.”
Nōh masks are made from blocks of light hinoki, Japanese cypress. Once you are done carving the wood and shaping it into a face, it is time to apply layer upon layer of gesso mixed with glue. Upon the sanding, you can finally apply the natural pigments.
“You live and then you die, that's how easy it is.”
“Don't talk like that, please.”
“The time has come that we have to.”
There are about four hundred and fifty different masks. This one is meant to resemble a fukai, the face of a middle aged woman who has already experienced life’s pain and happiness. I chose it over the shakumi type because I thought the former would fit Yoko’s personality better. There is a certain bitterness in the face of a shakumi that Yoko never had. Not even when illness had ravaged her.
“Will you stay there after she's gone, dad?”
I run my fingers over Yoko’s face with a muted sense of longing akin to an echo. A Nōh mask is hung, kakeru, or attached, tsukeru, rather than worn, in order to imply that the performer becomes the mask and its emotions.
I am still under a spell. I cover my shoulders with the shawl and hang Yoko’s face over mine.
“Please don't turn the house into a shrine when I'm no longer here.”
“What am I supposed to do, then?”
“Hold to the one item that truly has some meaning to you, if you must. Let go of everything else. Please do as I say.”
Nōh masks are often said to be made with a neutral expression, however this is not to say that the art is expressionless. It is the duty of a skilled mask carver to try and instill a range of emotions in the wood. They are then to be released by an equally skillful performer by means of minute movements, such as mask tilting. Terasu, tilting upwards, a somewhat lighter expression, fit for a smile or a laugh. Kumorasu, tilting downwards, a slight frown, the look of sadness, a tearful face.
“You can't dwell in the past, Yoshihiro.”
I dance through the room, searching for Yoko. At first, I feel awkward and heart-broken. I force myself to regulate my breathing and set my mind free. An inner voice warns me against trying to reach a blank state. Instead, I try my best to embrace all the images that come to me, the good but also the bad, and then I let go of them, the bad but also the good.
It's only then that I feel Yoko all around.
I synchronize with her gradually, my limbs reaching for the darkness. My heartbeat fluctuates and settles as I peel one superfluous layer of self upon another, until I reach my core. Soon enough, the scent of wood redefines itself to a subtle hint of lavender. Our beings find a balance in movement. The grief and the physical pain. The solitude and the gratefulness for a well-rounded life. A denial of death, the desire of it. A restless heart, a body tired of fighting.
Yoko died this time of the year – midsummer. After the cremation ceremony, Miwako said she had always known Yoko was a bird, past her flesh, deep inside.
Ana Padilla Fornieles is a translator, cultural journalist, and writer currently based in Beijing, where she works as a cultural manager at the Embassy of Spain in the P.R. of China. Her work has been featured in Spittoon and Womankind Magazine. She is a regular contributor to the Spanish online cultural magazine Le Miau Noir and part of the moderating team of the feminist book club Our Shared Shelf and is presently working on her prose and a zine, Hatsumōde.