The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (6 page)

Kenji sat back into the chair, at ease for the first time since entering the shop, and began to laugh. His ribs ached and he could barely breathe through his nose but he couldn’t stop laughing. Nazo, which meant “mystery,” looked at him as if he were the mystery. The cat watched Kenji closely at first, his eyes narrowing in scrutiny before he lost interest and set about licking the white mitten of his paw. For a moment, everything stopped hurting and Kenji felt something close to calm.

Hiroshi bounded up the stairs after practice, slid open the shoji door, and stood in the doorway of his and Kenji’s small room, across from the bedroom of their grandparents. When he was old enough to understand, his
obaachan
had told him that it had been their mother’s childhood room. Hiroshi remembered looking everywhere for some small relic that the young Misako might have left behind that hadn’t been packed away—a doll, a trinket, or a book she had loved, but the room was clean and immaculate, and, over the years, the boys had made it comfortably their own. Or, at least, Hiroshi had. As he looked
around, it appeared as if he had displaced his brother inch by inch, with his clothes, his stacks of sumo magazines, his sword collection, his sheer height and strength. Kenji never said a word, just seemed to occupy less and less space.

Hiroshi had promised his
obaachan
he would clean up their room before dinner. His brother was late coming home and Hiroshi knew she was concerned. He gathered up his clothes, a seed of worry growing as he picked up his brother’s book about Noh theater. During sumo tournament days, when he and his
ojiichan
listened religiously to all the matches on the radio, Kenji always wandered away to a quiet corner to read his books. Sometimes he was a mystery, even to Hiroshi. He folded up his clothes, stacked his magazines into a neat pile, and tried to make more room for his brother. If Kenji hadn’t returned by the time he cleaned up their room, he would go out and look for him.

Something shiny on the tatami caught his eye. Hiroshi stooped to see a yen coin wedged between the mats. As he dug for it, the coin slipped farther down. He wedged his fingers into the crack and pried up the corner of the mat to discover not only the yen coin, but also a red brocade
omamori bukuro
—a small, rectangular bag, no bigger than the palm of his hand, with a white-knotted cord. Embroidered on the bag in gold thread were the characters “great” and “to protect.” His
obaachan
had once bought such a bag from a temple they visited, explaining to Hiroshi that tucked inside each one was a prayer or blessing written on paper or a thin tablet of wood, sanctified by a priest from one of the temples. It warded off many evils, kept you safe, and protected from outside forces. He also remembered his grandmother saying that to open an
omamori
bag would undo the blessing. It was considered a lucky charm by most, just another superstition by others.

Hiroshi’s first thought was that Kenji must have hidden the
omamori
beneath the two-inch-thick tatami. But when he lifted the mat higher, he found an old school writing tablet that had his mother’s name, Misako Wada, written on it—the characters inside neatly lined up in precise columns. Could the
omamori
also have belonged to his mother? His grandmother often swept the mats but never
lifted the tightly fitted tatami. Hiroshi pried up the other mats but lowered them back in place when he found nothing more. His heart raced as he held the brocade bag in the palm of his hand, fingering the gold thread. Mesmerized by the thought that it had once belonged to his mother, he didn’t move until he heard his grandmother’s voice rise up the stairs, quick and excited.

Kenji had returned.

Hiroshi tucked the
omamori
safely into his pocket and hurried downstairs to see what had kept his brother out so late. He heard his
obaachan’s
voice rising with anxiety and understood her concern when he was halfway down the stairs. Kenji stood just inside the front door with his head bowed. He looked up when he heard Hiroshi, his lips thin and serious, his misery apparent as he held his brother’s gaze for a moment, before turning away. His jacket was bloodied and torn. A bruise under his right eye was darkening into the curve of a half-moon. Hiroshi paused for a moment, surprised to see that his brother had been fighting.

“What happened? Come, come sit down,” his
obaachan
urged, tugging Kenji’s jacket sleeve and trying to lead him toward the reception room. “Your
ojiichan
will be home any moment now.”

“I’m fine,” Kenji said softly. He tried to smile and shrug off their
obaachan’s
concern by putting his hands reassuringly on her shoulders and holding her at arm’s length. “It was an accident,” he heard Kenji whisper.

“Are you all right?” Hiroshi asked. He hadn’t realized Kenji was now taller than their
obaachan
. In the past year, he had grown up and was entering that nebulous place between boy and man. Yet he could see hints of Kenji’s trauma that gave him away—a thin smudge of dried blood right below his nose, the slight quiver in his voice, the way he winced as he lifted his arms, slow and deliberate.

Kenji looked up and nodded.

Hiroshi’s mind raced, jumped from thought to maddening thought. He would get the names of the boys who had done this to Kenji and teach them all a lesson. He had no doubt that he alone could take care of all his brother’s tormentors. At thirteen, Hiroshi’s passion was still sumo wrestling. Wasn’t he the school champion,
two years in a row? Wrestling had been part of Hiroshi’s life since elementary school physical education classes, and though he wasn’t unusually big and tall, he had always been strong and solid.

Hiroshi tried and tried to teach Kenji to defend himself but his brother always shied away from fighting. On the rare occasions they wrestled together, he and Kenji took turns being Takemikazuchi-no-kami when they practiced. They imagined the earth shaking as the bodies of the two gods made impact, earthquakes originating from their great battle. Hiroshi often let Kenji win, happy to see the smile that spread across his younger brother’s face. At other times, what began in fun turned quickly into something more, an uneven match, with Hiroshi the victor, leading to anger and tears. “Fight back,” he yelled, pushing against his brother, wanting nothing more than for his brother to respond with added force. But it wasn’t something Kenji did; he turned around and walked away, or closed his eyes when things became rough. “Fight back,” he said again and again, irritated by his brother’s passivity. He wanted Kenji to be able to take care of himself, but his brother resisted as if Hiroshi were making him take some bitter medicine.

After a while, they had stopped wrestling altogether and each pursued his own interests. In his everyday life, as in wrestling, Hiroshi was outgoing and expressive and filled each room with his presence, while Kenji kept to himself, shy and reserved, moving through each day as quietly as possible. Now, Hiroshi couldn’t help but feel that he was responsible for Kenji’s beating.

When their
ojiichan
returned, he put down his pipe and leaned in closely to examine Kenji, not saying a word at first. He lifted Kenji’s shirt and lightly touched the bruise on his side, tilted his chin to get a better look at his eye. Then he finally said lightly, “I’d hate to see the other boys,” and went about his business as if nothing had happened. Hiroshi could see the look of relief on Kenji’s face.

After their
obaachan
had attended to his brother’s wounds, she patted Kenji’s cheek and left the brothers alone in the reception room. Hiroshi stood in the doorway and watched Kenji, the dark bruise beneath his eye giving him the look of a young, helpless animal.

“What happened?” Hiroshi asked, his voice dry and tight.

Kenji stood up, filled with a sudden energy that Hiroshi had seen in other boys, just before a match, the split second before a wrestler was ready to bolt toward his opponent. “They were making fun of me at school.”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kenji whispered. “All of them, all of the time.”

“But what made you fight today?” Hiroshi asked. “Why now, after all this time?”

Kenji carefully touched his cheek and said, “I finally got tired of it all.”

“So you started the fight?”

Kenji first shrugged, then nodded. “I deserved what I got.”

Hiroshi heard the distress in Kenji’s voice, and saw his eyes tearing. He moved closer and pulled from his pocket the
omamori
bag. “Does this belong to you?” he asked.

Kenji shook his head.

“I found it under the tatami in our room. I think it may have belonged to
okasan.”
He swallowed. “Here, keep it.”

Kenji looked up at him, his eye swollen shut. “Are you sure?”

Hiroshi put it in his brother’s hand and smiled. “I think she would be happy to know it was protecting you.”

Kenji barely looked up, whispered a thank-you. He glanced from Hiroshi to the photo of their parents, unable to meet their gaze for long, either. “They’re dead.
Obaachan’s
stories won’t bring them back.” Kenji’s low voice sounded strangely distant and adult.

Hiroshi peered again at his younger brother, his spindly arms and thin legs. “No one ever said they would.”

Kenji didn’t reply, but rather than let the silence grow between them, Hiroshi reached out and gave his shoulder a warm squeeze, the way he did when Kenji was little and frightened. But this time Hiroshi held on until his brother relaxed and looked up at him.

“I didn’t fight,” Kenji whispered. “After I threw the first punch, I didn’t fight like you taught me.”

Hiroshi breathed in his brother’s scent of stale sweat and something more sour and earthy—what he imagined fear must smell like. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, and made a silent vow to protect Kenji always. “Just don’t ever think you deserve to be beaten.”

Kenji hurried past Fukushima-san’s
sembei
rice cracker store on the way to the mask shop, where he found Akira Yoshiwara intently working on a mask as if the world stood still around him. It had been almost a year since the afternoon of Kenji’s fight, the first time he had set foot in the mask shop, hurt and miserable, only to find a soothing balm within the small rooms. Since then, he’d returned many times, shy and hesitant at first, yet always welcomed by Akira Yoshiwara, and even the cat, Nazo, who soon grew used to his presence.

It wasn’t long before a visit every afternoon became part of Kenji’s routine. His
obaachan
agreed to let him go as long as he didn’t bother the famous artisan. She smiled when he told her how he loved the dusty rooms that smelled of sweet wood and paint, where, isolated from life’s disturbances, he watched each mask materialize before his eyes.

After Kenji swept the floors, he and Nazo sat aside and watched Yoshiwara at work. When the cat became bored and stole away, chasing after some shadow, Kenji remained motionless, intrigued by the rough, grinding bursts of the saw that shaped the mask from a block of Japanese cypress. With a set of chisels, Yoshiwara sculpted out the eyes, nose, and mouth, the hairline and the high brow of what he said would be a
Ko-omote
mask. Kenji knew
ko
meant “youth,” and that
omote
meant “face,” and as Yoshiwara sanded with steady concentration, he saw the smooth, rounded features of a young girl emerge. He
imagined it was like a face underwater slowly coming to the surface, the features becoming more defined. Yoshiwara then whitewashed the mask with a coat of
gofun
, or powdered seashell, and when it was dry, applied the first of six layers of paint to obtain the fleshy skin color. By the end of the week, Yoshiwara had brought the mask fully to life, painting in the finer details of the young girl’s dark eyes, her eyebrows and black hair.

Week after week, Kenji watched as each different mask slowly took shape with the sure strokes of Yoshiwara’s chisels against the wood. When he worked, he disappeared into his own world, oblivious, his dark hair covered in fine sawdust that gave him the appearance of an old man, just as when Kenji had first seen him through the window. The rhythmic scraping sound was hypnotic. Kenji loved the demon or spirit masks best, which were elaborately fitted with brass eyes or teeth, their horns dusted with gold. Simple masks took as little as a week or two, but the more elaborate ones required several months or more to bring to life.

In the beginning when Kenji was allowed to watch, he always grabbed a handful of the fragrant wood shavings from the floor and put them into his pocket. It made him feel close to the mask shop even when he wasn’t there. When his
obaachan
complained about the wood shavings still in his pocket on washing day, Kenji transferred them to his mother’s
omamori
bag, which he always carried with him, careful not to look at the blessing inside.