Confessions of a Mask Read Free Page A

world of fairy tales. Thus, without my being aware of it, one of the determinants of my life had come into operation. And because of my struggles against it, from the beginning my every fantasy was tinged with despair, strangely complete and in itself resembling passionate desire.One night from my bed I saw a shining city floating upon the expanse of darkness that surrounded me. It was strangely still, and yet overflowed with brilliance and mystery. I could plainly see a mystic brand that had been impressed upon the faces of the persons in that city. They were adults, returning home in dead of night, still retaining in speech or gesture traces of something like secret signs and countersigns, something smacking of Freemasonry. Moreover, in their faces there shone a glistening fatigue that made them shy of being looked at full in the face. As with those holiday masks that leave powdered silver on the fingertips when one touches them, it seemed that if I could but touch their faces, I might discover the color of the pigments with which the city of night had painted them.
    Presently Night raised a curtain directly before my eyes, revealing the stage on which Shokyokusai Tenkatsu performed her feats of magic. (She was then making one of her rare appearances at a theater in the Shinjuku district; although the staging of the magician Dante, whom I saw at the same theater some years later, was on a many times grander scale than hers, neither Dante nor even the Universal Exhibition of the Hagen-beck Circus amazed me so much as my first view of Tenkatsu.)
    She lounged indolently about the stage, her opulent body veiled in garments like those of the Great Harlot of the Apocalypse. On her arms were flashy bracelets, heaped with artificial stones; her make-up was as heavy as that of a female ballad-singer, with a coating of white powder extending even to the tips of her toenails; and she wore a trumpery costume that surrendered her person over to the kind of brazen luster given off only by shoddy merchandise. And yet, curiously enough, all this somehow achieved a melancholy harmony with her haughty air of self-importance, characteristic of conjurers and exiled noblemen alike, with her sort of somber charm, with her heroine-like bearing. The delicate grain of the shadow cast by these unharmonious elements produced its own surprising and unique illusion of harmony.
    I understood, though vaguely, that the desire "to become Tenkatsu" and "to become a streetcar operator" differed in essence. Their most marked dissimilarity was the fact that in the case of Tenkatsu the craving for that "tragic quality" was almost wholly lacking. In wishing to become Tenkatsu I did not have to taste that bitter mixture of longing and shame. And yet one day, trying hard to still my heartbeats, I stole into my mother's room and opened the drawers of her clothing chest.
    From among my mother's kimonos I dragged out the most gorgeous one, the one with the strongest colors. For a sash I chose an obi on which scarlet roses were painted in oil, and wrapped it round and round my waist in the manner of a Turkish pasha. I covered my head with a wrapping-cloth of crepe de Chine. My cheeks flushed with wild delight when I stood before the mirror and saw that this improvised headcloth resembled those of the pirates in Treasure Island.
    But my work was still far from complete. My every point, down to the very tips of my fingernails, had to be made worthy of the creation of mystery. I stuck a hand mirror in my sash and powdered my face lightly. Then I armed myself with a silver-colored flashlight, an old-fashioned fountain pen of chased metal, and whatever else struck my eye.
    I assumed a solemn air and, dressed like this, rushed into my grandmother's sitting-room. Unable to suppress my frantic laughter and delight, I ran about the room crying:
    "I'm Tenkatsu! Me, I'm Tenkatsu!"
    My grandmother was there sick abed, and also my mother and a visitor and the maid assigned to the