The Mask

The mask was made of ebony, deep lines representing smile lines scored with ruby lacquer. It was thick, slick with polish and grinning garishly, the lips large and stylised and the teeth small and rounded and exposed in the empty leer. A long length of upturned wood stood for a kind of nose, complete right down to the two hollow nostrils drilled below the peak of the proboscis, to grooves tracing down to meet at the caricature of a mouth in an exaggerated cupid’s bow of the upper lip. The cheeks were broad and sanded rough so that a thin white layer of rouge would cling more readily to them like the powdered French noblemen of old, replete with a small yellow beauty mark in the vague shape of a love heart just above the left of the smile’s curve. The eyes were hollow orifices; the empty holes peaked at the top and were framed by pointed eyebrows that might have been lifted in mirth. Tiny crows’ feet were etched into the corners of the eyes and stained red like lines around its jowls.
         For as long as I could remember it had sat on the mantelpiece above the fire. In the summer months it reflected the late evening sun that reached into the living room as tender fingers with a dull sheen – in the winter months it glittered obscenely with the reflection of light from the snapping fire beneath, always grinning blankly.
         I hated it. Whether it sat over an empty recess, or whether it sat over a hearth pregnant with warmth and light, the empty eyes followed me around the room. If I sat on the worn old armchair to trace the emerald brocade and talk with an old friend over green tea in china cups, it would stare. If I stretched out languorously with Tibbles the grey tabby on the rug pocked with cheeky ember burns and tried to read a book in the fire’s warm embrace, I would feel it staring down at me. If I strolled across the room to switch of the television, to flick the record player off with a scratch, to open the French doors to the rolling summer heat, it would watch me.
         Every so often I would turn the mask around to face the wooden mantelpiece but it would only stare back at me in negative, a laughing Janus.
         Many times I would brace myself on one arm against the cool wooden sill of the mantle and luxuriate with the invading sun at my back, massaging away the weariness of the day, and pick up the mask. Tapping it against the soft wood of the sill I would contemplate throwing it into the hearth, to wait and wonder and stare until winter time when a fire would consume it, melt it down like so much candy, screaming. And I would think, Yes, this winter you’re for it. This winter, I’m free; I’ll get this monkey off my back. So I would put it back, and wait until the trees outside reached up to an unforgiving, tepid sky leafless, birdless and imploring; wait until ponds froze over and seas grew grey and choppy; wait until frosts bit hard and beautiful on the lawn and burned the lemon tree.
         And when those times came and the house was warmed with its hot fire heart my resolve would flicker with the flames and the mask would sit, leering eerily until my next summer vow.
         The mask was made of ebony, deep lines representing smile lines scored with ruby lacquer. It was thick, slick with polish and grinning garishly, the lips large and stylised and the teeth small and rounded and exposed in the empty leer....