Confessions of a Mask Read Online Free Page A

seemed to me to be a defect that could not go unchallenged. Reading this, I felt the author had both betrayed me and committed a grave error.
    Before long I chanced upon a discovery. This was to read the passage while hiding under my hand:
suddenly was put back together again and came springing nimbly right out of the dragon's mouth. There was not a single scratch anywhere on his body. The dragon. Thereupon the story became ideal:
    "Without a moment's delay, the dragon chewed the prince greedily into bits. It was almost more than he could stand, but the prince summoned all his courage and bore the torture steadfastly until he was finally chewed completely into shreds. Then, in a flash, he sank to the ground and died on the spot."
    An adult would certainly have seen the absurdity in such a method of cutting. And even that young and arrogant censor discerned the patent contradiction between "being chewed completely into shreds" and "sinking to the ground," but he was easily infatuated with his own fancies and found it still impossible to discard either phrase.
     
    On the other hand, I delighted in imagining situations in which I myself was dying in battle or being murdered. And yet I had an abnormally strong fear of death. One day I would bully a maid to tears, and the next morning I would see her serving breakfast with a cheerfully smiling face, as though nothing had happened. Then I would read all manner of evil meanings into her smiles. I could not believe them to be other than the diabolical smiles that come from being fully confident of victory. I was sure she was plotting to poison me out of revenge. Waves of fear billowed up in my breast. I was positive the poison had been put in my bowl of broth, and I would not have touched it for all the world. I ended many such meals by jumping up from the table and staring hard at the maid, as though to say "So there!" It seemed to me that the woman was so dismayed at this thwarting of her plans for poisoning me that she could not rise, but was only staring from across the table at the broth, now become completely cold, with some dust floating on its surface, and telling herself I'd left too much for the poison to be effective.
    Out of concern for my frail health and also to keep me from learning bad things, my grandmother had forbidden me to play with the neighborhood boys, and my only playmates, excepting maids and nurses, were three girls whom my grandmother had selected from the girls of the neighborhood. The slightest noise affected my grandmother's neuralgia—the violent opening or closing of a door, a toy bugle, wrestling, or any conspicuous sound or vibration whatsoever—and our playing had to be quieter than is usual even among girls. Rather than this I preferred by far to be by myself reading a book, playing with my building blocks, indulging in my willful fancies, or drawing pictures. When my sister and brother were born, they were not given over into my grandmother's hands as I had been, and my father saw to it that they were reared with a freedom befitting children. And yet I did not greatly envy them their liberty and rowdiness.
    But things were different when I went visiting at the homes of my cousins. Then even I was called upon to be a boy, a male. An incident which should be related occurred in the early spring of my seventh year, shortly before I entered primary school, during a visit to the home of a certain cousin whom I shall call Sugiko. Upon our arrival there—my grandmother had accompanied me—my great-aunt had praised me to the skies —"How he's grown! How big he's become!"—and my grandmother had been so taken in by this flattery that she had granted a special dispensation regarding the meals I took there. Until then she had been so frightened by the frequent attacks of autointoxication I have already mentioned that she had forbidden me to eat all "blue-skinned" fish. My diet had been carefully limited: of fish, I was allowed only such white-flesh