Memoirs of a Geisha (49 page)

I set the rock on the table. Nobu picked it up with his fingers and held it in the towel wrapped around his hand.

“I hope I didn’t promise you a jewel this big,” he said. “I don’t have that much money. But things are possible now that weren’t possible before.”

I bowed and tried not to look upset. Nobu didn’t need to tell me what he meant.

  chapter thirty-three

T
hat very night while I lay on my futon with the room swaying around me, I made up my mind to be like the fisherman who hour after hour scoops out fish with his net. Whenever thoughts of the Chairman drifted up from within me, I would scoop them out, and scoop them out again, and again, until none of them were left. It would have been a clever system, I’m sure, if I could have made it work. But when I had even a single thought of him, I could never catch it before it sped away and carried me to the very place from which I’d banished my thoughts. Many times I stopped myself and said: Don’t think of the Chairman, think of Nobu instead. And very deliberately, I pictured myself meeting Nobu somewhere in Kyoto. But then something always went wrong. The spot I pictured might be where I’d often imagined myself encountering the Chairman, for example . . . and then in an instant I was lost in thoughts of the Chairman once again.

I went on this way for weeks, trying to remake myself. Sometimes when I was free for a while from thinking about the Chairman, I began to feel as if a pit had opened up within me. I had no appetite even when little Etsuko came late at night carrying me a bowl of clear broth. The few times I did manage to focus my mind clearly on Nobu, I grew so numbed I seemed to feel nothing at all. While putting on my makeup, my face hung like a kimono from a rod. Auntie told me I looked like a ghost. I went to parties and banquets as usual, but I knelt in silence with my hands in my lap.

I knew Nobu was on the point of proposing himself as my
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, and so I waited every day for the news to reach me. But the weeks dragged on without any word. Then one hot afternoon at the end of June, nearly a month after I’d given back the rock, Mother brought in a newspaper while I was eating lunch, and opened it to show me an article entitled “Iwamura Electric Secures Financing from Mitsubishi Bank.” I expected to find all sorts of references to Nobu and the Minister, and certainly to the Chairman; but mostly the article gave a lot of information I can’t even remember. It told that Iwamura Electric’s designation had been changed by the Allied Occupation authorities from . . . I don’t remember—a Class Something to a Class Something-Else. Which meant, as the article went on to explain, that the company was no longer restricted from entering into contracts, applying for loans, and so forth. Several paragraphs followed, all about rates of interest and lines of credit; and then finally about a very large loan secured the day before from the Mitsubishi Bank. It was a difficult article to read, full of numbers and business terms. When I finished, I looked up at Mother, kneeling on the other side of the table.

“Iwamura Electric’s fortunes have turned around completely,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“Mother, I hardly even understand what I’ve just read.”

“It’s no wonder we’ve heard so much from Nobu Toshikazu these past few days. You must know he’s proposed himself as your
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. I was thinking of turning him down. Who wants a man with an uncertain future? Now I can see why you’ve seemed so distracted these past few weeks! Well, you can relax now. It’s finally happening. We all know how fond you’ve been of Nobu these many years.”

I went on gazing down at the table just like a proper daughter. But I’m sure I wore a pained expression on my face; because in a moment Mother went on:

“You mustn’t be listless this way when Nobu wants you in his bed. Perhaps your health isn’t what it should be. I’ll send you to a doctor the moment you return from Amami.”

The only Amami I’d ever heard of was a little island not far from Okinawa; I couldn’t imagine this was the place she meant. But in fact, as Mother went on to tell me, the mistress of the Ichiriki had received a telephone call that very morning from Iwamura Electric concerning a trip to the island of Amami the following weekend. I’d been asked to go, along with Mameha and Pumpkin, and also another geisha whose name Mother couldn’t remember. We would leave the following Friday afternoon.

“But Mother . . . it makes no sense at all,” I said. “A weekend trip as far as Amami? The boat ride alone will take all day.”

“Nothing of the sort. Iwamura Electric has arranged for all of you to travel there in an airplane.”

In an instant I forgot my worries about Nobu, and sat upright as quickly as if someone had poked me with a pin. “Mother!” I said. “I can’t possibly fly on an airplane.”

“If you’re sitting in one and the thing takes off, you won’t be able to help it!” she replied. She must have thought her little joke was very funny, because she gave one of her huffing laughs.

*  *  *

With gasoline so scarce, there couldn’t possibly be an airplane, I decided, so I made up my mind not to worry—and this worked well for me until the following day, when I spoke with the mistress of the Ichiriki. It seemed that several American officers on the island of Okinawa traveled by air to Osaka several weekends a month. Normally the airplane flew home empty and returned a few days later to pick them up. Iwamura Electric had arranged for our group to ride on the return trips. We were going to Amami only because the empty airplane was available; otherwise we’d probably have been on our way to a hot-springs resort, and not fearing for our lives at all. The last thing the mistress said to me was, “I’m just grateful it’s you and not me flying in the thing.”

When Friday morning came, we set out for Osaka by train. In addition to Mr. Bekku, who came to help us with our trunks as far as the airport, the little group consisted of Mameha, Pumpkin, and me, as well as an elderly geisha named Shizue. Shizue was from the Pontocho district rather than Gion, and had unattractive glasses and silver hair that made her look even older than she really was. What was worse, her chin had a big cleft in the middle, like two breasts. Shizue seemed to view the rest of us as a cedar views the weeds growing beneath it. Mostly she stared out the window of the train; but every so often she opened the clasp of her orange and red handbag to take out a piece of candy, and looked at us as if she couldn’t see why we had to trouble her with our presence.

From Osaka Station we traveled to the airport in a little bus not much larger than a car, which ran on coal and was very dirty. At last after an hour or so, we climbed down beside a silver airplane with two great big propellers on the wings. I wasn’t at all reassured to see the tiny wheel on which the tail rested; and when we went inside, the aisle sloped downward so dramatically I felt sure the airplane was broken.

The men were onboard already, sitting in seats at the rear and talking business. In addition to the Chairman and Nobu, the Minister was there, as well as an elderly man who, as I later learned, was regional director of the Mitsubishi Bank. Seated beside him was a man in his thirties with a chin just like Shizue’s, and glasses as thick as hers too. As it turned out, Shizue was the longtime mistress of the bank director, and this man was their son.

We sat toward the front of the airplane and left the men to their dull conversation. Soon I heard a coughing noise and the airplane trembled . . . and when I looked out the window, the giant propeller outside had begun to turn. In a matter of moments it was whirling its swordlike blades inches from my face, making the most desperate humming noise. I felt sure it would come tearing through the side of the airplane and slice me in half. Mameha had put me in a window seat thinking the view might calm me once we were airborne, but now that she saw what the propeller was doing, she refused to switch seats with me. The noise of the engines grew worse and the airplane began to bump along, turning here and there. Finally the noise reached its most terrifying volume yet, and the aisle tipped level. After another few moments we heard a thump and began to rise up into the air. Only when the ground was far below us did someone finally tell me the trip was seven hundred kilometers and would take nearly four hours. When I heard this, I’m afraid my eyes glazed over with tears, and everyone began to laugh at me.

I pulled the curtains over the window and tried to calm myself by reading a magazine. Quite some time later, after Mameha had fallen asleep in the seat beside me, I looked up to find Nobu standing in the aisle.

“Sayuri, are you well?” he said, speaking quietly so as not to wake Mameha.

“I don’t think Nobu-san has ever asked me such a thing before,” I said. “He must be in a very cheerful mood.”

“The future has never looked more promising!”

Mameha stirred at the sound of our talking, so Nobu said nothing further, and instead continued up the aisle to the toilet. Just before opening the door, he glanced back toward where the other men were seated. For an instant I saw him from an angle I’d rarely seen, which gave him a look of fierce concentration. When his glance flicked in my direction, I thought he might pick up some hint that I felt as worried about my future as he felt reassured about his. How strange it seemed, when I thought about it, that Nobu understood me so little. Of course, a geisha who expects understanding from her
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is like a mouse expecting sympathy from the snake. And in any case, how could Nobu possibly understand anything about me, when he’d seen me solely as a geisha keeping my true self carefully concealed? The Chairman was the only man I’d ever entertained as Sayuri the geisha who had also known me as Chiyo—though it was strange to think of it this way, for I’d never realized it before. What would Nobu have done if he had been the one to find me that day at the Shirakawa Stream? Surely he would have walked right past . . . and how much easier it might have been for me if he had. I wouldn’t spend my nights yearning for the Chairman. I wouldn’t stop in cosmetics shops from time to time, to smell the scent of talc in the air and remind myself of his skin. I wouldn’t strain to picture his presence beside me in some imaginary place. If you’d asked me why I wanted these things, I would have answered, Why does a ripe persimmon taste delicious? Why does wood smell smoky when it burns?

But here I was again, like a girl trying to catch mice with her hands. Why couldn’t I stop thinking about the Chairman?

I’m sure my anguish must have shown clearly on my face when the door to the toilet opened a moment later, and the light snapped off. I couldn’t bear for Nobu to see me this way, so I laid my head against the window, pretending to be asleep. After he passed by, I opened my eyes again. I found that the position of my head had caused the curtains to pull open, so that I was looking outside the airplane for the first time since shortly after we’d lifted off the runway. Spread out below was a broad vista of aqua blue ocean, mottled with the same jade green as a certain hair ornament Mameha sometimes wore. I’d never imagined the ocean with patches of green. From the sea cliffs in Yoroido, it had always looked the color of slate. Here the sea stretched all the way out to a single line pulled across like a wool thread where the sky began. This view wasn’t frightening at all, but inexpressibly lovely. Even the hazy disk of the propeller was beautiful in its own way, and the silver wing had a kind of magnificence, and was decorated with those symbols that American warplanes have on them. How peculiar it was to see them there, considering the world only five years earlier. We had fought a brutal war as enemies; and now what? We had given up our past; this was something I understood fully, for I had done it myself once. If only I could find a way of giving up my future . . .

And then a frightening image came to mind: I saw myself cutting the bond of fate that held me to Nobu, and watching him fall all the long way into the ocean below.

I don’t mean this was just an idea or some sort of daydream. I mean that all at once I understood exactly how to do it. Of course I wasn’t really going to throw Nobu into the ocean, but I did have an understanding, just as clearly as if a window had been thrown open in my mind, of the one thing I could do to end my relationship with him forever. I didn’t want to lose his friendship; but in my efforts to reach the Chairman, Nobu was an obstacle I’d found no way around. And yet I could cause him to be consumed by the flames of his own anger; Nobu himself had told me how to do it, just a moment after cutting his hand that night at the Ichiriki Teahouse only a few weeks earlier. If I was the sort of woman who would give myself to the Minister, he’d said, he wanted me to leave the room right then and would never speak to me again.

The feeling that came over me as I thought of this . . . it was like a fever breaking. I felt damp everywhere on my body. I was grateful Mameha remained asleep beside me; I’m sure she would have wondered what was the matter, to see me short of breath, wiping my forehead with my fingertips. This idea that had come to me, could I really do such a thing? I don’t mean the act of seducing the Minister; I knew perfectly well I could do that. It would be like going to the doctor for a shot. I’d look the other way for a time, and it would be over. But could I do such a thing to Nobu? What a horrible way to repay his kindness. Compared with the sorts of men so many geisha had suffered through the years, Nobu was probably a very desirable
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. But could I bear to live a life in which my hopes had been extinguished forever? For weeks I’d been working to convince myself I could live it; but could I really? I thought perhaps I understood how Hatsumomo had come by her bitter cruelty, and Granny her meanness. Even Pumpkin, who was scarcely thirty, had worn a look of disappointment for many years. The only thing that had kept me from it was hope; and now to sustain my hopes, would I commit an abhorrent act? I’m not talking about seducing the Minister; I’m talking about betraying Nobu’s trust.