Memoirs of a Geisha (51 page)

“Minister . . .” I said.

My voice echoed so much in the little hall, I spoke more quietly afterward.

“I understand you had a talk with the mistress of the Ichiriki about me. Isn’t that so?”

He took in a deep breath, but ended up saying nothing.

“Minister, if I may,” I said, “I’d like to tell you a story about a geisha named Kazuyo. She isn’t in Gion any longer, but I knew her well at one time. A very important man—much like you, Minister—met Kazuyo one evening and enjoyed her company so much that he came back to Gion every night to see her. After a few months of this, he asked to be Kazuyo’s
danna
, but the mistress of the teahouse apologized and said it wouldn’t be possible. The man was very disappointed; but then one afternoon Kazuyo took him to a quiet spot where they could be alone. Someplace very much like this empty theater. And she explained to him that . . . even though he couldn’t be her
danna
—”

The moment I said these last words, the Minister’s face changed like a valley when the clouds move away and sunlight rushes across it. He took a clumsy step toward me. At once my heart began to pound like drums in my ears. I couldn’t help looking away from him and closing my eyes. When I opened them again, the Minister had come so close, we were nearly touching, and then I felt the damp fleshiness of his face against my cheek. Slowly he brought his body toward mine until we were pressed together. He took my arms, probably to pull me down onto the planking, but I stopped him.

“The stage is too dusty,” I said. “You must bring over a mat from that stack.”

“We’ll go over there,” the Minister replied.

If we had lain down upon the mats in the corner, Nobu wouldn’t have seen us in the sunlight when he opened the door.

“No, we mustn’t,” I said. “Please bring a mat here.”

The Minister did as I asked, and then stood with his hands by his side, watching me. Until this moment I’d half-imagined something would stop us; but now I could see that nothing would. Time seemed to slow. My feet looked to me like someone else’s when they stepped out of my lacquered zori and onto the mat.

Almost at once, the Minister kicked off his shoes and was against me, with his arms around me tugging at the knot in my obi. I didn’t know what he was thinking, because I certainly wasn’t prepared to take off my kimono. I reached back to stop him. When I’d dressed that morning, I still hadn’t quite made up my mind; but in order to be prepared, I’d very deliberately put on a gray underrobe I didn’t much like—thinking it might be stained before the end of the day—and a lavender and blue kimono of silk gauze, as well as a durable silver obi. As for my undergarments, I’d shortened my
koshimaki
—my “hip wrap”—by rolling it at the waist, so that if I decided after all to seduce the Minister, he’d have no trouble finding his way inside it. Now, when I withdrew his hands from around me, he gave me a puzzled look. I think he believed I was stopping him, and he looked very relieved as I lay down on the mat. It wasn’t a tatami, but a simple sheet of woven straw; I could feel the hard flooring beneath. With one hand I folded back my kimono and underrobe on one side so that my leg was exposed to the knee. The Minister was still fully dressed, but he lay down upon me at once, pressing the knot of my obi into my back so much, I had to raise one hip to make myself more comfortable. My head was turned to the side as well, because I was wearing my hair in a style known as
tsubushi shimada
, with a dramatic chignon looped in the back, which would have been ruined if I’d put any weight on it. It was certainly an uncomfortable arrangement, but my discomfort was nothing compared with the uneasiness and anxiety I felt. Suddenly I wondered if I’d been thinking at all clearly when I’d put myself in this predicament. The Minister raised himself on one arm and began fumbling inside the seam of my kimono with his hand, scratching my thighs with his fingernails. Without thinking about what I was doing, I brought my hands up to his shoulders to push him away . . . but then I imagined Nobu as my
danna
, and the life I would live without hope; and I took my hands away and settled them onto the mat again. The Minister’s fingers were squirming higher and higher along the inside of my thigh; it was impossible not to feel them. I tried to distract myself by focusing on the door. Perhaps it would open even now, before the Minister had gone any further; but at that moment I heard the jingling of his belt, and then the zip of his pants, and a moment later he was forcing himself inside me. Somehow I felt like a fifteen-year-old girl again, because the feeling was so strangely reminiscent of Dr. Crab. I even heard myself whimper. The Minister was holding himself up on his elbows, with his face above mine. I could see him out of only one corner of my eye. When viewed up close like this, with his jaw protruding toward me, he looked more like an animal than a human. And even this wasn’t the worst part; for with his jaw jutted forward, the Minister’s lower lip became like a cup in which his saliva began to pool. I don’t know if it was the squid guts he’d eaten, but his saliva had a kind of gray thickness to it, which made me think of the residue left on the cutting board after fish have been cleaned.

When I’d dressed that morning, I’d tucked several sheets of a very absorbent rice paper into the back of my obi. I hadn’t expected to need them until afterward, when the Minister would want them for wiping himself off—if I decided to go through with it, that is. Now it seemed I would need a sheet much sooner, to wipe my face when his saliva spilled onto me. With so much of his weight on my hips, however, I couldn’t get my hand into the back of my obi. I let out several little gasps as I tried, and I’m afraid the Minister mistook them for excitement—or in any case, he suddenly grew even more energetic, and now the pool of saliva in his lip was being jostled with such violent shock waves I could hardly believe it held together rather than spilling out in a stream. All I could do was pinch my eyes shut and wait. I felt as sick as if I had been lying in the bottom of a little boat, tossed about on the waves, and with my head banging again and again against the side. Then all at once the Minister made a groaning noise, and held very still for a bit, and at the same time I felt his saliva spill onto my cheek.

I tried again to reach the rice paper in my obi, but now the Minister was lying collapsed upon me, breathing as heavily as if he’d just run a race. I was about to push him off when I heard a scraping sound outside. My feelings of disgust had been so loud within me, they’d nearly drowned out everything else. But now that I remembered Nobu, I could feel my heart pounding once again. I heard another scrape; it was the sound of someone on the stone steps. The Minister seemed to have no idea what was about to happen to him. He raised his head and pointed it toward the door with only the mildest interest, as if he expected to see a bird there. And then the door creaked open and the sunlight flooded over us. I had to squint, but I could make out two figures. There was Pumpkin; she had come to the theater just as I’d hoped she would. But the man peering down from beside her wasn’t Nobu at all. I had no notion of why she had done it, but Pumpkin had brought the Chairman instead.

  chapter thirty-four

I
can scarcely remember anything after that door opened—for I think the blood may have drained out of me, I went so cold and numb. I know the Minister climbed off me, or perhaps I pushed him off. I do remember weeping and asking if he’d seen the same thing I had, whether it really had been the Chairman standing there in the doorway. I hadn’t been able to make out anything of the Chairman’s expression, with the late-afternoon sun behind him; and yet when the door closed again, I couldn’t help imagining I’d seen on his face some of the shock I myself was feeling. I didn’t know if the shock was really there—and I doubted it was. But when we feel pain, even the blossoming trees seem weighted with suffering to us; and in just the same way, after seeing the Chairman there . . . well, I would have found my own pain reflected on anything I’d looked at.

If you consider that I’d taken the Minister to that empty theater for the very purpose of putting myself in danger—so that the knife would come slamming down onto the chopping block, so to speak—I’m sure you’ll understand that amid the worry, and fear, and disgust that almost overwhelmed me, I’d also been feeling a certain excitement. In the instant before that door opened, I could almost sense my life expanding just like a river whose waters have begun to swell; for I had never before taken such a drastic step to change the course of my own future. I was like a child tiptoeing along a precipice overlooking the sea. And yet somehow I hadn’t imagined a great wave might come and strike me there, and wash everything away.

When the chaos of feelings receded, and I slowly became aware of myself again, Mameha was kneeling above me. I was puzzled to find that I wasn’t in the old theater at all any longer, but rather looking up from the tatami floor of a dark little room at the inn. I don’t recall anything about leaving the theater, but I must have done it somehow. Later Mameha told me I’d gone to the proprietor to ask for a quiet place to rest; he’d recognized that I wasn’t feeling well, and had gone to find Mameha soon afterward.

Fortunately, Mameha seemed willing to believe I was truly ill, and left me there. Later, as I wandered back toward the room in a daze and with a terrible feeling of dread, I saw Pumpkin step out into the covered walkway ahead of me. She stopped when she caught sight of me; but rather than hurrying over to apologize as I half-expected she might, she turned her focus slowly toward me like a snake that had spotted a mouse.

“Pumpkin,” I said, “I asked you to bring Nobu, not the Chairman. I don’t understand—”

“Yes, it must be hard for you to understand, Sayuri, when life doesn’t work out perfectly!”

“Perfectly? Nothing worse could have happened . . . did you misunderstand what I was asking you?”

“You really do think I’m stupid!” she said.

I was bewildered, and stood a long moment in silence. “I thought you were my friend,” I said at last.

“I thought you were my friend too, once. But that was a long time ago.”

“You talk as if I’ve done something to harm you, Pumpkin, but—”

“No, you’d never do anything like that, would you? Not the perfect Miss Nitta Sayuri! I suppose it doesn’t matter that you took my place as the daughter of the okiya? Do you remember that, Sayuri? After I’d gone out of my way to help you with that Doctor—whatever his name was. After I’d risked making Hatsumomo furious at me for helping you! Then you turned it all around and stole what was mine. I’ve been wondering all these months just why you brought me into this little gathering with the Minister. I’m sorry it wasn’t so easy for you to take advantage of me this time—”

“But Pumpkin,” I interrupted, “couldn’t you just have refused to help me? Why did you have to bring the Chairman?”

She stood up to her full height. “I know perfectly well how you feel about him,” she said. “Whenever there’s nobody looking, your eyes hang all over him like fur on a dog.”

She was so angry, she had bitten her lip; I could see a smudge of lipstick on her teeth. She’d set out to hurt me, I now realized, in the worst way she could.

“You took something from me a long time ago, Sayuri. How does it feel now?” she said. Her nostrils were flared, her face consumed with anger like a burning twig. It was as though the spirit of Hatsumomo had been living trapped inside her all these years, and had finally broken free.

*  *  *

During the rest of that evening, I remember nothing but a blur of events, and how much I dreaded every moment ahead of me. While the others sat around drinking and laughing, it was all I could do to pretend to laugh. I must have spent the entire night flushed red, because from time to time Mameha touched my neck to see if I was feverish. I’d seated myself as far away from the Chairman as I could, so that our eyes would never have to meet; and I did manage to make it through the evening without confronting him. But later, as we were all preparing for bed, I stepped into the hallway as he was coming back into the room. I ought to have moved out of his way, but I felt so ashamed, I gave a brief bow and hurried past him instead, making no effort to hide my unhappiness.

It was an evening of torment, and I remember only one other thing about it. At some point after everyone else was asleep, I wandered away from the inn in a daze and ended up on the sea cliffs, staring out into the darkness with the sound of the roaring water below me. The thundering of the ocean was like a bitter lament. I seemed to see beneath everything a layering of cruelty I’d never known was there—as though the trees and the wind, and even the rocks where I stood, were all in alliance with my old girlhood enemy, Hatsumomo. The howling of the wind and the shaking of the trees seemed to mock me. Could it really be that the stream of my life had divided forever? I removed the Chairman’s handkerchief from my sleeve, for I’d taken it to bed that evening to comfort myself one last time. I dried my face with it, and held it up into the wind. I was about to let it dance away into the darkness, when I thought of the tiny mortuary tablets that Mr. Tanaka had sent me so many years earlier. We must always keep something to remember those who have left us. The mortuary tablets back in the okiya were all that remained of my childhood. The Chairman’s handkerchief would be what remained of the rest of my life.

*  *  *

Back in Kyoto, I was carried along in a current of activity over the next few days. I had no choice but to put on my makeup as usual, and attend engagements at the teahouses just as though nothing had changed in the world. I kept reminding myself what Mameha had once told me, that there was nothing like work for getting over a disappointment; but my work didn’t seem to help me in any way. Every time I went into the Ichiriki Teahouse, I was reminded that one day soon Nobu would summon me there to tell me the arrangements had been settled at last. Considering how busy he’d been over the past few months, I didn’t expect to hear from him for some time—a week or two, perhaps. But on Wednesday morning, three days after our return from Amami, I received word that Iwamura Electric had telephoned the Ichiriki Teahouse to request my presence that evening.

I dressed late in the afternoon in a yellow kimono of silk gauze with a green underrobe and a deep blue obi interwoven with gold threads. Auntie assured me I looked lovely, but when I saw myself in the mirror, I seemed like a woman defeated. I’d certainly experienced moments in the past when I felt displeased with the way I looked before setting out from the okiya; but most often I managed to find at least one feature I could make use of during the course of the evening. A certain persimmon-colored underrobe, for example, always brought out the blue in my eyes, rather than the gray, no matter how exhausted I felt. But this evening my face seemed utterly hollow beneath my cheekbones—although I’d put on Western-style makeup just as I usually did—and even my hairstyle seemed lopsided to me. I couldn’t think of any way to improve my appearance, other than asking Mr. Bekku to retie my obi just a finger’s-width higher, to take away some of my downcast look.

My first engagement was a banquet given by an American colonel to honor the new governor of Kyoto Prefecture. It was held at the former estate of the Sumitomo family, which was now the headquarters of the American army’s seventh division. I was amazed to see that so many of the beautiful stones in the garden were painted white, and signs in English—which of course I couldn’t read—were tacked to the trees here and there. After the party was over, I made my way to the Ichiriki and was shown upstairs by a maid, to the same peculiar little room where Nobu had met with me on the night Gion was closing. This was the very spot where I’d learned about the haven he’d found to keep me safe from the war; it seemed entirely appropriate that we should meet in this same room to celebrate his becoming my
danna
—though it would be anything but a celebration for me. I knelt at one end of the table, so that Nobu would sit facing the alcove. I was careful to position myself so he could pour sake using his one arm, without the table in his way; he would certainly want to pour a cup for me after telling me the arrangements had been finalized. It would be a fine night for Nobu. I would do my best not to spoil it.

With the dim lighting and the reddish cast from the tea-colored walls, the atmosphere was really quite pleasant. I’d forgotten the very particular scent of the room—a combination of dust and the oil used for polishing wood—but now that I smelled it again, I found myself remembering details about that evening with Nobu years earlier that I couldn’t possibly have called to mind otherwise. He’d had holes in both of his socks, I remembered; through one a slender big toe had protruded, with the nail neatly groomed. Could it really be that only five and a half years had passed since that evening? It seemed an entire generation had come and gone; so many of the people I’d once known were dead. Was this the life I’d come back to Gion to lead? It was just as Mameha had once told me: we don’t become geisha because we want our lives to be happy; we become geisha because we have no choice. If my mother had lived, I might be a wife and mother at the seashore myself, thinking of Kyoto as a faraway place where the fish were shipped—and would my life really be any worse? Nobu had once said to me, “I’m a very easy man to understand, Sayuri. I don’t like things held up before me that I cannot have.” Perhaps I was just the same; all my life in Gion, I’d imagined the Chairman before me, and now I could not have him.

After ten or fifteen minutes of waiting for Nobu, I began to wonder if he was really coming. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I laid my head down on the table to rest, for I’d slept poorly these past nights. I didn’t fall asleep, but I did drift for a time in my general sense of misery. And then I seemed to have a most peculiar dream. I thought I heard the tapping sound of drums in the distance, and a hiss like water from a faucet, and then I felt the Chairman’s hand touching my shoulder. I knew it was the Chairman’s hand because when I lifted my head from the table to see who had touched me, he was there. The tapping had been his footsteps; the hissing was the door in its track. And now he stood above me with a maid waiting behind him. I bowed and apologized for falling asleep. I felt so confused that for a moment I wondered if I was really awake; but it wasn’t a dream. The Chairman was seating himself on the very cushion where I’d expected Nobu to sit, and yet Nobu was nowhere to be seen. While the maid placed sake on the table, an awful thought began to take hold in my mind. Had the Chairman come to tell me Nobu had been in an accident, or that some other horrible thing had happened to him? Otherwise, why hadn’t Nobu himself come? I was about to ask the Chairman, when the mistress of the teahouse peered into the room.

“Why, Chairman,” she said, “we haven’t seen you in weeks!”

The mistress was always pleasant in front of guests, but I could tell from the strain in her voice that she had something else on her mind. Probably she was wondering about Nobu, just as I was. While I poured sake for the Chairman, the mistress came and knelt at the table. She stopped his hand before he took a sip from his cup, and leaned toward him to breathe in the scent of the vapors.

“Really, Chairman, I’ll never understand why you prefer this sake to others,” she said. “We opened some this afternoon, the best we’ve had in years. I’m sure Nobu-san will appreciate it when he arrives.”

“I’m sure he would,” the Chairman said. “Nobu appreciates fine things. But he won’t be coming tonight.”

I was alarmed to hear this; but I kept my eyes to the table. I could see that the mistress was surprised too, because of how quickly she changed the subject.

“Oh, well,” she said, “anyway, don’t you think our Sayuri looks charming this evening!”

“Now, Mistress, when has Sayuri
not
looked charming?” said the Chairman. “Which reminds me . . . let me show you something I’ve brought.”

The Chairman put onto the table a little bundle wrapped in blue silk; I hadn’t noticed it in his hand when he’d entered the room. He untied it and took out a short, fat scroll, which he began to unroll. It was cracked with age and showed—in miniature—brilliantly colored scenes of the Imperial court. If you’ve ever seen this sort of scroll, you’ll know that you can unroll it all the way across a room and survey the entire grounds of the Imperial compound, from the gates at one end to the palace at the other. The Chairman sat with it before him, unrolling it from one spindle to the other—past scenes of drinking parties, and aristocrats playing kickball with their kimonos cinched up between their legs—until he came to a young woman in her lovely twelve-layered robes, kneeling on the wood floor outside the Emperor’s chambers.