Memoirs of a Geisha (56 page)

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.

“Now what do you think of that!” he said.

“It's quite a scroll,” the mistress said. “Where did the Chairman find it?”

“Oh, I bought it years ago. But look at this woman right here. She's the reason I bought it. Don't you notice anything about her?”

The mistress peered at it; afterward the Chairman turned it for me to see. The image of the young woman, though no bigger than a large coin, was painted in exquisite detail. I didn't notice it at first, but her eyes were pale . . . and when I looked more closely I saw they were blue-gray. They made me think at once of the works Uchida had painted using me as a model. I blushed and muttered something about how beautiful the scroll was. The mistress admired it too for a moment, and then said:

“Well, I'll leave the two of you. I'm going to send up some of that fresh, chilled sake I mentioned. Unless you think I should save it for the next time Nobu-san comes?”

“Don't bother,” he said. “We'll make do with the sake we have.”

“Nobu-san is . . . quite all right, isn't he?”

“Oh, yes,” said the Chairman. “Quite all right.”

I was relieved to hear this; but at the same time I felt myself growing sick with shame. If the Chairman hadn't come to give me news about Nobu, he'd come for some other reason—probably to berate me for what I'd done. In the few days since returning to Kyoto, I'd tried not to imagine what he must have seen: the Minister with his pants undone, me with my bare legs protruding from my disordered kimono . . .

When the mistress left the room, the sound of the door closing behind her was like a sword being drawn from its sheath.

“May I please say, Chairman,” I began as steadily as I could, “that my behavior on Amami—”

“I know what you're thinking, Sayuri. But I haven't come here to ask for your apology. Sit quietly a moment. I want to tell you about something that happened quite a number of years ago.”

“Chairman, I feel so confused,” I managed to say. “Please forgive me, but—”

“Just listen. You'll understand soon enough why I'm telling it to you. Do you recall a restaurant named Tsumiyo? It closed toward the end of the Depression, but . . . well, never mind; you were very young at the time. In any case, one day quite some years ago—eighteen years ago, to be exact—I went there for lunch with several of my associates. We were accompanied by a certain geisha named Izuko, from the Pontocho district.”

I recognized Izuko's name at once.

“She was everybody's favorite back in those days,” the Chairman went on. “We happened to finish up our lunch a bit early, so I suggested we take a stroll by the Shirakawa Stream on our way to the theater.”

By this time I'd removed the Chairman's handkerchief from my obi; and now, silently, I spread it onto the table and smoothed it so that his monogram was clearly visible. Over the years the handkerchief had taken on a stain in one corner, and the linen had yellowed; but the Chairman seemed to recognize it at once. His words trailed off, and he picked it up.

“Where did you get this?”

“Chairman,” I said, “all these years I've wondered if you knew I was the little girl you'd spoken to. You gave me your handkerchief that very afternoon, on your way to see the play
Shibaraku
. You also gave me a coin—”

“Do you mean to say . . . even when you were an apprentice, you knew that I was the man who'd spoken to you?”

“I recognized the Chairman the moment I saw him again, at the sumo tournament. To tell the truth, I'm amazed the Chairman remembered
me
.”

“Well, perhaps you ought to look at yourself in the mirror sometime, Sayuri. Particularly when your eyes are wet from crying, because they become . . . I can't explain it. I felt I was seeing right through them. You know, I spend so much of my time seated across from men who are never quite telling me the truth; and here was a girl who'd never laid eyes on me before, and yet was willing to let me see straight into her.”

And then the Chairman interrupted himself.

“Didn't you ever wonder why Mameha became your older sister?” he asked me.

“Mameha?” I said. “I don't understand. What does Mameha have to do with it?”

“You really don't know, do you?”

“Know what, Chairman?”

“Sayuri, I am the one who asked Mameha to take you under her care. I told her about a beautiful young girl I'd met, with startling gray eyes, and asked that she help you if she ever came upon you in Gion. I said I would cover her expenses if necessary. And she did come upon you, only a few months later. From what she's told me over the years, you would certainly never have become a geisha without her help.”

It's almost impossible to describe the effect the Chairman's words had on me. I'd always taken it for granted that Mameha's mission had been personal—to rid herself and Gion of Hatsumomo. Now that I understood her real motive, that I'd come under her tutelage because of the Chairman . . . well, I felt I would have to look back at all the comments she'd ever made to me and wonder about the real meaning behind them. And it wasn't just Mameha who'd suddenly been transformed in my eyes; even I seemed to myself to be a different woman. When my gaze fell upon my hands in my lap, I saw them as hands the Chairman had made. I felt exhilarated, and frightened, and grateful all at once. I moved away from the table to bow and express my gratitude to him; but before I could even do it, I had to say:

“Chairman, forgive me, but I so wish that at some time years ago, you could have told me about . . . all of this. I can't say how much it would have meant to me.”

“There's a reason why I never could, Sayuri, and why I had to insist that Mameha not tell you either. It has to do with Nobu.”

To hear mention of Nobu's name, all the feeling drained out of me—for I had the sudden notion that I understood where the Chairman had been leading all along.

“Chairman,” I said, “I know I've been unworthy of your kindness. This past weekend, when I—”

“I confess, Sayuri,” he interrupted, “that what happened on Amami has been very much on my mind.”

I could feel the Chairman looking at me; I couldn't possibly have looked back at him.

“There's something I want to discuss with you,” he went on. “I've been wondering all day how to go about it. I keep thinking of something that happened many years ago. I'm sure there must be a better way to explain myself, but . . . I do hope you'll understand what I'm trying to say.”

Here he paused to take off his jacket and fold it on the mats beside him. I could smell the starch in his shirt, which made me think of visiting the General at the Suruya Inn and his room that often smelled of ironing.

“Back when Iwamura Electric was still a young company,” the Chairman began, “I came to know a man named Ikeda, who worked for one of our suppliers on the other side of town. He was a genius at solving wiring problems. Sometimes when we had difficulty with an installation, we asked to borrow him for a day, and he straightened everything out for us. Then one afternoon when I was rushing home from work, I happened to run into him at the pharmacist. He told me he was feeling very relaxed, because he'd quit his job. When I asked him why he'd done it, he said, ‘The time came to quit. So I quit!' Well, I hired him right there on the spot. Then a few weeks later I asked him again, ‘Ikeda-san, why
did
you quit your job across town?' He said to me, ‘Mr. Iwamura, for years I wanted to come and work for your company. But you never asked me. You always called on me when you had a problem, but you never asked me to work for you. Then one day I realized that you never
would
ask me, because you didn't want to hire me away from one of your suppliers and jeopardize your business relationship. Only if I quit my job first, would you then have the opportunity to hire me. So I quit.' ”

I knew the Chairman was waiting for me to respond; but I didn't dare speak.

“Now, I've been thinking,” he went on, “that perhaps your encounter with the Minister was like Ikeda quitting his job. And I'll tell you why this thought has been on my mind. It's something Pumpkin said after she took me down to the theater. I was extremely angry with her, and I demanded she tell me why she'd done it. For the longest time she wouldn't even speak. Then she told me something that made no sense at first. She said you'd asked her to bring Nobu.”

“Chairman, please,” I began unsteadily, “I made such a terrible mistake . . .”

“Before you say anything further, I only want to know why you did this thing. Perhaps you felt you were doing Iwamura Electric some sort of . . . favor. I don't know. Or maybe you owed the Minister something I'm unaware of.”

I must have given my head a little shake, because the Chairman stopped speaking at once.

“I'm deeply ashamed, Chairman,” I managed to say at last, “but . . . my motives were purely personal.”

After a long moment he sighed and held out his sake cup. I poured for him, with the feeling that my hands were someone else's, and then he tossed the sake into his mouth and held it there before swallowing. Seeing him with his mouth momentarily full made me think of myself as an empty vessel swelled up with shame.

“All right, Sayuri,” he said, “I'll tell you exactly why I'm asking. It will be impossible for you to grasp why I've come here tonight, or why I've treated you as I have over the years, if you don't understand the nature of my relationship with Nobu. Believe me, I'm more aware than anyone of how difficult he can sometimes be. But he is a genius; I value him more than an entire team of men combined.”

I couldn't think of what to do or say, so with trembling hands I picked up the vial to pour more sake for the Chairman. I took it as a very bad sign that he didn't lift his cup.

“One day when I'd known you only a short time,” he went on, “Nobu brought you a gift of a comb, and gave it to you in front of everyone at the party. I hadn't realized how much affection he felt for you until that very moment. I'm sure there were other signs before, but somehow I must have overlooked them. And when I realized how he felt, the way he looked at you that evening . . . well, I knew in a moment that I couldn't possibly take away from him the thing he so clearly wanted. It never diminished my concern for your welfare. In fact, as the years have gone by, it has become increasingly difficult for me to listen dispassionately while Nobu talks about you.”

Here the Chairman paused and said, “Sayuri, are you listening to me?”

“Yes, Chairman, of course.”

“There's no reason you would know this, but I owe Nobu a great debt. It's true I'm the founder of the company, and his boss. But when Iwamura Electric was still quite young, we had a terrible problem with cash flow and very nearly went out of business. I wasn't willing to give up control of the company, and I wouldn't listen to Nobu when he insisted on bringing in investors. He won in the end, even though it caused a rift between us for a time; he offered to resign, and I almost let him. But of course, he was completely right, and I was wrong. I'd have lost the company without him. How do you repay a man for something like that? Do you know why I'm called ‘Chairman' and not ‘President'? It's because I resigned the title so Nobu would take it—though he tried to refuse. This is why I made up my mind, the moment I became aware of his affection for you, that I would keep my interest in you hidden so that Nobu could have you. Life has been cruel to him, Sayuri. He's had too little kindness.”

In all my years as a geisha, I'd never been able to convince myself even for a moment that the Chairman felt any special regard for me. And now to know that he'd intended me for Nobu . . .

“I never meant to pay you so little attention,” he went on. “But surely you realize that if he'd ever picked up the slightest hint of my feelings, he would have given you up in an instant.”

Since my girlhood, I'd dreamed that one day the Chairman would tell me he cared for me; and yet I'd never quite believed it would really happen. I certainly hadn't imagined he might tell me what I hoped to hear, and
also
that Nobu was my destiny. Perhaps the goal I'd sought in life would elude me; but at least during this one moment, it was within my power to sit in the room with the Chairman and tell him how deeply I felt.

“Please forgive me for what I am about to say,” I finally managed to begin.

I tried to continue, but somehow my throat made up its mind to swallow—though I can't think what I was swallowing, unless it was a little knot of emotion I pushed back down because there was no room in my face for any more.

“I have great affection for Nobu, but what I did on Amami . . .” Here I had to hold a burning in my throat a long moment before I could speak again. “What I did on Amami, I did because of my feelings for you, Chairman. Every step I have taken in my life since I was a child in Gion, I have taken in the hope of bringing myself closer to you.”