Geisha in Rivalry

by Kafū Nagai

  "Really?"

  "For a while I was his mistress. But then he wanted me to go back to the country with him. If I went with him, he would make me his real wife, he said. I didn't like the idea, but I wasn't going to stay young forever, and once I became used to being a wife, I thought, I'd realize that it was silly of me to think that way."

  "Where was it, his home?"

  "Oh, far away from here. You know, where the salmon come from."

  "Oh, you mean Niigata?"

  "No, that's wrong. In the direction of Hokkaido. Akita, they call it. I've never been so cold. It's really a terrible place. I'll never forget it. I stood it for three whole years."

  "And then you couldn't stand it any more, I suppose?"

  "How can you say that? My husband died. And since it turned out that way—well, I was still a geisha. His parents were both in good health. Besides, there were two younger brothers. What with one thing and another, I couldn't go on being alone among them."

  "Yes, I understand. But you must relax for a moment. Here, have another drink."

  "Thank you." Komayo accepted the cup of sake that Eda offered. "Since that's the way it is, I hope I can count on your understanding."

  "I wonder what the other geisha are doing? They're probably not coming."

  "It's still not eleven," said Eda, taking out his watch and looking at it. At that moment, Komayo was called to the telephone. As she stood up to go, Eda followed her retreating figure with his eyes, at the same time lowering his voice to say: "Excellent, isn't she? Really an exquisite thing."

  Yoshioka laughed.

  "Better that no one else should come tonight. And by the way, it's about time for me to disappear."

  "What? Things haven't reached that stage yet. It's not by any means limited to tonight."

  "You've gone too far to retreat now. And she probably feels the same way about it. I don't want to be guilty of embarrassing her." Eda emptied at one gulp the two cups of sake that stood before him, helped himself to a cigar from Yoshioka's case, and, lighting a match, stood up to go.

  THE FIREFLY FLOWER

  KOMAYO'S call was from her hakoya, the woman who kept accounts and took care of the telephone at her geisha house. Having answered it, she was on her way back upstairs to her guests when the mistress called to her from her small office room: "Koma-chan, just a moment."

  Speaking in a coquettish voice and with the intention of quickly forestalling any questions, Komayo answered: "Okami-san, I suppose it's all right if I leave now?"

  "Well, you'd better go and ask first." The mistress was used to situations like this. Blowing a whiff of smoke and speaking as if everything had already been arranged, she added: "Anyway, he never stays all night."

  Komayo was altogether at a loss for an immediate answer. Of course, since the man involved was Yoshioka, with whom she had formerly had an affair, it was no longer particularly a matter of saying yes or no. In fact, with Yoshioka it would be very nice indeed. But to have him send for her after all these years and then all at once, on the very same evening, to let herself agree to everything—she wondered if it wouldn't make her look cheap in the eyes of the teahouse world, like the completely owned geisha that she used to be in her childhood days. It was this that made her uneasy. Up to now, Komayo had not really considered whether Yoshioka felt this way or not. At any rate, this business of what had happened following their accidental meeting at the theater after such a long time—if it was because of such a feeling that Yoshioka had sent for her, why hadn't he done it without letting people like the mistress of the machiai know? If he had only informed her directly by a wink or some other signal, how much more face she would have saved! As she thought about this, she became somewhat angry.

  "Well then, okami-san, please let me know when the time is up," Komayo said over her shoulder, leaving it at that and returning to the guest room on the second floor.

  Here the light of the electric lamps shone on nothing but the wild disorder of sake cups and plates on the san-dalwood table. Of Yoshioka and Eda there was nothing to be seen. She thought that perhaps they had gone to the washroom, but somehow, in spite of herself and without knowing why, she had a strange sensation of desperate loneliness and abandonment. Then, with an air or refusing to worry about anything, she sat down under the glare of the lights. From force of habit, she took a small mirror out of the folds of her obi, smoothed her hair at the sides, and wiped her face with powdered make-up paper. As she gazed absent-mindedly at the mirror, Komayo found herself for some unknown reason deeply absorbed in the everyday worries that constantly revolrved in her mind. It couldn't be that she was lovesick. Or was it perhaps that love, after all, was the cause of her worries? In any case, Komayo herself believed firmly that her troubles were of no such frivolous sort. What had plunged her into thought was the single matter of her future. She would be twenty-six this year, and from now on she would show her age more and more as the years passed. If she didn't make definite plans for her future now, there would be only depression and vexation beyond reason. At fourteen, she had been apprenticed and at sixteen had made her debut as a half-fledged geisha. Then, when she was almost twenty, her freedom was bought for her, and at twenty-two she had accompanied her husband to faraway Akita. And the third year after that she had lost him. Up to that time, she had really known nothing about the world or about people. She had never even reflected very deeply about herself. After her husband's death, if she had wanted to stay with his relatives in Akita, there would probably have been nothing to prevent it. But in doing so, even more than if she had become a nun, she would have had to submit to an utter denial of herself. To have been left alone in a well-to-do country family among people who, no matter where one looked, were completely different from herself, and from then on, to spend the rest of her life with them—it was decidedly not the place where a city-bred woman could stand to hide herself away. She even went to the extent of thinking it would be better to die. At last, with no thought of what was to become of her, she fled to Tokyo.

  Upon her return, when she arrived at Ueno Station, she was immediately faced with the problem of where to stay. Because it had been years since she had heard from home, there was not a single place in the whole broad expanse of Tokyo that she could ask to take her in except the geisha house in Shimbashi to which she had first gone as a bound apprentice. And now, for the first time in her life, Komayo began to realize keenly within herself the misery and sorrow of being a woman, and at the same time the feeling came over her that from now on, throughout her whole existence, living or dying, whichever it might be, she must in any case always go her way alone. If she went back to the geisha house where she had been apprenticed as a young girl, of course they would take her in for the time being, and she could undoubtedly expect some sort of help from them in the future. But at the same time that she was thinking this, in her unreasonable feminine way she felt that it would be bitter indeed to show herself in such a completely distracted state at the house from which she had been so handsomely redeemed seven years ago. She would sooner die than go back there....

  By this time, Komayo had boarded a streetcar for Shimbashi. As she rode along, completely absorbed in thoughts of what to do next, she suddenly heard from beside her a woman's voice calling her by her old geisha name: Komazo. Surprised, Komayo looked around. It was Taki, the woman who had served as a maid at the machiai where her lover from Akita had always met her. Her years of faithful service had brought their reward, and toward the end of last year Taki had opened her own business in the southern part of the district. And although Komayo at first politely demurred, it was her good fortune to find a lodging for the time being at Taki's place. Soon after that, at the house run by the old geisha called Jukichi of the Obanaya, she took up her profession again under an agreement to share her income with the house. And this was the house where she now worked.

  Suddenly, for some reason or other, Komayo thought: "I hate being a geisha. Once you become a geisha, no matter what yo
u do, it's hopeless.... Yet even I was once a married woman in a well-to-do family and was treated with respect by all the servants." Unintentionally she found herself on the verge of tears.

  At that instant, the maid came bustling along the corridor. "Why, Komayo-san!" she exclaimed. "Is this where you've been?" Then, as she was clearing away the sake cups and the plates, she said: "Over there... the guest room in the annex."

  WELCOME FIRE

  THE FLOWER and vegetable market, which all night long had kept the Ginza filled with people, had ended yesterday. This evening, through side street after side street lined with geisha houses, there sounded the voices of men walking about and calling: "O-mukai! O-mukai!" as they announced their role of escorting the geisha to their engagements. At the same time, from the newspaper building on the main street, there emerged a rush of newsboys shouting: "Extra! Extra!" and ringing their small bells as if something of great moment had happened. Here and there, as lattice doors opened for geisha to be sent hurrying off in jinrikisha to their engagements, one could hear the sound of steel struck on flint to make the sparks that were meant to bring them good fortune in their ventures. And above all this clamor of a summer night in the midst of the city, the new moon and the evening star shone with a cool brilliance.

  With a rattling sound, the lattice door of the Obanaya opened, and an old man came out saying: "What's this? An extra? Probably another plane crash." He looked up at the sky. Unexpectedly he heard from behind him the charming voice of a young apprentice geisha.

  "Danna, are you going to light the welcome fire now?"

  "I guess it's time, isn't it?" With both hands behind his back, the old man still looked up at the sky. As if talking to himself, he said: "This year we have a new moon for the Bon festival."

  "Danna, what does it mean—having a new moon for O-Bon?" Hanako was chewing on a hozuki berry, squeezing it noisily against her teeth. To the young dancing girl, there had been something strange about the old man's soliloquy.

  "The things I bought for the fire are under the Buddha shelf. Be a good girl and bring them here."

  "Danna, I'll light the fire for you."

  "Well, all right. But bring the things here. And don't break the brazier."

  "Don't worry." With this, the child geisha was off, delighted at having the chance to play with fire in public. In a flutter of excitement, she brought the materials for the All Souls' bonfire to the edge of the street.

  "Danna, it's ready now. I'll light it."

  "Wait a minute! Don't burn it all up at once. That's dangerous. Take your time about it."

  As he spoke, the welcome fire flared up in the evening breeze that came from the main street, and Hanako's heavily powdered face glowed red in its light. On bended knees, the old man placed his hands together and prayed: "Namu Amida-butsu. Namu Amida-butsu."

  "Danna, look! At Chiyokichi-neisan's place.... Over there too! The fires are burning everywhere. Isn't it beautiful?"

  Somehow, in this new world of telephones and electric lights, the smoke of the welcome fires burning in front of the houses seemed out of place, and it gave things a pensive air. The old man of the Obanaya, still kneeling on the ground, seemed to be taking an unconscionably long time about his prayers, but by and by he stood up, rubbing his thighs with both hands. No doubt he had long since passed the sixty-year mark. Over his hempen summer kimono, old and worn from many washings, he wore a black satin sash that appeared to have been made from a woman's obi. Although his back was not yet noticeably bent, there was a kind of transparency about his aged limbs that gave him the pitiful look of being nothing but skin and bones. His head was neatly bald, and his cheeks had fallen in. His snow-white eyebrows were long like the bristles of a paintbrush. But he looked quite happy, and in spite of his decline his eyes were bright and clear. His mouth showed dignity and manliness, and his nose had an elegant line. It seemed to be in no way the face of a man who had been from the beginning the master of a geisha house.

  "Oh, danna! Here comes the sensei from Negishi."

  "What? Where?" The old man stopped in the midst of sprinkling water on the remains of the welcome fire. "Oh, of course. Children's eyes are quick, aren't they?"

  "So they are," a voice called out. "And how is everything with you?" Still several doors away, taking big steps to avoid the puddles of water in the street and at the same time raising his hand to his straw hat in greeting to the old man, the "sensei from Negishi," as Hanako called him, approached. He was the newspaper novelist Kurayama Nanso, a man of about forty. In his white summer kimono, his plain haori jacket of thin silk, his white tabi socks, and his leather-soled sandals, he looked neither like an office worker nor a merchant, nor yet did he have the appearance of an artist. For a number of years he had been constantly at work writing serial novels for the newspapers of the city, as well as comedies for the theater from time to time. He also wrote joruri ballads and dramatic criticism. Through such accomplishments he had made a name for himself with the public.

  "Well, sensei, please come in." The old man slid open the lattice door.

  But the novelist still stood there watching the rising smoke of the welcome fires for the souls of the dead as it drifted through the side streets. "Nowadays," he said, "one has the feeling of old times only at O-Bon and the equinox festivals. By the way, your Sho-san... How many years is it now?"

  "Shohachi? This is the sixth year."

  "Six years. How fast the time goes! Then next year will be the seventh memorial anniversary."

  "Yes, that's true. Death takes both the old and the young. There's nothing harder to understand than life."

  "This year they're giving memorial performances everywhere. How is it, if next year is Sho-san's seventh memorial anniversary... Hasn't there been any such suggestion?"

  "Yes, there has. In fact, there was also some such talk the year before last, at the third anniversary. But I thought it was somewhat more than the boy deserved, and I left it at that."

  "Surely it couldn't have been more than he deserved. After all, he was too fine an artist to lose."

  "If he'd lived four or five years longer, we could probably have told a little better, but after all he was still only a youngster. To die at twenty-four or twenty-five, no matter how much talent a person may have shown, only means leaving off at the beginning of his training, doesn't it? As for thinking him too good to lose, that's a family feeling. It's only a partial view that comes from the favoritism of his patrons. But then, to take advantage of this and put on a big show with a memorial performance or something like that—no matter if it is the third or the seventh anniversary—as if he were the most famous master of his time, why, it would by flying in the face of providence."

  "That's only natural if you speak from the standpoint of your own temperament. But if such an idea comes up naturally among the people who admired him, it's not a matter of your making unreasonable requests or embarrassing anybody, is it? Why not just let other people make the proper arrangements?"

  "No doubt you're right. Whatever it may be, right or wrong, it should be the way his admirers want it. I suppose it's better for an old man to keep quiet."

  It was to a small room at the back of the house that the old man led the novelist. In the small Obanaya this was the best of the rooms. Here, for years, he and the old geisha Jukichi, his wife, had carried on their daily life. Here, too, the Buddhist family altar had been set up. A little garden, hardly larger than the room itself but containing a lighted stone lantern, lay between it and the somewhat more spacious room to the front through which the geisha came and went. Beyond, through an opening in the sliding door of the veranda, one could see the outer lattice door and a lattice bay window that overlooked the street. Through the space between the Obanaya and the two-story house next door, the cool evening breeze blew constantly, making the wind bells on the eaves tinkle.

  "As usual, things are all cluttered up," the old man said. "Won't you take off your coat?"

  "No, thank you. I'm
quite comfortable. The breeze is very pleasant." As he fluttered his fan back and forth with a crackling sound, Kurayama-sensei looked appreciatively around him. At this moment a geisha came in with a tobacco tray and a dish of cakes. It was Komayo.

  It was not only through having met him several times here at the Obanaya that Komayo was acquainted with Kurayama-sensei. She had helped to entertain him at parties and in the guest rooms of teahouses and had run into him from time to time at the theater, so that she could greet him quite familiarly: "Sensei, it's good to see you."

  "Hello there," he said. "By the way, your performance the other day was splendid. You really ought to offer me a treat."

  "Really? You make me very happy. If there is any way for a person like me to do it, I'll treat you to anything you like."

  "Shall I tell you? If it's all right to say it in front of the master here, I'll tell you." Kurayama laughed.

  "Why, if you have something to say, please say it. I'm not afraid to hear it." Laughing gaily, Komayo stood up.

  As she did so, the excited voice of the girl geisha Hanako called from the front of the house: "Komayo-neisan, you have an engagement!"

  "All right," she answered. Then, after saying to Kurayama: "Sensei, please make yourself at home," Komayo quietly left the room.

  Kurayama gently tapped his pipe against the ash tray. "Things are always lively around here, aren't they? How many girls do you have?"

  "Just now, three big and two small. Yes, it makes for a good deal of excitement."