Geisha in Rivalry

by Kafū Nagai

  Although Nanso's father Shusai had already passed away several years before Kikujo's death, relations with the house next door became even more intimate during Nanso's generation. Despite Nanso's having set himself up as a dramatic critic so early in life, his name was by then well known, and for this reason, after Kikujo died, his foster son Isshi came almost every day to visit Nanso's house. And since Nanso himself had secret theatrical ambitions, he always received Isshi with great cordiality. But after Isshi's foster mother moved to Tsukiji the relations grew remote. Since it was a considerable distance for Isshi to come, his visits to his old home became quite rare. As for Nanso, his interest in literature and the stage declined year by year. His morning and evening glimpses of the old garden next door only increased his desire to be alone with his addiction to nostalgic thoughts of the past, so that now he no longer felt any inclination to meet this rising young actor and talk with him.

  Meanwhile, the uninhabited garden became more abandoned year by year, and the layer of fallen leaves only grew deeper. Even in summer and autumn, when the time for trimming and pruning arrived, the sound of the shears was never heard. There was nothing at all but the piercing cries of the butcherbirds in autumn and the bulbuls in winter. It had become again just as it was when Nanso, as a child, walked uneasily behind his father to take a look at it. Peering through the hedge as he faithfully did the chores in his own garden, Nanso surmised that since no one in the Segawa family— neither Isshi nor his foster mother—appeared to have much interest any more in the old rest home of the brothel, they were practically letting it go to ruin. Undoubtedly they would be only too happy to dispose of it to the first buyer who came along.

  Although Nanso had definitely given up his theatrical aspirations, his relations with the newspapers still obliged him from time to time to write dramatic criticism. As a result, when he once happened to attend a play in which Isshi was appearing, he thought he would like to visit him in his dressing room and talk with him again after their long separation. At the same time he would like to ask, in a roundabout way, concerning the disposition of the villa next door. Then, if the occasion was right, he would go a step further. Granting that the house must be sold, he would suggest, wouldn't it be better, if possible, to sell it to a person who had some appreciation of such things? In any case, he would say, it was purely out of friendship that he wanted to give such advice. It was because his own father, during his lifetime, had taken care of that old pine tree and that brushwood gate, quietly and without letting anyone know.... But then, thinking it over, he told himself that this was out of the question. Suppose he did offer such impertinent advice. What good would it do? Nowadays even the authentic nobility, including no less a family than the Date of Sendai, showed no regret in selling off their priceless heirlooms, and this in spite of their not being particularly pressed for money. Since it was now the fashion of the world to turn such things into cash, he might as well keep quiet. So, with nothing to do but take his morning and evening looks through the hedge, he passed the days tormenting himself with questions. Would a buyer perhaps show up today? Would the pine tree by the pond be uprooted and carried away tomorrow?

  The night rain fell with a pattering sound on the dead lotus leaves outside the window. Nanso, replacing his scattered books on the shelves and gathering up the scraps of paper around his desk, thought it was about time to go to bed. As he lighted his long silver-decorated pipe for one more smoke, he listened casually to the sound of the rain. At that moment he seemed to hear the music of a samisen. This was something that had never happened before. It wasn't that one never heard a samisen in that neighborhood. What struck him as strange was the music itself, for it was accompanied by the captivating voice of a woman singing in the Sonohachi joruri style. Nanso, who had a taste for music of this sort, opened the wooden shutter of the round window. To his even greater astonishment, he saw a light in the supposedly vacant house next door. The singer had reached the the passage in the plaintive Sonohachi-style ballad where the lovers depart for Toribeyama to take their own lives, and the solemn melody, coming across the garden through the drizzling rain, sounded all the more funereal. Overcome with the strangeness of it all, Nanso had the uncertain feeling that perhaps this time a ghost had really appeared in the house next door. If it had been music in the Kiyomoto or the nagauta style, no matter how rainy and dismal the night, he would not have had such a sensation of uneasiness. But this was the most somber of all joruri styles, sung in such a touching tone of voice that he hardly knew whether he was dreaming or awake—Sonohachi, the style used only for relating stories of love suicide. Somehow Nanso could only think that it must be the spirit of the courtesan who had died in that house. Unable to lie at rest, she must have returned in the dead of this rainy autumn night to voice in secret her regret for the world of the living.

  The sliding door of the study opened quietly, and a voice said: "I've brought you some tea." It was his wife. As she spoke, Nanso turned to her and said abruptly: "Ochiyo, something strange is going on."

  "What do you mean?"

  "It's a ghost after all."

  "Oh, don't say things like that!"

  "Listen. There! Isn't someone singing Sonohachi-bushi in that empty house next door?"

  A look of relief suddenly came over Ochiyo's face. "Please don't frighten me like that again. I know more about it than you do."

  Nanso was puzzled to find his usually faint-hearted wife suddenly behaving with extraordinary calm. "You know about it? That ghost?"

  "Of course I know. Haven't you seen her yet?"

  "Why, no."

  "I see. Well, I guess she's about twenty-four or twenty-five. She looks young, but maybe she's older than that. Her face is round, and she has a rather dark complexion. I'm sure that you'd find her admirable. She's really a very charming and chic young woman." Ochiyo stopped to listen. "She has a good voice, hasn't she? It shows practice. Do you suppose she's playing the samisen herself?"

  Ochiyo was decidedly not a woman of the gay world, but when it came to such styles of music as Sonohachi, Kato, Itchu, Ogie, and the like, she knew far more than the average geisha. This was because she had been born into the family of a famous painter and man of letters who had once led a luxurious life, so that from childhood she had been accustomed to receiving artists, writers, actors, and other people of the entertainment world. It was some ten years since she had come to Kurayama's house as a young bride. She now had two children and was already thirty-five, but even today, when she did her hair in the ginkgo-leaf style and went out shopping, she was occasionally taken for a geisha. Her disposition matched her youthful style. She was generous and unworried, and the contrast of these qualities with the extremely reserved character of her husband was the very reason for their harmonious life together.

  "Ochiyo, how is it that you know all the details? Have you been spying?"

  "Why, no! I have a good reason for knowing, but I'm not going to tell you free of charge." Ochiyo laughed. Then, inviting him to sit down, she said: "This evening, out front, as I was coming home from shopping, two covered jinrikisha came rolling up behind me and pulled up at the gate next door. This certainly seemed strange, so I unintentionally stopped and turned to look back. In no time at all I saw Segawa Isshi get out of one and then a smart young woman, a geisha type, get out of the other. Isn't it delightful? Bringing her secretly to a private villa so that nobody will know." Ochiyo laughed merrily.

  "It certainly is. Hamamura is all the rage nowadays." Nanso used the actor's traditional stage name. "No doubt that's the reason for it."

  "I wonder if she's a geisha. Or do you suppose she's his mistress?"

  Instead of answering this question, Nanso said: "The rain seems to be only a drizzle now. Go and light a lantern for me. I'm going to have a look."

  "Well! You needn't put yourself to that much trouble." But Ochiyo had hardly said this before she got up and went to the veranda. There she took a lantern out of a closet and lighted it.
r />   "The children are asleep, aren't they?"

  "Oh yes. They went to bed a long time ago."

  "Did they? Well, won't you come with me? The lackey should always go ahead with the lantern."

  "Now, really!... Anyway, the rain is stopping at a very convenient time." Slipping into a pair of garden clogs, Ochiyo stood there on the stone step and held the lantern out to light his way. "Just like a chambermaid in a Kabuki play," she said, bursting into laughter.

  "There's something pleasant about walking in the garden at night with a lantern. For all you know, I might be playing the role of the handsome young lord in the twelfth act of Genji," Nanso mused. "But it's a strange kind of jealousy that makes a man take his wife with him when he goes to spy on the house next door." Nanso laughed exuberantly.

  "They'll hear you! Laughing in a loud voice like that."

  "Listen! It's sad, isn't it? So many crickets still alive and singing. Ochiyo, you can't get through that way. There's always a puddle under the pomegranate tree. It's better to go under the crape myrtle over there."

  Picking their way from one steppingstone to another, the two of them shortly entered the thick shrubbery. Ochiyo, concealing the lantern behind one of her kimono sleeves, held her breath. Just then, the Sonohachi music came suddenly to an end, and after that there was nothing but the faint light shining through the paper doors of the veranda. A lonely silence had come over the villa, and there was neither the sound of talk nor of laughter nor of anything else.

  The next morning the sky had put on a new brilliance after the rain. From the moist earth and the moss-grown shingled roofs the steam rose in clouds. It was a day of Indian summer, and Nanso was planting Chinese narcissus bulbs around the base of the plum tree and the edges of the garden rocks. Catching sight of him from the garden next door, Segawa Isshi called across the fence: "Sensei! Sensei! I see you're just as busy as ever."

  Nanso, lifting a muddy hand to take off his old hat and walking in the direction from which the voice had come, called out in turn: "It's been a long time since I've had a chance to meet you. When did you come? I had no idea that you were here."

  "Oh, I only arrived yesterday for a bit of relaxation. I haven't had time yet to drop in and see you."

  "It really has been a long time. You must come over for a chat. My wife is always talking about you. I hope you'll excuse me for being so neglectful, but please bring your friend along." Here Nanso lowered his voice a bit. "To tell the truth, I was quite touched last night. It was really beautiful music."

  "You heard it? In that case, I'd better confess."

  "I'd like very much to see her."

  Just then, from the direction of the veranda, a voice called: "Niisan, where are you?"

  "Sensei, let's have a long talk later on. I'd like to ask your opinion about several things." With this, Segawa moved away from the fence. Walking toward the veranda, he called out: "What is it? I'm out here."

  THE WAY HOME

  IT WAS not until two days later that Segawa dropped in for a visit with Nanso. He came alone. Apparently the woman of the Sonohachi ballad had returned home. Segawa had a number of things to talk about, and he answered Nanso's questions in the same frank spirit in which they were asked.

  "The girl? She's from Shimbashi. You probably know her. She's called Komayo."

  "Komayo from the Obanaya?... Of course. Somehow I had the feeling that it was a voice I'd heard before. I've seen her dance several times. It's promising that she can do Sonohachi so well."

  "She's been practicing several parts of it recently."

  "Segawa, my boy, this time it seems to have lasted for quite a while. Since the end of last year I've been hearing about it from time to time. It looks as though you'd decided to take a wife."

  "Well, I've been thinking it's about time, but as long as my mother's around, it's practically impossible to get anything settled."

  "I see what you mean. But listen, a wife who doesn't pay attention to her mother-in-law is a wife who won't pay attention to her husband either. You've got to think about such matters apart from love."

  "That's exactly what I've been thinking. But my mother is actually still young. In fact, she only reached fifty-one this year. It's because of this that we don't seem able to come to any sort of agreement at all. To tell the truth, I've taken Komayo home to see her several times. She says it's fine that Komayo seems to be such a well-behaved girl and that this might be all right as long as mother is still here, but that if an actor's wife isn't a bit more amiable and resourceful at the same time, he'll have nothing but trouble when it comes to family discussions about property and such things. That stands to reason, but the truth is that Komayo is a Shimbashi geisha, and her release would have to be paid for. This is what my mother doesn't like. I think I've told you about my mother, sensei. She belongs to that frightening class of bill collectors and Kyoto women. When it comes to money matters, there's no reasoning with her at all."

  "Probably not, I suppose."

  "In the first place, it's my father's fault. It was a disgrace for a Tokyo man. There was no reason for him to take up with a woman from Kyoto after my foster mother died. Weren't there women enough in Tokyo?"

  "That's quite true. But after all it's rather fortunate for you that she wasn't a completely tasteless and inexperienced woman. It's a black day for an actor family when no one is left but women who know nothing about the world—the way it was with the house of Naritaya. It's a pity to think of such an illustrious family of artists gone to ruin."

  "But Kyoto women can't be trusted even when they they are geisha. Why on earth is it that women are all so stingy and mean? They're forever making a nuisance about even the most trivial things—always trying to put a man under obligation, aren't they?"

  "Women and small men are hard to manage, as the saying goes."

  "It's true, isn't it? Really, I've thought seriously about marrying Komayo, but if I'm to be placed under obligation for anything and everything, it just won't work, I can assure you."

  "Then it isn't that you want to marry her because you've fallen hopelessly in love. That puts a different complexion on the matter."

  "No, I don't mean that I have anything against her in particular. But naturally I'm not one of those patrons she has had to put up with and make efforts for whether she wants to or not. In fact, there have been times when I've called her in as a regular geisha. Still, if I must confess the truth, I'm not so madly in love with her that I must marry her at any cost."

  Nanso laughed. "That doesn't sound very cheerful."

  "Well, if I'm to admit everything quite freely, that's just about how matters stand. On the other hand, this doesn't mean that I've decided to remain a bachelor all my life. I've been thinking about settling down if there's a suitable occasion. But about Komayo: toward the end of last year, because of me, she was virtually thrown out by a valuable danna. Then this same danna, out of spite, began an affair with a girl from the same house—Kikuchiyo is her name—and immediately set her up in her own business. To retaliate for this, Komayo insisted that I take her into my house, even if it was only for three days or so. If I deserted her, she said, she would take morphine. That was the kind of scene she put on. Well, I didn't know what to do with her, but I finally got out of it by telling her she'd have to wait until we finished the memorial services for the thirteenth anniversary of my father's death."

  "That must have been pretty awful for you. I'd just as soon not get myself involved with women."

  "It's embarrassing, sensei, to have even you say a thing like that. Certainly I didn't want to do anything cruel. But even if I took her home with me, it would be inconvenient on account of my mother, and if I met her at another teahouse where we hadn't been before, it would probably be bad for her business. Everything I thought of seemed suspicious. Finally I decided that since our country house was vacant, I'd meet her there and spend a few days with her."