Memoirs of a Geisha

by Arthur Golden

  I thanked Nobu and accepted the package, and he banged on the window of the car once again. The driver jumped out to hold the door for him.

  We bowed until the car had turned the corner and then Mameha led me back into the garden of the Kaburenjo Theater, where we took a seat on a stone bench overlooking the carp pond and peered into the bag Nobu had given me. It contained only a tiny box, wrapped in gold-colored paper embossed with the name of a famous jewelry store and tied with a red ribbon. I opened it to find a simple jewel, a ruby as big as a peach pit. It was like a giant drop of blood sparkling in the sunlight over the pond. When I turned it in my fingers, the glimmer jumped from one face to another. I could feel each of the jumps in my chest.

  "I can see how thrilled you are," Mameha said, "and I'm very happy for you. But don't enjoy it too much. You'll have other jewels in your life, Sayuri-plenty of them, I should think. But you'll never have this opportunity again. Take this ruby back to your okiya, and give it to Mother."

  To see this beautiful jewel, and the light that seeped out of it painting my hand pink, and to think of Mother with her sickly yellow eyes and their meat-colored rims... well, it seemed to me that giving this jewel to her would be like dressing up a badger in silk. But of course, I had to obey Mameha.

  "When you give it to her," she went on, "you must be especially sweet and say, 'Mother, I really have no need for a jewel like this and would be honored if you'd accept it. I've caused you so much trouble over the years.' But don't say more, or she'll think you're being sarcastic."

  When I sat in my room later, grinding an ink stick to write a note of thanks to Nobu, my mood grew darker and darker. If Mameha herself had asked me for the ruby, I could have given it to her cheerfully... but to give it to Mother! I'd grown fond of Nobu, and was sorry that his expensive gift would go to such a woman. I knew perfectly well that if the ruby had been from the Chairman, I couldn't have given it up at all. In any case, I finished the note and went to Mother's room to speak with her. She was sitting in the dim light, petting her dog and smoking.

  "What do you want?" she said to me. "I'm about to send for a pot of tea."

  "I'm sorry to disturb you, Mother. This afternoon when Mameha and I left the theater, President Nobu Toshikazu was waiting for me-"

  "Waiting for Mameha-san, you mean."

  "I don't know, Mother. But he gave me a gift. It's a lovely thing, but I have no use for it."

  I wanted to say that I would be honored if she would take it, but Mother wasn't listening to me. She put her pipe down onto the table and took the box from my hand before I could even offer it to her. I tried again to explain things, but Mother just turned over the box to dump the ruby into her oily fingers.

  "What is this?" she asked.

  "It's the gift President Nobu gave me. Nobu Toshikazu, of Iwamura Electric, I mean."

  "Don't you think I know who Nobu Toshikazu is?"

  She got up from the table to walk over to the window, where she slid back the paper screen and held the ruby into the stream of late-afternoon sunlight. She was doing what I had done on the street, turning the gem around and watching the sparkle move from face to face. Finally she closed the screen again and came back.

  "You must have misunderstood. Did he ask you to give it to Mameha?"

  "Well, Mameha was with me at the time."

  I could see that Mother's mind was like an intersection with too much traffic in it. She put the ruby onto the table and began to puff on her pipe. I saw every cloud of smoke as a little confused thought released into the air. Finally she said to me, "So, Nobu Toshikazu has an interest in you, does he?"

  "I've been honored by his attention for some time now."

  At this, she put the pipe down onto the table, as if to say that the conversation was about to grow much more serious. "I haven't watched you as closely as I should have," she said. "If you've had any boyfriends, now is the time to tell me."

  "I've never had a single boyfriend, Mother."

  I don't know whether she believed what I'd said or not, but she dismissed me just the same. I hadn't yet offered her the ruby to keep, as Mameha had instructed me to do. I was trying to think of how to raise the subject. But when I glanced at the table where the gem lay on its side, she must have thought I wanted to ask for it back. I had no time to say anything further before she reached out and swallowed it up in her hand.

  *

  Finally it happened, one afternoon only a few days later. Mameha came to the okiya and took me into the reception room to tell me that the bidding for my mizuage had begun. She'd received a message from the mistress of the Ichiriki that very morning.

  "I couldn't be more disappointed at the timing," Mameha said, "because I have to leave for Tokyo this afternoon. But you won't need me. You'll know if the bidding goes high, because things will start to happen."

  "I don't understand," I said. "What sorts of things?"

  "All sorts of things," she said, and then left without even taking a cup of tea.

  She was gone three days. At first my heart raced every time I heard one of the maids approaching. But two days passed without any news. Then on the third day, Auntie came to me in the hallway to say that Mother wanted me upstairs.

  I'd just put my foot onto the first step when I heard a door slide open, and all at once Pumpkin came rushing down. She came like water poured from a bucket, so fast her feet scarcely touched the steps, and midway down she twisted her finger on the banister. It must have hurt, because she let out a cry and stopped at the bottom to hold it.

  "Where is Hatsumomo?" she said, clearly in pain. "I have to find her!"

  "It looks to me as if you've hurt yourself badly enough," Auntie said. "You have to go find Hatsumomo so she can hurt you more?"

  Pumpkin looked terribly upset, and not only about her finger; but when I asked her what was the matter, she just rushed to the entryway and left.

  Mother was sitting at the table when I entered her room. She began to pack her pipe with tobacco, but soon thought better of it and put it away. On top of the shelves holding the account books stood a beautiful European-style clock in a glass case. Mother looked at it every so often, but a few long minutes passed and still she said nothing to me. Finally I spoke up. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Mother, but I was told you wanted to see me."

  "The doctor is late," she said. "We'll wait for him."

  I imagined she was referring to Dr. Crab, that he was coming to the okiya to talk about arrangements for my mizuage. I hadn't expected such a thing and began to feel a tingling in my belly. Mother passed the time by patting Taku, who quickly grew tired of her attentions and made little growling noises.

  At length I heard the maids greeting someone in the front entrance hall below, and Mother went down the stairs. When she came back a few minutes later she wasn't escorting Dr. Crab at all, but a much younger man with smooth silver hair, carrying a leather bag.

  "This is the girl," Mother said to him.

  I bowed to the young doctor, who bowed back to me.

  "Ma'am," he said to Mother, "where shall we...?"

  Mother told him the room we were in would be fine. The way she closed the door, I knew something unpleasant was about to happen. She began by untying my obi and folding it on the table. Then she slipped the kimono from my shoulders and hung it on a stand in the corner. I stood in my yellow underrobe as calmly as I knew how, but in a moment Mother began to untie the waistband that held my underrobe shut. I couldn't quite stop myself from putting my arms in her way-though she pushed them aside just as the Baron had done, which gave me a sick feeling. After she'd removed the waistband, she reached inside and pulled out my koshimaki-once again, just as it had happened in Hakone. I didn't like this a bit, but instead of pulling open my robe as the Baron had, she refolded it around me and told me to lie down on the mats.

  The doctor knelt at my feet and, after apologizing, peeled open my underrobe to expose my legs. Mameha had told me a little about mizuage, but it seemed to me I w
as about to learn more. Had the bidding ended, and this young doctor emerged the winner? What about Dr. Crab and Nobu? It even crossed my mind that Mother might be intentionally sabotaging Mameha's plans. The young doctor adjusted my legs and reached between them with his hand, which I had noticed was smooth and graceful like the Chairman's. I felt so humiliated and exposed that I had to cover my face. I wanted to draw my legs together, but I was afraid anything that made his task more difficult would only prolong the encounter. So I lay with my eyes pinched shut, holding my breath. I felt as little Taku must have felt the time he choked on a needle, and Auntie held his jaws open while Mother put her fingers down his throat. At one point I think the doctor had both of his hands between my legs; but at last he took them away, and folded my robe shut. When I opened my eyes, I saw him wiping his hands on a cloth.

  "The girl is intact," he said.

  "Well, that's fine news!" Mother replied. "And will there be much blood?"

  "There shouldn't be any blood at all. I only examined her visually."

  "No, I mean during mizuage."

  "I couldn't say. The usual amount, I should expect."

  When the young silver-haired doctor had taken his leave, Mother helped me dress and instructed me to sit at the table. Then without any warning, she grabbed my earlobe and pulled it so hard I cried out. She held me like that, with my head close to hers, while she said:

  "You're a very expensive commodity, little girl. I underestimated you. I'm lucky nothing has happened. But you may be very sure I'm going to watch you more closely in the future. What a man wants from you, a man will pay dearly to get. Do you follow me?"

  "Yes, ma'am!" I said. Of course, I would have said yes to anything, considering how hard she was pulling on my ear.

  "If you give a man freely what he ought to pay for, you'll be cheating this okiya. You'll owe money, and I'll take it from you. And I'm not just talking about this!" Here Mother made a gruesome noise with her free hand-rubbing her fingers against her palm to make a squishing sound.

  "Men will pay for that," she went on. "But they'll pay just to chat with you too. If I find you sneaking off to meet a man, even if it's just for a little talk..." And here she finished her thought by giving another sharp tug on my earlobe before letting it go.

  I had to work hard to catch my breath. When I felt I could speak again, I said, "Mother... I've done nothing to make you angry!"

  "Not yet, you haven't. If you're a sensible girl, you never will."

  I tried to excuse myself, but Mother told me to stay. She tapped out her pipe, even though it was empty; and when she'd filled it and lit it, she said, "I've come to a decision. Your status here in the okiya is about to change."

  I was alarmed by this and began to say something, but Mother stopped me.

  "You and I will perform a ceremony next week. After that, you'll be my daughter just as if you'd been born to me. I've come to the decision to adopt you. One day, the okiya will be yours."

  I couldn't think of what to say, and I don't remember much of what happened next. Mother went on talking, telling me that as the daughter of the okiya I would at some point move into the larger room occupied by Hatsumomo and Pumpkin, who together would share the smaller room where I'd lived up to now. I was listening with only half my mind, until I began slowly to realize that as Mother's daughter, I would no longer have to struggle under Hatsumomo's tyranny. This had been Mameha's plan all along, and yet I'd never really believed it would happen. Mother went on lecturing me. I looked at her drooping lip and her yellowed eyes. She may have been a hateful woman, but as the daughter of this hateful woman, I would be up on a shelf out of Hatsumomo's reach.

  In the midst of all of this, the door slid open, and Hatsumomo herself stood there in the hallway.

  "What do you want?" Mother said. "I'm busy."

  "Get out," she said to me. "I want to talk with Mother."

  "If you want to talk with me," Mother said, "you may ask Sayuri if she'll be kind enough to leave."

  "Be kind enough to leave, Sayuri," Hatsumomo said sarcastically.

  And then for the first time in my life, I spoke back to her without the fear that she would punish me for it.

  "I'll leave if Mother wants me to," I told her.

  "Mother, would you be kind enough to make Little Miss Stupid leave us alone?" Hatsumomo said.

  "Stop making a nuisance of yourself!" Mother told her. "Come in and tell me what you want."

  Hatsumomo didn't like this, but she came and sat at the table anyway. She was midway between Mother and me, but still so close that I could smell her perfume.

  "Poor Pumpkin has just come running to me, very upset," she began. "I promised her I'd speak with you. She told me something very strange. She said, 'Oh, Hatsumomo! Mother has changed her mind!' But I told her I doubted it was true."

  "I don't know what she was referring to. I certainly haven't changed my mind about anything recently."

  "That's just what I said to her, that you would never go back on your word. But I'm sure she'd feel better, Mother, if you told her yourself."

  "Told her what?"

  "That you haven't changed your mind about adopting her."

  "Whatever gave her that idea? I never had the least intention of adopting her in the first place."

  It gave me a terrible pain to hear this, for I couldn't help thinking of how Pumpkin had rushed down the stairs looking so upset... and no wonder, for no one could say anymore what would become of her in life. Hatsumomo had been wearing that smile that made her look like an expensive piece of porcelain, but Mother's words struck her like rocks. She looked at me with hatred.

  "So it's true! You're planning to adopt her. Don't you remember, Mother, when you said you were going to adopt Pumpkin? You asked me to tell her the news!"

  "What you may have said to Pumpkin is none of my concern. Besides, you haven't handled Pumpkin's apprenticeship as well as I expected. She was doing well for a time, but lately..."

  "You promised, Mother," Hatsumomo said in a tone that frightened me.

  "Don't be ridiculous! You know I've had my eye on Sayuri for years. Why would I turn around and adopt Pumpkin?"

  I knew perfectly well Mother was lying. Now she went so far as to turn to me and say this:

  "Sayuri-san, when was the first time I raised the subject of adopting you? A year ago, perhaps?"

  If you've ever seen a mother cat teaching its young to hunt-the way she takes a helpless mouse and rips it apart-well, I felt as though Mother was offering me the chance to learn how I could be just like her. All I had to do was lie as she lied and say, "Oh, yes, Mother, you mentioned the subject to me many times!" This would be my first step in becoming a yellow-eyed old woman myself one day, living in a gloomy room with my account books. I could no more take Mother's side than Hatsumomo's. I kept my eyes to the mats so I wouldn't have to see either of them, and said that I didn't remember.

  Hatsumomo's face was splotched red from anger. She got up and walked to the door, but Mother stopped her.

  "Sayuri will be my daughter in one week," she said. "Between now and then, you must learn how to treat her with respect. When you go downstairs, ask one of the maids to bring tea for Sayuri and me."

  Hatsumomo gave a little bow, and then she was gone.

  "Mother," I said, "I'm very sorry to have been the cause of so much trouble. I'm sure Hatsumomo is quite wrong about any plans you may have made for Pumpkin, but... may I ask? Wouldn't it be possible to adopt both Pumpkin and me?"

  "Oh, so you know something about business now, do you?" she replied. "You want to try telling me how to run the okiya?"

  A few minutes later, a maid arrived bearing a tray with a pot of tea and a cup-not two cups, but only a single one. Mother didn't seem to care. I poured her cup full and she drank from it, staring at me with her red-rimmed eyes.

  chapter twenty-four

  When Mameha returned to town the following day and learned that Mother had decided to adopt me, she didn't see
m as pleased as I would have expected. She nodded and looked satisfied, to be sure; but she didn't smile. I asked if things hadn't turned out exactly as she'd hoped.

  "Oh, no, the bidding between Dr. Crab and Nobu went just as I'd hoped," she told me, "and the final figure was a considerable sum. The moment I found out, I knew Mrs. Nitta would certainly adopt you. I couldn't be more pleased!"

  This is what she said. But the truth, as I came to understand in stages over the following years, was something quite different. For one thing, the bidding hadn't been a contest between Dr. Crab and Nobu at all. It had ended up a contest between Dr. Crab and the Baron. I can't imagine how Mameha must have felt about this; but I'm sure it accounts for why she was suddenly so cold to me for a short time, and why she kept to herself the story of what had really happened.

  I don't mean to suggest that Nobu was never involved. He did bid quite aggressively for my mizuage, but only during the first few days, until the figure passed Y=8000. When he ended up dropping out, it probably wasn't because the bidding had gone too high. Mameha knew from the beginning that Nobu could bid against anyone, if he wanted to. The trouble, which Mameha hadn't anticipated, was that Nobu had no more than a vague interest in my mizuage. Only a certain kind of man spends his time and money chasing after mizuage, and it turned out that Nobu wasn't one of them. Some months earlier, as you may remember, Mameha had suggested that no man would cultivate a relationship with a fifteen-year-old apprentice unless he was interested in her mizuage. This was during the same discussion when she told me, "You can bet it isn't your conversation he's attracted to." She may have been right about my conversation, I don't know; but whatever attracted Nobu to me, it wasn't my mizuage either.

  As for Dr. Crab, he was a man who would probably have chosen suicide the old-fashioned way before allowing someone like Nobu to take a mizuage away from him. Of course he wasn't really bidding against Nobu after the first few days, but he didn't know that, and the mistress of the Ichiriki made up her mind not to tell him. She wanted the price to go as high as it could. So when she spoke to him on the telephone she said things like, "Oh, Doctor, I've just received word from Osaka, and an offer has come in for five thousand yen." She probably had received word from Osaka-though it might have been from her sister, because the mistress never liked to tell outright lies. But when she mentioned Osaka and an offer in the same breath, naturally Dr. Crab assumed the offer was from Nobu, even though it was actually from the Baron.