Memoirs of a Geisha

by Arthur Golden

  *

  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.

  "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 acr
oss 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."