Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

“No,” he said. And that was the end of it.

The Minister may not have liked making eye contact with people, but he certainly liked to study his food, as I discovered after a maid arrived with dinner for the two men. Before putting anything in his mouth, he held it up with his chopsticks and peered at it, turning it this way and that. And if he didn’t recognize it, he asked me what it was. “It’s a piece of yam boiled in soy sauce and sugar,” I told him when he held up something orange. Actually I didn’t have the least idea whether it was yam, or a slice of whale liver, or anything else, but I didn’t think the Minister wanted to hear that. Later, when he held up a piece of marinated beef and asked me about it, I decided to tease him a bit.

“Oh, that’s a strip of marinated leather,” I said. “It’s a specialty of the house here! It’s made from the skin of elephants. So I guess I should have said ‘elephant leather.’ ”

“Elephant leather?”

“Now, Minister, you know I’m teasing you! It’s a piece of beef. Why do you look at your food so closely? Did you think you would come here and eat dog or something?”

“I’ve eaten dog, you know,” he said to me.

“That’s very interesting. But we don’t have any dog here tonight. So don’t look at your chopsticks anymore.”

Very soon we began playing a drinking game. Nobu hated drinking games, but he kept quiet after I made a face at him. We may have let the Minister lose a bit more often than we should have, because later, as we were trying to explain the rules to a drinking game he’d never played, his eyes became as unsteady as corks floating in the surf. All at once he stood up and headed off toward one corner of the room.

“Now, Minister,” Nobu said to him, “exactly where are you planning on going?”

The Minister’s answer was to let out a burp, which I considered a very well-spoken reply because it was apparent he was about to throw up. Nobu and I rushed over to help him, but he’d already clamped his hand over his mouth. If he’d been a volcano, he would have been smoking by this time, so we had no choice but to roll open the glass doors to the garden to let him vomit onto the snow there. You may be appalled at the thought of a man throwing up into one of these exquisite decorative gardens, but the Minister certainly wasn’t the first. We geisha try to help a man down the hallway to the toilet, but sometimes we can’t manage it. If we say to one of the maids that a man has just visited the garden, they all know exactly what we mean and come at once with their cleaning supplies.

Nobu and I did our best to keep the Minister kneeling in the doorway with his head suspended over the snow. But despite our efforts he soon tumbled out headfirst. I did my best to shove him to one side, so he would at least end up in snow that hadn’t yet been vomited upon. But the Minister was as bulky as a thick piece of meat. All I really did was turn him onto his side as he fell.

Nobu and I could do nothing but look at each other in dismay at the sight of the Minister lying perfectly still in the deep snow, like a branch that had fallen from a tree.

“Why, Nobu-san,” I said, “I didn’t know how much fun your guest was going to be.”

“I believe we’ve killed him. And if you ask me, he deserved it. What an irritating man!”

“Is this how you act toward your honored guests? You must take him out onto the street and walk him around a bit to wake him up. The cold will do him good.”

“He’s lying in the snow. Isn’t that cold enough?”

“Nobu-san!” I said. And I suppose this was enough of a reprimand, for Nobu let out a sigh and stepped down into the garden in his stocking feet to begin the task of bringing the Minister back to consciousness. While he was busy with this, I went to find a maid who could help, because I couldn’t see how Nobu would get the Minister back up into the teahouse with only one arm. Afterward I fetched some dry socks for the two men and alerted a maid to tidy the garden after we’d left.

When I returned to the room, Nobu and the Minister were at the table again. You can imagine how the Minister looked-and smelled. I had to peel his wet socks off his feet with my own hands, but I kept my distance from him while doing it. As soon as I was done, he slumped back onto the mats and was unconscious again a moment later.

“Do you think he can hear us?” I whispered to Nobu.

“I don’t think he hears us even when he’s conscious,” Nobu said. “Did you ever meet a bigger fool in your life?”

“Nobu-san, quietly!” I whispered. “Do you think he actually enjoyed himself tonight? I mean, is this the sort of evening you had in mind?”

“It isn’t a matter of what I had in mind. It’s what he had in mind.”

“I hope that doesn’t mean we’ll be doing the same thing again next week.”

“If the Minister is pleased with the evening, I’m pleased with the evening.”

“Nobu-san, really! You certainly weren’t pleased. You looked as miserable as I’ve ever seen you. Considering the Minister’s condition, I think we can assume he isn’t having the best night of his life either…”

“You can’t assume anything, when it comes to the Minister.”

“I’m sure he’ll have a better time if we can make the atmosphere more… festive somehow. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Bring a few more geisha next time, if you think it will help,” Nobu said. “We’ll come back next weekend. Invite that older sister of yours.”

“Mameha’s certainly clever, but the Minister is so exhausting to entertain. We need a geisha who’s going to, I don’t know, make a lot of noise! Distract everyone. You know, now that I think of it… it seems to me we need another guest as well, not just another geisha.”

“I can’t see any reason for that.”

“If the Minister is busy drinking and sneaking looks at me, and you’re busy growing increasingly fed up with him, we’re not going to have a very festive evening,” I said. “To tell the truth, Nobu-san, perhaps you should bring the Chairman with you next time.”

You may wonder if I’d been plotting all along to bring the evening to this moment. It’s certainly true that in coming back to Gion, I’d hoped more than anything else to find a way of spending time with the Chairman. It wasn’t so much that I craved the chance to sit in the same room with him again, to lean in and whisper some comment and take in the scent of his skin. If those sorts of moments would be the only pleasure life offered me, I’d be better off shutting out that one brilliant source of light to let my eyes begin to adjust to the darkness. Perhaps it was true, as it now seemed, that my life was falling toward Nobu. I wasn’t so foolish as to imagine I could change the course of my destiny. But neither could I give up the last traces of hope.

“I’ve considered bringing the Chairman,” Nobu replied. “The Minister is very impressed with him. But I don’t know, Sayuri. I told you once already. He’s a busy man.”

The Minister jerked on the mats as if someone had poked him, and then managed to pull himself up until he was sitting at the table. Nobu was so disgusted at the sight of his clothing that he sent me out to bring back a maid with a damp towel. After the maid had cleaned the Minister’s jacket and left us alone again, Nobu said:

“Well, Minister, this certainly has been a wonderful evening! Next time we’ll have even more fun, because instead of throwing up on just me, you might be able to throw up on the Chairman, and perhaps another geisha or two as well!”

I was very pleased to hear Nobu mention the Chairman, but I didn’t dare react.

“I like this geisha,” said the Minister. “I don’t want another one.”