Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

“Nobu-san, I hope the Minister didn’t take this too badly, considering all he’s done for Iwamura Electric.”

“Now wait just a moment. I won’t have you thinking I’m ungrateful. The Minister helped us because it was his job to help us. I’ve treated him well these past months, and I won’t stop now. But that doesn’t mean I have to give up what I’ve waited more than ten years for, and let him have it instead! What if I’d come to you as he wanted me to? Would you have said, ‘All right, Nobu-san, I’ll do it for you’?”

“Please… How can I answer such a question?”

“Easily. Just tell me you would never have done such a thing.”

“But Nobu-san, I owe such a debt to you… If you asked a favor of me, I could never turn it down lightly.”

“Well, this is new! Have you changed, Sayuri, or has there always been a part of you I didn’t know?”

“I’ve often thought Nobu-san has much too high an opinion of me…”

“I don’t misjudge people. If you aren’t the woman I think you are, then this isn’t the world I thought it was. Do you mean to say you could consider giving yourself to a man like the Minister? Don’t you feel there’s right and wrong in this world, and good and bad? Or have you spent too much of your life in Gion?”

“My goodness, Nobu-san… it’s been years since I’ve seen you so enraged…”

This must have been exactly the wrong thing to say, because all at once Nobu’s face flared in anger. He grabbed his glass in his one hand and slammed it down so hard it cracked, spilling ice cubes onto the tabletop. Nobu turned his hand to see a line of blood across his palm.

“Oh, Nobu-san!”

“Answer me!”

“I can’t even think of the question right now… please, I have to go fetch something for your hand-”

“Would you give yourself to the Minister, no matter who asked it of you? If you’re a woman who would do such a thing, I want you to leave this room right now, and never speak to me again!”

I couldn’t understand how the evening had taken this dangerous turn; but it was perfectly clear to me I could give only one answer. I was desperate to fetch a cloth for Nobu’s hand-his blood had trickled onto the table already-but he was looking at me with such intensity I didn’t dare to move.

“I would never do such a thing,” I said.

I thought this would calm him, but for a long, frightening moment he continued to glower at me. Finally he let out his breath.

“Next time, speak up before I have to cut myself for an answer.”

I rushed out of the room to fetch the mistress. She came with several maids and a bowl of water and towels. Nobu wouldn’t let her call a doctor; and to tell the truth, the cut wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. After the mistress left, Nobu was strangely silent. I tried to begin a conversation, but he showed no interest.

“First I can’t calm you down,” I said at last, “and now I can’t get you to speak. I don’t know whether to make you drink more, or if the liquor itself is the problem.”

“We’ve had enough liquor, Sayuri. It’s time you went and brought back that rock.”

“What rock?”

“The one I gave you last fall. The piece of concrete from the factory. Go and bring it.”

I felt my skin turn to ice when I heard this-because I knew perfectly well what he was saying. The time had come for Nobu to propose himself as my danna .

“Oh, honestly, I’ve had so much to drink, I don’t know whether I can walk at all!” I said. “Perhaps Nobu-san will let me bring it the next time we see each other?”

“You’ll get it tonight. Why do you think I stayed on after the Minister left? Go get it while I wait here for you.”

I thought of sending a maid to retrieve the rock for me; but I knew I could never tell her where to find it. So with some difficulty I made my way down the hall, slid my feet into my shoes, and sloshed my way-as it felt to me, in my drunken state-through the streets of Gion.

When I reached the okiya, I went to my room and found the piece of concrete, wrapped in a square of silk and stowed on a shelf of my closet. I unwrapped it and left the silk on the floor, though I don’t know exactly why. As I left, Auntie-who must have heard me stumbling and come up to see what was the matter-met me in the upstairs hallway and asked why I was carrying a rock in my hand.

“I’m taking it to Nobu-san, Auntie,” I said. “Please, stop me!”

“You’re drunk, Sayuri. What’s gotten into you this evening?”

“I have to give it back to him. And… oh, it will be the end of my life if I do. Please stop me…”

“Drunk, and sobbing. You’re worse than Hatsumomo! You can’t go back out like this.”

“Then please call the Ichiriki. And have them tell Nobu-san I won’t be there. Will you?”

“Why is Nobu-san waiting for you to bring him a rock?”

“I can’t explain. I can’t…”

“It makes no difference. If he’s waiting for you, you’ll have to go,” she said to me, and led me by the arm back into my room, where she dried my face with a cloth and touched up my makeup by the light of an electric lantern. I was limp while she did it; she had to support my chin in her hand to keep my head from rolling. She grew so impatient that she finally grabbed my head with both hands and made it clear she wanted me to keep it still.

“I hope I never see you acting this way again, Sayuri. Heaven knows what’s come over you.”

“I’m a fool, Auntie.”

“You’ve certainly been a fool this evening,” she said. “Mother will be very angry if you’ve done something to spoil Nobu-san’s affection for you.”

“I haven’t yet,” I said. “But if you can think of anything that will…”

“That’s no way to talk,” Auntie said to me. And she didn’t speak another word until she was finished with my makeup.

I made my way back to the Ichiriki Teahouse, holding that heavy rock in both my hands. I don’t know whether it was really heavy, or whether my arms were simply heavy from too much to drink. But by the time I joined Nobu in the room again, I felt I’d used up all the energy I had. If he spoke to me about becoming his mistress, I wasn’t at all sure I would be able to dam up my feelings.

I set the rock on the table. Nobu picked it up with his fingers and held it in the towel wrapped around his hand.

“I hope I didn’t promise you a jewel this big,” he said. “I don’t have that much money. But things are possible now that weren’t possible before.”

I bowed and tried not to look upset. Nobu didn’t need to tell me what he meant.

That very night while I lay on my futon with the room swaying around me, I made up my mind to be like the fisherman who hour after hour scoops out fish with his net. Whenever thoughts of the Chairman drifted up from within me, I would scoop them out, and scoop them out again, and again, until none of them were left. It would have been a clever system, I’m sure, if I could have made it work. But when I had even a single thought of him, I could never catch it before it sped away and carried me to the very place from which I’d banished my thoughts. Many times I stopped myself and said: Don’t think of the Chairman, think of Nobu instead. And very deliberately, I pictured myself meeting Nobu somewhere in Kyoto. But then something always went wrong. The spot I pictured might be where I’d often imagined myself encountering the Chairman, for example… and then in an instant I was lost in thoughts of the Chairman once again.

I went on this way for weeks, trying to remake myself. Sometimes when I was free for a while from thinking about the Chairman, I began to feel as if a pit had opened up within me. I had no appetite even when little Etsuko came late at night carrying me a bowl of clear broth. The few times I did manage to focus my mind clearly on Nobu, I grew so numbed I seemed to feel nothing at all. While putting on my makeup, my face hung like a kimono from a rod. Auntie told me I looked like a ghost. I went to parties and banquets as usual, but I knelt in silence with my hands in my lap.