Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

But here I was again, like a girl trying to catch mice with her hands. Why couldn’t I stop thinking about the Chairman?

I’m sure my anguish must have shown clearly on my face when the door to the toilet opened a moment later, and the light snapped off. I couldn’t bear for Nobu to see me this way, so I laid my head against the window, pretending to be asleep. After he passed by, I opened my eyes again. I found that the position of my head had caused the curtains to pull open, so that I was looking outside the airplane for the first time since shortly after we’d lifted off the runway. Spread out below was a broad vista of aqua blue ocean, mottled with the same jade green as a certain hair ornament Mameha sometimes wore. I’d never imagined the ocean with patches of green. From the sea cliffs in Yoroido, it had always looked the color of slate. Here the sea stretched all the way out to a single line pulled across like a wool thread where the sky began. This view wasn’t frightening at all, but inexpressibly lovely. Even the hazy disk of the propeller was beautiful in its own way, and the silver wing had a kind of magnificence, and was decorated with those symbols that American warplanes have on them. How peculiar it was to see them there, considering the world only five years earlier. We had fought a brutal war as enemies; and now what? We had given up our past; this was something I understood fully, for I had done it myself once. If only I could find a way of giving up my future…

And then a frightening image came to mind: I saw myself cutting the bond of fate that held me to Nobu, and watching him fall all the long way into the ocean below.

I don’t mean this was just an idea or some sort of daydream. I mean that all at once I understood exactly how to do it. Of course I wasn’t really going to throw Nobu into the ocean, but I did have an understanding, just as clearly as if a window had been thrown open in my mind, of the one thing I could do to end my relationship with him forever. I didn’t want to lose his friendship; but in my efforts to reach the Chairman, Nobu was an obstacle I’d found no way around. And yet I could cause him to be consumed by the flames of his own anger; Nobu himself had told me how to do it, just a moment after cutting his hand that night at the Ichiriki Teahouse only a few weeks earlier. If I was the sort of woman who would give myself to the Minister, he’d said, he wanted me to leave the room right then and would never speak to me again.

The feeling that came over me as I thought of this… it was like a fever breaking. I felt damp everywhere on my body. I was grateful Mameha remained asleep beside me; I’m sure she would have wondered what was the matter, to see me short of breath, wiping my forehead with my fingertips. This idea that had come to me, could I really do such a thing? I don’t mean the act of seducing the Minister; I knew perfectly well I could do that. It would be like going to the doctor for a shot. I’d look the other way for a time, and it would be over. But could I do such a thing to Nobu? What a horrible way to repay his kindness. Compared with the sorts of men so many geisha had suffered through the years, Nobu was probably a very desirable danna . But could I bear to live a life in which my hopes had been extinguished forever? For weeks I’d been working to convince myself I could live it; but could I really? I thought perhaps I understood how Hatsumomo had come by her bitter cruelty, and Granny her meanness. Even Pumpkin, who was scarcely thirty, had worn a look of disappointment for many years. The only thing that had kept me from it was hope; and now to sustain my hopes, would I commit an abhorrent act? I’m not talking about seducing the Minister; I’m talking about betraying Nobu’s trust.

During the rest of the flight, I struggled with these thoughts. I could never have imagined myself scheming in this way, but in time I began to imagine the steps involved just like in a board game: I would draw the Minister aside at the inn-no, not at the inn, at some other place-and I would trick Nobu into stumbling upon us… or perhaps it would be enough for him to hear it from someone else? You can imagine how exhausted I felt by the end of the trip. Even as we left the airplane, I must still have looked very worried, because Mameha kept reassuring me that the flight was over and I was safe at last.

We arrived at our inn about an hour before sunset. The others admired the room in which we would all be staying, but I felt so agitated I could only pretend to admire it. It was as spacious as the largest room at the Ichiriki Teahouse, and furnished beautifully in the Japanese style, with tatami mats and gleaming wood. One long wall was made entirely of glass doors, beyond which lay extraordinary tropical plants-some with leaves nearly as big as a man. A covered walkway led down through the leaves to the banks of a stream.

When the luggage was in order, we were all of us quite ready for a bath. The inn had provided folding screens, which we opened in the middle of the room for privacy. We changed into our cotton gowns and made our way along a succession of covered walkways, leading through the dense foliage to a luxurious hot-springs pool at the other end of the inn. The men’s and women’s entrances were shielded by partitions, and had separate tiled areas for washing. But once we were immersed in the dark water of the springs and moved out beyond the partition’s edge, the men and women were together in the water. The bank director kept making jokes about Mameha and me, saying he wanted one of us to fetch a certain pebble, or twig, or something of the sort, from the woods at the edge of the springs-the joke being, of course, that he wanted to see us naked. All this while, his son was engrossed in conversation with Pumpkin; and it didn’t take us long to understand why. Pumpkin’s bosoms, which were fairly large, kept floating up and exposing themselves on the surface while she jabbered away as always without noticing.

Perhaps it seems odd to you that we all bathed together, men and women, and that we planned to sleep in the same room later that night. But actually, geisha do this sort of thing all the time with their best customers-or at least they did in my day. A single geisha who values her reputation will certainly never be caught alone with a man who isn’t her danna . But to bathe innocently in a group like this, with the murky water cloaking us… that’s quite another matter. And as for sleeping in a group, we even have a word for it in Japanese- zakone , “fish sleeping.” If you picture a bunch of mackerel thrown together into a basket, I suppose that’s what it means.

Bathing in a group like this was innocent, as I say. But that doesn’t mean a hand never strayed where it shouldn’t, and this thought was very much on my mind as I soaked there in the hot springs. If Nobu had been the sort of man to tease, he might have drifted over toward me; and then after we’d chatted for a time he might suddenly have grabbed me by the hip, or… well, almost anywhere, to tell the truth. The proper next step would be for me to scream and Nobu to laugh, and that would be the end of it. But Nobu wasn’t the sort of man to tease. He’d been immersed in the bath for a time, in conversation with the Chairman, but now he was sitting on a rock with only his legs in the water, and a small, wet towel draped across his hips; he wasn’t paying attention to the rest of us, but rubbing at the stump of his arm absentmindedly and peering into the water. The sun had set by now, and the light faded almost to evening; but Nobu sat in the brightness of a paper lantern. I’d never before seen him so exposed. The scarring that I thought was at its worst on one side of his face was every bit as bad on his damaged shoulder-though his other shoulder was beautifully smooth, like an egg. And now to think that I was considering betraying him… He would think I had done it for only one reason, and would never understand the truth. I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting Nobu or of destroying his regard for me. I wasn’t at all sure I could go through with it.