Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

“The Minister?” Pumpkin said incredulously.

“I’ll explain some other time, but here’s what I want you to do. I want you to bring Nobu there and… Pumpkin, this will sound very strange. I want you to discover us.”

“What do you mean, ‘discover’ you?”

“I want you to find some way of bringing Nobu there and opening the back door we saw earlier, so that… he’ll see us.”

While I was explaining this, Pumpkin had noticed the Minister waiting in another covered walkway through the foliage. Now she looked back at me.

“What are you up to, Sayuri?” she said.

“I don’t have time to explain it now. But it’s terribly important, Pumpkin. Truthfully, my entire future is in your hands. Just make sure it’s no one but you and Nobu-not the Chairman, for heaven’s sake, or anyone else. I’ll repay you in any way you’d like.”

She looked at me for a long moment. “So it’s time for a favor from Pumpkin again, is it?” she said. I didn’t feel certain what she meant by this, but rather than explaining it to me, she left.

I wasn’t sure whether or not Pumpkin had agreed to help. But all I could do at this point was go to the doctor for my shot, so to speak, and hope that she and Nobu would appear. I joined the Minister in the corridor and we set out down the hill.

As we walked around the bend in the road and left the inn behind us, I couldn’t help remembering the day Mameha had cut me on the leg and taken me to meet Dr. Crab. On that afternoon I’d felt myself in some sort of danger I couldn’t fully understand, and I felt much the same way now. My face was as hot in the afternoon sun as if I’d sat too close to the hibachi; and when I looked at the Minister, sweat was running down his temple onto his neck. If all went well he would soon be pressing that neck against me… and at this thought I took my folding fan from my obi, and waved it until my arm was tired, trying to cool both myself and him. All the while, I kept up a flow of conversation, until a few minutes later, when we came to a stop before the old theater with its thatched roof. The Minister seemed puzzled. He cleared his throat and looked up at the sky.

“Will you come inside with me for a moment, Minister?” I said.

He didn’t seem to know what to make of this, but when I walked down the path beside the building, he plodded along behind me. I climbed the stone steps and opened the door for him. He hesitated only a moment before walking inside. If he had frequented Gion all his life, he’d certainly have understood what I had in mind-because a geisha who lures a man to an isolated spot has certainly put her reputation at stake, and a first-class geisha will never do such a thing casually. But the Minister just stood inside the theater, in the patch of sunlight, like a man waiting for a bus. My hands were trembling so much as I folded my fan and tucked it into my obi again, I wasn’t at all certain I could see my plan through to the end. The simple act of closing the door took all my strength; and then we were standing in the murky light filtering under the eaves. Still, the Minister stood inert, with his face pointed toward a stack of straw mats in the corner of the stage.

“Minister…” I said.

My voice echoed so much in the little hall, I spoke more quietly afterward.

“I understand you had a talk with the mistress of the Ichiriki about me. Isn’t that so?”

He took in a deep breath, but ended up saying nothing.

“Minister, if I may,” I said, “I’d like to tell you a story about a geisha named Kazuyo. She isn’t in Gion any longer, but I knew her well at one time. A very important man-much like you, Minister-met Kazuyo one evening and enjoyed her company so much that he came back to Gion every night to see her. After a few months of this, he asked to be Kazuyo’s danna , but the mistress of the teahouse apologized and said it wouldn’t be possible. The man was very disappointed; but then one afternoon Kazuyo took him to a quiet spot where they could be alone. Someplace very much like this empty theater. And she explained to him that… even though he couldn’t be her danna -”

The moment I said these last words, the Minister’s face changed like a valley when the clouds move away and sunlight rushes across it. He took a clumsy step toward me. At once my heart began to pound like drums in my ears. I couldn’t help looking away from him and closing my eyes. When I opened them again, the Minister had come so close, we were nearly touching, and then I felt the damp fleshiness of his face against my cheek. Slowly he brought his body toward mine until we were pressed together. He took my arms, probably to pull me down onto the planking, but I stopped him.

“The stage is too dusty,” I said. “You must bring over a mat from that stack.”

“We’ll go over there,” the Minister replied.

If we had lain down upon the mats in the corner, Nobu wouldn’t have seen us in the sunlight when he opened the door.

“No, we mustn’t,” I said. “Please bring a mat here.”

The Minister did as I asked, and then stood with his hands by his side, watching me. Until this moment I’d half-imagined something would stop us; but now I could see that nothing would. Time seemed to slow. My feet looked to me like someone else’s when they stepped out of my lacquered zori and onto the mat.

Almost at once, the Minister kicked off his shoes and was against me, with his arms around me tugging at the knot in my obi. I didn’t know what he was thinking, because I certainly wasn’t prepared to take off my kimono. I reached back to stop him. When I’d dressed that morning, I still hadn’t quite made up my mind; but in order to be prepared, I’d very deliberately put on a gray underrobe I didn’t much like-thinking it might be stained before the end of the day-and a lavender and blue kimono of silk gauze, as well as a durable silver obi. As for my undergarments, I’d shortened my koshimaki -my “hip wrap”-by rolling it at the waist, so that if I decided after all to seduce the Minister, he’d have no trouble finding his way inside it. Now, when I withdrew his hands from around me, he gave me a puzzled look. I think he believed I was stopping him, and he looked very relieved as I lay down on the mat. It wasn’t a tatami, but a simple sheet of woven straw; I could feel the hard flooring beneath. With one hand I folded back my kimono and underrobe on one side so that my leg was exposed to the knee. The Minister was still fully dressed, but he lay down upon me at once, pressing the knot of my obi into my back so much, I had to raise one hip to make myself more comfortable. My head was turned to the side as well, because I was wearing my hair in a style known as tsubushi shimada , with a dramatic chignon looped in the back, which would have been ruined if I’d put any weight on it. It was certainly an uncomfortable arrangement, but my discomfort was nothing compared with the uneasiness and anxiety I felt. Suddenly I wondered if I’d been thinking at all clearly when I’d put myself in this predicament. The Minister raised himself on one arm and began fumbling inside the seam of my kimono with his hand, scratching my thighs with his fingernails. Without thinking about what I was doing, I brought my hands up to his shoulders to push him away… but then I imagined Nobu as my danna , and the life I would live without hope; and I took my hands away and settled them onto the mat again. The Minister’s fingers were squirming higher and higher along the inside of my thigh; it was impossible not to feel them. I tried to distract myself by focusing on the door. Perhaps it would open even now, before the Minister had gone any further; but at that moment I heard the jingling of his belt, and then the zip of his pants, and a moment later he was forcing himself inside me. Somehow I felt like a fifteen-year-old girl again, because the feeling was so strangely reminiscent of Dr. Crab. I even heard myself whimper. The Minister was holding himself up on his elbows, with his face above mine. I could see him out of only one corner of my eye. When viewed up close like this, with his jaw protruding toward me, he looked more like an animal than a human. And even this wasn’t the worst part; for with his jaw jutted forward, the Minister’s lower lip became like a cup in which his saliva began to pool. I don’t know if it was the squid guts he’d eaten, but his saliva had a kind of gray thickness to it, which made me think of the residue left on the cutting board after fish have been cleaned.