Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

When I’d dressed that morning, I’d tucked several sheets of a very absorbent rice paper into the back of my obi. I hadn’t expected to need them until afterward, when the Minister would want them for wiping himself off-if I decided to go through with it, that is. Now it seemed I would need a sheet much sooner, to wipe my face when his saliva spilled onto me. With so much of his weight on my hips, however, I couldn’t get my hand into the back of my obi. I let out several little gasps as I tried, and I’m afraid the Minister mistook them for excitement-or in any case, he suddenly grew even more energetic, and now the pool of saliva in his lip was being jostled with such violent shock waves I could hardly believe it held together rather than spilling out in a stream. All I could do was pinch my eyes shut and wait. I felt as sick as if I had been lying in the bottom of a little boat, tossed about on the waves, and with my head banging again and again against the side. Then all at once the Minister made a groaning noise, and held very still for a bit, and at the same time I felt his saliva spill onto my cheek.

I tried again to reach the rice paper in my obi, but now the Minister was lying collapsed upon me, breathing as heavily as if he’d just run a race. I was about to push him off when I heard a scraping sound outside. My feelings of disgust had been so loud within me, they’d nearly drowned out everything else. But now that I remembered Nobu, I could feel my heart pounding once again. I heard another scrape; it was the sound of someone on the stone steps. The Minister seemed to have no idea what was about to happen to him. He raised his head and pointed it toward the door with only the mildest interest, as if he expected to see a bird there. And then the door creaked open and the sunlight flooded over us. I had to squint, but I could make out two figures. There was Pumpkin; she had come to the theater just as I’d hoped she would. But the man peering down from beside her wasn’t Nobu at all. I had no notion of why she had done it, but Pumpkin had brought the Chairman instead.

Ican scarcely remember anything after that door opened-for I think the blood may have drained out of me, I went so cold and numb. I know the Minister climbed off me, or perhaps I pushed him off. I do remember weeping and asking if he’d seen the same thing I had, whether it really had been the Chairman standing there in the doorway. I hadn’t been able to make out anything of the Chairman’s expression, with the late-afternoon sun behind him; and yet when the door closed again, I couldn’t help imagining I’d seen on his face some of the shock I myself was feeling. I didn’t know if the shock was really there-and I doubted it was. But when we feel pain, even the blossoming trees seem weighted with suffering to us; and in just the same way, after seeing the Chairman there… well, I would have found my own pain reflected on anything I’d looked at.

If you consider that I’d taken the Minister to that empty theater for the very purpose of putting myself in danger-so that the knife would come slamming down onto the chopping block, so to speak-I’m sure you’ll understand that amid the worry, and fear, and disgust that almost overwhelmed me, I’d also been feeling a certain excitement. In the instant before that door opened, I could almost sense my life expanding just like a river whose waters have begun to swell; for I had never before taken such a drastic step to change the course of my own future. I was like a child tiptoeing along a precipice overlooking the sea. And yet somehow I hadn’t imagined a great wave might come and strike me there, and wash everything away.

When the chaos of feelings receded, and I slowly became aware of myself again, Mameha was kneeling above me. I was puzzled to find that I wasn’t in the old theater at all any longer, but rather looking up from the tatami floor of a dark little room at the inn. I don’t recall anything about leaving the theater, but I must have done it somehow. Later Mameha told me I’d gone to the proprietor to ask for a quiet place to rest; he’d recognized that I wasn’t feeling well, and had gone to find Mameha soon afterward.

Fortunately, Mameha seemed willing to believe I was truly ill, and left me there. Later, as I wandered back toward the room in a daze and with a terrible feeling of dread, I saw Pumpkin step out into the covered walkway ahead of me. She stopped when she caught sight of me; but rather than hurrying over to apologize as I half-expected she might, she turned her focus slowly toward me like a snake that had spotted a mouse.

“Pumpkin,” I said, “I asked you to bring Nobu, not the Chairman. I don’t understand-”

“Yes, it must be hard for you to understand, Sayuri, when life doesn’t work out perfectly!”

“Perfectly? Nothing worse could have happened… did you misunderstand what I was asking you?”

“You really do think I’m stupid!” she said.

I was bewildered, and stood a long moment in silence. “I thought you were my friend,” I said at last.

“I thought you were my friend too, once. But that was a long time ago.”

“You talk as if I’ve done something to harm you, Pumpkin, but-”

“No, you’d never do anything like that, would you? Not the perfect Miss Nitta Sayuri! I suppose it doesn’t matter that you took my place as the daughter of the okiya? Do you remember that, Sayuri? After I’d gone out of my way to help you with that Doctor-whatever his name was. After I’d risked making Hatsumomo furious at me for helping you! Then you turned it all around and stole what was mine. I’ve been wondering all these months just why you brought me into this little gathering with the Minister. I’m sorry it wasn’t so easy for you to take advantage of me this time-”

“But Pumpkin,” I interrupted, “couldn’t you just have refused to help me? Why did you have to bring the Chairman?”

She stood up to her full height. “I know perfectly well how you feel about him,” she said. “Whenever there’s nobody looking, your eyes hang all over him like fur on a dog.”

She was so angry, she had bitten her lip; I could see a smudge of lipstick on her teeth. She’d set out to hurt me, I now realized, in the worst way she could.

“You took something from me a long time ago, Sayuri. How does it feel now?” she said. Her nostrils were flared, her face consumed with anger like a burning twig. It was as though the spirit of Hatsumomo had been living trapped inside her all these years, and had finally broken free.

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.