Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

Back in Kyoto, I was carried along in a current of activity over the next few days. I had no choice but to put on my makeup as usual, and attend engagements at the teahouses just as though nothing had changed in the world. I kept reminding myself what Mameha had once told me, that there was nothing like work for getting over a disappointment; but my work didn’t seem to help me in any way. Every time I went into the Ichiriki Teahouse, I was reminded that one day soon Nobu would summon me there to tell me the arrangements had been settled at last. Considering how busy he’d been over the past few months, I didn’t expect to hear from him for some time-a week or two, perhaps. But on Wednesday morning, three days after our return from Amami, I received word that Iwamura Electric had telephoned the Ichiriki Teahouse to request my presence that evening.

I dressed late in the afternoon in a yellow kimono of silk gauze with a green underrobe and a deep blue obi interwoven with gold threads. Auntie assured me I looked lovely, but when I saw myself in the mirror, I seemed like a woman defeated. I’d certainly experienced moments in the past when I felt displeased with the way I looked before setting out from the okiya; but most often I managed to find at least one feature I could make use of during the course of the evening. A certain persimmon-colored underrobe, for example, always brought out the blue in my eyes, rather than the gray, no matter how exhausted I felt. But this evening my face seemed utterly hollow beneath my cheekbones-although I’d put on Western-style makeup just as I usually did-and even my hairstyle seemed lopsided to me. I couldn’t think of any way to improve my appearance, other than asking Mr. Bekku to retie my obi just a finger’s-width higher, to take away some of my downcast look.

My first engagement was a banquet given by an American colonel to honor the new governor of Kyoto Prefecture. It was held at the former estate of the Sumitomo family, which was now the headquarters of the American army’s seventh division. I was amazed to see that so many of the beautiful stones in the garden were painted white, and signs in English-which of course I couldn’t read-were tacked to the trees here and there. After the party was over, I made my way to the Ichiriki and was shown upstairs by a maid, to the same peculiar little room where Nobu had met with me on the night Gion was closing. This was the very spot where I’d learned about the haven he’d found to keep me safe from the war; it seemed entirely appropriate that we should meet in this same room to celebrate his becoming my danna -though it would be anything but a celebration for me. I knelt at one end of the table, so that Nobu would sit facing the alcove. I was careful to position myself so he could pour sake using his one arm, without the table in his way; he would certainly want to pour a cup for me after telling me the arrangements had been finalized. It would be a fine night for Nobu. I would do my best not to spoil it.

With the dim lighting and the reddish cast from the tea-colored walls, the atmosphere was really quite pleasant. I’d forgotten the very particular scent of the room-a combination of dust and the oil used for polishing wood-but now that I smelled it again, I found myself remembering details about that evening with Nobu years earlier that I couldn’t possibly have called to mind otherwise. He’d had holes in both of his socks, I remembered; through one a slender big toe had protruded, with the nail neatly groomed. Could it really be that only five and a half years had passed since that evening? It seemed an entire generation had come and gone; so many of the people I’d once known were dead. Was this the life I’d come back to Gion to lead? It was just as Mameha had once told me: we don’t become geisha because we want our lives to be happy; we become geisha because we have no choice. If my mother had lived, I might be a wife and mother at the seashore myself, thinking of Kyoto as a faraway place where the fish were shipped-and would my life really be any worse? Nobu had once said to me, “I’m a very easy man to understand, Sayuri. I don’t like things held up before me that I cannot have.” Perhaps I was just the same; all my life in Gion, I’d imagined the Chairman before me, and now I could not have him.

After ten or fifteen minutes of waiting for Nobu, I began to wonder if he was really coming. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I laid my head down on the table to rest, for I’d slept poorly these past nights. I didn’t fall asleep, but I did drift for a time in my general sense of misery. And then I seemed to have a most peculiar dream. I thought I heard the tapping sound of drums in the distance, and a hiss like water from a faucet, and then I felt the Chairman’s hand touching my shoulder. I knew it was the Chairman’s hand because when I lifted my head from the table to see who had touched me, he was there. The tapping had been his footsteps; the hissing was the door in its track. And now he stood above me with a maid waiting behind him. I bowed and apologized for falling asleep. I felt so confused that for a moment I wondered if I was really awake; but it wasn’t a dream. The Chairman was seating himself on the very cushion where I’d expected Nobu to sit, and yet Nobu was nowhere to be seen. While the maid placed sake on the table, an awful thought began to take hold in my mind. Had the Chairman come to tell me Nobu had been in an accident, or that some other horrible thing had happened to him? Otherwise, why hadn’t Nobu himself come? I was about to ask the Chairman, when the mistress of the teahouse peered into the room.

“Why, Chairman,” she said, “we haven’t seen you in weeks!”

The mistress was always pleasant in front of guests, but I could tell from the strain in her voice that she had something else on her mind. Probably she was wondering about Nobu, just as I was. While I poured sake for the Chairman, the mistress came and knelt at the table. She stopped his hand before he took a sip from his cup, and leaned toward him to breathe in the scent of the vapors.

“Really, Chairman, I’ll never understand why you prefer this sake to others,” she said. “We opened some this afternoon, the best we’ve had in years. I’m sure Nobu-san will appreciate it when he arrives.”

“I’m sure he would,” the Chairman said. “Nobu appreciates fine things. But he won’t be coming tonight.”

I was alarmed to hear this; but I kept my eyes to the table. I could see that the mistress was surprised too, because of how quickly she changed the subject.

“Oh, well,” she said, “anyway, don’t you think our Sayuri looks charming this evening!”

“Now, Mistress, when has Sayuri not looked charming?” said the Chairman. “Which reminds me… let me show you something I’ve brought.”

The Chairman put onto the table a little bundle wrapped in blue silk; I hadn’t noticed it in his hand when he’d entered the room. He untied it and took out a short, fat scroll, which he began to unroll. It was cracked with age and showed-in miniature-brilliantly colored scenes of the Imperial court. If you’ve ever seen this sort of scroll, you’ll know that you can unroll it all the way across a room and survey the entire grounds of the Imperial compound, from the gates at one end to the palace at the other. The Chairman sat with it before him, unrolling it from one spindle to the other-past scenes of drinking parties, and aristocrats playing kickball with their kimonos cinched up between their legs-until he came to a young woman in her lovely twelve-layered robes, kneeling on the wood floor outside the Emperor’s chambers.

“Now what do you think of that!” he said.

“It’s quite a scroll,” the mistress said. “Where did the Chairman find it?”