Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

About a month after I’d arrived in the okiya, Mother told me the time had come to begin my schooling. I was to accompany Pumpkin the following morning to be introduced to the teachers. Afterward, Hatsumomo would take me to someplace called the “registry office,” which I’d never heard of, and then late in the afternoon I would observe her putting on her makeup and dressing in kimono. It was a tradition in the okiya for a young girl, on the day she begins her training, to observe the most senior geisha in this way.

When Pumpkin heard she would be taking me to the school the following morning, she grew very nervous.

“You’ll have to be ready to leave the moment you wake up,” she told me. “If we’re late, we may as well drown ourselves in the sewer…”

I’d seen Pumpkin scramble out of the okiya every morning so early her eyes were still crusty; and she often seemed on the point of tears when she left. In fact, when she clopped past the kitchen window in her wooden shoes, I sometimes thought I could hear her crying. She hadn’t taken to her lessons well-not well at all, as a matter of fact. She’d arrived in the okiya nearly six months before me, but she’d only begun attending the school a week or so after my arrival. Most days when she came back around noon, she hid straightaway in the maids’ quarters so no one would see her upset.

The following morning I awoke even earlier than usual and dressed for the first time in the blue and white robe students wore. It was nothing more than unlined cotton decorated with a childlike design of squares; I’m sure I looked no more elegant than a guest at an inn looks wearing a robe on the way to the bath. But I’d never before worn anything nearly so glamorous on my body.

Pumpkin was waiting for me in the entryway with a worried look. I was just about to slip my feet into my shoes when Granny called me to her room.

“No!” Pumpkin said under her breath; and really, her face sagged like wax that had melted. “I’ll be late again. Let’s just go and pretend we didn’t hear her!”

I’d like to have done what Pumpkin suggested; but already Granny was in her doorway, glowering at me across the formal entrance hall. As it turned out, she didn’t keep me more than ten or fifteen minutes; but by then tears were welling in Pumpkin’s eyes. When we finally set out, Pumpkin began at once to walk so fast I could hardly keep up with her.

“That old woman is so cruel!” she said. “Make sure you put your hands in a dish of salt after she makes you rub her neck.”

“Why should I do that?”

“My mother used to say to me, ‘Evil spreads in the world through touch.’ And I know it’s true too, because my mother brushed up against a demon that passed her on the road one morning, and that’s why she died. If you don’t purify your hands, you’ll turn into a shriveled-up old pickle, just like Granny.”

Considering that Pumpkin and I were the same age and in the same peculiar position in life, I’m sure we would have talked together often, if we could have. But our chores kept us so busy we hardly had time even for meals-which Pumpkin ate before me because she was senior in the okiya. I knew that Pumpkin had come only six months before me, as I’ve mentioned. But I knew very little else about her. So I asked:

“Pumpkin, are you from Kyoto? Your accent sounds like you are.”

“I was born in Sapporo. But then my mother died when I was five, and my father sent me here to live with an uncle. Last year my uncle lost his business, and here I am.”

“Why don’t you run away to Sapporo again?”

“My father had a curse put on him and died last year. I can’t run away. I don’t have anywhere to go.”

“When I find my sister,” I said, “you can come with us. We’ll run away together.”

Considering what a difficult time Pumpkin was having with her lessons, I expected she would be happy at my offer. But she didn’t say anything at all. We had reached Shijo Avenue by now and crossed it in silence. This was the same avenue that had been so crowded the day Mr. Bekku had brought Satsu and me from the station. Now, so early in the morning, I could see only a single streetcar in the distance and a few bicyclists here and there. When we reached the other side, we continued up a narrow street, and then Pumpkin stopped for the first time since we’d left the okiya.

“My uncle was a very nice man,” she said. “Here’s the last thing I heard him say before he sent me away. ‘Some girls are smart and some girls are stupid,’ he told me. ‘You’re a nice girl, but you’re one of the stupid ones. You won’t make it on your own in the world. I’m sending you to a place where people will tell you what to do. Do what they say, and you’ll always be taken care of.’ So if you want to go out on your own, Chiyo-chan, you go. But me, I’ve found a place to spend my life. I’ll work as hard as I have to so they don’t send me away. But I’d sooner throw myself off a cliff than spoil my chances to be a geisha like Hatsumomo.”

Here Pumpkin interrupted herself. She was looking at something behind me, on the ground. “Oh, my goodness, Chiyo-chan,” she said, “doesn’t it make you hungry?”

I turned to find myself looking into the entryway of another okiya. On a shelf inside the door sat a miniature Shinto shrine with an offering of a sweet-rice cake. I wondered if this could be what Pumpkin had seen; but her eyes were pointed toward the ground. A few ferns and some moss lined the stone path leading to the interior door, but I could see nothing else there. And then my eye fell upon it. Outside the entryway, just at the edge of the street, lay a wooden skewer with a single bite of charcoal-roasted squid remaining. The vendors sold them from carts at night. The smell of the sweet basting sauce was a torment to me, for maids like us were fed nothing more than rice and pickles at most meals, with soup once a day, and small portions of dried fish twice a month. Even so, there was nothing about this piece of squid on the ground that I found appetizing. Two flies were walking around in circles on it just as casually as if they’d been out for a stroll in the park.

Pumpkin was a girl who looked as if she could grow fat quickly, given the chance. I’d sometimes heard her stomach making noises from hunger that sounded like an enormous door rolling open. Still, I didn’t think she was really planning to eat the squid, until I saw her look up and down the street to be sure no one was coming.

“Pumpkin,” I said, “if you’re hungry, for heaven’s sake, take the sweet-rice cake from that shelf. The flies have already claimed the squid.”

“I’m bigger than they are,” she said. “Besides, it would be sacrilege to eat the sweet-rice cake. It’s an offering.”

And after she said this, she bent down to pick up the skewer.

It’s true that I grew up in a place where children experimented with eating anything that moved. And I’ll admit I did eat a cricket once when I was four or five, but only because someone tricked me. But to see Pumpkin standing there holding that piece of squid on a stick, with grit from the street stuck to it, and the flies walking around… She blew on it to try to get rid of them, but they just scampered to keep their balance.

“Pumpkin, you can’t eat that,” I said. “You might as well drag your tongue along on the paving stones!”

“What’s so bad about the paving stones?” she said. And with this-I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself-Pumpkin got down on her knees and stuck out her tongue, and gave it a long, careful scrape along the ground. My mouth fell open from shock. When Pumpkin got to her feet again, she looked as though she herself couldn’t quite believe what she’d done. But she wiped her tongue with the palm of her hand, spat a few times, and then put that piece of squid between her teeth and slid it off the skewer.