Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

“Oh, Chiyo,” she said, and then she reached up to scratch her face. Or at least, I thought she was scratching her face, for I couldn’t see well. It took me a moment to understand she was crying. After this I could do nothing to hold back my own tears.

“I’m so sorry, Satsu!” I told her. “It’s all my fault.”

Somehow or other we stumbled toward each other in the dark until we were hugging. I found that all I could think about was how bony she’d grown. She stroked my hair in a way that made me think of my mother, which caused my eyes to well up so much I might as well have been underwater.

“Quiet, Chiyo-chan,” she whispered to me. With her face so close to mine, her breath had a pungent odor when she spoke. “I’ll get a beating if the mistress finds out you were here. Why did it take you so long!”

“Oh, Satsu, I’m so sorry! I know you came to my okiya…”

“Months ago.”

“The woman you spoke with there is a monster. She wouldn’t give me the message for the longest time.”

“I have to run away, Chiyo. I can’t stay here in this place any longer.”

“I’ll come with you!”

“I have a train schedule hidden under the tatami mats upstairs. I’ve been stealing money whenever I can. I have enough to pay off Mrs. Kishino. She gets beaten whenever a girl escapes. She won’t let me go unless I pay her first.”

“Mrs. Kishino… who is she?”

“The old lady at the front door. She’s going away. I don’t know who will take her place. I can’t wait any longer! This is a horrible spot. Never end up anywhere like this, Chiyo! You’d better go now. The mistress may be here at any moment.”

“But wait. When do we run away?”

“Wait in the corner there, and don’t say a word. I have to go upstairs.”

I did as she told me. While she was gone I heard the old woman at the front door greet a man, and then his heavy footsteps ascended the stairs over my head. Soon someone came down again hurriedly, and the door slid open. I felt panicked for a moment, but it was only Satsu, looking very pale.

“Tuesday. We’ll run away Tuesday late at night, five days from now. I have to go upstairs, Chiyo. A man has come for me.”

“But wait, Satsu. Where will we meet? What time?”

“I don’t know… one in the morning. But I don’t know where.”

I suggested we meet near the Minamiza Theater, but Satsu thought it would be too easy for people to find us. We agreed to meet at a spot exactly across the river from it.

“I have to go now,” she said.

“But, Satsu… what if I can’t get away? Or what if we don’t meet up?”

“Just be there, Chiyo! I’ll only have one chance. I’ve waited as long as I can. You have to go now before the mistress comes back. If she catches you here, I may never be able to run away.”

There were so many things I wanted to say to her, but she took me out into the hallway and wrenched the door shut behind us. I would have watched her go up the stairs, but in a moment the old woman from the doorway had taken me by the arm and pulled me out into the darkness of the street.

I ran back from Miyagawa-cho and was relieved to find the okiya as quiet as I’d left it. I crept inside and knelt in the dim light of the entrance hall, dabbing the sweat from my forehead and neck with the sleeve of my robe and trying to catch my breath. I was just beginning to settle down, now that I’d succeeded in not getting caught. But then I looked at the door to the maids’ room and saw that it stood open a bit, just wide enough to reach an arm through, and I felt myself go cold. No one ever left it that way. Except in hot weather it was usually closed all the way. Now as I watched it, I felt certain I heard a rustling sound from within. I hoped it was a rat; because if it wasn’t a rat, it was Hatsumomo and her boyfriend again. I began to wish I hadn’t gone to Miyagawa-cho. I wished it so hard that if such a thing had been possible, I think time itself would have begun to run backward just from the force of all my wishing. I got to my feet and crept down onto the dirt corridor, feeling dizzy from worry, and with my throat as dry as a patch of dusty ground. When I reached the door of the maids’ room, I brought my eye to the crack to peer inside. I couldn’t see well. Because of the damp weather, Yoko had lit charcoal earlier that evening in the brazier set into the floor; only a faint glow remained, and in that dim light, something small and pale was squirming. I almost let out a scream when I saw it, because I was sure it was a rat, with its head bobbing around as it chewed at something. To my horror I could even hear the moist, smacking sounds of its mouth. It seemed to be standing up on top of something, I couldn’t tell what. Stretching out toward me were two bundles of what I thought were probably rolled-up fabric, which gave me the impression it had chewed its way up between them, spreading them apart as it went. It was eating something Yoko must have left there in the room. I was just about to shut the door, for I was frightened it might run out into the corridor with me, when I heard a woman’s moan. Then suddenly from beyond where the rat was chewing, a head raised up and Hatsumomo was looking straight at me. I jumped back from the door. What I’d thought were bundles of rolled-up fabric were her legs. And the rat wasn’t a rat at all. It was her boyfriend’s pale hand protruding from his sleeve.

“What is it?” I heard her boyfriend’s voice say. “Is someone there?”

“It’s nothing,” Hatsumomo whispered.

“Someone’s there.”

“No, it’s no one at all,” she said. “I thought I heard something, but it’s no one.”

There was no question in my mind Hatsumomo had seen me. But she apparently didn’t want her boyfriend to know. I hurried back to kneel in the hallway, feeling as shaken as if I’d almost been run over by a trolley. I heard groans and noises coming from the maids’ room for some time, and then they stopped. When Hatsumomo and her boyfriend finally stepped out into the corridor, her boyfriend looked right at me.

“That girl’s in the front hall,” he said. “She wasn’t there when I came in.”

“Oh, don’t pay her any attention. She was a bad girl tonight and went out of the okiya when she wasn’t supposed to. I’ll deal with her later.”

“So there was someone spying on us. Why did you lie to me?”

“Koichi-san,” she said, “you’re in such a bad mood tonight!”

“You aren’t the least surprised to see her. You knew she was there all along.”

Hatsumomo’s boyfriend came striding up to the front entrance hall and stopped to glower at me before stepping down into the entryway. I kept my eyes to the floor, but I could feel myself blush a brilliant red. Hatsumomo rushed past me to help him with his shoes. I heard her speak to him as I’d never heard her speak to anyone before, in a pleading, almost whining voice.

“Koichi-san, please,” she said, “calm down. I don’t know what’s gotten into you tonight! Come again tomorrow…”

“I don’t want to see you tomorrow.”

“I hate when you make me wait so long. I’ll meet you anywhere you say, on the bottom of the riverbed, even.”

“I don’t have anywhere to meet you. My wife watches over me too much as it is.”

“Then come back here. We have the maids’ room-”

“Yes, if you like sneaking around and being spied on! Just let me go, Hatsumomo. I want to get home.”

“Please don’t be angry with me, Koichi-san. I don’t know why you get this way! Tell me you’ll come back, even if it isn’t tomorrow.”

“One day I won’t come back,” he said. “I’ve told you that all along.”