Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

I heard the outside door roll open, and then it closed again; after a time Hatsumomo came back into the front entrance hall and stood peering down the corridor at nothing. Finally she turned to me and wiped the moisture from her eyes.

“Well, little Chiyo,” she said. “You went to visit that ugly sister of yours, didn’t you?”

“Please, Hatsumomo-san,” I said.

“And then you came back here to spy on me!” Hatsumomo said this so loudly, she woke one of the elderly maids, who propped herself on her elbow to look at us. Hatsumomo shouted at her, “Go back to sleep, you stupid old woman!” and the maid shook her head and lay back down again.

“Hatsumomo-san, I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” I said. “I don’t want to get in trouble with Mother.”

“Of course you’ll do whatever I want you to do. That isn’t even a subject for discussion! And you’re already in trouble.”

“I had to go out to deliver your shamisen.”

“That was more than an hour ago. You went to find your sister, and you made plans to run away with her. Do you think I’m stupid? And then you came back here to spy on me!”

“Please forgive me,” I said. “I didn’t know it was you there! I thought it was-”

I wanted to tell her I’d thought I’d seen a rat, but I didn’t think she’d take it kindly.

She peered at me for a time and then went upstairs to her room. When she came back down, she was holding something in her fist.

“You want to run away with your sister, don’t you?” she said. “I think that’s a fine idea. The sooner you’re out of the okiya, the better for me. Some people think I don’t have a heart, but it isn’t true. It’s touching to imagine you and that fat cow going off to try to make a living someplace, all alone in the world! The sooner you’re out of here, the better for me. Stand up.”

I stood, though I was afraid of what she was going to do to me. Whatever she was holding in her fist she wanted to tuck beneath the sash of my robe; but when she stepped toward me, I backed away.

“Look,” she said, and opened her hand. She was holding a number of folded bills-more money than I’d ever seen, though I don’t know how much. “I’ve brought this from my room for you. You don’t need to thank me. Just take it. You’ll repay me by getting yourself out of Kyoto so I’ll never have to see you again.”

Auntie had told me never to trust Hatsumomo, even if she offered to help me. But when I reminded myself how much Hatsumomo hated me, I understood that she wasn’t really helping me at all; she was helping herself to be rid of me. I stood still as she reached into my robe and tucked the bills under my sash. I felt her glassy nails brushing against my skin. She spun me around to retie the sash so the money wouldn’t slip, and then she did the strangest thing. She turned me around to face her again, and began to stroke the side of my head with her hand, wearing an almost motherly gaze. The very idea of Hatsumomo behaving kindly toward me was so odd, I felt as if a poisonous snake had come up and begun to rub against me like a cat. Then before I knew what she was doing, she worked her fingers down to my scalp; and all at once she clenched her teeth in fury and took a great handful of my hair, and yanked it to one side so hard I fell to my knees and cried out. I couldn’t understand what was happening; but soon Hatsumomo had pulled me to my feet again, and began leading me up the stairs yanking my hair this way and that. She was shouting at me in anger, while I screamed so loudly I wouldn’t have been surprised if we’d woken people all up and down the street.

When we reached the top of the stairs, Hatsumomo banged on Mother’s door and called out for her. Mother opened it very quickly, tying her sash around her middle and looking angry.

“What is the matter with the two of you!” she said.

“My jewelry!” Hatsumomo said. “This stupid, stupid girl!” And here she began to beat me. I could do nothing but huddle into a ball on the floor and cry out for her to stop until Mother managed to restrain her somehow. By that time Auntie had come to join her on the landing.

“Oh, Mother,” Hatsumomo said, “on my way back to the okiya this evening, I thought I saw little Chiyo at the end of the alleyway talking to a man. I didn’t think anything of it, because I knew it couldn’t be her. She isn’t supposed to be out of the okiya at all. But when I went up to my room, I found my jewelry box in disarray, and rushed back down just in time to see Chiyo handing something over to the man. She tried to run away, but I caught her!”

Mother was perfectly silent a long while, looking at me.

“The man got away,” Hatsumomo went on, “but I think Chiyo may have sold some of my jewelry to raise money. She’s planning to run away from the okiya, Mother, that’s what I think… after we’ve been so kind to her!”

“All right, Hatsumomo,” Mother said. “That’s quite enough. You and Auntie go into your room and find out what’s missing.”

The moment I was alone with Mother, I looked up at her from where I knelt on the floor and whispered, “Mother, it isn’t true… Hatsumomo was in the maids’ room with her boyfriend. She’s angry about something, and she’s taking it out on me. I didn’t take anything from her!”

Mother didn’t speak. I wasn’t even sure she’d heard me. Soon Hatsumomo came out and said she was missing a brooch used for decorating the front of an obi.

“My emerald brooch, Mother!” she kept saying, and crying just like a fine actress. “She’s sold my emerald brooch to that horrible man! It was my brooch! Who does she think she is to steal such a thing from me!”

“Search the girl,” Mother said.

Once when I was a little child of six or so, I watched a spider spinning its web in a corner of the house. Before the spider had even finished its job, a mosquito flew right into the web and was trapped there. The spider didn’t pay it any attention at first, but went on with what it was doing; only when it was finished did it creep over on its pointy toes and sting that poor mosquito to death. As I sat there on that wooden floor and watched Hatsumomo come reaching for me with her delicate fingers, I knew I was trapped in a web she had spun for me. I could do nothing to explain the cash I was carrying beneath my sash. When she drew it out, Mother took it from her and counted it.

“You’re a fool to sell an emerald brooch for so little,” she said to me. “Particularly since it will cost you a good deal more to replace it.”

She tucked the money into her own sleeping robe, and then said to Hatsumomo:

“You had a boyfriend here in the okiya tonight.”

Hatsumomo was taken aback by this; but she didn’t hesitate to reply, “Whatever gave you such an idea, Mother?”

There was a long pause, and then Mother said to Auntie, “Hold her arms.”

Auntie took Hatsumomo by the arms and held her from behind, while Mother began to pull open the seams of Hatsumomo’s kimono at the thigh. I thought Hatsumomo would resist, but she didn’t. She looked at me with cold eyes as Mother gathered up the koshimaki and pushed her knees apart. Then Mother reached up between her legs, and when her hand came out again her fingertips were wet. She rubbed her thumb and fingers together for a time, and then smelled them. After this she drew back her hand and slapped Hatsumomo across the face, leaving a streak of moisture.

Hatsumomo wasn’t the only one angry at me the following day, because Mother ordered that all the maids be denied servings of dried fish for six weeks as punishment for having tolerated Hatsumomo’s boyfriend in the okiya. I don’t think the maids could have been more upset with me if I’d actually stolen the food from their bowls with my own hands; and as for Pumpkin, she began to cry when she found out what Mother had ordered. But to tell the truth, I didn’t feel as uneasy as you might imagine to have everyone glowering at me, and to have the cost of an obi brooch I’d never seen or even touched added to my debts. Anything that made life more difficult for me only strengthened my determination to run away.