Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

After closing the trapdoor silently behind me, I stuffed my sleeping robe under the gravity-feed tank and managed to climb up and straddle my legs over the ridge of the roof. I won’t pretend I wasn’t frightened; the voices of people on the street certainly seemed a long way below me. But I had no time to waste being afraid, for it seemed to me that at any moment one of the maids, or even Auntie or Mother, might pop up through the trapdoor looking for me. I put the shoes onto my hands to keep from dropping them and began scooting my way along the ridge, which proved to be more difficult than I’d imagined. The roof tiles were so thick they made almost a small step where they overlapped, and they clanked against one another when I shifted my weight unless I moved very slowly. Every noise I made echoed off the roofs nearby.

I took several minutes to cross just to the other side of our okiya. The roof of the building next door was a step lower than ours. I climbed down onto it and stopped a moment to look for a path to the street; but despite the moonlight, I could see only a sheet of blackness. The roof was much too high and steep for me to consider sliding down it on a gamble. I wasn’t at all sure the next roof would be better; and I began to feel a bit panicky. But I continued along from ridge to ridge until I found myself, near the end of the block, looking down on one side into an open courtyard. If I could make my way to the gutter, I could scoot around it until I came to what I thought was probably a bath shed. From the top of the bath shed, I could climb down into the courtyard easily.

I didn’t relish the thought of dropping into the middle of someone else’s house. I had no doubt it was an okiya; all the houses along our block were. In all likelihood someone would be waiting at the front door for the geisha to return, and would grab me by the arm as I tried to run out. And what if the front door was locked just as ours was? I wouldn’t even have considered this route if I’d had any other choice. But I thought the path down looked safer than anything I’d seen yet.

I sat on the ridge a long while listening for any clues from the courtyard below. All I could hear was laughter and conversation from the street. I had no idea what I would find in the courtyard when I dropped in, but I decided I’d better make my move before someone in my okiya discovered me gone. If I’d had any idea of the damage I was about to do to my future, I would have spun around on that ridge as fast as I could have and scooted right back where I’d come from. But I knew nothing of what was at stake. I was just a child who thought she was embarking on a great adventure.

I swung my leg over, so that in a moment I was dangling along the slope of the roof, just barely clinging to the ridge. I realized with some panic that it was much steeper than I’d thought it would be. I tried to scamper back up, but I couldn’t do it. With the toilet shoes on my hands, I couldn’t grab onto the ridge of the roof at all, but only hook my wrists over it. I knew I had committed myself, for I would never manage to climb back up again; but it seemed to me that the very moment I let go, I would slide down that roof out of control. My mind was racing with these thoughts, but before I’d made the decision to let go of the ridge, it let go of me. At first I glided down more slowly than I would have expected, which gave me some hope I might stop myself farther down, where the roof curved outward to form the eaves. But then my foot dislodged one of the roof tiles, which slid down with a clattering noise and shattered in the courtyard below. The next thing I knew, I lost my grip on one of the toilet shoes and it slid right past me. I heard the quiet plop as it landed below, and then a much worse sound-the sound of footsteps coming down a wooden walkway toward the courtyard.

Many times I had seen the way flies stood on a wall or ceiling just as if they were on level ground. Whether they did it by having sticky feet, or by not weighing very much, I had no idea, but when I heard the sound of someone walking below, I decided that whatever I did I would find a way of sticking to that roof just as a fly might do, and I would find it right away. Otherwise I was going to end up sprawled in that courtyard in another few seconds. I tried digging my toes into the roof, and then my elbows and knees. As a final act of desperation I did the most foolish thing of all-I slipped the shoe from my other hand and tried to stop myself by pressing my two palms against the roof tiles. My palms must have been dripping with sweat, because instead of slowing down I began to pick up speed the moment I touched them to the roof. I heard myself skidding with a hissing sound; and then suddenly the roof was no longer there.

For a moment I heard nothing; only a frightening, empty silence. As I fell through the air I had time to form one thought clearly in my mind: I pictured a woman stepping into the courtyard, looking down to see the shattered tile on the ground, and then looking up toward the roof in time to see me fall out of the sky right on top of her; but of course this isn’t what happened. I turned as I fell, and landed on my side on the ground. I had the sense to bring an arm up to protect my head; but still I landed so heavily that I knocked myself into a daze. I don’t know where the woman was standing, or even if she was in the courtyard at the time I fell out of the sky. But she must have seen me come down off that roof, because as I lay stunned on the ground I heard her say:

“Good heavens! It’s raining little girls!”

Well, I would have liked to jump to my feet and run out, but I couldn’t do it. One whole side of my body felt dipped in pain. Slowly I became aware of two women kneeling over me. One kept saying something again and again, but I couldn’t make it out. They talked between themselves and then picked me up from the moss and sat me on the wooden walkway. I remember only one fragment of their conversation.

“I’m telling you, she came off the roof, ma’am.”

“Why on earth was she carrying toilet slippers with her? Did you go up there to use the toilet, little girl? Can you hear me? What a dangerous thing to do! You’re lucky you didn’t break into pieces when you fell!”

“She can’t hear you, ma’am. Look at her eyes.”

“Of course she can hear me. Say something, little girl!”

But I couldn’t say anything. All I could do was think about how Satsu would be waiting for me opposite the Minamiza Theater, and I would never show up.

The maid was sent up the street to knock on doors until she found where I’d come from, while I lay curled up in a ball in a state of shock. I was crying without tears and holding my arm, which hurt terribly, when suddenly I felt myself pulled to my feet and slapped across the face.

“Foolish, foolish girl!” said a voice. Auntie was standing before me in a rage, and then she pulled me out of that okiya and behind her up the street. When we reached our okiya, she leaned me up against the wooden door and slapped me again across the face.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” she said to me, but I couldn’t answer. “What were you thinking! Well, you’ve ruined everything for yourself… of all the stupid things! Foolish, foolish girl!”

I’d never imagined Auntie could be so angry. She dragged me into the courtyard and threw me onto my stomach on the walkway. I began to cry in earnest now, for I knew what was coming. But this time instead of beating me halfheartedly as she had before, Auntie poured a bucket of water over my robe to make the rod sting all the more, and then struck me so hard I couldn’t even draw a breath. When she was done beating me, she threw the rod onto the ground and rolled me over onto my back. “You’ll never be a geisha now,” she cried. “I warned you not to make a mistake like this! And now there’s nothing I or anyone else can do to help you.”