Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

“If I may ask, ma’am, who has told you?”

“No one has told me,” she said. “Hatsumomo and I have known each other since I was a girl of six and she was nine. When you’ve watched a creature misbehaving itself over such a long period, there’s no secret in knowing what it will do next.”

“I don’t know what I did to make her hate me so,” I said.

“Hatsumomo is no harder to understand than a cat. A cat is happy so long as it’s lying in the sun with no other cats around. But if it should think someone else is poking around its meal dish… Has anyone told you the story of how Hatsumomo drove young Hatsuoki out of Gion?”

I told her no one had.

“What an attractive girl Hatsuoki was,” Mameha began. “And a very dear friend of mine. She and your Hatsumomo were sisters. That is to say, they’d both been trained by the same geisha-in this case, the great Tomihatsu, who was already an old woman at the time. Your Hatsumomo never liked young Hatsuoki, and when they both became apprentice geisha, she couldn’t bear having her as a rival. So she began to spread a rumor around Gion that Hatsuoki had been caught in a public alleyway one night doing something very improper with a young policeman. Of course there was no truth in it. If Hatsumomo had simply gone around telling the story, no one in Gion would have believed her. People knew how jealous she felt about Hatsuoki. So here’s what she did: whenever she came upon someone very drunk-a geisha, or a maid, or even a man visiting Gion, it didn’t matter-she whispered the story about Hatsuoki in such a way that the next day the person who’d heard it didn’t remember that Hatsumomo had been the source. Soon poor Hatsuoki’s reputation was so damaged, it was an easy matter for Hatsumomo to put a few more of her little tricks to use and drive her out.”

I felt a strange relief at hearing that someone besides me had been treated monstrously by Hatsumomo.

“She can’t bear to have rivals,” Mameha went on. “That’s the reason she treats you as she does.”

“Surely Hatsumomo doesn’t see me as a rival, ma’am,” I said. “I’m no more a rival to her than a puddle is a rival to the ocean.”

“Not in the teahouses of Gion, perhaps. But within your okiya… Don’t you find it odd that Mrs. Nitta has never adopted Hatsumomo as her daughter? The Nitta okiya must be the wealthiest in Gion without an heir. By adopting Hatsumomo, not only would Mrs. Nitta solve that problem, but all of Hatsumomo’s earnings would then be kept by the okiya, without a single sen of it paid out to Hatsumomo herself. And Hatsumomo is a very successful geisha! You’d think Mrs. Nitta, who’s as fond of money as anyone, would have adopted her a long time ago. She must have a very good reason not to do so, don’t you think?”

I’d certainly never thought of any of this before, but after listening to Mameha, I felt certain I knew exactly what the reason was.

“Adopting Hatsumomo,” I said, “would be like releasing the tiger from its cage.”

“It certainly would. I’m sure Mrs. Nitta knows perfectly well what sort of adopted daughter Hatsumomo would turn out to be-the sort that finds a way to drive the Mother out. In any case, Hatsumomo has no more patience than a child. I don’t think she could keep even a cricket alive in a wicker cage. After a year or two, she’d probably sell the okiya’s collection of kimono and retire. That, young Chiyo, is the reason Hatsumomo hates you so very much. The Pumpkin girl, I don’t imagine Hatsumomo feels too worried about Mrs. Nitta adopting her.”

“Mameha-san,” I said, “I’m sure you recall the kimono of yours that was ruined…”

“You’re going to tell me you’re the girl who put ink on it.”

“Well… yes, ma’am. And even though I’m sure you know Hatsumomo was behind it, I do hope that someday I’ll be able to show how sorry I am for what happened.”

Mameha gazed at me a long while. I had no notion what she was thinking until she said:

“You may apologize, if you wish.”

I backed away from the table and bowed low to the mats; but before I had a chance to say anything at all, Mameha interrupted me.

“That would be a lovely bow, if only you were a farmer visiting Kyoto for the first time,” she said. “But since you want to appear cultivated, you must do it like this. Look at me; move farther away from the table. All right, there you are on your knees; now straighten out your arms and put your fingertips onto the mats in front of you. Just the tips of your fingers; not your whole hand. And you mustn’t spread your fingers at all; I can still see space between them. Very well, put them on the mats… hands together… there! Now that looks lovely. Bow as low as you can, but keep your neck perfectly straight, don’t let your head drop that way. And for heaven’s sake, don’t put any weight onto your hands or you’ll look like a man! That’s fine. Now you may try it again.”

So I bowed to her once more, and told her again how deeply sorry I was for having played a role in ruining her beautiful kimono.

“It was a beautiful kimono, wasn’t it?” she said. “Well, now we’ll forget about it. I want to know why you’re no longer training to be a geisha. Your teachers at the school tell me you were doing well right up until the moment you stopped taking lessons. You ought to be on your way to a successful career in Gion. Why would Mrs. Nitta stop your training?”

I told her about my debts, including the kimono and the brooch Hatsumomo had accused me of stealing. Even after I was finished, she went on looking coldly at me. Finally she said:

“There’s something more you’re not telling me. Considering your debts, I’d expect Mrs. Nitta to feel only more determined to see you succeed as a geisha. You’ll certainly never repay her by working as a maid.”

When I heard this, I must have lowered my eyes in shame without realizing it; for in an instant Mameha seemed able to read my very thoughts.

“You tried to run away, didn’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I had a sister. We’d been separated but we managed to find each other. We were supposed to meet on a certain night to run away together… but then I fell off the roof and broke my arm.”

“The roof! You must be joking. Did you go up there to take a last look at Kyoto?”

I explained to her why I’d done it. “I know it was foolish of me,” I said afterward. “Now Mother won’t invest another sen in my training, since she’s afraid I may run away again.”

“There’s more to it than that. A girl who runs away makes the mistress of her okiya look bad. That’s the way people think here in Gion. ‘My goodness, she can’t even keep her own maids from running away!’ That sort of thing. But what will you do with yourself now, Chiyo? You don’t look to me like a girl who wants to live her life as a maid.”

“Oh, ma’am… I’d give anything to undo my mistakes,” I said. “It’s been more than two years now. I’ve waited so patiently in the hopes that some opportunity might come along.”

“Waiting patiently doesn’t suit you. I can see you have a great deal of water in your personality. Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things, and finds the secret paths no one else has thought about-the tiny hole through the roof or the bottom of a box. There’s no doubt it’s the most versatile of the five elements. It can wash away earth; it can put out fire; it can wear a piece of metal down and sweep it away. Even wood, which is its natural complement, can’t survive without being nurtured by water. And yet, you haven’t drawn on those strengths in living your life, have you?”

“Well, actually, ma’am, water flowing was what gave me the idea of escaping over the roof.”