Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

I won’t say I had any natural talent of any kind at all, in dance or in anything else; but I was certainly as determined as anyone to work single-mindedly until I reached my goal. Since meeting the Chairman on the street that day back in the spring, I had longed for nothing so much as the chance to become a geisha and find a place for myself in the world. Now that Mameha had given me that chance, I was intent on making good. But with all my lessons and chores, and with my high expectations, I felt completely overwhelmed in my first six months of training. Then after that, I began to discover little tricks that made everything go more smoothly. For example, I found a way of practicing the shamisen while running errands. I did this by practicing a song in my mind while picturing clearly how my left hand should shift on the neck and how the plectrum should strike the string. In this way, when I put the real instrument into my lap, I could sometimes play a song quite well even though I had tried playing it only once before. Some people thought I’d learned it without practicing, but in fact, I’d practiced it all up and down the alleyways of Gion.

I used a different trick to learn the ballads and other songs we studied at the school. Since childhood I’ve always been able to hear a piece of music once and remember it fairly well the next day. I don’t know why, just something peculiar about my mind, I suppose. So I took to writing the words on a piece of paper before going to sleep. Then when I awoke, while my mind was still soft and impressionable, I read the page before even stirring from my futon. Usually this was enough, but with music that was more difficult, I used a trick of finding images to remind me of the tune. For example, a branch falling from a tree might make me think of the sound of a drum, or a stream flowing over a rock might remind me of bending a string on the shamisen to make the note rise in pitch; and I would picture the song as a kind of stroll through a landscape.

But of course, the greatest challenge of all, and the most important one for me, was dance. For months I tried to make use of the various tricks I’d discovered, but they were of little help to me. Then one day Auntie grew furious when I spilled tea onto a magazine she was reading. The strange thing was that I’d been thinking kind thoughts toward her at the very moment she turned on me. I felt terribly sad afterward and found myself thinking of my sister, who was somewhere in Japan without me; and of my mother, who I hoped was at peace in paradise now; and of my father, who’d been so willing to sell us and live out the end of his life alone. As these thoughts ran through my head, my body began to grow heavy. So I climbed the stairs and went into the room where Pumpkin and I slept-for Mother had moved me there after Mameha’s visit to our okiya. Instead of laying myself down on the tatami mats and crying, I moved my arm in a sort of sweeping movement across my chest. I don’t know why I did it; it was a move from a dance we’d studied that morning, which seemed to me very sad. At the same time I thought about the Chairman and how my life would be so much better if I could rely on a man like him. As I watched my arm sweep through the air, the smoothness of its movement seemed to express these feelings of sadness and desire. My arm passed through the air with great dignity of movement-not like a leaf fluttering from a tree, but like an ocean liner gliding through the water. I suppose that by “dignity” I mean a kind of self-confidence, or certainty, such that a little puff of wind or the lap of a wave isn’t going to make any difference.

What I discovered that afternoon was that when my body felt heavy, I could move with great dignity. And if I imagined the Chairman observing me, my movements took on such a deep sense of feeling that sometimes each movement of a dance stood for some little interaction with him. Turning around with my head tipped at an angle might represent the question, “Where shall we spend our day together, Chairman?” Extending my arm and opening my folding fan told how grateful I felt that he’d honored me with his company. And when I snapped my fan shut again later in the dance, this was when I told him that nothing in life mattered more to me than pleasing him.

During the spring of 1934, after I’d been in training for more than two years, Hatsumomo and Mother decided that the time had come for Pumpkin to make her debut as an apprentice geisha. Of course, no one told me anything about it, since Pumpkin was on orders not to speak with me, and Hatsumomo and Mother wouldn’t waste their time even considering such a thing. I found out about it only when Pumpkin left the okiya early one afternoon and came back at the end of the day wearing the hairstyle of a young geisha-the so-called momoware , meaning “split peach.” When I took my first look at her as she stepped up into the entrance hall, I felt sick with disappointment and jealousy. Her eyes never met mine for more than a flicker of an instant; probably she couldn’t help thinking of the effect her debut was having on me. With her hair swept back in an orb so beautifully from her temples, rather than tied at the neck as it had always been, she looked very much like a young woman, though still with her same babyish face. For years she and I had envied the older girls who wore their hair so elegantly. Now Pumpkin would be setting out as a geisha while I remained behind, unable even to ask about her new life.

Then came the day Pumpkin dressed as an apprentice geisha for the first time and went with Hatsumomo to the Mizuki Teahouse, for the ceremony to bind them together as sisters. Mother and Auntie went, though I wasn’t included. But I did stand among them in the formal entrance hall until Pumpkin came down the stairs assisted by the maids. She wore a magnificent black kimono with the crest of the Nitta okiya and a plum and gold obi; her face was painted white for the very first time. You might expect that with the ornaments in her hair and the brilliant red of her lips, she should have looked proud and lovely; but I thought she looked more worried than anything else. She had great difficulty walking; the regalia of an apprentice geisha is so cumbersome. Mother put a camera into Auntie’s hands and told her to go outside and photograph Pumpkin having a flint sparked on her back for good luck the very first time. The rest of us remained crowded inside the entrance hall, out of view. The maids held Pumpkin’s arms while she slipped her feet into the tall wooden shoes we call okobo , which an apprentice geisha always wears. Then Mother went to stand behind Pumpkin and struck a pose as though she were about to spark a flint, even though, in reality, it was always Auntie or one of the maids who did the job. When at last the photograph was taken, Pumpkin stumbled a few steps from the door and turned to look back. The others were on their way out to join her, but I was the one she looked at, with an expression that seemed to say she was very sorry for the way things had turned out.

By the end of that day, Pumpkin was officially known by her new geisha name of Hatsumiyo. The “Hatsu” came from Hatsumomo, and even though it ought to have helped Pumpkin to have a name derived from a geisha as well known as Hatsumomo, in the end it didn’t work that way. Very few people ever knew her geisha name, you see; they just called her Pumpkin as we always had.

I was very eager to tell Mameha about Pumpkin’s debut. But she’d been much busier than usual lately, traveling frequently to Tokyo at the request of her danna , with the result that we hadn’t set eyes on each other in nearly six months. Another few weeks passed before she finally had time to summon me to her apartment. When I stepped inside, the maid let out a gasp; and then a moment later Mameha came walking out of the back room and let out a gasp as well. I couldn’t think what was the matter. And then when I got on my knees to bow to Mameha and tell her how honored I was to see her again, she paid me no attention at all.