Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

I couldn’t very well tell her I felt too tired to go; so I swallowed my real feelings and followed her up the street.

The party, as she explained to me along the way, was to be given by the man who ran the National Theater in Tokyo. He knew all the important geisha in nearly every geisha district in Japan; and although he would probably be very cordial when Mameha introduced me, I shouldn’t expect him to say much. My only responsibility was to be sure I always looked pretty and alert. “Just be sure you don’t let anything happen to make you look bad,” she warned.

We entered the teahouse and were shown by a maid to a room on the second floor. I hardly dared to look inside when Mameha knelt and slid open the door, but I could see seven or eight men seated on cushions around a table, with perhaps four geisha. We bowed and went inside, and afterward knelt on the mats to close the door behind us-for this is the way a geisha enters a room. We greeted the other geisha first, as Mameha had told me to do, then the host, at one corner of the table, and afterward the other guests.

“Mameha-san!” said one of the geisha. “You’ve come just in time to tell us the story about Konda-san the wig maker.”

“Oh, heavens, I can’t remember it at all,” Mameha said, and everyone laughed; I had no idea what the joke was. Mameha led me around the table and knelt beside the host. I followed and positioned myself to one side.

“Mr. Director, please permit me to introduce my new younger sister,” she said to him.

This was my cue to bow and say my name, and beg the director’s indulgence, and so on. He was a very nervous man, with bulging eyes and a kind of chicken-bone frailty. He didn’t even look at me, but only flicked his cigarette in the nearly full ashtray before him and said:

“What is all the talk about Konda-san the wig maker? All evening the girls keep referring to it, and not a one of them will tell the story.”

“Honestly, I wouldn’t know!” Mameha said.

“Which means,” said another geisha, “that she’s too embarrassed to tell it. If she won’t, I suppose I’ll have to.”

The men seemed to like this idea, but Mameha only sighed.

“In the meantime, I’ll give Mameha a cup of sake to calm her nerves,” the director said, and washed out his own sake cup in a bowl of water on the center of the table-which was there for that very reason-before offering it to her.

“Well,” the other geisha began, “this fellow Konda-san is the best wig maker in Gion, or at least everyone says so. And for years Mameha-san went to him. She always has the best of everything, you know. Just look at her and you can tell.”

Mameha made a mock-angry face.

“She certainly has the best sneer,” said one of the men.

“During a performance,” the geisha went on, “a wig maker is always backstage to help with changes of costume. Often while a geisha is taking off a certain robe and putting on another one, something will slip here or there, and then suddenly… a naked breast! Or… a little bit of hair! You know, these things happen. And anyway-”

“All these years I’ve been working in a bank,” said one of the men. “I want to be a wig maker!”

“There’s more to it than just gawking at naked women. Anyway, Mameha-san always acts very prim and goes behind a screen to change-”

“Let me tell the story,” Mameha interrupted. “You’re going to give me a bad name. I wasn’t being prim. Konda-san was always staring at me like he couldn’t wait for the next costume change, so I had a screen brought in. It’s a wonder Konda-san didn’t burn a hole in it with his eyes, trying to see through it the way he did.”

“Why couldn’t you just give him a little glimpse now and then,” the director interrupted. “How can it hurt you to be nice?”

“I’ve never thought of it that way,” Mameha said. “You’re quite right, Mr. Director. What harm can a little glimpse do? Perhaps you want to give us one right now?”

Everyone in the room burst out laughing at this. Just when things were starting to calm down, the director started it all over by rising to his feet and beginning to untie the sash of his robe.

“I’m only going to do this,” he said to Mameha, “if you’ll give me a glimpse in return…”

“I never made such an offer,” Mameha said.

“That isn’t very generous of you.”

“Generous people don’t become geisha,” Mameha said. “They become the patrons of geisha.”

“Never mind, then,” the director said, and sat back down. I have to say, I was very relieved he’d given up; because although all the others seemed to be enjoying themselves enormously, I felt embarrassed.

“Where was I?” Mameha said. “Well, I had the screen brought in one day, and I thought this was enough to keep me safe from Konda-san. But when I hurried back from the toilet at one point, I couldn’t find him anywhere. I began to panic, because I needed a wig for my next entrance; but soon we found him sitting on a chest against the wall, looking very weak and sweating. I wondered if there was something wrong with his heart! He had my wig beside him, and when he saw me, he apologized and helped put it on me. Then later that afternoon, he handed me a note he’d written…”

Here Mameha’s voice trailed off. At last one of the men said, “Well? What did it say?”

Mameha covered her eyes with her hand. She was too embarrassed to continue, and everyone in the room broke into laughter.

“All right, I’ll tell you what he wrote,” said the geisha who’d begun the story. “It was something like this: ‘Dearest Mameha. You are the very loveliest geisha in all of Gion,’ and so forth. ‘After you have worn a wig, I always cherish it, and keep it in my workshop to put my face into it and smell the scent of your hair many times a day. But today when you rushed to the toilet, you gave me the greatest moment of my life. While you were inside, I hid myself at the door, and the beautiful tinkling sound, more lovely than a waterfall-’ ”

The men laughed so hard that the geisha had to wait before going on.

“ ‘-and the beautiful tinkling sound, more lovely than a waterfall, made me hard and stiff where I myself tinkle-’ ”

“He didn’t say it that way,” Mameha said. “He wrote, ‘the beautiful tinkling sound, more lovely than a waterfall, caused me to swell and bulge at the knowledge that your body was bare…’ ”

“Then he told her,” the other geisha said, “that he was unable to stand afterward because of the excitement. And he hoped that one day he would experience such a moment again.”

Of course, everyone laughed, and I pretended to laugh too. But the truth is, I was finding it difficult to believe that these men-who had paid so considerably to be there, among women wrapped in beautiful, expensive robes-really wanted to hear the same sorts of stories children back in the pond in Yoroido might have told. I’d imagined feeling out of my depth in a conversation about literature, or Kabuki, or something of that sort. And of course, there were such parties in Gion; it just happened that my first was of the more childish kind.

All through Mameha’s story, the man beside me had sat rubbing his splotchy face with his hands and paying little attention. Now he looked at me a long while and then asked, “What’s the matter with your eyes? Or have I just drunk too much?”

He certainly had drunk too much-though I didn’t think it would be proper to tell him. But before I could answer, his eyebrows began to twitch, and a moment later he reached up and scratched his head so much that a little cloud of snow spilled onto his shoulders. As it turned out, he was known in Gion as “Mr. Snowshowers” because of his terrible dandruff. He seemed to have forgotten the question he’d asked me-or maybe he never expected me to answer it-because now he asked my age. I told him I was fourteen.