Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

I didn’t have an answer to this question. But if Mameha wasn’t concerned, I could think of no reason why I ought to be.

My first impression upon entering the Exhibition Hall was of an enormous empty space reaching up to the roof, beneath which sunlight poured in through screened windows high overhead. The huge expanse was filled with the noise of the crowd, and with smoke from the sweet-rice cakes roasted with miso paste on the grills outside. In the center was a square mound where the wrestlers would compete, dominated by a roof in the style of a Shinto shrine. A priest walked around on it, chanting blessings and shaking his sacred wand adorned with folded paper strips.

Mameha led me down to a tier in the front, where we removed our shoes and began to walk across in our split-toed socks on a little margin of wood. Our hosts were in this row, but I had no idea who they were until I caught sight of a man waving his hand to Mameha; I knew at once that he was Nobu. There was no doubt why Mameha had warned me about his appearance. Even from a distance the skin of his face looked like a melted candle. At some time in his life he had suffered terrible burns; his whole appearance was so tragic-looking, I couldn’t imagine the agony he must have endured. Already I was feeling strange from running into Korin; now I began to worry that when I met Nobu, I might make a fool of myself without quite understanding why. As I walked along behind Mameha, I focused my attention not on Nobu but on a very elegant man seated beside him on the same tatami mat, wearing a pinstripe men’s kimono. From the moment I set eyes on this man I felt a strange stillness settling over me. He was talking with someone in another box, so that I could see only the back of his head. But he was so familiar to me that for a moment I could make no sense of what I saw. All I knew was that he was out of place there in the Exhibition Hall. Before I could even think why, I saw an image in my mind of him turning toward me on the streets of our little village…

And then I realized: it was Mr. Tanaka!

He’d changed in some way I couldn’t have described. I watched him reach up to smooth his gray hair and was struck by the graceful way he moved his fingers. Why did I find it so peculiarly soothing to look at him? Perhaps I was in a daze at seeing him and hardly knew how I really felt. Well, if I hated anyone in this world, I hated Mr. Tanaka; I had to remind myself of this. I wasn’t going to kneel beside him and say, “Why, Mr. Tanaka, how very honored I am to see you again! What has brought you to Kyoto?” Instead I would find some way of showing him my true feelings, even if it was hardly the proper thing for an apprentice to do. Actually, I’d thought of Mr. Tanaka very little these last few years. But still I owed it to myself not to be kind to him, not to pour his sake into his cup if I could spill it on his leg instead. I would smile at him as I was obliged to smile; but it would be the smile I had so often seen on Hatsumomo’s face; and then I would say, “Oh, Mr. Tanaka, the strong odor of fish… it makes me so homesick to sit here beside you!” How shocked he would be! Or perhaps this: “Why, Mr. Tanaka, you look… almost distinguished!” Though in truth, as I looked at him-for by now we’d nearly reached the box in which he sat-he did look distinguished, more distinguished than I could ever have imagined. Mameha was just arriving, lowering herself to her knees to bow. Then he turned his head, and for the first time I saw his broad face and the sharpness of his cheekbones… and most of all, his eyelids folded so tightly in the corners and so smooth and flat. And suddenly everything around me seemed to grow quiet, as if he were the wind that blew and I were just a cloud carried upon it.

He was familiar, certainly-more familiar in some ways than my own image in the mirror. But it wasn’t Mr. Tanaka at all. It was the Chairman.

Ihad seen the Chairman during only one brief moment in my life; but I’d spent a great many moments since then imagining him. He was like a song I’d heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since. Though of course, the notes had changed a bit over time-which is to say that I expected his forehead to be higher and his gray hair not so thick. When I saw him, I had a flicker of uncertainty whether he was really the Chairman; but I felt so soothed, I knew without a doubt I had found him.

While Mameha was greeting the two men, I stood behind awaiting my turn to bow. What if my voice, when I tried to speak, should sound like a rag squeaking on polished wood? Nobu, with his tragic scars, was watching me, but I wasn’t sure whether the Chairman had even noticed me there; I was too timid to glance in his direction. When Mameha took her place and began to smooth her kimono over her knees, I saw that the Chairman was looking at me with what I took to be curiosity. My feet actually went cold from all the blood that came rushing into my face.

“Chairman Iwamura… President Nobu,” Mameha said, “this is my new younger sister, Sayuri.”

I’m certain you’ve heard of the famous Iwamura Ken, founder of Iwamura Electric. And probably you’ve heard of Nobu Toshikazu as well. Certainly no business partnership in Japan was ever more famous than theirs. They were like a tree and its roots, or like a shrine and the gate that stands before it. Even as a fourteen-year-old girl I’d heard of them. But I’d never imagined for a moment that Iwamura Ken might be the man I’d met on the banks of the Shirakawa Stream. Well, I lowered myself to my knees and bowed to them, saying all the usual things about begging their indulgence and so forth. When I was done, I went to kneel in the space between them. Nobu fell into conversation with a man beside him, while the Chairman, on the other side of me, sat with his hand around an empty teacup on a tray at his knee. Mameha began talking to him; I picked up a small teapot and held my sleeve out of the way to pour. To my astonishment, the Chairman’s eyes drifted to my arm. Of course, I was eager to see for myself exactly what he was seeing. Perhaps because of the murky light in the Exhibition Hall, the underside of my arm seemed to shine with the gleaming smoothness of a pearl, and was a beautiful ivory color. No part of my body had ever struck me as lovely in this way before. I was very aware that the Chairman’s eyes weren’t moving; as long as he kept looking at my arm, I certainly wasn’t going to take it away. And then suddenly Mameha fell silent. It seemed to me she’d stopped talking because the Chairman was watching my arm instead of listening to her. Then I realized what was really the matter.

The teapot was empty. What was more, it had been empty even when I’d picked it up.

I’d felt almost glamorous a moment earlier, but now I muttered an apology and put the pot down as quickly as I could. Mameha laughed. “You can see what a determined girl she is, Chairman,” she said. “If there’d been a single drop of tea in that pot, Sayuri would have gotten it out.”

“That certainly is a beautiful kimono your younger sister is wearing, Mameha,” the Chairman said. “Do I recall seeing it on you, back during your days as an apprentice?”

If I felt any lingering doubts about whether this man was really the Chairman, I felt them no longer after hearing the familiar kindness of his voice.

“It’s possible, I suppose,” Mameha replied. “But the Chairman has seen me in so many different kimono over the years, I can’t imagine he remembers them all.”

“Well, I’m no different from any other man. Beauty makes quite an impression on me. When it comes to these sumo wrestlers, I can’t tell one of them from the next.”