Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

It happened in the okiya during the course of about a minute, not long after lunch one cold day while I knelt on the wooden walkway with my shamisen. Hatsumomo was strolling past on her way to the toilet. If I’d had shoes I would have stepped down onto the dirt corridor to get out of her way. But as it was, I could do nothing but struggle to get up from my knees, with my legs and arms nearly frozen. If I’d been quicker Hatsumomo probably wouldn’t have bothered speaking to me. But during that moment while I rose to my feet, she said:

“The German Ambassador is coming to town, but Pumpkin isn’t free to entertain him. Why don’t you ask Mameha to arrange for you to take Pumpkin’s place?” After this she let out a laugh, as if to say the idea of my doing such a thing was as ridiculous as serving a dish of acorn shells to the Emperor.

The German Ambassador was causing quite a stir in Gion at the time. During this period, in 1935, a new government had recently come to power in Germany; and though I’ve never understood much about politics, I do know that Japan was moving away from the United States during these years and was eager to make a good impression on the new German Ambassador. Everyone in Gion wondered who would be given the honor of entertaining him during his upcoming visit.

When Hatsumomo spoke to me, I ought to have lowered my head in shame and made a great show of lamenting the misery of my life compared with Pumpkin’s. But as it happened, I had just been musing about how much my prospects seemed to have improved and how successfully Mameha and I had kept her plan from Hatsumomo-whatever her plan was. My first instinct when Hatsumomo spoke was to smile, but instead I kept my face like a mask, and felt pleased with myself that I’d given nothing away. Hatsumomo gave me an odd look; I ought to have realized right then that something had passed through her mind. I stepped quickly to one side, and she passed me. That was the end of it, as far as I was concerned.

Then a few days later, Mameha and I went to the Shirae Teahouse to meet Dr. Crab once again. But as we rolled open the door, we found Pumpkin slipping her feet into her shoes to leave. I was so startled to see her, I wondered what on earth could possibly have brought her there. Then Hatsumomo stepped down into the entryway as well, and of course I knew: Hatsumomo had outsmarted us somehow.

“Good evening, Mameha-san,” Hatsumomo said. “And look who’s with you! It’s the apprentice the Doctor used to be so fond of.”

I’m sure Mameha felt as shocked as I did, but she didn’t show it. “Why, Hatsumomo-san,” she said, “I scarcely recognize you… but my goodness, you’re aging well!”

Hatsumomo wasn’t actually old; she was only twenty-eight or twenty-nine. I think Mameha was just looking for something nasty to say.

“I expect you’re on your way to see the Doctor,” Hatsumomo said. “Such an interesting man! I only hope he’ll still be happy to see you. Well, good-bye.” Hatsumomo looked cheerful as she walked away, but in the light from the avenue I could see a look of sorrow on Pumpkin’s face.

Mameha and I slipped out of our shoes without speaking a word; neither of us knew what to say. The Shirae’s gloomy atmosphere seemed as thick as the water in a pond that night. The air smelled of stale makeup; the damp plaster was peeling in the corners of the rooms. I would have given anything to turn around and leave.

When we slid open the door from the hallway, we found the mistress of the teahouse keeping Dr. Crab company. Usually she stayed a few minutes even after we’d arrived, probably to charge the Doctor for her time. But tonight she excused herself the moment we entered and didn’t even look up as she passed. Dr. Crab was sitting with his back facing us, so we skipped the formality of bowing and went instead to join him at the table.

“You seem tired, Doctor,” Mameha said. “How are you this evening?”

Dr. Crab didn’t speak. He just twirled his glass of beer on the table to waste time-even though he was an efficient man and never wasted a moment if he could help it.

“Yes, I am rather tired,” he said at last. “I don’t feel much like talking.”

And with that, he drank down the last of his beer and stood to leave. Mameha and I exchanged looks. When Dr. Crab reached the door to the room, he faced us and said, “I certainly do not appreciate when people I have trusted turn out to have misled me.”

Afterward he left without closing the door.

Mameha and I were too stunned to speak. At length she got up and slid the door shut. Back at the table, she smoothed her kimono and then pinched her eyes closed in anger and said to me, “All right, Sayuri. What exactly did you say to Hatsumomo?”

“Mameha-san, after all this work? I promise you I would never do anything to ruin my own chances.”

“The Doctor certainly seems to have thrown you aside as though you’re no better than an empty sack. I’m sure there’s a reason… but we won’t find it out until we know what Hatsumomo said to him tonight.”

“How can we possibly do that?”

“Pumpkin was here in the room. You must go to her and ask.”

I wasn’t at all sure Pumpkin would speak with me, but I said I would try, and Mameha seemed satisfied with this. She stood and prepared to leave, but I stayed where I was until she turned to see what was keeping me.

“Mameha-san, may I ask a question?” I said. “Now Hatsumomo knows I’ve been spending time with the Doctor, and probably she understands the reason why. Dr. Crab certainly knows why. You know why. Even Pumpkin may know why! I’m the only one who doesn’t. Won’t you be kind enough to explain your plan to me?”

Mameha looked as if she felt very sorry I’d asked this question. For a long moment she looked everywhere but at me, but she finally let out a sigh and knelt at the table again to tell me what I wanted to know.

“You know perfectly well,” she began, “that Uchida-san looks at you with the eyes of an artist. But the Doctor is interested in something else, and so is Nobu. Do you know what is meant by ‘the homeless eel’?”

I had no idea what she was talking about, and I said so.

“Men have a kind of… well, an ‘eel’ on them,” she said. “Women don’t have it. But men do. It’s located-”

“I think I know what you’re talking about,” I said, “but I didn’t know it was called an eel.”

“It isn’t an eel, really,” Mameha said. “But pretending it’s an eel makes things so much easier to understand. So let’s think of it that way. Here’s the thing: this eel spends its entire life trying to find a home, and what do you think women have inside them? Caves, where the eels like to live. This cave is where the blood comes from every month when the ‘clouds pass over the moon,’ as we sometimes say.”

I was old enough to understand what Mameha meant by the passage of clouds over the moon, because I’d been experiencing it for a few years already. The first time, I couldn’t have felt more panicked if I’d sneezed and found pieces of my brain in the handkerchief. I really was afraid I might be dying, until Auntie had found me washing out a bloody rag and explained that bleeding was just part of being a woman.

“You may not know this about eels,” Mameha went on, “but they’re quite territorial. When they find a cave they like, they wriggle around inside it for a while to be sure that… well, to be sure it’s a nice cave, I suppose. And when they’ve made up their minds that it’s comfortable, they mark the cave as their territory… by spitting. Do you understand?”

If Mameha had simply told me what she was trying to say, I’m sure I would have been shocked, but at least I’d have had an easier time sorting it all out. Years later I discovered that things had been explained to Mameha in exactly the same way by her own older sister.