Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha

This seemed to give Nobu something to think about, for we walked along in silence a few moments. Finally he said, “I shouldn’t be surprised. You’re as conniving a person as I know.”

“Nobu-san! What else was I to do?” I said. “I thought you had disappeared completely. I might never have known where to find you, if Takazuru hadn’t come to me in tears to say how badly you’ve been treating her.”

“Well, I have been hard on her, I suppose. But she isn’t as clever as you-or as pretty, for that matter. If you’ve been thinking I’m angry with you, you’re quite right.”

“May I ask what I have done to make an old friend so angry?”

Here Nobu stopped and turned to me with a terribly sad look in his eyes. I felt a fondness welling up in me that I’ve known for very few men in my life. I was thinking how much I had missed him, and how deeply I had wronged him. But though I’m ashamed to admit it, my feelings of fondness were tinged with pity.

“After a considerable amount of effort,” he said, “I have discovered the identity of your danna .”

“If Nobu-san had asked me, I would have been glad to tell him.”

“I don’t believe you. You geisha are the most close-mouthed group of people. I asked around Gion about your danna , and one after another they all pretended not to know. I never would have found out, if I hadn’t asked Michizono to come entertain me one night, just the two of us.”

Michizono, who was about fifty at the time, was a sort of legend in Gion. She wasn’t a beautiful woman, but she could sometimes put even Nobu in a good mood just from the way she crinkled her nose at him when she bowed hello.

“I made her play drinking games with me,” he went on, “and I won and won until poor Michizono was quite drunk. I could have asked her anything at all and she would have told me.”

“What a lot of work!” I said.

“Nonsense. She was very enjoyable company. There was nothing like work about it. But shall I tell you something? I have lost respect for you, now that I know your danna is a little man in uniform whom no one admires.”

“Nobu-san speaks as if I have any choice over who my danna is. The only choice I can ever make is what kimono I’ll wear. And even then-”

“Do you know why that man has a desk job? It’s because no one trusts him with anything that matters. I understand the army very well, Sayuri. Even his own superiors have no use for him. You may as well have made an alliance with a beggar! Really, I was once very fond of you, but-”

“Once? Is Nobu-san not fond of me any longer?”

“I have no fondness for fools.”

“What a cold thing to say! Are you only trying to make me cry? Oh, Nobu-san! Am I a fool because my danna is a man you can’t admire?”

“You geisha! There was never a more irritating group of people. You go around consulting your almanacs, saying, ‘Oh, I can’t walk toward the east today, because my horoscope says it’s unlucky!’ But then when it’s a matter of something affecting your entire lives, you simply look the other way.”

“It’s less a matter of looking the other way than of closing our eyes to what we can’t stop from happening.”

“Is that so? Well, I learned a few things from my talk with Michizono that night when I got her drunk. You are the daughter of the okiya, Sayuri. You can’t pretend you have no influence at all. It’s your duty to use what influence you have, unless you want to drift through life like a fish belly-up on the stream.”

“I wish I could believe life really is something more than a stream that carries us along, belly-up.”

“All right, if it’s a stream, you’re still free to be in this part of it or that part, aren’t you? The water will divide again and again. If you bump, and tussle, and fight, and make use of whatever advantages you might have-”

“Oh, that’s fine, I’m sure, when we have advantages.”

“You’d find them everywhere, if you ever bothered to look! In my case, even when I have nothing more than-I don’t know-a chewed-up peach pit, or something of the sort, I won’t let it go to waste. When it’s time to throw it out, I’ll make good and certain to throw it at somebody I don’t like!”

“Nobu-san, are you counseling me to throw peach pits?”

“Don’t joke about it; you know perfectly well what I’m saying. We’re very much alike, Sayuri. I know they call me ‘Mr. Lizard’ and all of that, and here you are, the loveliest creature in Gion. But that very first time I saw you at the sumo tournament years ago-what were you, fourteen?-I could see what a resourceful girl you were even then.”

“I’ve always believed that Nobu-san thinks me more worthy than I really am.”

“Perhaps you’re right. I thought you had something more to you, Sayuri. But it turns out you don’t even understand where your destiny lies. To tie your fortunes to a man like the General! I would have taken proper care of you, you know. It makes me so furious to think about it! When this General is gone from your life, he’ll leave nothing for you to remember him by. Is this how you intend to waste your youth? A woman who acts like a fool is a fool, wouldn’t you say?”

If we rub a fabric too often, it will quickly grow threadbare; and Nobu’s words had rasped against me so much, I could no longer maintain that finely lacquered surface Mameha had always counseled me to hide behind. I felt lucky to be standing in shadow, for I was certain Nobu would think still less of me if he saw the pain I was feeling. But I suppose my silence must have betrayed me; for with his one hand he took my shoulder and turned me just a fraction, until the light fell on my face. And when he looked me in the eyes, he let out a long sigh that sounded at first like disappointment.

“Why do you seem so much older to me, Sayuri?” he said after a moment. “Sometimes I forget you’re still a girl. Now you’re going to tell me I’ve been too harsh with you.”

“I cannot expect that Nobu-san should act like anyone but Nobu-san,” I said.

“I react very badly to disappointment, Sayuri. You ought to know that. Whether you failed me because you’re too young or because you aren’t the woman I thought… either way you failed me, didn’t you?”

“Please, Nobu-san, it frightens me to hear you say these things. I don’t know if I can ever live my life by the standards you use for judging me…”

“What standards are those, really? I expect you to go through life with your eyes open! If you keep your destiny in mind, every moment in life becomes an opportunity for moving closer to it. I wouldn’t expect this sort of awareness from a foolish girl like Takazuru, but-”

“Hasn’t Nobu-san been calling me foolish all evening?”

“You know better than to listen to me when I’m angry.”

“So Nobu-san isn’t angry any longer. Then will he come to see me at the Ichiriki Teahouse? Or invite me to come and see him? In fact, I’m in no particular hurry this evening. I could come in even now, if Nobu-san asked me to.”

By now we had walked around the block, and were standing at the entrance to the teahouse. “I won’t ask you,” he said, and rolled open the door.

I couldn’t help but let out a great sigh when I heard this; and I call it a great sigh because it contained many smaller sighs within it-one sigh of disappointment, one of frustration, one of sadness… and I don’t know what else.

“Oh, Nobu-san,” I said, “sometimes you’re so difficult for me to understand.”

“I’m a very easy man to understand, Sayuri,” he said. “I don’t like things held up before me that I cannot have.”

Before I had a chance to reply, he stepped into the teahouse and rolled the door shut behind him.