Memoirs of a Geisha (51 page)

“Then how do you know it's true?” said Nobu. “The fish certainly didn't tell it to you.”

“The fish died then and there! How could it tell me if I wasn't born yet? Besides, I don't speak Russian.”

“All right, Pumpkin,” I said, “so you believe the Chairman's fish is a talking fish too.”

“I didn't say that. But it looks
exactly
like that talking fish did. I wouldn't eat it if I was starving to death.”

“If you hadn't been born yet,” said the Chairman, “and even your mother hadn't been born, how do you know what the fish looked like?”

“You know what the Prime Minister looks like, don't you?” she said. “But have you ever met him? Actually, you probably have. Let me pick a better example. You know what the Emperor looks like, but you've never had the honor of meeting him!”

“The Chairman has had the honor, Pumpkin,” Nobu said.

“You know what I mean. Everybody knows what the Emperor looks like. That's what I'm trying to say.”

“There are pictures of the Emperor,” said Nobu. “You can't have seen a picture of the fish.”

“The fish is famous where I grew up. My mother told me all about it, and I'm telling you,
it looks like that thing right there on the table
!”

“Thank heavens for people like you, Pumpkin,” said the Chairman. “You make the rest of us seem positively dull.”

“Well, that's my story. I'm not telling another one. If the rest of you want to play ‘big liar,' somebody else can start.”

“I'll start,” said Mameha. “Here's my first story. When I was about six years old I went out one morning to draw water from the well in our okiya, and I heard the sound of a man clearing his throat and coughing. It was coming from
inside
the well. I woke up the mistress, and she came out to listen to it. When we held a lantern over the well, we couldn't find anyone there at all, but we continued to hear him until after the sun had come up. Then the sounds stopped and we never heard them again.”

“The other story is the true one,” said Nobu, “and I haven't even heard it.”

“You have to listen to them both,” Mameha went on. “Here's my second. One time I went with several geisha to Osaka to entertain at the home of Akita Masaichi.” He was a famous businessman who'd made a fortune before the war. “After we sang and drank for hours, Akita-san fell asleep on the mats, and one of the other geisha snuck us into the next room and opened a big chest full of all kinds of pornography. There were pornographic woodblock prints, including some by Hiroshige—”

“Hiroshige never made pornographic prints,” said Pumpkin.

“Yes, he did, Pumpkin,” the Chairman said. “I've seen some of them.”

“And also,” Mameha went on, “he had pictures of all sorts of fat European women and men, and some reels of movies.”

“I knew Akita Masaichi well,” said the Chairman. “He wouldn't have had a collection of pornography. The other one is true.”

“Now, really, Chairman,” Nobu said. “You believe a story about a man's voice coming out of a well?”

“I don't have to believe it. All that matters is whether Mameha thinks it's true.”

Pumpkin and the Chairman voted for the man in the well. The Minister and Nobu voted for the pornography. As for me, I'd heard both of these before and knew that the man in the well was the true one. The Minister drank his penalty glass without complaining; but Nobu grumbled all the while, so we made him go next.

“I'm not going to play this game,” he said.

“You're going to play it, or you're going to drink a penalty glass of sake every round,” Mameha told him.

“All right, you want two stories, I'll tell you two stories,” he said. “Here's the first one. I've got a little white dog, named Kubo. One night I came home, and Kubo's fur was completely blue.”

“I believe it,” said Pumpkin. “It had probably been kidnapped by some sort of demon.”

Nobu looked as if he couldn't quite imagine that Pumpkin was serious. “The next day it happened again,” he went on tentatively, “only this time Kubo's fur was bright red.”

“Definitely demons,” said Pumpkin. “Demons love red. It's the color of blood.”

Nobu began to look positively angry when he heard this. “Here's my second story. Last week I went to the office so early in the morning that my secretary hadn't yet arrived. All right, which is the true one?”

Of course, we all chose the secretary, except for Pumpkin, who was made to drink a penalty glass of sake. And I don't mean a cup; I mean a glass. The Minister poured it for her, adding drop by drop after the glass was full, until it was bulging over the rim. Pumpkin had to sip it before she could pick the glass up. I felt worried just watching her, for she had a very low tolerance for alcohol.

“I can't believe the story about the dog isn't true,” she said after she'd finished the glass. Already I thought I could hear her words slurring a bit. “How could you make something like that up?”

“How could I make it up? The question is, how could you believe it? Dogs don't turn blue. Or red. And there aren't demons.”

It was my turn to go next. “My first story is this. One night some years ago, the Kabuki actor Yoegoro got very drunk and told me he'd always found me beautiful.”

“This one isn't true,” Pumpkin said. “I know Yoegoro.”

“I'm sure you do. But nevertheless, he told me he found me beautiful, and ever since that night, he's sent me letters from time to time. In the corner of every letter, he glues one little curly black hair.”

The Chairman laughed at this, but Nobu sat up, looking angry, and said, “Really, these Kabuki actors. What irritating people!”

“I don't get it. What do you mean a
curly
black hair?” Pumpkin said; but you could see from her expression that she figured out the answer right away.

Everyone fell silent, waiting for my second story. It had been on my mind since we'd started playing the game, though I was nervous about telling it, and not at all certain it was the right thing to do.

“Once when I was a child,” I began, “I was very upset one day, and I went to the banks of the Shirakawa Stream and began to cry . . .”

As I began this story, I felt almost as though I were reaching across the table to touch the Chairman on the hand. Because it seemed to me that no one else in the room would see anything unusual in what I was saying, whereas the Chairman would understand this very private story—or at least, I hoped he would. I felt I was having a conversation with him more intimate than any we'd ever had; and I could feel myself growing warm as I spoke. Just before continuing, I glanced up, expecting to find the Chairman looking at me quizzically. Instead, he didn't seem even to be paying attention. All at once I felt so vain, like a girl posturing for the crowds as she walks along, only to discover the street is empty.

I'm sure everyone in the room had grown tired of waiting for me by this time, because Mameha said, “Well? Go on.” Pumpkin mumbled something too, but I couldn't understand her.

“I'm going to tell another story,” I said. “Do you remember the geisha Okaichi? She died in an accident during the war. Many years before, she and I were talking one day, and she told me she'd always been afraid a heavy wooden box would fall right onto her head and kill her. And that's exactly how she died. A crate full of scrap metal fell from a shelf.”

I'd been so preoccupied, I didn't realize until this moment that neither of my stories was true. Both were partially true; but it didn't concern me very much in any case, because most people cheated while playing this game. So I waited until the Chairman had chosen a story—which was the one about Yoegoro and the curly hair—and declared him right. Pumpkin and the Minister had to drink penalty glasses of sake.

After this it was the Chairman's turn.

“I'm not very good at this sort of game,” he said. “Not like you geisha, who are so adept at lying.”

“Chairman!” said Mameha, but of course she was only teasing.

“I'm concerned about Pumpkin, so I'm going to make this simple. If she has to drink another glass of sake, I don't think she'll make it.”

It was true that Pumpkin was having trouble focusing her eyes. I don't even think she was listening to the Chairman until he said her name.

“Just listen closely, Pumpkin. Here's my first story. This evening I came to attend a party at the Ichiriki Teahouse. And here's my second. Several days ago, a fish came walking into my office—no, forget that. You might even believe in a walking fish. How about this one. Several days ago, I opened my desk drawer, and a little man jumped out wearing a uniform and began to sing and dance. All right, now which one is true?”

“You don't expect me to believe a man jumped out of your drawer,” Pumpkin said.

“Just pick one of the stories. Which is true?”

“The other one. I don't remember what it was.”

“We ought to make you drink a penalty glass for that, Chairman,” said Mameha.

When Pumpkin heard the words “penalty glass,” she must have assumed she'd done something wrong, because the next thing we knew, she'd drunk half a glassful of sake, and she wasn't looking well. The Chairman was the first to notice, and took the glass right out of her hand.

“You're not a drain spout, Pumpkin.” the Chairman said. She stared at him so blankly, he asked if she could hear him.

“She might be able to hear you,” Nobu said, “but she certainly can't see you.”

“Come on, Pumpkin,” the Chairman said. “I'm going to walk you to your home. Or drag you, if I have to.”

Mameha offered to help, and the two of them led Pumpkin out together, leaving Nobu and the Minister sitting at the table with me.

“Well, Minister,” Nobu said at last, “how was your evening?”

I think the Minister was every bit as drunk as Pumpkin had been; but he muttered that the evening had been very enjoyable. “Very enjoyable, indeed,” he added, nodding a couple of times. After this, he held out his sake cup for me to fill, but Nobu plucked it from his hand.

 

  chapter thirty-two

A
ll through that winter and the following spring, Nobu went on bringing the Minister to Gion once or even twice every week. Considering how much time the two of them spent together during these months, you'd think the Minister would eventually have realized that Nobu felt toward him just as an ice pick feels toward a block of ice; but if he did, he never showed the least sign. To tell the truth, the Minister never seemed to notice much of anything, except whether I was kneeling beside him and whether his cup was full of sake. This devotion made my life difficult at times; when I paid too much attention to the Minister, Nobu grew short-tempered, and the side of his face with less scarring turned a brilliant red from anger. This was why the presence of the Chairman, Mameha, and Pumpkin was so valuable to me. They played the same role straw plays in a packing crate.

Of course I valued the Chairman's presence for another reason as well. I saw more of him during these months than I'd ever seen of him before, and over time I came to realize that the image of him in my mind, whenever I lay on my futon at night, wasn't really how he looked, not exactly. For example, I'd always pictured his eyelids smooth with almost no lashes at all; but in fact they were edged with dense, soft hair like little brushes. And his mouth was far more expressive than I'd ever realized—so expressive, in fact, that he often hid his feelings only very poorly. When he was amused by something but didn't want to show it, I could nevertheless spot his mouth quivering in the corners. Or when he was lost in thought—mulling over some problem he'd encountered during the day, perhaps—he sometimes turned a sake cup around and around in his hand and put his mouth into a deep frown that made creases all the way down the sides of his chin. Whenever he was carried away in this state I considered myself free to stare at him unabashedly. Something about his frown, and its deep furrows, I came to find inexpressibly handsome. It seemed to show how thoroughly he thought about things, and how seriously he was taken in the world. One evening while Mameha was telling a long story, I gave myself over so completely to staring at the Chairman that when I finally came to myself again, I realized that anyone watching me would have wondered what I was doing. Luckily the Minister was too dazed with drink to have noticed; as for Nobu, he was chewing a bite of something and poking around on the plate with his chopsticks, paying no attention either to Mameha or to me. Pumpkin, though, seemed to have been watching me all along. When I looked at her, she wore a smile I wasn't sure how to interpret.

*  *  *

One evening toward the end of February, Pumpkin came down with the flu and was unable to join us at the Ichiriki. The Chairman was late that night as well, so Mameha and I spent an hour entertaining Nobu and the Minister by ourselves. We finally decided to put on a dance, more for our own benefit than for theirs. Nobu wasn't much of a devotee, and the Minister had no interest at all. It wasn't our first choice as a way to pass the time, but we couldn't think of anything better.

First Mameha performed a few brief pieces while I accompanied her on the shamisen. Afterward, we exchanged places. Just as I was taking up the starting pose for my first dance—my torso bent so that my folding fan reached toward the ground, and my other arm stretched out to one side—the door slid open and the Chairman entered. We greeted him and waited while he took a seat at the table. I was delighted he'd arrived, because although I knew he'd seen me on the stage, he'd certainly never watched me dance in a setting as intimate as this one. At first I'd intended to perform a short piece called “Shimmering Autumn Leaves,” but now I changed my mind and asked Mameha to play “Cruel Rain” instead. The story behind “Cruel Rain” is of a young woman who feels deeply moved when her lover takes off his kimono jacket to cover her during a rainstorm, because she knows him to be an enchanted spirit whose body will melt away if he becomes wet. My teachers had often complimented me on the way I expressed the woman's feelings of sorrow; during the section when I had to sink slowly to my knees, I rarely allowed my legs to tremble as most dancers did. Probably I've mentioned this already, but in dances of the Inoue School the facial expression is as important as the movement of the arms or legs. So although I'd like to have stolen glances at the Chairman as I was dancing, I had to keep my eyes positioned properly at all times, and was never able to do it. Instead, to help give feeling to my dance, I focused my mind on the saddest thing I could think of, which was to imagine that my
danna
was there in the room with me—not the Chairman, but rather Nobu. The moment I formulated this thought, everything around me seemed to droop heavily toward the earth. Outside in the garden, the eaves of the roof dripped rain like beads of weighted glass. Even the mats themselves seemed to press down upon the floor. I remember thinking that I was dancing to express not the pain of a young woman who has lost her supernatural lover, but the pain I myself would feel when my life was finally robbed of the one thing I cared most deeply about. I found myself thinking, too, of Satsu; I danced the bitterness of our eternal separation. By the end I felt almost overcome with grief; but I certainly wasn't prepared for what I saw when I turned to look at the Chairman.

He was sitting at the near corner of the table so that, as it happened, no one but me could see him. I thought he wore an expression of astonishment at first, because his eyes were so wide. But just as his mouth sometimes twitched when he tried not to smile, now I could see it twitching under the strain of a different emotion. I couldn't be sure, but I had the impression his eyes were heavy with tears. He looked toward the door, pretending to scratch the side of his nose so he could wipe a finger in the corner of his eye; and he smoothed his eyebrows as though they were the source of his trouble. I was so shocked to see the Chairman in pain that I felt almost disoriented for a moment. I made my way back to the table, and Mameha and Nobu began to talk. After a moment the Chairman interrupted.

“Where is Pumpkin this evening?”

“Oh, she's ill, Chairman,” said Mameha.

“What do you mean? Won't she be here at all?”

“No, not at all,” Mameha said. “And it's a good thing, considering she has the stomach flu.”

Mameha went back to talking. I saw the Chairman glance at his wristwatch and then, with his voice still unsteady, he said:

“Mameha, you'll have to excuse me. I'm not feeling very well myself this evening.”

Nobu said something funny just as the Chairman was sliding the door shut, and everyone laughed. But I was thinking a thought that frightened me. In my dance, I'd tried to express the pain of absence. Certainly I had upset myself doing it, but I'd upset the Chairman too; and was it possible he'd been thinking of Pumpkin—who, after all, was absent? I couldn't imagine him on the brink of tears over Pumpkin's illness, or any such thing, but perhaps I'd stirred up some darker, more complicated feelings. All I knew was that when my dance ended, the Chairman asked about Pumpkin; and he left when he learned she was ill. I could hardly bring myself to believe it. If I'd made the discovery that the Chairman had developed feelings for Mameha, I wouldn't have been surprised. But Pumpkin? How could the Chairman long for someone so . . . well, so lacking in refinement?

You might think that any woman with common sense ought to have given up her hopes at this point. And I did for a time go to the fortune-teller every day, and read my almanac more carefully even than usual, searching for some sign whether I should submit to what seemed my inevitable destiny. Of course, we Japanese were living in a decade of crushed hopes. I wouldn't have found it surprising if mine had died off just like so many other people's. But on the other hand, many believed the country itself would one day rise again; and we all knew such a thing could never happen if we resigned ourselves to living forever in the rubble. Every time I happened to read an account in the newspaper of some little shop that had made, say, bicycle parts before the war, and was now back in business almost as though the war had never happened, I had to tell myself that if our entire nation could emerge from its own dark valley, there was certainly hope that I could emerge from mine.

*  *  *

Beginning that March and running all through the spring, Mameha and I were busy with
Dances of the Old Capital
, which was being staged again for the first time since Gion had closed in the final years of the war. As it happened, the Chairman and Nobu grew busy as well during these months, and brought the Minister to Gion only twice. Then one day during the first week of June, I heard that my presence at the Ichiriki Teahouse had been requested early that evening by Iwamura Electric. I had an engagement booked weeks before that I couldn't easily miss; so by the time I finally slid open the door to join the party, I was half an hour late. To my surprise, instead of the usual group around the table, I found only Nobu and the Minister.

I could see at once that Nobu was angry. Of course, I imagined he was angry at me for making him spend so much time alone with the Minister—though to tell the truth, the two of them weren't “spending time together” any more than a squirrel is spending time with the insects that live in the same tree. Nobu was drumming his fingers on the tabletop, wearing a very cross expression, while the Minister stood at the window gazing out at the garden.

“All right, Minister!” Nobu said, when I'd settled myself at the table. “That's enough of watching the bushes grow. Are we supposed to sit here and wait for you all night?”

The Minister was startled, and gave a little bow of apology before coming to take his place on a cushion I'd set out for him. Usually I had difficulty thinking of anything to say to him, but tonight my task was easier since I hadn't seen him in so long.

“Minister,” I said, “you don't like me anymore!”

“Eh?” said the Minister, who managed to rearrange his features so they showed a look of surprise.

“You haven't been to see me in more than a month! Is it because Nobu-san has been unkind, and hasn't brought you to Gion as often as he should have?”

“Nobu-san isn't unkind,” said the Minister. He blew several breaths up his nose before adding, “I've asked too much of him already.”

“Keeping you away for a month? He certainly is unkind. We have so much to catch up on.”

“Yes,” Nobu interrupted, “mostly a lot of drinking.”

“My goodness, but Nobu-san is grouchy tonight. Has he been this way all evening? And where are the Chairman, and Mameha and Pumpkin? Won't they be joining us?”

“The Chairman isn't available this evening,” Nobu said. “I don't know where the others are. They're your problem, not mine.”

In a moment, the door slid back, and two maids entered carrying dinner trays for the men. I did my best to keep them company while they ate—which is to say, I tried for a while to get Nobu to talk; but he wasn't in a talking mood; and then I tried to get the Minister to talk, but of course, it would have been easier to get a word or two out of the grilled minnow on his plate. So at length I gave up and just chattered away about whatever I wanted, until I began to feel like an old lady talking to her two dogs. All this while I poured sake as liberally as I could for both men. Nobu didn't drink much, but the Minister held his cup out gratefully every time. Just as the Minister was beginning to take on that glassy-eyed look, Nobu, like a man who has just woken up, suddenly put his own cup firmly on the table, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and said:

“All right, Minister, that's enough for one evening. It's time for you to be heading home.”

“Nobu-san!” I said. “I have the impression your guest is just beginning to enjoy himself.”

“He's enjoyed himself plenty. We're sending him home early for once, thank heavens. Come on, then, Minister! Your wife will be grateful.”

“I'm not married,” said the Minister. But already he was pulling up his socks and getting ready to stand.

I led Nobu and the Minister up the hallway to the entrance, and helped the Minister into his shoes. Taxis were still uncommon because of gasoline rationing, but the maid summoned a rickshaw and I helped the Minister into it. Already I'd noticed that he was acting a bit strangely, but this evening he pointed his eyes at his knees and wouldn't even say good-bye. Nobu remained in the entryway, glowering out into the night as if he were watching clouds gather, though in fact it was a clear evening. When the Minister had left, I said to him, “Nobu-san, what in heaven's name is the matter with the two of you?”

He gave me a look of disgust and walked back into the teahouse. I found him in the room, tapping his empty sake cup on the table with his one hand. I thought he wanted sake, but he ignored me when I asked—and the vial turned out to be empty, in any case. I waited a long moment, thinking he had something to say to me, but finally I spoke up.