Memoirs of a Geisha (9 page)

Teacher Mouse knelt on a cushion facing the class and made no effort at all to look friendly. When the students bowed to her in unison and told her good morning, she just glowered back at them without speaking a word. Finally she looked at the board on the wall and called out the name of the first student.

This first girl seemed to have a very high opinion of herself. After she'd glided to the front of the room, she bowed before the teacher and began to play. In a minute or two Teacher Mouse told the girl to stop and said all sorts of unpleasant things about her playing; then she snapped her fan shut and waved it at the girl to dismiss her. The girl thanked her, bowed again, and returned to her place, and Teacher Mouse called the name of the next student.

This went on for more than an hour, until at length Pumpkin's name was called. I could see that Pumpkin was nervous, and in fact, the moment she began to play, everything seemed to go wrong. First Teacher Mouse stopped her and took the shamisen to retune the strings herself. Then Pumpkin tried again, but all the students began looking at one another, for no one could tell what piece she was trying to play. Teacher Mouse slapped the table very loudly and told them all to face straight ahead; and then she used her folding fan to tap out the rhythm for Pumpkin to follow. This didn't help, so finally Teacher Mouse began to work instead on Pumpkin's manner of holding the plectrum. She nearly sprained every one of Pumpkin's fingers, it seemed to me, trying to make her hold it with the proper grip. At last she gave up even on this and let the plectrum fall to the mats in disgust. Pumpkin picked it up and came back to her place with tears in her eyes.

After this I learned why Pumpkin had been so worried about being the last student. Because now the girl with the disheveled hair, who'd been rushing to the school as we'd left for breakfast, came to the front of the room and bowed.

“Don't waste your time trying to be courteous to me!” Teacher Mouse squeaked at her. “If you hadn't slept so late this morning, you might have arrived here in time to learn something.”

The girl apologized and soon began to play, but the teacher paid no attention at all. She just said, “You sleep too late in the mornings. How do you expect me to teach you, when you can't take the trouble to come to school like the other girls and sign up properly? Just go back to your place. I don't want to be bothered with you.”

The class was dismissed, and Pumpkin led me to the front of the room, where we bowed to Teacher Mouse.

“May I be permitted to introduce Chiyo to you, Teacher,” Pumpkin said, “and ask your indulgence in instructing her, because she's a girl of very little talent.”

Pumpkin wasn't trying to insult me; this was just the way people spoke back then, when they wanted to be polite. My own mother would have said it the same way.

Teacher Mouse didn't speak for a long while, but just looked me over and then said, “You're a clever girl. I can see it just from looking at you. Perhaps you can help your older sister with her lessons.”

Of course she was talking about Pumpkin.

“Put your name on the board as early every morning as you can,” she told me. “Keep quiet in the classroom. I tolerate no talking at all! And your eyes must stay to the front. If you do these things, I'll teach you as best I can.”

And with this, she dismissed us.

In the hallways between classes, I kept my eyes open for Satsu, but I didn't find her. I began to worry that perhaps I would never see her again, and grew so upset that one of the teachers, just before beginning the class, silenced everyone and said to me:

“You, there! What's troubling you?”

“Oh, nothing, ma'am. Only I bit my lip by accident,” I said. And to make good on this—for the sake of the girls around me, who were staring—I gave a sharp bite on my lip and tasted blood.

It was a relief to me that Pumpkin's other classes weren't as painful to watch as the first one had been. In the dance class, for example, the students practiced the moves in unison, with the result that no one stood out. Pumpkin wasn't by any means the worst dancer, and even had a certain awkward grace in the way she moved. The singing class later in the morning was more difficult for her since she had a poor ear; but there again, the students practiced in unison, so Pumpkin was able to hide her mistakes by moving her mouth a great deal while singing only softly.

At the end of each of her classes, she introduced me to the teacher. One of them said to me, “You live in the same okiya as Pumpkin, do you?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said, “the Nitta okiya,” for Nitta was the family name of Granny and Mother, as well as Auntie.

“That means you live with Hatsumomo-san.”

“Yes, ma'am. Hatsumomo is the only geisha in our okiya at present.”

“I'll do my best to teach you about singing,” she said, “so long as you manage to stay alive!”

After this the teacher laughed as though she'd made a great joke, and sent us on our way.

 

  chapter five

T
hat afternoon Hatsumomo took me to the Gion Registry Office. I was expecting something very grand, but it turned out to be nothing more than several dark tatami rooms on the second floor of the school building, filled with desks and accounting books and smelling terribly of cigarettes. A clerk looked up at us through the haze of smoke and nodded us into the back room. There at a table piled with papers sat the biggest man I'd ever seen in my life. I didn't know it at the time, but he'd once been a sumo wrestler; and really, if he'd gone outside and slammed his weight into the building itself, all those desks would probably have fallen off the tatami platform onto the floor. He hadn't been a good enough sumo wrestler to take a retirement name, as some of them do; but he still liked to be called by the name he'd used in his wrestling days, which was Awajiumi. Some of the geisha shortened this playfully to Awaji, as a nickname.

As soon as we walked in, Hatsumomo turned on her charm. It was the first time I'd ever seen her do it. She said to him, “Awaji-san!” But the way she spoke, I wouldn't have been surprised if she had run out of breath in the middle, because it sounded like this:

“Awaaa-jii-saaaannnnnnnn!”

It was as if she were scolding him. He put down his pen when he heard her voice, and his two big cheeks shifted up toward his ears, which was his way of smiling.

“Mmm . . . Hatsumomo-san,” he said, “if you get any prettier, I don't know what I'm going to do!”

It sounded like a loud whisper when he spoke, because sumo wrestlers often ruin their voice boxes, smashing into one another's throats the way they do.

He may have been the size of a hippopotamus, but Awajiumi was a very elegant dresser. He wore a pin-striped kimono and kimono trousers. His job was to make certain that all the money passing through Gion flowed where it was supposed to; and a trickle from that river of cash flowed directly into his pocket. That isn't to say that he was stealing; it was just the way the system worked. Considering that Awajiumi had such an important job, it was to every geisha's advantage to keep him happy, which was why he had a reputation for spending as much time out of his elegant clothes as in them.

She and Awajiumi talked for a long time, and finally Hatsumomo told him she'd come to register me for lessons at the school. Awajiumi hadn't really looked at me yet, but here he turned his giant head. After a moment he got up to slide open one of the paper screens over the window for more light.

“Why, I thought my eyes had fooled me,” he said. “You should have told me sooner what a pretty girl you brought with you. Her eyes . . . they're the color of a mirror!”

“A mirror?” Hatsumomo said. “A mirror has no color, Awaji-san.”

“Of course it does. It's a sparkly gray. When you look at a mirror, all you see is yourself, but I know a pretty color when I find it.”

“Do you? Well, it isn't so pretty to me. I once saw a dead man fished out of the river, and his tongue was just the same color as her eyes.”

“Maybe you're just too pretty yourself to be able to see it elsewhere,” Awajiumi said, opening an account book and picking up his pen. “Anyway, let's register the girl. Now . . . Chiyo, is it? Tell me your full name, Chiyo, and your place of birth.”

The moment I heard these words, I had an image in my mind of Satsu staring up at Awajiumi, full of confusion and fear. She must have been in this same room at some time or other; if I had to register, surely she'd had to register too.

“Sakamoto is my last name,” I said. “I was born in the town of Yoroido. You may have heard of it, sir, because of my older sister, Satsu?”

I thought Hatsumomo would be furious with me; but to my surprise she seemed almost pleased about the question I'd asked.

“If she's older than you, she'd have registered already,” Awajiumi said. “But I haven't come across her. I don't think she's in Gion at all.”

Now Hatsumomo's smile made sense to me; she'd known in advance what Awajiumi would say. If I'd felt any doubts whether she really had spoken to my sister as she claimed, I felt them no longer. There were other geisha districts in Kyoto, though I didn't know much about them. Satsu was somewhere in one of them, and I was determined to find her.

*  *  *

When I returned to the okiya, Auntie was waiting to take me to the bathhouse down the street. I'd been there before, though only with the elderly maids, who usually handed me a small towel and a scrap of soap and then squatted on the tile floor to wash themselves while I did the same. Auntie was much kinder, and knelt over me to scrub my back. I was surprised that she had no modesty whatever, and slung her tube-shaped breasts around as if they were nothing more than bottles. She even whacked me on the shoulder with one several times by accident.

Afterward she took me back to the okiya and dressed me in the first silk kimono I'd ever worn, a brilliant blue with green grasses all around the hem and bright yellow flowers across the sleeves and chest. Then she led me up the stairs to Hatsumomo's room. Before going in, she gave me a stern warning not to distract Hatsumomo in any way, or do anything that might make her angry. I didn't understand it at the time, but now I know perfectly well why she was so concerned. Because, you see, when a geisha wakes up in the morning she is just like any other woman. Her face may be greasy from sleep, and her breath unpleasant. It may be true that she wears a startling hairstyle even as she struggles to open her eyes; but in every other respect she's a woman like any other, and not a geisha at all. Only when she sits before her mirror to apply her makeup with care does she become a geisha. And I don't mean that this is when she begins to look like one. This is when she begins to think like one too.

In the room, I was instructed to sit about an arm's length to the side of Hatsumomo and just behind her, where I could see her face in the tiny dressing mirror on her makeup stand. She was kneeling on a cushion, wearing a cotton robe that clung to her shoulders, and gathering in her hands a half dozen makeup brushes in various shapes. Some of them were broad like fans, while others looked like a chopstick with a dot of soft hair at the end. Finally she turned and showed them to me.

“These are my brushes,” she said. “And do you remember this?” She took from the drawer of her makeup stand a glass container of stark white makeup and waved it around in the air for me to see. “This is the makeup I told you never to touch.”

“I haven't touched it,” I said.

She sniffed the closed jar several times and said, “No, I don't think you have.” Then she put the makeup down and took up three pigment sticks, which she held out for me in the palm of her hand.

“These are for shading. You may look at them.”

I took one of the pigment sticks from her. It was about the size of a baby's finger, but hard and smooth as stone, so that it left no trace of color on my skin. One end was wrapped in delicate silver foil that was flecking away from the pressure of use.

Hatsumomo took the pigment sticks back and held out what looked to me like a twig of wood burned at one end.

“This is a nice dry piece of paulownia wood,” she said, “for drawing my eyebrows. And this is wax.” She took two half-used bars of wax from their paper wrapping and held them out for me to see.

“Now why do you suppose I've shown you these things?”

“So I'll understand how you put on your makeup,” I said.

“Heavens, no! I've shown them to you so you'll see there isn't any magic involved. What a pity for you! Because it means that makeup alone won't be enough to change poor Chiyo into something beautiful.”

Hatsumomo turned back to face the mirror and sang quietly to herself as she opened a jar of pale yellow cream. You may not believe me when I tell you that this cream was made from nightingale droppings, but it's true. Many geisha used it as a face cream in those days, because it was believed to be very good for the skin; but it was so expensive that Hatsumomo put only a few dots around her eyes and mouth. Then she tore a small piece of wax from one of the bars and, after softening it in her fingertips, rubbed it into the skin of her face, and afterward of her neck and chest. She took some time to wipe her hands clean on a rag, and then moistened one of her flat makeup brushes in a dish of water and rubbed it in the makeup until she had a chalky white paste. She used this to paint her face and neck, but left her eyes bare, as well as the area around her lips and nose. If you've ever seen a child cut holes in paper to make a mask, this was how Hatsumomo looked, until she dampened some smaller brushes and used them to fill in the cutouts. After this she looked as if she'd fallen face-first into a bin of rice flour, for her whole face was ghastly white. She looked like the demon she was, but even so, I was sick with jealousy and shame. Because I knew that in an hour or so, men would be gazing with astonishment at that face; and I would still be there in the okiya, looking sweaty and plain.

Now she moistened her pigment sticks and used them to rub a reddish blush onto her cheeks. Already during my first month in the okiya, I'd seen Hatsumomo in her finished makeup many times; I stole looks at her whenever I could without seeming rude. I'd noticed she used a variety of tints for her cheeks, depending on the colors of her kimono. There was nothing unusual in this; but what I didn't know until years later was that Hatsumomo always chose a shade much redder than others might have used. I can't say why she did it, unless it was to make people think of blood. But Hatsumomo was no fool; she knew how to bring out the beauty in her features.

When she'd finished applying blush, she still had no eyebrows or lips. But for the moment she left her face like a bizarre white mask and asked Auntie to paint the back of her neck. I must tell you something about necks in Japan, if you don't know it; namely, that Japanese men, as a rule, feel about a woman's neck and throat the same way that men in the West might feel about a woman's legs. This is why geisha wear the collars of their kimono so low in the back that the first few bumps of the spine are visible; I suppose it's like a woman in Paris wearing a short skirt. Auntie painted onto the back of Hatsumomo's neck a design called
sanbon-ashi
—“three legs.” It makes a very dramatic picture, for you feel as if you're looking at the bare skin of the neck through little tapering points of a white fence. It was years before I understood the erotic effect it has on men; but in a way, it's like a woman peering out from between her fingers. In fact, a geisha leaves a tiny margin of skin bare all around the hairline, causing her makeup to look even more artificial, something like a mask worn in Noh drama. When a man sits beside her and sees her makeup like a mask, he becomes that much more aware of the bare skin beneath.

While Hatsumomo was rinsing out her brushes, she glanced several times at my reflection in the mirror. Finally she said to me:

“I know what you're thinking. You're thinking you'll never be so beautiful. Well, it's perfectly true.”

“I'll have you know,” said Auntie, “that some people find Chiyo-chan quite a lovely girl.”

“Some people like the smell of rotting fish,” said Hatsumomo. And with that, she ordered us to leave the room so she could change into her underrobe.

Auntie and I stepped out onto the landing, where Mr. Bekku stood waiting near the full-length mirror, looking just as he had on the day he'd taken Satsu and me from our home. As I'd learned during my first week in the okiya, his real occupation wasn't dragging girls from their homes at all; he was a dresser, which is to say that he came to the okiya every day to help Hatsumomo put on her elaborate kimono.

The robe Hatsumomo would wear that evening was hanging on a stand near the mirror. Auntie stood smoothing it until Hatsumomo came out wearing an underrobe in a lovely rust color, with a pattern of deep yellow leaves. What happened next made very little sense to me at the time, because the complicated costume of kimono is confusing to people who aren't accustomed to it. But the way it's worn makes perfect sense if it's explained properly.

To begin with, you must understand that a housewife and a geisha wear kimono very differently. When a housewife dresses in kimono, she uses all sorts of padding to keep the robe from bunching unattractively at the waist, with the result that she ends up looking perfectly cylindrical, like a wood column in a temple hall. But a geisha wears kimono so frequently she hardly needs any padding, and bunching never seems to be a problem. Both a housewife and a geisha will begin by taking off their makeup robes and tucking a silk slip around the bare hips; we call this a
koshimaki
—“hip wrap.” It's followed by a short-sleeved kimono undershirt, tied shut at the waist, and then the pads, which look like small contoured pillows with strings affixed for tying them into place. In Hatsumomo's case, with her traditional small-hipped, willowy figure, and her experience of wearing kimono for so many years, she didn't use padding at all.