Memoirs of a Geisha (26 page)

By now both teams had finished their ring-entering ceremonies. Two more special ceremonies followed, one for each of the two
yokozuna
. A
yokozuna
is the very highest rank in sumo—“just like Mameha’s position in Gion,” as Nobu explained it to me. I had no reason to doubt him; but if Mameha ever took half as much time entering a party as these
yokozuna
took entering the ring, she’d certainly never be invited back. The second of the two was short and had a most remarkable face—not at all flabby, but chiseled like stone, and with a jaw that made me think of the squared front end of a fishing boat. The audience cheered him so loudly I covered my ears. His name was Miyagiyama, and if you know sumo at all, you’ll understand why they cheered as they did.

“He is the greatest wrestler I have ever seen,” Nobu told me.

Just before the bouts were ready to begin, the announcer listed the winner’s prizes. One was a considerable sum of cash offered by Nobu Toshikazu, president of the Iwamura Electric Company. Nobu seemed very annoyed when he heard this and said, “What a fool! The money isn’t from me, it’s from Iwamura Electric. I apologize, Chairman. I’ll call someone over to have the announcer correct his mistake.”

“There’s no mistake, Nobu. Considering the great debt I owe you, it’s the least I can do.”

“The Chairman is too generous,” Nobu said. “I’m very grateful.” And with this, he passed a sake cup to the Chairman and filled it, and the two of them drank together.

When the first wrestlers entered the ring, I expected the bout to begin right away. Instead they spent five minutes or more tossing salt on the mound and squatting in order to tip their bodies to one side and raise a leg high in the air before slamming it down. From time to time they crouched, glowering into each other’s eyes, but just when I thought they were going to charge, one would stand and stroll away to scoop up another handful of salt. Finally, when I wasn’t expecting it, it happened. They slammed into each other, grabbing at loincloths; but within an instant, one had shoved the other off balance and the match was over. The audience clapped and shouted, but Nobu just shook his head and said, “Poor technique.”

During the bouts that followed, I often felt that one ear was linked to my mind and the other to my heart; because on one side I listened to what Nobu told me—and much of it was interesting. But the sound of the Chairman’s voice on the other side, as he went on talking with Mameha, always distracted me.

An hour or more passed, and then the movement of a brilliant color in Awajiumi’s section caught my eye. It was an orange silk flower swaying in a woman’s hair as she took her place on her knees. At first I thought it was Korin, and that she had changed her kimono. But then I saw it wasn’t Korin at all; it was Hatsumomo.

To see her there when I hadn’t expected her . . . I felt a jolt as if I’d stepped on an electric wire. Surely it was only a matter of time before she found a way of humiliating me, even here in this giant hall amid hundreds of people. I didn’t mind her making a fool of me in front of a crowd, if it had to happen; but I couldn’t bear the thought of looking like a fool in front of the Chairman. I felt such a hotness in my throat, I could hardly even pretend to listen when Nobu began telling me something about the two wrestlers climbing onto the mound. When I looked at Mameha, she flicked her eyes toward Hatsumomo, and then said, “Chairman, forgive me, I have to excuse myself. It occurs to me Sayuri may want to do the same.”

She waited until Nobu was done with his story, and then I followed her out of the hall.

“Oh, Mameha-san . . . she’s like a demon,” I said.

“Korin left more than an hour ago. She must have found Hatsumomo and sent her here. You ought to feel flattered, really, considering that Hatsumomo goes to so much trouble just to torment you.”

“I can’t bear to have her make a fool of me here in front of . . . well, in front of all these people.”

“But if you do something she finds laughable, she’ll leave you alone, don’t you think?”

“Please, Mameha-san . . . don’t make me embarrass myself.”

We’d crossed a courtyard and were just about to climb the steps into the building where the toilets were housed; but Mameha led me some distance down a covered passageway instead. When we were out of earshot of anyone, she spoke quietly to me.

“Nobu-san and the Chairman have been great patrons of mine over the years. Heaven knows Nobu can be harsh with people he doesn’t like, but he’s as loyal to his friends as a retainer is to a feudal lord; and you’ll never meet a more trustworthy man. Do you think Hatsumomo understands these qualities? All she sees when she looks at Nobu is . . . ‘Mr. Lizard.’ That’s what she calls him. ‘Mameha-san, I saw you with Mr. Lizard last night! Oh, goodness, you look all splotchy. I think he’s rubbing off on you.’ That sort of thing. Now, I don’t care what you think of Nobu-san at the moment. In time you’ll come to see what a good man he is. But Hatsumomo may very well leave you alone if she thinks you’ve taken a strong liking to him.”

I couldn’t think how to respond to this. I wasn’t even sure just yet what Mameha was asking me to do.

“Nobu-san has been talking to you about sumo for much of the afternoon,” she went on. “For all anyone knows, you adore him. Now put on a show for Hatsumomo’s benefit. Let her think you’re more charmed by him than you’ve ever been by anyone. She’ll think it’s the funniest thing she’s ever seen. Probably she’ll want you to stay on in Gion just so she can see more of it.”

“But, Mameha-san, how am I going to make Hatsumomo think I’m fascinated by him?”

“If you can’t manage such a thing, I haven’t trained you properly,” she replied.

When we returned to our box, Nobu had once again fallen into conversation with a man nearby. I couldn’t interrupt, so I pretended to be absorbed in watching the wrestlers on the mound prepare for their bout. The audience had grown restless; Nobu wasn’t the only one talking. I felt such a longing to turn to the Chairman and ask if he recalled a day several years ago when he’d shown kindness to a young girl . . . but of course, I could never say such a thing. Besides, it would be disastrous for me to focus my attention on him while Hatsumomo was watching.

Soon Nobu turned back to me and said, “These bouts have been tedious. When Miyagiyama comes out, we’ll see some real skill.”

This, it seemed to me, was my chance to dote on him. “But the wrestling I’ve seen already has been so impressive!” I said. “And the things President Nobu has been kind enough to tell me have been so interesting, I can hardly imagine we haven’t seen the best already.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Nobu. “Not one of these wrestlers deserves to be in the same ring as Miyagiyama.”

Over Nobu’s shoulder, I could see Hatsumomo in a far tier. She was chatting with Awajiumi and didn’t appear to be looking at me.

“I know this may seem a very foolish thing to ask,” I said, “but how can a wrestler as small as Miyagiyama be the greatest?” And if you had seen my face, you might have thought no subject had ever interested me more. I felt ridiculous, pretending to be absorbed by something so trivial; but no one who saw us would have known that we weren’t talking about the deepest secrets of our souls. I’m happy to say that at that very moment, I caught a glimpse of Hatsumomo turning her head toward me.

“Miyagiyama only looks small because the others are so much fatter,” Nobu was saying. “But he’s very vain about his size. His height and weight were printed in the newspaper perfectly correctly a few years ago; and yet he was so offended he had a friend hit him on top of the head with a plank, and then gorged himself on sweet potatoes and water, and went down to the newspaper to show them they were wrong.”

Probably I would have laughed at nearly anything Nobu had said—for Hatsumomo’s benefit, I mean. But in fact, it really was quite funny to imagine Miyagiyama squinting his eyes shut and waiting for the plank to come banging down. I held that image in my mind and laughed as freely as I dared, and soon Nobu began to laugh with me. We must have looked like the best of friends to Hatsumomo, for I saw her clapping her hands in delight.

Soon I struck upon the idea of pretending that Nobu himself was the Chairman; every time he spoke, I overlooked his gruffness and tried to imagine gentleness instead. Gradually I found myself able to look at his lips and block from my mind the discoloring and the scars, and imagine that they were the Chairman’s lips, and that every nuance in his voice was some comment on his feelings about me. At one point I think I convinced myself I wasn’t even in the Exhibition Hall, but in a quiet room kneeling beside the Chairman. I hadn’t felt such bliss in as long as I could remember. Like a ball tossed in the air that seems to hang motionless before it falls, I felt myself suspended in a state of quiet timelessness. As I glanced around the hall, I saw only the beauty of its giant wooden timbers and smelled the aroma of the sweet-rice cakes. I thought this state might never end; but then at some point I made a comment I don’t even remember, and Nobu responded:

“What are you talking about? Only a fool could think such an ignorant thing!”

My smile fell before I could stop it, just as if the strings holding it had been cut. Nobu was looking me square in the eye. Of course, Hatsumomo sat far away, but I felt certain she was watching us. And then it occurred to me that if a geisha or a young apprentice grew teary-eyed in front of a man, wouldn’t most anyone take it for infatuation? I might have responded to his harsh comment with an apology; instead I tried to imagine it was the Chairman who had spoken to me so abruptly, and in a moment my lip was trembling. I lowered my head and made a great show of being childish.

To my surprise, Nobu said, “I’ve hurt you, haven’t I?”

It wasn’t difficult for me to sniff theatrically. Nobu went on looking at me for a long moment and then said, “You’re a charming girl.” I’m sure he intended to say something further, but at that moment Miyagiyama came into the hall and the crowd began to roar.

For a long while, Miyagiyama and the other wrestler, whose name was Saiho, swaggered around the mound, scooping up salt and tossing it into the ring, or stamping their feet as sumo wrestlers do. Every time they crouched, facing each other, they made me think of two boulders on the point of tipping over. Miyagiyama always seemed to lean forward a bit more than Saiho, who was taller and much heavier. I thought when they slammed into each other, poor Miyagiyama would certainly be driven back; I couldn’t imagine anyone dragging Saiho across that ring. They took up their position eight or nine times without either of the men charging; then Nobu whispered to me:

“
Hataki komi!
He’s going to use
hataki komi
. Just watch his eyes.”

I did what Nobu suggested, but all I noticed was that Miyagiyama never looked at Saiho. I don’t think Saiho liked being ignored in this way, because he glowered at his opponent as ferociously as an animal. His jowls were so enormous that his head was shaped like a mountain; and from anger his face had begun to turn red. But Miyagiyama continued to act as though he scarcely noticed him.

“It won’t last much longer,” Nobu whispered to me.

And in fact, the next time they crouched on their fists, Saiho charged.

To see Miyagiyama leaning forward as he did, you’d have thought he was ready to throw his weight into Saiho. But instead he used the force of Saiho’s charge to stand back up on his feet. In an instant he swiveled out of the way like a swinging door, and his hand came down onto the back of Saiho’s neck. By now Saiho’s weight was so far forward, he looked like someone falling down the stairs. Miyagiyama gave him a push with all his force, and Saiho brushed right over the rope at his feet. Then to my astonishment, this mountain of a man flew past the lip of the mound and came sprawling right into the first row of the audience. The spectators tried to scamper out of the way; but when it was over, one man stood up gasping for air, because one of Saiho’s shoulders had crushed him.

The encounter had scarcely lasted a second. Saiho must have felt humiliated by his defeat, because he gave the most abbreviated bow of all the losers that day and walked out of the hall while the crowd was still in an uproar.

“That,” Nobu said to me, “is the move called
hataki komi
.”

“Isn’t it fascinating,” Mameha said, in something of a daze. She didn’t even finish her thought.

“Isn’t what fascinating?” the Chairman asked her.

“What Miyagiyama just did. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Yes, you have. Wrestlers do that sort of thing all the time.”

“Well, it certainly has got me thinking . . .” Mameha said.

*  *  *

Later, on our way back to Gion, Mameha turned to me excitedly in the rickshaw. “That sumo wrestler gave me a most marvelous idea,” she said. “Hatsumomo doesn’t even know it, but she’s just been thrown off-balance herself. And she won’t even find it out until it’s too late.”

“You have a plan? Oh, Mameha-san, please tell it to me!”

“Do you think for a moment I would?” she said. “I’m not even going to tell it to my own maid. Just be very sure to keep Nobu-san interested in you. Everything depends on him, and on one other man as well.”

“What other man?”

“A man you haven’t met yet. Now don’t talk about it any further! I’ve probably said more than I should already. It’s a great thing you met Nobu-san today. He may just prove to be your rescuer.”

I must admit I felt a sickness inside when I heard this. If I was to have a rescuer, I wanted it to be the Chairman and no one else.

  chapter eighteen

N
ow that I knew the identity of the Chairman, I began that very night to read every discarded news magazine I could find in the hopes of learning more about him. Within a week I’d accumulated such a stack of them in my room that Auntie gave me a look as if I’d lost my mind. I did find mention of him in a number of articles, but only in passing, and none told me the sorts of things I really wanted to know. Still, I went on picking up every magazine I found poking out of a trash basket, until one day I came upon a stack of old papers tied in a bundle behind one of the teahouses. Buried in it was a two-year-old issue of a news magazine that happened to feature an article on Iwamura Electric.

It seemed that Iwamura Electric had celebrated its twentieth anniversary in April of 1931. It astonishes me even now to think of it, but this was the same month when I met the Chairman on the banks of the Shirakawa Stream; I would have seen his face in all the magazines, if only I’d looked in them. Now that I knew a date to search for, I managed over the course of time to find many more articles about the anniversary. Most of them came from a collection of junk thrown out after the death of the old granny who lived in an okiya across the alley.

The Chairman had been born in 1890, as I learned, which meant that despite his gray hair he’d been a little over forty when I met him. I’d formed the impression that day he was probably chairman of an unimportant company, but I was quite wrong. Iwamura Electric wasn’t as big as Osaka Electric—its chief rival in western Japan, according to all the articles. But the Chairman and Nobu, because of their celebrated partnership, were much better known than the chiefs of much larger companies. In any case, Iwamura Electric was considered more innovative and had a better reputation.

At seventeen the Chairman had gone to work at a small electric company in Osaka. Soon he was supervising the crew that installed wiring for machinery at factories in the area. The demand for electric lighting in households and offices was growing at this time, and during the evenings the Chairman designed a fixture to allow the use of two lightbulbs in a socket built for only one. The director of the company wouldn’t build it, however, and so at the age of twenty-two, in 1912, shortly after marrying, the Chairman left to establish his own company.

For a few years things were difficult; then in 1914, the Chairman’s new company won the electrical wiring contract for a new building on a military base in Osaka. Nobu was still in the military at this time, since his war wounds made it difficult for him to find a job anywhere else. He was given the task of overseeing the work done by the new Iwamura Electric Company. He and the Chairman quickly became friends, and when the Chairman offered him a job the following year, Nobu took it.

The more I read about their partnership, the more I understood just how well suited they really were to each other. Nearly all the articles showed the same photograph of them, with the Chairman in a stylish three-piece suit of heavy wool, holding in his hand the ceramic two-bulb socket that had been the company’s first product. He looked as if someone had just handed it to him and he hadn’t yet decided what he was going to do with it. His mouth was slightly open, showing his teeth, and he stared at the camera with an almost menacing look, as though he were about to throw the fixture. By contrast, Nobu stood beside him, half a head shorter and at full attention, with his one hand in a fist at his side. He wore a morning coat and pin-striped trousers. His scarred face was completely without expression, and his eyes looked sleepy. The Chairman—perhaps because of his prematurely gray hair and the difference in their sizes—might almost have been Nobu’s father, though he was only two years older. The articles said that while the Chairman was responsible for the company’s growth and direction, Nobu was responsible for managing it. He was the less glamorous man with the less glamorous job, but apparently he did it so well that the Chairman often said publicly that the company would never have survived several crises without Nobu’s talents. It was Nobu who’d brought in a group of investors and saved the company from ruin in the early 1920s. “I owe Nobu a debt I can never repay,” the Chairman was quoted more than once as saying.

*  *  *

Several weeks passed, and then one day I received a note to come to Mameha’s apartment the following afternoon. By this time I’d grown accustomed to the priceless kimono ensembles that Mameha’s maid usually laid out for me; but when I arrived and began changing into an autumn-weight silk of scarlet and yellow, which showed leaves scattered in a field of golden grasses, I was taken aback to find a tear in the back of the gown large enough to put two fingers through. Mameha hadn’t yet returned, but I took the robe in my arms and went to speak with her maid.

“Tatsumi-san,” I said, “the most upsetting thing . . . this kimono is ruined.”

“It isn’t ruined, miss. It needs to be repaired is all. Mistress borrowed it this morning from an okiya down the street.”

“She must not have known,” I said. “And with my reputation for ruining kimono, she’ll probably think—”

“Oh, she knows it’s torn,” Tatsumi interrupted. “In fact, the underrobe is torn as well, in just the same place.” I’d already put on the cream-colored underrobe, and when I reached back and felt in the area of my thigh, I saw that Tatsumi was right.

“Last year an apprentice geisha caught it by accident on a nail,” Tatsumi told me. “But Mistress was very clear that she wanted you to put it on.”

This made very little sense to me; but I did as Tatsumi said. When at last Mameha rushed in, I went to ask her about it while she touched up her makeup.

“I told you that according to my plan,” she said, “two men will be important to your future. You met Nobu a few weeks ago. The other man has been out of town until now, but with the help of this torn kimono, you’re about to meet him. That sumo wrestler gave me such a wonderful idea! I can hardly wait to see how Hatsumomo reacts when you come back from the dead. Do you know what she said to me the other day? She couldn’t thank me enough for taking you to the exhibition. It was worth all her trouble getting there, she said, just to see you making big eyes at ‘Mr. Lizard.’ I’m sure she’ll leave you alone when you entertain him, unless it’s to drop by and have a look for herself. In fact, the more you talk about Nobu around her, the better—though you’re not to mention a word about the man you’ll meet this afternoon.”

I began to feel sick inside when I heard this, even as I tried to seem pleased at what she’d said; because you see, a man will never have an intimate relationship with a geisha who has been the mistress of a close associate. One afternoon in a bathhouse not many months earlier, I’d listened as a young woman tried to console another geisha who’d just learned that her new
danna
would be the business partner of the man she’d dreamed about. It had never occurred to me as I watched her that I might one day be in the same position myself.

“Ma’am,” I said, “may I ask? Is it part of your plan that Nobu-san will one day become my
danna
?”

Mameha answered me by lowering her makeup brush and staring at me in the mirror with a look that I honestly think would have stopped a train. “Nobu-san is a fine man. Are you suggesting you’d be ashamed to have him for a
danna
?” she asked.

“No, ma’am, I don’t mean it that way. I’m just wondering . . .”

“Very well. Then I have only two things to say to you. First, you’re a fourteen-year-old girl with no reputation whatever. You’ll be very fortunate ever to become a geisha with sufficient status for a man like Nobu to consider proposing himself as your
danna
. Secondly, Nobu-san has never found a geisha he likes well enough to take as a mistress. If you’re the first, I expect you to feel very flattered.”

I blushed with so much heat in my face I might almost have caught fire. Mameha was quite right; whatever became of me in the years ahead, I would be fortunate even to attract the notice of a man like Nobu. If Nobu was beyond my reach, how much more unreachable the Chairman must be. Since finding him again at the sumo exhibition, I’d begun to think of all the possibilities life presented to me. But now after Mameha’s words I felt myself wading through an ocean of sorrow.

*  *  *

I dressed in a hurry, and Mameha led me up the street to the okiya where she’d lived until six years earlier, when she’d gained her independence. At the door we were greeted by an elderly maid, who smacked her lips and gave her head a shake.

“We called the hospital earlier,” the maid said. “The Doctor goes home at four o’clock today. It’s nearly three-thirty already, you know.”

“We’ll phone him before we go, Kazuko-san,” Mameha replied. “I’m sure he’ll wait for me.”

“I hope so. It would be terrible to leave the poor girl bleeding.”

“Who’s bleeding?” I asked in alarm; but the maid only looked at me with a sigh and led us up the stairs to a crowded little hallway on the second floor. In a space about the size of two tatami mats were gathered not only Mameha and me, as well as the maid who’d shown us up, but also three other young women and a tall, thin cook in a crisp apron. They all looked at me warily, except for the cook, who draped a towel over her shoulder and began to whet a knife of the sort used to chop the heads off fish. I felt like a slab of tuna the grocer had just delivered, because I could see now that I was the one who was going to do the bleeding.

“Mameha-san . . .” I said.

“Now, Sayuri, I know what you’re going to say,” she told me—which was interesting, because I had no idea myself what I was going to say. “Before I became your older sister, didn’t you promise to do exactly as I told you?”

“If I’d known it would include having my liver cut out—”

“No one’s going to cut out your liver,” said the cook, in a tone that was supposed to make me feel much better, but didn’t.

“Sayuri, we’re going to put a little cut in your skin,” Mameha said. “Just a little one, so you can go to the hospital and meet a certain doctor. You know the man I mentioned to you? He’s a doctor.”

“Can’t I just pretend to have a stomachache?”

I was perfectly serious when I said this, but everyone seemed to think I’d made a clever joke, for they all laughed, even Mameha.

“Sayuri, we all have your best interests at heart,” Mameha said. “We only need to make you bleed a little, just enough so the Doctor will be willing to look at you.”

In a moment the cook finished sharpening the knife and came to stand before me as calmly as if she were going to help me with my makeup—except that she was holding a knife, for heaven’s sake. Kazuko, the elderly maid who had shown us in, pulled my collar aside with both hands. I felt myself beginning to panic; but fortunately Mameha spoke up.

“We’re going to put the cut on her leg,” she said.

“Not the leg,” said Kazuko. “The neck is so much more erotic.”

“Sayuri, please turn around and show Kazuko the hole in the back of your kimono,” Mameha said to me. When I’d done as she asked, she went on, “Now, Kazuko-san, how will we explain this tear in the back of her kimono if the cut is on her neck and not her leg?”

“How are the two things related?” Kazuko said. “She’s wearing a torn kimono, and she has a cut on her neck.”

“I don’t know what Kazuko keeps gabbing on about,” the cook said. “Just tell me where you want me to cut her, Mameha-san, and I’ll cut her.”

I’m sure I should have been pleased to hear this, but somehow I wasn’t.

Mameha sent one of the young maids to fetch a red pigment stick of the sort used for shading the lips, and then put it through the hole in my kimono and swiftly rubbed a mark high up on the back of my thigh.

“You must place the cut exactly there,” Mameha said to the cook.

I opened my mouth, but before I could even speak, Mameha told me, “Just lie down and be quiet, Sayuri. If you slow us down any further, I’m going to be very angry.”

I’d be lying if I said I wanted to obey her; but of course, I had no choice. So I lay down on a sheet spread out on the wooden floor and closed my eyes while Mameha pulled my robe up until I was exposed almost to the hip.

“Remember that if the cut needs to be deeper, you can always do it again,” Mameha said. “Start with the shallowest cut you can make.”

I bit my lip the moment I felt the tip of the knife. I’m afraid I may have let out a little squeal as well, though I can’t be sure. In any case, I felt some pressure, and then Mameha said:

“Not
that
shallow. You’ve scarcely cut through the first layer of skin.”

“It looks like lips,” Kazuko said to the cook. “You’ve put a line right in the middle of a red smudge, and it looks like a pair of lips. The Doctor’s going to laugh.”

Mameha agreed and wiped off the makeup after the cook assured her she could find the spot. In a moment I felt the pressure of the knife again.

I’ve never been good at the sight of blood. You may recall how I fainted after cutting my lip the day I met Mr. Tanaka. So you can probably imagine how I felt when I twisted around and saw a rivulet of blood snaking down my leg onto a towel Mameha held against the inside of my thigh. I lapsed into such a state when I saw it that I have no memory at all of what happened next—of being helped into the rickshaw, or of anything at all about the ride, until we neared the hospital and Mameha rocked my head from side to side to get my attention.