Memoirs of a Geisha (34 page)

  chapter twenty-four

W
hen Mameha returned to town the following day and learned that Mother had decided to adopt me, she didn’t seem as pleased as I would have expected. She nodded and looked satisfied, to be sure; but she didn’t smile. I asked if things hadn’t turned out exactly as she’d hoped.

“Oh, no, the bidding between Dr. Crab and Nobu went just as I’d hoped,” she told me, “and the final figure was a considerable sum. The moment I found out, I knew Mrs. Nitta would certainly adopt you. I couldn’t be more pleased!”

This is what she said. But the truth, as I came to understand in stages over the following years, was something quite different. For one thing, the bidding hadn’t been a contest between Dr. Crab and Nobu at all. It had ended up a contest between Dr. Crab and the Baron. I can’t imagine how Mameha must have felt about this; but I’m sure it accounts for why she was suddenly so cold to me for a short time, and why she kept to herself the story of what had really happened.

I don’t mean to suggest that Nobu was never involved. He did bid quite aggressively for my
mizuage
, but only during the first few days, until the figure passed ¥8000. When he ended up dropping out, it probably wasn’t because the bidding had gone too high. Mameha knew from the beginning that Nobu could bid against anyone, if he wanted to. The trouble, which Mameha hadn’t anticipated, was that Nobu had no more than a vague interest in my
mizuage
. Only a certain kind of man spends his time and money chasing after
mizuage
, and it turned out that Nobu wasn’t one of them. Some months earlier, as you may remember, Mameha had suggested that no man would cultivate a relationship with a fifteen-year-old apprentice unless he was interested in her
mizuage
. This was during the same discussion when she told me, “You can bet it isn’t your conversation he’s attracted to.” She may have been right about my conversation, I don’t know; but whatever attracted Nobu to me, it wasn’t my
mizuage
either.

As for Dr. Crab, he was a man who would probably have chosen suicide the old-fashioned way before allowing someone like Nobu to take a
mizuage
away from him. Of course he wasn’t really bidding against Nobu after the first few days, but he didn’t know that, and the mistress of the Ichiriki made up her mind not to tell him. She wanted the price to go as high as it could. So when she spoke to him on the telephone she said things like, “Oh, Doctor, I’ve just received word from Osaka, and an offer has come in for five thousand yen.” She probably had received word from Osaka—though it might have been from her sister, because the mistress never liked to tell outright lies. But when she mentioned Osaka and an offer in the same breath, naturally Dr. Crab assumed the offer was from Nobu, even though it was actually from the Baron.

As for the Baron, he knew perfectly well his adversary was the Doctor, but he didn’t care. He wanted the
mizuage
for himself and pouted like a little boy when he began to think he might not win it. Sometime later a geisha told me about a conversation she’d had with him around this time. “Do you hear what has been happening?” the Baron said to her. “I’m trying to arrange a
mizuage
, but a certain annoying doctor keeps getting in my way. Only one man can be the explorer of an undiscovered region, and I want to be that man! But what am I to do? This foolish doctor doesn’t seem to understand that the numbers he throws about represent real money!”

As the bidding went higher and higher, the Baron began to talk about dropping out. But the figure had already come so close to a new record that the mistress of the Ichiriki made up her mind to push things still higher by misleading the Baron, just as she’d misled the Doctor. On the telephone she told him that the “other gentleman” had made a very high bid, and then added, “However, many people believe he’s the sort of gentleman who will go no higher.” I’m sure there may have been people who believed such a thing about the Doctor, but the mistress herself wasn’t one of them. She knew that when the Baron made his last bid, whatever it was, the Doctor would top it.

In the end, Dr. Crab agreed to pay ¥11,500 for my
mizuage
. Up to that time, this was the highest ever paid for a
mizuage
in Gion, and possibly in any of the geisha districts in Japan. Keep in mind that in those days, one hour of a geisha’s time cost about ¥4, and an extravagant kimono might have sold for ¥1500. So it may not sound like a lot, but it’s much more than, say, a laborer might have earned in a year.

I have to confess I don’t know much about money. Most geisha pride themselves on never carrying cash with them, and are accustomed to charging things wherever they go. Even now in New York City, I live just the same way. I shop at stores that know me by sight, where the clerks are kind enough to write down the items I want. When the bill comes at the end of the month, I have a charming assistant who pays it for me. So you see, I couldn’t possibly tell you how much money I spend, or how much more a bottle of perfume costs than a magazine. So I may be one of the worst people on earth to try explaining anything at all about money. However, I want to pass on to you something a close friend once told me—who I’m sure knows what he’s talking about, because he was Japan’s Deputy Minister of Finance for a time during the 1960s. Cash, he said, is often worth less one year than it was the year before, and because of this, Mameha’s
mizuage
in 1929 actually cost more than mine in 1935, even though mine was ¥11,500 while Mameha’s was more like ¥7000 or ¥8000.

Of course, none of this mattered back at the time my
mizuage
was sold. As far as everyone was concerned I had set a new record, and it remained until 1951, when Katsumiyo came along—who in my opinion was one of the greatest geisha of the twentieth century. Still, according to my friend the Deputy Minister of Finance, the real record remained Mameha’s until the 1960s. But whether the real record belonged to me, or to Katsumiyo, or to Mameha—or even to Mamemitsu back in the 1890s—you can well imagine that Mother’s plump little hands began to itch when she heard about a record amount of cash.

It goes without saying that this is why she adopted me. The fee for my
mizuage
was more than enough to repay all my debts to the okiya. If Mother hadn’t adopted me, some of that money would have fallen into my hands—and you can imagine how Mother would have felt about this. When I became the daughter of the okiya, my debts ceased to exist because the okiya absorbed them all. But all of my profits went to the okiya as well, not only then, at the time of my
mizuage
, but forever afterward.

The adoption took place the following week. Already my given name had changed to Sayuri; now my family name changed as well. Back in my tipsy house on the sea cliffs, I’d been Sakamoto Chiyo. Now my name was Nitta Sayuri.

*  *  *

Of all the important moments in the life of a geisha,
mizuage
certainly ranks as high as any. Mine occurred in early July of 1935, when I was fifteen years old. It began in the afternoon when Dr. Crab and I drank sake in a ceremony that bound us together. The reason for this ceremony is that even though the
mizuage
itself would be over with quickly, Dr. Crab would remain my
mizuage
patron until the end of his life—not that it gave him any special privileges, you understand. The ceremony was performed at the Ichiriki Teahouse, in the presence of Mother, Auntie, and Mameha. The mistress of the Ichiriki attended as well, and Mr. Bekku, my dresser—because the dresser is always involved in ceremonies of this sort, representing the interests of the geisha. I was dressed in the most formal costume an apprentice wears, a black, five-crested robe and an underrobe of red, which is the color of new beginnings. Mameha instructed me to behave very sternly, as though I had no sense of humor at all. Considering my nervousness, I found it easy to look stern as I walked down the hallway of the Ichiriki Teahouse, with the train of my kimono pooled around my feet.

After the ceremony we all went to a restaurant known as Kitcho for dinner. This was a solemn event too, and I spoke little and ate even less. Sitting there at dinner, Dr. Crab had probably already begun thinking about the moment that would come later, and yet I’ve never seen a man who looked more bored. I kept my eyes lowered throughout the meal in the interests of acting innocent, but every time I stole a glance in his direction, I found him peering down through his glasses like a man at a business meeting.

When dinner was over, Mr. Bekku escorted me by rickshaw to a beautiful inn on the grounds of the Nanzen-ji Temple. He’d already visited there earlier in the day to arrange my clothing in an adjoining room. He helped me out of my kimono and changed me into a more casual one, with an obi that required no padding for the knot—since padding would be awkward for the Doctor. He tied the knot in such a way that it would come undone quite easily. After I was fully dressed, I felt so nervous that Mr. Bekku had to help me back into my room and arrange me near the door to await the Doctor’s arrival. When he left me there, I felt a horrible sense of dread, as if I’d been about to have an operation to remove my kidneys, or my liver, or some such thing.

Soon Dr. Crab arrived and asked that I order him sake while he bathed in the bath attached to the room. I think he may have expected me to help undress him, because he gave me a strange look. But my hands were so cold and awkward, I don’t think I could have done it. He emerged a few minutes later wearing a sleeping robe and slid open the doors to the garden, where we sat on a little wooden balcony, sipping sake and listening to the sound of the crickets and the little stream below us. I spilled sake on my kimono, but the Doctor didn’t notice. To tell the truth, he didn’t seem to notice much of anything, except a fish that splashed in the pond nearby, which he pointed out to me as if I might never have seen such a thing. While we were there, a maid came and laid out both our futons, side by side.

Finally the Doctor left me on the balcony and went inside. I shifted in such a way as to watch him from the corner of my eye. He unpacked two white towels from his suitcase and set them down on the table, arranging them this way and that until they were just so. He did the same with the pillows on one of the futons, and then came and stood at the door until I rose from my knees and followed him.

While I was still standing, he removed my obi and told me to make myself comfortable on one of the futons. Everything seemed so strange and frightening to me, I couldn’t have been comfortable no matter what I’d done. But I lay down on my back and used a pillow stuffed with beans to prop up my neck. The Doctor opened my robe and took a long while to loosen each of the garments beneath it step by step, rubbing his hands over my legs, which I think was supposed to help me relax. This went on for a long time, but at last he fetched the two white towels he’d unpacked earlier. He told me to raise my hips and then spread them out beneath me.

“These will absorb the blood,” he told me.

Of course, a
mizuage
often involves a certain amount of blood, but no one had explained to me exactly why. I’m sure I should have kept quiet or even thanked the Doctor for being so considerate as to put down towels, but instead I blurted out, “What blood?” My voice squeaked a little as I said it, because my throat was so dry. Dr. Crab began explaining how the “hymen”—though I didn’t know what that could possibly be—frequently bled when torn . . . and this, that, and the other . . . I think I became so anxious hearing it all that I rose up a little from the futon, because the Doctor put his hand on my shoulder and gently pushed me back down.

I’m sure this sort of talk would be enough to quash some men’s appetite for what they were about to do; but the Doctor wasn’t that sort of man. When he’d finished his explanation, he said to me, “This is the second time I will have the opportunity of collecting a specimen of your blood. May I show you?”

I’d noticed that he’d arrived with not only his leather overnight bag, but also a small wooden case. The Doctor fetched a key ring from the pocket of his trousers in the closet and unlocked the case. He brought it over and swung it open down the middle to make a kind of freestanding display. On both sides were shelves with tiny glass vials, all plugged with corks and held in place by straps. Along the bottom shelf were a few instruments, such as scissors and tweezers; but the rest of the case was crowded with these glass vials, perhaps as many as forty or fifty of them. Except for a few empty ones on the top shelf, they all held something inside, but I had no idea what. Only when the Doctor brought the lamp from the table was I able to see white labels along the tops of each vial, marked with the names of various geisha. I saw Mameha’s name there, as well as the great Mamekichi’s. I saw quite a number of other familiar names as well, including Hatsumomo’s friend Korin.

“This one,” the Doctor said as he removed one of the vials, “belongs to you.”

He’d written my name wrong, with a different character for the “ri” of Sayuri. But inside the vial was a shriveled-looking thing I thought resembled a pickled plum, though it was brownish rather than purple. The Doctor removed the cork and used tweezers to take it out.