Geisha in Rivalry

by Kafū Nagai

  Komayo, looking intently into the mirror as she combed her hair, had suddenly recalled, without any connection at all, a red-faced gentleman named Su-gishima who had repeatedly sent for her and tried to seduce her just after her second debut as a geisha in Shimbashi. If by any chance Yoshioka should become angry at her refusal to let him buy her freedom, it would no longer be a question of her having to say yes or no. She would have to find a substitute to keep her in funds if she was to carry on a secret affair with Segawa, and she now began to reconsider one by one the names of guests who had earlier made some sort of proposal to her.

  "That group came from Dairen, if I'm not mistaken. At any rate, he has a business in China."

  "Oh, really? Then I suppose he doesn't live here?"

  "No. He comes here every year at New Year's and in the middle of the summer. Now that you mention it, I haven't seen him at all this summer. I asked him to bring me some Nanking satin and some crepe de Chine. In fact, I always ask him to bring things back for me whenever he leaves for China. They're cheap, and the quality is good."

  "Really? Then I should have asked him for something too. But he was such an unpleasant person, somehow—so persistent and so lewd. Don't you think so?"

  "He was really taken with you. He wanted me to arrange things for him with you. Any terms at all would be agreeable, he said. I don't know when I've been in such an embarrassing position as I was that evening."

  "It was embarrassing for me too, because it was just after I'd been away for such a long time. Besides, I didn't have the slightest idea of how to behave."

  "He may strike people as being rather coarse, but they say he's really quite kind to girls in his own way. A long time ago, when Choshichi-san of the Kimikawaya was his geisha, she had to quit for three years because she was ill, and he let her stay at his villa the whole time. The story is that he took very good care of her."

  "Did he really? If that's the kind of person he is... well, he's probably patient and willing to overlook most things, don't you suppose? I don't care how ugly a man is. What I want is a person who will be constant and take care of me without getting angry every time I want to have my own way a little bit."

  "You can say things like that, but with a handsome man like Yo-san for your danna, you certainly wouldn't take up with someone else."

  "Is Yo-san really as handsome as that, I wonder? Somehow he looks to me like the man in the advertisement for Jintan pills. I don't think he's the least bit handsome. It's only because I was his mistress once before. But, Hana-chan, I don't think my affair with Yo-san is going to last much longer."

  "Why, what do you mean? Have you found somebody else?" '

  "No. It's not that, but... for one thing, there's this matter of buying me my freedom, and then..." At a loss for words, Komayo looked down. The truth was that she had met Segawa Isshi again last night at the Gishun, and the two of them had become lovers in real earnest. This made her almost certain that it would be impossible to keep Yoshioka in the dark for very long, no matter how hard she tried. If it had been an ordinary guest, she could manage cleverly by one means or another to keep it a secret, but when it came to someone like Yoshioka, she knew that she was not dealing with a patron whom she could easily wrap around her little finger. Like any mistress, she understood quite well how shrewd a man can be. For this reason, Komayo had made up her mind first to enlist Hanasuke as her ally and then to contrive things so adeptly in advance that neither the guests outside nor her colleagues inside the Obanaya—and this included Jukichi-neisan—could place any obstacles in the way of her new love.

  "Hana-chan, there are lots of things I'd like to talk about. If you don't have an engagement just now, why don't we go out and have dinner at the Ingoya or somewhere? To tell the truth, I'm at my wit's end about what to do."

  "Really? Well, I don't have any engagement this evening."

  "Good. Then let's go right away." Komayo rose quickly, almost as if jumping to her feet. "Osada-san!" she called out to the hakoya. "We're going out to the Ingoya for a little while. There may be a call for me around seven or eight from the Gishun, where I went yesterday. I should be back by then, but anyway, let me know if a call does come, will you please?" In a flutter of kimono, the two women hurried down the stairway.

  At the same time old Gozan ascended it, carrying in one hand a sprinkling can for watering the morning-glories that grew on the roof where the laundry was dried. As he stepped out on the roof, the sounds of samisen practice that up to now had been coming from the second stories of houses here and there suddenly ceased. Everywhere, apparently, it was the hour of the bath. The evening wind that fluttered the yukata on the drying rack was heavy with the stench of coke. Telephones began to ring more and more busily as night came on in the gay quarter. Standing there on the drying platform, Gozan was oblivious to the beauty of the clouds trailing across the mackerel sky. He even forgot to count the buds of the morning-glories. For some time he watched the crows flying homeward toward the woods that surrounded the Hama Palace.

  GUILD

  LATER in the evening, just when Komayo had returned with Hanasuke from the Ingoya and was enjoying a quiet smoke, the impatiently awaited but delightful call from the Gishun came. As soon as she arrived there, she sent for Hanasuke and introduced her to Segawa-niisan. The three of them talked and joked together until past ten o'clock, when Hanasuke went off to keep an engagement to which she had been called a short time before. Left alone, Komayo and the niisan retired to the guest room at the back of the house. They had planned to get up before the midnight curfew hour, but they were young and newly in love and, despite their intentions, found it difficult to say goodbye. There was pleasure in the thought that they might as well spend the night as they were, since there were to be no rehearsals the next day.

  They slept until past noon. They had just awakened from the dreams of their midday sleep and exchanged a few cups of sake on their empty stomachs when the maid arrived with the announcement: "Komayo-san, you have a telephone call." She spoke in a hushed voice, as if to express her regret for the interruption.

  Komayo went to the telephone. When she asked the name of the house that had called her for an engagement, the hakoya answered: "The Taigetsu." Komayo declined the invitation for the time being, but the call was soon repeated.

  "Niisan," she said to Segawa, "I wish we could go somewhere out of town." But as she said it, she was thinking: "If it's business, it can't be helped."

  Komayo went back to the telephone. This time it was Hanasuke's voice. "There's a guest here who is very eager to see you. You must come, by all means, even if it's only for a little while." The place was the Taigetsu, to which she had been invited by the earlier call.

  Against her will, Komayo consented. She begged Segawa to wait for her, promising him faithfully to be back within an hour. Reluctantly she called a jinrikisha, returned home for a few minutes to repair her make-up and change her kimono, and then left for the Taigetsu.

  In an airy and fairly large upstairs room, a lively party was going on. The single guest sat surrounded by a group of geisha that included Jukichi-neisan, the slightly younger senior geisha Fusahachi, four or five girls in their early twenties—Ineka, Hagiha, Kineko, Oboro— and two young dancing girls. "With such a crowd," Komayo thought to herself, "I'll be able to break away fairly soon," but her pleasure in the idea vanished when she realized that she could not do such a selfish thing in the presence of Jukichi. Just as this thought struck her, Jukichi, politely taking leave with the words "Well, until next time, then," left for an engagement somewhere else.

  The guest was a large and extremely dark-skinned man of about fifty who looked for all the world like the sea monster called umibozu. He had taken off his haori jacket and was sitting in his kimono of bluish cloth with white splashes, over which he wore a stiff obi. On the little finger of his right hand was a signet ring. He looked like a man from the stock exchange in Kabutocho. Seated between Hanasuke and the old geisha Fusahachi and letting
both of them pour beer for him, he seemed to have nothing in particular to talk about but merely sat there grinning broadly and apparently listening with interest to Kineko, Hagiha, Ineka, and the other amorous geisha as they boasted of their love affairs or to the young dancing girls as they gave their unrestrained opinions about certain child actors.

  Komayo, thinking of the time and deciding to leave, rose quietly and started for the hakoya's room downstairs. Before she knew it, Hanasuke too had left the room and followed her, calling softly to her as she reached the corner of the corridor: "Koma-chan, wait a minute." Komayo stopped. Speaking under her breath, Hanasuke asked: "Koma-chan, listen, aren't you free tonight?"

  Komayo looked Hanasuke as if to say: "What do you mean by that?"

  Coming quite close to her, Hanasuke said: "Last night, after I left the Gishun, I had an engagement with this gentleman. He was very eager to have you come, but I knew you were with the niisan, and besides, it was very late, so I managed to make a good excuse for you. But now he's come again tonight, and he insists that I arrange things for him with you. He's a big antique dealer from Yokohama. When he used to have his store in Nihombashi, I'd meet him now and then in Yoshicho. I've also seen him from time to time since I came to Shimbashi, but he seems not to have any special girl friend here so far."

  Step by step, Hanasuke urged Komayo into an empty guest room at the corner of the corridor. Apparently she was determined by some means or other to settle matters at once. Komayo, nevertheless, could certainly not agree to an arrangement with a guest who had called her for the first time tonight. On the other hand, after inducing Hanasuke to go out with her last night and then, over their beefsteak, taking her into her confidence and asking for her help, she couldn't tell her tonight that all this was nothing but lies. Not knowing what to answer, she could do nothing but stand there speechless, as if she had turned to stone.

  "Koma-chan, with that gentleman in there you wouldn't have to worry in the least if by any chance the word about Segawa-san gets out. He says there's no fun in keeping a geisha who doesn't go in for buying the love of an actor now and then. He's always saying things like that because he likes color and excitement. Those cheapskate cabinet ministers and aristocrats can't hold a candle to him. That's why I thought it would be a shame to let the chance go by and maybe have someone else get hold of him. So, even though I may have taken too much for granted... well, to be honest about it, last night I told him all about you and asked him to be nice to you."

  Komayo uttered an involuntary cry of surprise. Her face turned scarlet, and her eyes filled with tears. But because the vacant guest room was only dimly lighted by the lamps in the corridor, Hanasuke could see neither Komayo's face nor her eyes. Moreover, Hanasuke's officiousness generally made her rash in jumping to conclusions, so that even though she correctly interpreted Komayo's cry as an exclamation of surprise, it was typical of her to race on to the false impression that Komayo was beside herself with joy at her unexpected good fortune. And because she was given to forming such hasty opinions, she saw in Komayo's present fidgeting nothing more than an uncomfortable feeling brought on by her reluctance to accept another engagement tonight, of all nights, when the niisan was waiting for her. It was quite natural for Hanasuke, with her feminine intuition, to surmise this, but to her such an unfortunate coincidence was an unavoidable feature of the profession. "If you will only agree to put up with the inevitable," she told Komayo, "you'll soon see that it brings good results." She spoke with the unlimited kindheartedness that marks women who lead shameful lives. But, more than that, if Hanasuke succeeded tonight by her own efforts alone in procuring Komayo by fair means or foul, the machiai would not enter into the bargain at all, and if the guest could be counted on to give a direct tip of fifty yen, twenty yen would be hers. Or if he gave a hundred, she would get fifty. For a satellite geisha whose face was not her fortune, this would make a tidy little windfall. Her conduct was exactly what might be expected of an acquisitive woman who was forever inseparable from her savings deposit book.

  Far from listening to any excuses that Komayo might invent, Hanasuke knew that the more time she wasted on a matter like this, the more likely it was that the possible would become impossible. If she could succeed in ruthlessly driving her into a corner from which there was no escape, things would take care of themselves automatically. Knowing from experience what Komayo's answer would be, she forestalled it by saying: "Well, I'm relying on you. Good luck." Then, leaving Komayo standing there as she was in the vacant guest room, she deftly slipped out and headed for the stairs, not even giving her time to call out: "Oh, wait a minute, please!"

  Completely bewildered as she was, her heart pounding inside her like a drum, Komayo realized that she couldn't stand here abstractedly in this vacant room forever. Just now, in fact, she heard footsteps approaching along the corridor. No doubt it was one of the maids. Since there was no help for it, she went back to the guest room where she had been before. The old geisha Fusahachi had long since taken her leave, and it was only a matter of seconds before Ineka, Oboro, Kineko, Hagiha, and the others had all bowed themselves out, so that the only one left was the young dancing girl Tobimaru. The antique dealer, looking more than ever like a sea monster, still sat there pouring down the sake with an air of perfect composure while one of the maids fanned his back.

  GRAND PERFORMANCE

  AT LONG last the time had come around for the grand performance of the Shimbashi geisha dances, a three-day event that took place every spring and autumn at the Kabukiza. It was the first day of the autumn show, and the curtain had just fallen on a brilliant opening dance by the entire company.

  "It's lucky we came early. Lake of Jewels is the number after next." The speaker was a woman of about thirty-five whose hair was done in a marumage coiffure. Apparently she was the novelist Nanso's wife, for she handed him her program as she busied herself with pouring out tea. The charming bright-eyed girl of thirteen or so who sat beside her was clearly her daughter. The other member of the party was a small woman of perhaps fifty, also with a marumage headdress and wearing a fine-patterned haori coat decorated with the crest of the Uji school of singing and dancing. She was evidently a teacher of music. These four occupied a box slightly east of center in the grand tier.

  "Thank you very much, madame." The woman who appeared to be a member of the Uji school accepted her cup of tea. "It's almost ten years since they performed your joruri ballad-drama, isn't it?" she asked Nanso. "If I remember correctly, it was the former Segawa-san who did it. Isn't that right?"

  "That's quite correct. For some reason or other, in the past few years these worthless plays and joruri of mine have taken to appearing unexpectedly now and then. To tell the truth, it's embarrassing. It puts me in an awkward position, and I don't like it."

  "My husband is always in a bad humor when they put on one of his plays. If it upsets him so much, it would be better if he didn't write anything in the first place, I say." The woman in the marumage coiffure laughed merrily as she said this, at the same time breaking up a large piece of bean-paste candy with a toothpick so that her daughter could eat it with her fingers.

  Nanso, studying the program, echoed her laughter in an amused fashion but said nothing. The third number, on old work of his, was listed under its full title as the ballad-drama Lake of Jewels: A Literal Report of Its History. Below this appeared the names of the Tokiwazu musicians who would provide the samisen accompaniment and the singing, together with the names of the three geisha who would dance. But apparently none of this was of any concern to Nanso, for he soon shifted his eyes to the confusion around him. The theater was gradually being filled by the throng of late arrivals that now came surging in. The promenade corridors and the orchestra between the two hanamichi runways overflowed with the traffic of people moving in and out. people meeting and greeting one another, people everywhere. More than confusion, it was the height of confusion.

  What Kurayama Nanso nowadays considered to be far more
interesting than watching the performance of his own ballad-dramas and plays was to sit and observe quite casually the hubbub of the theater between acts, the costumes of the women, their latest hair styles, and the like. For this reason, whenever he received an invitation from a theater either as author or as dramatic critic, regardless of whether it was some small suburban playhouse or the first-class stage of the Kabukiza, he invariably made it his duty to be in the audience. But he no longer expressed his opinions with passionate force as he had done ten years ago, and even when a play was so bad as to be unbearable, he did his best to write a review that would somehow be amiable and complimentary. There were times, however, when he went astray in his praise and unintentionally lapsed into his natural irony. And because this delighted the more discerning among theatergoers, Nanso's position as a dramatic critic today, in spite of his self-disdain, preserved in unexpected quarters an even more unexpected influence. It was ten years ago, during the time when he was most ardent in his theatergoing, that Nanso had taken great pains over the creation of new joruri and plays. Since then, however, as the taste of the times changed from year to year, he had seen everything become quite the opposite of what he thought it should be—the methods of staging performances, the character and conduct of actors, their style of acting, the general taste of the audience. If this was the way the world went, it couldn't be helped, and since it had seemed foolish to him to lose his temper about it, he had ended up by withdrawing his interest as much as he could from this aspect of the theater.

  Nevertheless, from time to time during the past several years, those ten-year-old works of his had begun to be performed again. God only knew what fashion of the times had brought them back to light, but they had taken to appearing regularly in theaters here and there at least once or twice a season. At first he had found this extremely unpleasant. Then, thinking by contrast that perhaps society had opened its eyes, he secretly became a bit proud. Finally he came to the conclusion that the present-day world, in its tendency to treat anything and everything with complete unconcern, made no distinction whatever between good and bad or old and new and that all this was nothing more than momentary good luck. The result was that now, whenever he came across a performance of one of his old works, Nanso's mind went back to the days of his youth, and he invariably lost himself in thoughts that were someimes happy and sometimes sad. But to let himself be seduced by all of this into becoming once again a man of the theater—he entertained no such ambition at all. Nanso, in everything he said and did, now showed an inexpressibly deep preference for recollection of the cloudy past rather than for participation in the strenuous progressiveness of the present.