by India Millar
I lowered my head and waited for death to come to me.
Akira laughed, very softly. He leaned forward and pushed my head up with his finger.
“Dear Mineko. Dear, clever little Mineko. Midori taught you well, didn’t she? You are not only pretty and talented, you are intelligent as well. A worrying combination. Just as well you’re not a man. If you were, I think I would have to make sure you were not a danger to me.”
I kept my eyes down and said nothing at all.
Akira patted my cheek. When I glanced up, the dagger had disappeared and he was fastening his robe. Apart from a flush on his cheeks, he gave no sign that anything had changed between us. But it had, and we both knew it.
He smiled and nodded and walked away.
8
The moon floats serene
In her own beauty. I wish
For her enchantment.
I stayed at the peephole until dawn. I had hoped that Abe-san would grow tired of his games and leave Sute, but he did not. He had worked himself into a state of high excitement and barely left her alone for an hour before he was waking her again. And again. And again. I could have wept for her. But he was entitled to do it, of course. He had paid handsomely for the privilege of deflowering his hated gaijin, and he was making the most of it.
By the time he decided that he had finally had enough, I was stiff and half asleep. Even so, I waited until I heard the front door close before I levered myself off the wall and forced my rigid joints to move. I slid back the screen door and nearly screamed aloud with shock.
Ken was still outside. He looked fresh, as if he had spent the night in restful sleep, and I wondered if he had actually just come back. Then I realized he was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, and on closer inspection saw that he needed to shave. I glared at him and shouldered past him without a word. Akira had no doubt ordered him to keep an eye on me, although what he thought I might do was beyond my comprehension. Or was it just one more of Akira’s strange games? I ignored Ken and walked as quickly as I could into the reception room.
Sute was lying exactly where Abe-san had left her, little more than a tumbled mound under the bedding. I sat down beside her and put my arms around her. She was long past crying and simply rested against me, shaking.
“Can you stand?” I asked.
Sute shook her head.
Well, then, I thought. Akira’s creature might as well make himself useful. “Ken!” I shouted abruptly. Rudely. Silent as always, he was standing before me in a moment. “Lift Sute up. Carefully! And carry her to the bathhouse.”
I might as well have been talking to a statue. His face never flickered. But he did lean down and scoop Sute in his arms, lifting her as easily as if she were a child. I followed him out of the room, and as we walked toward the bathhouse, each door opened behind us as the other geisha followed behind us silently.
Ken lowered Sute to her feet in the bathhouse, and I put my arms around her to stop her from falling. I gestured for him to go, and he turned and walked away without a backward glance.
We had no need to call the maids. Between us, we girls soaped Sute gently and rinsed her, time and time again, until all trace of Abe-san had been washed away. She stared at us and twisted and turned to order, but said nothing. When I was happy that she was clean, we coaxed her into the bath and made a protective ring around her.
“It’s never going to be as bad again.” Barely comforting words, but it was the best I could do.
Sute gave a small sigh and relaxed visibly. “It wasn’t so much what he did, I was more or less expecting that.” She spoke in a rush, and then stopped, looking from one to the other of us imploringly, begging us to understand. “It was the way he treated me. He enjoyed hurting me, I know he did. How could he hate me so much when he’s never even seen me before?”
How could I answer that? I, who could feel no pain? Naruko answered for me.
“It isn’t you he hates,” she explained in her lilting Japanese. “It’s the gaijin. He can’t hurt them, so he took it out on you.”
We all nodded. Sute looked bewildered but finally shrugged.
“I’ll get used to it, I suppose,” she said bravely. “He gave me a present anyway.”
I had seen it on the tatami matting. A few coins, the very least he could have left without bringing dishonor on himself. But Sute was obviously pleased.
“I’ve never had so much money all to myself,” she said. “Can I really keep it?”
For some reason, we all started laughing. Sute joined in shyly.
Auntie inspected her later, frowning over the bruises and cuts that marred her body, and I could see she wasn’t pleased.
“Abe-san got his money’s worth,” she said dryly. “I don’t care what Akira-san says, it will be a long time before he is allowed back in this house again.” She sighed heavily. “When I owned the Hidden House, I would not have stood for this sort of thing.”
“Things were different then,” I said carefully. We both thought about it. Had it really only been a couple of years since the gaijin had forced their way into our world and changed things forever? Now, it seemed as if they had always been amongst us, dictating how things were. Buying and selling. Forcing us to learn their language. Laughing at our customs. Even trying to force us to adopt their religion. And above all, making us realize that there was a new, wide world out there.
As Midori had found out.
Auntie’s face had relaxed. She was staring into space, almost as if she had forgotten I was there. I spoke without thinking.
“Auntie, why did you sell the Hidden House and the Green Tea House to Akira-san? Both houses were making enough money, weren’t they?”
For a second, I thought she hadn’t heard me. Staring at her, I guessed her thoughts were far, far away, and suddenly I realized that Auntie—sour, wrinkled old Auntie—must once have been beautiful. That once—probably many years before I had even been born—she had entranced men with her looks, her singing voice, her skill on the samisen. Alas, no trace of any of it remained. She no longer sang; her voice was cracked and roughened by the passing years. Although she still played the samisen passably well, the arthritis in her fingers made her slow and careful, and the music she made was without joy.
Then the moment passed, and Auntie was poking me abruptly with the tip of her cane.
“None of your business,” she snapped. “Akira-san owns us all now. And that’s all you and the other geisha need to know. You have a patron this evening. Go and make yourself presentable. You look half asleep. Do you think anybody is going to pay good money for you looking like that?”
I was almost relieved by her anger. The glimpse I had had of an Auntie that was foreign to me had been…uncomfortable.
My patron was a man who had visited the Hidden House frequently. He had tried us all in turn, as was only courteous. After all, if he had appeared to favor one of us more than the rest, he would have lost face if the hadn’t given the favored geisha a handsome present for changing his mind when he tired of her. As far as I could be said to have favorite patrons, I suppose he was one of them. He was reasonably undemanding and seemed satisfied when I pretended to be hurt by his attentions after a mere punch or two, and not very hard punches at that.
I greeted him with downcast eyes and a demure smile, and was startled when he immediately snarled at me in return.
“Bow, geisha. Less of this disrespect. I’m paying good money for your attention.”
I bowed deeply and then realized what all this was about. Fuwe-san was not on his own tonight. He had two friends with him, both strangers to me. Both of the other men were goggling at me and nudging each other, and I understood at once that they had taken far too much sake already.
I kept my head down and shuffled into the main reception room behind Fuwe-san and his companions.
It soon became obvious that his companions were to take the twins. The girls smiled and bowed in perfect unison, and I saw Fuwe-san swell visibly with pr
ide as his friends’ jaws dropped. The twins bustled around with sake and cups, and I quickly served my patron myself, dropping to my knees humbly in front of him.
“Would it please Fuwe-san if I played the samisen for him?” I murmured almost inaudibly. “Or perhaps I could sing for him?”
He waved a nonchalant hand. “My friends,” he called. I guessed what was coming and stayed perfectly still. “If I could have your attention for just a moment, gentlemen?”
Both men stared at him eagerly.
“This is Mineko-chan. You may have heard me speak of her?”
“Ah!” The older man nodded. “She is the one they say cannot feel any pain? Is it really so?”
Fuwe-san grinned. “Watch,” he said smugly.
I braced myself, but even so was surprised by the force of his blow. His foot caught me at the side of the head and pitched me full length on the tatami. As soon as I could compose myself, I got carefully back on to my knees and bowed before Fuwe-san, my head hitting the tatami respectfully.
Both his friends gave exclamations of delight. They stared at Fuwe-san with amazed respect and he drew himself up to his full height, basking in their admiration.
“That was just for starters. If you will excuse me, my friends. I want to test just how much this one can take.”
And with that, he reached down and grabbed my hair, dragging me out of the room with my feet scrabbling helplessly. I could hear their appreciative laughter following me out.
Even then, I half expected Fuwe-san to revert to his normal, fairly pleasant self when we were alone. But either he had taken too much sake himself or he was still riding the wave of his friends’ admiration, so he was as a stranger to me.
As soon as the screen door slid closed behind him, he flung me to the floor and strutted around me, giving me a poke now and then with the flat of his foot. I resigned myself to a particularly bad evening, calculating carefully at what stage I should pretend to be hurt. I kept my eyes down and gave a deep, theatrical sigh.
“I do not please Fuwe-san this evening?” I asked timidly.
“Not yet,” he said grandly. He clicked his fingers and I gathered I was supposed to untie his robe for him. I shuffled forward on my knees and undid his sash, allowing his robe to fall open. His rearing tree of flesh almost hit me on the nose, and somehow I managed to turn a giggle into a sigh of fear. Fuwe-san gasped with pleasure, and I schooled my face to remain respectful. What fools these men were! All of them. Even Akira? Well, no. Perhaps not Akira. The thought of Akira made me shudder, and Fuwe-san obviously thought he had frightened me as he grinned and took his tree in his hand, thrusting it toward me.
I took it between my lips, nibbling and sucking automatically. It was clean and not unpleasant, but as I performed for him I thought how the other girls—even the twins, who until recently had given nothing away—said that sometimes they were aroused by a patron.
“Some of them aren’t too bad,” Hoshimo had opinioned, and Sayo had nodded agreement. “The younger ones can be nice, if you get them on your own and they haven’t drunk too much.”
“And I quite like the idea of getting paid to enjoy myself,” Sayo had added with a giggle.
Both Naruko and Masaki giggled as well, and I stared at them hungrily. I had never felt anything when I was with a client. Never the least sign of arousal, no matter what they had wanted to do to me. I remembered Midori saying that Mori-san had actually asked her what she would like him to do to give her pleasure, and that she had taken full advantage of his offer and she had loved every moment of it—no doubt as did Kiku now!—and she had laughed at my puzzled face.
“Do you never feel anything, Mineko? Not even disgust at the old, nasty ones?”
I had shaken my head. “Nothing. I just tolerate whatever they want to do to me and then forget it as soon as they’ve gone. Good or bad, it doesn’t make any difference to me.”
She had looked at me for a long time, her beautiful green eyes sad.
“I think,” she said carefully, “that I would prefer to feel something, even if I hated what was being done to me, than nothing at all.”
I had shrugged. What could I say? I could feel no pain. Neither, it seemed, could I feel anything remotely resembling sexual arousal. The geisha had found that fascinating. They had sat around me in the bath, looking at me with as much interest as if they were patrons.
“Have you tried using the love globes?” Naruko asked. I nodded. “And?”
“Not a thing. At first, they just felt a bit cold and then I got bored with them and forgot they were there.”
The geisha gasped in amazement. The love globes were two sets of heavy, metal spheres tied together and filled with liquid. They were unevenly weighted and once inserted deep into a girl’s sex, they rocked to and fro with the tiniest of movements. All the geisha loved them. Except me.
“Tried touching yourself?” Coming from tiny, exquisite Masaki the words sounded coarse beyond belief. “Let’s face it, if you can’t please yourself, then who can?”
I had simply shrugged. Of course I had tried. I had touched myself in just the same way as the nicest of the patrons did. And with exactly the same result. Nothing at all.
The geisha shook their heads at me.
“Well, I suppose the gods aren’t that generous with their gifts. Perhaps it’s to compensate for you being unable to be hurt,” Naruko suggested.
I stared at the water and nodded. She was probably right. But it would have been nice, I thought, to know what all the fuss was about. According to the girls, it was much nicer for us when we achieved bursting of the fruit than it was for the patrons. And they seemed to enjoy it a lot.
Fuwe-san recalled me to the present abruptly by thrusting his tree so far in my mouth that I gagged for air.
“Harder,” he muttered. I obliged, sucking and nibbling for all I was worth. In a complicated contortion that nearly unbalanced both of us, he leaned over me and pushed his fingers between the cheeks of my bottom. I gargled—not in pain, of course—but because he was nearly choking me. That seemed to please him immensely, as he snatched his tree from my mouth—I was lucky enough to be able to give it a good nip in parting—and shoved me face down. It was obvious that he intended to split the melon, but unfortunately he was so drunk by that stage he missed me completely and managed to scrape the entire length of his tree on the coarse tatami.
I couldn’t help it. In spite of all my training, even in spite of my fear of Akira-san, I laughed out loud as the great, silly baby let out a bellow of pain and hauled himself to his feet, rubbing his sore tree gingerly between his fingers. It was faintly pink, but had not so much as a graze on it.
“Think that was funny, did you, geisha?” I had expected a shout of anger, but Fuwe-san’s low growl was far more worrying. Before I could apologize and make some excuse, he was leaning over me and his hands were meeting around my neck. My lovely, slender neck that was so much admired by my patrons. Damn, I thought. I would bruise black by morning. Auntie would be furious.
He lifted me bodily by the neck. He was so much taller than me that my feet left the ground, and suddenly I was kicking and scrabbling for a foothold in thin air. I couldn’t breathe. My vision began to retreat behind a sea of red and I managed a half scream before the room wasn’t there anymore and I was beginning to black out. Strangely, my mind worked perfectly well. It had had to happen one day, I supposed. There had always been the chance, and a strong chance at that, that a patron would go too far and I would die at his hands. Such a shame that it had happened so very soon…
Suddenly, just as quickly as I had begun to choke, I could breathe again. My eyesight was still blurred, but I could feel the tatami beneath my back, and oddly enough it seemed to me that Fuwe-san was looking down at me, but he had grown very much taller. So tall that he was nearly brushing the ceiling with his head. I coughed and hawked blood out of my throat and blinked hard, trying desperately to focus my eyes.
For a moment, I thought tha
t perhaps I had died after all. Fuwe-san was staring down at me. But his body was stretched out in midair, his hands swinging down by his side, his mouth stretched wide and his eyes huge. He gasped and through swimming eyes I realized somebody was holding him up high.
“Please…” he moaned. “Please, don’t hurt me. I’ll pay. Anything you want. Just put me down.”
“You were going to kill Mineko. You deserve to feel her pain for her.”
The other man’s voice—the man I now realized was holding my patron on high—was completely calm. A beautiful voice, deep and smooth, broken by only the slightest hint of anger.
“Ken.” My voice was the harsh crow of a raven, carried on the wind. I coughed and tried again. “Ken, put him down. He was only claiming what he’s paid for.”
To my surprise, Ken immediately lowered Fuwe-san to his feet. As soon as he let go, my patron tottered, and Ken had to grab him to stop him from collapsing. But even if he was terrified, Fuwe-san could still bluster.
“You’ll suffer for this. Both of you. I’ve got a good mind to tell my great friend Akira-san how you’ve treated me. You’ll both be lucky if you have any skin on your backs by tomorrow.”
“Akira-san will not listen to you.” Ken stared steadily at Fuwe-san until he dropped his eyes. “The geisha in this house are special to him. Mineko in particular. Perhaps Mineko-chan cannot feel pain, but that doesn’t mean you can cause her injury. If I tell Akira-san I stopped you from murdering her, then I think he will not be happy with you.”
The apparently mild threat had an interesting effect on my patron. I watched fascinated as his face drained of all color, leaving his skin looking like spoiled tofu. His mouth opened and closed but no sound came out. I understood perfectly. We had all heard tales of Akira’s cruelty. Of men who had been tortured by his thugs for perceived insults. Rival yakuza who had been slaughtered because Akira had thought them a threat. Even women who had in some way caused him to lose face had been dealt with…severely. Obviously, Fuwe-san appreciated the truth behind Ken’s threat.