The Geisha Who Could Feel No Pain (Secrets From The Hidden House Book 2)

by India Millar

  “Sayo, Hoshimi,” I pleaded. “Please, help me to the bathhouse. I smell!”

  “You do.” Hoshimi beamed at me. “Wait a moment. Sayo will call the other geisha, and we can all bathe together. We have good gossip.”

  I almost wept with pleasure at the thought.

  The girls walked me down to the bathhouse, shouting “hop, hop, hop” every time I forgot about my broken ankle and tried to walk on it. Eventually, it became a game and we were all crying with laughter by the time we were in the bath.

  Kiku slapped the water with the palms of her hand to stop the chatter. The gesture was so familiar, it was almost as if the years had not passed and nothing had ever changed in the Hidden House. Masaki perched on the steps, and the rest of the geisha formed a protective ring around me. Only Bigger was missing. And Ken.

  I felt the lack of Ken in my bones, and the sadness clouded my joy. I told myself that at least I had known him, known what it was to be loved, but the knowledge made my heart weep.

  “Tell me. Please.” I stared around at the ring of smiling faces. Midori took my hand in hers and patted it gently. I burst into tears.

  “It’s over, Mineko-chan,” she said gently. “Everything has changed now. Akira’s dead. The Hidden House is finished. All the geisha are free at last. So are you.”

  I screwed up my face to try and stop the tears. I could hardly believe what she was saying. But Midori was nodding, and as I understood she was speaking the truth, panic hit my belly like a fist. Free? I was free? But if I had no master, no home, what could I do? What could any of us do?

  But all the geisha were smiling and nodding. I needed time to think for a moment, and asked the question that had left me bewildered since I had first seen her.

  “Midori-chan, why are you here? Kiku said the kabuki was doing well in America, that you were happy. Why have you come back?”

  Midori stared at the steaming water and drew her finger through it in a spiral.

  “Do you know, they don’t have bathhouses in America? When you bathe, you do it alone, in a small tub. You don’t even shower first, you just wallow in your own dirt.”

  I stared at her in utter confusion. Unthinkable though her words were, what did that have to do with her coming back to the Hidden House?

  “I was homesick, Mineko,” she said simply.

  Ah. We all drew a breath of sympathy, understanding completely. This—the Floating World—was our world, good or bad as it may be. We knew it. We were part of it. It was our home.

  “Don’t misunderstand me,” Midori said quickly. “There is much that is wonderful outside Japan. I perform in the kabuki. We have no need to worry whether death is waiting around the corner for us. We have money. There is much kindness and breathtaking marvels in abundance. Things you could not begin to imagine if you hadn’t seen them yourself. Life is very, very good. But…” She shrugged and sighed. “I missed this. All of you. I used to wake up in the morning and for a moment forget I wasn’t in Edo. Then I remembered, and wanted to weep.”

  “Does Danjuro feel the same as you? Does he miss Japan?” Masaki interrupted.

  “No, not really. He has the kabuki. As far as he is concerned, he carries Edo with him.”

  We nodded. Of course Danjuro would feel like that. The kabuki had always been his life. I wondered which came first with him—the kabuki or Midori? But I held my tongue.

  “It got a little better when I got the first letter from Kiku. I was overjoyed, and then I realized that if Kiku had gotten a message to me, then I could write back to her. There are always people—Japanese and gaijin alike—traveling between Japan and America, and I guessed that one of our patrons would know somebody who would be happy to carry a message for me. Eventually I found a friend of one of our patrons who was coming to Edo for trade, and he agreed to carry a letter for me to Kiku. After that, we wrote as often as we could, and so I kept up with all the gossip in the Floating World. But when Kiku told me about the troubles that were going on, I began to worry. It got so bad that even Danjuro noticed I was unhappy. We talked and talked about it, and eventually he agreed that I must come back to the Floating World.”

  We all gasped. A Japanese man telling his wife to leave him? To travel for many weeks to a different country without him? To go where he knew there was great danger? No! This was not possible. Midori watched our faces and smiled wryly.

  “Well, perhaps it wasn’t as easy as that. I told him it was my—our—karma. That until we knew Akira was finished for once and for all, there would never be any true peace for either of us. At first, he insisted that he must come with me, but I persuaded him that was nonsense. If we both left the kabuki, how much of it would be there when we returned?” She laughed shortly and I knew I had the answer to my unspoken question. Danjuro might love his wife, but the kabuki came first. And Midori, clearly, knew it as well. “I told him that I had dreamed repeatedly that Akira was going to die. But that sometimes it was a different dream, and that if I wasn’t there to see him die, he survived. I kept on at him until he got angry and said he couldn’t concentrate for my nagging. I knew I had won then.”

  “I thought you were a fox spirit,” I said.

  “Ah! I wondered if I had fooled you. It was easy enough to dye my hair red. And don’t forget, I wear make up every day for the kabuki. It was a simple thing to turn my skin white. You couldn’t see my eyes for the veil, and the gaijin clothes made me look very different.” She laughed, clapping her hands in delight at her deception. “I’m sorry. I wanted to make sure all of you were all right. Especially you, Mineko. Kiku told me that Akira had been boasting he was going to take you away from the Hidden House. Use you as bait. Not for the other yakuza, not then. He told Mori-san that he knew I was listening to his thoughts, and that I would come back and try to rescue you if I thought you were in danger. Perhaps somehow he knew Kiku was writing to me. I would believe anything about Akira.”

  We all nodded seriously.

  “Is he dead? Really?” I asked.

  “Oh yes.” Midori nodded. “We were watching, you know. Kiku and I. Not close, but close enough to hear and see. You know what it’s like in the Floating World, news spreads like fire and any entertainment—especially if it’s free!—is worth watching. We just joined the crowd. We were all pushed to one side when Akira and his yakuza arrived. There was a lot of yelling and screaming for a while, and then the other yakuza started running past us. We knew you were in serious trouble when little Kiku came scampering past us. We couldn’t see what was going on very well, but somebody said Akira had dashed into his house—or at least, what was left of it—and after that that things just seemed to wind down. A couple of yakuza—Akira’s men—came and threatened us all with their swords, so we went away. A peasant woman had already grabbed Kiku, but we slipped her a piece of silver and she gave her back happily.”

  “We didn’t go far.” Kiku beamed. “We just hid round the corner and sneaked back as soon as we could. We found you lying in front of the wall. We thought you were dead at first. Your head was bleeding terribly where a stone had hit it, and you didn’t seem to be breathing. There were lots of Akira’s men still wandering about, and they shouted at us to leave you alone, but Midori stood up to them. She showed them Akira’s dragon on her back, and they just gawped at her and backed away, kowtowing. They were so frightened of her she even got two of them to pick you up and carry you back here. Midori didn’t recognize any of them so we think they thought she really was a fox spirit and were terrified she had already gotten vengeance on Akira, and that now she was after them as well. We got a doctor to you, and he said you were alive, but he thought you might never wake up. And if you did, he was sure you would never be able to speak or hear properly.”

  Like Auntie, after her brain seizure. I realized suddenly I had not seen Auntie. Was she dead, in spite of all my care? The thought saddened me.

  “She’s dead as well? Auntie?” I asked.

  “Oh no. She’s fine,” Sute said. “Ta
kes more than that to kill Auntie!”

  “And Akira? He’s dead? You’re sure?” I demanded.

  “Quite sure,” Kiku said. “When the fire cooled, they found his body in the house. We worked out that he was lying where Midori’s room had been.”

  “You’re sure it was him?” I asked doubtfully.

  “Positive.” Kiku glanced at Midori, who nodded. “There wasn’t a great deal left to identify him by, but some of his tattoos were still there. And he had two of Midori’s kingfisher combs, tight in his fist.”

  I exhaled with a deep sigh. I glanced at Midori, to try and read her face. She smiled.

  “I hated him,” she said simply. “All the time I was in his house, in his power, I hated him. I used to dream about him—really dream, I mean—even when I was in America. I wished him dead. And yet when they told me he had died thinking about me, I felt sorry for him. He was a terrible man, but I think he really loved me, no matter what.”

  “He told me he loved you.” I nodded. “He always thought you would come back to him. I suppose you did, in the end.”

  I stared into the steam, letting the gentle murmur of conversation lap around me. Akira was really dead then. Perhaps it was the blow to my head that had addled my brain, but it was only at that moment that I wondered why Midori had said that we were all free. Even if Akira was dead, what did it matter to us? We would simply be owned by somebody else.

  “What’s happening to the Hidden House?” I asked. “Who owns it now?”

  Midori smiled gently.

  “I do.”

  19

  Home is not a place.

  Home is where the heart dwells. My

  Home is at your side.

  The girls smiled at my astounded face.

  “He had no relatives to take their share,” Midori explained. “And not long before he died, he asked Mori-san to make sure that I got everything he had left. Not that there is much left.”

  “But he was rich!” I interrupted. “We all knew that he owned half of the tea houses on Willow Road. I know he said some time ago that his problems with the other yakuza had cost him a lot, but even so there was all the money he made from looking after the other tea houses and all his other businesses. What happened to all that?”

  Midori shrugged. “He tried too hard. When he decided he wanted to take his share of the opium trade from the other yakuza he had to lay out a lot of money to establish himself. And when his rivals realized what he was doing, they retaliated by stealing his trade from the tea houses and the brothels. The other yakuza were frightened of him. They banded together to fight him, and he had to take on more and more men to defend his empire. There was less money coming in to pay for them, so he had to sell the houses. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had won, but he didn’t. When he died, Akira had only the Hidden House and his own house to his name.”

  “Tell her about the gold!” Sute broke in.

  I frowned at her, shocked by the lack of respect she had shown to my elder sister. But Midori smiled indulgently.

  “Wait, Sute. All in good time. When I told Auntie what had happened to Akira, her reaction was strange. She just stared into space for a long time, and then said he had died as he would have wished.”

  “She was Akira’s wet nurse,” I interrupted. “She used to be his father’s favorite concubine. Her own baby died at the same time Akira was born, so she nursed him instead. She loved him as if he was her own son.” I had the satisfaction of knowing that I had surprised my fellow geisha. Girls who thought they had seen everything. I could see them thinking about what I had said, and then they looked at each other as if a mystery had been explained.

  “You haven’t seen Auntie since Akira took you,” Kiku said gravely. “She’s changed since she was ill. You would barely know her now. She’s…” She paused and shrugged. “She’s nice. Not Auntie at all.”

  “Akira said she was like that when she was a young woman,” I said. “But she’s well?”

  “Oh yes. In her body, she’s still strong. She’s going to go into a monastery. She says it’s where she wants to end her life.”

  I blinked. Auntie—Akira’s Hana—in a monastery? Then I remembered the softness that had come over her face when she had spoken of Akira and sighed. If that was what Auntie wanted, then it was good.

  “Tell her about the gold, Midori!” Sute could stand it no longer. She was fidgeting and tugged Midori’s sleeve to urge her on.

  “I was just getting to it, Sute. Now sit quietly.” Midori patted her hand as if she was a pet demanding attention. “When we told Auntie that Akira had left everything to me, we thought she hadn’t heard us for a while. She just sat there, with her head on one side, as if she was listening to a voice that none of the rest of us could hear. Then she got to her feet and started ordering us about, just like she used to. ‘Over there’ she said, pointing with her stick. When we didn’t understand, she sighed and got to her feet. She went to the screen and fiddled with the struts until part of it slid back. She took a silk purse out of the enclosure and gave it to me, nodding.”

  Midori smiled at my astonished face.

  “After that, we listened and went where she directed us. There were little hidden closets everywhere. Some had nothing in them, but others had gold and jewels. By the time she had remembered them all, we had a fortune on the tatami.”

  Gold. I suddenly remembered my own thirty koban.

  “The gold you left with me,” I interrupted. “I brought it out of Akira’s house with me. I know I did. You can take it back now.”

  “I have it.” Midori nodded. “It’s safe, but it’s waiting for you. I gave it to you, and it’s yours. Together with your share of Akira’s treasure.”

  It took a while for the words to penetrate my brain. I stared at her astonished.

  “But it’s all yours! Akira left everything he had to you.”

  Sute was giggling. The twins covered their mouths politely with their hands, but I could see they were smiling. Naruko and Masaki didn’t bother about being polite, they just grinned.

  “I’ve already told the geisha I’m sharing it between them. We all suffered at Akira’s hands. We all deserve a share of what we earned for him. Besides, if I kept all of it, I would never enjoy it. I couldn’t. It would be tainted. But shared between us…” She shrugged. “I feel it is clean again.”

  And then all of them were talking together until my head was spinning.

  “But what are you all going to do with it?” I asked eventually. What good was wealth to the likes of us? We were just ordinary women, not even women of high birth. We had no rights in a man’s world. As soon as it became known that we were rich, the remaining yakuza would move in on us. They would either simply take the money from us or make us marry their men to make the thing appear respectable.

  “I’m going to be married!” Sute trilled, her face pink with pleasure. “Ito-san has asked me to marry him, and I shall take my share as my dowry.” Ito. Of course, the yakuza that Akira had left to keep order in the Hidden House. So Sute really had taken a fancy to him then! “He asked me before we knew about the money, but it’s much better now that I have a dowry. He doesn’t even know about it yet.”

  I managed to stutter my congratulations.

  “We are going home.” The twins spoke together, as always. One began a sentence, and the other finished it. “We will travel in style. When our father sees that we are rich women, he will accept us back into the family. He will be happy that we have returned.”

  I tried to share their hope, but I wondered if he would really be pleased to see his daughters back. Sayo must have seen the doubt on my face.

  “We have heard that father has remarried, a woman who is much younger than he is. He has another son. He will forgive us.”

  Ah. Another son to replace the lost child. Perhaps he would welcome his daughters back after all.

  “Naruko? Masaki? What about you?”

  The girls looked at each other. Masaki sp
oke for both of them.

  “We don’t know. Kiku has persuaded Mori-san to rent a house for us. Not in the Floating World, but in Edo. We will be together, which will make us very happy. We think we may travel a little—Naruko would like me to see her home in China.” Naruko nodded shyly. “And after that? We will see.”

  I looked from Naruko’s beaming face to Masaki’s happy smile, and had no doubt at all that the future would be good to them.

  “Truly, the Hidden House is finished then,” I said with quiet satisfaction. Midori nodded.

  “That it is. I own it, and I am going to see it razed to the ground. I am going to make sure that nothing remains of it. Except memories,” she added softly.

  I sighed like a prayer. And then had an afterthought. “And Bigger? I didn’t see him in the battle.”

  “No. He stayed here.” Kiku pulled a sour face. “He told the geisha Akira wanted him to protect them. In any event, as soon as he heard Akira was dead, he disappeared. We have heard that he has been taken in by one of the other yakuza. I hope he enjoys his new life, starting as the new recruit. The lowest of the low.”

  “May the gods give him what he deserves.”

  Even Sute caught the sarcasm behind my words and beamed.

  “And that just leaves you, Mineko-chan.” Midori smiled at me, but I thought I saw sadness in her expression. “I had hoped that you would come to America with me. Act in the kabuki at my side. But it seems that the gods don’t favor me that much.”

  My breath hitched in my throat. Me? Go with my beloved Midori and take part in the kabuki? The thing I wanted more than anything given to me at long last? I filled with joy, until I realized what she had actually said.

  “Why? If you will take me, I would love that more than anything. You know I’ve dreamed of acting in the kabuki since I was a child.”