"What's going on here?" he said. "If you have something more to say to these girls, say it while I'm standing here. There's no cause for you to treat them this way."
"I'm sure we have a great many more things to talk about. But the train is coming," Mrs. Fidget said. And it was true: I could see it curling around a turn not far in the distance.
Mr. Tanaka led us back up the platform to where the farmers and old women were gathering up their things. Soon the train came to a stop before us. Mr. Bekku, in his stiff kimono, wedged himself between Satsu and me and led us by our elbows into the train car. I heard Mr. Tanaka say something, but I was too confused and upset to understand it. I couldn't trust what I heard. It might have been:
Mata yo! "We'll meet again!"
Or this:
Matte yo! "Wait!"
Or even this:
Ma... deyo! "Well, let's go!"
When I peered out the window, I saw Mr. Tanaka walking back toward his cart and Mrs. Fidget wiping her hands all over her kimono.
After a moment, my sister said, "Chiyo-chan!"
I buried my face in my hands; and honestly I would have plunged in anguish through the floor of the train if I could have. Because the way my sister said my name, she hardly needed to say anything more.
"Do you know where we're going?" she said to me.
I think all she wanted was a yes or no answer. Probably it didn't matter to her what our destination was-so long as someone knew what was happening. But, of course, I didn't. I asked the narrow man, Mr. Bekku, but he paid me no attention. He was still staring at Satsu as if he had never seen anything like her before. Finally he squeezed his face into a look of disgust and said:
"Fish! What a stench, the both of you!"
He took a comb from his drawstring bag and began tearing it through her hair. I'm certain he must have hurt her, but I could see that watching the countryside pass by outside the window hurt her even more. In a moment Satsu's lips turned down like a baby's, and she began to cry. Even if she'd hit me and yelled at me, I wouldn't have ached as much as I did watching her whole face tremble. Everything was my fault. An old peasant woman with her teeth bared like a dog's came over with a carrot for Satsu, and after giving it to her asked where she was going.
"Kyoto," Mr. Bekku answered.
I felt so sick with worry at hearing this, I couldn't bring myself to look Satsu in the eye any longer. Even the town of Senzuru seemed a remote, faraway place. As for Kyoto, it sounded as foreign to me as Hong Kong, or even New York, which I'd once heard Dr. Miura talk about. For all I knew, they ground up children in Kyoto and fed them to dogs.
We were on that train for many hours, without food to eat. The sight of Mr. Bekku taking a wrapped-up lotus leaf from his bag, and unwrapping it to reveal a rice ball sprinkled with sesame seeds, certainly got my attention. But when he took it in his bony fingers and pressed it into his mean little mouth without so much as looking at me, I felt as if I couldn't take another moment of torment. We got off the train at last in a large town, which I took to be Kyoto; but after a time another train pulled into the station, and we boarded it. This one did take us to Kyoto. It was much more crowded than the first train had been, so that we had to stand. By the time we arrived, as evening was approaching, I felt as sore as a rock must feel when the waterfall has pounded on it all day long.
I could see little of the city as we neared Kyoto Station. But then to my astonishment, I caught a glimpse of rooftops reaching as far as the base of hills in the distance. I could never have imagined a city so huge. Even to this day, the sight of streets and buildings from a train often makes me remember the terrible emptiness and fear I felt on that curious day when I first left my home.
Back then, around 1930, a fair number of rickshaws still operated in Kyoto. In fact, so many were lined up before the station that I imagined no one went anywhere in this big city unless it was in a rickshaw-which couldn't have been further from the truth. Perhaps fifteen or twenty of them sat pitched forward onto their poles, with their drivers squatting nearby, smoking or eating; some of the drivers even lay curled up asleep right there in the filth of the street.
Mr. Bekku led us by our elbows again, as if we were a couple of buckets he was bringing back from the well. He probably thought I'd have run away if he'd let go of me a moment; but I wouldn't have. Wherever he was taking us, I preferred it to being cast out alone into that great expanse of streets and buildings, as foreign to me as the bottom of the sea.
We climbed into a rickshaw, with Mr. Bekku squeezed tightly on the bench between us. He was a good deal bonier under that kimono even than I suspected. We pitched back as the driver raised the poles, and then Mr. Bekku said, "Tominaga-cho, in Gion."
The driver said nothing in reply, but gave the rickshaw a tug to get it moving and then set off at a trot. After a block or two I worked up my courage and said to Mr. Bekku, "Won't you please tell us where we're going?"
He didn't look as if he would reply, but after a moment he said, "To your new home."
At this, my eyes filled with tears. I heard Satsu weeping on the other side of Mr. Bekku and was just about to let out a sob of my own when Mr. Bekku suddenly struck her, and she let out a loud gasp. I bit my lip and stopped myself so quickly from crying any further that I think the tears themselves may have come to a halt as they slid down my cheeks.
Soon we turned onto an avenue that seemed as broad as the whole village of Yoroido. I could hardly see the other side for all the people, bicycles, cars, and trucks. I'd never seen a car before. I'd seen photographs, but I remember being surprised at how... well, cruel, is the way they looked to me in my frightened state, as though they were designed more to hurt people than to help them. All my senses were assaulted. Trucks rumbled past so close I could smell the scorched rubber odor of their tires. I heard a horrible screech, which turned out to be a streetcar on tracks in the center of the avenue.
I felt terrified as evening settled in around us; but I was never so astonished by anything in my life as by my first glimpse of city lights. I'd never even seen electricity except during part of our dinner at Mr. Tanaka's house. Here, windows were lit along the buildings upstairs and down, and the people on the sidewalks stood under puddles of yellow glow. I could see pinpoints even at the far reaches of the avenue. We turned onto another street, and I saw for the first time the Minamiza Theater standing on the opposite side of a bridge ahead of us. Its tiled roof was so grand, I thought it was a palace.
At length the rickshaw turned down an alleyway of wooden houses. The way they were all packed together, they seemed to share one continuous facade-which once again gave me the terrible feeling of being lost. I watched women in kimono rushing around in a great hurry on the little street. They looked very elegant to me; though, as I later learned, they were mostly maids.
When we came to a halt before a doorway, Mr. Bekku instructed me to get out. He climbed out behind me, and then as if the day hadn't been difficult enough, the worst thing of all happened. For when Satsu tried to get out as well, Mr. Bekku turned and pushed her back with his long arm.
"Stay there," he said to her. "You're going elsewhere."
I looked at Satsu, and Satsu looked at me. It may have been the first time we'd ever completely understood each other's feelings. But it lasted only a moment, for the next thing I knew my eyes had welled up with tears so much I could scarcely see. I felt myself being dragged backward by Mr. Bekku; I heard women's voices and quite a bit of commotion. I was on the point of throwing myself onto the street when suddenly Satsu's mouth fell open at something she saw in the doorway behind me.
I was in a narrow entryway with an ancient-looking well on one side and a few plants on the other. Mr. Bekku had dragged me inside, and now he pulled me up onto my feet. There on the step of the entryway, just slipping her feet into her lacquered zori, stood an exquisitely beautiful woman wearing a kimono lovelier than anything I'd ever imagined. I'd been impressed with the kimono worn by the young bucktoothe
d geisha in Mr. Tanaka's village of Senzuru; but this one was a water blue, with swirling lines in ivory to mimic the current in a stream. Glistening silver trout tumbled in the current, and the surface of the water was ringed with gold wherever the soft green leaves of a tree touched it. I had no doubt the gown was woven of pure silk, and so was the obi, embroidered in pale greens and yellows. And her clothing wasn't the only extraordinary thing about her; her face was painted a kind of rich white, like the wall of a cloud when lit by the sun. Her hair, fashioned into lobes, gleamed as darkly as lacquer, and was decorated with ornaments carved out of amber, and with a bar from which tiny silver strips dangled, shimmering as she moved.
This was my first glimpse of Hatsumomo. At the time, she was one of the most renowned geisha in the district of Gion; though of course I didn't know any of this then. She was a petite woman; the top of her hairstyle reached no higher than Mr. Bekku's shoulder. I was so startled by her appearance that I forgot my manners-not that I had developed very good manners yet-and stared directly at her face. She was smiling at me, though not in a kindly way. And then she said:
"Mr. Bekku, could you take out the garbage later? I'd like to be on my way."
There was no garbage in the entryway; she was talking about me. Mr. Bekku said he thought Hatsumomo had enough room to pass.
"You may not mind being so close to her," said Hatsumomo. "But when I see filth on one side of the street, I cross to the other."
Suddenly an older woman, tall and knobby, like a bamboo pole, appeared in the doorway behind her.
"I don't know how anyone puts up with you, Hatsumomo-san," said the woman. But she gestured for Mr. Bekku to pull me onto the street again, which he did. After this she stepped down into the entryway very awkwardly-for one of her hips jutted out and made it difficult for her to walk-and crossed to a tiny cabinet on the wall. She took from it something that looked to me like a piece of flint, along with a rectangular stone like the kind fishermen use to sharpen their knives, and then stood behind Hatsumomo and struck the flint against the stone, causing a little cluster of sparks to jump onto Hatsumomo's back. I didn't understand this at all; but you see, geisha are more superstitious even than fishermen. A geisha will never go out for the evening until someone has sparked a flint on her back for good luck.
After this, Hatsumomo walked away, using such tiny steps that she seemed to glide along with the bottom of her kimono fluttering just a bit. I didn't know that she was a geisha at the time, for she was worlds above the creature I'd seen in Senzuru a few weeks earlier. I decided she must be some sort of stage performer. We all watched her float away, and then Mr. Bekku handed me over to the older woman in the entryway. He climbed back into the rickshaw with my sister, and the driver raised the poles. But I never saw them leave, because I was slumped down in the entryway in tears.
The older woman must have taken pity on me; for a long while I lay there sobbing in my misery without anyone touching me. I even heard her shush up a maid who came from inside the house to speak with her. At length she helped me to my feet and dried my face with a handkerchief she took from one sleeve of her simple gray kimono.
"Now, now, little girl. There's no need to worry so. No one's going to cook you." She spoke with the same peculiar accent as Mr. Bekku and Hatsumomo. It sounded so different from the Japanese spoken in my village that I had a hard time understanding her. But in any case, hers were the kindest words anyone had said to me all day, so I made up my mind to do what she advised. She told me to call her Auntie. And then she looked down at me, square in the face, and said in a throaty voice:
"Heavens! What startling eyes! You're a lovely girl, aren't you? Mother will be thrilled."
I thought at once that the mother of this woman, whoever she was, must be very old, because Auntie's hair, knotted tightly at the back of her head, was mostly gray, with only streaks of black remaining.
Auntie led me through the doorway, where I found myself standing on a dirt corridor passing between two closely spaced structures to a courtyard in the back. One of the structures was a little dwelling like my house in Yoroido-two rooms with floors of dirt; it turned out to be the maids' quarters. The other was a small, elegant house sitting up on foundation stones in such a way that a cat might have crawled underneath it. The corridor between them opened onto the dark sky above, which gave me the feeling I was standing in something more like a miniature village than a house-especially since I could see several other small wooden buildings down in the courtyard at the end. I didn't know it at the time, but this was a very typical dwelling for the section of Kyoto in which it stood. The buildings in the courtyard, though they gave the impression of another group of tiny houses, were just a small shed for the toilets and a storehouse of two levels with a ladder on the outside. The entire dwelling fitted into an area smaller than Mr. Tanaka's home in the countryside and housed only eight people. Or rather nine, now that I had arrived.
After I took in the peculiar arrangement of all the little buildings, I noticed the elegance of the main house. In Yoroido, the wood structures were more gray than brown, and rutted by the salty air. But here the wood floors and beams gleamed with the yellow light of electric lamps. Opening off the front hallway were sliding doors with paper screens, as well as a staircase that seemed to climb straight up. One of these doors stood open, so that I was able to see a wood cabinet with a Buddhist altar. These elegant rooms turned out to be for the use of the family-and also Hatsumomo, even though, as I would come to understand, she wasn't a family member at all. When family members wanted to go to the courtyard, they didn't walk down the dirt corridor as the servants did, but had their own ramp of polished wood running along the side of the house. There were even separate toilets-an upper one for family and a lower one for servants.
I had yet to discover most of these things, though I would learn them within a day or two. But I stood there in the corridor a long while, wondering what sort of place this was and feeling very afraid. Auntie had disappeared into the kitchen and was talking in a hoarse voice to somebody. At length the somebody came out. She turned out to be a girl about my age, carrying a wooden bucket so heavy with water that she sloshed half of it onto the dirt floor. Her body was narrow; but her face was plump and almost perfectly round, so that she looked to me like a melon on a stick. She was straining to carry the bucket, and her tongue stuck out of her mouth just the way the stem comes out of the top of a pumpkin. As I soon learned, this was a habit of hers. She stuck her tongue out when she stirred her miso soup, or scooped rice into a bowl, or even tied the knot of her robe. And her face was truly so plump and so soft, with that tongue curling out like a pumpkin stem, that within a few days I'd given her the nickname of "Pumpkin," which everyone came to call her-even her customers many years later when she was a geisha in Gion.
When she had put down the bucket near me, Pumpkin retracted her tongue, and then brushed a strand of hair behind her ear while she looked me up and down. I thought she might say something, but she just went on looking, as though she were trying to make up her mind whether or not to take a bite of me. Really, she did seem hungry; and then at last she leaned in and whispered:
"Where on earth did you come from?"
I didn't think it would help to say that I had come from Yoroido; since her accent was as strange to me as everyone else's, I felt sure she wouldn't recognize the name of my village. I said instead that I'd just arrived.
"I thought I would never see another girl my age," she said to me. "But what's the matter with your eyes?"
Just then Auntie came out from the kitchen, and after shooing Pumpkin away, picked up the bucket and a scrap of cloth, and led me down to the courtyard. It had a beautiful mossy look, with stepping-stones leading to a storehouse in the back; but it smelled horrible because of the toilets in the little shed along one side. Auntie told me to undress. I was afraid she might do to me something like what Mrs. Fidget had done, but instead she only poured water over my shoulders and rubbed me down with t
he rag. Afterward she gave me a robe, which was nothing more than coarsely woven cotton in the simplest pattern of dark blue, but it was certainly more elegant than anything I'd ever worn before. An old woman who turned out to be the cook came down into the corridor with several elderly maids to peer at me. Auntie told them they would have plenty of time for staring another day and sent them back where they'd come from.
"Now listen, little girl," Auntie said to me, when we were alone. "I don't even want to know your name yet. The last girl who came, Mother and Granny didn't like her, and she was here only a month. I'm too old to keep learning new names, until they've decided they're going to keep you."
"What will happen if they don't want to keep me?" I asked.
"It's better for you if they keep you."
"May I ask, ma'am... what is this place?"
"It's an okiya," she said. "It's where geisha live. If you work very hard, you'll grow up to be a geisha yourself. But you won't make it as far as next week unless you listen to me very closely, because Mother and Granny are coming down the stairs in just a moment to look at you. And they'd better like what they see. Your job is to bow as low as you can, and don't look them in the eye. The older one, the one we call Granny, has never liked anyone in her life, so don't worry about what she says. If she asks you a question, don't even answer it, for heaven's sake! I'll answer for you. The one you want to impress is Mother. She's not a bad sort, but she cares about only one thing."
I didn't have a chance to find out what that one thing was, for I heard a creaking noise from the direction of the front entrance hall, and soon the two women came drifting out onto the walkway. I didn't dare look at them. But what I could see out of the corner of my eye made me think of two lovely bundles of silk floating along a stream. In a moment they were hovering on the walkway in front of me, where they sank down and smoothed their kimono across their knees.
Memoirs of a Geisha Page 5