by India Millar
I had no words to say to Carpi. I could not bring myself to ask how she was, or – even worse – to lie and comment that she was looking well. Because she was not looking well, not at all. She looked as if she was suddenly an old woman, as though she had aged thirty years in only a few days.
Her face had always been remarkably pretty, in a way that was almost perfection to Japanese eyes. She had lovely, almond-shaped eyes, a small nose, broad cheekbones, and wonderful, smooth skin. As her patrons were wont to say, a “face like a melon seed.” But now, Carpi was no longer pretty. She had lost weight in her face and her cheekbones dominated her expression. Even her eyes seemed to have sunken in. And even worse, her face had none of its normal animation, the devil-may-care look that had made her so very vivacious. Her skin was taut over her bones and seemed to have changed color from her old, deeply attractive tea-rose pink to a distinctly unattractive spoiled milk hue.
“Sit down.” Even Carpi’s voice was a dull echo of her old, full-of-bravado tones.
I sat on the tatami at her feet. “Carpi, what is it? What’s the matter?” No point in pretending I had not seen the changes in my Older Sister. She would not have appreciated my lies anyway.
“I don’t know.” Her voice was flat. Hopeless. I wanted to weep for her.
“You need to see the doctor. I’ll tell Auntie.” I had half risen to my feet, but Carpi waved at me to sit down.
“She knows. I’ve seen the doctor. In fact, I’ve seen two doctors.”
I blinked in shock. Auntie had actually paid for two doctors to see Carpi? She must be worried!
“What did they say? What’s wrong?”
Carpi laughed shortly and shrugged her shoulders. “Auntie was worried that one of the patrons had given me something horrible. She kept patrons away from me for a month to be safe.” My eyes widened in shock. A month, a whole month, without a patron? No money coming in, and doctor´s fees going out? Auntie must have been so distraught. “Then when I didn’t start showing horrible pustules, she decided at least it wasn’t that. Do you know,” she added almost conversationally, “I think I would have been happier if it had been the pox. At least that way the doctor could have given me mercury and I would have had a chance at getting better.”
I shook my head. “Don’t be silly. They say the mercury cure is almost as bad as the disease. Anyway, it’s obvious you haven’t got anything like that. But what did the doctors say was the matter?”
“The first one said my vital energies were out of balance.” Carpi smiled ruefully and I saw her teeth had turned yellow. Her disease or just neglect? “He said I needed to eat more vegetables and no meat. He also gave me some powder to burn. I had to inhale the fumes. They made me sick. When that cure did no good, Auntie got a different doctor to see me. One from Edo. Outside the Floating World.”
“No!”
Carpi nodded, her expression wry. “I know,” she said. “When she did that, I really started to worry. I thought I must be very near death if Auntie was prepared to go to that sort of expense. I needn’t have worried. It turned out that this physician was a regular at the Green Tea House and an old friend of Auntie. I think he owed her a favor or two, and I was one of them. Anyway, he said it was definitely not the pox. He agreed with the first doctor and said it was my entire balance that was out of sorts. He prescribed more foul herbs – only these ones I had to swallow – and said I was to rest. And drink sake three times a day. And not to take any spices in my food. And to take a pipe when I felt really out of sorts. The sake gave me a headache, but the pipe is good.”
“Do you feel better?” An inane thing to ask, but what else could I say?
Carpi stared at me for so long, I began to feel uncomfortable.
She climbed to her feet with a total absence of her usual, sinuous grace. I was about to put out my hand to help her, then realized helplessly that there was nothing I could grasp to help her up. Embarrassed, I changed the gesture into one of pretending to push back my hair. Carpi was not fooled, I knew. Not at all. But politely she pretended she had not noticed. Once on her feet, she loosened her robe with her teeth and tugged it aside. “Look,” she said.
I stared. I couldn’t help it. She was naked under the loose robe. I had seen Carpi naked many times, in the bath or when a group of us was entertaining clients. But this was not Carpi’s body. She was more like a living skeleton than a young woman. Her breasts had shrunk until they were barely more than empty bags on her chest. I could count each one of her ribs. Her hips stuck out like the handles on a cooking pot. Even her rounded little belly was now concave, as if it was slowly but surely being sucked toward her backbone.
“Oh, Carpi!” I whispered. “Have you stopped eating? Is it the herbs?”
She shook her head and I rose and pulled her robe around her tenderly, fastening the sash as if she was a child.
“I don’t feel like eating, but I do. In fact, I’m eating more than I used to do. And drink! No matter how much tea I drink, I’m still thirsty all the time. I seem to pee more than I drink, as well. I can’t go more than a couple of hours without reaching for the pot. And Midori…” She hesitated, and I guessed that whatever she was about to say worried her more than anything. “Midori, I can’t see properly. Everything is blurred. I can’t even read a scroll anymore. I think I’m going blind. And I’m tired. It doesn’t matter how long I sleep for, I can’t seem to wake up. I just feel awful, Midori. What is it? What’s the matter with me?”
“I don’t know, Carpi. I’m sorry, I just don’t know. Can we ask Auntie to get another doctor? Perhaps one of the foreign Barbarians might have some knowledge that we don’t possess?”
“I’ve asked her,” Carpi said miserably. “But she says that whatever I have, it’s a Japanese disease and the foreign devils would have no idea how to treat it. I suppose she’s right.”
We both fell silent, tied in our own thoughts. Carpi looked and sounded so unlike her normal, ebullient self, was clearly so very ill, I had no idea what to say to her. What to do that might help her.
“Can I do anything?” I asked lamely.
To my surprise, Carpi nodded. Very slowly. “Yes. Yes, you can help me, Little Sister. You are probably the only one in the Hidden House that can help me. If you will.”
I stared at her. Her tone was very serious, and I was bewildered. What could I possibly do to help her that none of the others could? I held my hands out in a gesture that said, Tell me!
“Midori, I am not going to get any better.” The words of course you are died in my mouth. If Carpi, with her iron will, had decided that she was not going to recover from this mysterious ailment, then she would not. I blinked back tears.
“Do not die, Older Sister,” I whimpered. “Please, do not die.”
“I am going to die, Midori. If I carry on like this, then I will either go to sleep and stay in my dreams forever or my flesh will fall from my bones entirely and I will starve to death. I do not welcome either of those ends, Little Sister. If I am to die, then I want it to be at a time of my own choosing. In a way of my own choosing. That is why you are the only one who can help me.”
Already, I was shaking my head. I knew, now, why Carpi had said I was the only one who could help her. Because of Danjuro, I was the only one of the girls in the Hidden House who was allowed to venture outside, into the Floating World.
“Help me, Midori.” Carpi reached out and grabbed my shoulders in her hands. I had never felt her grip before, and it was shockingly strong. I did not recoil, as I might have done at any time before, but felt rather nothing but intense pity. “Help me, Little Sister. I want to leave this world in my own good time, by my own hands.” She laughed bitterly at the irony of her words. “I can hardly commit seppuku, but I can take poison. You remember, when it was your mizuage? The drops I put in your eyes to make them sparkle, to make your pupils bigger?” I nodded reluctantly. “That drug, in large enough quantities, will kill. It is easily available from any apothecary. Next time Danjuro sends
for you, stop at an apothecary and tell him you want some. He will hand it over without a second thought. It is something a geisha will always have use for. I ask nothing else of you. I will put the drug in my tea, or perhaps the sake. And then...I will find peace. Do this for me, Little Sister. Please.”
I swallowed and shook my head again. I could not. Suicide was an honorable thing, but surely Carpi could see that she might get better. That she still had years of life to look forward to. I could not help her kill herself. Not while there was still a chance of life. Perhaps it was the half of me that was truly a foreign Barbarian that was stopping me, but I could not. I just could not do what she was asking of me.
While I was trying to find the words to explain my feelings to Carpi, she closed her eyes and sighed. “You will not help me,” she said flatly.
“I cannot. You will get better, Carpi. Auntie must find you another doctor. You are too young to think of death.”
“You think so? Oh well. Perhaps you are right.” Was it just my imagination or did she sound less defeated, a little like the old, strong, Carpi? “Don’t tell anybody what we’ve been discussing, will you?”
“No, of course not. Is there anything…anything else I can do for you?”
“Prepare me a pipe, please.” Carpi nodded at the tray beside her. Eager to help, I rolled a ball of opium between my fingers carefully and held it over the flame of the lamp on the end of a long pin, until it began to go sticky. With equal care, I pushed it in the bowl of the pipe and then heated that over the flame. As soon as the fumes began to ripple the air with their sweetness, I placed the pipe between Carpi’s eager lips. She inhaled deeply once, twice, three times and then nodded her head. I took the pipe away, set it back on the tray, and waited until Carpi laid down and her eyes closed. Then I sneaked away and closed her screen door, shielding her from the world.
I thought that our little chat really had done Carpi some good. The next day, just after the noon meal, she appeared in Kiku’s room and sat for a while with the rest of us girls. And she did, she really did, seem like the acerbic, witty Carpi of old. The girls were so obviously pleased to see her that I felt certain it had done her good. That she would get better, no matter what the gods had chosen to inflict her with.
We discussed it amongst ourselves, after Carpi had pleaded sleepiness and left us. We all agreed that none of us had ever seen anything like it before, but that it was definitely not the pox, for which we were all deeply thankful.
And anyway, all thoughts of Carpi soon left my mind. It was the third day of the week, and Danjuro had sent for me.
I hustled my way through the Floating World on winged feet, little Suzume trotting at my heels. This time, there were no nervous steps with Suzume hissing directions at me. This time, I knew where I was bound and was eager to get there. To my lover.
The only thing that gave me the slightest pang of unease on the walk was the apothecary shops we passed. I could not help but recall Carpi’s plea and was so glad I had refused that it added an extra frisson to my excursion. Unlike last time, nobody stopped us. Neither samurai nor yakuza showed the slightest bit of interest in us girls, and I guessed that it was because we were walking as though we belonged in this world, with neither nerves nor fears.
The male servant was waiting for us at the door of the theater and bowed us to what I had already begun to think of us as “our” box. Even the noodle seller seemed to be hovering, waiting for us, and I took it all as fortunate signs. How lucky I was! Who among those who lived in my world could ask for more? And then Danjuro – in the character of a young man – leaped eagerly on the stage. I forgot all about my luck and the fact that I would have to return to the Hidden House in a matter of hours and simply lost myself in the magic of the kabuki.
This was a new play, a tragedy recounting the story of two young lovers who had eloped and been discovered. Brought home and separated by the girl’s father, who intended his daughter for a rich merchant, the two resolved to commit suicide together. This aspect of the play gave me a distinct twinge of unease, but it was soon submerged by the make-believe world of the theater. I sighed and brushed away tears and hissed and booed with the rest of the theater as the action unwound. As the two young lovers ran from the stage, with Danjuro as the man, I held my breath with the rest of the audience until the sound of a loud splash came from behind the scenes, and we knew, with total and complete satisfaction, that the lovers had drowned themselves together and were now as inseparable in the next life as they had wanted to be in this one.
Perhaps it was because I was becoming a little more used to the drama of the kabuki, but just the tiniest thread of criticism rose in my mind. Not of Danjuro, of course. Never Danjuro. He was always sublime, no matter what part he took. Whether it was a withered old crone, a young lover, or a commanding shogun, Danjuro was always the character he was taking. Something elusive about that thought, something important, danced just out of my reach and I shrugged it away, annoyed that it dared to try to belittle my joy in this evening.
No, it was not Danjuro I was criticizing. Certainly not. And it was barely criticism anyway. It was just…the actor who had played the part of the young girl. He had been excellent, certainly. Of course he had. He would have had no place in the Edo kabuki if he had not been a wonderful actor. And yet there was just something about the way he had walked that was not quite right. His use of the fan was just slightly unconvincing. Suddenly, I knew what it was.
I could have done better. If I had been playing the part of the young girl, then I would have had the audience weeping with me, shouting for me. As it was, the greater part of the applause – as was only right – had been for Danjuro.
But if it had been me on the stage. Me in his arms. Me playing the part of the lover that I was in real life…I drew a huge sigh.
Not possible, of course. All the parts in the kabuki were taken by men. Women were not so much as allowed on the stage. I glanced at Suzume and knew instinctively from the tension in her body, the expression on her face, that she shared my longing. Oh, what a pair we were, shaking off our amazing good fortune and longing for what we could not have. But then, that is the nature of woman, and there is nothing to be done about it.
And yet, Carpi had told me that once, many hundreds of years ago, all geisha were men. That women geisha were unheard of. And I was sure, although I could not remember how I knew, that once upon a time it was women who took center stage in the kabuki and men who were unheard of as actors. But that was all years ago, many lives ago.
I shook off such impossible dreams. Count your blessings, woman, I scolded myself, for they are many.
Suzume and I were escorted backstage. By that time, I was on fire. Not for the kabuki, but for Danjuro.
He was sitting down when I entered his room, but he leaped to his feet at once. His eyes were shining and his face animated, as if he had taken the first puff from an opium pipe. Although he had wiped off his thick stage makeup, I could still see traces of it around his hairline and in the creases of his nose. Suddenly, I thought, we are both the same, Danjuro. You and I. We both hide behind our makeup. We are both actors. And neither of us, no matter what the outside world sees, is comfortable in the skin that karma has given us to wear.
“Well? What did you think of it, Midori-chan?”
“It was wonderful,” I told him. “I was deeply moved. Moved to tears.” In spite of my enthusiasm, something in my voice betrayed me. He moved toward me and took my shoulders in his hands, staring into my face. Perhaps, after all, I wasn’t such a good actor as I thought myself to be. Or was it that Danjuro knew me better than I knew myself?
“It wasn’t right, was it? Tell me. Tell me what was wrong. I know the crowd loved it, but I felt in my blood that something wasn’t quite right. Was it me?”
I bit my lip in confusion. I wasn’t here to criticize, I was here to applaud the great man. To offer him my body – oh yes! – and bring him down gently from the tension of his performance. I was
a geisha, not a critic. Should I lie? Heap on the praise until my lover was happy? I glanced at him and decided he wanted the truth.
“It was the young man who took the part of the girl,” I blurted. “He was very good, please don’t think he wasn’t, it was just that I still knew he was a man. Not a woman.”
Danjuro let out his breath in a long hiss and loosed his grip from my shoulders. I immediately felt the lack of his touch.
“Yes. Yes, you’re right. I felt it myself. What was it? What was wrong?”
I told him, explaining about the walk, the way he held his fan. And for good measure – Danjuro was my lover, after all – told him that there was something lacking in the way the young man looked at the object of his desire.
He looked at me intently and then nodded brusquely. “Show me.” He held his arms wide and then stood back. Abruptly, he was no longer Danjuro, my lover. He was back in character. He was Danjuro, the great actor. “You have come to tell me that your father is going to marry you off to an old man. That there is no hope for us. Show me your face, your walk.”
It was quite ridiculously easy. I could even remember the dialogue from that particular scene. I turned my back on Danjuro, took a deep breath, and when I turned to face him, I was no longer Midori No Me. I was the doomed lover, come to tell her man that everything was lost.
He made me act the scene out three, four, five times. Eventually, he nodded and I saw the tension leave his body.
“Yes, you have it. I will try and explain it to him, but I don’t know. Did many others see what you saw?”
“I don’t think so.” I was elated, full of the pure joy of being somebody else. Although, I had to admit, why would I not be good at it? After all, it was what I did almost every day. “Suzume noticed. I know she did. But I don’t think anybody else in the audience realized it. Not even the women.”