One Hundred and One Ways

by Mako Yoshikawa

  Yukiko was preoccupied during the first couple of visits, and had to strive not to let Sekiguchi know it. After nineteen months of rushed encounters in unlikely rooms, her lover, Jun, had come to the decision that he resented the work that she did. First he pouted, refusing to tell her what was wrong, and then he sulked, his well-cut mouth turning down at its ends. When the thought that she spent her nights luring other men finally became too much for him, he ceased talking to her altogether, staring moodily into space whenever she spoke. Jun and Yukiko had never talked much to each other, judging it wiser to spend their all-too-brief sessions in intercourse of another sort, but this was a silence of a wholly different degree and ilk. During their assignations (for there was no question that they would stop meeting to have sex), hers was the only voice that was ever used.

  In the beginning, with Jun acting up in this way, she was relieved, albeit a little surprised, that Sekiguchi did not attempt to make love to her. When she talked it over with Kaori, as she did with every predicament of her life, she wondered aloud if he had no desire for her at all, but came out of loneliness, as some of the older clients did. Not until his fifth visit in as many weeks did she admit that Kaori had been right to scoff at her suggestion: it was neither shyness, nor impotence, nor respect for his absent wife that made him hesitate to touch her. Sekiguchi spent his sessions watching her almost calculatingly, and she was at first infuriated, and then amused, when she decided that he, with his face that frightened children, was attempting to determine whether she was love-worthy. He had gall, but she rather liked that in a man. Besides, there was a certain sexiness to the way he carried himself, as if his matter-of-fact assumption of authority could command desire as well as obedience.

  Sekiguchi was in fact attractive to women, and would be so for the whole of his life. With the exception of Kaori, all the geishas and apprentices of the house at first openly pitied Yukiko for his interest, for she was notoriously fussy, and her new admirer was not only ugly but unkempt as well, with dirt under his nails and his hair perpetually overgrown. Kaori, who alone knew how little Yukiko cared about Jun’s lack of cleanliness, and who was also aware of how sullen he had lately become, watched Yukiko’s increasingly careful preparations for Sekiguchi’s visits with concern rather than pity. But as his visits continued, the other geishas also began to fall under the spell of his authority, and then they all fell to worrying about Yukiko.

  Love was, of course, an occupational hazard in their trade, and as the mistress of the house was wont to remind them, married clients posed the greatest threat of all. Only two alternatives were available to the geisha stupid enough to fall for a married man. If he offered to keep her, buying her out of the geisha house and setting her up in a home of her own, she would lead a precarious existence at best, vulnerable to the vagaries of his affection. The security of marriage would be denied her, as divorce was virtually unheard of in those days, and she would have to live with the fear that at any point he might decide to give her up for his wife. The geisha house, where shelter, daily meals, and the warmth of female companionship were guaranteed even for a woman long past her prime, offered a far better future.

  In the other scenario, which was far more likely, the married man would simply tire of the geisha and move on to another woman, or perhaps back to his wife. The wisdom here was that if a man could cheat on his wife, he would cheat on his mistress as well. The tears of the geisha would mean little to him, as he had already paid for his time.

  As the mistress of the house continually warned them, either alternative was grim, spelling doom for the geisha, heartache and much unease.

  At about this time Yukiko began to be troubled by falling dreams. She knew from her friends that such dreams were common. Every woman in the house, it seemed, suffered from the disorienting experience of falling, seemingly out of control, in her sleep, and then jerking herself awake. But Yukiko’s case was an extreme one. She had those dreams three, four times a night, every night, for almost a month running. In the mornings she was cranky and sluggish, and in the evenings, when she went to work, she had to wear two coats of paint to mask her puffy face.

  Her puffiness notwithstanding, the sleeplessness improved Yukiko’s looks, conferring upon her a languidness and sensuality that her somewhat forbidding beauty had always lacked. Her lips were fuller and her eyelids heavier, and her movements had slowed, so that when she reached down to smooth her kimono over her hips, it seemed an invitation. She was more popular with clients than she ever had been before.

  It was an unusually cool October. Sekiguchi’s face was lightly flushed when he came in at his usual hour on Saturday, and she thought as they greeted each other that his color was due to the north wind.

  “I am going away,” he announced without preamble. “My wife is finally pregnant.”

  She did not immediately register the meaning of his words, so abrupt had they been. Then she felt herself slipping, the sensation she had experienced repeatedly in her dreams. Struggling for level ground, she forced herself to scan his face clinically for signs of the handsome boy that rumor said he had been. She found nothing.

  She lifted her hand to her hair, for a moment veiling her face with her sleeve, and then she moved her hand back to her lap. “Congratulations,” she said. “I hope all goes well.”

  His head tilting, he peered closer at her. Her voice had been cool and steady, her eyes clear and her face smooth, but Sekiguchi’s mouth contorted as if he wanted to speak, and she realized with horror and a burst of anger that he was gazing at her with pity.

  Yet when he reached out to embrace her good-bye, she did not resist. As he held her, she thought of Jun, with his smooth long muscles and his lovely, petulant mouth, who had finally acquiesced—just last week—to her decision that they part. She shivered, but with such tight self-control that Sekiguchi thought it was his breath on her that stirred the flyaway hairs near her ears.

  When he came back a mere two months later, she was waiting for him. Forewarned by the gossip line, she knew of the pregnancy that had one day simply melted away, the stomach that had flattened, and the retreat from all society made by the wife.

  She thought at first that he looked much the same, except that his flat-footed gait may have been a shade more noticeable than usual as he stepped into the room. He slid the paper door shut behind him and returned Yukiko’s bow, his good eye brightening as it lit upon her face. It was not until he hitched up the ends of his kimono and sat down on the floor that she noticed, with a peculiar tightening of her chest, how he had changed. His mouth and his weak eye drooped even more than they used to, giving him the comically morose look of a bulldog, and there was a dullness even to his left eye now. For the first time, she could spot lines etched into his forehead.

  He asked her about her life during the past two months, and the parties and the activities of the geishas. Sekiguchi’s requests for the gossip of the house always made her want to laugh, but it touched her, too, for few of the other clients evinced any interest in her except as it concerned them. So she always readily acceded to his desire and regaled him with stories, as she did then: of Michi-chan, the youngest, newest apprentice and the darling of the house, who pined after her parents, her grandmother, her dog and her cat, and of how they all came to visit last weekend, turning the almost staid establishment into a veritable menagerie; of Sachiko, flat-nosed and merry and addicted to the gay whirl of parties, whom a rich young man courted in vain; and of Reiko, the ethereal Kyoto beauty who had fallen in love with a rotund shopkeeper, and of their plans for a wedding in the spring. Yukiko’s face always softened when she spoke of her friends.

  In the course of her storytelling, Sekiguchi laughed twice, a fact she regarded with some triumph. Afterwards there was a pause, which she finally, and as delicately as possible, filled.

  “And how has Sekiguchi-san been?”

  He looked through her for a moment, and she thought that at last he was going to speak of the weeks of waiting, the dis
appointment, and the wife who now hovered on the edge of madness, but instead he shrugged and gallantly, almost boyishly bowed.

  “I missed you,” he said.

  A month and a half, punctuated by his weekly visits, passed, and then it was winter, and the rooms of the geisha house were filled with the charcoal smell and smoky warmth that came from fires built in holes in the ground.

  There had been an earthquake earlier in the day. She may have been distracted by the memory of its rhythms, for she was in the middle of a story, spicy and scandalous, but she kept losing her place in it, stumbling over the words again and again. Finally she stopped. She stared at Sekiguchi, at his one sharp eye, which gazed back at her patiently; the wry mouth; the round head. Her heart, pounding through five layers of cotton, silk, and heavy brocade, made the outer robe of her kimono flutter.

  “I can’t think,” she said at last.

  She watched his hand, crooked and scarred, as it stretched towards her face. His touch on her was soft as a whisper. She swallowed audibly, thinking she should say or do something, but her geisha training had deserted her, and she sat as passively as the wives whom those of her profession sometimes envied, and more often scorned.

  She did not even help him with the intricate ritual of undressing her, an act that even her well-trained maid could not accomplish alone. Somehow he managed, though he wrestled for minutes with the daunting bow at her back. All that Yukiko did was to take out the two pins on the top of her head, so that her hair came cascading down in all its tea-scented richness over her shoulders.

  It took him much less time to undress himself. Naked but demure with her hair concealing her breasts, she watched with curiosity as his body emerged. It was unexpectedly wiry and it looked strong despite its squatness, but the skin was so badly eroded, without a smooth stretch in sight, that she flinched, and then she blushed with shame at her rudeness. He shook his head at her and smiled, his mouth twisting and his bad eye disappearing into a squint, and with a new feeling of shyness she reached out towards him.

  As he climbed on top of her, her breath caught and she felt again as if she were falling in a dream. She fought against the sensation, but this time she lost.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I ENTER THE bedroom, turn off the light, and find my way to the bed. Eric is still in the bathroom. I swivel my body around, so that my feet lie on the pillow, and carefully cover myself with the sheet.

  Eric comes into the room and slips into bed beside me. Then he reaches out and clasps the shaved smoothness of my calves and the boniness of my ankles. “What the—” he begins.

  “Surprise!” I say, pulling up the sheet from the bottom.

  Eric is silent, stunned, I think optimistically, by my cleverness. My eyes are still unused to the dark, and so I sit up and grope for his face. With my fingers, I read the smile like Braille on his lips.

  “That’s very cute,” he says.

  I slip a finger into his mouth and his tongue, soft and warm, enfolds it.

  Lying beneath Eric while waiting for him to finish, I touch the muscles beneath his shoulder blades. His back is smooth. Broad up at top, it narrows down in a funnel shape, and his spine is especially hard and bony towards the bottom. Like a newborn animal, the swell of his buttocks is soft and lightly furred.

  I am thinking of nothing but his back when he begins to spasm in pleasure. I shift myself under him, and when I turn my head slightly to the right, there on the windowsill is Phillip, his body darkly silhouetted against the night sky. I cry out a little at the shock of seeing him there, but Eric is caught up in sensation and does not notice.

  In most ghost stories, of course, the sight of the spectre inspires horror in the living, fear that the dead one has come back to hound them into the grave. Yet never before until now, in the middle of Eric’s orgasm, have I felt fear at the apparition of Phillip. It is a shot of pure terror, an emotion that easily overrides in intensity the pang of guilt I usually feel when I see him, so pale and quiet, and so vulnerable in his nakedness. I bite down hard on my bottom lip, to prevent a scream from escaping.

  This is what it feels like to be haunted.

  Then the sight of him makes me climax again, even though I thought I would not.

  When it is all over, I want to crawl into a corner and hide, as Phillip himself always seems to want to these days, and it occurs to me that this is precisely what I fear most about his ghost: that he is here to prevent me from ever leaving the shadows of my apartment again.

  Eric likes to stay inside me afterwards. In the beginning I did not like him to do so, but I have grown used to it by now, and I no longer really mind. Today, however, I push at him gently, to make him move away. He lies panting like a dog on top of me, and his suddenly relaxed body is much heavier than it was before. I can feel the racing of his heart against my chest.

  Engrossed as he was, it did not seem as if he could have been aware of me at all, yet he surprises me, as he sometimes still does. He lifts his head up and peers at me. “You okay?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “I thought you seemed a little out of it towards the end. You know, just before you came again.”

  I crane my neck slowly towards the right to glance once more at Phillip, his figure and face cast in shadow. A wind blows, the moonlight catches him, I blink and when I look again, he is gone. There remains only the movement of the curtains in the breeze. Wearily I rub my eyes.

  “I’m fine,” I say, carefully moving out from under him.

  Minutes pass, but Eric does not seem tired. He lies on his back, looking intently at some unknown point high above him. I place my head next to his on his shoulder, and look upwards with him. The wind whispers, and on the ceiling grotesque shadows mock the movements of the curtains. Through the window a wisp of a cloud is visible, glowing with moonshine or maybe only the artificial brightness of the city. I wonder what Eric is looking at, whether he sees something different from what I am seeing. I stroke his chest slowly while he lies almost frozen in his stillness. I believe him to be lost in thought and memory, as I am, but when I look again he is fast asleep.

  He stirs. From past lovers I know that men usually look younger and softer when they sleep. Eric, who sleeps more soundly than most, occasionally whimpers or makes gurgling noises, just like a baby Perhaps it is the contrast with his daytime self that makes him seem especially vulnerable at moments like these. When he is awake, he is always protectively putting his arm around me; when he is asleep, that same arm seems to reach towards me with need. His body curls trustingly around me now, and his fingers have already started entwining themselves into my hair.

  Yet just as I am settling down beside him, he surprises me for the second time of the night. “Who—” he says, raising his head, and turning towards the window.

  “What is it?” I ask, placing a hand on his chest.

  “I thought I saw something,” he says. “Actually, someone. It wasn’t anything. Go back to sleep.” His head is back on the pillow, and his speech is already blurred with sleep.

  “Okay,” I say, but I sit up and look around the room. Even the shadows are still.

  “Strange about this apartment,” he mutters. “I keep thinking I see things here. I’m probably just overworked, but what a joke if it really was haunted—”

  Suddenly I cannot bear to hear anymore. “Shh,” I tell him. “You’ve been dreaming.” Turning my back to him, I lie bone-tired but sleepless, my eyes open and staring as I lie wrapped in Eric’s arms.

  By December, when the air is sharp and bright, my grandmother and I will be old friends. I will lend her my warmest scarf and we will stroll together, arm in arm like schoolgirls, the breadth of Central Park.

  Obaasama, I will say (stumbling no longer, the word like butter as it rolls off my tongue), how have you survived, without learning to forget?

  CHAPTER TEN

  ON TUESDAY I wake up to the sight of Phillip. He looks uncomfortable, his head drooping over his knees as he sits leani
ng back against the wall, and his body seems gaunt and weak. My bed is large and luxurious, and smells faintly of Eric still; next to me is a soft impression of his body in the wrinkles of the sheet.

  The heat and the light of the sun stream in through the window and make the air in the room hazy, but my mind feels clean and sharp. I get out of bed quietly, put on a robe, and tiptoe out of the room. I cannot allow myself to look too long at Phillip, for this afternoon Eric and I are going browsing for rings.

  It is already past eleven, so I take a shower and get dressed right away. My makeup takes longer, far longer, even, than it usually does. When my grandmother Yukiko worked as a geisha and made herself up every evening, the elaborate process of painting her face white and remaking her features into the masklike ones of a doll took more than an hour. Today, after half an hour, tissue paper stained with lipstick litters the sink; my cheeks hurt from the number of times I put on blush and rubbed it off; and I have developed the beginnings of a severe headache from the strength of the perfume emanating from my wrists and neck. In the end it is the lateness of the hour rather than any sense of completion that makes me stop. I back out of the bathroom reluctantly, keeping my eyes on the mirror as I go.

  In the living room, Phillip leans against the coffee table. I can see every rib of his body, and the bones at the top of his shoulders jut upwards. His chin is pointed, his cheeks are hollow, and his eyes sunken. When one of the six violet moths flying about him lands on his eyebrow, he does not even twitch.

  For the longest time, forever, it seemed, I could not go near Phillip past a particular point because a kind of vertigo would set in. So there is a certain justice to the fact that when he appears to me now, I feel acutely claustrophobic, as if my apartment, with its tall windows, skylights, and high ceilings, were instead airless, suffocating, and dark. For so it would seem, were I to be holed up here with Phillip for eternity. It is a scenario worthy of Edgar Allan Poe—a claustrophobe, surely, if there ever was one, with his nightmarish fantasies of tipsy men sealed up behind brick walls, beating hearts under floorboards, and desirable sisters nailed inside coffins.