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At breakfast the day after my tryst with the Minister, my stomach was so knotted, I could hardly take a bite of my fish. My pulse fluttered like a hummingbird as I knelt to pour the Minister tea. Far from venting his feelings about last night in front of everyone, as I’d feared he would, he only waved me away and continued to gaze at Pumpkin as though he’d never seen her in his life. I won’t pretend Pumpkin was any great beauty, but that morning she was wearing a lovely blush-pink kimono patterned with red hibiscus. The jasmine scent she wore was much more delicate than her usual geranium.
He was the Dr Crab sort, then - collecting encounters with geisha like prizes, and then losing interest.
Next was the Chairman. His presence was like hot coals spilt over an open wound. I avoided his eyes, murmured something inane about the weather, and moved on to Mameha.
“Sayuri, you still don’t look well,” she said, peering at me. I felt like a wet rag wrung out and beaten on a smoothing stone, waiting to be folded and pressed.
“I’m only tired, Mameha-san,” I assured her, only half-truthfully. “As a matter of fact, some fresh air might do me good.”
“Yes, Sayuri, you’re not looking your best today. It must have been all that exercise yesterday,” put in Pumpkin. “Don’t you agree, Chairman?” She stared at him as if she wanted to devour him whole.
For a split second, I gaped at her, then recovered myself enough to laugh.
“I’m used to it, Pumpkin. The annual dances have helped me keep my figure over the years. Besides, I suppose I’m so used to frequent engagements in Gion, I don’t know what to do with myself now I’m on holiday!”
Pumpkin looked as though she would retort, then thought better of it. Instead, she turned to the Chairman and launched into a story about an American soldier who had got so drunk, he had dressed in a kabuki dancer’s outfit and danced the other guests under the table. Sick of the back-and-forth, I excused myself. Trading insults with Pumpkin wouldn’t change the Chairman’s feelings towards me.
"I'll join you," snapped Nobu, rising from the table with an alacrity that made me lightheaded. I hadn’t counted on his walking with me, any more than a goat expects to find a tiger in its pen. But I could hardly refuse my future danna. And, to tell the truth, although I’m not proud of it, I hoped to convince Pumpkin her victory was hollow. So I smiled radiantly at Nobu, as though I couldn’t have wished for anything finer than his company on a walk, and placed my hand on his arm. We strolled along one of the forest paths we’d visited the previous afternoon.
I suppose it sounds terribly selfish, to treat a man one calls friend in such a cavalier fashion. But without a danna, I was no more than a butterfly, waiting for a collector to capture me and pin me to the page. Like Hatsumomo and Pumpkin before me, I’d sipped at nectar that seemed sweet and sustaining, but was as toxic as a yew flower.
“Doesn’t he ever smile?” growled Nobu, as soon as we were out of earshot.
“If Nobu-san led by example, he would find his temper improved.”
“I can’t lead by example! I’m barely keeping myself from shoving his head into the natto dish. Although, considering his hygiene, perhaps that would be an improvement. It’s like climbing Mount Fuji to have a conversation with him.”
As I'd expected the Minister to confront me about our liaison in the barn, this was no small relief. Mameha’s words came back to me: “No man will want a geisha if he hears some other man has taken a bite.”
“Look, Nobu-san,” I said, to distract him from what was sure to become a full-fledged tirade. We were at the mouth of a rocky alcove, shaded by a cascade of ferns that matched those on my soft brown kimono. A swarm of brilliant blue-winged insects flew towards the seashore. “Don’t they shimmer like jewels?”
He scowled. “Is that poetry, or your way of telling me to be quiet?”
“It’s my way of telling Nobu-san to appreciate the beautiful morning. Nobu-san ought to be celebrating the turn of his fortunes.”
“No morning is beautiful with that man in it,” grumbled Nobu. But he changed the subject, and was soon deep in monologue about investments, portfolios and sales figures.
Naturally, I couldn’t understand a word. But I sat beside him on a flat rock, and let the foreign words swoop about me like the insects I’d just marvelled at.
Shame began to gnaw at me. We geisha are so used to seeing the surface of things that we never think to look beneath.
People only valued me for my beauty, my outward appearance. Hadn’t I done the same to Nobu, who had once said he wasn’t used to having things held up before him that he couldn’t have? How many opportunities had he been denied, because of his arm? I hadn’t thought of the months he’d worked to rebuild Iwamura Electric out of the ashes of its pre-war glory. I’d been like a girl who looks at her family’s heirloom kimono and sees only faded silks and outdated fashions. Would it truly be such a hardship, living with Nobu?
“I told you I’d give you a ruby, didn’t I?” said Nobu, suddenly reaching into his breast pocket. “Here.”
Into my cupped hands, he placed a tiny box. With a little chill of foreboding, I watched him extract the lump of concrete he’d given me in Gion, and a golden necklace, set with the largest ruby pendant I’d ever laid eyes on.
I wanted to laugh - here was my en, drawing me back to Nobu. My plan of two days before seemed a fever dream, just like the time I’d tried to run away to find Satsu. A geisha never escapes her destiny; she only endures it.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s nothing, Nobu-san. You startled me, that’s all.”
“Don’t be so ridiculous. We were having a perfectly normal conversation a minute ago, and now you look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
“It’s only… it’s been such a short time since the war, I’d never thought to see such an enormous jewel,” I said. The excuse sounded rather paltry to me, but Nobu seemed gratified by it.
“I’m not in the habit of exaggerating,” he growled. “Didn’t I promise you a precious stone the size of that piece of concrete? You geisha are so used to tall tales, you can’t figure out when a man’s telling the truth.”
“Thank you, Nobu-san,” I said quietly, and bowed my head. “I’ve never had a promise from you that wasn’t worth cherishing.”
After we returned to Gion, I was on tenterhooks, expecting a furious letter from Nobu calling off our engagement. Only four days later, I received a letter stamped with the Iwamura Electric logo. I opened it with a sickening jolt of guilt.
But the Chairman had kept my secret, out of respect for Nobu if nothing else, and for that I owed him an even stronger debt of gratitude.
Inside the letter was an invitation from the Chairman to dine at the Ichiriki, and a promissory note from Nobu, for six months’ rent at an apartment in Gion.
Mother was overjoyed when she heard. Of course, she had no rights to any property of Nobu’s, for the title to the apartment was in his name. But still, her eyes positively glowed at the prospect of having one less mouth to feed. Besides, our okiya, stripped during the war, had lost much of its former glory. Even with the General’s patronage, Mother had plundered Hatsumomo’s old collection to pay for its upkeep. I’m sure she saw visions of exquisite, priceless kimono and studded hair ornaments.
As for me, I hardly knew how I felt. The week leading to Nobu’s return from Osaka seemed to slip by me faster than water from a leaking bucket.
I considered feigning illness the night I was due to meet with the Chairman, but it would look very odd if I hurried off right after a full day of engagements. Besides, I couldn’t avoid him my whole life - not if Nobu was to become my danna.
The Chairman was already waiting when I arrived. I poured us a glass of sake each, and tried to fortify myself by breathing in the kuroyaki-scented air. The state I was in, I fancied all the spirits of all the geisha who had ever frequented that house were watching over me. Whether they were malevolent or benevolent, I couldn’t say.
“I confess, Sayuri, that what happened on Amami has been very much on my mind. You must know that Nobu’s feelings towards you run very deep. Before the war, he approached me with misgivings. He seemed to think I desired you. I told him he was mistaken - that I had always felt towards you as a mentor towards a young woman. And a month ago he approached me again, to seek my blessing to become your danna.”
I blinked hard, but it was no use. For a moment I could only cover my face with my hands. The Chairman looked away while I composed myself and wiped my eyes with his handkerchief.
When I thought I had myself under control, I said, “Chairman, I’m sorry if I’ve caused any bad blood between the two of you. It was a foolish thing to do.” And it had been, in more ways than one. “I’m afraid I’ve hurt Nobu-san irreparably. If he never wants to set eyes on me again, it would be more than I deserve.”
I trailed to an awkward halt. I couldn’t very well tell the Chairman the real reason I’d intended to drive Nobu away. Young girls today are outspoken about their feelings and date any number of boys with impunity. But in those days, love, like most strong emotions, was for American women in American novels. It was rarely spoken of outside closed doors. Certainly in Gion, it was a forbidden word. Men desired women; women were not expected to reciprocate. A declaration of love from a geisha to a patron - even her danna - would have sounded absurd, as if a priceless scroll or an ancient table were to come to life.
I opened my mouth to speak, but the Chairman held up a hand.
“Once, when I was just beginning Iwamura Electric, one of my best junior salesmen came to me, looking dejected. He not only refused a pay rise, but wanted to resign his position altogether and return to his village in Fukushima. When I asked him why, he admitted to being homesick.
“He told me he’d worked at his uncle’s chandlery since he was a boy. He knew his customers’ orders by heart. Half of them had been friends of the family for years. For the poorer families, he always gave extra portions of fuel at the new year.”
I remembered my father in the tipsy house, coaxing wood from his blade. “Forgive me, Chairman - I don’t understand.”
“It seems to me, Sayuri, that your situation is similar to this salesman’s dilemma. By being with the Minister, you were trying to escape to something that looked more attractive, but found what you were fleeing from had followed you. Go back to Nobu,” said the Chairman. And, in unconscious echo of Mameha’s words to me, “You and he are entwined in ways that defy explanation.”
I said goodbye and stumbled out of the teahouse in such a daze, I’m surprised I didn’t trip over the steps. Such is the way of people with too much water - we flow with the current, dream-dazzled, swept out of our senses by the tide only to wake on foreign shores.
I found myself kneeling by the Shirakawa Stream, in the moonlight, under a canopy of willows. Yamabuki petals floated in the water. The colours were those of my kimono, inverted: indigo silk, speckled with yellow and green.
What a pretty picture it would have made, if I hadn’t been crying my eyes out. The Chairman hadn’t loved me after all.
I would be lying if I said the thought of drowning myself didn’t cross my mind. We frequently heard of kabuki actors found floating facedown after some scandal had eroded their reputation.
Mameha was right: romance had no place in the hanamachi.
My hopes of a life with the Chairman evaporated like mist. How well did I know Iwamura Ken? How fully can a geisha love a man she has only ever idolised? The man who’d shown me such kindness as a little girl — well, I wasn’t Chiyo-chan anymore. A shaved ice, a smile: those were childish fantasies. I’d hoped the Chairman might rescue me, when he’d only been a signpost, a stone in the stream diverting me towards my true path.
Mameha would have reprimanded me on the realities of being a geisha. I imagined what Nobu would say, if he were here: “Don’t be absurd, Sayuri. You don’t have the impulse to suicide. You’re as full of life as - as that lizard scampering onto that rock.”
It had emerged from a crevice in one of the tree roots. As I studied the scales glistening on the creature’s back, the knobbly ridges along the spine, the bulging head… well, I won’t be so cruel as to say I thought of Nobu’s skin. But I recalled Hatsumomo’s name for him - Mr. Lizard.
Lizards are said to bring good luck when seen outside one’s house. The Shirakawa Stream was not my home; nor was the Ichiriki. But as I studied the lizard, I realised that in some sense, this moment was a mirror of my first true memory of Gion - desolate, adrift, waiting for an omen at this same riverbank. The Chairman had found me here and recommended me to Mameha.
Becoming a geisha had shaped the whole course of my life up to this point. Now, it seemed, I might continue along a different tributary - one I’d so foolishly discarded until today.
With shaking hands, I rinsed the Chairman’s soiled handkerchief. It looked such a pathetic white rag that I almost surrendered it to the current. Then, like a coward, I snatched my hand back at the last minute. Eager though I’d been to plunge into the stream myself a moment ago, I couldn’t bring myself to part with the last relic of my childhood, even though it was only an illusion. I tucked it back into my obi. In the spring wind, the water against my bare skin sent a shock of cold down my spine.