Memoirs Of A Geisha

I said to you, "That afternoon when I met so-and-so . . . was the very best afternoon of my life, and also the very worst afternoon." I expect you might put down your teacup and say, "Well, now,

fascinating to me, even the fish smell on his hands was a kind of perfu

d father, or my older sister-and certainly not about how I became a geisha, or what it was like to be one. Most people would much rather carry on with their fantasies that my mother and grandmother were geisha, and that I began my training in dance when I was weaned from the breast, and so on. As a matter of

, that's wher

of changes. He tried his best to smile, though it didn't come

said. "You c

n can interpret it however they want; you can imagine how often I've relied on it. I decided I'd better use it just then, and of course it worked. He let ou

at's like making tea in a bucket!" And when he'd laughed again, he said to me, "That's why yo

grow up in Yoroido, and no one would suggest it's a glamorous spot. Hardly anyone ever visits it. As for the people who live t

ays wheezing and there would be spells when it let out a huge sneeze-which is to say there was a burst of wind with a tremendous spray. I decided our tiny house must have been offended by the ocean sneezing in its face from time to time, and to

When I was very young, I told my mother I thought someone had poked a hole in her eyes and all the ink had drained out, which she thought very funny. The fortunetellers said her eyes were so pale because of too much water in her personality, so much that the other four elements were hardly present at a}}-and this, they explained, was why her features matched so poorly. People in the village often said she ought to have been extremely attractive, becau

his personality is at ease on the sea. In fact, my father was more at ease on the sea than anywhere else, and never left it far behind him. He smelled like the sea even after he had bathed. When he wasn't fishing, he sat on the floor in our dark front room mending a fishing net. And if a fishing net had been a sleeping creature, he wouldn't even have awakened it, at the speed he worked. He did everything this slowly. Even

a graveyard in the woods. She led me to three graves in the corner, with three white marker posts much taller than I was. They had stern-looking black characters written top to bottom on them, but I hadn't attended the school in our little village long enough to know where one ended and the next began. My mother pointed to them and said, "Natsu, wife of Sakamoto Minoru." Sakamoto Minoru was the name of my father. "Died age twenty-four, in the nineteenth year of Meiji." Then she pointed to the next one: "Jinichir

like my father as anyone could be. Satsu was six years older than me, and of course, being older, she could do things I couldn't do. But Satsu had a remarkable quality of'doing everything in a way that seemed like a complete accident. For example, if you asked her to pour a bowl of soup from a pot on the stove, she would get the job done

t does-which is to say, more or less constantly. As the months passed she slept most of the time, and soon began to groan whenever she was awake. I knew something in her was changing quickly, but because of so much water in her personality, this didn't seem worrisome to me. Sometimes she grew thin in a matter of months but grew strong agai

of our dark front room, singing to a cricket I'd fo

up! It's D

gun. My father was at home that day because a terrible storm was coming. He sat in his usual spot on the floor, with his two big spiderlike hands

ortedly knew more Chinese characters than anyone. He was far too proud to notice a creature like me.

a fishing all day. How glorious! And then on rough days you take a rest. I see yo

aid my

eek, you know. Perhaps yo

untangle his hands from th

id to me, "get the

wouldn't be known by my geisha

ly my mother groaning, and nothing of what they said. I occupied myself with making tea, and soon the doctor came back out rubbing

began. "You need to have a talk with one of the women in the villag

money, Doctor,"

you're saying. But you owe it to your wife. She

going to

s. She's in terrible pain

ide the great hall of a temple, looking for some way out, well, that was how my mind was reacting. It had never occurred to me that my mother wouldn't simply go on being sick. I won't say I'd never wonder

d die first," my

have four or five years. I'll leave you some more of those pills fo

more he began to seem like just a curious collection of shapes and textures. His spine was a path of knobs. His head, with its discolored splotches, might have been a bruised fruit. His arms were sticks wrapped in old leath

y name in a whisper. I w

ery importan

und almost as though he'd lost control of them. I thought he was s

ge. Bring back some i

y thing of value in our tipsy house. In front of a rough carving of Amida, the Buddha of the West

. . wasn't ther

only made a gesture with his

an a storm that constantly washed away what had been there only a moment before, and left behind something barren and unrecognizable? I'd never had such a thought before. To escape it, I ran down the path until the village came into view below me. Yoroido was a tiny town, just at the opening of an inlet. Usually the water was spotted with fishermen, but today I could see just a few boats coming back-looking to

ain, and my feet went out from under me. I fell forward onto one side of my face. I suppose I must have knocked myself into a daze, because I remember only a kind of numbness and a feeling of something in my mouth I wanted to spit out. I heard voices and felt myself turned onto my back; I was lifted and carried. I could tell they were taking me into the Japan Coastal Seafood Company, because I smelled the odor of fish wrapping

rather a man's kimono, with kimono trousers that made him look to me like the illustrations you may have seen of samurai. His skin was smooth and tight as a drum; his cheekbones were shiny hillocks, like the crisp skin of a

ch were fixed on his face with such fascination, I couldn't pretend I hadn't been staring at him. He didn't give me a sneer, as if to say that I was an impudent girl, and he didn't look

at last. "You're old S

ding from the trunks of the pine trees, and the circle of brightness in the sky where the sun was smothered by clouds. He lived in the world that was visible, even if

he spoke to me, tears c

o leave, but instead he said, "Don't swallow that blood, little girl. Unless you

?" said one of the men. "He

ing. He beat her with a stick and then washed out the boat with sake and lye so strong it bleached streaks of coloring from the wood. Even this wasn't enough; Mr. Yamamura had the Shinto priest come and

ome of the fish guts," said Mr. Tanaka, "tak

the fish g

this floor since you or I were born. Go ahead," Mr.

hadn't leaned to the side and pressed a finger against one nostril to blow his nose onto the floor. After seeing this, I couldn't bear to hold anything in my mouth a moment longer, an

gi, though what he really meant, I think,

ctor had been at our hou

house?" Mr. T

e tipsy house u

mean . . . 't

s to the side, like it'

rd Sakamoto's tipsy house and look for Dr. Miura. You won't have trouble findi

instead he stood near the table a long while looking at me. I felt my fac

t on your face, little

all mirror to show it to me. My lip w

is how you came to have such extraordinary eyes

as for my father, he's so wrinkled I've

rinkled your

ade," I said. "The back of his head is as ol

say about your father," Mr. Tanaka

made my face blush so red, I

n with an egg for a head fath

urse, geisha are always called beautiful, even those who aren't. But when Mr. Tanaka said it

like a scrap of paper in the wind. Somewhere between the various thoughts about my mother-somewhere past the discomfort in my lip-there nestled a pleasant thought I tried again and again to bring into focus. It was about Mr. Tanaka. I stopped on the cliffs and gazed out to sea, where the waves even after the storm were still like sharpened ston

nce. I tried to remember how Mr. Tanaka had made me feel, but in the cold quiet of the house it had slipped away from me. Instead I felt a persistent, icy dre

y sister scrub the iron pot that had cooked our soup; but even though it was right before her-even though her eyes were poi

, I don't

old me, and brushed her unruly hair f

," I said. "Satsu, M

is crack

I said. "That line h

he water get o

it out. I w

nto her face as a look of extreme puzzlement, just as so many of her feelings did. But she said not