Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden Read Free Book Online

back over her shoulder so I’d be certain to chase her. It may sound peculiar, but I’d never had the experience of actually meeting another little girl. Of course I knew the girls in my village, but we’d grown up together and had never done anything that might be called “meeting.” But Kuniko—for that was the name of Mr. Tanaka’s little daughter—was so friendly from the first instant I saw her, I thought it might be easy for me to move from one world into another.
    Kuniko’s clothing was much more refined than mine, and she wore zori; but being the village girl I was, I chased her out into the woods barefoot until I caught up to her at a sort of playhouse made from the sawed-off branches of a dead tree. She’d laid out rocks and pine cones to make rooms. In one she pretended to serve me tea out of a cracked cup; in another we took turns nursing her baby doll, a little boy named Taro who was really nothing more than a canvas bag stuffed with dirt. Taro loved strangers, said Kuniko, but he was very frightened of earthworms; and by a most peculiar coincidence, so was Kuniko. When we encountered one, Kuniko made sure I carried it outside in my fingers before poor Taro should burst into tears.
    I was delighted at the prospect of having Kuniko for a sister. In fact, the majestic trees and the pine smell—even Mr. Tanaka—all began to seem almost insignificant to me in comparison. The difference between life here at the Tanakas’ house and life in Yoroido was as great as the difference between the odor of something cooking and a mouthful of delicious food.
    As it grew dark, we washed our hands and feet at the well, and went inside to take our seats on the floor around a square table. I was amazed to see steam from the meal we were about to eat rising up into the rafters of a ceiling high above me, with electric lights hanging down over our heads. The brightness of the room was startling; I’d never seen such a thing before. Soon the servants brought our dinner—grilled salted sea bass, pickles, soup, and steamed rice—but the moment we began to eat, the lights went out. Mr. Tanaka laughed; this happened quite often, apparently. The servants went around lighting lanterns that hung on wooden tripods.
    No one spoke very much as we ate. I’d expected Mrs. Tanaka to be glamorous, but she looked like an older version of Satsu, except that she smiled a good deal. After dinner she and Satsu began playing a game of go, and Mr. Tanaka stood and called a maid to bring his kimono jacket. In a moment Mr. Tanaka was gone, and after a short delay, Kuniko gestured to me to follow her out the door. She put on straw zori and lent me an extra pair. I asked her where we were going.
    â€œQuietly!” she said. “We’re following my daddy. I do it every time he goes out. It’s a secret.”
    We headed up the lane and turned on the main street toward the town of Senzuru, following some distance behind Mr. Tanaka. In a few minutes we were walking among the houses of the town, and then Kuniko took my arm and pulled me down a side street. At the end of a stone walkway between two houses, we came to a window covered with paper screens that shone with the light inside. Kuniko put her eye to a hole torn just at eye level in one of the screens. While she peered in, I heard the sounds of laughter and talking, and someone singing to the accompaniment of a shamisen. At length she stepped aside so I could put my own eye to the hole. Half the room inside was blocked from my view by a folding screen, but I could see Mr. Tanaka seated on the mats with a group of three or four men. An old man beside him was telling a story about holding a ladder for a young woman and peering up her robe; everyone was laughing except Mr. Tanaka, who gazed straight ahead toward the part of the room blocked from my view. An older woman in kimono came with a glass for him, which he held while she