Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden Read Free Book Online Page A

poured beer. Mr. Tanaka struck me as an island in the midst of the sea, because although everyone else was enjoying the story—even the elderly woman pouring the beer—Mr. Tanaka just went on staring at the other end of the table. I took my eye from the hole to ask Kuniko what sort of place this was.
    â€œIt’s a teahouse,” she told me, “where geisha entertain. My daddy comes here almost every night. I don’t know why he likes it so. The women pour drinks, and the men tell stories—except when they sing songs. Everybody ends up drunk.”
    I put my eye back to the hole in time to see a shadow crossing the wall, and then a woman came into view. Her hair was ornamented with the dangling green bloom of a willow, and she wore a soft pink kimono with white flowers like cutouts all over it. The broad obi tied around her middle was orange and yellow. I’d never seen such elegant clothing. None of the women in Yoroido owned anything more sophisticated than a cotton robe, or perhaps linen, with a simple pattern in indigo. But unlike her clothing, the woman herself wasn’t lovely at all. Her teeth protruded so badly that her lips didn’t quite cover them, and the narrowness of her head made me wonder if she’d been pressed between two boards as a baby. You may think me cruel to describe her so harshly; but it struck me as odd that even though no one could have called her a beauty, Mr. Tanaka’s eyes were fixed on her like a rag on a hook. He went on watching her while everyone else laughed, and when she knelt beside him to pour a few more drops of beer into his glass, she looked up at him in a way that suggested they knew each other very well.
    Kuniko took another turn peeking through the hole; and then we went back to her house and sat together in the bath at the edge of the pine forest. The sky was extravagant with stars, except for the half blocked by limbs above me. I could have sat much longer trying to understand all I’d seen that day and the changes confronting me . . . but Kuniko had grown so sleepy in the hot water that the servants soon came to help us out.
    Satsu was snoring already when Kuniko and I lay down on our futons beside her, with our bodies pressed together and our arms intertwined. A warm feeling of gladness began to swell inside me, and I whispered to Kuniko, “Did you know I’m going to come and live with you?” I thought the news would shock her into opening her eyes, or maybe even sitting up. But it didn’t rouse her from her slumber. She let out a groan, and then a moment later her breath was warm and moist, with the rattle of sleep in it.

 
    Â  chapter three
    B ack at home my mother seemed to have grown sicker in the day I’d been away. Or perhaps it was just that I’d managed to forget how ill she really was. Mr. Tanaka’s house had smelled of smoke and pine, but ours smelled of her illness in a way I can’t even bear to describe. Satsu was working in the village during the afternoon, so Mrs. Sugi came to help me bathe my mother. When we carried her out of the house, her rib cage was broader than her shoulders, and even the whites of her eyes were cloudy. I could only endure seeing her this way by remembering how I’d once felt stepping out of the bath with her while she was strong and healthy, when the steam had risen from our pale skin as if we were two pieces of boiled radish. I found it hard to imagine that this woman, whose back I’d so often scraped with a stone, and whose flesh had always seemed firmer and smoother to me than Satsu’s, might be dead before even the end of summer.
    That night while lying on my futon, I tried to picture the whole confusing situation from every angle to persuade myself that things would somehow be all right. To begin with, I wondered, how could we go on living without my mother? Even if we did survive and Mr. Tanaka adopted us, would my own family cease