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

to exist? Finally I decided Mr. Tanaka wouldn’t adopt just my sister and me, but my father as well. He couldn’t expect my father to live alone, after all. Usually I couldn’t fall asleep until I’d managed to convince myself this was true, with the result that I didn’t sleep much during those weeks, and mornings were a blur.
    On one of these mornings during the heat of the summer, I was on my way back from fetching a packet of tea in the village when I heard a crunching noise behind me. It turned out to be Mr. Sugi—Mr. Tanaka’s assistant—running up the path. When he reached me, he took a long while to catch his breath, huffing and holding his side as if he’d just run all the way from Senzuru. He was red and shiny like a snapper, though the day hadn’t grown hot yet. Finally he said:
    â€œMr. Tanaka wants you and your sister . . . to come down to the village . . . as soon as you can.”
    I’d thought it odd that my father hadn’t gone out fishing that morning. Now I knew why: Today was the day.
    â€œAnd my father?” I asked. “Did Mr. Tanaka say anything about him?”
    â€œJust get along, Chiyo-chan,” he told me. “Go and fetch your sister.”
    I didn’t like this, but I ran up to the house and found my father sitting at the table, digging grime out of a rut in the wood with one of his fingernails. Satsu was putting slivers of charcoal into the stove. It seemed as though the two of them were waiting for something horrible to happen.
    I said, “Father, Mr. Tanaka wants Satsu-san and me to go down to the village.”
    Satsu took off her apron, hung it on a peg, and walked out the door. My father didn’t answer, but blinked a few times, staring at the point where Satsu had been. Then he turned his eyes heavily toward the floor and gave a nod. I heard my mother cry out in her sleep from the back room.
    Satsu was almost to the village before I caught up with her. I’d imagined this day for weeks already, but I’d never expected to feel as frightened as I did. Satsu didn’t seem to realize this trip to the village was any different from one she might have made the day before. She hadn’t even bothered to clean the charcoal off her hands; while wiping her hair away she ended up with a smudge on her face. I didn’t want her to meet Mr. Tanaka in this condition, so I reached up to rub off the mark as our mother might have done. Satsu knocked my hand away.
    Outside the Japan Coastal Seafood Company, I bowed and said good morning to Mr. Tanaka, expecting he would be happy to see us. Instead he was strangely cold. I suppose this should have been my first clue that things weren’t going to happen just the way I’d imagined. When he led us to his horse-drawn wagon, I decided he probably wanted to drive us to his house so that his wife and daughter would be in the room when he told us about our adoption.
    â€œMr. Sugi will be riding in the front with me,” he said, “so you and Shizu-san had better get into the back.” That’s just what he said: “Shizu-san.” I thought it very rude of him to get my sister’s name wrong that way, but she didn’t seem to notice. She climbed into the back of the wagon and sat down among the empty fish baskets, putting one of her hands flat onto the slimy planks. And then with that same hand, she wiped a fly from her face, leaving a shiny patch on her cheek. I didn’t feel as indifferently about the slime as Satsu did. I couldn’t think about anything but the smell, and about how satisfied I would feel to wash my hands and perhaps even my clothes when we reached Mr. Tanaka’s house.
    During the trip, Satsu and I didn’t speak a word, until we topped the hill overlooking Senzuru, when all of a sudden she said:
    â€œA train.”
    I looked out to see a train in the distance, making its way toward the town. The smoke