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

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.
    “Mr. 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:
    “A train.”
    I looked out to see a train in the distance, making its way toward the town. The smoke rolled downwind in a way that made me think of the skin being shed from a snake. I thought this was clever and tried explaining it to Satsu, but she didn’t seem to care. Mr. Tanaka would have appreciated it, I thought, and so would Kuniko. I decided to explain it to both of them when we reached the Tanakas’ home.
    Then suddenly I realized we weren’t headed in the direction of Mr. Tanaka’s home at all.
    The wagon came to a stop a few minutes later on a patch of dirt beside the train tracks, just outside the town. A crowd of people stood with sacks and crates piled around them. And there, to one side of them, was Mrs. Fidget, standing beside a peculiarly narrow man wearing a stiff kimono. He had soft black hair, like a cat’s, and held in one of his hands a cloth bag suspended from a string. He struck me as out of place in Senzuru, particularly there beside the farmers and the fishermen with their crates, and an old hunched woman wearing a rucksack of yams. Mrs. Fidget said something to him, and when he turned and peered at us, I decided at once that I was frightened of him.
    Mr. Tanaka introduced us to this man, whose name was Bekku. Mr. Bekku said nothing at all, but only looked closely at me and seemed puzzled by Satsu.
    Mr. Tanaka said to him, “I’ve brought Sugi with me from Yoroido. Would you like him to accompany you? He knows the girls, and I can spare him for a day or so.”
    “No, no,” said Mr. Bekku, waving his hand.
    I certainly hadn’t expected any of this. I asked where we were going, but no one seemed to hear me, so I came up with an answer for myself. I decided Mr. Tanaka had been displeased by what Mrs. Fidget had told him about us, and that this curiously narrow man, Mr. Bekku, planned to take us somewhere to have our fortunes told more completely. Afterward we would be returned to Mr. Tanaka.
    While I tried my best to soothe myself with these thoughts, Mrs. Fidget, wearing a pleasant smile, led Satsu and me some distance down the dirt platform. When we were too far away for the others to