Presently she commenced to wonder whether she had been created merely to make others happy, not to be complete in and of herself. She danced just as her bygone Elder Sisters had taught her, not altering a single motion, and the quietly carousing old Noh actors who came here each spring compared her to sunshine at midnight, to a bare peak looming high over a snowy range, to snow in a silver bowl. Sometimes she called for a closed palanquin, and was carried to Yasaka Shrine to pray alone. The house paid for this; that was all she cost; her younger sisters shared her fees among them, saving for old age. Where she hid herself from spring to spring she never said; and if, as some people believe, secrecy in and of itself becomes truth, then her vanishings were preciously inexplicable lessons. By now the Noh actors were certain of her ghosthood. A goddess appeared singularly, whereas these regular apparitions of hers implied some form of unfreedom. So they called her to dance for them in that upstairs room, behind closed shutters, while an old woman sang and plucked the shamisen, and sometimes a young maiko beat the drum. Drinking in sad joy, the actors admired and pitied her.
The Inoue School expresses nothing in the face, everything in the movement. This too is a Noh actor’s way. Mr. Kanze and Mr. Umewaka, present incarnations of those two great acting families, discussed with nearly unheard of approval her fixed gaze’s projection of thoughtful sadness, her slow turnings and the way her wide sleeves hung down like wings. She filled their sake cups, and they smiled — for they could be cheerful enough when their masks came off. Another incense stick burned to nothing. On the following night Mr. Kanze was performing “Yuya,” incarnating the sweetly dancing young girl, and he raised his wrinkled hand in front of his masked face, then turned, the lovely mask smiling and smiling; he seemed to move faster than Yukiko, and presently his head tilted down lower and lower, so that Yuya’s mouth smiled upward in increasing sadness; and her wig of horsehair glistened. The cherry blossoms had already fallen — a matter of greater interest than the recent hunger-riots. After he had withdrawn behind the rainbow curtain and the apprentices carried away his mask and costume, he went out to an eel restaurant with Mr. Umewaka; where, having discussed the carelessness of choruses, the ignorance of certain members of the public and other such eternal matters, they drank sake, then more sake, upon which Mr. Kanze said: Our Cherry Ghost nears the end of her spring at last.
Oh, do you think so?
Did your father ever speak about her?
Not in my hearing, unfortunately. He preferred me not to be instructed by any geisha, however talented.
Of course, of course. When she danced the Yuya Dance for us the other night, it struck me as less fresh than ten years ago. And once my father told me that while her motions were nearly perfect, she had not yet mastered it. You know the second lowering of the fan—
Yes. She has certainly mastered that. In fact, I saw no error in her dancing at all, and as you know, dear friend, I’m very critical.
As I know too well, dear friend! Well, next spring let’s bring our sons, so that when they’re old they may begin to notice something.
My son’s unready, unfortunately. He’s ungifted, quite a shame to me—
Not at all! I’ll never forget the way he performed “Yokihi.” He truly brought her alive, and that daring choice of mask—
He insisted. Perhaps I shouldn’t have indulged him.
So they praised one another, and eventually agreed to bring their sons to see the Cherry Ghost. And when the blossoms came, and they withdrew into that upstairs room where she poured out sake for them and their sons, who were beginners, men in their thirties, still encumbered in their acting by remnants of the deceitful “first flower” which pertains to a young body, Mr. Umewaka requested the Yuya Dance.
The Cherry Ghost demurred, saying: But since I performed it just last year…
Exactly. You possess such grace…
Please excuse my extremely clumsy movements. I feel ashamed to dance before you. But since you insist, sensei, I’ll try my best.
The shamisen player was already kneeling in the corner. The Cherry Ghost began to dance.
That night Mr. Kanze said to his son: Watch her again in thirty years. She too is losing her “first flower,” but I’m sure she’s unaware of it.
In her old teahouse they learned to expect her on that instant when clouds of cherry blossoms filled the sky in Kyoto. Men waited to give her gold hair ornaments, which she passed on to her Younger Sisters. When the last proprietress died, her sisters retired, and rain leached through the rotten roof, she removed to a quiet house employing only three geishas, whose owner was old and expected nothing; she made them all rich. She had heard that Yoshitomo was dead, and the Imagawas nearly exterminated; but when she inquired after these matters, in order to overcome the shyness of a certain drunken samurai, he laughed at her and said: That was long ago! — Perhaps she had already known that; she might have learned it in a song. She danced “Black Hair,” and a tear traveled slowly down the man’s face. His uncouthness annoyed her. But isn’t the lot of the perfect to be surrounded by the imperfect? — When that house likewise went out of business, she gave herself to one in the Pontocho district, thereby freeing it from a parasitic loan; thus she did Kannon’s will. After praying at Yasaka Shrine, she recommenced to dance in Gion, saving the establishment of a retired geisha who had slanderously been called unlucky. By now people interpreted her apparition as a sign of great fortune, saying: The Cherry Tree Lady has come to us! She never ate or drank, but took in the fragrance from incense sticks. Most people still said her face expressed spring.
She carries her ageing beautifully, the current Mr. Kanze instructed his son. You should remember her next time you perform “Kinuta.”
Thank you, father. Is she truly a ghost?
Of course. So never fail to show her respect and pity.
If I were performing her, I’d need our youngest mask—
Don’t go falling in love with her. You know where the prostitutes are.
In Kamakura stands a shrine to Eleven-Headed Kannon wherein the goddess is all hues of gold, crowned with heads; she is vermilion-lipped, yes, very wide-lipped, and guarded behind by a cloud-shroud of swirling gilded metal. Some people say that prayers at this spot find special favor. And that spring when Yukiko flowered back into herself, there on her hill which lay so nearly in the shadow of Rainy Mountain, she wept snowy tears, and longed to go to Kamakura, to pray that this strange weight be lifted from her. But she was bound to appear in Kyoto, in another teahouse in Gion, and from there she could by no means reach Kamakura before the blossoms fell. For that moment she would have liked to keep her budding blooms in her sleeves; but out they came; and thus, freed from her prison of wooden bones, she became a lovely maiko once again.
Then that spring fled, as did the next, and the young Mr. Kanze began to grow old. When he visited her she danced, singing for him the old tanka: Even the dream-road is now erased.
Up on her hill, not quite in the shadow of Rainy Mountain, she gazed across the forests and plains, and the jade-grey river made broad white waves across the rocks. Her flowers had gone; soon she must lose her leaves within the pearlescent colorlessness of the autumn sky.
To be beautiful without loving anyone is as sad as to be unbeautiful and remain unloved. How could Kannon’s warning have been false? Disregarding Keisei’s Companion in Solitude, which warns that a lover’s longings, or even the wish of a faithful old couple to be buried in the same grave, are crimes, she reached for love as a reprieve from her sadness.