“Chairman, please,” I began unsteadily, “I made such a terrible mistake…”
“Before you say anything further, I only want to know why you did this thing. Perhaps you felt you were doing Iwamura Electric some sort of… favor. I don’t know. Or maybe you owed the Minister something I’m unaware of.”
I must have given my head a little shake, because the Chairman stopped speaking at once.
“I’m deeply ashamed, Chairman,” I managed to say at last, “but… my motives were purely personal.”
After a long moment he sighed and held out his sake cup. I poured for him, with the feeling that my hands were someone else’s, and then he tossed the sake into his mouth and held it there before swallowing. Seeing him with his mouth momentarily full made me think of myself as an empty vessel swelled up with shame.
“All right, Sayuri,” he said, “I’ll tell you exactly why I’m asking. It will be impossible for you to grasp why I’ve come here tonight, or why I’ve treated you as I have over the years, if you don’t understand the nature of my relationship with Nobu. Believe me, I’m more aware than anyone of how difficult he can sometimes be. But he is a genius; I value him more than an entire team of men combined.”
I couldn’t think of what to do or say, so with trembling hands I picked up the vial to pour more sake for the Chairman. I took it as a very bad sign that he didn’t lift his cup.
“One day when I’d known you only a short time,” he went on, “Nobu brought you a gift of a comb, and gave it to you in front of everyone at the party. I hadn’t realized how much affection he felt for you until that very moment. I’m sure there were other signs before, but somehow I must have overlooked them. And when I realized how he felt, the way he looked at you that evening… well, I knew in a moment that I couldn’t possibly take away from him the thing he so clearly wanted. It never diminished my concern for your welfare. In fact, as the years have gone by, it has become increasingly difficult for me to listen dispassionately while Nobu talks about you.”
Here the Chairman paused and said, “Sayuri, are you listening to me?”
“Yes, Chairman, of course.”
“There’s no reason you would know this, but I owe Nobu a great debt. It’s true I’m the founder of the company, and his boss. But when Iwamura Electric was still quite young, we had a terrible problem with cash flow and very nearly went out of business. I wasn’t willing to give up control of the company, and I wouldn’t listen to Nobu when he insisted on bringing in investors. He won in the end, even though it caused a rift between us for a time; he offered to resign, and I almost let him. But of course, he was completely right, and I was wrong. I’d have lost the company without him. How do you repay a man for something like that? Do you know why I’m called ‘Chairman’ and not ‘President’? It’s because I resigned the title so Nobu would take it-though he tried to refuse. This is why I made up my mind, the moment I became aware of his affection for you, that I would keep my interest in you hidden so that Nobu could have you. Life has been cruel to him, Sayuri. He’s had too little kindness.”
In all my years as a geisha, I’d never been able to convince myself even for a moment that the Chairman felt any special regard for me. And now to know that he’d intended me for Nobu…
“I never meant to pay you so little attention,” he went on. “But surely you realize that if he’d ever picked up the slightest hint of my feelings, he would have given you up in an instant.”
Since my girlhood, I’d dreamed that one day the Chairman would tell me he cared for me; and yet I’d never quite believed it would really happen. I certainly hadn’t imagined he might tell me what I hoped to hear, and also that Nobu was my destiny. Perhaps the goal I’d sought in life would elude me; but at least during this one moment, it was within my power to sit in the room with the Chairman and tell him how deeply I felt.
“Please forgive me for what I am about to say,” I finally managed to begin.
I tried to continue, but somehow my throat made up its mind to swallow-though I can’t think what I was swallowing, unless it was a little knot of emotion I pushed back down because there was no room in my face for any more.
“I have great affection for Nobu, but what I did on Amami…” Here I had to hold a burning in my throat a long moment before I could speak again. “What I did on Amami, I did because of my feelings for you, Chairman. Every step I have taken in my life since I was a child in Gion, I have taken in the hope of bringing myself closer to you.”
When I said these words, all the heat in my body seemed to rise to my face. I felt I might float up into the air, just like a piece of ash from a fire, unless I could focus on something in the room. I tried to find a smudge on the tabletop, but already the table itself was glazing over and disappearing in my vision.
“Look at me, Sayuri.”
I wanted to do as the Chairman asked, but I couldn’t.
“How strange,” he went on quietly, almost to himself, “that the same woman who looked me so frankly in the eye as a girl, many years ago, can’t bring herself to do it now.”
Perhaps it ought to have been a simple task to raise my eyes and look at the Chairman; and yet somehow I couldn’t have felt more nervous if I’d stood alone on a stage with all of Kyoto watching. We were sitting at a corner of the table, so close that when at length I wiped my eyes and raised them to meet his, I could see the dark rings around his irises. I wondered if perhaps I should look away and make a little bow, and then offer to pour him a cup of sake… but no gesture would have been enough to break the tension. As I was thinking these thoughts, the Chairman moved the vial of sake and the cup aside, and then reached out his hand and took the collar of my robe to draw me toward him. In a moment our faces were so close, I could feel the warmth of his skin. I was still struggling to understand what was happening to me-and what I ought to do or say. And then the Chairman pulled me closer, and he kissed me.
It may surprise you to hear that this was the first time in my life anyone had ever really kissed me. General Tottori had sometimes pressed his lips against mine when he was my danna; but it had been utterly passionless. I’d wondered at the time if he simply needed somewhere to rest his face. Even Yasuda Akira-the man who’d bought me a kimono, and whom I’d seduced one night at the Tatematsu Teahouse-must have kissed me dozens of times on my neck and face, but he never really touched my lips with his. And so you can imagine that this kiss, the first real one of my life, seemed to me more intimate than anything I’d ever experienced. I had the feeling I was taking something from the Chairman, and that he was giving something to me, something more private than anyone had ever given me before. There was a certain very startling taste, as distinctive as any fruit or sweet, and when I tasted it, my shoulders sagged and my stomach swelled up; because for some reason it called to mind a dozen different scenes I couldn’t think why I should remember. I thought of the head of steam when the cook lifted the lid from the rice cooker in the kitchen of our okiya. I saw a picture in my mind of the little alleyway that was the main thoroughfare of Pontocho, as I’d seen it one evening crowded with well-wishers after Kichisaburo’s last performance, the day he’d retired from the Kabuki theater. I’m sure I might have thought of a hundred other things, for it was as if all the boundaries in my mind had broken down and my memories were running free. But then the Chairman leaned back away from me again, with one of his hands upon my neck. He was so close, I could see the moisture glistening on his lip, and still smell the kiss we’d just ended.
“Chairman,” I said, “why?”