Now she took a close look at me for the first time, puffing on her pipe while the old woman beside her sighed. I didn’t feel I could look at Mother directly, but I had the impression of smoke seeping out of her face like steam from a crack in the earth. I was so curious about her that my eyes took on a life of their own and began to dart about. The more I saw of her, the more fascinated I became. Her kimono was yellow, with willowy branches bearing lovely green and orange leaves; it was made of silk gauze as delicate as a spider’s web. Her obi was every bit as astonishing to me. It was a lovely gauzy texture too, but heavier-looking, in russet and brown with gold threads woven through. The more I looked at her clothing, the less I was aware of standing there on that dirt corridor, or of wondering what had become of my sister-and my mother and father-and what would become of me. Every detail of this woman’s kimono was enough to make me forget myself. And then I came upon a rude shock: for there above the collar of her elegant kimono was a face so mismatched to the clothing that it was as though I’d been patting a cat’s body only to discover that it had a bulldog’s head. She was a hideous-looking woman, though much younger than Auntie, which I hadn’t expected. It turned out that Mother was actually Auntie’s younger sister-though they called each other “Mother” and “Auntie,” just as everyone else in the okiya did. Actually they weren’t really sisters in the way Satsu and I were. They hadn’t been born into the same family; but Granny had adopted them both.
I was so dazed as I stood there, with so many thoughts running through my mind, that I ended up doing the very thing Auntie had told me not to do. I looked straight into Mother’s eyes. When I did she took the pipe from her mouth, which caused her jaw to fall open like a trapdoor. And even though I knew I should at all costs look down again, her peculiar eyes were so shocking to me in their ugliness that I could do nothing but stand there staring at them. Instead of being white and clear, the whites of her eyes had a hideous yellow cast, and made me think at once of a toilet into which someone had just urinated. They were rimmed with the raw lip of her lids, in which a cloudy moisture was pooled; and all around them the skin was sagging.
I drew my eyes downward as far as her mouth, which still hung open. The colors of her face were all mixed up: the rims of her eyelids were red like meat, and her gums and tongue were gray. And to make things more horrible, each of her lower teeth seemed to be anchored in a little pool of blood at the gums. This was due to some sort of deficiency in Mother’s diet over the past years, as I later learned; but I couldn’t help feeling, the more I looked at her, that she was like a tree that has begun to lose its leaves. I was so shocked by the whole effect that I think I must have taken a step back, or let out a gasp, or in some way given her some hint of my feelings, for all at once she said to me, in that raspy voice of hers:
“What are you looking at!”
“I’m very sorry, ma’am. I was looking at your kimono,” I told her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.”
This must have been the right answer-if there was a right answer-because she let out something of a laugh, though it sounded like a cough.
“So you like it, do you?” she said, continuing to cough, or laugh, I couldn’t tell which. “Do you have any idea what it cost?”
“No, ma’am.”
“More than you did, that’s for certain.”
Here the maid appeared with tea. While it was served I took the opportunity to steal a glance at Granny. Whereas Mother was a bit on the plump side, with stubby fingers and a fat neck, Granny was old and shriveled. She was at least as old as my father, but she looked as if she’d spent her years stewing herself into a state of concentrated meanness. Her gray hair made me think of a tangle of silk threads, for I could see right through them to her scalp. And even her scalp looked mean, because of patches where the skin was colored red or brown from old age. She wasn’t frowning exactly, but her mouth made the shape of a frown in its natural state anyway.
She took in a great big breath in preparation to speak; and then as she let it out again she mumbled, “Didn’t I say I don’t want any tea?” After this, she sighed and shook her head, and then said to me, “How old are you, little girl?”
“She’s the year of the monkey,” Auntie answered for me.
“That fool cook is a monkey,” Granny said.
“Nine years old,” said Mother. “What do you think of her, Auntie?”
Auntie stepped around in front of me and tipped my head back to look at my face. “She has a good deal of water.”
“Lovely eyes,” said Mother. “Did you see them, Granny?”
“She looks like a fool to me,” Granny said. “We don’t need another monkey anyway.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’re right,” Auntie said. “Probably she’s just as you say. But she looks to me like a very clever girl, and adaptable; you can see that from the shape of her ears.”
“With so much water in her personality,” Mother said, “probably she’ll be able to smell a fire before it has even begun. Won’t that be nice, Granny? You won’t have to worry any longer about our storehouse burning with all our kimono in it.”
Granny, as I went on to learn, was more terrified of fire than beer is of a thirsty old man.
“Anyway, she’s rather pretty, don’t you think?” Mother added.
“There are too many pretty girls in Gion,” said Granny. “What we need is a smart girl, not a pretty girl. That Hatsumomo is as pretty as they come, and look at what a fool she is!”
After this Granny stood, with Auntie’s help, and made her way back up the walkway. Though I must say that to watch Auntie’s clumsy gait-because of her one hip jutting out farther than the other-it wasn’t at all obvious which of the two women had the easier time walking. Soon I heard the sound of a door in the front entrance hall sliding open and then shut again, and Auntie came back.
“Do you have lice, little girl?” Mother asked me.
“No,” I said.
“You’re going to have to learn to speak more politely than that. Auntie, be kind enough to trim her hair, just to be sure.”
Auntie called a servant over and asked for shears.
“Well, little girl,” Mother told me, “you’re in Kyoto now. You’ll learn to behave or get a beating. And it’s Granny gives the beatings around here, so you’ll be sorry. My advice to you is: work very hard, and never leave the okiya without permission. Do as you’re told; don’t be too much trouble; and you might begin learning the arts of a geisha two or three months from now. I didn’t bring you here to be a maid. I’ll throw you out, if it comes to that.”
Mother puffed on her pipe and kept her eyes fixed on me. I didn’t dare move until she told me to. I found myself wondering if my sister was standing before some other cruel woman, in another house somewhere in this horrible city. And I had a sudden image in my mind of my poor, sick mother propping herself on one elbow upon her futon and looking around to see where we had gone. I didn’t want Mother to see me crying, but the tears pooled in my eyes before I could think of how to stop them. With my vision glazed, Mother’s yellow kimono turned softer and softer, until it seemed to sparkle. Then she blew out a puff of her smoke, and it disappeared completely.
chapter four
During those first few days in that strange place, I don’t think I could have felt worse if I’d lost my arms and legs, rather than my family and my home. I had no doubt life would never again be the same. All I could think of was my confusion and misery; and I wondered day after day when I might see Satsu again. I was without my father, without my mother-without even the clothing I’d always worn. Yet somehow the thing that startled me most, after a week or two had passed, was that I had in fact survived. I remember one moment drying rice bowls in the kitchen, when all at once I felt so disoriented I had to stop what I was doing to stare for a long while at my hands; for I could scarcely understand that this person drying the bowls was actually me.