Once a week or so, Hatsumomo and her boyfriend-who turned out to be a chef in a nearby noodle restaurant-came to the okiya and shut themselves in the maids’ room. They met other times in other places as well. I know because Yoko was often asked to deliver messages, and I sometimes overheard. All the maids knew what Hatsumomo was doing; and it’s a measure of how much power she had over us that no one spoke a word to Mother or Auntie or Granny. Hatsumomo would certainly have been in trouble for having a boyfriend, much less for bringing him back to the okiya. The time she spent with him earned no revenue, and even took her away from parties at teahouses where she would otherwise have been making money. And besides, any wealthy man who might have been interested in an expensive, long-term relationship would certainly think less of her and even change his mind if he knew she was carrying on with the chef of a noodle restaurant.
One night just as I was coming back from taking a drink of water at the well in the courtyard, I heard the outside door roll open and slam against the door frame with a bang.
“Really, Hatsumomo-san,” said a deep voice, “you’ll wake everyone…”
I’d never really understood why Hatsumomo took the risk of bringing her boyfriend back to the okiya-though probably it was the risk itself that excited her. But she’d never before been so careless as to make a lot of noise. I hurried into my position on my knees, and in a moment Hatsumomo was in the formal entrance hall, holding two packages wrapped in linen paper. Soon another geisha stepped in behind her, so tall that she had to stoop to pass through the low doorway. When she stood erect and looked down on me, her lips looked unnaturally big and heavy at the bottom of her long face. No one would have called her pretty.
“This is our foolish lower maid,” said Hatsumomo. “She has a name, I think, but why don’t you just call her ‘Little Miss Stupid.’ ”
“Well, Little Miss Stupid,” said the other geisha. “Go and get your big sister and me something to drink, why don’t you?” The deep voice I’d heard was hers, and not the voice of Hatsumomo’s boyfriend after all.
Usually Hatsumomo liked to drink a special kind of sake called amakuchi-which was very light and sweet. But amakuchi was brewed only in the winter, and we seemed to have run out. I poured two glasses of beer instead and brought them out. Hatsumomo and her friend had already made their way down to the courtyard, and were standing in wooden shoes in the dirt corridor. I could see they were very drunk, and Hatsumomo’s friend had feet much too big for our little wooden shoes, so that she could hardly walk a step without the two of them breaking out in laughter. You may recall that a wooden walkway ran along the outside of the house. Hatsumomo had just set her packages down onto that walkway and was about to open one of them when I delivered the beer.
“I’m not in the mood for beer,” she said, and bent down to empty both glasses underneath the foundation of the house.
“I’m in the mood for it,” said her friend, but it was already too late. “Why did you pour mine out?”
“Oh, be quiet, Korin!” Hatsumomo said. “You don’t need more to drink anyway. Just look at this, because you’re going to die from happiness when you see it!” And here, Hatsumomo untied the strings holding shut the linen paper of one package, and spread out upon the walkway an exquisite kimono in different powdery shades of green, with a vine motif bearing red leaves. Really, it was a glorious silk gauze-though of summer weight, and certainly not appropriate for the fall weather. Hatsumomo’s friend, Korin, admired it so much that she drew in a sharp breath and choked on her own saliva-which caused them both to burst out laughing again. I decided the time had come to excuse myself. But Hatsumomo said:
“Don’t go away, Little Miss Stupid.” And then she turned to her friend again and told her, “It’s time for some fun, Korin-san. Guess whose kimono this is!”
Korin was still coughing a good deal, but when she was able to speak, she said, “I wish it belonged to me!”
“Well, it doesn’t. It belongs to none other than the geisha we both hate worse than anyone else on earth.”
“Oh, Hatsumomo… you’re a genius. But how did you get Satoka’s kimono?”
“I’m not talking about Satoka! I’m talking about… Miss Perfect!”
“Who?”
“Miss ‘I’m-So-Much-Better-Than-You-Are’… that’s who!”
There was a long pause, and then Korin said, “Mameha! Oh, my goodness, it is Mameha’s kimono. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize it! How did you manage to get your hands on it?”
“A few days ago I left something at the Kaburenjo Theater during a rehearsal,” Hatsumomo said. “And when I went back to look for it, I heard what I thought was moaning coming up from the basement stairs. So I thought, ‘It can’t be! This is too much fun!’ And when I crept down and turned on the light, guess who I found lying there like two pieces of rice stuck together on the floor?”
“I can’t believe it! Mameha?”
“Don’t be a fool. She’s much too prissy to do such a thing. It was her maid, with the custodian of the theater. I knew she’d do anything to keep me from telling, so I went to her later and told her I wanted this kimono of Mameha’s. She started crying when she figured out which one I was describing.”
“And what’s this other one?” Korin asked, pointing to the second package that lay on the walkway, its strings still tied.
“This one I made the girl buy with her own money, and now it belongs to me.”
“Her own money?” said Korin. “What maid has enough money to buy a kimono?”
“Well, if she didn’t buy it as she said, I don’t want to know where it came from. Anyway, Little Miss Stupid is going to put it away in the storehouse for me.”
“Hatsumomo-san, I’m not allowed in the storehouse,” I said at once.
“If you want to know where your older sister is, don’t make me say anything twice tonight. I have plans for you. Afterward you may ask me a single question, and I’ll answer it.”
I won’t say that I believed her; but of course, Hatsumomo had the power to make my life miserable in any way she wanted. I had no choice but to obey.
She put the kimono-wrapped in its linen paper-into my arms and walked me down to the storehouse in the courtyard. There she opened the door and flipped a light switch with a loud snap. I could see shelves stacked with sheets and pillows, as well as several locked chests and a few folded futons. Hatsumomo grabbed me by the arm and pointed up a ladder along the outside wall.
“The kimono are up there,” she said.
I made my way up and opened a sliding wooden door at the top. The storage loft didn’t have shelves like the ground-floor level. Instead the walls were lined with red lacquered cases stacked one on top of the next, nearly as high as the ceiling. A narrow corridor passed between these two walls of cases, with slatted windows at the ends, covered over with screens for ventilation. The space was lit harshly just as below, but much more brightly; so that when I had stepped inside, I could read the black characters carved into the fronts of the cases. They said things like Kata-Komon, Ro-“Stenciled Designs, Open-Weave Silk Gauze”; and Kuromontsuki, Awase-“Black-Crested Formal Robes with Inner Lining.” To tell the truth, I couldn’t understand all the characters at the time, but I did manage to find the case with Hatsumomo’s name on it, on a top shelf. I had trouble taking it down, but finally I added the new kimono to the few others, also wrapped in linen paper, and replaced the case where I’d found it. Out of curiosity, I opened another of the cases very quickly and found it stacked to the top with perhaps fifteen kimono, and the others whose lids I lifted were all the same. To see that storehouse crowded with cases, I understood at once why Granny was so terrified of fire. The collection of kimono was probably twice as valuable as the entire villages of Yoroido and Senzuru put together. And as I learned much later, the most expensive ones were in storage somewhere else. They were worn only by apprentice geisha; and since Hatsumomo could no longer wear them, they were kept in a rented vault for safekeeping until they were needed again.