With the help of one of these women, I found the Tatsuyo in a dead-end alley with only three other houses. All were marked with placards near their doors. I can’t possibly describe how I felt when I saw the sign lettered “Tatsuyo,” but I will say that my body seemed to tingle everywhere, so much that I felt I might explode. In the doorway of the Tatsuyo sat an old woman on a stool, carrying on a conversation with a much younger woman on a stool across the alley-though really it was the old woman who did all the talking. She sat leaning back against the door frame with her gray robe sagging partway open and her feet stuck out in a pair of zori. These were zori woven coarsely from straw, of the sort you might have seen in Yoroido, and not at all like the beautifully lacquered zori Hatsumomo wore with her kimono. What was more, this old woman’s feet were bare, rather than fitted with the smooth silk tabi. And yet she thrust them out with their uneven nails just as though she were proud of the way they looked and wanted to be sure you noticed them.
“Just another three weeks, you know, and I’m not coming back,” she was saying. “The mistress thinks I am, but I’m not. My son’s wife is going to take good care of me, you know. She’s not clever, but she works hard. Didn’t you meet her?”
“If I did I don’t remember,” the younger woman across the way said. “There’s a little girl waiting to talk with you. Don’t you see her?”
At this, the old woman looked at me for the first time. She didn’t say anything, but she gave a nod of her head to tell me she was listening.
“Please, ma’am,” I said, “do you have a girl here named Satsu?”
“We don’t have any Satsu,” she said.
I was too shocked to know what to say to this; but in any case, the old woman suddenly looked very alert, because a man was just walking past me toward the entrance. She stood partway and gave him several bows with her hands on her knees and told him, “Welcome!” When he’d entered, she put herself back down on the stool and stuck her feet out again.
“Why are you still here?” the old woman said to me. “I told you we don’t have any Satsu.”
“Yes, you do,” said the younger woman across the way. “Your Yukiyo. Her name used to be Satsu, I remember.”
“That’s as may be,” replied the old woman. “But we don’t have any Satsu for this girl. I don’t get myself into trouble for nothing.”
I didn’t know what she meant by this, until the younger woman muttered that I didn’t look as if I had even a single sen on me. And she was quite right. A sen-which was worth only one hundredth of a yen-was still commonly used in those days, though a single one wouldn’t buy even an empty cup from a vendor. I’d never held a coin of any kind in my hand since coming to Kyoto. When running errands, I asked that the goods be charged to the Nitta okiya.
“If it’s money you want,” I said, “Satsu will pay you.”
“Why should she pay to speak to the likes of you?”
“I’m her little sister.”
She beckoned me with her hand; and when I neared her, she took me by the arms and spun me around.
“Look at this girl,” she said to the woman across the alley. “Does she look like a little sister to Yukiyo? If our Yukiyo was as pretty as this one, we’d be the busiest house in town! You’re a liar, is what you are.” And with this, she gave me a little shove back out into the alley.
I’ll admit I was frightened. But I was more determined than frightened, and I’d already come this far; I certainly wasn’t going to leave just because this woman didn’t believe me. So I turned myself around and gave her a bow, and said to her, “I apologize if I seem to be a liar, ma’am. But I’m not. Yukiyo is my sister. If you’d be kind enough to tell her Chiyo is here, she’ll pay you what you want.”
This must have been the right thing to say, because at last she turned to the younger woman across the alley. “You go up for me. You’re not busy tonight. Besides, my neck is bothering me. I’ll stay here and keep an eye on this girl.”
The younger woman stood up from her stool and walked across into the Tatsuyo. I heard her climbing the stairs inside. Finally she came back down and said:
“Yukiyo has a customer. When he’s done, someone will tell her to come down.”
The old woman sent me into the shadows on the far side of the door to squat where I couldn’t be seen. I don’t know how much time passed, but I grew more and more worried that someone in the okiya might discover me gone. I had an excuse for leaving, though Mother would be angry with me just the same; but I didn’t have an excuse for staying away. Finally a man came out, picking at his teeth with a toothpick. The old woman stood to bow and thanked him for coming. And then I heard the most pleasing sound I’d heard since coming to Kyoto.
“You wanted me, ma’am?”
It was Satsu’s voice.
I sprang to my feet and rushed to where she stood in the doorway. Her skin looked pale, almost gray-though perhaps it was only because she wore a kimono of garish yellows and reds. And her mouth was painted with a bright lipstick like the kind Mother wore. She was just tying her sash in the front, like the women I’d seen on my way there. I felt such relief at seeing her, and such excitement, I could hardly keep from rushing into her arms; and Satsu too let out a cry and covered her hand with her mouth.
“The mistress will be angry with me,” the old woman said.
“I’ll come right back,” Satsu told her, and disappeared inside the Tatsuyo again. A moment or so later she was back, and dropped several coins into the woman’s hand, who told her to take me into the spare room on the first floor.
“And if you hear me cough,” she added, “it means the mistress is coming. Now hurry up.”
I followed Satsu into the gloomy entrance hall of the Tatsuyo. Its light was brown more than yellow, and the air smelled like sweat. Beneath the staircase was a sliding door that had come off its track. Satsu tugged it open, and with difficulty managed to shut it behind us. We were standing in a tiny tatami room with only one window, covered by a paper screen. The light from outdoors was enough for me to see Satsu’s form, but nothing of her features.
“Oh, Chiyo,” she said, and then she reached up to scratch her face. Or at least, I thought she was scratching her face, for I couldn’t see well. It took me a moment to understand she was crying. After this I could do nothing to hold back my own tears.
“I’m so sorry, Satsu!” I told her. “It’s all my fault.”
Somehow or other we stumbled toward each other in the dark until we were hugging. I found that all I could think about was how bony she’d grown. She stroked my hair in a way that made me think of my mother, which caused my eyes to well up so much I might as well have been underwater.
“Quiet, Chiyo-chan,” she whispered to me. With her face so close to mine, her breath had a pungent odor when she spoke. “I’ll get a beating if the mistress finds out you were here. Why did it take you so long!”