Memoirs of a Geisha | Page 5

and a
feeling of something in my mouth I wanted to spit out. I heard voices an\
d felt myself turned onto my
back; I was lifted and carried. I could tell they were taking me into th\
e Japan Coastal Seafood Company,
because I smelled the odor of fish wrapping itself around me. I heard a \
slapping sound as they slid a
catch of fish from one of the wooden tables onto the floor and laid me o\
n its slimy surface. I knew I was
wet from the rain, and bloody too, and that I was barefoot and dirty, an\
d wearing peasant clothing. What
I didn't know was that this was the moment that would change everything.\
For it was in this condition I
found myself looking up into the face of Mr. Tanaka Ichiro.
I'd seen Mr. Tanaka in our village many times before. He lived in a much\
larger town nearby but came
every day, for his family owned the Japan Coastal Seafood Company. He di\
dn't wear peasant clothing
like the fishermen, but rather a man's kimono, with kimono trousers that\
made him look to me like the
illustrations you may have seen of samurai. His skin was smooth and tigh\
t as a drum; his cheekbones
were shiny hillocks, like the crisp skin of a grilled fish. I'd always f\
ound him fascinating. When I was in
the street throwing a beanbag with the other children and Mr. Tanaka hap\
pened to stroll out of the
seafood company, I always stopped what I was doing to watch him.
I lay there on that slimy table while Mr. Tanaka examined my lip, pullin\
g it down with his fingers and
tipping my head this way and that. All at once he caught sight of my gra\
y eyes, which were fixed on his
face with such fascination, I couldn't pretend I hadn't been staring at \
him. He didn't give me a sneer, as if
to say that I was an impudent girl, and he didn't look away as if it mad\
e no difference where I looked or
what I thought. We stared at each other for a long moment-so long it gav\
e me a chill even there in the
muggy air of the seafood company.
"I know you," he said at last. "You're old Sakamoto's little girl."
Even as a child I could tell that Mr. Tanaka saw the world around him as\
it really was; he never wore the

dazed look of my father. To me, he seemed to see the sap bleeding from t\
he trunks of the pine trees, and
the circle of brightness in the sky where the sun was smothered by cloud\
s. He lived in the world that was
visible, even if it didn't always please him to be there. I knew he noti\
ced the trees, and the mud, and the
children in the street, but I had no reason to believe he'd ever noticed\
me.
Perhaps this is why when he spoke to me, tears came stinging to my eyes.\
Mr. Tanaka raised me into a sitting position. I thought he was going to \
tell me to leave, but instead he
said, "Don't swallow that blood, little girl. Unless you want to make a \
stone in your stomach. I'd spit it
onto the floor, if I were you."
"A girl's blood, Mr. Tanaka?" said one of the men. "Here, where we bring\
the fish?"
Fishermen are terribly superstitious, you see. They especially don't lik\
e women to have anything to do
with fishing. One man in our village, Mr. Yamamura, found his daughter p\
laying in his boat one
morning. He beat her with a stick and then washed out the boat with sake\
and lye so strong it bleached
streaks of coloring from the wood. Even this wasn't enough; Mr. Yamamura\
had the Shinto priest come
and bless it. All this because his daughter had done nothing more than p\
lay where the fish are caught.
And here Mr. Tanaka was suggesting I spit blood onto the floor of the ro\
om where the fish were cleaned.
"If you're afraid her spit might wash away some of the fish guts," said \
Mr. Tanaka, "take them home
with you. I've got plenty more."
"It isn't the fish guts, sir."
"I'd say her blood will be the cleanest thing to hit this floor since yo\
u or I were born. Go ahead," Mr.
Tanaka said, this time talking to me. "Spit it out."
There I sat on that slimy table, uncertain what to do. I thought it woul\
d be terrible to disobey Mr.
Tanaka, but I'm not sure I would have found the courage to spit if one o\
f the men hadn't leaned to the
side and pressed a finger against one nostril to blow his nose onto the \
floor. After seeing this, I couldn't
bear to hold anything in my mouth a moment longer, and spat out