Memoirs of a Geisha | Page 6

the bloo\
d just as Mr. Tanaka had told
me to do. All the men walked away in disgust except Mr. Tanaka's assista\
nt, named Sugi. Mr. Tanaka
told him to go and fetch Dr. Miura.
"I don't know where to find him," said Sugi, though what he really meant\
, I think, was that he wasn't
interested in helping.
I told Mr. Tanaka the doctor had been at our house a few minutes earlier\
.
"Where is your house?" Mr. Tanaka asked me.
"It's the little tipsy house up on the cliffs."

"What do you mean . . . 'tipsy house'?"
"It's the one that leans to the side, like it's had too much to drink."
Mr. Tanaka didn't seem to know what to make of this. "Well, Sugi, walk u\
p toward Sakamoto's tipsy
house and look for Dr. Miura. You won't have trouble finding him. Just l\
isten for the sound of his
patients screaming when he pokes them."
I imagined Mr. Tanaka would go back to his work after Sugi had left; but\
instead he stood near the table
a long while looking at me. I felt my face beginning to burn. Finally he\
said something I thought was
very clever.
"You've got an eggplant on your face, little daughter of Sakamoto."
He went to a drawer and took out a small mirror to show it to me. My lip\
was swollen and blue, just as
he'd said.
"But what I really want to know," he went on, "is how you came to have s\
uch extraordinary eyes, and
why you don't look more like your father?"
"The eyes are my mother's," I said. "But as for my father, he's so wrink\
led I've never known what he
really looks like."
"You'll be wrinkled yourself one day."
"But some of his wrinkles are the way he's made," I said. "The back of h\
is head is as old as the front, but
it's as smooth as an egg."
"That isn't a respectful thing to say about your father," Mr. Tanaka tol\
d me. "But I suppose it's true."
Then he said something that made my face blush so red, I'm sure my lips \
looked pale.
"So how did a wrinkled old man with an egg for a head father a beautiful\
girl like you?"
In the years since, I've been called beautiful more often than I can rem\
ember. Though, of course, geisha
are always called beautiful, even those who aren't. But when Mr. Tanaka \
said it to me, before I'd ever
heard of such a thing as a geisha, I could almost believe it was true.
After Dr. Miura tended to my lip, and I bought the incense my father had\
sent me for, I walked home in
a state of such agitation, I don't think there could have been more acti\
vity inside me if I'd been an anthill.
I would've had an easier time if my emotions had all pulled me in the sa\
me direction, but it wasn't so
simple. I'd been blown about like a scrap of paper in the wind. Somewher\
e between the various thoughts

about my mother-somewhere past the discomfort in my lip-there nestled a \
pleasant thought I tried again
and again to bring into focus. It was about Mr. Tanaka. I stopped on the\
cliffs and gazed out to sea,
where the waves even after the storm were still like sharpened stones, a\
nd the sky had taken on the
brown tone of mud. I made sure no one was watching me, and then clutched\
the incense to my chest and
said Mr. Tanaka's name into the whistling wind, over and over, until I f\
elt satisfied I'd heard the music in
every syllable. I know it sounds foolish of me-and indeed it was. But I \
was only a confused little girl.
After we'd finished our dinner and my father had gone to the village to \
watch the other fishermen play
Japanese chess, Satsu and I cleaned the kitchen in silence. I tried to r\
emember how Mr. Tanaka had
made me feel, but in the cold quiet of the house it had slipped away fro\
m me. Instead I felt a persistent,
icy dread at the thought of my mother's illness. I found myself wonderin\
g how long it would be until she
was buried out in the village graveyard along with my father's
other family. What would become of me afterward? With my mother dead, Sa\
tsu would act in her place,
I supposed. I watched my sister scrub the iron pot that had cooked our s\
oup; but even though it was right
before her-even though her eyes were pointed at the thing-I could tell s\
he wasn't seeing it. She went on
scrubbing it long after it was clean. Finally I said to her:
"Satsu-san, I don't feel well."
"Go outside and heat the bath," she told me, and brushed her unruly hair\
from her eyes with one of her
wet hands.
"I don't want a bath," I said. "Satsu,