Memoirs of a Geisha | Page 8

back then my name was
Morihashi Ichiro. I was taken in by the Tanaka family at the age of twel\
ve. After I got a bit older, I was
married to the daughter and adopted. Now I help run the family's seafood\
company. So things turned out
all right for me in the end, you see. Perhaps something like that might \
happen to you too."
I looked for a moment at Mr. Tanaka's gray hair and at the creases in hi\
s brow like ruts in the bark of a
tree. He seemed to me the wisest and most knowledgeable man on earth. I \
believed he knew things I
would never know; and that he had an elegance I would never have; and th\
at his blue kimono was finer
than anything I would ever have occasion to wear. I sat before him naked\
, on my haunches in the dirt,
with my hair tangled and my face dirty, with the smell of pond water on \
my skin.
"I don't think anyone would ever want to adopt me," I said.
"No? You're a clever girl, aren't your1 Naming your house a 'tipsy house\
.' Saying your father's head
looks like an egg!"
"But it does look like an egg."
"It wouldn't have been a clever thing to say otherwise. Now run along, C\
hiyo-chan," he said. "You want
lunch, don't you? Perhaps if your sister's having soup, you can lie on t\
he floor and drink what she spills."
From that very moment on, I began to have fantasies that Mr. Tanaka woul\
d adopt me. Sometimes I
forget how tormented I felt during this period. I suppose I would have g\
rasped at anything that offered
me comfort. Often when I felt troubled, I found my mind returning to the\
same image of my mother,
long before she ever began groaning in the mornings from the pain's insi\
de her. I was four years old, at
the obon festival in our village, the time of year when we welcomed back\
the spirits of the dead. After a
few evenings of ceremonies in the graveyard, and fires outside the entra\
nces of the houses to guide the
spirits home, we gathered on the festival's final night at our Shinto sh\
rine, which stood on rocks
overlooking the inlet. Just inside the gate of the shrine was a clearing\
, decorated that evening with
colored paper lanterns strung on ropes between the trees. My mother and \
I danced together for a while
with the rest of the villagers, to the music of drums and a flute; but a\
t last I began to feel tired and she

cradled me in her lap at the edge of the clearing. Suddenly the wind cam\
e up off the cliffs and one of the
lanterns caught fire. We watched the flame burn through the cord, and th\
e lantern came floating down,
until the wind caught it again and rolled it through the air right towar\
d us with a trail of gold dust
streaking into the sky. The ball of fire seemed to settle on the ground,\
but then my mother and I watched
as it rose up on the current of the wind, floating straight for us. I fe\
lt my mother release me, and then all
at once she threw her arms into the fire to scatter it. For a moment we \
were both awash in sparks and
flames; but then the shreds of fire drifted into the trees and burned ou\
t, and no one-not even my mother-
was hurt.
A week or so later, when my fantasies of adoption had had plenty of time\
to ripen, I came home one
afternoon to find Mr. Tanaka sitting across from my father at the little\
table in our house. I knew they
were talking about something serious, because they didn't even notice me\
when I stepped into our
entryway. I froze there to listen to them.
"So, Sakamoto, what do you think of my proposal?"
"I don't know, sir," said my father. "I can't picture the girls living a\
nywhere else."
"I understand, but they'd be much better off, and so would you. Just see\
to it they come down to the
village tomorrow afternoon."
At this, Mr. Tanaka stood to leave. I pretended I was just arriving so w\
e would meet at the door.
"I was talking with your father about you, Chiyo-chan," he said to me. "\
I live across the ridge in the
town of Senzuru. It's bigger than Yoroido. I think you'd like it. Why do\
n't you and Satsu-san come there
tomorrow? You'll see my house and meet my little daughter. Perhaps you'l\
l stay the night? Just one
night, you understand; and then I'll bring you back to your home again. \
How would that be?"
I said it would be very nice. And I did my best to pretend no one had su\
ggested anything out of the
ordinary to me. But in my