Memoirs of a Geisha | Page 9

head it was as though an explosion had occurre\
d. My thoughts were in
fragments I could hardly piece together. Certainly it was true that a pa\
rt of me hoped desperately to be
adopted by Mr. Tanaka after my mother died; but another part of me was v\
ery much afraid. I felt
horribly ashamed for even imagining I might live somewhere besides my ti\
psy house. After Mr. Tanaka
had left, I tried to busy myself in the kitchen, but I felt a bit like S\
atsu, for I could hardly see the things
before me. I don't know how much time passed. At length I heard my fathe\
r making a sniffling noise,
which I took to be crying and which made my face burn with shame. When I\
finally forced myself to
glance his way, I saw him with his hands already tangled up in one of hi\
s fishing nets, but standing at the
doorway leading into the back room, where my mother lay in the full sun \
with the sheet stuck to her like
skin.
The next day, in preparation for meeting Mr. Tanaka in the village, I sc\
rubbed my dirty ankles and
soaked for a while in our bath, which had once been the boiler compartme\
nt from an old steam engine
someone had abandoned in our village; the top had been sawed off and the\
inside lined with wood. I sat

a long while looking out to sea and feeling very independent, for I was \
about to see something of the
world outside our little village for the first time in my life.
When Satsu and I reached the Japan Coastal Seafood Company, we watched t\
he fishermen unloading
their catches at the pier. My father was among them, grabbing fish with \
his bony hands and dropping
them into baskets. At one point he looked toward me and Satsu, and then \
afterward wiped his face on the
sleeve of his shirt. Somehow his features looked heavier to me than usua\
l. The men carried the full
baskets to Mr. Tanaka's horse-drawn wagon and arranged them in the back.\
I climbed up on the wheel to
watch. Mostly, the fish stared out with glassy eyes, but every so often \
one would move its mouth, which
seemed to me like a little scream. I tried to reassure them by saying:
"You're going to the town of Senzuru, little fishies! Everything will be\
okay."
I didn't see what good it would do to tell them the truth. At length Mr.\
Tanaka came out into the street
and told Satsu and me to climb onto the bench of the wagon with him. I s\
at in the middle, close enough
to feel the fabric of Mr. Tanaka's kimono against my hand. I couldn't he\
lp blushing at this. Satsu was
looking right at me, but she didn't seem to' notice anything and wore he\
r usual muddled expression.
I passed much of the trip looking back at the fish as they sloshed aroun\
d in their baskets. When we
climbed up over the ridge leaving Yoroido, the wheel passed over a rock \
and the wagon tipped to one
side quite suddenly. One of the sea bass was thrown out and hit the grou\
nd so hard it was jolted back to
life. To see it flopping and gasping was more than I could bear. I turne\
d back around with tears in my
eyes, and though I tried to hide them from Mr. Tanaka, he noticed them a\
nyway. After he had retrieved
the fish and we were on our way again, he asked me what was the matter. \
"The poor fish!" I said.
"You're like my wife. They're mostly dead when she sees them, but if she\
has to cook a crab, or anything
else still alive, she grows teary-eyed and sings to them."
Mr. Tanaka taught me a little song-really almost a sort of prayer-that I\
thought his wife had invented.
She sang it for crabs, but we changed the words for the fish:
Suzuki yo suzuki!
Jobutsu shite kure!
Little bass, oh little bass!
Speed yourself to Buddhahood!
Then he taught me another song, a lullaby I'd never heard before. We san\
g it to a flounder in the back
lying in a low basket by itself, with its two button-eyes on the side of\
its head shifting around.
Nemure yo, ii karei yo!
Niwa ya makiba ni
Tori mo hitsuji mo

Minna nemurelia
Hoshi wa mado kara
Gin no hikari o
Sosogu, kono yorul
Go to sleep, you good flounder!
When all are sleeping-
Even the birds and the sheep
In the gardens and in the fields-
The stars this evening
Will pour their golden light
From the window.
We topped the ridge a few moments later, and the town of Senzuru came in\
to view below us. The day
was drab, everything in shades of gray. It was my first look at the worl\
d outside Yoroido, and I didn't
think I'd missed much.