The Waiting Years Page 2

  He had set before her an astonishingly large sum of money.

  Until then she had managed by pretending not to hear what others said, but there was no avoiding the issue now that Shirakawa himself had broached it with her. Should she refuse to accept the task it was almost certain that her husband would simply introduce into the family a woman chosen without consulting her. His leaving the choice to her was a sign of his trust, of the importance he attached, for the family’s sake, to her position. A sense of this odd trust that was reposed in her had been there all the while, heavy in her heart, as she, with Yoshi and Etsuko, who felt nothing but joy at this chance to see the capital, sat swaying in the rickshaws that had brought them all the way to the Kusumi’s house in far-off Tokyo.

  ‘I quite understand,’ said Kin. ‘There’s a woman I’m friendly with who keeps a notion store and often acts as a go-between in this kind of thing, so I’ll ask her right away.’

  Kin carried things forward on a businesslike basis, skillfully avoiding any direct reference to the private heaviness of Tomo’s heart. Born into a family that had been official rice agents in Kuramae where the Shogun had his warehouses, Kin was well acquainted with the manners of the wealthier merchants and samurai of the old feudal era and was not in the least shocked by the idea that a man who had got on in the world should keep a concubine or even two. As she saw things, the jealousy of a wife in such a situation would be modified by a natural pride in such a sign of the family’s increasing prosperity.

  So it was that after Kin and her daughter were in bed that night, when Kin broached the subject, lowering her voice as though still constrained by Tomo’s presence and with many glances up at the second floor, she was if anything surprised that her daughter should reply in a somber voice.

  ‘Poor woman. You know, Mother – you say she’s got more distinguished since we saw her last, but to me it looks like the distinction that comes through suffering. That first moment when our door opened and she came in, I got quite a shock.’

  ‘Oh well, people on whom fortune smiles always have their share of hard times too,’ said Kin lightly. ‘Anyway, I’d like to help her find some girl with a pleasant nature. It seems her husband told her that if she couldn’t find a completely inexperienced girl a child geisha would do, just so long as she wasn’t spoiled …’

  Fresh from the official prefectural residence whose rooms were hushed and chill like the priests’ quarters of some great temple, the child Etsuko was captivated by the second floor of this house that was so cheerful, with its broad view directly over the waters of the Sumida River and its sounds of creaking rudders and lapping waves that came to the ears all day long. When Toshi was busy, she would go out through the back gate onto the quay and watch the gentle motion of the water lapping at the stakes beneath her feet, or listen entranced to the stirring cries of the boatmen as they busily rowed their loaded vessels by. On one such occasion, Toshi’s pale face peered out through the bars of the window and she called:

  ‘Mind you don’t fall, Miss Etsuko.’ Today as usual Tomo was out with Kin.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Etsuko called, turning round with a smile. She was charming, with her regular features and oval face that looked so grown-up for its age, and the small topknot tied with its crimson cloth.

  ‘Come along,’ said Toshi, ‘I’ve got something nice for you.’

  ‘Coming,’ Etsuko replied obediently and walked over to the window, the long red-striped sleeves of her kimono fluttering in the breeze as she went. Beneath the bars of the window, twining around slender bamboo sticks, grew the five or six morning glories that Kin tended so lovingly, coaxing them carefully from the tiny plot of soil. Seen from outside, both Toshi’s face at the window and the sewing spread out on her lap seemed to Etsuko somehow different from when she saw them indoors. Toshi put a thin arm through the bars and dangled before Etsuko’s eyes the stuffed monkey of red silk that she held between her fingers.

  ‘Isn’t it pretty!’ Clinging to the bars with both hands, Etsuko gazed happily at the tiny monkey on its string, her smile so unclouded that Toshi reflected with a knowing nod to herself that the child did not miss its mother.

  ‘Where’s your mummy gone?’ she asked, jiggling the monkey up and down on its string.

  ‘She’s gone to see somebody,’ said Etsuko in a clear voice.

  ‘I expect you miss your mother, don’t you dear?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, but her eyes were lively and unclouded as she added, ‘but then I’ve got Yoshi.’

  ‘Yes, of course – there’s Yoshi, isn’t there,’ said Toshi with a nod. ‘Is your mummy very busy even when she’s at home?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Etsuko in the same clear voice as before. ‘People come to see us.’

  ‘Dear me! And is your daddy out a lot?’

  ‘Yes, he’s at the prefectural office all day. And at night he’s often invited out, or people come to see him, so quite often I don’t see him once all day.’

  ‘I see … And how many maids do you have?’

  ‘Three. Yoshi, Seki, and Kimi. And then we have a steward and a houseboy.’

  ‘Well, you do have a big family, don’t you? It’s no wonder Mummy’s so busy.’

  Toshi stopped her sewing and a smile spread over her face. She was picturing to herself the woman that Tomo would find during her present stay and take home with her, and imagining the changes that she might bring to Etsuko’s life.

  Around the same time that Toshi and Etsuko were talking to each other, Tomo and Kin were engaged in conversation with a male gesha called Zenkō on the second floor of a riverside teahouse in the geisha district of Yanagibashi.

  Kin was treating Tomo as though she were her mistress and effacing herself completely. Zenkō, a dapper man who having started life in the family of a retainer of the Shogun knew how to relax without becoming ingratiating, spoke to his old acquaintance Kin in a tone free of the mannerisms of his trade often associated.

  ‘Well now, from what I’ve just heard, I should say it will be quite difficult. Still, we have four or five quite personable girls coming in a little while.’

  He twirled his slender silver pipe between his fingers as though not quite sure what to do with it. Privately, he was wondering with disgust just what part of the provinces had produced the kind of man who would have his legal wife search for a concubine for him. It confirmed his dislike for provincials in general, yet as he sat facing Tomo he sensed something in her manner that seemed somehow to match the pride in tradition still surviving in himself, something that was neither proud nor ingratiating, that was not in the slightest out of the ordinary yet suggested an old-fashioned formality that could not be sneered at or made fun of.

  ‘After all, even with someone we might think is all right, you never can tell a gentleman’s taste, can you?’ said Kin, a ready talker, glancing at Tomo as she returned to Zenkō the cup that he had filled with saké for her.

  ‘Come now,’ protested Zenkō, ‘you mustn’t rely too much on my judgment. Take these girl students nowadays, for instance, with their hair cut straight across the front and their foreign-style parasols. Myself, I just can’t …’

  ‘Now, now, Mr. Hosoi, the lady’s not looking for a girl to act as mistress for some foreigner. Anyway, I’m sure that if you looked among the child geishas you’d still be able to find a girl with the old ukiyo-e-style beauty that you like.’

  ‘No – the trouble with me is that I say what I think, and the young girls won’t have anything to do with me.’

  As he finished speaking a patter of feet sounded on the stairway leading up from the second floor, a medley of voices chimed in greetings, and four or five apprentice geishas in the charge of an elderly geisha came into the room.

  ‘Are we late?’ the elderly geisha said to Zenkō, beginning without delay to tune a samisen that a maid handed to her.

  The story had been that the wife of an official in the provinces wanted to see a colorful dance by apprentice geishas as s
omething to remember Tokyo by, and the girls were decked out in the gay finery that they would not normally have worn for a daytime engagement.

  The preliminary piece of instrumental music over, the young geishas took turns dancing in pairs. Those who were not dancing came to wait on Tomo and her companions, fetching and removing dishes of food and pouring out saké for them. Tomo, who disliked saké, raised her cup to her lips from time to time in order to give her hands something to do as she watched the dancers and the young geishas who sat near her in conversation with Zenkō and Kin.

  They must have been aged about fourteen or fifteen. There were two of them who formed a strikingly beautiful pair, yet as they were dancing, one exposed an arm that was thin, dark-skinned and undernourished, while the other had lines at the sides of her sharp nose that showed when she laughed in a way that was brutal and made her look like a heron. The mere idea of such a girl gradually growing to maturity in their family was a chilling prospect, and for the first time Tomo felt almost grateful that her husband had left the choice to her.

  After the young geishas had gone, she told Kin what she felt about them.

  ‘You certainly have a good eye,’ broke in Zenkō before Kin could reply. Kin herself, who during the past few days had been helping Tomo in assessing all kinds of girls, had sometimes found herself more alarmed than impressed by the sensitivity and acuity of Tomo’s judgment. It startled her to find that a woman who in normal social situations had never talked critically of others nor shown much positive interest should be able, when the occasion required, to make such a thorough-going appraisal of other women.

  It had been the same with the girl that Oshigi the haberdasher had brought along. Quiet-spoken with good, regular features, she was the kind of girl that Kin would have jumped at, but Tomo shook her head.

  ‘They said she was sixteen,’ she declared with seeming reluctance, ‘but she’s at least eighteen. Besides, you know, I don’t think she’s quite inexperienced.’

  Kin was skeptical, but on further inquiry discovered that the girl had indeed had an affair with her elder sister’s husband, a craftsman.

  ‘I wonder how you can tell?’ said Kin, gazing wonderingly at Tomo, who dropped her eyes as though embarrassed at her own accomplishment.

  ‘I wasn’t always like this,’ she said, heaving a sigh as though in deprecation of her present self. It seemed that she had acquired the ability to see through to a woman’s true self in the course of witnessing Shirakawa’s various affairs. Kin was not usually one to bother herself too deeply with the preoccupations and tribulations of others, but little by little as she accompanied Tomo in her search for a concubine she seemed to divine the nature of that ‘distinction acquired through suffering’ of which her daughter Toshi had spoken.

  Tomo was sitting by the night table looking through a pile of photographs of beautiful women when Etsuko came up silently and looked over her shoulder.

  ‘What pretty people! Who are they, Mummy?’ she asked, the red cloth on her hair tilting inquisitively to one side. Tomo did not reply but gave Etsuko a few of the photographs and said,

  ‘Etsuko, which do you like best?’

  ‘Now let me see …’ said Etsuko fanning the photographs out in her hand.

  ‘This one,’ she intoned in her child’s voice, and pointed to the middle photograph. It was a half-portrait, done against a white background, of a girl of fourteen or fifteen with her hair done up high in a style then popular among young girls and her arms tightly folded. The forehead with its conical hairline like Mt. Fuji and the strikingly large eyes like half-shaded spheres of black jade had awoken a response in Etsuko’s childish mind.

  ‘I see. You too …,’ said Tomo as though surprised, and taking the photograph she gazed at it again.

  ‘Tell me, Mummy. Who is it?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, you’ll know soon,’ said Tomo as she gathered the photos together again.

  The photograph had arrived a few days previously from Zenkō Sakuragawa, the male geisha at Yanagibashi.

  The task of selection that faced Tomo was difficult. She had already been at Kin’s for more than a month yet still no girl worth telling Shirakawa about had come to light. Several times she had written to her husband in her labored hand explaining that under no circumstances did she wish to bring back someone who did not please him, and each time the reply from Shirakawa had said that there was no hurry; she was to give every care to her choice. Nevertheless, as the rainy season gave way to clear skies and the Bon Festival drew near Tomo began to feel a sense of urgency. Not only her husband but the home left without its mistress were weighing heavily on her conscience.

  It was at this point that the new proposal had come from Zenkō. This time, Kin had been told, Mrs. Shirakawa was quite certain to be satisfied.

  The girl was called Suga and was fifteen years old; her father owned a shop that sold bamboo skin for wrapping purposes. Her accomplishments included the Nishikawa style of dancing, which she had been studying since she was a small child. She was an attractive girl and since early childhood had won applause whenever she appeared in performances put on by her dancing school. The mother and the elder brother, who was now head of the family, were both reputable citizens, but a dishonest employee had been into the firm during the past few years and the family had fallen on hard times. They had been driven to a point where they would either have to dispose of the shop or sell the girl to a geisha house. The mother had had no idea of making her a rich man’s concubine, but the dancing teacher, who was on friendly terms with Zenkō, had heard of Shirakawa and decided to mention the matter to him, thinking that it might better serve the girl’s own future interests to be taken into such a distinguished family than to be set adrift in the uncertain world of the geisha.

  ‘She’s a quiet girl,’ the dancing teacher had said. ‘And another thing is she’s unusually fair-skinned for a Tokyo girl. When she goes to the public bath the children actually come over to stare at her.’

  In a few days’ time the pupils of the school were to give a recital at which the girl called Suga would dance ‘Plum Blossom in Spring,’ so on that day Tomo and Kin set off for the teacher’s house with Zenkō leading the way. On the pretext of going to see the recital, they were to take a covert look at the girl. The teacher’s house stood in a narrow alley tucked away among the houses of the wholesale merchants of Kokuchō. The front it presented to the street was narrow, but upstairs there was a stage, and when Tomo and the others went up a small girl was already dancing a piece called ‘Gorō’ to the accompaniment of the teacher’s samisen.

  Seeing Zenkō, the teacher without pausing in her playing gave an almost imperceptible nod and smiled briefly, the dark hollow of her mouth with its black-dyed teeth throwing her lively-looking eyes into still greater prominence.

  They had calculated the approximate time of their arrival so that Suga should be present, and the three of them glanced with affected unconcern around the girls who were jammed into the tiny room watching the stage. All of them wore cotton summer kimonos with sashes mostly of red, but one girl, sitting at the far side totally absorbed in the dancing, told them at once by her outstanding beauty that this was Suga. She sat still and correct, little affected by the heat it seemed, while the others about her busily plied their fans.

  Her build was large for a girl of fifteen but the features were unmistakably those in the photographs. The soft white texture of the skin, like handmade paper, and the hair with its blue sheen that framed the pale face in almost oppressive profusion threw the eyebrows and eyes into even sharper prominence, giving them a dramatic beauty as though she were made up for the stage.

  Tomo gazed at Suga with a sense almost of shock. The girl was beautiful, that was all: nothing in the expression remotely suggested any spiritual depths. But the impression of purity was undeniable. Her voice as she spoke to her companion was subdued ; she would say something with downcast gaze then listen to the other’s reply with eyes wide open in a wa
y that was natural and unaffected.

  When ‘Gorō’ came to an end, the teacher handed the samisen to her assistant and said, ‘You next, Suga,’ then rose and came over to where Tomo and the others were sitting.

  The girl who rose to her feet and, lifting the hem of her kimono with both hands, walked towards the stage stooping modestly as she went, was indeed the girl whom Tomo’s gaze had singled out.

  ‘That’s her,’ said the teacher easily to Tomo and Kin as the first notes of the samisen broke the silence. ‘A really sweetnatured girl; I’m sure you’ll have no trouble at all in training her.’

  As they watched Suga going through the movements of the dance, the teacher broke in from time to time with details of her background. For all her striking looks, she was so retiring by nature that even though she was quick to learn, her dancing somehow lacked sparkle. She had no taste for showing off her skills in front of others and had acquired the feminine accomplishments principally to please her parents, declaring that a placid type of person like herself would never make a success in such a lively occupation as that of geisha. The busy town did not really suit her nature, and she felt sure that she would feel much lighter in spirit if she lived in some tranquil spot with a broad view of green paddies and streams. Suga’s mother, the teacher said, was a devoted parent. When she had first heard about Shirakawa from the teacher and been told that Suga would have to go to Fukushima, the idea of her daughter’s going so far away had reduced her to tears; if they were pleased with the girl and decided to take her on, she had said, she must meet the wife and have a thorough talk with her, since so much in her daughter’s future would depend on how the wife felt about the situation.