Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

all at once, and I turned to see Hatsumomo standing there.
    “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “I thought I heard a little mousie or something. I see you’ve been straightening my room! Are you the one who keeps rearranging all my makeup jars? Why do you insist on doing that?”
    “I’m very sorry, ma’am,” I said. “I only move them to dust underneath.”
    “But if you touch them,” she said, “they’ll start to smell like you. And then the men will say to me, ‘Hatsumomo-san, why do you stink like an ignorant girl from a fishing village?’ I’m sure you understand that, don’t you? But let’s have you repeat it back to me just to be sure. Why don’t I want you to touch my makeup?”
    I could hardly bring myself to say it. But at last I answered her. “Because it will start to smell like me.”
    “That’s very good! And what will the men say?”
    “They’ll say, ‘Oh, Hatsumomo-san, you smell just like a girl from a fishing village.’ ”
    “Hmm . . . there’s something about the way you said it that I don’t like. But I suppose it will do. I can’t see why you girls from fishing villages smell so bad. That ugly sister of yours was here looking for you the other day, and her stench was nearly as bad as yours.”
    I’d kept my eyes to the floor until then; but when I heard these words, I looked Hatsumomo right in the face to see whether or not she was telling me the truth.
    “You look so surprised!” she said to me. “Didn’t I mention that she came here? She wanted me to give you a message about where she’s living. Probably she wants you to go find her, so the two of you can run away together.”
    “Hatsumomo-san—”
    “You want me to tell you where she is? Well, you’re going to have to earn the information. When I think how, I’ll tell you. Now get out.”
    I didn’t dare disobey her, but just before leaving the room I stopped, thinking perhaps I could persuade her.
    “Hatsumomo-san, I know you don’t like me,” I said. “If you would be kind enough to tell me what I want to know, I’ll promise never to bother you again.”
    Hatsumomo looked very pleased when she heard this and came walking toward me with a luminous happiness on her face. Honestly, I’ve never seen a more astonishing-looking woman. Men in the street sometimes stopped and took their cigarettes from their mouths to stare at her. I thought she was going to come whisper in my ear; but after she’d stood over me smiling for a moment, she drew back her hand and slapped me.
    “I told you to get out of my room, didn’t I?” she said.
    I was too stunned to know how to react. But I must have stumbled out of the room, because the next thing I knew, I was slumped on the wood floor of the hallway, holding my hand to my face. In a moment Mother’s door slid open.
    “Hatsumomo!” Mother said, and came to help me to my feet. “What have you done to Chiyo?”
    “She was talking about running away, Mother. I decided it would be best if I slapped her for you. I thought you were probably too busy to do it yourself.”
    Mother summoned a maid and asked for several slices of fresh ginger, then took me into her room and seated me at the table while she finished a telephone call. The okiya’s only telephone for calling outside Gion was mounted on the wall of her room, and no one else was permitted to use it. She’d left the earpiece lying on its side on the shelf, and when she took it up again, she seemed to squeeze it so hard with her stubby fingers that I thought fluid might drip onto the mats.
    “Sorry,” she said into the mouthpiece in her raspy voice. “Hatsumomo is slapping the maids around again.”
    During my first few weeks in the okiya I felt an unreasonable affection for Mother—something like what a fish might feel for the fisherman who pulls the hook from its lip. Probably this was because I saw her no more than a few minutes each day while cleaning her room. She was always to be found there, sitting at