Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden Page A

the table, usually with an account book from the bookcase open before her and the fingers of one hand flicking the ivory beads of her abacus. She may have been organized about keeping her account books, but in every other respect she was messier even than Hatsumomo. Whenever she put her pipe down onto the table with a click, flecks of ash and tobacco flew out of it, and she left them wherever they lay. She didn’t like anyone to touch her futon, even to change the sheets, so the whole room smelled like dirty linen. And the paper screens over the windows were stained terribly on account of her smoking, which gave the room a gloomy cast.
    While Mother went on talking on the telephone, one of the elderly maids came in with several strips of freshly cut ginger for me to hold against my face where Hatsumomo had slapped me. The commotion of the door opening and closing woke Mother’s little dog, Taku, who was an ill-tempered creature with a smashed face. He seemed to have only three pastimes in life—to bark, to snore, and to bite people who tried to pet him. After the maid had left again, Taku came and laid himself behind me. This was one of his little tricks; he liked to put himself where I would step on him by accident, and then bite me as soon as I did it. I was beginning to feel like a mouse caught in a sliding door, positioned there between Mother and Taku, when at last Mother hung up the telephone and came to sit at the table. She stared at me with her yellow eyes and finally said:
    “Now you listen to me, little girl. Perhaps you’ve heard Hatsumomo lying. Just because she can get away with it doesn’t mean you can. I want to know . . . why did she slap you?”
    “She wanted me to leave her room, Mother,” I said. “I’m terribly sorry.”
    Mother made me say it all again in a proper Kyoto accent, which I found difficult to do. When I’d finally said it well enough to satisfy her, she went on:
    “I don’t think you understand your job here in the okiya. We all of us think of only one thing—how we can help Hatsumomo be successful as a geisha. Even Granny. She may seem like a difficult old woman to you, but really she spends her whole day thinking of ways to be helpful to Hatsumomo.”
    I didn’t have the least idea what Mother was talking about. To tell the truth, I don’t think she could have fooled a dirty rag into believing Granny was in any way helpful to anyone.
    “If someone as senior as Granny works hard all day to make Hatsumomo’s job easier, think how much harder you have to work.”
    “Yes, Mother, I’ll continue working very hard.”
    “I don’t want to hear that you’ve upset Hatsumomo again. The other little girl manages to stay out of her way; you can do it too.”
    “Yes, Mother . . . but before I go, may I ask? I’ve been wondering if anyone might know where my sister is. You see, I’d hoped to send a note to her.”
    Mother had a peculiar mouth, which was much too big for her face and hung open much of the time; but now she did something with it I’d never seen her do before, which was to pinch her teeth together as though she wanted me to have a good look at them. This was her way of smiling—though I didn’t realize it until she began to make that coughing noise that was her laugh.
    “Why on earth should I tell you such a thing?” she said.
    After this, she gave her coughing laugh a few more times, before waving her hand at me to say that I should leave the room.
    When I went out, Auntie was waiting in the upstairs hall with a chore for me. She gave me a bucket and sent me up a ladder through a trapdoor onto the roof. There on wooden struts stood a tank for collecting rainwater. The rainwater ran down by gravity to flush the little second-floor toilet near Mother’s room, for we had no plumbing in those days, even in the kitchen. Lately the weather had been dry, and the toilet had begun to stink. My task was to dump water into the tank so that Auntie could flush the