The Blonde Geisha
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We’d been riding for an hour, maybe longer, and the green shadow and gloom hung lower in the sky. I could hear the cawing of the ravens living in the old pine trees as if it were a solemn chant welcoming me to my new home.
No, wait, it wasn’t the birds I’d heard, but a loud bronze gong sounding a long note as rain pelted the oilcloth hood covering us. I held my breath as the driver continued pulling the jinrikisha along the narrowest of lanes with trees arching overhead, blocking my view of the darkening sky.
Then as if by the will of the gods, the rain stopped. I listened and I could hear the noise of running water from little conduits by the road, nearly hidden by overgrown fernlike plants as we traveled deeper into the hills.
A little farther down the lane, the road came to an end.
The driver stopped and I could feel the vehicle being lowered to the ground. I breathed out, relaxed.
“We’re here, Kathlene,” Father said, though I didn’t hear relief in his voice.
“At the nunnery?”
“Yes.”
I wanted to run away. Far away.
I was aware of the stillness surrounding me as I got out of the jinrikisha after my father, my legs stiff and my feet wet. I looked around. Where was everyone? Monks and nuns could usually be found walking the grounds with their curious, basket-shaped straw hats hiding their faces, their palms outstretched for alms, their voices low and begging.
All I saw was a dull red gate standing in front of a stairway of steep steps leading up to a small temple with vermilion pillars supporting it with a heavy, gray-tiled iron roof. Hundreds of lanterns dotted the grounds, along with several statues of heavenly guard dogs perched on stone pedestals.
I almost expected to hear them start barking as my father bounded up the steps, his feet moving at a fast pace, his mood somber. I started to follow him, when I saw the most exquisite scarlet wildflowers growing in clumps around the steps. I was drawn to the flowers, their long, soft petals reminding me of the finest silk worn by the geisha. Dazzled by their beauty, I bent down to pick a cluster of flowers when—
Whooossshhh. Something flew by my face so fast I could feel a tiny breeze fanning my cheek. I touched my skin in surprise, and before I could reach down and pick the flowers, I heard the unmistakable crrraaacck of stone hitting stone and exploding into hundreds of fragments.
I turned my head around in time to see the head of a dog statue toppling from its body and landing on the ground, shattering into big, ugly pieces. Then I heard a voice cry out, “Don’t touch the flowers!”
Startled and shaken down to my pantaloons wet from the rain, I jumped back, looked around, and was surprised to see the jinrikisha boy. He had yelled out to me, breaking the stillness around us.
“Why?” I asked, not understanding. “What’s wrong?”
“Those flowers are poisonous,” the boy said, bowing, knowing he’d spoken out of turn, but as I was about to find out, most fortuitous for us.
“Poisonous?” A commotion in the sky caught my attention. I looked up to see hundreds of pigeons flying over my head, the whirring of their wings mixing with the neighing of horses. Horses? The nuns shunned the luxury of any kind of conveyance and walked everywhere. Where did the horses come from?
“These flowers will inflame your hands,” the boy said, “and make them red.” Then he bent down low and whispered hotly in my ear, “I’d like to make your cheeks blush red with the heat of passion.”
“Oh!” I turned away, my skin tinting a dark pink. A silver-spun mist of anticipation slithered across the soft opening between my legs. Then a hot boiling steam spread across my belly, arousing my senses. I was unsettled by the boy’s crude remark, but I was more disturbed by my own reactions. A new strangeness arose within me, which didn’t seem unnatural. I experienced an overwhelming desire to surrender to the raw, sexual energy of this new discovery. Yet I was afraid of some dark emotion I couldn’t define. Afraid of losing control of myself, doing wild things I’d never thought of until now, and then wanting more.
Summoning the courage to confront the need as well as the desire stirring within me, I dared to look down at the large bulge between the boy’s legs, my heart beating faster when—
“Get back into the jinrikisha, Kathlene!” I heard my father shouting in English. His voice sounded desperate. “We’re leaving!”
I saw him running back down the stairs, taking them two, three steps at a time. Something was horribly wrong.
“What’s going on?” I asked, a fresh wind picking up and bringing the smell of sweating horseflesh with it, the pungent odor lingering under my nose. I hadn’t imagined the sound of horses after all.
My father grabbed me by the arm, then pushed me into the jinrikisha. “They were waiting for us, the devils. Get in, now!”
I did as I was told, fear making my heart beat faster, my father shouting to the boy to take off down the narrow lane. I dared to look out the oilcloth curtain, my eyes searching out the steep stairway leading to the temple before my father pulled me back into the jinrikisha. I saw dust kicking up. Someone was coming after us.
The boy was running. Running. I could hear his heavy breaths coming quickly, then quicker yet.
“Who was waiting for us in the temple, Father?”
Faster, faster, the boy ran. He must have the strength of the gods in him.
“I’m certain it was the Prince’s devils. If that boy hadn’t yelled out and startled the birds and surprised their horses, I hate to think what would have happened to us.” He put his arm around me, holding me tight, though I could feel him shaking. “How they knew we were coming here, I don’t know.”
Heavy breaths. Thumping bare feet. The boy didn’t stop running.
“Ogi-san.”
I reminded my father the old woman must have listened to us making our plans and heard him mention the name of the nunnery.
He nodded. “The woman isn’t a bad sort, but she’s weak. The Prince’s men will stop at nothing to find us, including threatening her with the sword to loosen her tongue.”
I dared to ask, “What will happen if they catch us?”
He flinched as if he couldn’t bear to think about it. “I will die protecting you, my daughter.”
“They won’t catch us,” I said. “The boy will outrun them.”
“You have much faith in this boy,” Father said, then looking out the oilcloth curtain, he finished with, “Though I don’t believe his feet will save us, but his wit.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look for yourself.”
I peeked through the oilcloth and let out a surprised sigh when I realized we had stopped under an arched bridge, the deep shadows and green twilight of the groves showering us in oncoming darkness.
“We’re under a bri—”
“Wait!” my father ordered. “Listen.”
Seconds later we heard the pounding of horses’ hooves galloping over the bridge, our pursuers rushing overhead. Their hoof-beats pounded and pounded upon the wooden bridge, sounding like a stampede.
I counted three, maybe four horses, their riders shouting and digging their heels into the flanks of their mounts. Now I understood the old Japanese proverb about why all bridges were curved: Because demons could only charge in a straight line.
Demons like the men following us.
I kept still as my father held me in his arms and the air filled with silence. I felt secure, holding on to him, certain he would get us to safety.
But the events of the last twenty-four hours weighed heavily upon me. The danger had passed, if only for a short time. I began to calm down, relax. I allowed my tired body to drift off, sleep for a minute, maybe two, but I couldn’t rest. Always in the back of my mind, I was asking, asking, why were those men following us? Why?
What wouldn’t my father tell me?
2
The soft hush of a breath lingering in the night air, the scent of forbidden love hanging still upon a wayward breeze, a stifling heat making lovers sweat under mosquito nets as they thrust and writhed in passion. All this cast a sensual spell over me as we returned to the city of Kioto.
Raindrops, big and plump, landing on gray-tiled roofs. Caterpillars humping along the road. A night filled with fear, but also with magic.
The magic of the fairy tale yet to come.
But first—
“We’re not out of danger yet, Kathlene.”
“I know, Father.”
“You’ve always trusted me, my daughter.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Do you believe whatever I do, it’s because I love you?”
“Yes.”
“Even if I take you to a place that may be unseemly for a young girl?”
“Yes.” I held my hand to my chest as if to quiet my rapidly beating heart. I sensed something wonderful and strange was about to happen to me. A mystery, but what?
“I’ve been thinking, my daughter, and questioning. I wouldn’t see you hurt for anything in the world, yet I’m faced with the most difficult decision of my life.”
“What decision?”
“Where we can hide. No place is safe from the Prince’s devils. Unless—”
I took my father’s hand in mine. It was cold. “Yes, Father?”
“Unless we hide in a place where no one would think of looking for us, a place filled with the secrets of men’s desires, a place devoted to the seeking of pleasure, a place I never dreamed I would expose my daughter to seeing. Yet what choice do I have? If the Prince’s devils find us, they will invoke the most unspeakable sin upon—”
“No! They won’t find us. They won’t.”
He held me tighter, so tight I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t understand my father’s turmoil. What was he talking about? Where was he taking me?
“Don’t judge me, Kathlene. Understand I’ve thought long and hard about what I’m about to do, and though I know you’ll be exposed to a certain kind of life that doesn’t please me, I have no other choice.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the Teahouse of Mikaeri Yanagi.”
“Mikaeri Yanagi,” I repeated. “What does that mean?”
“The Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree.”
The Look-Back Tree? I questioned. Look back at what?
“Simouyé will hide us,” he continued. “I’m certain of this.”
“Simouyé?” I asked, noting with interest my father didn’t follow the tradition of adding the honorific san to this strange name. A name that had no meaning to me but sounded very pleasing to my ears the way Father said it.
With a late-night summer rain come to visit us and the thumping of the jinrikisha clattering on the wet street, my father squeezed my hand. “Simouyé is a great friend, Kathlene, and a woman I can trust—” he looked down at me and I saw tenderness in his eyes “—with my greatest possession.”
“Father…” I started to ask, wondering who was this Simouyé. A teacher? A friend? Or something more? Something mysterious?
A geisha?
“Yes, Kathlene?” Father asked.
I took a deep breath, then found the courage to ask him, “Have you ever visited a geisha house?”
Taken aback by my question, swallowing a hard lump in his throat, he hesitated, then answered me with, “A geisha is a woman of high refinement and irreproachable morals. Though she often falls in love, sometimes the man she loves is unable to care for her as he wished he could do.”
“I want to be a geisha,” I said with the confidence of my youth.
He looked shocked at my words. “You? My daughter, a geisha? That’s impossible. You’re gaijin, a foreigner. According to tradition, a gaijin can’t become a geisha,” he said, tugging on my blond hair.
I succumbed to a sadness unnoticed by my father, my shoulders slumped, my smile turned upside down. With his spirits lifted by his amusement at my admission of wanting to be a geisha, my father sat back and expelled a deep breath and fell into silence.
Just as well. My ears were stinging from his words.
Gaijin can’t be geisha, he said.
I don’t believe him. When all this trouble is over, I’ll show him I can be a geisha. When I grow up—
Wait a minute. Wait.
Something interesting was going on. Peeking out of the oilcloth curtain, I became intrigued with the elegant-looking paneled houses situated along a canal with high walls surrounding them. In this part of Kioto, the streets were small and narrow and filled with dark wooden houses. I could see each multistoried house situated along the canal had a wooden platform in back, extending out over the wide riverbank. The colorful, red paper lanterns on the square verandas, swinging back and forth in the rain, held my interest. Big, black Japanese letters danced in bold characters on the lanterns. The rain blurred the writing, but the words were names. Girls’ names. I remembered seeing similar lanterns in the Shinbashi geisha district in Tokio.
I smiled. I knew where we were from the books I’d read. Near Gion, in Ponto-chô. The geisha district near the River Kamo. A special thrill shivered through me, knowing I was here in this magical place.
I slid to the edge of my seat and stuck my head out the window. Big raindrops hit my nose, my eyelids, my lips, giving me a taste of the strangeness of this place called Ponto-chô, my eyes dancing from one house on the river to the next. So much about the world of geisha excited me. I wondered which one was the Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree as the jinrikisha driver pulled us closer and closer to our destination. He hadn’t stopped running since we left the countryside, and more than once I saw him looking back at me when I poked my head out of the oilcloth curtain.
The sight of him made me take even more delight in the idea of hiding in the teahouse. If the boy could run and run and run, I imagined what pleasures he could sustain for a long time under the silkiness of a futon.
What if I were a geisha and he were my lover?
What delights awaited me, delights hidden under the tiniest bit of blue cloth barely covering his penis?
I leaned back into the jinrikisha as thunder rolled and rolled overhead. I wasn’t frightened. The sound of the rain ripping open the clouds made me imagine the thunder was the power of a samurai warrior driving his manly sword into a sighing maiden. Thrusting rain. Drenching rain.
Oooohhh, I wanted to feel these pleasures, but my heart was heavy, wondering if my father and I would be safe in the teahouse.
I closed my eyes and let the rain hit my face, wishing the danger would pass, wishing I could change the way I looked so they couldn’t find me, wishing the raindrops could sculpt my features like a geisha with high arched brows, winged cheekbones and bold carmine lips. Geisha were like the rain, I believed, with their skin so transparent and beautiful, colorless yet filled with hues of blue and red and yellow. How I wished I could be a geisha. To me, a geisha was like a fairy princess, pure and untouched, until the handsome prince sought her for a bride. Then he’d whisk her off to a castle surrounded by a moat, like the palace I’d read about in the days when Tokio was called Yeddo, a palace with so many rooms no one ever lived long enough to see them all. And I’d have kimonos woven with golden threads and dazzling rice ornaments for my hair made out of the purest white diamonds and the deepest black pearls.
And the man I loved would lie next to me under the silkiness of the futon, our bodies naked, our hands exploring each other. I’d know the ultimate joy of pleasure of feeling the thrust of a man’s penis inside me, that elusive feeling I’d begun to understand and craved deep in my soul, an ache that wouldn’t go away.
The jinrikisha boy turned down a tiny canal street into an alley and down a narrow lane, then crossed a small bridge before stopping before a teahouse hidden behind high walls. A great willow swayed in the night breeze. Rose and yellow lights burned behind the panes of paper.
I held my breath, lest the dream faded. I had the strangest feeling I’d stumbled into a fairy tale.
“The child can’t stay here, Edward-san,” the woman said in an abrupt manner in rapid Japanese, her hands f luttering around her.
“I have no choice, Simouyé-san,” my father insisted in a harsh voice. Then softer, he said, “I must ask you to do this for me.”
“I can’t. If the Prince’s men are searching for you everywhere in the city, they will find her here.”
“Not if you disguise her with a black wig and put a fancy kimono on her.”
A black wig? I tried to keep in the shadows, but the woman named Simouyé wouldn’t stop looking at me. That surprised me, since that wasn’t the Japanese way. Yet I couldn’t stop staring at her across the room almost as intensely.
I dared to inch closer to inspect the beautiful woman with the tight knot of black hair fixed high on the top of her head who spoke with such vehemence against my staying in the teahouse. She wore no makeup except for a light dusting of rice powder on her cheeks, but I swore her lips were dark red, though I couldn’t see her mouth. Simouyé pressed her lips together when she spoke and waved her arms around her. Her dark mauve kimono with sleeves reaching down to her hips fit her snugly, showing her still-girlish figure. Though she wore only white socks on her small feet, she seemed taller to me than most Japanese women.
Or was it because of the way she stood? Proud and straight. As if she knew her place, and that place was close to the gods.
She moved closer to me, startling me. Or was it an optical illusion produced by the embroidered birds on her sash, fitting tightly around her midriff, that made her seem like she was floating on air?
The intent of her words was no illusion.
“If your daughter stays here, Edward-san, you’re not thinking I would engage her as a maiko?” Simouyé asked, her hand flying to her breasts. My eyes widened with surprise. A maiko, I knew, was the localism for an apprentice geisha. I choked with joy at the thought, but the idea didn’t please the woman.
You don’t have to worry. My father would never permit me to become a geisha.
“That’s exactly what I mean, Simouyé-san,” my father answered.
My mouth dropped open, not believing my father had said the words I yearned to hear.
He continued, “As a maiko she wouldn’t be subjected to any—” he hesitated, then chose his next words with care “—unpleasant or awkward situations with your customers.”
My mind was so focused on this new turn of events, so startled by what my father had said, I hadn’t realized his hand was caressing the woman’s neck, as if this was a prelude to an intimate moment they’d previously shared. Then he moved his hand down to the V-shaped opening of her kimono, lingering there, then brushing her breasts with the tips of his fingers. The woman drew in her breath. I wanted to look away. My father was doing this?
I kept staring at the woman. Her sash was tied low, signifying her maturity, the curve of her breasts not flattened, allowing for her nipples to become taut and pointy through the kimono. She wore the thinnest silk undergarment underneath. I saw her shudder with pleasure.
“Even if I wish it, Edward-san,” Simouyé whispered, “I can’t allow the child to stay here. She doesn’t understand our ways.”
“She will learn. These high walls hide many secrets.”
“Yes, Edward-san, many secrets. Inside this world one sees only the mask of femininity. A geisha never shows her true self to her customer but bends as the willow, pleasing those who are often undeserving of such pleasure. Is that the kind of life you wish for your daughter?”
My father paused, his body stiffening, his hands clenched at his sides. I thought he was going to look at me, but he didn’t.
Say yes, Papa, please say yes.
“I’m desperate, Simouyé-san,” he said. “There’s no place else where she’ll be safe. I’ll return for her as soon as I can. Until then, you must help me.”
“What about the jinrikisha boy?”
“Hisa-don won’t speak about tonight. He knows his place.”
“That’s true, but—”
“Please, Simouyé-san, I’m begging you to help me save my daughter.”
The woman wasn’t convinced. “Our lives within these walls are very strict, Edward-san. If I say yes to your request, your daughter will have to follow all the rules of a maiko so as not to arouse suspicion. She must learn by observation by first becoming a maid and working long hours, but she’ll become a stronger woman. She must study the lute, the harp and dancing. She must learn the most polite language of geisha, where everything is hinted at and nothing is said directly, as well as respect and responsibility for her elders. She must also learn the art of wearing kimono, and be as pure as one who has not granted the pillow.”
This time I drew far back into the shadows, hiding from the woman’s scrutiny. My father’s intimate actions toward the woman had disturbed me, but this conversation disturbed me more. I could guess what granting the pillow meant. Something silky and warm and wonderful between a man and a woman snuggling up in a futon, hands groping, flesh touching. My heart pumped wildly and a warm flush pricked my skin pink. Would my education in the teahouse teach me about making love to a man?
Fueled with excitement, I pondered this new and interesting situation: If Simouyé agreed, I could stay in the teahouse and learn the ways of the geisha. It was both wonderful and frightening at the same time.
A slight noise drew my attention and my eyes darted to the other side of the room. I heard a knock, then the sound of a rice-paper door sliding open. The heavy rains must have prevented the geisha from changing their screens and doors to summer bamboo screens, a custom routinely followed to ward off the summer heat and humidity. I stifled a giggle. I had also upset their routine. No wonder Simouyé wasn’t pleased.
A young woman entered on her knees through the paper door and bowed three times, her forehead touching the floor. She wore a dark blue silk kimono with a striped white-and-pink sash tied around her waist. She was plain-looking, but a sweetness about her drew my attention. Innocent, childlike.
The girl began serving tiny cups of tea, placing them on the low black-lacquered table, alongside a tray of sweetmeats shaped like fantailed goldfish. The sugar glistened on top like golden specks and made my mouth water.
The girl handed me a cup of tea, then a napkin, then a sweetmeat.
“Thank you,” I whispered in Japanese, then I bowed to the girl.
The girl blinked her eyes in surprise, then bowed again and said, “It is my pleasure.”
I started to bow again until I looked over at my father. I couldn’t put the tea to my lips or the sweetmeat in my mouth. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My father and Simouyé were standing in the corner in the shadows, their bodies so close they touched in a most personal manner. The woman seemed unaware of my presence nor did she push away from the intimate caress of the tall American. He stroked her face, then brushed her lips with his fingertips and held her chin in his hands. She didn’t pull away when he slid his hands down to her hips, massaging her firm thighs, her rounded buttocks. Then, slipping his hand in the fold of her kimono, he touched her breasts, playing with them. I sensed the power of her raised emotions was difficult for the woman to suppress as she was accustomed to doing. I had the feeling she couldn’t maintain her composure much longer, yet she continued to speak in a soft voice, accenting her words.