The Blonde Geisha

4

Kioto, Japan 1895

Through the wooden gate, along the winding walkway of stones, up the narrow stairway and onto the veranda where the scent of camellia oil was as thick as the smells from the River Kamo, I fretted about what I was going to say to okâsan.

I was late.

Frustrated, I wiped the sweat from my face, smearing the thick white makeup okâsan insisted I wear whenever I went outside the teahouse, along with my black wig, perfectly centered and balanced. On hot days the wig was almost unbearable, but dyeing my hair black was not an option since most hair dyes contained lead and were known to cause death.

I ignored the heaviness of my wig. Instead, I prayed okâsan wouldn’t be upset, prayed she would act as custom decreed—there must be a time and place for each emotion—and this was neither the time nor the place for that emotion. As for me, this was my favorite hour of the day when the geisha and the maiko crouched in little groups, chattering. Small talk. Gossip, but more of a polite convention. It was part of our training and imperative that we maiko learned to talk with great animation about nothing at all.

And to play games with our customers. Games like Shallow River–Deep River, where the geisha raised up her kimono with her left hand as though crossing a river, a little bit higher each time, as she teased the onlooker by fluttering a fan with her right hand until she revealed her naked, dear little slit.

I giggled, remembering the first time I heard that phrase. The night I discovered the pleasures of the harigata. My smile faded. It was also the night my father left me in the Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree. Part of me died that night. But another part survived, and for three long years I’d studied to become a geisha. Still, I was but a maiko. Why? What had I done to displease the gods? It was customary for a maiko to spend several years of apprenticeship, then take her place as a geisha at age seventeen.

I’m eighteen. Haven’t I earned the right to turn back my collar and become a geisha?

How much longer could I stay in the teahouse, sneaking around the city with white makeup smeared on my face, my blond hair covered by a black wig? Was I destined to hide in the teahouse until my womanhood no longer blossomed? Or until someone discovered my identity?

More than once I saw curious strangers pointing to their nose when they looked at me, meaning my long, straight Irish nose. Why was it so important no one knew who I was? My father was gone and out of danger. Why couldn’t I take my place in the world of flowers and willows?

I’d done everything okâsan asked me to do, everything. Used dried nightingale droppings as a facial treatment to smooth and condition my skin. Washed the veranda twice a day on my knees, scrubbed the soiled futon sheets, trimmed the bamboo in the garden.

I’m a grown-up woman, I was proud to acknowledge, judging by the stares tossed at me earlier today. Although I knew it was naughty, I walked with my buttocks wiggling like I’d seen the older geisha do, my green, hand-painted kimono with yellow and pink morning glories pulled snugly over my hips. Pinkish silver pins sparkled in my hair.

Everywhere I went people stared at me. Oh, I’m not beautiful like Simouyé, but I’m taller than all the other maiko in my six-inch high clogs with tiny bells, since I had long ago outgrown the clogs my father gave me. And it’s unusual for an apprentice geisha to travel alone. We’re always chaperoned, except when we ride in jinrikishas in pairs. I feel so grown-up then, swaying my pretty paper parasol back and forth with Mariko doing the same as our open-air conveyance winds its way through the narrow streets.

Today I ignored the looks of the curious Japanese, keeping my head lowered, taking care not to let anyone get close enough to see my green eyes. It was important I slip away from the teahouse unnoticed so I could complete my errand.

Alone.

How long had I been gone? An hour? Not longer. I clasped my package neatly wrapped in a yellow cloth and tied with a red cord to my chest, my full breasts bound and flattened by the band I wore underneath my kimono. My insides were squeezed up just as tight. I was nervous about facing Simouyé. Whatever excuse I made, I could already see her swaying her body back and forth in that disapproving rhythm I’d come to know so well, scolding me for endless minutes when I made a mistake, while the other maiko pretended not to listen.

I shook my head in dismay. Yet it was okâsan who made one excuse after another when I asked her when I’d be ready to enter the geisha world. I was ready now, but Mariko told me I must accept okâsan’s decision to wait, as I’d accepted the rain.

I hadn’t completely accepted the rain. I’d never forget my first night in the teahouse. The scene never blurred in my mind: the red lantern on the wooden walkway leading to the garden, the deep green of vegetation, the way the rain fell straight down. The scene never blurred in my mind. The hot, damp room. The power of the large artificial penis made of leather and okâsan giving herself entirely to her passion, pushing up the penis to meet her flower heart, wave after wave of joy coming to her as Mariko and I watched.

All this flooded my mind, rekindling my melancholy as I slid open the door to the veranda. I cried out in surprise. It was empty, its straw-mat flooring gleaming, unshaded and bursting with sunbeams. No bells on high clogs ringing out as they were placed facing the way they came inside the entrance hall by small, dainty hands. No swishing of kimono on the floor as stockinged feet tapped out soft sounds. No girlish chatter filling the air.

No one was there.

I smiled. That suited me, for even if okâsan didn’t discover my lateness, Mariko would insist I write a poem asking the gods for forgiveness, then fasten it to the branch of the plum tree, for only then would okâsan have the honorable privilege to forgive my disobedience.

I made a face. Mariko always had an answer or a saying for whatever the problem. I carried a mental image of her with me, her head tilted just so, smiling, laughing, that was more real to me than any portrait could be. She was a living haiku, the seventeen-syllable poem divided into three lines. The haiku was delicate in sensitivity and deep in sentiment, yet both restrained and subdued in its expression.

Like Mariko.

What would I do without her? Whenever I couldn’t endure the strictness of Simouyé or the petty remarks of Youki or the strangeness of this land that tried my patience where what I was feeling didn’t matter as much as what I showed to others, Mariko was there. Laughing with me at the sight of a fat merchant splashed with mud by a reckless jinrikisha driver. Crying over the birth of a litter of kittens. Listening to the whispered conversations of a geisha with her customer from behind a screen—the woman’s half resisting, half yielding responses giving him an erection.

Or, I remembered fondly, watching the candy maker spinning barley sugar into various animal shapes. Covering our mouths and giggling, we licked our lips when the candy maker made a brown crystallized penis and gave it to us. Forming big O’s with our mouths and making sucking noises, we ate the candy, pretending it was a most honorable penis.

We were inseparable, doing everything together, talking to each other in our delicious Kioto geiko dialect and indulging in our favorite pastime: looking at the pillow book and fantasizing we were beautiful geisha trying out all forty-eight decreed sexual positions with our lovers to find out which ones we liked best.

My favorite woodblock print was by the artist Hokusai, depicting a sighing woman in the slippery embrace of two octopuses. They were strategically draped over her body, arousing her, attaching their mouths to her breasts and sucking on her nipples, her lips, pulling the breath out of her, and wrapping their tentacles around her belly, her waist, pushing their slippery appendages inside her vagina and her anal hole, and tickling her with ecstasy.

The funny, fluttering feelings wiggling through me when I looked at the erotic drawings had given me the courage to confess to Mariko how Hisa had grabbed me near the graveyard and rubbed up against me with his bare chest, teasing my hard nipples under my kimono with his sweaty, muscular body. I couldn’t deny the jinrikisha boy made me tingle with heated desire. Wearing a short, sleeveless robe, every muscle of his tanned body was revealed to my curious eye. Taut biceps. Bronze chest. And what I couldn’t see, meaning his most honorable penis, I could dream about.

And desire.

I’d cast off all my reserve, so hungry I was for the touch of a man, allowing myself to fall into his arms with utter ease. But it was wrong and I knew it. I ran away from him when he tried to untie my sash, though I wanted to stay and untie it for him, slowly, very slowly, teasing him with the promise of my wet vagina underneath my many layers of kimono.

“Haven’t you dreamed about making love with a man such as Hisa-don?” I’d said to Mariko late yesterday afternoon after our lessons as we looked out at the garden, listening to the chatter of the birds and the occasional splash of a frog. I often daydreamed about the jinrikisha boy, though I was careful to speak of him in the proper manner dictated when one spoke about a servant.

“Yes, Kathlene-san, I wish to make love to a man and to feel him inside me,” Mariko said, “but it’s our duty to cast our eyes away from Hisa-don.”

I wet my lips with my tongue. I was thirsty. My mouth had gone dry thinking about Hisa touching me, and Mariko was talking about duty? Again?

“Why do you say that, Mariko-san?”

“A geisha must follow the desires of okâsan in finding a patron,” Mariko explained, “even if her own feelings for the man okâsan chooses aren’t what she wishes.”

I shook my head. What was wrong with her? Mariko wouldn’t allow herself to know a man in any way until okâsan made that decision for her.

“I want a man who loves me,” I said. “And who can give me great pleasure with his most honorable penis thrusting deep inside me, touching my flower heart.”

“I’m certain the gods will give you many lovers, Kathlene-san,” Mariko teased, “but I pray you won’t shed many tears and dampen the soil with your melancholy.”

“Tell me what you mean, Mariko-san, please.”

“A geisha must put aside human emotion.”

“What does that have to do with Hisa-don?”

“He’s a servant and not worthy of us.”

“I don’t believe that. He’s a man and I’m a woman.”

“You must understand, Kathlene-san, it’s the way of all Japanese to put duty first.”

“What happens if a geisha falls in love with someone that doesn’t meet okâsan’s approval?”

Mariko shook her head. “A geisha would never allow herself to forsake duty for love.”

“Never?”

It was Mariko’s turn to be speak freely, something I could see was difficult for her, even when we were alone.

“If a geisha is found guilty of misconduct with a person of low rank, she is sent into exile.”

“And the man she loves? What happens to him?”

“He has violated the laws governing rank and must be executed.” Mariko paused a long moment, then added, “Some lovers immortalize their love by committing suicide.”

“Suicide,” I whispered, not wanting to accept the government’s edict of no social mixing.

“Yes, Kathlene-san. The doomed lovers drink sake from the same cup as if it’s a lovers’ pledge to seal their lips. Then the woman’s legs are tied together so she doesn’t die in an ungraceful manner when she plunges the knife into her throat. Her lover then follows her in death.” She paused long enough for the sight of the two lovers dying to have its effect on me, making me cringe, then she continued, “So you must understand while it’s true Hisa-don is most handsome, we must obey the rules.”

“Rules, always rules,” I shot back, not convinced. “I’ve followed all the rules and still okâsan won’t tell me why I can’t become a geisha.”

“We must have rules, Kathlene-san. It’s the only way Japan can be strong, that we can be strong when we become geisha.”

“I’m trying to understand, Mariko-san, for I want to be a geisha, but I can’t let go of my feelings.”

“In our world there are Japanese and gaijin. And you are gaijin.” She paused again, as if something weighed heavily upon her mind. “But I believe with all my heart you can be Japanese, Kathlene-san.”

“You do?”

“Yes. You’ve accepted many things since you came to live in the Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree. If you can accept how a geisha must act in the ways of love, you can become Japanese.”

“But you lose so much in your world of rules, Mariko-san, never experiencing a deep emotion, a profound joy, even pain.”

“That’s not true. I have known much joy since you came to the Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree,” she said, keeping her eyes lowered, “and much pain because I know you suffer so because your father hasn’t returned.”

I didn’t have an answer for that. I dropped my hands into my lap, lowering my head, letting my long blond hair hide my face. Hide my thoughts. Neither the sun nor the moon ever halt upon their journey, said an old Japanese proverb. In but a flicker of time, I was beyond the reach of my childhood, lost in the deep shadows behind the high walls of the geisha house. I had grown up practicing my art of dance, hoping someday to dance in the Spring Festival of the River Kamo Dances, as well as learning how to play the harp and the lute. I believed in my heart someday I would become an entertainer in the world of pleasuring men. I’d learned how to warm a bottle of sake, how to whisper erotic poems in a man’s ear and how to make him hard and rigid by slipping a ring on his penis, but not to turn my back to him like a mare in season.

I knew about the power of beauty and the weakness of passion, and how to forge promises while pretending to be indifferent, as well as the goodness and the evil in the hearts of men.

But I never forgot my father’s promise to return for me.

Time had passed and my father hadn’t set foot on Japanese shores again. What was not said was more powerful than words, Mariko had taught me. Though I never said it aloud to anyone, I believed my father would never return to the Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree. What else could I think? I hadn’t received one letter from him. If the world was flat as some believed, it was as if he’d fallen off the edge of the earth.

Why hadn’t he returned as he promised?

Sitting on a blue silk pillow, I tapped my fingertips on the edge of my folding fan. I mustn’t give up hoping Father would return, that he would see me become a geisha and be proud of me. To do so, I must officially enter the geisha sisterhood. This was a bond not easily broken and one I embraced.

Geisha sisters were dependent on each other for empathy and loyalty, and most important of all, friendship. That was why I wanted to go through the ceremony of sisterhood with Mariko and no one else. Mariko was the older sister because she’d lived in the teahouse longer than I, but we ate together, shared secrets and helped each other with our kimonos. Learning how to wear kimono wasn’t easy.

“A red silk slip?” I’d remarked, my hand going to my mouth when Mariko showed me what I’d wear under my kimono the day I formally entered the world of geisha.

“Yes, Kathlene-san, all geisha show a glimpse of red at their collar. Red is the color of passion. A geisha’s passion.”

“No more butterfly ties,” I said, referring to the ornate tying of my sash in the back that resembled a giant butterfly. I tied my sash too tightly at first, cutting off my breath, and it came apart soon after, sending us both into laughter. I’d learned how to fasten my kimono with its many ties and drape it over my body so it fell gracefully to the floor and trailed after me when I walked, as if it were water around my feet.

“When a geisha wears kimono she mustn’t stand out, Kathlene-san, but harmonize with her surroundings,” Mariko reminded me often.

She meant wa, harmony, the essential of the Japanese soul. I was overcome by a sentimental feeling inside my soul. Mariko reminded me of the soft, pink evening clouds with golden edges that stole over the horizon at sunset, chasing the heavy clouds of the day away and lighting the stars of the night. She could also be strong and fierce. I remembered the night she helped me when Youki cut off my hair. Mariko and I were like two petals that had fallen from the same rose and floated downstream side by side, going wherever the current carried us.

Why shouldn’t we become sisters?

That was why I sneaked out of the teahouse long before the rooster rose from his bed of straw and called the inhabitants of Ponto-chô awake. Then I hurried down the dark, narrow alleys along the canal, the wooden houses seeming to face inward rather then outward.

I hurried on my high clogs with bells to the shop where they sold the kokeshi dolls: crude, trunk-shaped dolls to look like a man with a roughly carved head with eyes, nose and mouth drawn on the doll and clothed in a brightly-painted kimono. The dolls were regarded as a symbol of protection for unattached females.

My face tightened at the thought of Mariko without a man to love her. Marriage meant security, position, home and children. If a geisha married, she must stop being a geisha. I had a deep feeling as much as Mariko wanted these things, she would never allow herself to stop being a geisha. She was trapped in her mind and body to serve one master. Duty.

I thought of her now as I rushed back down the narrow stairway, down the winding walkway of stone, and looked around the garden for her. Like the veranda, it was also empty. Where was she? Where were the others?

I went through the open gate and out into the street. It was late afternoon. I saw pilgrims on their way to Kiomidzu Temple, priests begging for alms and children wandering the streets. Even a long-tailed Tosa chicken being chased by a little black-and-white dog with big, tearful eyes.

Then I saw something that made me smile. Smile big. Hisa had returned from the market. He’d been on an errand for okâsan, I could see, eyeing the Shiba fish in his basket and a bottle of vinegar in his hand. I shouldn’t do it, but I stared at him, though I stayed in the shadows so he wouldn’t see me. Oh, he was magnificent looking. Tall, manly, his stance more like that of a warrior than a lackey.

I saw him lift his short, dark gray robe, and, to my amusement, point his penis downward and perform the most natural of needs, his steady flow hitting the pebbled street with such force I swore I saw little bits of stone flying through the air.

A loud giggle burst from my lips and I covered my mouth with my hand, but it wasn’t soon enough. Hisa looked around and saw me before I could escape. His chest heaved with excitement and his face flushed, but not with embarrassment. The act of urinating in public against walls, fences and poles with canine indifference was a common sight on the streets of Kioto. It adhered to the Japanese notion as long as the act was performed in a public place that belonged to everybody, it belonged to no one and therefore, need not be respected.

I didn’t move. How could I? He didn’t lower his robe but fixed his stare on me. With defiance, he continued to stand there, legs astride, eyes glaring at me, his penis exposed to my view. I took a deep breath. I should go, knowing okâsan frowned upon a maiko talking to a male servant, but it couldn’t hurt to look at his penis. Wasn’t that part of my training, to learn by observation?

I moved into the shadows, watching, seeing what he’d do next. My curiosity was a Western trait I had difficulty sweeping under my long kimono sleeves. They touched the ground as I walked, picking up bits of dirt on the pale yellow silk that matched the hue of my golden hair hidden underneath my black wig.

I kept looking at him.

As he stroked his penis, I became the artist, my eye drawing every line in my mind, while my body expressed my personal delight and involvement in what I was doing. My pulse raced and a raw heat grew in the pit of my belly. I could smell the scent of my desire, sweet-smelling like fresh moon blossoms, overtake me as I watched Hisa stroke his penis with his free hand. It grew in size until it could have been as strong and hard as any weapon he carried.

I held my breath, sensual thoughts playing with my mind. I imagined our silvery laughter mixing as our fingertips touched, our hands brushing together as he led my trembling fingers down to his penis, then squeezed my thigh. I giggled, remembering the large penises depicted in the erotic pictures of the masters. These artists were of the school if a man’s penis were drawn in its natural size, it wouldn’t be worth looking at. Hisa, on the other hand, defied such logic with a penis as large as any I’d seen in the woodblock prints.

That was why I found myself stepping out of the shadows and striding through the gate of the Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree. I swayed my hips, licked my lips and barely glanced at the great black-lacquered palace carriage hung with bright blue silk curtains and parked in front. I had other things on my mind.

I swung my head back and smiled at the handsome young man proclaiming his desire and offering his penis to me, his Sun Goddess, without shame.

I pretended I was the famed noblewoman, Lady Jiôyoshi, who saved her lover by seducing the shôgun. With a piece of silk hanging from my sash, I mimicked the actions of the beautiful noblewoman running through the temple at Kiomidzu, dashing past the shôgun—Hisa in my little drama—who tried to grab her. When he caught her, the brave temptress rewarded him with a night of lovemaking while her lover escaped to freedom.

Follow me, I mouthed the words to the young jinrikisha driver with my crimson bud lips, licking them then making a sucking sound. I had no intention of doing anything wrong. I only wanted to feel the boy’s arms around me, filling up the lonely place in my heart.

“Yes, Kathlene-san,” Hisa said, bowing low and peeking up my kimono, hoping to catch a glimpse of my blond pubic hair on my sand mound.

“The gods will punish you for that,” I teased. He knew I followed the geisha custom of not wearing anything underneath but a light silk wrap. His searching eyes made me giggle, though I blushed at the thought of him seeing my silky golden tuft of hair. He also knew my secret, but he would never tell. He accepted his place in the Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree and guarded it carefully.