"Golden, Arthur - Memoirs of A Geisha" - читать интересную книгу автора (Golden Arthur)

I didn't think it would help to say that I had come from Yoroido; since her accent was as strange to me as everyone else's, I felt sure she wouldn't recognize the name of my village. I said instead that I'd just arrived.

"I thought I would never see another girl my age," she said to me. But what's the matter with your eyes?"

Just then Auntie came out from the kitchen, and after shooing Pumpkin away, picked up the bucket and a scrap of cloth, and led me down to the courtyard. It had a beautiful mossy look, with stepping-stones leading to a storehouse in the back; but it smelled horrible because of the toilets in the little shed along one side. Auntie told me to undress. I was afraid she might do to me something like what Mrs. Fidget had done, but instead she only poured water over my shoulders and
rubbed me down with the rag. Afterward she gave me a robe, which was nothing more than coarsely woven cotton in the simplest pattern of dark blue, but it was certainly more elegant than anything I'd ever worn before. An old woman who turned out to be the cook came down into the corridor with several elderly maids to peer at me. Auntie told them they would have plenty of time for staring another day and sent them back where they'd come from.

"Now listen, little girl," Auntie said to me, when we were alone. "I don't even want to know your name yet. The last girl who came, Mother and Granny didn't like her, and she was here only a month. I'm too old to keep learning new names, until they've decided they're going to keep you."

"What will happen if they don't want to keep me?" I asked.

"It's better for you if they keep you."

"May I ask, ma'am . . . what is this place?"

"It's an okiya," she said. "It's where geisha live. If you work very hard, you'll grow up to be a geisha yourself. But you won't make it as far as next week unless you listen to me very closely, because Mother and Granny are coming down the stairs in just a moment to look at you. And they'd better like what they see. Your job is to bow as low as you can, and don't look them in the eye. The older one, the one we call Granny, has never liked anyone in her life, so don't worry about what she says. If she asks you a question, don't even answer it, for heaven's sake! I'll answer for you. The one you want to impress is Mother. She's not a bad sort, but she cares about only one thing."

I didn't have a chance to find out what that one thing was, for I heard a creaking noise from the direction of the front entrance hall, and soon the two women came drifting out onto the walkway. I didn't dare look at them. But what I could see out of the corner of my eye made me think of two lovely bundles of silk floating along a stream. In a moment they were hovering on the walkway in front of me, where they sank down and smoothed their kimono across their knees.

"Umeko-san!" Auntie shouted-for this was the name of the cook. "Bring tea for Granny."

"I don't want tea," I heard an angry voice say.

"Now, Granny," said a raspier voice, which I took to be Mother's. "You don't have to drink it. Auntie only wants to be sure you're comfortable."

"There's no being comfortable with these bones of mine," the old woman grumbled. I heard her take in a breath to say something more, but Auntie interrupted.

"This is the new girl, Mother," she said, and gave me a little shove, which I took as a signal to bow. I got onto my knees and bowed so low, I could smell the musty air wafting from beneath the foundation. Then I heard Mother's voice again.

"Get up and come closer. I want to have a look at you."

I felt certain she was going to say something more to me after I'd approached her, but instead she took from her obi, where she kept it tucked, a pipe with a metal bowl and a long stem made of bamboo. She set it down beside her on the walkway and then brought from the pocket of her sleeve a drawstring bag of silk, from which she removed a big pinch of tobacco. She packed the tobacco with her little finger, stained the burnt orange color of a roasted yam, and then put the pipe into her mouth and lit it with a match from a tiny metal box.

Now she took a close look at me for the first time, puffing on her pipe while the old woman beside her sighed. I didn't feel I could look at Mother directly, but I had the impression of smoke seeping out of her face like steam from a crack in the earth. I was so curious about her that my eyes took on a life of their own and began to dart about. The more I saw of her, the more fascinated I became. Her kimono was yellow, with willowy branches bearing lovely green and orange leaves; it was made of silk gauze as delicate as a spider's web. Her obi was every bit as astonishing to me. It was a lovely gauzy texture too, but heavier-looking, in russet and brown with gold threads woven through. The more I looked at her clothing, the less I was aware of standing there on that dirt corridor, or of wondering what had become of my sister-and my mother and father-and what would become of me. Every detail of this woman's kimono was enough to make me forget myself. And then I came upon a rude shock: for there above the collar of her elegant kimono was a face so mismatched to the clothing that it was as though I'd been patting a cat's body only to discover that it had a bulldog's head. She was a hideous-looking woman, though much younger than Auntie, which I hadn't expected. It turned out that Mother was actually Auntie's younger sister-though they called each other "Mother" and "Auntie," just as everyone else in the okiya did. Actually they weren't really sisters in the way Satsu and I were. They hadn't been born into the same family; but Granny had adopted them both.

I was so dazed as I stood there, with so many thoughts running through my mind, that I ended up doing the very thing Auntie had told me not to do. I looked straight into Mother's eyes. When I did she took the pipe from her mouth, which caused her jaw to fall open like a trapdoor. And even though I knew I should at all costs look down again, her peculiar eyes were so shocking to me in their ugliness that I could do nothing but stand there staring at them. Instead of being white and clear, the whites of her eyes had a hideous yellow cast, and made me think at once of a toilet into which someone had just urinated. They were rimmed with the raw lip of her lids, in which a cloudy moisture was pooled; and all around them the skin was sagging.

I drew my eyes downward as far as her mouth, which still hung open. The colors of her face were all mixed up: the rims of her eyelids were red like meat, and her gums and tongue were gray. And to make things more horrible, each of her lower teeth seemed to be anchored in a little pool of blood at the gums. This was due to some sort of deficiency in Mother's diet over the past years, as I later learned; but I couldn't help feeling, the more I looked at her, that she was like a tree that has begun to lose its leaves. I was so shocked by the whole effect that I think I must have taken a step back, or let out a gasp, or in some way given her some hint of my feelings, for all at once she said to me, in that raspy voice of hers:

"What are you looking at!"

"I'm very sorry, ma'am. I was looking at your kimono," I told her. "I don't think I've ever seen anything like it."

This must have been the right answer-if there was a right answer-because she let out something of a laugh, though it sounded like a cough.

"So you like it, do you?" she said, continuing to cough, or laugh, I couldn't tell which. "Do you have any idea what it cost?"

"No, ma'am."

"More than you did, that's for certain."