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

Kuniko took another turn peeking through the hole; and then we went back to her house and sat together in the bath at the edge of the pine forest. The sky was extravagant with stars, except for the half blocked by limbs above me. I could have sat much longer trying to understand all I'd seen that day and the changes confronting me . . . but Kuniko had grown so sleepy in the hot water that the servants soon came to help us out.

Satsu was snoring already when Kuniko and I lay down on our futons beside her, with our bodies pressed together and our arms intertwined. A warm feeling of gladness began to swell inside me, and I whispered to Kuniko, "Did you know I'm going to come and live with you?" I thought the news would shock her into opening her eyes, or maybe even sitting up. But it didn't rouse her from her slumber. She let out a groan, and then a moment later her breath was warm and moist, with the rattle of sleep in it.

Chapter three

Back at home my mother seemed to have grown sicker in the day I'd been away. Or perhaps it was just that I'd managed to forget how ill she really was. Mr. Tanaka's house had smelled of smoke and pine, but ours smelled of her illness in a way I can't even bear to describe. Satsu was working in the village during the afternoon, so Mrs. Sugi came to help me bathe my mother. When we carried her out of the house, her rib cage was broader than her shoulders, and even the whites of her eyes were -cloudy. I could only endure seeing her this way by remembering how I'd once felt stepping out of the bath with her while she was strong and healthy, when the steam had risen from our pale skin as if we were two pieces of boiled radish. I found it hard to imagine that this woman, whose back I'd so often scraped with a stone, and whose flesh had always seemed firmer and smoother to me than Satsu's, might be dead before even the end of summer.

That night while lying on my futon, I tried to picture the whole confusing situation from every angle to persuade myself that things would somehow be all right. To begin with, I wondered, how could we go on living without my mother? Even if we did survive and Mr. Tanaka adopted us, would my own family cease to exist? Finally I decided Mr. Tanaka wouldn't adopt just my sister and me, but my father as well. He couldn't expect my father to live alone, after all. Usually I couldn't fall asleep until I'd managed to convince myself this was true, with the result that I didn't sleep much during those weeks, and mornings were a blur.

On one of these mornings during the heat of the summer, I was on my way back from fetching a packet of tea in the village when I heard a crunching noise behind me. It turned out to be Mr. Sugi-Mr. Tanaka's assistant-running up the path. When he reached me, he took a long while to catch his breath, huffing and holding his side as if he'd just run all the way from Senzuru. He was red and shiny like a snapper, though the day hadn't grown hot yet. Finally he said:

"Mr. Tanaka wants you and your sister ... to come down to the village ... as soon as you can."

I'd thought it odd that my father hadn't gone out fishing that morning. Now I knew why: Today was the day.

"And my father?" I asked. "Did Mr. Tanaka say anything about him?"

"Just get along, Chiyo-chan," he told me. "Go and fetch your sister."

I didn't like this, but I ran up to the house and found my father sitting at the table, digging grime out of a rut in the wood with one of his fingernails. Satsu was putting slivers of charcoal into the stove. It seemed as though the two of them were waiting for something horrible to happen.

I said, "Father, Mr. Tanaka wants Satsu-san and me to go down to the village."

Satsu took off her apron, hung it on a peg, and walked out the door. My father didn't answer, but blinked a few times, staring at the point where Satsu had been. Then he turned his eyes heavily toward the floor and gave a nod. I heard my mother cry out in her sleep from the back room.

Satsu was almost to the village before I caught up with her. I'd imagined this day for weeks already, but I'd never expected to feel as frightened as I did. Satsu didn't seem to realize this trip to the village was any different from one she might have made the day before. She hadn't even bothered to clean the charcoal off her hands; while wiping her hair away she ended up with a smudge on her face. I didn't want her to meet Mr. Tanaka in this condition, so I reached up to rub off the mark as our mother might have done. Satsu knocked my hand away.

Outside the Japan Coastal Seafood Company, I bowed and said good morning to Mr. Tanaka, expecting he would be happy to see us. Instead he was strangely cold. I suppose this should have been my first clue that things weren't going to happen just the way I'd imagined. When he led us to his horse-drawn wagon, I decided he probably wanted to drive us to his house so that his wife and daughter would be in the room when he told us about our adoption.

"Mr. Sugi will be riding in the front with me," he said, "so you and Shizu-san had better get into the back." That's just what he said: "Shizu-san." I thought it very rude of him to get my sister's name wrong that way, but she didn't seem to notice. She climbed into the back of the wagon and sat down among the empty fish baskets, putting one of her hands flat onto the slimy planks. And then with that same hand, she wiped a fly from her face, leaving a shiny patch on her cheek. I didn't feel as indifferently about the slime as Satsu did. I couldn't think about anything but the smell, and about how satisfied I would feel to wash my hands and perhaps even my clothes when we reached Mr. Tanaka's house.

During the trip, Satsu and I didn't speak a word, until we topped the hill overlooking Senzuru, when all of a sudden she said:

"A train."

I looked out to see a train in the distance, making its way toward the town. The smoke rolled downwind in a way that made me think of the skin being shed from a snake. I thought this was clever and tried explaining it to Satsu, but she didn't seem to care. Mr. Tanaka would have appreciated it, I thought, and so would Kuniko. I decided to explain it to both of them when we reached the Tanakas' home.

Then suddenly I realized we weren't headed in the direction of Mr. Tanaka's home at all.

The wagon came to a stop a few minutes later on a patch of dirt beside the train tracks, just outside the town. A crowd of people stood with sacks and crates piled around them. And there, to one side of them, was Mrs. Fidget, standing beside a peculiarly narrow man wearing a stiff kimono. He had soft black hair, like a cat's, and held in one of his hands a cloth bag suspended from a string. He struck rne as out of place in Senzuru, particularly there beside the farmers and the fishermen with their crates, and an old hunched woman wearing a rucksack of yams. Mrs. Fidget said something to him, and when he turned and peered at us, I decided at once that I was frightened of him.

Mr. Tanaka introduced us to this man, whose name was Bekku. Mr. Bekku said nothing at all, but only looked closely at me and seemed puzzled by Satsu.

Mr. Tanaka said to him, "I've brought Sugi with me from Yoroido. Would you like him to accompany you? He knows the girls, and I can spare him for a day or so."

"No, no," said Mr. Bekku, waving his hand.

I certainly hadn't expected any of this. I asked where we were going, but no one seemed to hear me, so I came up with an answer for myself. I decided Mr. Tanaka had been displeased by what Mrs. Fidget had told him about us, and that this curiously narrow man, Mr. Bekku, planned to take us somewhere to have our fortunes told more completely. Afterward we would be returned to Mr. Tanaka.