Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden Page A

scolding him. He put down his pen when he heard her voice, and his two big cheeks shifted up toward his ears, which was his way of smiling.
    “Mmm . . . Hatsumomo-san,” he said, “if you get any prettier, I don’t know what I’m going to do!”
    It sounded like a loud whisper when he spoke, because sumo wrestlers often ruin their voice boxes, smashing into one another’s throats the way they do.
    He may have been the size of a hippopotamus, but Awajiumi was a very elegant dresser. He wore a pin-striped kimono and kimono trousers. His job was to make certain that all the money passing through Gion flowed where it was supposed to; and a trickle from that river of cash flowed directly into his pocket. That isn’t to say that he was stealing; it was just the way the system worked. Considering that Awajiumi had such an important job, it was to every geisha’s advantage to keep him happy, which was why he had a reputation for spending as much time out of his elegant clothes as in them.
    She and Awajiumi talked for a long time, and finally Hatsumomo told him she’d come to register me for lessons at the school. Awajiumi hadn’t really looked at me yet, but here he turned his giant head. After a moment he got up to slide open one of the paper screens over the window for more light.
    “Why, I thought my eyes had fooled me,” he said. “You should have told me sooner what a pretty girl you brought with you. Her eyes . . . they’re the color of a mirror!”
    “A mirror?” Hatsumomo said. “A mirror has no color, Awaji-san.”
    “Of course it does. It’s a sparkly gray. When you look at a mirror, all you see is yourself, but I know a pretty color when I find it.”
    “Do you? Well, it isn’t so pretty to me. I once saw a dead man fished out of the river, and his tongue was just the same color as her eyes.”
    “Maybe you’re just too pretty yourself to be able to see it elsewhere,” Awajiumi said, opening an account book and picking up his pen. “Anyway, let’s register the girl. Now . . . Chiyo, is it? Tell me your full name, Chiyo, and your place of birth.”
    The moment I heard these words, I had an image in my mind of Satsu staring up at Awajiumi, full of confusion and fear. She must have been in this same room at some time or other; if I had to register, surely she’d had to register too.
    “Sakamoto is my last name,” I said. “I was born in the town of Yoroido. You may have heard of it, sir, because of my older sister, Satsu?”
    I thought Hatsumomo would be furious with me; but to my surprise she seemed almost pleased about the question I’d asked.
    “If she’s older than you, she’d have registered already,” Awajiumi said. “But I haven’t come across her. I don’t think she’s in Gion at all.”
    Now Hatsumomo’s smile made sense to me; she’d known in advance what Awajiumi would say. If I’d felt any doubts whether she really had spoken to my sister as she claimed, I felt them no longer. There were other geisha districts in Kyoto, though I didn’t know much about them. Satsu was somewhere in one of them, and I was determined to find her.
    *  *  *
    When I returned to the okiya, Auntie was waiting to take me to the bathhouse down the street. I’d been there before, though only with the elderly maids, who usually handed me a small towel and a scrap of soap and then squatted on the tile floor to wash themselves while I did the same. Auntie was much kinder, and knelt over me to scrub my back. I was surprised that she had no modesty whatever, and slung her tube-shaped breasts around as if they were nothing more than bottles. She even whacked me on the shoulder with one several times by accident.
    Afterward she took me back to the okiya and dressed me in the first silk kimono I’d ever worn, a brilliant blue with green grasses all around the hem and bright yellow flowers across the sleeves and chest. Then she led me up the stairs to Hatsumomo’s room. Before going in, she