Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden Page B

gave me a stern warning not to distract Hatsumomo in any way, or do anything that might make her angry. I didn’t understand it at the time, but now I know perfectly well why she was so concerned. Because, you see, when a geisha wakes up in the morning she is just like any other woman. Her face may be greasy from sleep, and her breath unpleasant. It may be true that she wears a startling hairstyle even as she struggles to open her eyes; but in every other respect she’s a woman like any other, and not a geisha at all. Only when she sits before her mirror to apply her makeup with care does she become a geisha. And I don’t mean that this is when she begins to look like one. This is when she begins to think like one too.
    In the room, I was instructed to sit about an arm’s length to the side of Hatsumomo and just behind her, where I could see her face in the tiny dressing mirror on her makeup stand. She was kneeling on a cushion, wearing a cotton robe that clung to her shoulders, and gathering in her hands a half dozen makeup brushes in various shapes. Some of them were broad like fans, while others looked like a chopstick with a dot of soft hair at the end. Finally she turned and showed them to me.
    “These are my brushes,” she said. “And do you remember this?” She took from the drawer of her makeup stand a glass container of stark white makeup and waved it around in the air for me to see. “This is the makeup I told you never to touch.”
    “I haven’t touched it,” I said.
    She sniffed the closed jar several times and said, “No, I don’t think you have.” Then she put the makeup down and took up three pigment sticks, which she held out for me in the palm of her hand.
    “These are for shading. You may look at them.”
    I took one of the pigment sticks from her. It was about the size of a baby’s finger, but hard and smooth as stone, so that it left no trace of color on my skin. One end was wrapped in delicate silver foil that was flecking away from the pressure of use.
    Hatsumomo took the pigment sticks back and held out what looked to me like a twig of wood burned at one end.
    “This is a nice dry piece of paulownia wood,” she said, “for drawing my eyebrows. And this is wax.” She took two half-used bars of wax from their paper wrapping and held them out for me to see.
    “Now why do you suppose I’ve shown you these things?”
    “So I’ll understand how you put on your makeup,” I said.
    “Heavens, no! I’ve shown them to you so you’ll see there isn’t any magic involved. What a pity for you! Because it means that makeup alone won’t be enough to change poor Chiyo into something beautiful.”
    Hatsumomo turned back to face the mirror and sang quietly to herself as she opened a jar of pale yellow cream. You may not believe me when I tell you that this cream was made from nightingale droppings, but it’s true. Many geisha used it as a face cream in those days, because it was believed to be very good for the skin; but it was so expensive that Hatsumomo put only a few dots around her eyes and mouth. Then she tore a small piece of wax from one of the bars and, after softening it in her fingertips, rubbed it into the skin of her face, and afterward of her neck and chest. She took some time to wipe her hands clean on a rag, and then moistened one of her flat makeup brushes in a dish of water and rubbed it in the makeup until she had a chalky white paste. She used this to paint her face and neck, but left her eyes bare, as well as the area around her lips and nose. If you’ve ever seen a child cut holes in paper to make a mask, this was how Hatsumomo looked, until she dampened some smaller brushes and used them to fill in the cutouts. After this she looked as if she’d fallen face-first into a bin of rice flour, for her whole face was ghastly white. She looked like the demon she was, but even so, I was sick with jealousy and shame. Because I knew that in an hour or so, men would be gazing