“I know,” said Fumi, looking contentedly in the bronze circle. She moved aside. Now I could see my own face behind hers. It was an awful sight. “But beauty’z not everything.”
“You think so?” Shino’s face was unreadable.
“Oh, yeah. Men say they wan’ beauty,” Fumi said. “They dream aboudit; they pay a fortune. But what they really wan’ is kindness. Yu’ll do fine in here ’f yu’re gennle and considerate. Yu’ve just got to forget everything that’z for yu and remember everything that’z for them.”
Shino moved around, setting up the kettle on the little grill.
“I’m no good at pleasing,” she said. “I didn’t please my real husband. So how can I please a false husband in the pleasure quarter?”
The courtesan twitched her lips in her mirror. It might have been a smile.
“That’s a very good question. Jus’ keep yur eyes open,” she said. “Yu’ve godda brain. Yu’ll finna way.”
A
fter that, if I was lonely or bored when my father worked in the Yoshiwara, I’d go to the Corner Tamaya and ask for Shino. One morning when she’d been up late and I was up early, I even crawled into her bed and lay there beside her. I was curled up in the warmth when a crowd of the other women came in to get her.
“Yu up, yakko? C’mon, geddup!”
They pushed past the screen, about five of them; behind them I could see Kana.
Shino had been sound asleep and woke up confused. But she sat up. Her hair was down in a soft, long braid that lay like a rope in the bed.
They giggled.
“Lookit her! She’z so, like, stiff. She’z, like, a lady! She’ll, like, never gedda man. No one’z, like, ever gonna wan’ her,” one of them said.
Kana hit one of them on the back of the legs. “You’re just ignorant country oafs! Shino knows a lot. A lot. You should take advantage. She knows writing and music; she can draw, she can dance. She’ll do jus’ fine. Fumi thinks so anyway.” She pulled the futon off us. “C’mon downstairs, yakko. And bring yur liddle friend. It’z time to eat.”
Shino protested as she got up.
“I don’t like to be called that. You’ve given me a name. Can’t you call me by it?”
“It’s jus,’ like, easier to call yu the yakko,” yawned one of them. “Besides yur so . . . yur, like, so . . .”
“I know I am,” Shino said quietly.
We got up. Everybody clattered downstairs to the kitchen.
I
t was the one day a month when the prostitutes took it over. Normally they sat back on their knees, as if they had no interest in food, while clients filled their stomachs. But I had heard their stomachs grumble. Today they could eat as much as they wanted. They elbowed one another to grab the bean curd with corn, the fried fish, the white radish and eggplant in miso, and the bits of grilled chicken. Their mouths dripped with sauce, and they sputtered as they spoke in their funny dialect.
“Fumi says being beautiful is not the most important thing here. She says even if I’m not beautiful, I can be successful by being good,” said Shino.
“Fumi is, like, todally wrong. Being beautiful iz most important,” said one of them. “Izn it?”
They said that a lot. “Izn it?” I had started to say it to my mother, to tease her. It got my father in trouble for leaving me in the brothels while he worked. Still she didn’t ask that I stay at home.
“Even if I were to believe you,” said Shino in her careful way, “and I am not certain I do, can you tell me who determines what is beautiful?”
I slurped my soba noodles. The artists did, I thought.
“That’z a very good question, yakko,” said Fumi.
Everyone laughed. She was supposed to call her Shino.
“Nobody decides. It’z not for, like, deciding. It’z just for, like, kno-owing. Duh-uh!”
“That’s not true! Men decide.”
“They doan.”
“Do too.”
“Do not!”
“Who’s beautiful is just, like, obvious. Like Hana-ogi.” She was the top courtesan.
“Or Fumi.”
Kana was thoughtful. “But the weird thing is it, like, changes. Like the whole idea of who’s beautiful and for what reason changes year to year. I c’n remember . . . Like, now the girls have to be thin. But before, when I was first in the biz, the famous girls were round.”
“Never! I doan believe you. Yu mean, like, fat?” That was Takao, stuffing her face.
“Yu doan remember ’cause yu’re too young, but yeah, it’s true—like round. The girls were, like, round.”
Everyone made various noises of disgust.
“And men liked it,” Kana added as an afterthought.
Everyone laughed.
“So who decided we hafta be thin?”
“I tell you who decided. We decided,” said one girl.
“We did?”
“Yah. We make the fashion. ’F I wear this, like, bamboo-leaf pattern in my kimono and let my red underskirt show, and ’f I tie a purple-and-green obi around, really wide—like, way wider than anyone else—and I go strolling down the boulevard, then the artists paint me, even the noblewomen will think thaz a new style an’ it’z gorgeous. Izn it?”
“’Member when Hana-ogi went to the Spring Festival dressed like a man? They thought that was beautiful too.” Everyone laughed.
“Yah, maybe yu’re right. We decide.”
“That is, like, so cool! We’re, like, the evil ones, but they wanna dress like us? Even the little girls in the samurai families?”
“And talk like us. They copy our words, like iki—”
“Because we’re so clever. We set the styles. And we’re fuh-ny—”
“We’re fuh-ny till they suddenly decide we’re very bad for their health!”
Everyone laughed again.
“Well, we are. Bad for their health. Izn it?”
Everyone laughed more, and some leant sideways on the floor, they were so full.
“Not to mention our health.” Kana looked pointedly at one girl. It’s true she was very skinny. And pale. And she kept coughing. “You don’t look so great, Sanae.”
“Doan say that!” she wailed. “If they think I’m sick they’ll sen’ me home, won’t they?”
“We might all hafta go home if Sadanobu enforces these rules they’re talkin’ about.”
“But they doan really mean it. They’ll never shut down the brothels.”
“The only way we close ’em down is if we burn ’em down.”
“Mmmm, great idea,” murmured someone.
More laughter.
O
ur stomachs were bursting with food. We were lying around groaning.
“So what did we decide beauty is?” said Shino.
“We didn’ decide.”
“But we c’n give you the list.”
Fumi recited. “Best between fifteen and eighteen years of age.”
I thought most of them were a few years older than that.
“The skin must be pale pink, like cherry blossoms.”
Their skin was not pink but sallow; they never went outside.
“The eyes must be the shape of a melon seed. Nose depends on the face—not too large, not too small. Mouth should be very narrow across, and lips puffed as if a wasp has stung them. Eyes large and very black in the centre. Eyebrows close together.”
The girls fell silent, each one reflecting on how far away she was from the ideal. I did too.
“The teeth must be white and the nose must be gradual. The ears must be long and far away from your face, not fleshy.”
“Oooh.”
They curdled at the thought of fleshy ears.
“When you lift up your hair, the nape should be clean and your neck long.”
“How do you know all this?” said Shino.
“’S written in a tablet, and we’re measured. We’ve all bin assessed.”
“Waist must be very narrow and legs long in proportion to the back. Top of the head flat, like you can rest a plate on it.”
A couple of them stood up and put plates on their heads and tried walking. The plates slid off.
“And don’t forget the feet—a lovely arch.”
“And the toes should curl up!”
Here all the women put their hands over their mouths and giggled. Shino didn’t get the joke. Neither did I.
Fumi whispered, “’F yu have curled-up toes, it means that yur a wanton woman.”
“I am not,” said Shino indignantly. “Izn it?”
Everyone roared. Fumi patted her leg. “Good girl,” she said.
I looked at Shino and she looked at me. Her eyes were nothing like the shape of a melon seed. They were flat on top and curved on the bottom: they looked like little boats sailing across a placid sea. And her nose—the slope was not gradual at all but rather hasty. It had a big bump in it too. I put my hand on my chin to cover it because I knew how it stuck out.
“Fingers!” said the nice one. “Fingers must have tapered ends and be long and supple.”
“Got that one.” Shino had graceful long fingers. We all looked at them. They didn’t seem enough somehow.
“The yakko will become more beautiful as she gets a little older,” said Fumi.
“Not possible. Your basic face can’t change.”
“Yeah, but the rules c’n change. F’r instance, it used to be yur eyebrows had to be far apart, and now, it’s easy to see, the most beautiful thing iz to have the eyebrows close together,” continued the older courtesan. “We can pluck some and get them to grow t’wards each other. I’ve seen it done.” She paused. “And yur face will grow into this nose.”
Shino did not look hopeful.
“Wait. Doan give up,” said Fumi. “Think of those hands.”
Shino held up her hands. They looked very nice to me.
“They are large,” said the courtesan dubiously. She bent a finger back. “But so flexible!”
“I play the samisen.”
“And she makes paintings,” I said. “She can write many Chinese characters too.”
“There, already ’z better news! It’s as Kana says—you have talents! We poor girls have no talent, nuthin’. Probly you write poetry?”
“I like to write down my thoughts . . .” Shino ventured shyly.
They all fell over laughing.
“Oh, no. No, no. No one wanz to hear a prostitute’s thoughts.”
S
hino led me back to my father and let go of my hand. He was crouched as usual and chuckling to himself as he copied the antics of a trainer and his monkey with his darting brush.
“Go,” she said, pushing me. “I will see you again soon.”
“But, Shino,” I whined loudly. I wanted to see my father’s reaction when he knew she was near. And sure enough his head came up, his face coloured and softened. He put down his brush—he never did that for anyone else—and scrambled to his feet. He was barely taller than her, and while she made herself taller, like a sapling straining for sun, he made himself shorter, swaying and bending his knees.
“It is the beautiful yakko herself,” he said. “She has kindly returned my daughter.”
“She is much obliged to you for letting Ei entertain her in her quiet life,” said Shino.
They both laughed softly. I could feel the currents running between them. “I wonder if you would be walking on the boulevard some afternoon,” he said, “and I could thank you properly.”
She inclined her head just slightly. She seemed to think about this. “My time is not my own. But it is just possible I could find myself getting tea and treats for Fumi the day of the coming festival. She is very fond of the tea in that shop where we first met.”
A Little Bit Witch
AT THE FREER I HAD COVERED MY MOUTH
with my bony hand, amused by the skirmishes amongst the experts. I floated out of the building and bellied up into the late-afternoon sky. I savoured the moment. Perhaps I would be discovered. Words had been uttered, words that could not be ignored. The “forgery” word, in the splendid halls of art history! And one man said it, albeit with a nervous look off to the side: “It’s a great story—she was a better artist than her father.”
I spread my colours. A fine sunset. Would recognition follow? Were they ready? And even—were we ready, my father and I?
From the auditorium they all went out and raised their glasses in a toast to end the symposium “To Hokusai!” they chimed. To the Old Man.
Not a whisper about me.
Their wine was bitter.
I spread a noxious fog over them all from Foggy Bottom to the Mall.
I drifted above it, my head lined and hollow as a paper lantern, my ears long and my teeth ancient, my hair black streaks from a dry brush running down my bony, ribbed back. A trail of smoke from my tobacco pipe marked my passage.
S
EVERAL WEEKS LATER,
I watched Rebecca at her desk. There was a drawing on a screen in front of her, of me and the Old Man in his last years. Hokusai is on his knees, bent over a paper on the floor (no low desk, no rice caddy, which in palmier times served as desk), his bottom in the air. His head is bald with a little fuzz; his face is pressed to his paper. He looks adorable and extremely nearsighted. I am behind and a little to the side. My face is sharp, down-turned, depressed. I lean on the stem of my pipe, my neck improbably crooked, looking depressed.