Chapter 3 third chapter

Back home, my mother's illness seemed to have gotten worse during the day I was out.That night, I lay on the mattress thinking wildly.I thought, how can we go on living without our mother?Even if we survived and Mr. Tanaka adopted us, would our own home cease to exist?In the end, I decided that Mr. Tanaka would adopt not only my sister and me, but my father as well.After all, he can't expect my father to live alone. On a scorching morning, I was walking home when Mr. Sugii caught up with me and panting, Mr. Tanaka asked me and my sister to go to the village immediately. When I got home, I found my father sitting at the table digging dirt out of a log with the nail of one of his fingers.Satsu was adding sticks of charcoal to the stove.Both of them looked as if they were waiting for something terrible to happen.

"Father, Mr. Tanaka wants sister Satsu and me to go to the village at the foot of the mountain." I said. Zatsu took off his apron, hung it on a nail, and went out the door.Father didn't say anything, just blinked his eyes a few times, staring at the place where Satsu had just stopped.Then, he shifted his eyes heavily to the floor and nodded.I heard my mother screaming in her sleep from the back room. Outside the Nippon Offshore Seafood Company, Mr. Tanaka led us into his horse-drawn van, and I think he wanted to drive us to his home so that when he announced his adoption, his wife and daughter could present.Along the way, Zuozu and I didn't say a word, until we climbed to the top of the mountain overlooking Qianhe Town below, Zuozu suddenly said: "A train."

I looked out and saw in the distance that there was indeed a train heading towards town.The smoke from the train drifted downwind, and the smoke reminded me of the shedding skin of a snake.Then it dawned on me that we were not heading in the direction of Mr. Tanaka's house at all. A few minutes later, the carriage stopped beside the railway tracks outside the town.The old woman was standing there, and beside her stood a ridiculously thin man in a stiff kimono.Mr. Tanaka introduced us to this man named Betsukiya.Mr. Bekiya didn't say anything, just stared at me closely, he seemed to be full of doubts about Satsu.

I certainly didn't expect this to happen.I asked where we were going, but no one seemed to hear me, so I had to find an answer for myself.I concluded that the old woman had bad-mouthed us in front of Mr. Tanaka, which made Mr. Tanaka unhappy, so the strangely thin man, Mr. Bekiya, planned to take us to another place for a more comprehensive fortune-telling.After that, we will be handed back to Mr. Tanaka. The train stopped shortly in front of us.Mr. Betsugu led us onto the train.Soon an old peasant woman came up and asked where we were going. "Kyoto." Mr. Bekiya replied. After hearing this, I was worried to death immediately, Qianhe Town is already a place out of reach for us.As for Kyoto, this place sounds like a foreign country to me.

Approaching Kyoto Station, late in the evening, I caught a glimpse of the many roofs stretching down to the foot of a distant mountain, which shocked me.I never imagined that a city could be so huge.Even today, the streets and buildings I see from the train often remind me of the utter emptiness and fear I felt on that unusual day when I first left home.After getting out of the car, Mr. Bekiya led us by the elbow again, as if we were a pair of buckets he had brought back from the well.He probably thought that if he let me go, I'd run away; I didn't.I'd rather follow him wherever he took us than be left alone in a sea of ​​streets and buildings as unfamiliar as the bottom of the sea.

We climbed into a rickshaw, and Mr. Betsugu said, "Tominagacho, Gion." I mustered up the courage to ask Mr. Betsugu where we were going.He said, "Go to your new home." Hearing this, my eyes filled with tears.I heard Satsu crying on the other side of Mr. Bekiya, and just as I was about to cry myself, Mr. Bekiya suddenly hit Satsu, and she gasped heavily.I bit my lip tightly, restraining myself from crying. Before long, we turned onto a main street as wide as the entire Yorocho.The constant flow of people, bicycles, cars and trucks on the street made it almost impossible for me to see the other side of the street.I had never seen a car before, and I was stunned to see the trucks rumbling by so close I could smell the burnt rubber on their tires.I also heard a terrible scream from a tram in the middle of the street.

Eventually, the rickshaw turned into an alley lined with wooden houses.I saw women in kimonos hurrying up and down the side streets.We stopped in front of a porch, and Mr. Bekiya told me to get out of the car.When Satsu also wanted to get out of the car, Mr. Bekiya turned around and pushed her back. "Stay there," he told her. "You're going somewhere else." I looked at Satsu, and Satsu looked at me.This may be the first time we can fully understand each other's feelings.My eyes were full of tears and I could barely see.I felt myself being pulled back by Mr. Betsukiya, and just as I was struggling and about to fall down the street, Satsu suddenly saw something in the porch behind me, and she opened her mouth in surprise.

On the steps stood a graceful and beautiful woman, sliding her feet into her lacquered straw sandals, in a kimono more beautiful than anything I could have imagined.The kimono is aqua blue with ivory curves that mimic the ripples of a stream.Glittering silver trout were somersaulting in the current, and there were golden ripples on the surface wherever the tender green leaves could touch.I have no doubt that the gown was of real silk, as was the sash embroidered with pale green and yellow.Her dress wasn't the only thing special about her; her face was painted a thick white, like a wall of clouds illuminated by the sun.Her hair, glinting like black lacquer, is pulled back in a stylish chignon adorned with ornaments carved from amber and a hairpin that dangles from slender silver chains that sparkle as she moves. .

This is Hatsumomo I first saw.At that time, she was one of the most famous geisha in the Gion area.I was so amazed by her appearance that I forgot my etiquette and just stared straight at her face like that. Suddenly, an old woman appeared in the porch behind Hatsumomo. She was tall and had many bumps like a bamboo pole.She took out a flint and a rectangular stone, stood behind Hatsumomo, and struck the rectangular stone with the flint, causing a small ball of sparks to dance on Hatsumomo's back.It turns out that a geisha never goes out at night unless someone throws a good-luck spark behind her.

Only after this did Hatsumomo walk out the door, walking in such small steps that she looked like she was gliding, only the bottom of her kimono vibrated a little.Mr. Begong handed me over to the old woman, and he climbed back into the rickshaw to sit with my sister, and the driver lifted the handlebar.I fell to the door and cried bitterly. The old woman helped me up, "It's all right, little girl. There is no need to worry so much. No one will cook you." Although her accent was quite different from that of people in my village, she sounded very kind, so I decided to do as she said.She asked me to call her auntie.Then she looked down at me, "Oh my God! What amazing eyes! You're a beautiful girl, Mom must be so excited."

I think my aunt's mother must be very old, because most of my aunt's hair tied tightly behind her head has turned gray, leaving only a few locks of black hair. My aunt led me through the porch, and I found myself down a narrow corridor between buildings on either side that led to a backyard.One of the two buildings was a small house, like my home in Yorocho—two rooms with a dirt floor; this used to be the maid's quarters.The other building was an elegant little house built on a stone plinth.This is the most typical apartment in Kyoto.The entire apartment covers an area smaller than Mr. Tanaka's house in the country, and can only accommodate eight or nine people. Auntie went to the kitchen and was talking to someone in a hoarse voice.Finally that person came out. It turned out to be a little girl about my age. She was very thin, but her face was bulging and almost round. It looked like a pumpkin standing on a stick. .She was carrying the bucket as hard as she could, her tongue sticking out of her mouth like a vine growing from the top of a pumpkin.I soon learned that sticking out her tongue was a habit of hers.So I nicknamed her "Pumpkin," and everyone called her that—even years later, when she was a geisha in Gion, and many of her customers called her "Pumpkin." "Pumpkin" approached me and put down the bucket, looked at me for a while, and asked, "Where did you come from?" I was sure she didn't know about Yorocho, so I just said, I just arrived. "I thought I'd never see a girl my age again," she said to me. "But what about your eyes?" At this moment, my aunt came out from the kitchen, and she led me to the yard and gave me a bath.Afterwards, I was given a robe that was finer than anything I had worn before. "This is a geisha," she said. "It's where geisha live. If you work hard, you'll grow up to be a geisha yourself. Because mom and grandma are coming down to see you soon. You The job is to bow as deeply as possible and not look them in the eye. The old one, we call her grandma. But it's mother you need to please." Soon I heard a creaking sound from the front hall, and two women floated up.I dare not look at them, but what I glimpse out of the corner of my eye reminds me of two gorgeous bundles of silk floating on a stream.After they muttered a few words, Auntie gave me a slight push, which I guess was a signal for me to bow.I got down on my knees, bowing as low as I could, so close to the ground that I could smell the musty smell coming from the basement.Mom said, "Get up, come closer." As she smoked her pipe, she looked at me carefully.I couldn't look directly at Mom, but the smoke rising from her face seemed to me like steam from a crack in the ground.Her kimono was yellow, with willow embroidered with lovely green and orange leaves; the fabric of the kimono was silk tulle, as delicate as a spider's web.Every inch of her belt wows me.The belt is also a lovely tulle texture, but in a richer color, with gold threads woven all over the terracotta and brown base.The more I looked at her clothes, the less I felt like I was standing in a dirt corridor, and the less I wondered what was going on with my sister—what was going on with my mom and dad—and what would become of me.Every detail of this woman's kimono was enough to make me forget myself, and then I was rudely awakened: because above the collar of her beautiful kimono turned out to be an extremely ugly face.Surprisingly, Mom is actually Auntie's sister.But they are not biological sisters, but grandma adopted both of them at the same time. She suddenly said to me in her raspy voice, "What are you looking at!" "I'm very sorry, ma'am. I was looking at your kimono. I've never seen anything like it." She laughed, even though it sounded like a cough. While the maid was serving tea, I took the opportunity to peek at Grandma.Granny is old and wizened, but she looks like she's spent her whole life making herself a lot of hate.Her gray hair reminded me of a tangle of silk threads through which I could see her scalp.Even her scalp was unpleasant to watch, with patches of red or brown from age.She asked me how old I was. "She was born in the Year of the Monkey." My aunt answered for me. "Nine," said Mom. "What do you think of her, Auntie?" Auntie pushed my head back to get a better look at my face. "There's a lot of water in her hit." "Beautiful eyes," said Mom. "Did you see them, Grandma?" "I think she looks like a fool," said Grandma. "Anyway, we don't need another monkey." "Oh, I'm sure you're right," said my aunt, "but I think she looks like a very clever girl, quite resourceful; you can see that from the shape of her ears." "There's so much water in life," said Ma. "She can probably smell a fire before it starts. Isn't that good, Grandma? You won't have to worry about our storeroom catching fire and burning us down." All the kimonos." I learned later that grandma is more afraid of fire than beer is of a thirsty old man. "Anyway, she's pretty pretty, don't you think?" Mom added. "There are too many pretty girls in Gion," said Grandma. "We need a smart girl, not a pretty girl. That Hatsumomo is as pretty as they came, but she's a fool!" Grandma went back. "Well, little girl," my mother told me, "you're in Kyoto now. You've got to learn to behave yourself, or you'll get beaten. Here it's Grandma who beats you, so you'll be miserable. I'll give you My advice is: Work hard and never leave a geisha without permission. Do what you're told; don't make too much trouble; two or three months from now, you might start learning the art of being a geisha ’ I wondered if my sister was standing in front of another cruel woman in another house somewhere in this terrible city right now.All of a sudden, my poor sick mother came back to my mind, and I seemed to see her lifting herself off the mat on one elbow, looking around to see where we had gone.With tears in her eyes, the yellow kimono of "Mom" became softer and softer, and gradually turned into a ball of shining things.Then, with a puff of smoke, it was all gone again.