With
the second chapter the novelist begins to introduce new characters
and develop those initially introduced. The plot is set on its
course. Plot and character development is akin to theme development
in music. A composition opens and either remains a basic pattern of
theme with its distinctive melody or lyric plus a chorus or refrain;
or the piece begins to develop its complexity with variations on the
theme, new themes that may or may not be related to the opening
theme, or a change of tempo is introduced to allow the listener to
collect their thoughts or to provide the listener with a bridge to
the next theme development. The simpler composition is most commonly
that of popular music including folk and rock and various other
genres. The more complex construction is usually found in classical
music.
Novels
come in all shades of complexity. Detective fiction, for example, is
usually fairly simple in its conception much like the popular song. A
work of literature such as Dickens' novel Bleak House
is a good deal more complex with interwoven themes and subplots that
enrich the plot and take its many characters hither and yon and back
again. The simpler forms are often referred to as page-turners; the complex work requires a bit more concentration.
The
Blind Geisha
I
- 2
A
Dawning, Black Tea, Pungent Bitter Tears
Elizabeth
came awake in the darkness. Disoriented, she pulled her quilt to her
chin, blinking eyes, dry cough. Upstairs, she thought. Still
upstairs. Slowly turning her head, she saw the large, luminous
numbers on the clock face. 3:09. The old trundle bed groaned as she
turned to her side. She had dreamt of Micki. The inexplicable death
of her friend haunted her. Tears welled in her eyes. She turned the
quilt and blanket and sheet back across the bed and swung her legs to
the floor, feet feeling for slippers, hands on thighs, shoulders
slumped.
So
irrational, these emotions. A shake of head. Friends since high
school. Co-valedictorians. How proud we were. Then traveled together.
They had worked at Portland State together, Michelle teaching French
and Elizabeth in English. Nontenured, underpaid, they had shared an
apartment on the hillside south of the campus with a fine view of
Interstate 5. Then I took that position at San Francisco State, and
she had gone to New York. To dance. Follow your heart, she had said.
And four years later she died, a suicide.
And
I went to Stanford.
Inexplicable.
Standing,
she took her glasses from the nightstand and walked slowly, shuffling
her feet, to her small desk and sat. Silly thing, the desk. An
escritoire. Much too fancy. It did fit the space. Just under the
sloping roof, the window just to her right with the horizon and
brilliant light.
She
would work. She would not sleep. Sleep was through with her for this
night. Perhaps later. She lit the slender taper in its brass holder,
a dancing frog with arm extended holding a candle. She smiled to see
it. Mementos. Evoking emotion after all the years.
Mori
was a dancer. No. Not quite right. She was, of course, but geishas
were so much more. Most people think of geishas---no, no: geisha.
Will I never learn? No plurals in Japanese. No plurals. And no
gender. Like old people. A shake of head, hand swiping a comma of
lank hair over her ear. People think of them as merely courtesans,
prostitutes with wealthy clients. Like most generalizations, not
quite right. No. And did they even exist in the 15th century?
She
turned to her book stand and opened her reference book, her well
thumbed copy of Nelson's character dictionary. The kanji for geisha
was comprised of two characters: a woman and a branch or some sort of
support. Curious. Elizabeth took a 3 x 5 card and a wedge tipped pen
and drew the jukugo, the four
compounds that translated geisha:
芸者
(check
this) geisha
玄人
expert,
professional, geisha, prostitute
女郎
girl
内芸者
geisha
She
smiled to think of her own translation: a woman who bolsters male
egos. And that business of the obi. Where had she found that? Geisha
always tie their obi in the small of their back, and they need help
to do this properly. Once tied, the obi stays tied. The prostitutes
who aped the geisha tied their sashes in front. Their obi, obviously,
are tied and untied many times during the course of their working
day. Poor dears.
Mori
was a geisha. Supposedly. We only have that scoundrel Ikkyu's word
for it. The woman does not exist except in the man's poetry, and one
ink drawing of the two of them. A better rendering would be helpful.
Mori remains a plump, shadowy figure. Would her obi be tied in front
or back?
Grace
tells me this business of the obi only applies to modern times. In
the past, everyone, men and women, tied their obi in front. Changing
fashion in the 18th century caused the shifting obi. A clue, perhaps,
for a detective story. Who was that fellow? Inspector something or
other. The
Wages of Zen. Otani,
that was the man. Inspector Otani. File a missing person report.
Looking for a blind geisha. Last seen in the 15th century. Wearing
drab, worn kimono. Mori her name. Just Mori.
And
why blind? How blind? Curiouser and curiouser. She chewed on the
temple piece of her glasses, watching the flicker of the candle. Read
from the stained brown pages of the old manuscript:
...
from earliest times, walking the beach hand-in-hand with my mother
remembered only as a middle aged woman, already blind ... looking
from the corner of her eye, the furrows of a frown etched in her
brown face ... Kurumi was her name. The haze from the whalers fire
pots down the coast blowing out to sea. The old woman could smell the
tang, a heavy, almost musty odor, as those rough fellows rendered the
blubber all those miles away; I smelled only the sea wrack and salt
and wisps of smoke from cooking fires. They made perfumes, it was
said, from the huge beasts ... Early morning. Black tea, pungent and
bitter.
Grace
did not care for the manuscript's title: Mekura no Geisha no
Monogatari. Tales of a Blind Geisha. She thought it a bit grand
for the simple story it told. And the hand that wrote the kanji for
that title seemed different than the hand that wrote the story. "This
manuscript of ours is rather short and larded with casualisms and
colloquialisms," she had said. "Title is rather grand."
"So
what do you think?" Elizabeth had asked. "What was it
Bashō called his travel journals? Kikō, was it?"
"Something
like that. Kikou, maybe. Same difference. Usually translates as
'traveler's journal'. But did Ikkyu write this for her? Was she
literate? Did she dictate the story to him? Or was she just a story
teller?" Grace had smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
Elizabeth
sighed and carefully slipped on her glasses.
So
much to do.
She
had dozed. The sound of the car on gravel had woke her. There came
the heavy clunk of a car door closing, then footsteps on the gravel
path. It would be Grace. She knew that walk. The kitchen door open
and closed, bells chiming; and Grace called out, "Bess?"
"Upstairs,
dear."
At
the foot of the stairs, Grace said, "I've some groceries. I'll
just get things put away and be up."
"No
hurry."
"Did
I wake you?"
"No
no. Up early again. Just dozing. Just ..."
"Tea?"
"Please."
Elizabeth
sat in her rocker. How often she spent her afternoons in the
comfortable chair, gazing at the sea, or the distant line of the
horizon. Was the chair a replica of Jefferson's rocker? She didn't
know. It was called a Jefferson style mission rocker, but ... the
leather cover on its cushion had been replaced with faux leather
which pleased her. The oak was often cleaned and polished; but showed
its wear and tear. Older than she was, this chair. By fifty years or
more. She smiled to think of it.
"Ikkyu
might well have tagged it with monogatari," Grace said.
"Don't you think? He was impudent enough."
"That
could be it. Or someone else who thought to make it a bit grander,
more valuable. A 20th century gambit."
Grace
stood, stretched, and moved to the window. She gently pulled the
curtains aside. Crows in the the branches of the pine. Beyond, the
now hushed sweep of wave at ebb tide. Shiomachi,
she thought. 'Awaiting the tide.'
...
early morning, shouts, confusion, a woman's scream ... I was still
just a child. A man poked his head into our hut, the salt maker, he
yelled at my mother, grabbed her arm; but she broke free, gathered me
in her arms. Fire swept quickly through our little village. Smoke
blowing up the hillside, the temple bell in the distant village
clanging, clanging ... wood and paper now ashes, couples shifting the
cooling debris, the whalers still sitting on the beach, too late ...
I sat on the hard sand with wavelets tickling my feet building
castles, patting the coarse wet sand ... I ate a pickle ... my mother
was dead ...
Kurumi.
That translated to 'walnut'.
Grace drew the kanji:
胡桃
Complicated
for such a simple thing. Old and moon and tree and ... what? Omen?
Sign? Did Mori's mother simply look like a walnut and so acquired the
name? A nickname? Or given? It is a woman's name. Grace found many
"Kurumis" listed in her Japanese names dictionary.
Different kanji than walnut, but ... A given name become a nickname?
So
many questions. Too few answers. She should just fictionalize the
whole business and be done with it. The manuscript had arrived two
months ago. Well traveled, the package had gone to Stanford first,
then back to her colleague at Tohoku in Sendai. Emails went back and
forth and hither and yon, as emails will; but the sheaf of yellowed
paper had finally arrived. A photocopy of a handwritten copy? Ikkyu's
hand? They agreed that the title was spurious. They disagreed on the
translation of what seemed to be the original heading. Grace thought
Slack Water was more
literal and faithful to the intent of the story. Elizabeth thought
a more impressionistic rendering
better served Mori's brief autobiography: Awaiting the
Tide. And this title also
provided the connotation of waiting for opportunity to knock. Middle
aged, now nearly blind herself, was Ikkyu her 'opportunity'?
...sweeping
the stone path, an old man---the niwashi, the gardener? a curt nod,
as I looked away to see him, he looked again to see me ... a glare?
no, not severe; stern, face set, but something mischievous played
about his mouth : a cat stalking a thrush through the azaleas ...
In
the corner of the window, a spider's web. Unusual, thought Grace.
Bess cleaned this room herself, did not want Mrs Alston to bother as
all too often books and papers and cups littered every surface. Too
high? Just missed it? Grace reached up easily, intending to sweep the
web away with her hand; stopped herself, reached above the window and
ran a finger along the top of the casing.
"What
are you doing, Grace?" Elizabeth looked amused.
"You
saved the web."
"I
did."
"Ah."
Lithe.
And lissome, thought the older woman. A good head taller than I am.
Such a beautiful child. Cooped up here with me. "Have you done
anything more with those kanji for 'geisha'?" she asked.
"I
have. Several pages. Nothing definitive. Fairly certain 'geisha' as a
title didn't become common until 1550 or so. Shirabyōshi,
usually translated as 'white rhythm', had been in use for centuries
as a name for the women who dressed in white and performed street
dances. Geisha developed from that beginning. The kanji reflect
different views of these women; and they were no doubt all those
things and more. Certainly a kept woman; but how she was kept makes
all the difference. And by whom."
I
had come to Shuon'an to conduct a tea ceremony for the abbot. Two
sisters of the trade and I came from Nara by the old road. The temple
was beautifully restored by a priest named Ikkyu, iconoclastic fellow
who by reputation enjoyed his wine and his women. He was shorter than
I imagined, and we giggled behind our fans to see him sweeping the
stones so earnestly ...
"And
how is your 'whom', dear? Will he be coming down this weekend?"
A
shake of the head, her lopsided smile, the left side of her mouth
arcing up, silly grin, self-effacing, somewhat rueful. "Has a
delivery," she said.
"Oh?"
"Yes.
Oh."
"Where
to this time?"
Grace
looked to the window. "Tahiti," she said.
"Oh."
"Umm."
"That
Bernard," Elizabeth said, pronouncing the 'd'.
A
glance from Grace.
"I
said it wrong, didn't I." Elizabeth tapped the side of her head
with her knuckles.
"It's
nothing," Grace said.
"No
no, you get that blank look on your face when you're ... not angry,
but ... but frustrated. The animation leaves your eyes. Is it the
pupils contracting? I don't know. You stand more erect. A hundred
little things.
Grace
smiled. "Well ... "
"I
am sorry."
"You
never once misspoke when he was here."
"Yes,
I know. Bernard.
French. No 'd'. Dementia creeping in. Soon be blithering. Ship me off
to Nova Scotia."
"Oh
pooh."
"Well,
perversity then."
"You
didn't care for him, did you. Not really."
Elizabeth
turned her head to the window. Caught just so, the brightness through
the glass took on depth; contrasted with the shadows on the walls,
she imagined a tunnel of light, infinite and alluring. Her fancy was
that wisdom awaited at the far end.
"I
was disappointed for you," Elizabeth said. "He is always
here and gone, away for months at a time, leaving you ... I thought
... I think you deserve better."
Grace
put a hand on Elizabeth's shoulder. "Bernard with a 'd',"
she said.
"Bernard
with a 'd'."
Grace
stood over the older woman, sunlight beginning to fill the room.
"So
irrational, our emotions," Elizabeth said.
"Aren't
they just," Grace said. She patted the shoulder of her friend.
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