I made a face. Mariko always had an answer or a saying for whatever the problem. I carried a mental image of her with me, her head tilted just so, smiling, laughing, that was more real to me than any portrait could be. She was a living haiku, the seventeen-syllable poem divided into three lines. The haiku was delicate in sensitivity and deep in sentiment, yet both restrained and subdued in its expression.
Like Mariko.
What would I do without her? Whenever I couldn’t endure the strictness of Simouyé or the petty remarks of Youki or the strangeness of this land that tried my patience where what I was feeling didn’t matter as much as what I showed to others, Mariko was there. Laughing with me at the sight of a fat merchant splashed with mud by a reckless jinrikisha driver. Crying over the birth of a litter of kittens. Listening to the whispered conversations of a geisha with her customer from behind a screen—the woman’s half resisting, half yielding responses giving him an erection.
Or, I remembered fondly, watching the candy maker spinning barley sugar into various animal shapes. Covering our mouths and giggling, we licked our lips when the candy maker made a brown crystallized penis and gave it to us. Forming big O’s with our mouths and making sucking noises, we ate the candy, pretending it was a most honorable penis.
We were inseparable, doing everything together, talking to each other in our delicious Kioto geiko dialect and indulging in our favorite pastime: looking at the pillow book and fantasizing we were beautiful geisha trying out all forty-eight decreed sexual positions with our lovers to find out which ones we liked best.
My favorite woodblock print was by the artist Hokusai, depicting a sighing woman in the slippery embrace of two octopuses. They were strategically draped over her body, arousing her, attaching their mouths to her breasts and sucking on her nipples, her lips, pulling the breath out of her, and wrapping their tentacles around her belly, her waist, pushing their slippery appendages inside her vagina and her anal hole, and tickling her with ecstasy.
The funny, fluttering feelings wiggling through me when I looked at the erotic drawings had given me the courage to confess to Mariko how Hisa had grabbed me near the graveyard and rubbed up against me with his bare chest, teasing my hard nipples under my kimono with his sweaty, muscular body. I couldn’t deny the jinrikisha boy made me tingle with heated desire. Wearing a short, sleeveless robe, every muscle of his tanned body was revealed to my curious eye. Taut biceps. Bronze chest. And what I couldn’t see, meaning his most honorable penis, I could dream about.
And desire.
I’d cast off all my reserve, so hungry I was for the touch of a man, allowing myself to fall into his arms with utter ease. But it was wrong and I knew it. I ran away from him when he tried to untie my sash, though I wanted to stay and untie it for him, slowly, very slowly, teasing him with the promise of my wet vagina underneath my many layers of kimono.
“Haven’t you dreamed about making love with a man such as Hisa-don?” I’d said to Mariko late yesterday afternoon after our lessons as we looked out at the garden, listening to the chatter of the birds and the occasional splash of a frog. I often daydreamed about the jinrikisha boy, though I was careful to speak of him in the proper manner dictated when one spoke about a servant.
“Yes, Kathlene-san, I wish to make love to a man and to feel him inside me,” Mariko said, “but it’s our duty to cast our eyes away from Hisa-don.”
I wet my lips with my tongue. I was thirsty. My mouth had gone dry thinking about Hisa touching me, and Mariko was talking about duty? Again?
“Why do you say that, Mariko-san?”
“A geisha must follow the desires of okâsan in finding a patron,” Mariko explained, “even if her own feelings for the man okâsan chooses aren’t what she wishes.”
I shook my head. What was wrong with her? Mariko wouldn’t allow herself to know a man in any way until okâsan made that decision for her.
“I want a man who loves me,” I said. “And who can give me great pleasure with his most honorable penis thrusting deep inside me, touching my flower heart.”
“I’m certain the gods will give you many lovers, Kathlene-san,” Mariko teased, “but I pray you won’t shed many tears and dampen the soil with your melancholy.”
“Tell me what you mean, Mariko-san, please.”
“A geisha must put aside human emotion.”
“What does that have to do with Hisa-don?”
“He’s a servant and not worthy of us.”
“I don’t believe that. He’s a man and I’m a woman.”
“You must understand, Kathlene-san, it’s the way of all Japanese to put duty first.”
“What happens if a geisha falls in love with someone that doesn’t meet okâsan’s approval?”
Mariko shook her head. “A geisha would never allow herself to forsake duty for love.”
“Never?”
It was Mariko’s turn to be speak freely, something I could see was difficult for her, even when we were alone.
“If a geisha is found guilty of misconduct with a person of low rank, she is sent into exile.”
“And the man she loves? What happens to him?”
“He has violated the laws governing rank and must be executed.” Mariko paused a long moment, then added, “Some lovers immortalize their love by committing suicide.”
“Suicide,” I whispered, not wanting to accept the government’s edict of no social mixing.
“Yes, Kathlene-san. The doomed lovers drink sake from the same cup as if it’s a lovers’ pledge to seal their lips. Then the woman’s legs are tied together so she doesn’t die in an ungraceful manner when she plunges the knife into her throat. Her lover then follows her in death.” She paused long enough for the sight of the two lovers dying to have its effect on me, making me cringe, then she continued, “So you must understand while it’s true Hisa-don is most handsome, we must obey the rules.”
“Rules, always rules,” I shot back, not convinced. “I’ve followed all the rules and still okâsan won’t tell me why I can’t become a geisha.”
“We must have rules, Kathlene-san. It’s the only way Japan can be strong, that we can be strong when we become geisha.”
“I’m trying to understand, Mariko-san, for I want to be a geisha, but I can’t let go of my feelings.”
“In our world there are Japanese and gaijin. And you are gaijin.” She paused again, as if something weighed heavily upon her mind. “But I believe with all my heart you can be Japanese, Kathlene-san.”
“You do?”
“Yes. You’ve accepted many things since you came to live in the Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree. If you can accept how a geisha must act in the ways of love, you can become Japanese.”
“But you lose so much in your world of rules, Mariko-san, never experiencing a deep emotion, a profound joy, even pain.”
“That’s not true. I have known much joy since you came to the Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree,” she said, keeping her eyes lowered, “and much pain because I know you suffer so because your father hasn’t returned.”
I didn’t have an answer for that. I dropped my hands into my lap, lowering my head, letting my long blond hair hide my face. Hide my thoughts. Neither the sun nor the moon ever halt upon their journey, said an old Japanese proverb. In but a flicker of time,