Book report on “Memoirs of a Geisha” / CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3
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■Received a Sign <1932, almost 12>
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     In early spring, a full year after the terrible news about her family, something happened.
     Very early one morning, She awoke from a most peculiar dream about a bearded man. 
He slid open the paper screen over a window beside him with a loud clack. 
Then Chiyo awoke and her feelings were strangely different. 
She felt as though she was looking at a world that was somehow
changed from the she’d seen the night before─peering out, 
almost, through the very window that had opened in her dream.

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■Meet the Chairman <his age around 40>
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     That afternoon Auntie sent Chiyo on errands. Chiyo met Hatsumomo at the school. 
Hatsumomo said to Chiyo, “I want to show you that young girl over there. 
She’s nothing special. A bit stupid, and as awkward as a cripple.
 But I just thought you’d find it interesting that she’s going to be a geisha, 
and you never will.”
     Chiyo didn’t think Hatsumomo could have found anything crueler to say for her. 
he felt her life stretching out before her like a long path leading nowhere. 
This thought gave her such a fright she couldn’t stay there. 
She walked toward the Shirakawa. She threw herself onto the little 
stone wall at the edge of the stream and wept. Then she heard a man’s voice say this:
     “Why, it’s too pretty a day to be so unhappy.”
     This man was the Chairman. Not only had he bothered to speak to her, 
he’d actually spoken kindly. And when she raised herself to look at the man who’d spoken, 
she had a feeling of leaving her misery behind her there on the stone wall.
     He took a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe away the grit and tears from her face. 
“Here you are…a beautiful girl with nothing on earth to be ashamed of, 
and yet you’re afraid to look at me. Someone has been cruel to you…
or perhaps life has been cruel.”
     “Take this coin and buy a shaved ice with syrup on it. Take my handkerchief too, 
so you can wipe your face afterward,” he said and walked away. 
She thought if I were a geisha, the Chairman might spend time with me.
     After eat the ice, Chiyo rushed to the Gion Shrine with the change from the vendor. 
She threw the coins into the offertory box. 
She prayed that they permit her to become a geisha somehow.

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■Meet Mameha <her age 23>
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     In September, Granny had died. For a few days all of Gion did indeed come through the okiya. 
One day the door rolled open, and in came a kimono that at once 
struck Chiyo as the loveliest she’d seen any of their visitors were.
Chiyo took the opportunity to steal a peek at her face. It was such a perfect oval. 
She wasn’t as striking a woman as Hatsumomo, but her features were so perfectly formed. 
And then suddenly Chiyo realized who she was.
     Mameha, the geisha whose kimono Hatsumomo had made Chiyo ruin.
     When Mameha and her maid were ready to leave, they stopped at the door. 
Mameha said to Chiyo, “What is your name, little girl? Stand up a moment. 
I’d like to have a look at you.”

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■Mameha’s Apartment
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     Already Chiyo was finding it difficult to bear the burden of patience in her life, 
waiting for some tiny opening that might never come and that would 
certainly be the only chance she’d ever get.
     The end of the first month after Granny’s death, Mameha’s maid came to the okiya. 
She said to Chiyo that arrange for yourself to be sent out tomorrow afternoon and meet me. 
     Next day the maid led Chiyo to Mameha’s apartment. Mameha asked Chiyo, 
“How do you and Hatsumomo get along?” and “I want to know why you’re no longer 
training to be a geisha. Why would Mrs. Nitta stop your training?”
Chiyo explained to Mameha a background to the matter.

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■Mameha and Hatsumomo <now age26>
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     “Hatsumomo and I have known each other since I was a girl of six and she was nine.” 
Mameha said. “So I know perfectly well how Hatsumomo treats you:
about like a serpent treats its next meal, I should think.” 
Mameha told about her friend who had been treated monstrously by Hatsumomo. 
“She can’t bear to have rivals,” Mameha went on. 
“That’s the reason she treats you as she does.”
     Chiyo realized where in the course of conversation why Mameha summoned her. 
Mameha must have made up her mind to use me in seeking her revenge on Hatsumomo. 
And she wasn’t simply looking for revenge: unless I was mistaken, 
she wanted to be rid of Hatsumomo completely.

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■Mameha bet with Mother
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     Late one morning Mameha came to the okiya. Mameha said to Mother, 
“I’d like to talk with you briefly about your maid Chiyo. 
She’s really quite a lovely girl, Mrs. Nitta. I must say, at times 
I’ve thought of coming to ask your permission to make her my younger sister. 
But now that she’s no longer in training…”
     Mother must have been shocked to hear this. “Her debts are considerable. 
I’ve often thought how shocking it would be if she ever managed to repay them.” Mother said.
     “Such an attractive girl? I’d find it shocking if she couldn’t. 
I’m sure Chiyo’s debts are very considerable. But even so, 
I should think she’ll repay them by the time she’s twenty.”
     “Twenty! I don’t think any girl in Gion has ever done such a thing. 
And in the midst of this Depression…”
     Mother thought about fees she would have to pay to Mameha. 
A geisha of Mameha’s standing commonly takes a larger portion 
of her younger sister’s earnings than an ordinary geisha would.
     They finally has agreed to that if Chiyo had failed to repay her debts 
by the age of twenty, Mameha would have received nothing more than half wages. 
But Chiyo has succeeded, and Mameha is entitled to double.

     After Mameha left the okiya, Hatsumomo came and said, 
“If Mameha thinks she can make Chiyo into a more successful geisha than Pumpkin, 
she’s going to be very surprised.”
     Mother said “Now, Chiyo and Pumpkin will be fighting out…
and with a couple of the most prominent geisha in Gion ushering them along!”