If she was still married, that was sufficient reason to keep my distance. I could put myself in the place of her abandoned husband. Even if she’d come back to Kyoto, I would have been deeply wounded to discover she’d gone to bed with a foreigner she’d just met.
Then there was the question of whether I was free to do what I wanted. Gabriela had asked for a break, but without specifying how long a break. Did that mean I had to wait and be faithful to her in the meantime? Was she still with me, in Paris or wherever she was? Or had she lied when she’d said there was no other man?
Wrapped up in these musings, which only made me feel bad, I felt Mizuki’s cold fingers caressing the side of my neck.
“I can see you’re tense,” she whispered in my ear. “You should relax. I don’t have any expectations about what might happen between you and me, if that’s what you want to know. I’m living for the moment. When we were in Namida no Café, I just wanted to be somewhere quieter with you. That’s all.”
“I’m flattered,” I said, trying to hide my nervousness. “This trip has been a revelation. I’m beginning to see that I’m a man who doesn’t know how to enjoy the pleasures of life. That’s why my partner left me, and that’s why you’re going to be disappointed at the end of the night.”
In response, Mizuki raised her index finger to her nose and smiled. Then she pointed at a small house next to some traffic lights where we’d stopped.
I was amazed to see a geisha coming out carrying something that looked like a lute and then getting into a car with tinted windows. Her movements were so graceful she hardly seemed to touch the ground.
“That’s the second one I’ve seen since arriving in Kyoto.”
“You’ve been lucky then. You don’t often see them, especially at night.”
“Really? I thought they’d be working at private functions at night.”
“They do, but they move around with the utmost discretion, as you’ve just seen. They very rarely work so late at night, like the one we’ve just seen.” She gave me a provocative look. “Unless they’re modern geisha like me.”
“Do you see them more often in the morning?”
“Yes. Although there are only about a thousand in Japan now, you can see them early in the morning in Gion, doing errands with theirmaiko.”
“What are maiko?”
“Apprentice geisha. In Tokyo they start when they’re eighteen, but here fifteen is seen as old enough to start learning the arts of thegeiko, which is what geisha are called here.”
“Geiko and maiko . . . And what else do they do, apart from playing the lute? I mean, aside from dressing and styling themselves in incredible ways and mastering traditional Japanese arts?”
“Are you insinuating that geiko are prostitutes?”
“Please . . .” I threw up my arms to protest my innocence. “Nothing was further from my—”
“Even though they flirt in accordance with the old rules and joke with men, their profession always precludes any kind of sexual relationship. What they do traditionally have is adanna—a lover-protector who pays for their very expensive training and the other expenses incurred in becoming a geisha.”
Just then, the taxi pulled up in front of a two-story house. Taking the keys from her bag as the car drove off, Mizuki announced, “Now you’re going to find out what a modern geiko does.”
In Praise of Shadows
As Mizuki had said, she had a separate entrance to her apartment. We went up to the second floor by way of a stairway next to the carport. I imagined that Mr Okamura was downstairs sleeping off that evening’s drunkenness—it was after two in the morning—while his niece was busy robbing a poor gaijin of his peace of mind.
Once again I followed her to a door, with a foreboding that my willpower wasn’t going to last much longer.
She invited me into her loft, for that’s what it was—a clear space with no partitions except for a wide paper screen separating the futon from the rest of the room. Gentle indirect light radiating from floor level at different points in the room made the place look like a contemporary dance studio.
“This used to be my uncle’s atelier,” Mizuki told me, “but since my aunt died he’s stopped sculpting and works only as many hours as he has to. He spends the rest of his time in that bar in Gion. I think he’s got something going with the owner. If not, I don’t know why he’s always hanging out there.”
“Maybe he just wants to sing a song from time to time.” I couldn’t imagine any kind of romance with that dry, unfriendly woman. Indeed, I’d never seen them having a single conversation while I was there.
“When I arrived here three months ago, I moved stuff up from the cellar to make this apartment the way I wanted it.”
“It’s very nice.” I took a step toward the screen, imagining she had a sitting room on the other side.
“No, sit on my bed,” she ordered. “Get comfortable. I’m desperate for a shower.”
Before I could protest, she disappeared behind the paper partition.
