 position. I thought he was going to tell me to leave, but 
instead he said, "Don't swallow that blood, little girl. Unless you want to make a stone in your 
stomach. I'd spit it onto the floor, if I were you." 

"A girl's blood, Mr. Tanaka?" said one of the men. "Here, where we bring the fish?" 

Fishermen are terribly superstitious, you see. They especially don't like women to have 
anything to do with fishing. One man in our village, Mr. Yamamura, found his daughter 
playing in his boat one morning. He beat her with a stick and then washed out the boat with 
sake and lye so strong it bleached streaks of coloring from the wood. Even this wasn't 
enough; Mr. Yamamura had the Shinto priest come and bless it. All this because his 
daughter had done nothing more than play where the fish are caught. And here Mr. Tanaka 
was suggesting I spit blood onto the floor of the room where the fish were cleaned. 

"If you're afraid her spit might wash away some of the fish guts," said Mr. Tanaka, "take them 
home with you. I've got plenty more." 

"It isn't the fish guts, sir." 

"I'd say her blood will be the cleanest thing to hit this floor since you or I were born. Go 
ahead," Mr. Tanaka said, this time talking to me. "Spit it out." 

There I sat on that slimy table, uncertain what to do. I thought it would be terrible to disobey 
Mr. Tanaka, but I'm not sure I would have found the courage to spit if one of the men hadn't 
leaned to the side and pressed a finger against one nostril to blow his nose onto the floor. 
After seeing this, I couldn't bear to hold anything in my mouth a moment longer, and spat out 
the blood just as Mr. Tanaka had told me to do. All the men walked away in disgust except 
Mr. Tanaka's assistant, named Sugi. Mr. Tanaka told him to go and fetch Dr. Miura. 

"I don't know where to find him," said Sugi, though what he really meant, I think, was that he 
wasn't interested in helping. 

I told Mr. Tanaka the doctor had been at our house a few minutes earlier. 

"Where is your house?" Mr. Tanaka asked me. 


"It's the little tipsy house up on the cliffs." 

"What do you mean . . . 'tipsy house'?" 

"It's the one that leans to the side, like it's had too much to drink." 

Mr. Tanaka didn't seem to know what to make of this. "Well, Sugi, walk up toward 
Sakamoto's tipsy house and look for Dr. Miura. You won't have trouble finding him. Just listen 
for the sound of his patients screaming when he pokes them." 

I imagined Mr. Tanaka would go back to his work after Sugi had left; but instead he stood 
near the table a long while looking at me. I felt my face beginning to burn. Finally he said 
something I thought was very clever. 

"You've got an eggplant on your face, little daughter of Sakamoto." 

He went to a drawer and took out a small mirror to show it to me. My lip was swollen and 
blue, just as he'd said. 

"But what I really want to know," he went on, "is how you came to have such extraordinary 
eyes, and why you don't look more like your father?" 

"The eyes are my mother's," I said. "But as for my father, he's so wrinkled I've never known 
what he really looks like." 

"You'll be wrinkled yourself one day." 

"But some of his wrinkles are the way he's made," I said. "The back of his head is as old as 
the front, but it's as smooth as an egg." 

"That isn't a respectful thing to say about your father," Mr. Tanaka told me. "But I suppose it's 
true." 

Then he said something that made my face blush so red, I'm sure my lips looked pale. 

"So how did a wrinkled old man with an egg for a head father a beautiful girl like you?" 

In the years since, I've been called beautiful more often than I can remember. Though, of 
course, geisha are always called beautiful, even those who aren't. But when Mr. Tanaka said 
it to me, before I'd ever heard of such a thing as a geisha, I could almost believe it was true. 

After Dr. Miura tended to my lip, and I bought the incense my father had sent me for, I 
walked home in a state of such agitation, I don't think there could have been more activity 
inside me if I'd been an anthill. I would've had an easier time if my emotions had all pulled me 
in the same direction, but it wasn't so simple. I'd been blown about like a scrap of paper in 
the wind. Somewhere between the various thoughts about my mother-somewhere past the 
discomfort in my lip-there nestled a pleasant thought I tried again and again to bring into 
focus. It was about Mr. Tanaka. I stopped on the cliffs and gazed out to sea, where the 
waves even after the storm were still like sharpened stones, and the sky had taken on the 
brown tone of mud. I made sure no one was watching me, and then clutched the incense to 
my chest and said Mr. Tanaka's name into the whistling wind, over and over, until I felt 
satisfied I'd heard the music in every syllable. I know it sounds foolish of me-and indeed it 
was. But I was only a confused little girl. 


After we'd finished our dinner and my father had gone to the village to watch the other 
fishermen play Japanese chess, Satsu and I cleaned the kitchen in silence. I tried to 
remember how Mr. Tanaka had made me feel, but in the cold quiet of the house it had 
slipped away from me. Instead I felt a persistent, icy dread at the thought of my mother's 
illness. I found myself wondering how long it would be until she was buried out in the village 
graveyard along with my father's 
other family. What would become of me afterward? With my mother dead, Satsu would act in 
her place, I supposed. I watched my sister scrub the iron pot that had cooked our soup; but 
even though it was right before her-even though her eyes were pointed at the thing-I could 
tell she wasn't seeing it. She went on scrubbing it long after it was clean. Finally I said to her: 

"Satsu-san, I don't feel well." 

"Go outside and heat the bath," she told me, and brushed her unruly hair from her eyes with 
one of her wet hands. 

"I don't want a bath," I said. "Satsu, Mommy is going to die-" 

"This pot is cracked. Look!" 

"It isn't cracked," I said. "That line has always been there." 

"But how did the water get out just then?" 

"You sloshed it out. I watched you." 

For a moment I could tell that Satsu was feeling something very strongly, which translated 
itself onto her face as a look of extreme puzzlement, just as so many of her feelings did. But 
she said nothing further to me. She only took the pot from the stove and walked toward the 
door to dump it out. 

Chapter two 

The following morning, to take my mind off my troubles, I went swimming in the pond just 
inland from our house amid a grove of pine trees. The children from the village went there 
most mornings when the weather was right. Satsu came too sometimes, wearing a scratchy 
bathing dress she'd made from our father's old fishing clothes. It wasn't a very good bathing 
dress, because it sagged at her chest whenever she bent over, and one of the boys would 
scream, "Look! You can see Mount Fuji!" But she wore it just the same. 

Around noontime, I decided to return home for something to eat. Satsu had left much earlier 
with the Sugi boy, who was the son of Mr. Tanaka's assistant. She acted like a dog around 
him. When he went somewhere, he looked back over his shoulder to signal that she should 
follow, and she always did. I didn't expect to see her again until dinner-time, but as I neared 
the house I caught sight of her on the path ahead of me, leaning against a tree. If you'd seen 
what was happening, you might have understood it right away; but I was only a little girl. 
Satsu had her scratchy bathing dress up around her shoulders and the Sugi boy was playing 
around with her "Mount Fujis," as the boys called them. 

Ever since our mother first became ill, my sister had grown a bit pudgy. Her breasts were 
every bit as unruly as her hair. What amazed me most was that their unruliness appeared to 
be the very thing the Sugi boy found fascinating about them. He jiggled them with his hand, 
and pushed them to one side to watch them swing back and settle against her chest. I knew I 
shouldn't be spying, but I couldn't think what else to do with myself while the path ahead of 
me was blocked. And then suddenly I heard a man's voice behind me say: 


"Chiyo-chan, why are you squatting there behind that tree?" 

Considering that I was a little girl of nine, coming from a pond where I'd been swimming; and 
considering that as yet I had no shapes or textures on my body to conceal from anyone . . . 
well, it's easy to guess what I was wearing. 

When I turned-still squatting on the path, and covering my nakedness with my arms as best I 
could-there stood Mr. Tanaka. I could hardly have been more embarrassed. 

"That must be your tipsy house over there," he said. "And over there, that looks like the Sugi 
boy. He certainly looks busy! Who's that girl with him?" 

"Well, it might be my sister, Mr. Tanaka. I'm waiting for them to leave." 

Mr. Tanaka cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, and then I heard the sound of 
the Sugi boy running away down the path. My sister must have run away too, for Mr. Tanaka 
told me I could go home and get some clothes now. "When you see that sister of yours," he 
said to me, "I want you to give her this." 

He handed me a packet wrapped in rice paper, about the size of a fish head. "It's some 
Chinese herbs," he told me. "Don't listen to Dr. Miura if he tells you they're worthless. Have 
your sister make tea with them and give the tea to your mother, to ease the pain. They're 
very precious herbs. Make sure not to waste them." 

"I'd better do it myself in that case, sir. My sister isn't very good at making tea." 

Dr. Miura told me your mother is sick," he said. "Now you tell me your sister can't even be 
trusted to m