on, and end up in prison if he doesn't start doing as the government orders. He's
persuaded them we don't 
have the means to manufacture bayonets and bullet casings, but now they want us to design 


and build fighter airplanes! I mean, honestly, fighter airplanes? We manufacture appliances! 
Sometimes I wonder what these people are thinking.
"
"Nobu-san should speak more quietly.
"
"Who's going to hear me? That General of yours?
"
"Speaking of the General," I said, "I did go to see him today, to ask for his help.
"
"You're lucky he was still alive to see you.
" 
"Has he been ill?
" 
"Not ill. But he'll get around to killing himself one of these days, if he has the courage.
" 
"Please, Nobu-san.
"
"He didn't help you, did he?
"



"No, he said he'd already used up whatever influence he had." 

"That wouldn't have taken him long. Why didn't he save what little influence he had for you?" 

"I haven't seen him in more than a year . . ." 

"You haven't seen me in more than four years. And I have saved my best influence for you. 
Why didn't you come to me before now?" 

"But I've imagined you angry with me all this time. Just look at you, Nobu-san! How could I 
have come to you?" 

"How could you not? I can save you from the factories, I have access to the perfect haven. 
And believe me, it is perfect, just like a nest for a bird. You're the only one I'll give it to, 
Sayuri. And I won't give it even to you, until you've bowed on the floor right here in front of 
me and admitted how wrong you were for what happened four years ago. You're certainly 
right I'm angry with you! We may both be dead before we see each other again. I may have 
lost the one chance I had. And it isn't enough that you brushed me aside: you wasted the 
very ripest years of your life on a fool, a man who won't pay even the debt he owes to his 
country, much less to you. He goes on living as if he's done nothing wrong!" 

You can imagine how I was feeling by this time; for Nobu was a man who could hurl his 
words like stones. It wasn't just the words themselves or their meaning, but the way he said 
them. At first I'd been determined not to cry, regardless of what he said; but soon it occurred 
to me that crying might be the very thing Nobu wanted of me. And it felt so easy, like letting a 
piece of paper slip from my fingers. Every tear that slid down my cheeks I cried for a different 
reason. There seemed so much to mourn! I cried for Nobu, and for myself; I cried at 
wondering what would become of us all. I even cried for 

General Tottori, and for Korin, who had grown so gray and hollow from life in the factory. And 
then I did what Nobu demanded of me. I moved away from the table to make room, and I 
bowed low to the floor. 

"Forgive me for my foolishness," I said. 

"Oh, get up off the mats. I'm satisfied if you tell me you won't make the same mistake again." 

"I will not." 

"Every moment you spent with that man was wasted! That's just what I told you would 
happen, isn't it? Perhaps you've learned enough by now to follow your destiny in the future." 

"I will follow my destiny, Nobu-san. There's nothing more I want from life." 

"I'm pleased to hear that. And where does your destiny lead you?" 

"To the man who runs Iwamura Electric," I said. Of course, I was thinking of the Chairman. 

"So it does," Nobu said. "Now let us drink our beers together." 

I wet my lips-for I was far too confused and upset to be thirsty. Afterward Nobu told me about 
the nest he'd set aside. It was the home of his good friend Arashino Isamu, the kimono 
maker. I don't know if you remember him, but he was the guest of honor at the party on the 
Baron's estate years earlier at which Nobu and Dr. Crab were present. Mr. Arashino's home, 


which was also his workshop, was on the banks of the Kamo River shallows, about five 
kilometers upstream from Gion. Until a few years earlier, he and his wife and daughter had 
made kimono in the lovely Yuzen style for which he was famous. Lately, however, all the 
kimono makers had been put to work sewing parachutes-for they were accustomed to 
working with silk, after all. It was a job I could learn quickly, said Nobu, and the Arashino 
family was very willing to have me. Nobu himself would make the necessary arrangements 
with the authorities. He wrote the address of Mr. Arashino's home on a piece of paper and 
gave it to me. 

I told Nobu a number of times how grateful I was. Each time I told him, he looked more 
pleased with himself. Just as I was about to suggest that we take a walk together in the 
newly fallen snow, he glanced at his watch and drained the last sip of his beer. 

"Sayuri," he said to me, "I don't know when we will see each other again or what the world 
will be like when we do. We may both have seen many horrible things. But I will think of you 
every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world." 

"Nobu-san! Perhaps you ought to have been a poet!" 

"You know perfectly well there's nothing poetic about me." 

"Do your enchanting words mean you're about to leave? I was hoping we might take a stroll 
together." 

"It's much too cold. But you may see me to the door, and we'll say goodbye there." 

I followed Nobu down the stairs and crouched in the entryway of the teahouse to help him 
into his shoes. Afterward I slipped my feet into the tall wooden geta I was wearing because of 
the snow, and walked Nobu out to the street. Years earlier a car would have been waiting for 
him, but only government officials had cars these days, for almost no one could find the 
gasoline to run them. I suggested walking him to the trolley. 

"I don't want your company just now," Nobu said. "I'm on my way to a meeting with our Kyoto 
distributor. I have too many things on my mind as it is." 

"I must say, Nobu-san, I much preferred your parting words in the room upstairs." 

"In that case, stay there next time." 

I bowed and told Nobu good-bye. Most men would probably have turned to look over their 
shoulders at some point; but Nobu just plodded through the snow as far as the corner, and 
then turned up Shijo Avenue and was gone. In my hand I held the piece of paper he'd given 
me, with Mr. Arashino's address written on it. I realized I was squeezing it so hard in my 
fingers that if it were possible to crush it, I'm sure I would have. I couldn't think why I felt so 
nervous and afraid. But after gazing a moment at the snow still falling all around me, I looked 
at Nobu's deep footprints leading to the corner and had the feeling I knew just what was 
troubling me. When would I ever see Nobu again? Or the Chairman? Or for that matter, Gion 
itself? Once before, as a child, I'd been torn from my home. I suppose it was the memory of 
those horrible years that made me feel so alone. 

Chapter twenty-nine 

You may think that because I was a successful young geisha with a I great many admirers, 
someone else might have stepped forward to I rescue me even if Nobu hadn't. But a geisha 
in need is hardly like a jewel dropped on the street, which anyone might be happy to pick up. 


Every one of the hundreds of geisha in Gion was struggling to find a nest from the war in 
those final weeks, and only a few were lucky enough to find one. So you see, every day I 
lived with the Arashino family, I felt myself more and more in Nobu's debt. 

I discovered how fortunate I really was during the spring of the following year, when I learned 
that the geisha Raiha had been killed in the firebombing of Tokyo. It was Raiha who'd made 
us laugh by saying that nothing was as bleak as the future except the past. She and her 
mother had been prominent geisha, and her father was a member of a famous merchant 
family; to those of us in Gion, no one had seemed more likely to survive the war than Raiha. 
At the time of her death she was apparently reading a book to one of her young nephews on 
her father's estate in the Denenchofu section of Tokyo, and I'm sure she probably felt as safe 
there as she had in Kyoto. Strangely, the same air raid that killed Raiha also killed the great 
sumo wrestler Miyagiyama. Both had been living in relative comfort. And yet Pumpkin, who 
had seemed so lost to me, managed to survive the war, though the lens factory where she 
was working on the outskirts of Osaka was bombed five or six times. I learned that year that 
nothing is so unpredictable as who will survive a war and who won't. Mameha survived, 
working in a small hospital in Fukui Prefecture as a nurse's assistant; but her maid Ta-tsumi 
was killed by the terrible bomb that fell on Nagasaki, and her dresser, Mr. Itchoda, died of a 
heart attack during an air raid drill. Mr. Bekku, on the other hand, worked on a naval base in 
Osaka and yet survived somehow. So did General Tottori, who lived in the Suruya Inn until 
his death in the mid-1950s, and the Baron too-though I'm sorry to say that in the early years 
of the Allied Occupation, the Baron drowned himself in his splendid pond after his title and 
many of his holdings were taken away. I don't think he could face a world in which he was no 
longer free to act on his every whim. 

As for Mother, there was never a moment's doubt in my mind that she would survive. With 
her highly developed ability to benefit from other people's suffering, she fell so naturally into 
work in the gray market that it was as if she'd done it all along; she spent the war growing 
richer instead of poorer by buying and selling other people's heirlooms. Whenever Mr. 
Arashino sold a kimono from his collection in order to raise cash, he asked me to contact 
Mother so she could recover it for him. Many of the kimono sold in Kyoto passed through her 
hands, you see. Mr. Arashino probably hoped Mother would forgo her profit and hold hi