very 
deliberately put on a gray underrobe I didn't much like-thinking it might be stained before the 
end of the day-and a lavender and blue kimono of silk gauze, as well as a durable silver obi. 
As for my undergarments, I'd shortened my koshimaki-my "hip wrap"-by rolling it at the waist, 
so that if I decided after all to seduce the Minister, he'd have no trouble finding his way inside 
it. Now, when I withdrew his hands from around me, he gave me a puzzled look. I think he 
believed I was stopping him, and he looked very relieved as I lay down on the mat. It wasn't a 
tatami, but a simple sheet of woven straw; I could feel the hard flooring beneath. With one 
hand I folded back my kimono and underrobe on one side so that my leg was exposed to the 
knee. The Minister was still fully dressed, but he lay down upon me at once, pressing the 
knot of my obi into my back so much, I had to raise one hip to make myself more 
comfortable. My head was turned to the side as well, because I was wearing my hair in a 
style known as tsubushi shimada, with a dramatic chignon looped in the back, which would 
have been ruined if I'd put any weight on it. It was certainly an uncomfortable arrangement, 


but my discomfort was nothing compared with the uneasiness and anxiety I felt. Suddenly I 
wondered if I'd been thinking at all clearly when I'd put myself in this predicament. The 
Minister raised himself on one arm and began fumbling inside the seam of my kimono with 
his hand, scratching my thighs with his fingernails. Without thinking about what I was doing, I 
brought my hands up to his shoulders to push him away . . . but then I imagined Nobu as my 
danna, and the life I would live without hope; and I took my hands away and settled them 
onto the mat again. The Minister's fingers were squirming higher and higher along the inside 
of my thigh; it was impossible not to feel them. I tried to distract myself by focusing on the 
door. Perhaps it would open even now, before the Minister had gone any further; but at that 
moment I heard the jingling of his belt, and then the zip of his pants, and a moment later he 
was forcing himself inside me. Somehow I felt like a fifteen-year-old girl again, because the 
feeling was so strangely reminiscent of Dr. Crab. I even heard myself whimper. The Minister 
was holding himself up on his elbows, with his face above mine. I could see him out of only 
one corner of my eye. When viewed up close like this, with his jaw protruding toward me, he 
looked more like an animal than a human. And even this wasn't the worst part; for with his 
jaw jutted forward, the Minister's lower lip became like a cup in which his saliva began to 
pool. I don't know if it was the squid guts he'd eaten, but his saliva had a kind of gray 
thickness to it, which made me think of the residue left on the cutting board after fish have 
been cleaned. 

When I'd dressed that morning, I'd tucked several sheets of a very absorbent rice paper into 
the back of my obi. I hadn't expected to need them until afterward, when the Minister would 
want them for wiping himself off-if I decided to go through with it, that is. Now it seemed I 
would need a sheet much sooner, to wipe my face when his saliva spilled onto me. With so 
much of his weight on my hips, however, I couldn't get my hand into the back of my obi. I let 
out several little gasps as I tried, and I'm afraid the Minister mistook them for excitement-or in 
any case, he suddenly grew even more energetic, and now the pool of saliva in his lip was 
being jostled with such violent shock waves I could hardly believe it held together rather than 
spilling out in a stream. All I could do was pinch my eyes shut and wait. I felt as sick as if I 
had been lying in the bottom of a little boat, tossed about on the waves, and with my head 
banging again and again against the side. Then all at once the Minister made a groaning 
noise, and held very still for a bit, and at the same time I felt his saliva spill onto my cheek. 

I tried again to reach the rice paper in my obi, but now the Minister was lying collapsed upon 
me, breathing as heavily as if he'd just run a race. I was about to push him off when I heard a 
scraping sound outside. My feelings of disgust had been so loud within me, they'd nearly 
drowned out everything else. But now that I remembered Nobu, I could feel my heart 
pounding once again. I heard another scrape; it was the sound of someone on the stone 
steps. The Minister seemed to have no idea what was about to happen to him. He raised his 
head and pointed it toward the door with only the mildest interest, as if he expected to see a 
bird there. And then the door creaked open and the sunlight flooded over us. I had to squint, 
but I could make out two figures. There was Pumpkin; she had come to the theater just as I'd 
hoped she would. But the man peering down from beside her wasn't Nobu at all. I had no 
notion of why she had done it, but Pumpkin had brought the Chairman instead. 

Chapter thirty-four 

I can scarcely remember anything after that door opened-for I think the blood may have 
drained out of me, I went so cold and numb. I know the Minister climbed off me, or perhaps I 
pushed him off. I do remember weeping and asking if he'd seen the same thing I had, 
whether it really had been the Chairman standing there in the doorway. I hadn't been able to 
make out anything of the Chairman's expression, with the late-afternoon sun behind him; and 
yet when the door closed again, I couldn't help imagining I'd seen on his face some of the 
shock I myself was feeling. I didn't know if the shock was really there-and I doubted it was. 
But when we feel pain, even the blossoming trees seem weighted with suffering to us; and in 


just the same way, after seeing the Chairman there . . . well, I would have found my own pain 
reflected on anything I'd looked at. 

If you consider that I'd taken the Minister to that empty theater for the very purpose of putting 
myself in danger-so that the knife would come slamming down onto the chopping block, so to 
speak- I'm sure you'll understand that amid the worry, and fear, and disgust that almost 
overwhelmed me, I'd also been feeling a certain excitement. In the instant before that door 
opened, I could almost sense my life expanding just like a river whose waters have begun to 
swell; for I 
had never before taken such a drastic step to change the course of my own future. I was like 
a child tiptoeing along a precipice overlooking the sea. And yet somehow I hadn't imagined a 
great wave might come and strike me there, and wash everything away. 

When the chaos of feelings receded, and I slowly became aware of myself again, Mameha 
was kneeling above me. I was puzzled to find that I wasn't in the old theater at all any longer, 
but rather looking up from the tatami floor of a dark little room at the inn. I don't recall 
anything about leaving the theater, but I must have done it somehow. Later Mameha told me 
I'd gone to the proprietor to ask for a quiet place to rest; he'd recognized that I wasn't feeling 
well, and had gone to find Mameha soon afterward. 

Fortunately, Mameha seemed willing to believe I was truly ill, and left me there. Later, as I 
wandered back toward the room in a daze and with a terrible feeling of dread, I saw Pumpkin 
step out into the covered walkway ahead of me. She stopped when she caught sight of me; 
but rather than hurrying over to apologize as I half-expected she might, she turned her focus 
slowly toward me like a snake that had spotted a mouse. 

"Pumpkin," I said, "I asked you to bring Nobu, not the Chairman. I don't understand-" 

"Yes, it must be hard for you to understand, Sayuri, when life doesn't work out perfectly!" 

"Perfectly? Nothing worse could have happened . . . did you misunderstand what I was 
asking you?" 

"You really do think I'm stupid!" she said. 

I was bewildered, and stood a long moment in silence. "I thought you were my friend," I said 
at last. 

"I thought you were my friend too, once. But that was a long time ago. 

"You talk as if I've done something to harm you, Pumpkin, but-" "No, you'd never do anything 
like that, would you? Not the perfect Miss Nitta Sayuri! I suppose it doesn't matter that you 
took my place as the daughter of the okiya? Do you remember that, Sayuri? After I'd gone 
out of my way to help you with that Doctor-whatever his name was. After I'd risked making 
Hatsumomo furious at me for helping you! Then you turned it all around and stole what was 
mine. I've been wondering all these months just why you brought me into this little gathering 
with the Minister. I'm sorry it wasn't so easy for you to take advantage of me this time-" 

"But Pumpkin," I interrupted, "couldn't you just have refused to help me? Why did you have to 
bring the Chairman?" 

She stood up to her full height. "I know perfectly well how you feel about him," she said. 
"Whenever there's nobody looking, your eyes hang all over him like fur on a dog." 


She was so angry, she had bitten her lip; I could see a smudge of lipstick on her teeth. She'd 
set out to hurt me, I now realized, in the worst way she could. 

"You took something from me a long time ago, Sayuri. How does it feel now?" she said. Her 
nostrils were flared, her face consumed with anger like a burning twig. It was as though the 
spirit of Hatsumomo had been living trapped inside her all these years, and had finally 
broken free. 

During the rest of that evening, I remember nothing but a blur of events, and how much I 
dreaded every moment ahead of me. While the others sat around drinking and laughing, it 
was all I could do to pretend to laugh. I must have spent the entire night flushed red, because 
from time to time Mameha touched my neck to see if I was feverish. 