Work Text:
December, 1960
It was late one evening in the winter of 1960, after I’d been living in New York City for almost four years, when I received a call from my teahouse alerting me that an old friend had dropped by to see me.
“An old friend?” I asked the maid on the phone. “Who?”
“He asked us not to say,” she replied. “But he said you’ll want to see him.”
“How mysterious,” I mused aloud with a frown. “I’ll be there shortly.”
I dressed in a simple plum kimono with an equally simple golden obi. It was a darker, more mature shade than the vibrant colors I’d worn as a geisha in Gion, and now that I had reached forty, it was only natural that I transition into kimono of this sort. My hairstyles were no longer the elaborate, waxed creations they’d once been either, and my hair sat atop my head in a tidy bun with no hair ornaments. I wore only light makeup and no white face paint, as that was a style an aging geisha would give up as well, although I was no longer a geisha at all. It had been years since I’d last entertained, yet it still proved difficult for me to remember from time to time that I had left that life behind when it was all I’d known for so long.
I didn’t visit the teahouse often anymore, only when I had important guests or old acquaintances, and no acquaintance of mine would ever show up unannounced as this one had; it was quite rude. I spent the entire car ride there pondering who on earth it could be. I’d had countless clients over the years in Gion, but none who I thought would be ever presumptuous enough to request my company on such short notice, then refuse to identify themselves.
The teahouse was abuzz with activity when I stepped inside. There were a number of parties in full swing, with geisha and men scattered about in varying states of inebriation. Quickly, I located a maid, who guided me to one of the smaller, private tatami rooms near the back, away from the hustle and bustle. She slid open the door for me - and the moment I saw who awaited me on the other side of it, my mouth fell open.
“Well, well. I did have a little bet with myself again that your mouth would fall open at the sight of me,” Nobu remarked, without pausing even a second to take in the significance of the moment. “This time, Sayuri, you haven’t disappointed me.”
He was seated at the other side of the table facing the door, with only a sake cup before him. He was dressed in a navy business suit, with the sleeve pinned as he had always worn it, and I swore, if I could blink and transport myself back a decade ago, Nobu hadn’t changed the slightest bit. In fact, I couldn’t help but recall our last meeting before the war at the Ichiriki, when Nobu had appeared again in my life most unexpectedly after years without seeing him.
I hadn’t truly believed Mameha when she’d told me, years ago, that Nobu and I had an en . Yet in that split second in which our eyes met from across the room, a distance that felt both as wide as an ocean and as narrow as an inch, I believed it as much as I’d ever believed in anything.
“Nobu-san…” I tried to look anything other than plainly shocked, and I must have failed, because Nobu couldn’t help but chuckle at me.
“Yes, I’m sure you never thought you’d see me again. I’d thought the same, to be perfectly honest,” he said, as he took a sip of his sake. “Take a seat.” I balked at that, and he exhaled in frustration. “For heaven’s sake, Sayuri, I’m not here to scold you. Just sit down.”
Nobu drained his sake cup just in time for me to take a seat at the table, and reflexively, I reached for the vial of sake to fill it, a movement that felt as natural as breathing. He watched me closely all the while, so closely it felt as if he were touching me. As I poured out the rest of the sake in the vial, I felt a strange sadness welling up inside me, for sitting here with Nobu felt so old and familiar, as if I could almost pretend I was back in Gion before the Chairman became my danna .
Nobu and I were just as we were back then, although there were more wrinkles on his face than there used to be - the bad kind, I thought, remembering a conversation of ours years ago - and more grey in his hair. Still, he was as unchangeable as an ancient tree and about as stubborn as one. It wouldn’t surprise me if he hadn’t aged much simply because he refused to.
“I must admit,” I began, though my tongue felt cold and clumsy, like it was made of cotton, “when I was told an old friend had come to visit me, Nobu-san was the last person I was expecting.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d come if they told you it was me.”
“Why, Nobu-san,” I managed a smile, though it felt tremulous and tiny, “how on earth could you think such a thing?”
“In truth, I suppose I’d thought you had forgotten me.”
“Surely Nobu-san must know that he is a difficult man to forget.”
For a while, all he did was stare at me without a word, before finally letting out a sigh that surprised me with the weight of its sorrow.
“You know, after all these years, you’re still as beautiful as I remember you.”
I was caught off guard by the compliment, although once, years ago, I wouldn’t have been. Nobu had often complimented me out of nowhere, in that gruff manner of his that was always endearing in a way. Yet he was never anything less than sincere, and I could tell he meant it now as much as he would have back then; he was the most honest man I’d ever known.
“Nobu-san looks much the same himself.”
He barked a laugh. “There’s no use trying to flatter me. I’ve not aged as gracefully as some.”
“It’s been so many years,” I remarked, folding my hands in my lap and making a pitiful attempt to appear calm when my heart was beating at my ribs like a caged animal. “And I’m very glad to see Nobu-san again.”
“It has been many years. What was it? Ten?” he wondered aloud. “Would that it were under better circumstances.”
“Nobu-san,” I pretended to chide him, dancing around the seriousness I could feel descending on the room like a raincloud, “what is it that’s so unsatisfactory about these circumstances?”
I realized my misstep one second too late, but much to my surprise, Nobu didn’t seem angered. There was only a dark sort of amusement in his eyes.
“You don’t need me to answer that question, Sayuri.”
A long moment passed in silence, with only the distant sounds of laughter and revelry from a few rooms over filling the air between us. There were so many words that could fill that air too, apologies and admissions and pleas for forgiveness, yet somehow I couldn’t find any of them. For the quick-witted conversationalist I had always been, for once, I found myself totally speechless.
A maid came in the room, and I ordered another two vials of sake; one for Nobu and one for me, as I could sense I would need more courage than I had. They arrived, and I filled his cup, then my own.
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Nobu-san walks into mine,” I quipped, as I set the sake aside. Nobu gave me a confused look, and so I explained, “It’s from an American movie called Casablanca. Have you seen it?”
“I have no time for watching movies. Though I suppose you do.”
“I do,” I admitted, feeling myself relax slightly as we fell into conversation. “But I don’t just watch them for my own amusement. I watch them to learn English.”
Nobu didn’t respond to this, and instead only raised his cup, gesturing for me to do the same.
“A toast then, I suppose,” he said, “to all the teahouses in all the towns in the all the world.”
I nodded, and we drank together. Afterwards, he spent a while looking around at the silk walls and the expensive paintings in the room without a word.
“You’re doing well for yourself,” he finally observed.
“I am. But I don’t do it for the money,” I told him, following his eyes as he took in the room. “It’s a piece of home. I come here whenever I miss Japan.” The reason I’d left Japan lingered heavily in the air between us, unspoken, and so I decided to test the limits of our conversation. “Which reminds me… Nobu-san still hasn’t told me why he is here.”
“In New York? Iwamura Electric is meeting with a distributor here. If you mean your teahouse…” He drifted off and tossed back another cup of sake. “I’m not sure I’ve figured that out yet myself.”
I wasn’t sure that was true, and so I decided to venture closer to the truths we were avoiding. “All these years, I’d had the impression Nobu-san was angry with me. That he hadn’t forgiven me.”
“I was,” he said without hesitating. “And I haven’t.”
The words caused me a great deal of pain I didn’t expect and wasn’t prepared for, like a lash across my cheek. I nearly flinched, but thankfully, Nobu’s temper didn’t seem to be rising to a dangerous level. I’d expected all sorts of emotions when I’d first laid my eyes on Nobu, but instead there was a resigned sense of calm between us, as though we were two people looking out over the land after a tsunami has torn through it, surveying the destruction.
“You say you were angry. So Nobu-san isn’t angry with me any longer?”
Nobu didn’t answer that, and instead put down his cup with a sort of finality, as though he were tired of avoiding the truth as well.
“All right. Do you want to know why I came here tonight?” he asked me. There was an edge to his voice, but again, not the fury I’d expected. “I must be getting old and sentimental. I wanted to talk to you. Now, you know I’m not the kind of man who bothers to have regrets. All my life, I haven’t seen the point. But you…”
He let out a breath, and his eyes were as piercing as a blade, slicing away the mask under which I had always hidden myself and exposing my true face beneath. He had always had an uncanny way of doing that, unlike any other man I’d ever known. Perhaps, I thought, it was simply because he’d cared to, and none of the others ever had.
“You’re the only regret I have, you know.”
I could feel my chest tighten. It was one thing to recall from time to time how cruel I had been to Nobu in doing what I did on Amami, but being confronted with it right to my face was another thing entirely. I had wronged him so terribly, done the worst thing I could have possibly done and thrown aside one of the longest friendships of my life. Still, what else could I have done? Allowing Nobu his happiness would have meant sacrificing my own.
I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. “What happened on the island, Nobu-san-”
“I don’t want to talk about that. You gave yourself to the Minister to – what? To rid yourself of me once and for all? Is that all I ever was to you, Sayuri: an obstacle in the way of your happiness?”
I couldn’t hold back the tears that fell from my eyes as I listened to him hurl his words at me like stones. Though it hurt, I couldn’t say it was undeserved, and Nobu had a way of speaking that could chisel away at even the most composed of people.
“I cared for you, Nobu-san, truly-”
“But not as a man, though you certainly made me believe otherwise,” he remarked with a huff. “Well, I can’t say I blame you. You loved the Chairman all along, and I was a fool for not seeing it. I thought I was your destiny. How stupid I was!” He paused and took a long look at me, as if trying to gauge how I was really feeling. “Were you still happy, Sayuri – truly happy? When you had his child and he decided to stow the two of you away in another country?”
“I…” I shook my head. “It would have caused problems with the inheritance of Iwamura Electric. My leaving was for the best.”
“If the Chairman had had any sense, he would’ve left that wife of his in a second and married you instead.” He stopped once more. “I would’ve married you, you know. Given you children with my name. And for heaven’s sake, I wouldn’t have had to hide you all the way across the world like some sort of secret I was ashamed of.”
Nobu paused, and upon noticing the tears in my eyes, lowered his voice with a sigh.
“There is so much that could have been, Sayuri. None of that matters now.”
“After all these years, Nobu-san, why didn’t you come see me sooner? Have you really been angry with me all this time?”
“Oh, I was angry with you for a time. Years. I thought of you every time I saw the Chairman. When he became your danna I could hardly stand to look at the man. But after you left Japan… well, I stopped being so furious with you. If anything, I regretted that I’d been too much of a fool to forgive you for what you’d done.”
“Then will Nobu-san forgive me now, for all that I’ve done?”
The resulting silence felt like the most deafening sound in the world. I half-expected Nobu to rise up from the table and storm off, but he didn’t. He only thought for a good long while, took a drink of his sake, then at last nodded.
“I forgive you. I only wish that I’d done it sooner.” He took another long pause, peering over at me as if trying to memorize the picture of how I looked then, sitting by his side, after so many years and so much distance between us. “I loved you, did you know that?”
Again, he paused and sat there for a time in silence, peering at me like a child looking at a doll behind a store window, as if I were something to be admired from a distance, but always kept just beyond reach. I was frozen as still as a stone. There were precious few times I’d had those words said to me, and fewer still that they were genuine in the way they were now.
“You were resourceful, intelligent, nothing like every other geisha. I'd never known anyone like you. I was too cowardly to tell you years ago, so I suppose I'd better do it now. And even now, after so many years, when you’ve left the country, had another man’s child…” He pressed his lips into a weary line. “Like a fool, I love you still.”
I couldn’t bring myself to speak, and so I only lowered my eyes and let the tears spill from my eyes. I cried silently for Nobu, for his isolation and sorrow, but more than anything, I wept for all that could have been had I let the hand of fate steer me down a different road. I could have taken Nobu as my danna , stayed in Japan, perhaps even married him one day and bore his children. He could have been mine in a way that the Chairman never was; he would have belonged entirely to me, not to some wife to whom he would always return in the morning.
Over the years it had troubled me from time to time to think that I would never be anything more than a mistress, a scandal of a woman with whom the Chairman spent his nights in secret. Yet I had loved the Chairman so, and even now as Nobu sat there giving me the deepest parts of his soul, I could not make myself reciprocate the feelings he had admitted to me so freely. In fact, I couldn’t make myself say anything at all.
Nobu seemed almost as though he were able to read my thoughts. “Don’t say anything. I only wanted you to know.”
I bowed my head slightly to him in acknowledgement. For a time we only sat there with the words lingering in the air between us, sipping our sake. I grasped over and over at any shreds of courage it could provide me, but found none.
Finally, Nobu spoke again. “That son of yours. What is his name?”
“Ichiro,” I answered.
“A good name. Strong name. The Chairman provides for the both of you to live comfortably, I trust?” I nodded without a word. “Good.”
Nobu drained his last cup of sake and rose to stand without another word, unceremonious as ever. I felt a sort of panic when I saw him move to depart, though I couldn’t pinpoint why. Both of us could sense that our meeting had come to a close and there were no more words to be said. There were no words in the world that could make up for our years apart, or my cruelty, or his inability to forgive me. All I could do was mourn our friendship, and all he could do was mourn his unrequited love, and nothing could be done to change any of it.
As I had so many times before in Gion, I escorted him out of the tatami room and over to the door that led out onto the street. I knelt to put on his shoes, then stood and placed his hat on his head. I did all these things in silence, and the routine felt intimate in a way I’d never considered it to be, before. It felt final, too, and each movement was its own sort of silent farewell. Even so, there was a pleasant warmth to it all, the familiar comfort of spending the evening with an old friend, even though we both knew it was to be the last.
“Perhaps Nobu-san will come visit again,” I suggested, though I knew better than to be hopeful, “the next time he is in the United States.”
“I told you once that I don’t like things held up before me that I cannot have,” he answered bluntly, as I helped him pull on his coat. “The world may change, Sayuri, but I never will.”
I was certain Nobu would leave right then, but he lingered in the doorway for a moment longer just looking at me. I could feel the weight of a hundred possibilities right then, all the lives we could have lived that might have been so very different than the one we had found ourselves standing in now. Perhaps he was thinking, as I was, of our final meeting before the war, when we had parted ways with no idea if we would ever see each other again. This time, we were both certain that we wouldn’t.
I thought perhaps he would say I was beautiful, or compliment me in some other way, or leave me with some sort of parting words, but I knew Nobu better than that. He wasn’t that sort of man; not now, not ten years ago. Never.
“Don’t waste your tears on me,” was all he said at last, as he noticed the lingering wetness in my eyes. “I can’t stand blubbering fools.”
“All right. I won’t,” I agreed, feeling relieved to hear his curt sense of humor once more. “Farewell, Nobu-san.”
“Take care of yourself, Sayuri.”
With that, Nobu turned and made his way down the staircase which exited out onto the street. Of all the times Nobu and I had parted over the years, he had never once given me a backward glance. He wasn’t a man who preferred to dwell in the past; he was always singularly fixated on moving forward. And yet when he reached the bottom of the stairs to the teahouse, he stopped and did what I’d never seen him do before.
Nobu turned and looked back at me. And then, with a slight bow of his head, he was gone.