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The Baron brings her presents. It starts with a jade comb.
She accepts with a gracious smile and her attentions.
Mameha is sensible. She sees the gifts for what they are: a bid for her. She knows what that could mean. He saw her advertising campaign for the Japan Travel Bureau; she is the most famous geisha in Gion, perhaps in all of Japan, and he wishes to have her.
She knows the price she is worth.
The Baron won’t ever give her love - kindness, perhaps, and comfort - but he can give her security for as long as she can earn it. He can give her independence. He can give her what she needs to survive, and she knows that is enough for now.
But quietly, she hopes. Perhaps, if destiny allows, if she can silence her heart and wield all the gifts at her disposal - perhaps, she will one day be her own security.
It is arranged with her okiya: the Baron will be Mameha’s danna . He marks the occasion with a gift: an extraordinary kimono. It is the first of many.
She had paid most of her debt to her okiya; the Baron clears the rest. Her mizuage brought her close, she sells the trinkets she can afford to lose to buy independence. Gifts are not meant to be cherished, at least not for sentimental reasons. They are tools - weapons even - to be used.
She also understands that this is not emancipation; it is merely a transfer of obligation.
On the strength of her reputation and this latest news of her success in Gion, Mameha secures an apartment. It is generous, larger than that of her big sister Mametsuki or any other geisha Mameha had visited. She engages a maid and a dresser and has everything arranged to her liking. Past gifts become useful now: a scroll hanging in an alcove, her ornaments and kimono arranged as she likes for her exclusive use. The trinkets are turned into furniture and utensils.
She is not cut entirely free from her okiya. They will manage her account books and engagements, and she will use their kimono while she works to grow her own collection, but Mameha will pay handsomely for the closest thing to autonomy, and everybody profits.
When her Baron comes to lunch, she wears the kimono he gave her, uses every tactic she knows to ensure he feels welcome. It is uncertain ground for Mameha but she conceals it with all her might. He must never see her vulnerable. Nobody can. She has too far to fall. She must keep his feelings, and hers, firmly under her power. Anything else could be fatal.
The Baron is not an unattractive man. He is in his thirties, wealthy, fashionable and confident. She is lucky to have such a danna, she tells herself.
Mameha unties his shoes at the door. The maid serves lunch from his favourite restaurant. She kneels by his side, pours tea and speaks when invited, but the Baron does not seem to be searching for an equal partner in conversation.
He offers no compliments on her arrangements, which Mameha takes as tacit approval. She feels instinctive shame to look for approval from this man but she shoves that feeling down. His approval of her is her livelihood, her future.
They retire to her sleeping room, futon made up with pristine white sheets, and approach the climax of the ritual dance of danna and geisha.
He surprises her with flashes of tenderness, with touch beyond the perfunctory. He is gentle - and surprisingly adept - as he removes her kimono. It's not revulsion she feels when she shivers at the brush of his fingers, when his lips touch her neck. His weight on her is comfortable, not suffocating. When she trembles, it's not with fear. In the end, his pleasure is more welcome than she anticipated.
She chose this, it has not been imposed, and the price she must pay is so much lower than she had thought. Mameha is not often surprised, but she thinks that this is enough. Destiny has been kinder than she had any right to expect.
After, when Mameha is wrapped in a dressing robe and the Baron is dressing, he complains about the chair.
Mameha replaces it by the end of the day.
One morning, after a few months of weekly visits, and the gift of several exquisite kimono, Mameha realises that her Baron has given her an extra, somewhat inconvenient gift.
The Baron is sitting in the overstuffed armchair she keeps in a cupboard for his visits. He has eaten his lunch and there is a lull in his complaints about his colleagues, his underlings, a new government policy.
She presents the news neutrally, with all the delicacy she can command. Mameha lifts the teapot and pours.
For all she had thought she knew her Baron, she could not anticipate how he would react. Some geisha bear the children of their danna, others do not. She was still not sure of her own reaction, even after a week. For Mameha, a child might be a blessing and a comfort, but it would certainly be an end to any hope of being free from dependence upon men. The child might be her own, to love and to cherish, but it would never be entirely hers, and it would be a burden throughout the best years of her career.
The Baron said nothing. His nose twitched, he made a wordless noise, and he stroked his beard.
He did not speak again until he had risen from the futon to leave.
Three days later, a card was delivered with the time, date and place of an appointment. Mameha had her answer.
She tucked the card away with another hope and retrieved her shamisen. She must practice. Everything must continue as it had gone on before. Work would see her through this, as well as every other grief and disappointment of her life.
Three further days pass. Mameha has cancelled her engagements for that evening; she gives no reason to the okiya, but Mrs Okada's wry smile tells Mameha she knows.
Mameha goes to the appointment alone. It is harrowing beyond her vivid imaginings, and excruciating to a degree she had not anticipated.
When she weeps, she tells herself it is only for the pain.
A week later, Mameha walks to a temple a mile or two to the east of her apartment. She tells her maid she has gone to call on someone, a lie very much rooted in the truth.
She pays to erect a small jizo statue in memory of her child. It is the only kindness she can give her child, and the best kindness she can give herself.
She prays, but does not weep, and walks home.
Mameha works harder than ever. She rises early, spends her mornings practicing: she plays, she dances, she sings. She has afternoon as well as evening engagements nearly every day. When she does not have engagements, she makes calls and makes connections.
Hatsumomo’s claws are sharper these days; she must know something she shouldn’t. Mameha is sure she’s not imagining the way Hatsumomo swipes whenever the opportunity arises, as though Mameha were an unfledged bird fallen helpless into the reach of a sun-drenched cat.
Mameha’s skin is too thick for Hatsumomo to make her bleed.
Mrs Okada, still keeping Mameha's accounts, exclaims over Mameha’s earnings since her indisposition - a miraculous recovery - and that makes Mameha ache all over, but she presses on.
The main event of this long period is the theft and destruction of one of her kimono, a summer robe of iridescent greens and a vine of red leaves, splashed with ink by a thoughtless, foolish maid with shaking hands and eyes full of water. She sees Hatsumomo’s mark in the mischief but there is little she can do without risking Hatsumomo’s rage. Mameha is not secure enough yet to survive war with a fellow geisha - certainly not one as vicious as Hatsumomo - but the day will come.
Mameha is relieved that it had not been a gift from her Baron.
Mameha takes the only action she can at this time: she dismisses her maid and calls on Mrs Nitta.
Her Baron is away in Tokyo for two months.
Mameha misses him.
When she identifies the feeling, playing her shamisen on a fresh tatami mat as the maid tidies and dusts her bedroom, she mangles a note dreadfully and stops to take control of herself.
She questions it, turns the idea over in her mind as she resumes her playing. It is not the gifts, she thinks - although he rarely visits without some small trinket. It is something else. That is a transaction, a purchase of something unquantifiable. She misses the ghost of his fingers on her hips, the way he has been closer to her than anyone else, an intimacy unrivalled by any other in her past. She misses the kindness of those touches.
She had thought the money was kindness; perhaps she was wrong.
The Baron’s visits become less frequent.
She tells herself that it is not his interest waning, but the needs of his business keeping him in Tokyo. He used to summon her to Tokyo to entertain him; these requests have ceased. When she hears he is danna to another geisha in Akasaka in Tokyo, she attempts to be pragmatic. She is pragmatic. Her feelings are unimportant.
Her Baron visits when he is in town. During the days, when he comes, she unties his shoes, pours his tea while her maid serves lunch, and they retire to her bedroom. In the evenings, she sits by his side and tells jokes and plays games and feels her star rise each time she is asked to dance.
This, she thinks, is the kindness of destiny.
Over time, she erects two more jizo stones and gains two more scars on her heart.
The Baron is not her only client. She returns from the temple one afternoon to a message, summoning her to a meeting at the Ichiriki Teahouse with Iwamura Ken before her first engagement of the evening.
His request seems very strange to Mameha, but the suggestion is intriguing and Mameha can see no shortage of potential in it. Some five years after the incident of the destroyed kimono, Mameha is at the top of her profession.
The brief is simple:
She is to find the water-eyed girl at the Nitta okiya and make her a star.
If the Chairman sees anything unusual in how Mameha negotiates the terms of their agreement, the way she weighs and balances risk and reward, he is kind enough not to mention it. Likewise, when Mameha considers the bizarreness of the request, she has the kindness not to ask aloud where it came from.
Chiyo - Sayuri - is a young woman of talent and skill. She is a pleasure to teach, and her success brings Mameha a new sense of satisfaction that she had not felt with previous little sisters. Sayuri begins to feel like a true sister. The Chairman's task may have temporarily reduced her income but it has proven to be a kind and excellent gift.
Every day is full, of studying or teaching, engagements with Sayuri or visits with the Baron. Eventually she mixes both worlds and summons Sayuri to meet her danna.
Mameha is comfortable when the Baron ignores Sayuri as they kneel in a triangle around the tea table. Sayuri pours the tea and Mameha listens patiently to the Baron as he complains about the scroll on the wall. She politely and firmly corrects his misinformation, finding a balance between deference and independence, as she always has.
But when Sayuri holds the scroll up for the Baron to examine, Mameha turns cold. The Baron has a ferocious focus, but it is directed at Sayuri and not the scroll. She realises the chill is fear.
The Baron says this scroll is much more attractive than the one in your alcove now, Mameha. Calligraphy is so old-fashioned anyway. And Mameha feels every year of her age and experience in that moment. She is lovely, still lovely, but she feels the chasm between herself and her young apprentice.
She knows her Baron very well. She knows exactly what she must do to keep him onside, and she knows that she must warn Sayuri sternly later.
The Baron invites Sayuri to a party, and Mameha is once again indisposed.
Mr Itchoda’s report of the event contains glaring holes but Mameha's knowledge of the Baron paints murals in those gaps. Mameha wonders how Sayuri could have been so foolish. Mameha had warned her, so clearly, about the nature of this man.
It wasn’t betrayal. (Was it?) It was only regret for the foolishness of her protégé. Mameha knows her danna , his appreciation for beautiful things and his need to claim them for his own. He is not discreet about the things he desires; he has said them explicitly in front of both women and others.
Now, Sayuri may have thrown away her future - for the gift of a kimono.
Mameha is bitterly disappointed - furious, even - but she holds her tongue. Her plans must go ahead regardless; they have come too far.
The Baron is the highest bidder, at an unprecedented amount.
Mameha feels an exquisite blend of emotions that balances on the knife edge between pain and pleasure, pride and anguish. She pushes them away and does what she needs to. The Baron's astounding final bid is discarded, Dr Crab is the victor.
Mameha tells herself that this is a kindness to Sayuri. Nothing else.
Life goes on, as well as could be expected.
Mameha receives the Baron as often as his work will allow. She already has more kimono than she needs to live and work in Gion, but she graciously accepts each new gift.
She cashes in with Mrs Nitta, continues snapping at Hatsumomo's heels when it is convenient. She lives comfortably but also saves what she can, money and treasures stored in a secure vault. Each step in her life is taking her closer to true self-determination. This, Mameha thinks, may be happiness.
When Sayuri weeps with disappointment at the prospect of Nobu Toshikazu for her danna, Mameha is bewildered. Nobu is a kind man, and extraordinarily so to Sayuri. They have an en, and she would be cared for beyond what any geisha could hope to expect.
Mameha tries to reason with her, tells her that they all want kindness, that Sayuri is in no position to ask for more than that.
While Sayuri weeps pitifully into Mameha's table, Mameha sits and waits for her to compose herself. She thought she had taught Sayuri to be tougher than this, to put away her heart and her hopes and to glide to her destiny. Sayuri hasn't learned. Does she not understand how lucky she is?
The picture Mameha painted for Sayuri stays in her mind long after Sayuri fled home: Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.
Mameha wonders: has she truly grown so old? How many hopes does she still have? How foolish are they both?
So she does what she can, and plants the seed of General Tottori in Mrs Nitta's mind. Life may be cruel, but there is no need for Mameha to be so too. It is her own kindness to Sayuri, even if she cannot understand.
Sayuri meets with the General twice each week. Mameha is lucky to see the Baron twice in one month, then once per month.
Despite that, the money is still there - for now. She knows how fortunate she is. Jewels don't sell for much these days.
One of the sweetest moments of her career comes as she says, Hatsumomo-san, please, as a favour to me... and Hatsumomo turns wild, every inch the woman Mameha knew her to be. She felt the moment she tore Hatsumomo free of her moorings. It is no surprise when Sayuri reports that she is gone.
Then the Baron's visits end, and war truly descends upon their graceful world, and she is scooped into a rickshaw and hurried away.
Mameha spends her wartime years as a nurse’s assistant at a small hospital in Fukui province. She fares better than many of her peers, but she still does not like to think of that time when it is over. She hears so little news of her friends, and does not give herself time to wonder. She works, and one day melts into the next until it is over, and she can go home.
After the war, she returns to Gion. She sells, trades and barters to convert her treasures into the literal tools she needs for daily life. They still have far less value than they would have had ten years ago - who needs silk and precious gems now? What one needs is rice and tea and fuel, and Mameha needs a living.
She is a survivor, adept at making her own way. She calls in favours and swaps her treasures for a small building of rooms and a livelihood. She has made worse bargains. And she is independent.
When the time comes, she receives no letter, no formal message.
When she hears that her Baron is dead, it is from gossip overhead in the street.
Her head swims, stars dancing across her vision as she pictures him, her Baron, eyes wide open and pockets full of stones at the bottom of his beautiful lake. She pictures cherry blossom petals floating on its surface above him, as they had when she walked its shores with him so many, many years ago.
She can’t breathe, she’s drowning herself, gasping futilely for breath against a dusty panelled wall in a sheltered alley. Her chest remains tight, each breath a battle, but she forces her feet to turn her back to the street, eyes dry, and marches onward to her little apartment.
She has not seen him in nearly three years, not received so much as a line in a message. She knows that the Baron she pictures on the bottom of that lake is not the Baron who was there in actuality. Her Baron lives on in her mind, unravaged by several brutal, merciless years of war, by the loss of everything he had ever owned.
In her one room, she moves mechanically to remove her shoes and stow her shopping, keeping her mind blank until she pulls the fine box down from top shelf and kneels, removing the lid and unfolding the linen cover to gaze upon this last, most precious kimono, the first he had given her.
Alone, she weeps.
There is no time for grief. There are rooms to inspect, rents to collect. She allows herself the kindness of one hour's weakness, then she puts her kimono and her heart away.
She had always wanted to be independent of any men, to be reliant only upon herself.
In the cruellest of ways, she finds herself free.