‘I’ll drink to that.’
I’d seated myself on the couch again and was thinking a toast would be in order.
‘Would you happen to have any more saké?’
Kohana returned and stood over me with the flask, her hair swinging around my face. A more pleasant way to get a refill and have my view obscured, I’d never once encountered.
I had not realized it, but she was a good two centimetres taller than myself—more due to the fact that age had shrunk my height, than any Amazonian stature the girl possessed. Plus, as I do like to insist, I was seated, whereas she was standing up.
‘Are you thinking about making an offering?’ Kohana asked, after she finished filling my cup and stood back.
‘To whom? You?’ Frankly, I was confused.
‘Not to me, Wolram. It’s an old Japanese custom to make an offering at a shrine or temple, as a token for departed souls, and often we leave saké.’
‘Oh, I see. Fair enough.’ I raised my cup. ‘Well, here’s to the gods of abundance and creature comfort.’
‘Perhaps you should check behind you?’
Taking her cue, I looked over my shoulder.
‘Oh dear. I see I will have to put on hold my old friends abundance and creature comfort, at least for the time being.’ That said, I turned back to my budding cruise director. ‘So where are we now—and is this before, after, or in-between the two other times?’
‘Later. Roughly six months.’
‘Kyoto?’
‘Tokyo.’
‘At this rate, I’ll have seen all of Japan before I die again.’
I was happy to note I had travelling partners aside from the woman: I was comfy in the ivory-coloured sofa, and had that cup of saké in my right hand. Admittedly, I was now slap-bang in the middle of a narrow, quiet street some time after nightfall, but I’d managed to haul along a couple of creature comforts.
Kohana had abandoned her plain attire of the other visits and taken this opportunity to arrive in resplendent form—making me feel more the sore thumb.
Her hair, which had so recently tickled my nose, was tied up and laminated into that geisha working girl style—the same as her younger, living self, the first time I saw her in Kyoto. You know, the golden kimono with ibises on it, fluttering about, and a snow-white face. In other words, a life-size Japanese souvenir doll, only she seemed a little older and somehow sadder.
The girl turned around slowly, in mincing steps on those hazardous clogs, gazing with thawing warmth that replaced the sorrow. I took this to be affection for the rows of dark brown, compact, double-storey wooden houses on either side.
‘This is Asakusa. I lived here with my sister from the age of six, in that okiya—a geisha house—right over there.’
Kohana pointed out an innocuous building before us that had a red lantern dangling from its balcony.
Its dark, downstairs window was made of wooden lattice and paper, but the one on the second storey, above the tiled verandah, was round, with diagonal slats, and softly lit. There was a small sign with a freestyle painted kanji symbol next to the front door, which consisted of two sliding screens.
‘The okiya was called Kiri—Paulownia Tree—and it was owned by a woman named Oume-san. She ran a house that was a cooperative, dividing the profits among the girls, after overheads were covered.’
‘Is that so? I heard somewhere that geisha houses were strict, disciplinarian places.’
‘You’ve been reading too much fiction by foreigners.’ The girl unfurled a fan in quasi-coy manner. ‘Oh, wait, did I say reading? Perhaps I should infer you’ve watched a few too many movies-of-the-week.’
‘Side-splitting.’
Kohana snapped shut the fan.
‘I know, I know—flimsy. Surprisingly, you’re not far from the truth. This was not the norm for okiya, and Oume-san was nowhere near the norm for its management. Personally speaking, we had the best mama-san in the trade—but she wasn’t so good at business. We barely stayed above water.’
‘So you worked here? It looks a little small.’
‘It’s not a brothel, Wolram. These were our living quarters—we mostly worked in tea houses and at restaurants.’
‘How many people lived in the building?’
‘There were eight of us. Oume-san, two older geisha, three hangyoku, including Tomeko and me, and our maids. Space was precious.’
The wooden structures along the street, to left and right, looked dull and interchangeable. ‘Are these all geisha houses, then?’
‘Some are.’
‘How good was business?’
‘Before the war, I hear it was booming. By 1945, we were scratching to survive, and most of the other okiya had been closed down. I hit my prime at a dreadful time. We were fortunate that Oume-san had high-up contacts in the military—as much as she privately despised them.’
I sipped at my saké. The street was quiet and peaceful enough, and we were the only people about. One could get used to lounging here, even if the temperature was a trifle crisp.
Right then, however, my leisure time was interrupted by… What the Devil was that annoying sound? Bees?
‘As a wise man once told me, danger always strikes when everything seems fine. Listen, Wolram. You hear it?’
‘How could I miss the commotion? What is that?’
‘Speculate.’
‘Oh God, I’m not in the mood for guessing games. Bees, or wasps, come immediately to mind. So, I don’t know—the Wicked Witch of the West, sending down a horde of emissaries?’
‘Not the Wicked Witch.’
‘No?’
‘The Allied Forces.’
It clicked, then. 1945.
‘Oh crap. A bombing raid?’