Aug 11, 2009 06:50 PM
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(Updated Mar 20, 2010 02:37 PM)
On her mother: **Instead of being dark brown like everyone else's, my mother's eyes were a translucent grey. When I was very young I told my mother I thought someone had poked a *hole in her eyes and all the ink had drained out, which she thought very funny.
The fortune tellers said her eyes were so pale because of too much water in her personality, so much that the other four elements were present were hardly present at all – and this, they explained, was why her features matched so poorly.
On her first view of a geisha:There on the step of the entryway, just slipping her feet into a lacquered zori, stood an exquisitely beautiful woman wearing a kimono lovelier than I had ever imagined. This one was water blue, with swirling lines in ivory to mimic the current in a stream. Glistening silver trout tumbled in the current, and the surface of the water was ringed with gold wherever the soft green leaves of a tree touched it.
On the man who sold her to a geisha: Its true that up until this time in my life, Mr. Tanaka had brought me nothing but suffering; but he laso changed my horizons for ever. We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we find something that forces us to find one course. Mr. Tanaka changed all that when he sent me out into the world.
On dreams:This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does and sometimes consume us completely.Mameha, her mentor:
– on Sayuri's remarking that she is like a river who has come upon the dam of Hatsumomo:'Yes, probably that's true, ' she said, looking at me calmly.'But rivers sometimes wash dams away.' On geisha:But a geisha must study a great many arts besides shamisen. And in fact, the 'gei' of geisha means arts, so the word geisha really means artist or artisan.
On her goals:My mind on the eve of my debut was like a gardenin which the flowers have only begun to poke their faces up through the soil, so that it is still impossible to tell how things will look. I was brimming with excitement; and in this garden of my mind stood a statue, precisely in the center. It was an image of the geisha I wanted to become.
On meeting the chairman:Then he turned his head and, and for the first time I saw his face..... And suddenly everything around me seemed to grow quiet, as if he were the wind that blew and I were just a cloud carried upon it.
On being with the man she loved:I hadn't felt such bliss in as long as I could remember. Like a ball tossed in the air that seemed to hang motionless before it falls, I felt myself suspended in a state of quiet timelessness. As I glanced around the hall, I saw only the beauty of its giant wooden embers and smelled the aroma of the sweet-rice cakes.
Upon being relieved of her virginity:Something about the whole experience seemed so utterly ridiculous to me; the more I thought about it the funnier it seemd, and in a moment I was laughing. I had to keep quiet because the Doctor was in the next room.
From the man she rejected but tried to befriend:'I'm an easy man to understand, Sayuri', he said.'I don't like things held up before me that I can not have.'
On her most bitter enemy, Hatsumomo:Even now, as an older woman, I sometimes lift the brocade cover on the mirror of my makeup stand, and have the briefest flicker of a thought that I may find her there in the glass, smirking at me.On cutting free from her only friend:And then a frightening image came to mind: I saw myself cutting the bond of hate that held me to Nobu, and watching him fall all teh way into the ocean below.
On finally finding love with the Chairman:His shape was a blur before me, but I could see him moving closer, and in a moment he had gathered me up into his arms just as if I were a blanket. His lips went straight for the little triangle of flesh where the edges of my kimono came together at my throat. And the sense of urgency with which he almost consumed me, I couldn't help thinking of a moment earlier, when I'd stepped intto the kitchen of the okiya and found one of the maids leaning over the sink, trying to cover up the ripe pear she held to her mouth, its juices running down onto her neck. She'd had such a craving for it, she'd said and begged me not to tell mother.
On wishes:
I thought of the petals I'd thrown into the Kamo river shallows outside Mr. Arashino's work-shop, imagining they might find their way to the Chairman. It seemed to me that somehow, perhaps, they had.
And in the end:
But now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.
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Disclaimer, disclaimer! This is not a review - simply selective excerpting
