Yoshiwara Read online

  CHAPTER TWO

  The guest untied Utanos obi belt, that was holding her compound yukata firmly around the body. It was a custom to tie it on the front, except for the girls whose ceremony hasn't passed yet. In that case, the bound would be on the back so we couldn't untie it by ourselves. And surely our innocence wouldn't be easily accessed, because protecting it was worth more than a handful of pure gold. In such occasions, the clients could have the honor of disrobing the subject of their own desire for intimate pleasures.

  Our house is located in the centre of Yoshiwara, the settlement assigned for providing intimate services. We are not geishas, nor we are prostitutes, but the girls who retained the best part of both worlds. A minimum of eight annual cycles of education is acquired to learn specialized skills originally intended for geishas. Only the last year, before the ceremony, they teach us old crafts of the streets. Our section of this settlement is dedicated exclusively to female clientele. Although perhaps unusual, the ladies of our corners are not visiting only at night, but also when the other part of Yoshiwara is dormant. All clientele are women from wealthy families looking for romantic experiences or just some straightforward enjoyment. An example is our present ladies in the enthrall of what, until now, they could only fantasize of in their own four walls. They came to realize a dream like a brave warrior with a strong desire for life during hostile encounters.

  The obi slid to the floor and opened Utanos yukata over the entire length of her body. Only a part of the bare neck is illuminated by the lantern, while the rest of her skin stayed covered in shadow. She is still standing behind the seats of the guests.

  The night girl, during the service arranged this way, would always wait for partner's initiative stimulated by observing sensual scenes. Thoroughly captivated in a moment - Kaoru went to Hana, reaching to gently carries her neck with eyes that were devouring the soft lips in the whole duration of this encounter. Trailing with fingers over the collarbone, she slid her hand under Hana's yukata, continuing to travel in the direction of the, now uncovered, shoulders.

  A mischievous smile appeared on Hannah's face before she raised her right hand and placed it around Kaoru's waist pulling her forward.

  My only task was to watch and learn how to give pleasure with subtle seductions. I still haven't gone through the ceremony, but it's going to happen soon, more precisely in a few nights. That right age, as in the number of summers - I turned in the wintertime under the snow cover. Now I'm just waiting for this fateful night, to be bought and turned into a woman. They call us debutants.

  Hana and Kaoru are writhing upon each other with deep breaths. Every time I see them like this, I become excited, but this is my little secret nobody knows about. They are permeating in a way I have not seen yet - not even in one of Mother’s shungas. It's hard for me to stay focused when I look at how their bodies thrust in a passionate embrace. Only slightly, beneath the dissolved yukatas, could be noticed the movements of their muscles merged with their slender front parts as they slowly touch each other's soft crotches.

  By the glance at our guests, I can see that they haven't gathered enough courage yet to show the initiative to participate tonight. Both of them are holding the arms in their laps near the pulsating point - they came to us because of it, after all.

  Utano has always been a step ahead of everyone when it comes to the seduction of a client. As far as I've been able to see, or how much the light allows me to, I'm sure Utano reached for hidden chest in mahogany colour. She placed it beside the lady with hair white as snow, even though she can't be more than a few summers older them me. The lady is ardently exploring her through the scattered beam of light. Utano leaned over her with unfolded yukata, sliding her fingers over clients trembling thigh. Their breathing accelerated in accordance with the pulsating hills. At the moment when the tensed place was touched, the lady inhaled with a subtle quiver. The seductress here caressed her slowly, holding a penetrating gaze without blinking. She pulled the fingers toward herself at the moment of woman's sight, nearing them to her own lips. There was a glistering liquid on them. She licked it with a look below eyebrows, then leaned toward the woman's lips and whispered, "How do you like the taste of pleasure?"

  The client hasn't averted her eyes the whole time, staring at Utano enchanted as she opened the chest, taking out an elongated wrapping of red velvet with linings in golden colour.

  I'm practicing the exterior massage technique almost every day now, it's the way to prepare for the clients, and we begin to overcome the inner massage only when our first client penetrate through that little velum which is worth more than gold.

  Utano set backward on that woman's lap, giving pleasure to both of them. The entertainment lasted almost until the first sun rays.

  In the late morning, a light knocking on the bamboo part of the door awakens me. I'm trying to open my eyelids, but they are too heavy to manage that task. I lifted them up just so much that a few of the sun rays coming from the slightly parted curtains could impede, bringing displeasure to my still sleepy eyesight.

  On the other side of the door, Utano silently whispers my name. 'Uta, Utaa...'

  My unarticulated respond came, '... mmm... ca... came in...'

  She pounced in the room as if the morning is long in the past. After opening the curtains with a white floral pattern on them, she opened the window to let the fresh air in the room.

  'Come on Uta, you've slept through half of the sun rising already - if I didn't know better, I would think that you worked hard last night.' She did not remove the smile from her face.

  'Utano - my eyelids are simply refusing cooperation.'

  Not paying attention to my drowsy, uninterested and silent answer she just kneeled beside my futon, pulling the rasp to work on her nails. I only saw the dust of the keratoid part of her hand. Utano's thoughtlessness compelled me to let this white powder fall onto the place where I was sleeping.

  'Stop filing your nails over my futon - I don't want to sleep in that dust,' I tried to protest with frowned eyebrows. but she didn't care about my complaints.

  'You're always so meticulous, and it's not like I'm cleaning a dirt from under my nails - this little dust will not harm you, and by the way, you clean your room every day,' she smiled and continued, 'you will at least think that you have something concrete to clean now.'

  I raised myself in a sitting position. She however slightly moved, continuing to fil her nails above the floor.

  'You won't ask me anything?' Utano mischievously laughed.

  'You're going to tell me all about it anyway, that's why you came after all.' My tone stayed flat.

  'Uta!' She scolded me immediately, lifting her head to face my direction. 'This should interest you just like the arts of our crafts - stop thinking about Hana and Kaoru now - you'll see them plenty enough, they're nothing better than the rest of us, they have just been working together for a long time.'

  She always knew how to read me, she knew me so well that it wasn't strange for her to notice things about me even before I, myself would be conscious of my own thoughts and conclusions from them. As much as I tried to hide at least one secret, absolutely nothing could be hidden from Utano.

  'Come on, you baby - stop blushing now. Even I have to admit that their choreography is extraordinary,' she added with a smile, returning to her filing.

  'How much did you get this time?' I asked reservedly trying to hide my embarrassment from the previous topic.

  'Our guest paid the standard price to the Mother. And gave me just as much... for the new yukata... so that she doesn't have to untie the same one again - was her words before we parted.' Utano pulled out a few gold coins from her belt. 'This is for you Uta, to repay the debt as soon as possible.'

  Utano is not my real sister. She is a full-fledged night lady, or in our case a mentor to whom I'm assigned to - better to say, she picked me. It's not usually a custom for an older sister to share her earnings, but I think that Utano tries to make a balance in the univ
erse this way. She always felt indebted to me because of our first encounter.

  'Thank you Utano - but... you know that you don't have to give me this gold. I didn't do that so you would pay me. You'll have to work at list ten annual cycles this way so you would be able to pay your own debt.

  She became severe like she would only in some rare occasions. 'If you ever refuse my offering, you're refusing our sisterly bond. If it weren't for you that night, we wouldn't even be able to have this conversation, I wouldn't be no more. The least I could do is give you some coins from time to time. And besides that, you're all I have to care for in my life, so until I have enough for two debts, I'm not leaving. It would be unforgivable for me to leave you on these dusty streets alone.'

  ✽✽✽

  My memory reaches to that long in the past and unusually cold Yoshiwara morning. The dawn was dominated by dark still, because of dense clouds that were repressing the sun stifling the distant rays. Morning mist engrossed every part of the ground, lifting all the way to the window panes of almost every house. Bare trees were protruding in the distance from a dense cluster of dank clods. I was overcoming my unsteady steps in that dark alley with a gleam of moonlight, illuminating only a fraction of it.

  I was still just a child.

  I remember my trembling feet. It was cold, but the trembling wasn't because of that, yet out of fear.

  In the summer of that same year, my grandmother passed away. Although she was rising me, she also wasn't bounded to me by blood - as I found out afterward, but just a midwife. She delivered me from Yoshiwaras night lady. My birth mother died the same evening giving birth to me. The midwife took me home and cared for me as if I was her flesh and blood. When I was left alone in this world after her passing, I was sent to Yoshiwara in house 24.

  At that time I knew very little about these streets, just as much as a child should know, and that was only a fact that exclusively women reside there, but the real reason behind that - I didn't know.

  I thought that was a place where girls would go when they wouldn't want to live a rural style of life. I guessed that they would nurture a different preference in a profession - like becoming a fabric tailor, making their own income and managing to live that way. The stories would always connect those women with extravagant kimonos in context, so I assumed that was from where my innocent conclusions probably came from.

  People in our village would say that women from Yoshiwara were without honor and that they lost the place amongst honest folk. Those words in my mind meant that I'm on my way with no return when I was sent to Yoshiwara.

  I was thinking of my grandmother, her warm tea, prettily face and gentle voice. Even if I had to choose to let my hair being cut for seeing my grandma one last time - I would do it in a heartbeat, just so I could feel her embrace, even for a moment. Yet I knew, albeit still a child, I recognized a sorrow. Tears were freezing my cheeks. I wept to omit a sob.

  Every house on my way was the potential destination for me so I would pause at each one, approaching them to read the number, although I was still illiterate back then. All I could do in that situation was comparing the signs on those houses with the one on my paper. I didn't wont to walk near them because the groups of men were occupying almost every doorstep.

  In my delusion that only women reside in these parts, the sight frightened me further. Suspicion of everything I thought I knew, awoke in me. And besides that, almost every man was staggering by the door. Some of them were humming in inarticulate voices. I tried to pass them invisibly with a lowered head, walking in the middle of those streets. The house signs were nothing like the one on my paper, so I decided to distance myself from this part of the settlement.

  By turning right I expected to make a shortcut to the parallel, as I was assuming, wide street illuminated with lanterns. The mist was closing the ending on the other side, but lightning could be slightly perceived. Suddenly, I felt captured.

  My breath exhilarated.

  The walls were trying to swoop my tiny, frightened body. From the side balconies, some frozen stiff apparels in gray tones were hanging. It appeared like a dreadful wraith, especially where the cold moonlight would throw deep shadows across the entire wall.

  I wasn't looking back.

  The fear was compelling my legs to make those steps. I was desperately trying to skirt around the impediments on my path. There were wooden barrels as well. The scent that was spreading from them reminded me of the smell around taverns in the village where the men would drink. In a haze, I couldn't distinguish the silhouettes elongated to the sky. I was continually urging myself to make just a few more steps, and I would be free from this dark, serried and mist filled narrow space.

  Wraith was becoming larger by every step, gaining extremitys in my perception. I wasn't giving in to fear. With wide opened eyes I ren. I would face this, whatever it might be. Meeting my grandmother in the other world would be the worst outcome - was the comforting thoughts I told myself.

  The strange sob made me slow in my foray. Now my focus wasn't on the horrid scenes anymore, but on listening to the notes of every shriek. The voice of a woman was cutting through the silent darkness.

  I stilled.

  Lost in the mist, and attentive to the sound of air, I noticed that my wraith was just a small tree planted in a coal coloured barrel.

  On my toes I snaked to the cover I thought I was seeing. The deep male voice echoed breaking through the haze of swaying formes in the narrow passageway. I crouched behind the barrel, hiding in the cover of a small tree. Hearing a thump on a flash made me huddle in fear.

  The sobs silenced.

  I stayed like that for a few more moments.

  Like blinded I squeezed my eyes, trying to see through that tight mist in the direction of sound notes. Then I saw a knife, held by the human hand. Its blade flashed like a star in the dark sky. I flinched suddenly, tumbling the barrel with the tree in it. I heard an impact, and then the sound of a knife bouncing on the stone.

  I saw the man on the ground. His eyes were closed, while below him lied a girl with bleeding lips. The wraith toppled him down. Her clothes were ripped, and her skin bruised from the coldness.

  She had the same kimono grandma was wearing in my last memory. Nearing the bloodied face, she looked to me more and more like the older women before the soil took her away from me. I just stood there gazing at her for a few moments, then ran to her. She moved her head asking me in a thin voice to pull her out from beneath the man. I was frozen, still looking at the site in front of me.

  On the ground, I saw my grandmother laying there in a kimono redder then lips. 'Grandma?' I silently called a few times. The answer did not come. My chest seized in pain, I couldn't allow for her to be abanded again. I hugged her vigorously. Her hands accepted me, reaching around my neck. She's alive - the thought passed through my mind for a moment. As I was trying to stand up, those hands were tightening, pulling me in convulse to the ground of confusing scene. The man was still unconscious with his head laying on her waist. I forcefully turned myself from those hands, realizing that they do not belong to imaginary sight with my grandma in thoughts. The girl moved a bit, enough to toss the man by herself from her frail body. She grabbed me yelling, 'Run!'

  We were breaking with dawn through the clouds, to an end of the path. That was Utano. We haven't spoken a single word, I didn't even hear the name. She left me in front of house 24 and went away with first sun lights. I always thought that I won't ever see her again after that dreadful night permanently engraved in my memory, but the fate had decided differently. She was the girl that awaited me when I moved into the Mother's house. We become sisters in an instant, and not just as a mentor and apprentice, but like the blood-related ones we never really had.

  ✽✽✽

  'I love you too Uta.' she gently told me after my embrace around her waist. She stood up from the futon going to the door. Turning around briefly, she said, 'Don't forget. This job is all just about the golden coins. The a
ppetency of a client is the tip - your way from these dusty streets.'

  I was left still thinking of her sentence. Appetency of the guest. How much of fancying will I need to be free from Yoshiwara? If I were to be even half as good as Utano is, maybe my debt would be paid when I become an old woman. I haven't even begun to work yet, and I'm already dreaming of freedom where Utano and I are living in some rural part growing rice - just like my grandma was. I'm desperate for my ceremony to pass so I can finally start making an income, my first step in realizing our dreams.

  It's late afternoon.

  Kaoru and Hana are waiting for me to start my practice of ceremonial choreography. We climbed on an inside porch of our house. In front of it is thick grass growing, while all the way across our garden is squandered bushes filled with flowers. The leaves above the porch keep us away from the sun's rays, collecting the scent of spring under it.

  Kaoru expanded two fans with red and white patterns. Hana beside her stands with two white stripes usually used by Utano in performances, and my props are long sleeves clasped around my middle fingers. Kaoru made the first movement. We followed her carefully chosen motions. Mother is sitting in the distance signalizing with her head in approval towards us. Kaoru seems to be carried by the wind. Her body light as a feather in the air during a dance fervour. Although this dance is quite slow, that makes it even more challenging to perform. I need to keep my posture for a few moments in each position. I feel every muscle in my body, but Hanna's legs seem to be shaking as well. This dance is called The night butterfly . It is performed by three dancers with their props. That's one of the most challenging dances to master, and it is required to be performed on special occasions. Named from the gentle and slow moves emphasizing a line of the female body like butterfly motions with its graceful wings. The props are used to underline every gesture made by extending hands around the shapes.

  The dance has finished.