The Girl Who Played Go

32

At the beginning of that autumn I received a letter from a woman asking me to meet her in a park. I was sure this was to be my answer on the subject of the apprentice geisha, and I went to the appointed place at ten o’clock in the morning, having made up my mind to say no.

Under a flaming maple a woman sat on a stone bench dotted with rust-colored lichen. Her hair was knotted in a simple chignon and she was wearing an indigo-blue cotton kimono held at the waist with an orange belt.

I could not believe my eyes: it was Sunlight but, without makeup, her pale lips scarcely pink, she looked like a child of ten. She stood up and bowed in greeting.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

We sat perched at either end of the bench. She had her back half-turned to me and she remained completely silent.

I could not find the words I had prepared.

After a long while, I asked whether she would like to walk in the park. She walked behind me, taking tiny steps. All the maples were ablaze and the ginkgoes were a bright yellow; the autumn wind wafted their fiery leaves over us. We crossed a wooden bridge, circled a pool of emerald-green water bordered with chrysanthemums, and came to a stop in an open pavilion from which we could gaze out at the cloudless sky and decorative rocks crawling with ivy. The only sounds were the rustling of her kimono and the birdsong. Our shared silence was complicit. I could not break it.

As we left the park, she bowed deeply and walked away.