Sometimes, in the afternoon, before she began her caterwauling samisen practice, she would play for him a few phonograph pieces, "Rigoletto," the Dvořák "Humoresque," the things which it seemed all Tokyo was fond of. He did not understand much about music, still it seemed to him a pity if this country, these people, who had until now acquired fair taste through the fortunate absence of trashy, ephemeral rubbish, should now fall victims to the various "Blues" and "Bells" of fox-trot repertoires.
She evidently enjoyed the music; that was not pose. Her face beamed when she would announce the acquisition of a new record. "I have got 'Ave Malia.' It goes like that." She tried a high note, amusingly dissonant, in her typical geisha falsetto. "You should see my phonograph. It is high, like that," she held her hand to the height of her bosom.
It seemed a chance. "All right, let me see it. I'd like to. When?"
But she was horrified. No, certainly not. Of course, he could not come to her house. The obstacle made him obstinate.
"All right, then. I'll go to the waiting-house over there and send for you. Then you'll have to come, won't you?"
"Yes, maybe; but if I come I'll bring my Mother." She pointed her tongue at him, just an infinitesimal tip, pink between white teeth, laughed, and was gone.
It seemed absurd. The girl was a geisha; it was her business to entertain guests, dance and sing for them at least, even if she apparently must reserve the favors of affection for that police commissioner, whose presence one sensed, obscure in the background, through the phonograph, the ever multiplying new records, new jewelry, all evidently offerings from him.
"I don't quite get it all. Surely she doesn't drag that stage property mother of hers about wherever she has guests. Can you explain?" he asked Karsten.
"Well, first of all, of course, you can't visit a geisha in her own house; at least, old man, it is not etiquette, it isn't done. You must meet them in the waiting-houses. If they didn't the waiting-houses would lose their commissions and would boycott the geisha. And the geisha guild would cause trouble. It is with that as with everything else in Japan, as in business where there must always be a half dozen middlemen between producer and consumer. Of course, you might take her on a picnic, if she consents, but I wouldn't, if I were you. Japan is changing. We are getting away from the days of Loti. Be discreet, anyway. And then it's expensive. You have to pay a tremendous fee even for just the pleasure of helping her pick flowers, or sea shells, or whatever it might be, and she will have you buy a cartload of souvenirs for herself, and the mother, and the maid, and her friends, and the cat, for all I know. Anyway, remember the police commissioner. She would probably not dare."
So the matter did not progress. They chatted almost every day, across the alley, but she smiled at his invitations, enjoyed teasing him. It seemed an impasse.