He was gradually becoming better acquainted with his geisha neighbor. Toshi-san she said her name was, and he was introduced to the duenna, her "mother" she called her, and to her maid, and to her doll, Mitsuko-san. In the morning, at about ten o'clock, when she opened the _shoji_ to look at the weather, they often chatted. She was a pretty, vivacious little thing, wholly adorable, and they knew how to look after themselves, these geisha. So why not?
Sometimes, in the afternoon, before she began her caterwauling samisen practice, she would play for him a few phonograph pieces, "Rigoletto," the Dvorák "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.