I wonder what is so erotic about the nape of a woman's neck to men, she asked herself, and why is hiding it erotic too? Men, how strange! But she knew that letting her hair fall excited Furansu-san like any client and this was her only concession to their pact. This alone she would do in the light.

In the dark before dawn, when he was with her, her maiko would softly awaken her and she would dress in the dark, if he awoke or if he did not.

Then she would move to the second room and close the door, her maiko guarding the door, and would sleep again if she was tired. He had agreed never to enter this sanctuary--after the first time she had insisted: "In this way the privacy of the night may extend into the day," she had said.

"Please?"' "In this way that which you saw once will never change, whatever the gods decree."

A tremor went through her. Much as she tried, she could not cast out the sensation that the seed of the vile Sore God he had implanted within her was gathering strength, growing, readying to burst forth everywhere. Daily, she scrutinized herself.

Minutely. Only Raiko was trusted to make sure those places she could not see herself were examined as closely and were, as yet, blemishless. "Daily is too much, Hinodeh," Raiko had said before she had agreed to the contract. "Nothing maybe happen for years..."

"So sorry, Raiko-san. Daily, it is a condition."

"Why are you agreeing to this at all? You have a good future in our World. You may never reach first Class, but you are educated, your mama-san says you have a long list of clients who are pleased with you, she said you could marry a well-to-do merchant or farmer or sword maker, that you are sensible and would never be wanting for a good match."

"Thank you for your concern, Raiko-san, but you agreed with my mama-san that you would not question me or pry into my past, where I come from or to seek reasons. In return you share with her a percentage of the money I will earn for this year, and perhaps another. Let me say again, the reason I accept the possible contract is that I wish it."

Oh yes I wish it and how lucky I am.

Now she was twenty-two. Born on a farm outside Nagasaki in the province of Hizen on the South Island, and when she was five, she was invited into the Floating World by one of the many women intermediaries who travelled the country seeking children who could become possible geisha, art persons, those who would be trained, like Koiko, in the arts and not purely as an netsujo-jin, a person for passion. Her parents agreed and were given money and a promissory note for five yearly payments, beginning in ten years, the amount depending on the child's success.

As an art person she had not been successful --at the samisen or singing or dancing or as an actress--but as a person of passion from fifteen when she made her debut, better educated than her contemporaries, she soon became important to her mama-san and to herself. In those days her name was Gekko, Moonbeam, and though there were many foreigners in Nagasaki at that time, she knew not one of them, her House catering only to Japanese of the highest order.

One October, the Month Without Gods, she received a new client. He was a year older than her, eighteen, a goshi and the son of a goshi--an average swordsman, average soldier but to her her dream person. His name was Shin Komoda.

Their passion blossomed. As much as the mama-san tried to curb their mutual magnetism--the youth was poor, his bills remained unpd--nothing she could say or do had any effect. Until the spring of the following year. Without telling Gekko, the mama-san went to the youth's home and bowed before his mother and, politely, asked for payment.

There was no money to pay. The mother asked for time.

The youth was forbidden to see Gekko again.

Outwardly he obeyed his parents, but inwardly nothing they said or did had any effect. Within a week, disguised, they ran away together, disappearing into the sprawling port. There they changed their names and with some money she had saved, and jewelry she brought with her, they purchased passage in steerage on a coastal ship sailing that day for Yedo.

Within the week Shin Komoda was dishonored in his village and declared ronin. Again the mama-san went to see his mother. It was a matter of face, of honor, that their son's bills were paid. His mother's only possession of value and her pride, was her long and beautiful plume of hair. With her husband's agreement she went to a wigmaker in Nagasaki. Without hesitation the man bought. The money was just enough to pay their son's bills. So, for them honor was satisfied.

In Yedo, at the limit of their money, Gekko and Shin managed to find safe lodgings in the slums of the city. And a Buddhist priest to marry them. Without papers, either of them, and their real past obliterated, life was difficult, almost impossible, but for a year they lived happily, keeping to themselves, on the threshold of poverty. That did not matter for they basked in each other's company and their love increased and was fruitful, and though her money dwindled to nothing, however much she tried to be prudent and his pay hardly fed them--the only work he could find was as a guard at a low-class brothel that was not even in the Yedo Yoshiwara--it did not matter.

Nothing mattered. They were together. They were surviving. And she kept their two tiny rooms spotless and made of them a palace and sanctuary for him and the child and as much as she offered and offered, he refused and refused, "Never! Never never never again will any other man ever know you, swear it!" She swore it.

When their son was a year old Shin was killed in a brawl. With his death the light went out of her.

A week later the brothel mama-san propositioned her. She thanked her and refused saying she was returning to their home in Nara. In the market she bought a bright new candle, a red one, and that night when the child was asleep, quietly she lit it, to watch it and to think what she should do until the flame died, petitioning the gods, promising them that when the last fluttering was gone she would decide what was best for her son, asking for their help to make the decision wise.

The flame had died long since, the decision so simple, so correct: She must send her son back to his father's parents. Her son must go alone--she must pretend she and her husband had committed jinsai, joint ritual suicide, in apology to his parents for the hurt they had done them. To be accepted the child must have at least a year of money, preferably more. He must be clothed well and travel well with a trusted nurse, more money. Only in this way could he gain his heritage, samurai. Last, there was no point obeying an oath to the dead when the future of their living child was at stake.

In the morning she left her son with a neighbor andwiththe last of her money bought the best kimono and parasol she could find in the thieves market, then, penniless, went to the best hairdresser near the gates of Yedo's Yoshiwara. There she bartered a month's future earnings for the best up-to-date hairstyle and massage and facial and manicure and pedicure and other intimacies-- and information.

Information cost a second month.

That afternoon she sallied through the gates and went straight to the House of Wisteria. The mama-san was a pattern of everyone she had ever known, always degrees of perfection in their dress and coiffure, always a measure too heavy, with makeup that veered on being masklike, eyes so gentle to customers that could become granite hard in an instant, eyes that could make her girls quiver with fear, and always scented richly with best perfume she could afford that still could never quite disguise the pervading smell of sak`e. This mama-san was spare, her name Meikin.

"So sorry, I don't take ladies without papers or history," the mama-san said. "We are very law-abiding here."