An almost quiet car, stops at the main entrance of a house, discreetly aside, at one end of the ground. Men, alert and well dressed, get off there from the car. They carry the attaché-case characteristic of the businessmen, or, of the busy Japanese man. The strange house smartly swallow them through a door dissimulated on one side. I approach discreetly, but with curiosity, by the house. It is a Japanese style somber house. An all wood-builded house, decorated with subtle lattices of wood, openwork windows, roofs with black tiles, facings in oldish stuccos, like a house of another era, of an another time, a house of geisha, a traditional sumiya as they still exists in the Pontochô, the karyuu of the geishas of Kyoto.

I hear voices coming from the second floor of the house, from one of the lattice windows flooded with a yellowish light, shouts of men voices, mixed with jerked laughter from hysterical women.

After one moment of curious browsing around the house, a side of the curtain, a black color noren , artistically decorated with kanji penmanships, that surmounts one of the high windows, opened discreetly on the strangely make up face of a josei, a mysterious watakushi in her luminous implements of geisha. She seems initially surprised to see me, than maliciously interested, she is excited and seemed to call other occupants who do not wait to join her: two others over-excited geishas which do not cease glancing at me and commenting, between themselves, with the caracteristic jerked small laughters of the Japanese women, in front of the unknown or of the unsuspicious.

The deaf and jerked voices of the men, coming from the far end of the room, do not seem to disturb the young geishas in their nervous browsing of this strange gaïjin that had been surveying for some time, the neighbourhood of the dark residence.

The signs of the hand they make, towards the side door of the strange house, are obvious, they invite me to join them. My heart starts beating more rapidly, I who did not dare yet, penetrate these taboo places that haunt my mind since such a long time; will I finally breack through the mysteries of these places, where those mysterious bijin are busy-doing, with such grace, dedicated they are, to satisfy the sole desire of the male?

The night will be splendid. A light breeze crosses the broad carpark. The castle projects its strange lights on the high stone wall that supports it. I hear nothing more than an indistinct murmur coming from the city close by. I am transported in another dimension, the curious glances of the geishas excite my senses, I feel like if I was succumbing to the temptation of flesh. I move towards the side door of the dark house, the curtain of the high window closes discreetly.

I open the side door of the dark residence and I penetrate into the house. As soon as I am inside, a strange feeling invades me, as if I was projected out of time. I do not hear any more, the rumours of the city, only a regular beat coming from my own depths. The old staircase with its wood planks polished by time, cracks under my steps, an anachronistic oil lamp projects worrying shadows on the run-down walls, unknown odors come tickling my nostrils. On the staircase landing, a strange creature, outrageously make up, awaits for me with a non-dissimulated curiosity.

Immaterial phantom, unreal creature, abstract woman escaped from an another dimension that mine, she snatch me as soon as I reach the top landing of the staircase.

After she had removed my shoes with respect, she clings gently to me, and, in balance on her high wooden-shoes, she take me inside a large room, slightly lit by oil lamps, that project worrying shadows on the dark structures of the house. I see a group of men dressed in kimonos, sitting on the floor besides a large table of enamelled wood, encumbered with small objects: black lacquers dishes containing artistically laid out food, earthenware jars of glazed varnishes, other indefinable objects. Geishas, with their make up face and dressed up with sumptuous kimonos of floral patterns, hurried themselves in small jerky steps around the long table. The men seems occupied by frivolous frolics which they accompanied by glassfuls of rice alcohol that burns their throat. Their guttural shouts make jump up these fragile geishas, agitating around them like nervous butterflies. They ingeniously try to satisfy their least caprices, they carry food to their mouth, devoted with them to subtle games and chast caresses, give birth to atonal melodies from a strange string instrument or permorm slow and gracious dances. The delicate femininity of these young geishas, tallies badly with the roughness and the vulgarity of the men.

My unexpected arrival gives birth to ironic and sometimes, hostile comments from the men to this strange hennagaïjin, without however, disturbing their puerile child's tricks, only the young maikos shows me a protective interest full of curiosity.

I am drawn out of the large room by my companion geisha, who perform for me, strange mimes of reverence. We go along large corridors flanked by translucent partitions, down to the lower floor, and we penetrate behind one of the mobile partitions. The multiple attentions, the reverences, the incomprehensible vocal interpellations of my companion are not enough to inform me on the meaning of the events and of the situations. Like a docile slave, I yield to the conventions she imposes to me, expecting from these exercises, only the most libertine of the escapes.

The room is broad and luminous because flanked on three of its four faces, of shoji-gamis, these translucent walls made up of rice paper. The floor is partially covered with tatami mats and a narrower section in boards polished by usage, supporting dark wooden counters provided with multiple basins of varied forms and functions; strange metal containers are suspended on the roof by complicated ropes, in one of the corners of the room, a high and narrow circular basin made of curved wood-boards, girdled with straps of hemp, releases an odorous but worrying vapor.

My geisha, like a skilful kan-geiko, installs me on the ground and undertakes a laborious exercise to undress me. My senses are agitated. I imagine, with great euphoria, the events that will follow and I try, with anguish, to envisage the difficult handling I will have to perform, to be able to reach the hidden flesh of my tender geisha, behind the koitsukuri, these thick make up, the multiple kimonos of floral drawings, the delicious obi that retains them from the level of her hip down to her kidneys, in such a complex loop, and the sumptuous black shining hairstyle, driven by needles and strange floral pallets, I already screem for help.

I am now completely naked and vulnerable in front of this strange being looking at me with mischievousness and tenderness behind her complex geisha's getup; I am burning with desire to undress her, with all the savegery that caracterize my condition of an impetuous Occidental. I imagine, with happiness, the somptuousness of this body behind those impregnable walls and my boldness to extract from it, all the sexual pulsions emprison there.

She must have read my thoughts; she gently moves away while performing little jerked jumps on her legs folded under her body. Her small timid laughter is unambiguous on the reading she made of my hidden intentions; she calls, with a voluntary voice, somebody hiding behind the fragile partition; one of the translucent rice-paper partition opens slowly on a lovely atashi, almost a child-girl. She is naked: a white flesh with soft shapes of a fragile roundness, her forehead gird with a transparent gauze, only her face is maked up, a starch mask of a pale whiteness, the round drawing of her diminutive lips underlined, at the upper lip, with a bright crimson, her lashes redrawn, very high above her almond eyes, alike the impavide mask of the mysterious geishas, before the labourious installation of their sumptuous kimonos by the onagoshi-san; she kneels close to me, timidly, sitting on the tatami of the room and she waits in a pose of complete submission.