“Do you cook lobsters in the hottest one?” I tried again, venturing one foot into the silver liquid, then the other. My behaviour was attracting the curious glances my mere epidermis had not, so I told myself that if the water was not boiling the flesh of the others, it would not harm mine. I gasped as I committed the greater part of me to the onsen, and patted around until I located a ledge to sit on, leaving my shoulders and head radiating furiously into the evening air.
Two middle-aged ladies bobbed their heads approvingly. I stretched my eyes wide and said, “Mizu wa atsui des’!” The water is hot!
The two giggled and launched into a conversation, of which I understood about three words. But I nodded and grinned back at them, and that seemed quite sufficient for their purposes.
After what felt like a very long time, head swimming and sweat pouring down my face, I said to my companion, “How long do you keep this up?”
“I am about finished here,” she said, then to my consternation added, “I thought I would move to the hotter bath for a while.”
Before I could moan too loudly, she raised her voice to speak past my shoulder. I looked behind me to see one of the attendants coming to help me from the water.
“I’ve told her to take you for a massage. I will join you in a quarter hour or so.”
I staggered from the tub, ridiculously weak and heavy, and leaned unabashedly on the tiny woman’s shoulder. She helped me back to the stools, rinsed me off, then guided me to an adjoining room, where I was allowed to collapse face-down on a long, low table. She “covered” me with a minuscule towel. I was warm, I was motionless, and in seconds, I was asleep.
When I swam back up, there were hands on me: strong, capable hands manipulating the edges of my scapula, easing out tension I did not know was there. My eyes drifted open. On the next table lay Miss Sato, eyes shut, a masseuse working on her left knee. I was vaguely aware of well-being from my shoulders down, and was faintly astonished to realise that I must have been the passive object of the hands’ attentions for quite some time—long enough for them to make the journey from toes to shoulders, turning muscle to limp rag all the way.
When she’d finished with my neck and the back of my head, I never wanted to move again. I’d have been happy to melt into the table and slide away on the steaming river that ran down the middle of the village, to feed the roots of those cedar trees and bamboo groves …
Were it not that I felt as empty as a clean bowl.
I became aware of a presence. I opened my eyes. Miss Sato’s face was inches from my own.
“Would you care for dinner, Russell-san?” The English honourific had become the Japanese, but as always, the R required her full attention.
“Maybe you should call me ‘Mary.’ ”
The dark eyes crinkled. “And I am Haruki.”
My eyelides drifted shut. “What does ‘Haruki’ mean, anyway?”
“Often means ‘Sunshine.’ But Father say means ‘Makes life clear.’ ”
Students taking an
Examination by bear
May need the scrub-brush.
We stayed at the Arima spa for three days. All the while, Haruki-san watched our reactions—to strange clothing, stranger foods, uncomfortable customs, all the incomprehensible situations that travel brings.
That first day, after being parboiled and beaten, we were propped upright, wrapped in kimonos (mine with the woman’s stiff obi belt), and led away to the dining area, where we knelt until our legs were numb, picking our way through numerous courses of unrecognisable foods, most of them either raw or pickled. We slept on hard cotton mattresses laid on the floors, our heads perched on pillows stuffed, apparently, with gravel.
Fabulous luxury. For the first time since leaving Bombay, my night was dreamless.
The second day we spent in kimonos and tabi-socks with divided toes, sliding our feet into high wooden geta sandals when we went onto the cobbled streets. By midday my toe was blistered and my stomach querulous at the odd demands being made on it, my head spun with the relentlessness of the language, and I’d have cut off a finger for a cup of coffee. Or even English tea. However, by sunset I was negotiating the cobbles without too much thought, I knew which of the peculiar foods were more tasty, and the attentions of the bath attendant were very nearly welcome. I walked fearlessly to the baths, threw the odd ungrammatical phrases at my companions, joined in their laughter at the attempts, and scarcely noticed that I was displaying a lot of skin.
Again, no dreams.
The third day was almost comfortable … until the evening. Instead of taking us through the hallways and verandas to the inn’s baths, Haruki-san led us down the narrow streets to a different bath-house.
We stood outside the doors, while attendants waited to welcome us inside. “In modern times,” our teacher told us, “there are few truly mixed bath-houses. Mostly they are used for families, or for … other forms of male entertainment. Even in old times, women who bathed with men not of their family were … suspect. However, there remain traditional onsen in which men and women bath together. If you wish to experience one of those, this is your opportunity.”
My immediate impulse was to say, No thank you, but her expression was so … watchful, it gave me pause. That look of scrutiny was all too familiar: the sensation that my every motion was being judged, that my reaction to every assignment, or even mild suggestion, was being weighed and set down in a mental ledger. Haruki-san wanted to see just how far we were willing to go in (so to speak) immersing ourselves in the culture.
I took a deep breath. “Will you and I be the only women among a gathering of men?”
She turned to the attendants. After half a minute of back-and-forth, she replied, “No, there are five men and two women in the onsen at the moment. Although the two women are both older.”
I wanted to ask how much older, but decided that even a woman of ninety must think of herself as a woman, and if Haruki-san was willing, I would keep up my side.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll try anything once.”
I was finding that nudity could be less a personal awareness than a social convention: that if everyone else in the room agreed, bare skin was just another garment. So I took a deep breath and raised my chin, then more or less held that position for the next hour.
It may have helped that I did not have my spectacles on.
Afterwards, we were served a dinner that went similarly up on the squeamish front. However, a woman who has been asked to down nonchalantly a sheep’s eyeball is not easily daunted by the tentacles of sea creatures. And at least the miniature octopuses didn’t squirt as one’s teeth came down.
Of course, hefty jolts of warm sake helped.
When we took to our hard beds that night, we felt like honorary members of the Nippon empire.
And when we woke the next morning, we had been abandoned.
“Holmes, I do believe we’re being handed our hats.”
“So it would appear.”
There had been a sort of nervous finality in the service of breakfast, an unwillingness to meet our eyes. Also, Haruki-san did not join us, for the first time. So it was no huge surprise, when the maids came in to remove the trays, that they stayed to pack our valises.
We looked down at our two bags, bemused. “Do you suppose the onsen has buried Haruki-san under the tatami mats?” I asked Holmes.
Holmes grunted, and picked up his valise. After a moment, I reached for mine, and saw that, unlike his, the top had not been fastened. I frowned, and dropped to my heels to pull it open. On top of my clothing lay a small cloth bag with a drawstring. I pulled it open, then poured its contents out onto the tatami.
Some coins—disconcertingly few and small—and an envelope. Inside it were two slips of printed paper, tickets of some kind, and a folded sheet of writing paper containing two brief lines of Japanese characters—not the simpler kana, which function as a sort of alphabet, but kanji, the complex system based on the Chinese. “Do you recogni
se these?” I asked my companion.
“I propose that we ask the gentleman at the desk.”
The desk in the inn’s entrance foyer was a low table on which lay a ledger and abacus. Holmes and I knelt on either side of it, ignoring the maids who had trailed behind us. The gentleman in question dithered for a time, then reluctantly settled down across from us.
Holmes bowed, laid the piece of paper on the table, and waited. Without knowing if the characters represented a person, place, shopping list, or lines of poetry, an expectant expression seemed the best way to knock information free.
But the fellow was unknockable. Holmes put together a simple sentence asking what it said. The gentleman dutifully read it aloud: in Japanese. We sat. He sat.
No set of English knees is about to outlast Japanese legs when it comes to a sitting contest. However, our faces warned the man that we intended to try. With a sigh almost too faint to hear, he turned his head and said something to one of the maids. She scurried off, and returned with paper and pen.
Wordlessly, he set to work. I ignored the numbness in my extremities. Holmes was motionless.
In a minute or two, one question was answered: the message—or part of it at least—concerned a place, for the man’s pen began to shape a map.
Eventually, our host put aside the instrument and turned the sheet around to face us: a rough approximation of the Japanese coast, with roads and railways depicted by lines straight and cross-hatched, respectively. The gentleman put one finger on a dot near the bottom margin of the page. “Arima,” he said, raising his eyebrows in a question. When he was satisfied that we understood, he moved his finger up to a dot to the north of us and said, “Kyoto.” After that came “Nagoya,” then “Tokyo.” Retracing his path along a faint, winding inland route between Tokyo and Kyoto, he said, “Nakasendo.” Finally, his finger stopped beside a tiny ink dot on the inland road: “Mojiro-joku.”
He then moved his hand to tap the first line of kanji, and repeated the village name. He then pointed to the second and longer line, and said, “Please to arrive at three in afternoon, Thursday. Today Monday. Wakarimasuka?” Do you understand?
“We are to arrive in the town of Mojiro-joku at three o’clock Thursday afternoon,” Holmes replied.
“That winding line is the Nakasendo Road,” I said to Holmes. “Up the Kiso Valley. It was one of the two main highways during the Edo period.” The cheaply printed book that Miss Sato—Haruki-san—had given me was of poems Bashō had written about the Nakasendo, which had, as I remembered, sixty-nine stations along its 330-some miles.
“Kiso-kaido, hai,” agreed the innkeeper, looking relieved at my comprehension. “Nakasendo,” then a stream of words that either warned us of typhoons and highwaymen, or told us that the two things meant the same road. I hoped the latter, since some of the familiar sounds might have been a bit worrying, if I thought I was understanding them correctly: rain, yes, and river, but bears? At the end, he paused, then said once more, with slow emphasis, “Mojiro-joku.”
Holmes and I pronounced the words after him, causing him to beam in relief. He checked that the ink was dry, then folded his map up and, with both hands, delivered it into Holmes’ for safekeeping. He bowed; we bowed.
We had been dismissed.
Dismissed, but not heartlessly abandoned. We were assigned a cheerful lad we had seen around the inn, whose task, it seemed, was to escort us safely onto a train—the train for which we had two tickets. His only word of English was “hello” (or more specifically, “ ’aro”) which he used at all possible occasions. He grinned at the bounce of the rickshaws, grinned at the bustle around the train station, grinned as he pushed us into the arms of the station-master.
I decided, rather too late for it to do me any good, that the boy was a bit lacking in wits.
We had either missed our train, or the tickets were for some other station. If not country.
The station-master drew himself up to his full five and a half feet, resting one white-gloved hand on the truncheon at his belt. The other thrust out our two apparently useless scraps of paper.
Reluctantly, Holmes took them. One could almost hear our brains whirring through the possibilities, but as it happened, I found an answer first, triggered by a conversation with our absent teacher and the deep, red-faced humiliation of an innkeeper with inadequate footwear.
I bowed, and assembled a sentence to use against the official. “I am very sorry. Can you help me? I wish to save a man from shame.” And then I named the innkeeper of the onsen who had just evicted us.
The station-master’s officiousness paused a moment. I remained in my obsequious position, and haltingly explained. Holmes caught on instantly, and bowed as well. Even more helpful, he fed me words when mine faltered: The innkeeper gave us the tickets. The innkeeper’s boy brought us here. The innkeeper was wrong. We would return to the onsen and show him the mistake. He would be most ashamed, but what could one do? Unless the honourable station-master could help …?
In a town the size of Arima, the two men had to know each other. It was always possible that the two were mortal enemies, but even if that were the case, we would be no worse off than we were now.
We waited, heads inclined. After a moment, the white-gloved official replied with a bow of his own. Then he plucked the tickets from Holmes’ fingers and snapped out an order. We followed him across the station to the ticket office, straining our ears at the rapid-fire conversation. After a string of Hais and a lot of ducking of her head, the young ticket-seller pulled the offending tickets towards her, then hesitated.
A lot more conversation, increasingly vexed, and a great deal of bowing and sideways glances of apprehension at our persons.
“Holmes, I think our tickets may be no good.”
The woman’s gaze slid in my direction. “Tickets good,” she said, then corrected herself. “Were good, for morning train. But this not right class, for you.”
“Ah.” Perhaps Westerners were expected to shell out for First-Class seats? I dug the little bag out of my valise, offering her the coins inside.
Her face looked surprised, then uncomfortable. She looked to the station-master for a command decision.
The two set about debating the issue. While they were so engaged, I spotted an English-language map and brochure, printed with fare, simple map, and schedule. Holmes and I put our heads down over its creative English, and eventually determined that a First-Class ticket was three times the price of a Third-Class, and Second-Class twice that of Third.
Holmes broke into the ongoing debate. “We do not need First-Class. Even exchange. Wakarimasuka?”
“Hai,” she said, then translated for the station-master. Both of them looked at us with dubious expressions. We arranged our faces with encouragement and approval. The man finally gave a small shake to his head and ordered the woman to issue us the equivalent tickets for a later train. She did so, then carefully explained the hieroglyphics they held. It was a train to Kyoto, leaving in ninety-four minutes.
We accepted the slips of paper, gave them both many appreciative bows and thanks, and made our escape out onto the street. I tucked the schedule carefully away.
I still had the cloth bag in my hand. I pulled open the top, and took out a worn copper coin. “These appear to be almost worthless, Holmes. Our first stop needs to be a Thomas Cook. Failing that, we might get money out of a bank.”
“Russell, we have been issued with a challenge.”
“True.” I dropped the one sen coin onto the others and folded the bag away. “Do we want to accept it?”
“Why not?”
Indeed.
He looked up the street, at the shops and the busy traffic, wheeled and otherwise. “Perhaps we might begin with transformation.”
The clothing of a Buddhist pilgrim was basically that of a Japanese peasant: short white jacket over white trousers, sturdy shoes or sandals, a rucksack on the shoulders and a cloth bag around the neck, with a conical straw hat and a sturd
y walking stick. Variations and refinements are, as one might expect, legion, with stoles, prayer beads, bells, badges, and all the paraphernalia under the heavens.
When I stepped out of the ladies’ room in my garb and saw Holmes, it was hard not to laugh aloud. Particularly with a Bond Street valise at his feet.
By his face, he felt much the same at my appearance.
“Still,” I said, “they’re quite comfortable.”
“At least you’re not required to strap yourself into a kimono and obi.”
“Shades of Palestine. But we have to get rid of these valises. For one thing, they’re leather.”
With that goal and ninety minutes at our disposal, we plunged into the active street.
Our first purchase was a pair of cheap cloth squares. These were called “furoshiki,” and were used by everyone, to carry everything. There in the shop, we decanted the essentials from our valises, ruthlessly pruning away extra garments, writing implements, and—hardest of all—books. I hesitated over these, and in the end, kept only Haruki-san’s Bashō. We then turned to the fascinated audience that had gathered to watch these proceedings, and asked if anyone saw anything they wanted to buy.
A pen, a notebook, all our handkerchiefs, a waistcoat knit by Mrs Hudson, two silk scarves, and many stockings went instantly, each sale producing a few coins. We worked our way up the street, hawking the remainder and bargaining for a few essentials along the way. When we started, we collected looks that were as close to outrage as they were to befuddlement; by the time we finished, the walking sticks we carried and straw hats we wore gave us instant identity as henro, pilgrims. Our height and our eyes might attract second glances, but mostly as we were already moving away.
We even found a buyer for the valises, at a shop where we purchased two sturdy cloth rucksacks. Silver in pocket, sticks in hand, we marched back to the train station.
The station-master’s face was indescribable. Mouth hanging open, he pointed mutely towards the waiting crowd.