“Kin, old man, I’ve got a pain right here. I wonder what it is.”
“That’s your stomach. Stomach pains can kill you. You’d better watch it carefully,” is Kin’s most earnest advice.
“But it’s here, on my left,” says the first one, pointing at his left lung.
“Sure, that there’s your stomach. On the left, the stomach, and on the right, the lung.”
“Really? I thought the stomach was about here,” and this time he taps himself lightly on the hip.
“Don’t be silly, that’s the lumbago,” Kin mockingly replies.
At this point, a man of about twenty-five or twenty-six and sporting a thin moustache jumped into the bath with a plop. Next minute, the soap and loosened dirt upon his body rose to the surface, and the water glinted richly as if it might be mined for mineral wealth. Right beside him a bald-headed old man is talking to some close-cropped crony. Only their heads are visible above the water.
“Nothing’s much fun anymore when you get to be old like me. Once one gets decrepit, one can’t keep up with the youngsters. But when it comes to a hot bath, even though they say that only lads can take real heat, that, for me, must still be really hot. Otherwise,” the old man boastfully observed, “I don’t feel right.”
“But you, sir, are in spanking health. Not bad at all to be as energetic as you are.”
“I’m not all that energetic, you know. I only manage to keep free from illness. A man, they say, should live to be a hundred and twenty provided he does nothing bad.”
“What! Does one live as long as that?”
“Of course. I guarantee it up to a hundred and twenty. In the days before the Restoration there was a family called Magaribuchi-they were personal retainers of the Shogun—they used to live up here in Tokyo at Ushigome—and one of their male servants lived to a hundred and thirty.”
“That’s a remarkable age.”
“Yes, indeed. He was in fact so old that he’d clean forgotten his age.
He told me he could remember it until he turned a hundred, but then he just lost count. Anyway, when I knew him he was a hundred and thirty and still going strong. I don’t know what’s become of him. For all I know, he may be out there still, still alive and kicking.” So saying, he emerged from the bath. His whiskered friend remained in the water, grinning to himself and scattering all around him suds that glittered like small flecks of mica. The man who thereupon got into the bath was certainly no ordinary monster; for all across his back was spread a vast tattoo. It seemed to represent that legendary hero, lwami Jutaro-, about to decapitate a python with a huge high-brandished sword. For some sad reason, the tattoo has not yet been completed and the python must be guessed at. The great Jutaro- looks a mite discomfited. As this illustrated man jumped into the water, “Much too tepid,” he remarked. The man entering immediately behind him seems disposed to agree. “Oh dear,” he says, “they ought to heat it up a bit.” Just the same his features crack into a strained grimace, as though the water were in fact too hot for him.
Finding himself right next to the tattooed monster, “Hello, chief,” he greets him.
The tattooed monster nodded and, after a while, enquired “And how is Mr. Tami?”
“Couldn’t say. He’s gone so potty about gambling. . . ”
“Not just gambling. . . ”
“So? There’s something wrong with that one. He’s always bloody-minded. I don’t know, but no one really likes him. Can’t quite put a finger on it. Somehow one can’t quite trust him. A man with a trade just shouldn’t be like that.”
“Exactly. Mr. Tami is rather too pleased with himself. Too damn stuck up, I’d say. That’s why folk don’t trust him. Wouldn’t you say?”
“You’re right. He thinks he’s in a class by himself. Which never pays.”
“All the old craftsmen around here are dying off. The only ones left are you, Mr. Moto the cooper, the master brickmaker, and that’s about it. Of course, as you know, I too was born in these parts. But just take Mr. Tami. Nobody knows where he sprang from.”
“True. It’s a wonder that he’s come as far as he has.”
“Indeed it is. Somehow nobody likes him. Nobody even wants to pass the time of day with such an awkward bastard.” Poor old Mr. Tami is getting it in the neck from all and sundry.
Shifting my gaze away from the section filled with filthy rainwater, I now concentrate upon the section filled with limey goo. It proves to be packed with people. Indeed, it would be more exact to describe it as containing hot water between men rather than as containing men in its hot water. All the creatures here are, moreover, quite remarkably lethargic.
For quite some time now, men have been climbing in but none has yet climbed out. One cannot wonder that the water gets fouled when so many people use it and a whole week trundles by before the water’s changed. Duly impressed by the turmoil in that tub, I peered more deeply among its tight-squeezed monsters and there I found my wretched master cowering in the left-hand corner, squashed and par-boiled poppy-red. Poor old thing! Someone ought to make a gap and let him scramble out. But no one seems willing to budge an inch, and indeed my master himself appears perfectly happy to stay where he is.
He simply stands there motionless as his skin climbs through the gradu-ations of red to a vile vermilion. What a ghastly ordeal! I guess his readiness to suffer such dire reddening reflects a determination to extract his full two farthings worth in return for the bathhouse fee. But, devoted as I am to that dim monster of mine, I cannot sit here comfy on my ledge without worrying lest, dizzied by steam and medicating chemicals, he drown if he dallies longer. As these thoughts drifted through my mind, the fellow floating next to my master frowns and then remarks, “All the same, this is a bit too strong. It’s boiling up, really scorching, from somewhere here behind me.” I deduce that, reluctant to come out with a flat complaint which might impugn his manliness, he is trying indirectly to rouse the sympathy of his boiling fellow-monsters.