“I thank you for your regular and daily visits to my humble establishment. Today it is, beyond these friendly walls, more than a little chilly; so please, I beg of you, take your time, both within and without my spotless baths, to warm yourselves at comfortable leisure. Hey, you there you in charge of the baths, make quite sure that the water is kept at precisely the proper temperature.”
To which the bath attendant briefly answers, “Right.”
“Now there’s an amiable fellow,” says the cracked historian of the doings of Coxinga, speaking admiringly of the aged proprietor. “To run this kind of business, you have to have his knack for it.”
I was so struck by the sudden appearance of this strange old man that I decided to discontinue my overall surveillance of the bathhouse scene while I concentrated upon a more particularized scanning of so rum an individual. As I watched him, the old man, catching sight of a child some four years old who has just finished bathing, extends a mottled hand and, in that wheedling voice with which the old present their false advances to the young, calls out, “Come over here, my master.” The child, frightened by that trampled pudding of a face which the gaffer bent upon him, promptly began to scream. The old man looked surprised. “Why! you’re crying! What’s the matter? Frightened of the old man? Well, I never!” His voice showed that he was genuinely astonished but, soon giving up this coaxing as a bad job, he quickly switched his attentions to the child’s father. “Hello, Gen-san! How are you? A bit cold today, eh? And what about that burglar who broke into the big shop round the corner? Must have been a fathead. He cut a square hole in the wooden side-gate but then, can you believe it, took off without nicking a thing. Must have seen a copper or a watchman, I suppose. But what a waste of effort, eh!” Still grinning at the idea of the burglar’s rash stupidity, he turns to someone else. “Isn’t it cold, though! Perhaps, being young, you don’t yet feel how it bites.” It seems to me that, unique in his antiquity, he’s the only person in the building who feels the cold at all.
Having been thus absorbed for several minutes in studying the old man’s antics, I had virtually forgotten about all the other monsters, including my own master who was presumably still wedged in his boiling corner. I was jerked from my absorption by a sudden loud shouting in the middle of the room. And who should be the source of it but Mr.
Sneaze himself. That my master’s voice should be overloud and dis-agreeably indistinct is nothing new, but I was a little surprised to hear it raised in this particular place. I guessed in a flash that his raucous yaw-ping had been caused by a rush of blood to his noddle in consequence of his unwisely protracted immersion in water heated up to cure all ills.
Naturally, no one would object to such a hullaballoo, however raspingly unpleasant, if it were brought on by physical distress: but, as grew obvious soon enough, my beloved master, far from being geyser-dizzied out of his normal senses, was in fact being very much his own true self when he started bawling in that thickly violent voice. For the cause of the nasty uproar was a childishly idiotic squabble which he had started with some conceited pup, some totally insignificant houseboy.
“Get away from here! Go on, further off! You’re splashing water into my pail.” His shouting scraped one’s eardrums. One’s attitude to such outbursts depends, of course, upon one’s point of view. One could, for instance, as I had done, conclude he had just gone potty with the heat.
Another, perhaps one generous-minded person in ten thousand, might see a parallel with that courageous tongue lashing which Takayama Hikokuro dared to inflict upon a bandit. For all I know, that may have been precisely how my master saw himself. But since the houseboy clearly does not see himself in the bandit’s role, we are unlikely to witness a successful repetition of that historic encounter.
“I was sitting here long before you came and plumped yourself down.” The boy’s reply, calmly delivered over his shoulder, was not unreasonable. But, since that answer made it clear that the lad was not prepared to budge, it did not please my master. My master, even though his blood was up, must have realized that neither the words nor the style of their delivery could really be picked upon as those of a bandit, but his howling outburst was not in fact occasioned by the boy’s propinquity or any splashing of water. The truth was that, for some considerable time, the boy and his equally young companion had been swapping remarks in a pertly unpleasing manner utterly inappropriate to their age. My master had endured their prattle for as long as he could but, more and more exasperated, had finally blown up. Consequently, even though he had been perfectly civilly answered, the real cause of his fury remained unsoothed and he could not bring himself to leave the place without a last explosion of his heart. “Hobbledehoys,” he shouted. “Damned young idiots. Splashing your dirty water in other people’s pails.”
In my own heart of hearts I felt considerable sympathy for my master, because I, too, had found the boys’ behavior actively distasteful.
Nevertheless, I was bound to regard my master’s behavior during the incident as conduct unbecoming in a teacher. The trouble is that he is, by nature, something of a dry, old stick. Far too strict and far too rigid.
Not only is he as rough and dessicated as a lump of coke, but he’s also cinder-hard. I’m told that years ago when Hannibal was crossing the Alps, the advance of his army was impeded by a gigantic rock inconveniently blocking the mountain path. Hannibal is said to have soused the stone with vinegar and then to have lit a bonfire underneath it. The rock thus softened, he sawed it into segments, like someone slicing fish-paste, and so passed all his army safely on its way. A man like my master, on whom no effect whatsoever is produced by hours of steady boiling in a medicated bath, ought perhaps to be soused with vinegar and then grilled on an open fire. Failing some such treatment, his granitic obstinacy will not be softened though hordes of houseboys niggle away at the igneous rock of his nature for a hundred thousand years.