Hard Rain by Barry Eisler

Author:Barry Eisler [Eisler, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-02-26T19:03:57+00:00

12

THE NEXT DAY I contacted Tatsu via pager and our bulletin board, and arranged to meet him at noon at the Ginza-yusento, or public bath. Thesento is a Japanese institution, albeit one that has been in decline since not long after the war, when new apartments began to feature their own tubs and thesento became less a hygienic necessity and more a periodic indulgence. But, like all indulgences that are valued not just for their product but for their process, thesento will never entirely disappear. For in the unhurried rituals of scrubbing and soaking, and in the perspective of profound relaxation that can only be derived from immersion in water that the meek might describe as scalding, there are qualities of devotion, and celebration, and meditation, qualities that are necessary concomitants to a life worth living.

Ginza-yu exists at both geographical and psychological remove from the nearby shopping glitz for which its namesake is best known, hiding almost slyly in the shadow of the Takaracho expressway overpass, and making its presence known only with a faded, hand-painted sign. I waited in a doorway across the street until I saw Tatsu pull up in an unmarked car. He parked at the curb and got out. I watched him turn the corner into the bathhouse’s side entrance, then followed him in.

He saw me as I came up behind him. He had already taken off his shoes, and was about to place them in one of the small lockers just inside the entrance.

“Tell me what you have,” he said.

I retracted a bit as though hurt. He looked at me for a long moment, then sighed and asked, “How are you?”

I bent and took off my shoes. “Fine, thanks for asking. You?”

“Very well.”

“Your wife? Your daughters?”

He couldn’t help smiling at the mention of his family. He nodded and said, “Everyone is fine. Thank you.”

I grinned. “I’ll tell you more inside.”

We put our shoes away. I had already purchased the necessary accoutrements at the convenience store across the street-shampoo, soap, scrubbing cloth, and towels-and handed Tatsu what he needed as we went in. We paid the proprietor the government-mandated and -subsidized four hundred yen apiece, walked up the wide wooden stairs to the changing area, undressed in the unadorned locker room, then went through the sliding glass door to the bath beyond. The bathing area was empty-peak time would be in the evening-and, like the locker room, almost Spartan in its unpretentiousness: nothing more than a large square space, a high ceiling, white tile walls dripping with condensation, bright fluorescent lighting, and an exhaust fan on one wall that seemed forlorn from its long and losing battle with the steam within. The only concession to an aesthetic not strictly utilitarian was a large, brightly colored mosaic of Ginza 4-chome on the wall above the bath itself. We sat down to scrub.

The trick is to use hot water at the spigots where you sit, filling the sento-supplied low plastic pail with increasingly painful bucketfuls and pouring them over your head and body.

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