I walked through the central part of the hot springs town searching for a place to stay, but none of the decent inns would take guests after the dinner hour had passed. I stopped by five or six places, but they all turned me down, and finally, in a deserted area outside town, I ran across an inn that would take me that didn’t include a dinner charge. It was a totally desolate-looking lodging, a ramshackle place that might best be called a flophouse. The inn had seen many years go by, but it lacked all the charm you might expect from a quaint lodging of its age. Mismatched fittings here and there were ever so slightly slanted, as if slapdash repairs had been made. I doubted that it would make it through the next earthquake, and I could only hope that no tremblor would hit that day, or the next.
They didn’t serve dinner, but breakfast was included, and the fee for one night was incredibly cheap. Inside the entrance was a simple reception desk, behind which sat a completely hairless old man—devoid even of eyebrows—who took my payment for one night in advance. The lack of eyebrows made the old man’s largish eyes seem to glisten bizarrely, glaringly. There was a large brown cat, equally ancient, sacked out on a floor cushion beside him. Something must have been wrong with its nose, for it snored louder than any cat I’d ever heard. Occasionally the rhythm of its snores fitfully missed a beat. Everything in this inn seemed to be old, ancient, and falling apart.
The room I was shown to was small, like the little storage area where they keep futon bedding. The light on the ceiling was dim, and the flooring under the tatami creaked ominously with each step. But it was too late to be particular. I told myself I should be happy enough to have a roof over my head and a futon to sleep on.
I put my large shoulder bag, my only luggage, down on the floor and set off for town (this wasn’t exactly the type of room I wanted to lounge around in). I went into a nearby soba noodle shop and had a simple dinner. There weren’t any other restaurants open, so it was that place or nothing. I had a beer, some bar snacks, and some hot soba. The soba was mediocre, the soup lukewarm, but again, I wasn’t about to complain. It certainly beat going to bed on an empty stomach. After I left the soba shop, I thought I’d buy some snacks and a small bottle of whiskey, but couldn’t find a convenience store. It was after eight, and the only places open were the little shooting-gallery stalls typically found in hot springs towns. So I hoofed it back to the inn, changed into a yukata, and went downstairs to take a bath.
Compared to the shabby building and facilities, the hot springs bath at the inn was surprisingly wonderful. The steaming bathwater was a thick green color, not watered down, the sulfur odor more pungent than anything I’d ever experienced, and I soaked there, warming myself to the bone. There were no other bathers (I had no idea if there were even any people staying at the place besides me), and I was able to enjoy a long, leisurely soak. After a while I felt a little light-headed and got out to cool off. Then got back into the tub. Maybe this shoddy-looking little inn was a good choice after all, I figured. It was certainly more peaceful than bathing with some noisy tour group like in the larger inns.
—
I was soaking in the bath for the third time when the monkey slid open the door with a clatter and came inside. “Excuse me,” he said in a low voice. It took me a while to realize that this was a monkey. All the thick, hot water had left me a little dazed, and I’d never expected to hear a monkey speak, so I couldn’t quickly make the connection between what I was seeing and the fact that this was an actual monkey. My brain felt scattered as I gazed through the steam, uncomprehendingly, at the monkey, who slid the glass door closed behind him. He straightened up the little buckets that lay strewn about and stuck a thermometer into the bath to check the temperature. He gazed intently at the dial on the thermometer, his eyes narrowed, like a bacteriologist isolating some new strain of pathogen.
“How is the bath?” the monkey asked me.
“It’s very nice. Thank you,” I said. My voice reverberated densely, softly, in the steam. My voice sounded almost mythological. It didn’t sound like it came from me, but rather like an echo from the past returning from deep in the forest. And that echo was…hold on a second. What was a monkey doing here? And why was he speaking in a human language?
“Shall I scrub your back for you?” the monkey asked, his voice again low. He had the clear, alluring voice of a doo-wop baritone. Not at all what you would expect. But nothing was odd about his voice, and if you closed your eyes and listened, you’d think it was an ordinary person speaking.
“Yes, thanks,” I replied. It wasn’t like I was sitting there, hoping someone would come and scrub my back, but I was afraid if I turned him down, he might think I was dead set against having a monkey ever scrub me down. It was a kind gesture on his part, I figured, and I certainly didn’t want to hurt his feelings. So I slowly rose up out of the tub, plunked myself down
