by Rokuro Inui
VII
“I wish Niza had killed me that day.”
Perhaps because her wounds were not fully healed, Hatori pressed one hand to her chest as she walked, with difficulty, beside Kyuzo.
“I have outlived him two times now,” she added.
They were on the road that ran beside the banks of the canal surrounding the Thirteen Floors. The pleasure quarters towered above them, the red lacquered railings and lattices around every floor gleaming in the sunlight. The canal itself was filled with stagnant green water, and its banks were crowded with the lowliest, cheapest brothels.
“I never thought the day would come when I would look up at this building from outside it,” said Hatori. “I owe it all to him.”
The marshy banks of the canal were dense with reeds. In the shadow of the reeds, swarms of water striders made tiny ripples on the water.
It was Kyuzo who had come up with the plan after the automaton he had made forgot what it was and turned up at his house.
The habitat it brought with it was indeed a masterpiece, likely sufficient to buy Hatori out from under all her debts.
Nizaemon himself had departed their world, but Kyuzo saw that if the habitat were sold and Hatori freed, she could live as husband and wife with the automaton that looked just like him. It might be some small comfort, and all she would need to do was pretend to be an automaton herself.
This was the argument that had overcome her initial lack of enthusiasm when Kyuzo had taken pity on her and explained his idea.
Kyuzo stopped at the edge of the reeds. Hatori bowed shallowly to him, then turned to leave.
He felt the urge to call after her, ask what she would do next, but thought better of it. Whatever her answer, he had no way to help her.
As he watched her walk away, he felt the precariousness of life, its thinness. She almost looked translucent.
He looked away, noticing a cricket that was much larger than might be expected, given the season, sitting on one of the reeds.
When he reached toward it in curiosity, a sudden gust of wind set the reeds rattling.
Narrowing his eyes, he searched for where the cricket had gone. He saw that it had fallen into the water of the canal, where a single frog was approaching it. The frog snapped at the insect once, then spat it out again as if unhappy about its taste.
“Not fooling the frogs yet, I see,” Kyuzo murmured with a rueful grin. “So much to learn, so little time …”
He turned away and set off in the opposite direction from Hatori.
I
When I was pregnant with you, I dreamt there was a whale in my belly.
The voice of Geiemon Tentoku’s mother came back to him as he stood on the slightly inclined bathhouse floor, slapping the thick cypress pillar with his oversized hands: left, right, left, right.
The exercise was called teppo, after the word for the pole used in an actual sumo stable. It involved lunging at the pillar, bracing yourself with one hand and slapping the pillar’s side with the other, then switching sides and doing it again. Deep handprints sunk into the pillar’s gleaming lacquered surface testified to Tentoku’s long years of practice and also served as guides as he silently ran through the exercise, making the whole building shake.
His body radiated heat. His back was tattooed with a fin whale surrounded by foaming waves that extended to the ends of his limbs, and this all but prevented him from sweating. After half an hour of practice he felt as if his blood were boiling.
At birth, Tentoku had weighed three times what the average newborn did. He was so large that when his shoulders got caught in the birth canal, it took three people to pull him out. When he finally emerged in a flood of amniotic fluid, it had been like hauling a baby whale aboard a fishing boat.
His mother had loved telling that story. Tentoku had lived with her on the lowest of the Thirteen Floors only until the age of five, and her account of his birth was one of his few vivid memories of her.
“Gei!” The voice cut through the damp, heavy slapping from the teppo exercise. “Are you almost ready?”
Tentoku turned to see Chitose leaning out of the tall, red lacquered chair that towered over the changing room.
Chitose was in her fifties. Once a beautiful young woman with a brisk, straightforward manner, now there was white in her hair, and the sharpness of her personality had rounded out along with her face and figure. She handled most of the bathhouse’s day-to-day management these days, in place of her husband, Senroku, who could scarcely walk due to his beriberi.
It was time for Tentoku to finish up his morning exercises, bring in the firewood, and start heating the bathwater.
Tentoku nodded to Chitose and removed the mawashi he wrapped around his waist for training, leaving him completely naked.
The bathhouse’s changing room was shared by male and female customers, without even a partition to divide them, but the baths themselves were separate. The entrance to each bath was built like a red torii gate set into the wall. To keep the steam in, the middle crossbar of the torii was set low in the frame, and the space above was filled by a wooden board with a pine tree painted on it.
Most people had to duck to get under the crossbar, but with Tentoku’s bulk he practically had to crawl.
The bath chamber was dim and cool. Last night’s water had gone completely cold. Tentoku used one of the rinsing buckets to scoop up some water and pour it over his head, repeating the process until he felt cooler.
He then returned to the changing room, dried himself briskly with a hand towel, tied a waistcloth on, and then turned toward the shelf above Chitose’s high chair and clapped his hands together.
This shelf was the bathhouse’s kamidana and proudly displayed a talisman from Kehaya Shrine.
Taima no Kehaya was the patron deity of sumo. In the Age of Myth, his bout with Nomi no Sukune had turned into a battle to the death. Nomi no Sukune had broken Kehaya’s ribs and thrown him to the ground, but as he had raised his leg to deliver the finishing blow, Kehaya had seized it and flipped his opponent over, snatching a miraculous victory from the jaws of defeat.
This technique was now known as the tsumatori, or rear toe pick, and it was Tentoku’s signature move.
“Always the diligent one,” said Chitose, noticing Tentoku with his palms pressed together as she returned to her chair. “When’s your next match?”
“The tournament to raise funds for Renkon Inari,” said Tentoku bluntly. Smiling did not come easily to him. But Chitose seemed delighted all the same.
Renkon Inari was the shrine at the entrance to Tengen Street, a busy thoroughfare lined with the mansions of merchants, wholesalers, and representatives of the provincial domains. The deity Inari’s festival day was the first Day of the Ox in the second month, so each year Renkon Inari hosted a sumo tournament on that day to solicit donations.
“If it’s a fund-raising tournament, then women will be allowed to watch too,” said Chitose happily.
Tournaments held under imperial patronage were strictly off-limits to women except for a special round held on the last day. But shrine tournaments to raise funds were open to man, woman, or child.
Tentoku nodded, looking slightly troubled. “But that’s also a gift day,” he said. “Won’t you be busy?”
“Gift day” was a broad term applied to days that included New Year’s Day, the five imperial observances, and the Ebisu-ko Festival honoring the god of wealth and prosperity. On gift days, the bathhouse plied its guests with tea and sake, and they offered gifts of cash in return. To be seen at the bathhouse on gift day was de rigueur for any Tempuite worthy of the name, so they were always busy.
“It’ll be all right,” said Chitose. “I can leave the high chair to someone else for half an hour while I watch your bout.” She patted him firmly on the back. “Better get to work. Go around back and fire up the boilers. Don’t forget to put out
the sign like always when they ring the bells for the fifth hour.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Tentoku walked around the high chair to the entranceway, slipped on a pair of sandals, and stepped outside.
The road was still shrouded in early-morning fog. He saw tofu and fish peddlers hurrying toward the residential longhouses and compounds.
“Hey, it’s Geiemon Tentoku!” said one, stopping in his tracks.
Tentoku did not recognize his face. He stood cautiously where he was as the stranger approached without hesitation and casually slapped Tentoku’s chest with his open palm.
“Look at the size of you!” the man said. “You work here?”
When Tentoku nodded silently, the man lowered the lacquered boxes that hung from a pole he balanced on his shoulder, opened a drawer in one, and began rummaging around for something. He seemed to be a seller of tools and sundries; Tentoku saw knives and planes in the drawer, among other things.
“You’re just eighteen, right?” the merchant said. “Keep up the hard work and a stable’ll take you on in no time.”
“How do you know so much about me?”
“From this,” said the man, pulling a colorful woodblock print in protective cloth from the drawer.
Tentoku’s eyes flew open. He snatched the print from the man’s hand and examined it closely.
The fin whale tattoo, the waves foaming down the arms and legs, even the traditional wrestler’s yagura-otoshi hairstyle … There was no doubt about it: this was a picture of him.
In the print, he had a twisted cloth hachimaki around his forehead and was using a thick wooden go board (held one handed, naturally) to fan the fires of the bathhouse boilers.
A few other prints were in the cloth packet, all depicting Tentoku as well. One had him defeating a wicked ogre in battle; another showed an actual bout he had fought, with his famous rear toe pick securing the victory.
“What is this?” muttered Tentoku.
“One of my esteemed customers can’t get enough of you. I bought some of the Aoiya’s prints as a present for him, but this is even better. Can I get a handprint? It’ll help me land a really big order.”
“The Aoiya?” Tentoku was only growing more confused.
“Come on, as if you didn’t know! Their prints of you are the talk of the town. Why Kainsai does pictures of you instead of one of the real stars, I don’t know, but—”
The man suddenly closed his mouth, obviously regretting what he had said. He watched Tentoku for his reaction, but Tentoku offered none. He simply handed the man his prints back and headed for the rear of the bathhouse again.
“Don’t get bent out of shape, okay?” he heard the man calling from behind him.
Tentoku did not keep up with every trend and rumor in Tempu, but even he knew about the Aoiya and Kainsai.
The Aoiya was a publishing house, and Kainsai was an artist who specialized in bijinga—pictures of beautiful women. Some of Kainsai’s works were on the risqué side, but none were too explicit, and perhaps for that reason they were popular among men and women alike. Tentoku had seen other wrestlers passing Kainsai’s work around in the dressing rooms before tournaments.
There was a peculiar eroticism about the figures Kainsai drew. Even Tentoku, whose line of work had made him more than accustomed to the sight of a naked woman, sometimes blushed at Kainsai’s compositions.
But now, it seemed, Kainsai had chosen him as subject. And Tentoku had no idea why.
II
The woman was back again.
Tentoku stared in surprise.
When she removed the obi around her waist and let her red kosode slip from her shoulders, the men in the changing room and washing area grew restless.
Her skin was fair. She was skinny and flat chested, but her lips were red and there was an ambiguity to her appearance that did not fail to attract attention—depending on how you looked at her, you might see a young girl or a woman in her prime.
Perhaps feeling his eyes on her, the woman turned toward Tentoku. She met his gaze with thinly translucent eyes like colored glass, red lips curving into a smile.
“Something on your mind, Tentoku?”
The voice of the elderly bathhouse regular he was currently attending to brought him back to his senses, and he hurriedly resumed scrubbing her back with a bran bag.
When he glanced toward the changing room again, the woman was already gone.
Glancing around the washing area, he saw her through the white steam, trimming her pubic hair with a set of the bathhouse’s kekiri stones. He did not know her name or anything else about her except that she occasionally bathed here.
Once, and only once, she had asked him to wash her back for her. Her skin had felt peculiar in a way he could neither pinpoint exactly nor forget. He had washed hundreds, thousands of backs in his time, old and young, male and female, but there was something unmistakably different about hers.
Since that day, every time she visited the bathhouse he hoped that she would call on his services again. But despite her polite nod and smile when their eyes met, she never did.
“Tentoku, over here,” called another woman as the aged regular he had just finished washing disappeared into the female bath chamber.
“Coming,” said Tentoku. The whale on his back flexed like a living thing as he walked through the steam, as if swimming through the ocean in the hours just after dawn when mist still clung to the water.
Wearing only his waistcloth and twisted headband, Tentoku began to scrub O-Tomi, the customer who had called him over. Her youth had long since left her, but her appetites had not.
“I hear you’ll be in the tournament at Renkon Inari,” she purred. Leaning back into him, she grabbed his hand with a mischievous grin and guided it to her generous bosom.
None of this was new to Tentoku, so he shook off her hand without comment, reached to one side for the bucket, and poured hot water over O-Tomi’s shoulders. It sluiced through the slatted platform her stool rested on, then ran across the slightly inclined floor to the central drain.
O-Tomi frowned and sighed in disappointment. “You’re too young to be so unflappable,” she said. “Would it kill you to feign a little embarrassment sometimes?”
“Sorry,” Tentoku said.
“Never mind, never mind,” O-Tomi said. “I’m just another old lady, after all.” She reached behind her head to put her hair up again. “You might not guess from looking at me, but I help all the young men from the longhouses through their first time. You haven’t had yours yet, from the look of you. What do you say? Can I offer some assistance?”
She flashed him a playful grin. It was true that Tentoku had not yet known the embrace of a woman.
The hollow clack of wood on wood sounded from above. “O-Tomi, stop teasing our Tentoku,” called Chitose from the high chair.
“Oh dear! You were listening?”
Good-natured laughter rippled across the washing area.
The clientele ranged in age from the elderly to newborn babes, and Tentoku knew them all.
He had been raised here from a young age by Senroku, the bathhouse’s owner, and his wife, Chitose.
Years ago, before baths had been installed in the Thirteen Floors, Senroku and Chitose had operated a bath boat on the canal that surrounded it, offering their services to the courtesans who were unable to leave the brothel.
Senroku would busily stoke the fires to warm the tub set into the boat’s deck while Chitose took care of the customers, going down the queue and washing them with a bucket and hand towel one by one. There were other boats offering washing services, but only Senroku and Chitose’s had a real bathtub.
Tentoku had been born in the cheapest brothel on the lowest floor. At the age of five, he was already formidable. When Senroku offered to take him in to help with the bathhouse, his once-kin
d mother turned suddenly cold. “Go on, get out of here,” she told him. “You’re only in the way here.” He remembered being ushered aboard the boat, confused and sobbing, and watching the receding form of his mother on the shore. That had been more than ten years ago now.
He finished washing O-Tomi’s back, and she thanked him and headed for the soaking tubs. When she stooped to pass through the door, he saw the pubic hair and red sex between her legs.
“Tentoku, you’ve got a visitor upstairs,” Chitose called from the high chair, leaning over the armrest. It was almost time for the evening bell, when the bathhouse closed.
Tentoku removed the twisted hand towel he wore as a headband, wrung it out, and mopped the sweat from his face.
He had no idea who his visitor might be, but despite his wariness he ascended the narrow stairway from the changing room.
The ceiling upstairs was barely six feet high, forcing Tentoku to hunch over whenever he was up there. It was a large wooden-floored room with boards for go and shogi and a scattering of customers relaxing with drinks.
“Over here, Tentoku,” called Senroku from one corner of the room.
Senroku’s beriberi made any walking difficult, and he seldom came out of his quarters in the rear of the bathhouse these days. He would not have dragged himself upstairs through the pain if Tentoku’s visitor were not very important indeed.
In Senroku’s youth, he had been a sumo wrestler too, known for his fearsome toughness. He had often helped Tentoku with training before illness had left him emaciated and gray.
Beside Senroku, a man sat leaning against the wall, looking down on the washing area through a foot-square window set in the wall. The man had his sword over his shoulder and looked slightly different from the other customers.
“Just a bunch of old bags,” he muttered in disgust, then turned to Tentoku.
“This is Seijuro,” said Senroku. “He’s a bodyguard for Chokichi Yaguruma.” Yaguruma was a minor gang leader in the area.
The man put his sake cup down on the floor.
