by Leo McKay
“Have you been there?” Meta asked.
Yuka shook her head. “I see a picture,” she said.
“This way,” Yuka says suddenly, crinkling the map into a pocket and picking up her Louis Vuitton bag. Meta struggles to keep up as Yuka heads off down a narrow street.
The rain that was teeming down when they left Tokyo is wafting slowly here in big flakes. The snow is on the wet side of firm, and the flakes are piling up quickly. The accumulation has been pushed back from the streets several times already. The banks beside Meta are almost waist-high. Still, the ground is covered with a thick white blanket, and though there are tire tracks on the streets and footprints on the sidewalks, the only movement in sight is the falling of snow.
Meta is pleasantly surprised at the sight of the rest house. At first glance, it appears to be less than five years old. Its steel and glass arches, though no more than three storeys tall, give the building an air of grandeur set against the snow-softened greenery that surrounds them. Inside the spacious lobby, walls of glass stretch all the way to the vaulted ceiling, letting daylight stream in. The hostess who shows them around takes them through the entrance and lobby into a vast games room that is carpeted and full of plush chairs and tables and cluttered with boxes of board games. On an elevated floor at the far end stand the ping-pong tables, two of them. Most of the guests, the hostess informs them, are getting ready for dinner, which will be served in twenty minutes.
“There is very nice onsen bath here,” Yuka says. “I see a picture.”
Meta plops down on the loveseat and feels herself sink into the plush. Their room is large, with windows at the far end that look out over a terraced balcony and a snow-covered garden of evergreen trees and shrubs. Just inside the windows there is a sitting area: a loveseat and chair with a coffee table between. Their room is so clean and new and spacious, the view outside the window so tranquil, that the effect is to immediately cleanse Meta of the crampedness, clutter, and grubbiness of Tokyo.
“This place is unbelievable,” she says. She looks out over the garden, letting the peacefulness of the scene lull her. Yuka is scurrying about unpacking. Meta wishes her friend would slow down now that they are here in the mountains. Yuka made the reservation for the rest house long ago, before her boyfriend went to Kyoto. She’d even made arrangements for Kazuhiro to spend the weekend with a relative who lived near the seashore at Chiba, two hours south of the city. Meta knows she herself is an afterthought, second choice.
“Now is time for meal,” Yuka says. She rushes to the door and holds it open, waiting for Meta to get up from where she’s settled in.
The dining room is traditional, with tatami mats, low tables, and cushions to sit on, seating maybe 150 people or more. Everyone but Meta and Yuka is dressed in a yukata, a casual belted robe made from cotton. Most seem to be retirement-aged. There are a lot of smiles in the room, which unnerves Meta somewhat. She is used to the stone-faced expressions people wear on the streets of Tokyo, but this is where people go to deliberately shed that disguise. People are actually laughing, calling out to each other.
A hostess shows them to the table that corresponds to their room number. The meal is already laid out for them, cooling.
Each place setting has several vessels, small and large, each containing a separate part of the meal. There is a bowl of miso soup with seaweed and tofu, a bowl of hot rice, a plate of grilled fish, a smaller plate with some fried tofu, several small dishes, each with a different sort of pickle, a tray for dipping sauces, a small plate of wasabe, some pickled ginger root, and a good portion of battered deep-fried vegetables.
Yuka raises a tiny glass of sake to her lips and takes a taste. “This is low-quality sake,” she says. “But taste is not so bad.”
Meta still feels cold and damp after being outside in the snow, and she drinks the miso before it cools. This does nothing to warm her, so she raises the sake to her lips and tips it back in a single swallow. She almost gags on the flavour, but the alcohol goes shooting through her, shaking her with a quick, invigorating shiver, then settling to a fiery ball in her stomach that begins slowly to spread through her.
They eat hungrily after their journey, with barely enough room between bites for conversation. Occasionally Yuka explains what some food item is, how it is prepared, or exactly how one is supposed to eat it.
At the end of the meal, Meta leans back and feels herself sink pleasantly into the cushion she sits on. The tightness in her begins to loosen. Beautiful scenery, some alcohol, a full stomach, these have worked a spell on her. Across the table, Yuka smiles at her, and two age lines bracket her mouth. It has been several weeks since her boyfriend’s departure, and Meta thinks that part of Yuka’s changed demeanour is probably due to a gradual loss of physical pain. She isn’t pounded on regularly, and this may be the first time since Meta has known her that Yuka is not nursing a fresh injury.
They return to their room when the meal is over. There is light coming in from the windows on the courtyard, but the sun has set and the light shines down from the still-lit clouds and reflects up from the snow. The maids have come through and laid out their futons, taking them from the big closets in the walls. Giant, thick quilts cover both beds, and Meta throws herself onto one, wiggling down into its softness. Face in the bedding, she opens her eyes just wide enough to see the pure, clean light that suffuses the room.
“Don’t fall asleep yet,” Yuka says.
Meta opens her eyes fully and rolls onto her back to see Yuka standing naked over her. Her clothes are folded neatly on the chair beside her, and the yukata, supplied with the room, is draped over a forearm. Meta startles at this sudden vision of flesh. On the only occasions Meta had seen Yuka’s skin, it has been burned or bruised or bandaged or swelling over a broken bone. Now in the magical light of Hakone, her dark, wheat-coloured skin glows with the same wavelength of light as the room. Her two small, round breasts curve up slightly to peak into large, dark nipples. Yuka slips the robe over her shoulders and cinches it at the waist.
“Now we will go onsen,” Yuka says.
Meta lies back on the futon. She does not want to move. Everything inside her is leaning toward sleep. “I don’t want to go anywhere,” she says.
“You must come onsen,” Yuka says. Her tone expresses an absolute lack of choice. “But first is small surprise.”
She bends down to her suitcase and pushes through some clothes until she pulls out a brown paper bag with black kanji on the side. Meta recognizes the symbol for alcohol. On top of the clothes in the suitcase, there is a package of Some Time cigarettes.
“This is top-quality sake,” Yuka says, sliding the traditional 1.8 litre bottle from the sack. She unscrews the cap from the bottle and fills two small glasses. “This should be much warmer, but …” She sets the two glasses on a dressing table. Meta reaches for a glass, but Yuka puts a hand on her wrist.
“When you are in your yukata and ready to go onsen, then you may take sake.”
“All right, all right,” Meta says, conceding to the desire for sake. She slips out of her clothes, and keeping her eyes down, pulls the yukata quickly around her.
The two women stand with their small glasses of sake. “Good sake is drink very slowly,” Yuka says. She brings her glass to her lips. A pink tip of tongue moves out to meet the lip of the glass as it nears her mouth. She takes a microscopic taste. Meta watches her carefully and repeats her exact motions. The sake is delicious. It is absolutely tasty. For the first time she understands why someone might want to drink sake. The flavour is so delicate, crystalline. At the taste, the blood begins to move quickly inside her. She feels her face flush.
At the far end of the onsen room is a one-and-a-half-storey wall of glass. On the other side of the glass: a pond, some large rocks, greenery, snow. The onsen room itself is huge, luxurious, what the Japanese would describe with the English word gorgeous. The floor and walls are laid with thick, earthy, contoured tiles. The stools and basins are made from a ligh
tweight, delicately grained wood. A few small groups of older women sit at the low shower heads, basins lathered full of soapy water. They intermittently lean their heads toward one another and laugh, sit back on their stools diligently soaping, scrubbing, and rinsing their bodies.
The large, steaming basin of the onsen bath itself is dotted here and there with the greying heads of women joyously clucking to one another. Meta and Yuka find two adjoining shower heads, sit down, and begin silently lathering.
Meta loves the ritual of a Japanese bathhouse. She sits down to her task of washing in order to give it her full attention. She takes her hand towel, lathers it up till it’s dropping thick gobs of soap, and scrubs her face, her neck, her arms as though she wants the skin to come off. Then she fills her basin with clear water from the spout and rinses off the lather. She soaps her hand towel and scrubs herself again.
When she is finished washing, she sits fidgeting with her basin, trying to seem purposeful, waiting for a signal from Yuka to move toward the tub. Yuka stretches, then stands up, and Meta follows her to where the tiled floor gives way to the pool of volcanically warmed water.
The greenish water is unbelievably hot. There is an invigorating mineral snap to its odour, and she can feel it soaking through her to the bone. The tight muscles in her hands are first to begin to loosen, then her forearms and up to the shoulders. When she gets too warm, she rests at the side. Yuka does not come out of the water once, and Meta begins to wonder how she does it.
“I’m Japanese,” Yuka says when Meta comments. Yuka believes this explains everything.
The water, the tiles, the steam, the heat, these give their voices a shivery, other-worldly quality. With her hair slicked back and her skin aglow from the heat and the scrubbing, the bones of Yuka’s face stand forward, giving her a tranquil, noble aspect. Outside, the big flakes of snow continue to fall in the dark. The garden on the other side of the windows is dark now, but a faint glow from some light source nearby illumines enough so that the flakes of snow and what they fall on remain visible.
When they arrive back in their room, Meta sits on a cushion on the tatami. Her body is electrified. She has scrubbed every square inch of her skin almost raw, and now she feels all of herself, feels the good thick cotton of the yukata rubbing against her. Yuka goes directly to the sink, where she had placed a small decanter of sake in warm water. She pours two small glasses full and hands one to Meta. Meta brings the sake before her nose and smells it. Then she sniffs the warm skin at the back of her wrist. Everything in this country is so achingly well-suited to every other thing, Meta thinks. How can the manufacturers of this sake, somewhere, God-knows-where, in the Kansai maybe, know that the smell of their product is exquisite alongside the exact combination of minerals present naturally in this particular onsen in the mountains of Hakone?
Yuka puts the decanter on the nearby tatami and sits on a cushion next to Meta.
A sad, subdued expression comes over her face, and Meta wonders if she is thinking about the boyfriend in Kyoto.
“Today is special day,” Yuka says.
Meta nods in general agreement, then realizes that Yuka means something more specific.
“Today I am forty years old,” Yuka says.
“This is your birthday! Yuka! I’m angry with you! You didn’t tell me that! I don’t have a present for you!”
“Don’t need present,” Yuka says. “Trip is present.”
“Well,” says Meta. “Let’s have a toast.” She raises her cup. “To forty years,” she says.
“Kampai,” says Yuka, and brings her cup forward. They drink. They sit in silence for a time, their bodies and minds quieted by their soak.
“You know what they say about turning forty. The best is yet to come.”
Yuka begins slowly shaking her head. “No good,” she says. “No good.” She averts her eyes as they fill with tears, then reaches for the decanter and tops up the two glasses. Meta puts out a hand to take the decanter from her. Her fingertips rest on the warm back of Yuka’s hand. Yuka relinquishes the decanter, and Meta puts it far on the opposite side of her, out of Yuka’s reach.
They settle back onto their cushions. One of Yuka’s legs comes free of the yukata and is suddenly bare almost to the hip. Her hair is drying in layers against the side of her cheek. She puts her drink on the mat, picks it up, puts it down again. Her face appears to droop with fatigue.
“When I am married, I am nineteen,” Yuka says. “Mr. Tama is twenty-five. I am university student and he is young salaryman with his company. This is not arranged marriage. I love him. He is so handsome man! He is so kind man! This is sixties. University student protest American Army bases. Police arrest a lot of people. Everyone say new Japan is coming. I tell Mr. Tama I want to make new Japan. I’m not typical Japanese housewife.” She stops and finishes her sake. She looks out the window at the falling snow. “Now is over my happy life,” she says.
Meta leaves a long silence, waiting until she is sure she’s not cutting Yuka off. “Have you heard from … Kyoto?”
Yuka shakes her head.
“What will you do? When he comes back?”
Yuka leaves the cushion she’s been sitting on and crawls on all fours, deep into the shadows of the room. From her futon she says, “I love him,” and begins crying quietly.
Yuka is obviously drunk and tired and overwhelmed with emotions. Meta is not exactly sure whom she’s saying she loves, the boyfriend or the late husband.
Meta sits in silence a while, noticing the stillness that seems to penetrate the room so completely. The smell of fresh tatami mats calms her further. Before long, Yuka is asleep. Meta can hear her deep breaths rising and falling evenly in the darkness. Meta fumbles around on the floor for the sake decanter and pours herself one last small cupful. Halfway across the world, Ziv is up and starting a new day. He would already have received her last letter. He may have already replied to it. She imagines him a moment, sitting in his bedroom with a pen in his hand, crouching over a stack of writing paper. In a moment this image of Ziv shimmers halfway between imagination and dream as she drifts off to sleep.
When Meta awakes, it is not yet morning. She pulls the quilt from her head. Except for the dim light given off by the snow outside, the room is dark. A low sound hovers at the corner of her attention. At first she thinks it is water moving slowly through plumbing in the walls, or maybe a draft seeping in at the window. Then she recognizes it as a quiet sob. Yuka is crying, her face buried in bedclothes, muffling the sound.
“Yuka!” Meta whispers. She doesn’t know if her friend is asleep or awake. If asleep, she does not want to wake her.
There is no answer.
“Yuka,” she says again. She sits up in bed. In the dim room, she cannot make out where one massive futon ends and the other begins. Thick quilted blankets are billowed and pushed up, casting shadows on themselves. She looks for a shape she can recognize. “Yuka,” she says. She crawls out from under her quilt, the half-open yukata letting in the cold. There is a slight movement ahead in the sheets, but it could be the shadow of a tree from outside. She reaches what she thinks might be the head of the other futon and pulls back the quilt there. A splash of black hair gleams out from the sheets. “Yuka,” she whispers. No reply. She puts her face right down into the hair. The sobs are much more audible at this distance, but she still cannot tell whether Yuka is crying or dreaming of crying. Her hair smells like the onsen. Meta’s nose tingles at the familiarity and association of the scent. She feels the cold creeping into her and pulls back a corner of the quilt to slip beneath it. A knee touches bare skin – the small of a back? a buttock? – she wiggles in behind Yuka and sidles up to her. Yuka is curled away in a fetal position. Her bare buttocks nestled in Meta’s lap. Meta slips back the side of her Yukata and puts the skin of her belly on the small of Yuka’s back.
Yuka’s sobs have quieted, but not ceased. Meta reaches a hand over Yuka’s slim waist, letting her fingers come to rest on Yuka’s small, ta
ut navel.
Meta closes her eyes. But she will be content to sleep now, to go back to sleep holding and comforting her friend. Encircled by Meta’s larger body, draped over by a consoling arm, Yuka ceases crying. Meta opens her eyes and looks over the back of Yuka’s head to the window. It is still dark. She cannot tell whether it is snowing. She closes her eyes again.
Meta arrives back in Tokyo relaxed, yet somehow uneasy. The atmosphere at the Hakone rest house, the food, the sake, the onsen, these have brought her to the deepest sense of contentment and belonging she has felt in all her time in Japan. The noise of Tokyo is what she notices first. The sound of cars on the streets, the hum of trains whizzing past overhead. But the peace of Hakone has taken up residence inside of her, and the commotion of the city seems distant and incapable of affecting her. She feels sure of herself now in her relationship to Yuka. She crawled into bed with her for no other reason than to comfort a friend. But Yuka is a volatile and sometimes confused person. How is she interpreting what took place?
In the hallway outside their apartment doors, Yuka and Meta hug briefly before keying their own locks. Meta is careful not to draw Yuka too close in the hug and to turn her head far to the side to receive Yuka’s kiss on her cheek.
So many ideas and emotions are coursing through her when she gets inside her apartment that she takes out a notebook, sits at the kitchen table and begins writing.
Dear Ziv,
I spent two days outside of Tokyo in a place called Hakone. There was snow there, and the whole experience of quiet and cold reminded me so much of Canada.
Did I ever tell you about my neighbour Yuka? What this woman has been through since I’ve known her I could not even begin to describe for you. I seem to be her only friend.
