Bath Day in Sheshurino

On Saturdays, smoke drifts over the village. The banyas are being heated. The bitter haze, from birch or aspen, floats everywhere. The old folks have the black banyas, the ones without a chimney and just a pile of stones in the middle, to serve as a stove that’s heated until the stones glow red, and you mustn’t go in then because the air’s so bad you can’t even breathe. Then they open it up, but the fumes stick around so the darn place is like a smoke-house. They get going bright and early, and that’s the only way to do it. There’s a teensy little window, so you can’t see a thing in there, not even in broad daylight.

The oldest in the family – which would be granddad or even great-granddad – always gets to enjoy the first steam. And when mystical, magical Ivan Kupala Day is coming up, in early June, he’ll gather herbs to dry too, muttering his spells over them. He’ll collect potentilla root, rowanberry leaves, cocklebur, the sticky catchfly that makes your fingers all gummy, and angelica root that’s sweetish to the taste, so for sharpness he’ll grind some juniper needles in a pestle. The women do their bit as well, for the hair-washing part of it, collecting soapwort, whose pale, whitish little flowers sort of lather when you rub them between your fingers. In the villages, people use potash to wash their hair, by sifting out the ashes and boiling up what’s left. And there’s your shampoo, there’s your soap. As for rinsing, well, it varies – some like to steep a birch-twig switch in the rinse water, others prefer oak. But everyone steams with burdock, because no one has ever found anything better than burdock, better than its soft leaves and beetroot-colored burrs. It’s all floated in a basin, and the pale water turns brownish. And the fibrous bark is torn off linden trees and plaited, and that takes some tearing, believe you me. But then again, the work makes you sweat like mad, which is a load off the body…

The steaming is a lengthy process. Before his first steam, granddad, with a towel wound around his hips, goes in for a moment, squinting from the fumes, to splash some strong home-brewed beer from a wooden scoop onto the stones. That sends a hearty, yeasty, heady aroma all through the banya… In the dressing room, the women are setting out the clean linens, stacking them in even piles – this one pa’s, that one grandpa’s. Clean underpants and outer pants, side-collar shirts… Before going in, everyone wearing a cross takes it off so as not to get burned, wrapping it in a scrap of cloth and putting it somewhere special.

The broad bench is spread with a towel, and on it is placed a jug of home-brewed bread beer made of leftover rye crusts. They crush some mint to make it smell good, and scatter a little mound of sour apples, and cranberries or viburnum fruit in fall.

Then the grandpas, wearing their old hats, will go in, crossing themselves – right into the very thickest steam, into the dense cloud of aromas. They sit themselves down on the shelves in silence, except for the groaning. They endure the heat because it warms their bones all through, drives the chill from their bodies. And the first who can’t stand it, he shoulders his way out the door and heads for the lake and goes straight off the jetty into the cold water, sending up great puffs of steam. The women turn aside bashfully…

The two-fisted men are next, the no-nonsense ones – the tractor operators and the lumberjacks – coming for their wash and their steam, and after that the banya always smells the same, reeking of diesel fuel and engine oil. When they leave, you have to wave a juniper switch around and pour vinegar on the little stone stove, and that’s how that goes.

But what about the women? When the women get in with the little kids, there’s squealing, squeaking, raucous laughter, and slaps on bare backs – stop your crying, soap’s not like shame, it won’t eat your eyes out! The littlest ones go into the trough to be washed first, and then the women have their time to rest. They lie on the shelves, send up a cloud of fresh steam, and work each other over with switches. The old girls lay into you mercilessly; the birch leaves stick to well-steamed bodies like mustard plasters… Our women like to spread ferns on the floor that make the banya smell like you’re walking in the woods…

My neighbor Nadyukha and I go in for the last steam, trying not to touch the black, soot-smeared walls. It’s already dark in there, but the stove is holding its heat and the cistern’s full of hot water. Nadyukha sits her Varya on the slippery bench and rubs her scrawny little back with a washcloth until it’s red and Varya’s squealing. She has blond, almost flaxen hair, and she’s as proud of it as any little girl would be. Some summer visitors have given her a lovely bottle of shampoo, and the lather fluffs up on her hair in a luxurious, frothy cap, and rainbow-tinted soap bubbles fly everywhere. She pops them between her palms and laughs. Nadyukha douses her with warm water and recites, like a spell: “Like water off a duck’s back, that’s how my Varya’s skinniness will go. You’re going to be chubby and the prettiest of them all!”

Varya snuffles and lets a tear fall, a trial tear.

“No, granmmaaaa” – and the tears are streaming down now – “I don’t want to be pudgy. You… oh, you’re wider than a door, can’t get into your housecoat, the buttons fly off… I don’t want to be like that! I’ll be like a model instead, and after that I’ll be walking in a fashion show. Auntie Dasha, oh, she showed me a magazine, with pictures. There was a girl in it who lived in a village too, and then she went and got gorgeous, and they gave her a modeling job. Now she lives in France, she’s married to a prince, he’s bought her a yacht, all sorts of beautiful rings… And a car, red as red can be, and a castle, for real, and she’s started singing and now they know her everywhere… So why would I be herding cows in a village? I want it beautiful too!”

Nadyukha rinses out the basin, dunks the workaday linens in it, rubs them with soap, and says, looking over in my direction: “That Auntie Dasha of yours should read you something out of another magazine … oh yes … about how there was once a featherbrain, pretty as a picture, but she married a drunk. And how she’s got a tumbledown shack now and an old motorcycle instead of a red car, and wears felt boots on her bare feet. But she can still sing just as good as your model.”

“But maaaa,” Varya wails, her tears falling into the linen basin, “Auntie Dasha’s husband was in the movies, and he’s from the village too, and everyone went to the rec center to look at him.”

“You’ll never be a box-office smash,” Nadyukha says with certainty, cramming Varya into a warm pair of pants. “You don’t have the main thing an actress needs.”

“What’s that?” Varya isn’t crying any more.

“You’ve got no butt. Without a butt, a woman doesn’t count as a woman at all.” She pulls on Varya’s felt boots and shakes her fist at me behind the kid’s back. “What were you asked to read to the child? AN ALPHABET BOOK!”

And we go out of the banya into the fresh air, where we give off the smell of birch switches and a touch of vinegar. Evening is falling...