That winter it was exceptionally cold in Moscow. The small columns of the wells at the street crossings in the suburb were all iced over, and my father had to carry buckets of safe water on my sled from a distant column, since it was the only one still usable in the whole neighbourhood.
At home we rationed water very carefully, using it only for drinking, cooking and washing our faces and teeth. My mother took her weekly bath in the hospital where she worked, and my father in the factory shower-room.
I was the only member of the family that still needed to wash, so my Aunt Valentina, my father’s elder sister, suggested to my mother that she could take me to the public baths, which she went to regularly because, she said, the steam was good for her and made her feel younger.
I was six years old and had never been to the public baths, because until then my mother always gave me my bath in a big tub in our kitchen, which was heated by a wood stove. Mama worried about draughts, and was always careful that the temperature of the water was just right, while the sweat dripped from her forehead. When Aunt Valentina made her suggestion it seemed to me the public baths must be a lovely place, because she was never tired or worried, but on the contrary always smiling and full of energy. So it was decided that I’d go along with my aunt.
That Saturday afternoon she came to our house with a large bag, swollen like the hump of a camel that had just filled itself with water, like the one I’d seen in an illustrated book that I immediately brought over to show her.
“Are you carrying the water you use to wash with in the bag?” I asked, showing her the picture of the animal.
Laughing, my aunt let me look inside her bag: there was a big pink-and-blue striped terry-cloth towel, a long sponge made of bark fibres and dried birch twigs tied together like a broom, and at the bottom there was a change of underwear but my aunt wouldn’t let me touch it.
“When we’re in the sauna you can massage me with the birch twigs”, she said cheerfully.
My mother prepared a bag with the things I’d need, and as a final thought she put in the duck I always took my bath with at home. I knew how to put on my felt boots by myself: you had to sit on the floor, put your foot in and then pull the boot up. The hardest thing was not to confuse the right one with the left one, because they looked so similar. My mother had tied a red string on the right one and a blue string on the left one, so I only had to pay attention to get them right. After I’d put my boots on, mama put a rubber cord with my gloves sewed on at both ends around my neck, and over that my hooded sheepskin coat. A scarf knotted behind my neck covering my face up to my eyes completed my outfit.
My aunt wore a pile-lined coat, felt boots like mine and a wool scarf that covered her forehead.
“Ready for the expedition to the public baths?” smiled Papa, from the armchair where he was reading the newspaper.
Outside the house the air was like ice, but at first the body didn’t feel the cold. We put our bags onto my sled and we both pulled it as we walked through the narrow streets of the suburb.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and all around us a white realm silently contemplated itself. In the pale sky an orange ball, detached and indifferent, shone without giving off heat. That morning there had been a snowfall that had covered all the streets, roofs, trees and every surface it could stick to. The light of the snow spread over everything. Like a magic fairy it had buried all the dirt and erased every imperfection. Its caress had given the original purity of their youth to the old grey houses.
The crunch of the sled on beaten snow didn’t break the peace of the scene; it was in harmony with the white silence all around.
Occasionally we met up with other people with sleds carrying children who held tin or enamel basins in their laps: “They’re coming back from the baths,” she said. “Their mothers are so finicky that they don’t trust the communal tubs”.
My aunt asked two of them the same question, “Are there a lot of people at the baths? How long did you have to wait?”.
They answered with the enthusiasm of victors, because they’d already got through the long, tiring queue, “When we left there were more people than when we went in, and we had to wait over an hour”.
My aunt gave me a worried look, “We’ll have to wait for a long time, Natalia, what do you think?”
Aunt Valentina always called me by my full name, instead of using the usual pet name, Natasha, and I felt older and more responsible with her.
“We’ll wait, Aunty, I’m not tired. But can I come to the sauna with you?”
“Yes, and then you’ll beat me with the birch twigs”.
Even if she smiled as she pronounced the word “beat”, it worried me a bit, but I imagined she was joking.
At last we arrived. I understood that the long three-storey building housed the public baths because there was a long queue of people waiting outside.
“Who is the last on the queue?” asked my aunt, the question always asked by the person who’d arrived last.
“I am” answered a small man in a grey lambs-wool Cossack hat and a quilted coat. He was also carrying a sheaf of dried birch twigs under his arm.
“Do I have to beat him, too?” I whispered into my aunt’s ear, pointing at his twigs.
She burst into a loud laugh.
“He’d probably like that a lot, sweetie, but men and women go to different sections.”
Despite my whisper, the man had heard my words, and beating his hands in his heavy gloves, he good-humouredly confirmed my aunt’s words,
“We go up to the third floor and you to the second. But on the first floor we all go to the buffet to drink a beer, or” he added, winking his eye at me, “a lemonade.”
“Will you really buy me a lemonade, Aunty?” It was my childhood dream to drink a lemonade at a buffet. Boria, our neighbours’ son, who was only two years older than I was, had already had two with his father, a distinction that had earned him the admiration of all the neighbourhood children.
The time spent waiting flew quickly because I’d found a strip of ice to slide up and down on. Then my aunt called me.
We entered the spacious, high-ceilinged lobby. There was another queue at the cloakroom, but not so long as the one outside. When we got to the counter my aunt helped me off with my fur; then she took off her coat and passed it over together with my sled.
In exchange the old woman presiding over the cloakroom, who seemed very busy and annoyed, gave us two tokens to collect them with later, which my aunt carefully placed in her wallet.
We waited in another queue at the cash-desk, but it was much shorter.
“One adult and one child,” said my aunt to the cashier.
“How old is the little girl?”
“Six,” answered my aunt.
“She’s tall for her age. Over eight you pay the full price. Come over here and let me measure your height.”
On the wall next to the cash-desk there was a big wood ruler for measuring children. I tried to bend my knees as I walked over to it. I was two centimetres short of a meter, so the cashier let us pay the reduced price.
My aunt put the tickets into her wallet, beside the tokens.
“Be careful that it doesn’t get lost or stolen, otherwise we’ll be without our coats, and with this freezing weather...” she spoke softly as we walked towards the staircase.
This led to the second floor, where, above the French door there was written in large letters,
“WOMEN” – I could already read the signs over shops.
“We’re almost there, Natalia,” said my aunt, carrying the two bags. I’d taken out my duck, and told him he should be careful of my aunt’s wallet, too.
At last we went into the women’s changing room. There were a lot of wood benches with drawers for shoes and clothes lockers higher up. After the attendant had tidied up a place that had just been left free, my aunt and I began to undress. I was extremely curious about the novelty of my surroundings, the women dressing and undressing, children crying and acting up. I looked particularly at the naked women who, sponges underarm and covering their breasts with their hands, were going towards a mysterious door where others were coming out with red, almost smoking bodies and wet hair. One of them was sitting on a bench near us and panting.
“Is it hot inside?”, asked my aunt.
“I stayed in the sauna too long” smiled the woman, as if she felt guilty.
“You should have taken a cold shower afterwards,” answered my aunt.
“I don’t have the strength to move. I’ll rest a bit... it’ll pass.”
My aunt nodded. Meanwhile she’d already got undressed, and helped me take off my jumper.
Now I was naked, too, and I felt embarrassed. I tried to hide behind my duck. My aunt took our sponges and the soap and held my hand as we went towards the mysterious door. Before we went in, she got onto a scale and weighed herself.
“Let’s hope I’ll have lost a kilo when we leave,” she exclaimed.
Finally we went in. The world in front of me was so different from the one I’d just left behind that I felt frightened and held tight to my aunt. At first it seemed to me as dark as night in there, but after a few seconds I could make out lamps that shed a weak light over a large room full of steam and water, with low granite seats.
In that grey, smoky mist there moved strange, naked figures, blurry in the weak light. With basins in hand they went to get water from the faucets and then went back to their seats to wash themselves.
It took me a few seconds to realize that they were the women we’d just seen in the changing room, they were so different! In that warm, damp room they no longer resembled their normal selves; their bodies seemed dilated by the steam; in that unreal half-light their naked forms looked as though they were made of rubber, like my duck.
I was so surprised to find myself in that dark, warm, damp world that I’d peed while walking slowly forward holding onto my aunt, though no one had noticed
My aunt’s expert eye had spotted a free place and she told me to wait there for her so no one would take it.
“Stay here and don’t move. I’m going to look for basins for both of us”, she said, quickly vanishing into the steam. I stood stock-still and a bit frightened, looking all around. The woman on my right was combing her long hair as she sat on a granite seat near her basin. The one on my left was rubbing her skin so hard it seemed she wanted to take it off; she had large tits and a belly like a watermelon, but her face was pretty and she smiled at me cheerfully.
“Can you do me a favour?” – she asked me in an unfamiliar, melodic voice, “I’ll bend over so you can rub my back.”
I nodded. She gave me her soapy horsehair sponge, got down on all fours and, as I stood rubbing her back as hard as I could, ordered, “Further to the right. In the middle now. Lower down on the left.”
I was getting tired when at last my aunt arrived, holding two enamel basins.
“What a stroke of luck, Natalia, I found the basins right away!”
“You’re right,” the woman next to us said as she rinsed herself, “there are so many people today - the baths were closed for three days in a row for maintenance work, so everyone has crammed in today.”
The conversation became more general, moving from the baths to the scandals and troubles of daily life in the neighbourhood. In those days, crime news didn’t exist in the Russian press, so news spread from mouth to mouth, and often got distorted and exaggerated.
After disinfecting the basin with a solution of manganese powder that my aunt had brought with her, I put my duck in and began washing it while my aunt was soaping up beside me. While I was playing, I could hear the women around me talking about a shocking thing that had taken place in the neighbourhood: a man had killed his wife, cut her up in pieces and then eaten her.
I was very frightened. One detail especially made me shudder: the police had found a piece of the woman’s leg in the soup! On that day my reluctance to eat soup made with meat was born. I still don’t like it even today.
Meanwhile my aunt had finished washing and began to soap my hair. I didn’t like washing my hair. with my mother I always acted up, but since I was in the public baths I was ashamed to cry, so I just squeezed my eyes tight. For the final rinse my aunt brought a basin full of clean water and poured it over my head. I could feel a cascade of water running down my body, but after the sting of soap in my eyes nothing made an impression on me, and I laughed merrily.
“Let’s go into the sauna”, said my aunt, taking my hand, and we crossed the room with the baths
At the bottom there was a small, heavy iron door. My aunt opened it and we entered what seemed to me the entrails of the earth. At the time I couldn’t give words to my feelings, but that was the sensation I had.
A hot, dry steam hit me, first my face and hair and then my whole body. The change in temperature was sudden and for a few seconds my body was uncertain whether to accept it or not. Then something moved inside me and I began to feel a pleasurable warmth all over; my muscles relaxed and my breathing was longer. I wanted to stretch as much as possible and I put my tongue out.
“You look like a little dog when you’re hot,” my aunt smiled, leading me towards a free bench. Then she lay down and put the birch twigs into my hands.
“Now do a good deed: beat me as hard as you can.”
For a moment I stood there, unbelieving. Then on a nearby bench I saw the outline of a woman sitting and beating herself with twigs like ours. She was having a hard time reaching her back, so at last I understood my aunt’s words.
Her body was stretched out in front of me. Standing at the height of her shoulders, I could see her smooth back and round buttocks, while her legs disappeared into the mist of steam. Slowly I began to beat her back, all the while waiting for her to cry out, but she kept silent and breathed deeply, whispering, “Harder, Natalia, harder”.
Imitating the rhythm of the movements of the woman beside us, I started to enjoy the game. I imagined my aunt’s body as the egg whites my mother beat with wire whips, adding sugar and then putting them in the oven. After a few minutes she took out the sweet-smelling meringues that were my childhood favourites. I beat my aunt’s body from the shoulders to the bottoms of her feet and then started upwards again, with her whispering between breaths to tell me what to do.
Then my aunt sat up on the bench. She hugged me and kissed my cheeks. Her body, more relaxed now, reminded me of the big cello I’d heard played by a neighbour of ours who studied at the conservatory.
My cello-aunt stood up and together we left the sauna. We took a cool shower in the room with the baths and then we went back out into the changing room. After the intense emotions of the bath itself, the changing room seemed a relaxing, comfortable place.
My aunt wrapped me in a great towel and set me down on a bench. I stayed there without moving, leaning on the backrest. The attendants offered drinks, and my aunt ordered a lemonade for me.
Duly washed and dried by the steam, I felt light as a feather. The arrival of the lemonade was the height of happiness. My aunt poured the contents of the bottle into two glasses. She sat beside me, wrapped in her towel, and sipped her drink. We were both full of contentment.
When she’d finished her lemonade, my aunt started to get dressed, humming a song that was popular then, while I tried to follow along. The attendant who’d come to take our empty glasses looked at us with a smile on her wrinkled mouth, before pronouncing the customary Russian formula for wishing well to those who’d had a good bath: “May you be as light as the steam.”
“Thank you,” answered my aunt. She was pleased, and her happiness could be seen in her eyes.
We had to return to the everyday world, and my aunt started dressing me. First my cotton undershirt and panties, then a wool undershirt and underpants, leotard and heavy pants and finally
a jumper. We had come to the boots. My aunt opened the drawer where she’d put hers and mine and pulled out two large felt boots and one small one.
“Where’s the other boot?” she asked softly.
She put her hand into the drawer, feeling for the boot, but there was no trace of it.
“It’s not possible,” she said, “they’ve stolen only one.”
I started to cry. That day’s emotions had found a cause for release. After such intense happiness, I felt the theft of my boot as something unjust and frustrating.
“They stole one boot, not even two, only one,” I continued saying to myself. The loss seemed even greater because it was inexplicable, because someone had harbored a mean, unaccountable desire to leave a little girl without a boot in the freezing cold of a Moscow winter.
That was my first, painfully conscious impact with the reality of the world. I realized somehow that everything in this life must be paid for, and I felt particularly fragile and vulnerable: someone had stolen my felt boot, someone wanted to ruin my joy.
I cried desperately for a few minutes.
“It’s very bad joke,” my aunt fumed. Her serenity was gone, too, and for an instant she, too, felt she’d been made a joke of.
Hearing my sobs, the women near us came closer.
“They stole the little girl’s boot,” the words flew around.
The attendant with the wrinkled mouth arrived, but now her mouth wasn’t smiling; it was shut tight with disdain, and her faded blue eyes had turned to metal. Brusquely, she started opening all the nearby drawers to look for the stolen boot.
But after all the drawers and all the locker doors had been opened it was clear there was nothing to do – the boot couldn’t be found anywhere.
“What people there are in this world!”, grumbled the woman to our right.
“Vultures!” said the woman on the left, “to leave the child without a boot in this freezing cold, you have to have a heart of steel.”
And they all expressed their regret in one way or another.
All the attention I was receiving calmed me down immediately. Meanwhile the women had passed from words to deeds. One had brought my aunt a wool hanky to wrap my foot in so I would be able to get home. Every woman brought something warm to help us get over what had happened.
Feeling so important made my heart swell with pride. As I passed by the lockers, each woman caressed my hair or my cheeks.
My aunt gathered up all the warm things offered by the women and wrapped my leg with the bandages given to us by the attendant, putting a wool scarf on top. Last of all they put on a galosh that belonged to the attendant, who used it when she cleaned the inside of the baths.
“You’ll bring it back as soon as you can,” she said to my aunt, who nodded as she was tying the last bandage around my foot.
With a leg that looked like it was in a cast I went down to the ground floor where we’d left our coats. Other attendants already knew about what had happened and helped my aunt dress me. The rubber string with the gloves, the fur coat, the cap, the hanky to cover my nose, the scarf: at last we were ready to leave the building.
Evening was coming on and the temperature was had gone even lower. I could feel the freezing air around me. My aunt put me on the sled, laying the two bags over my feet; she took the rope and we moved off towards home.
It was a starry evening. Above my head I could see the dark vault of heaven full of bright stars. It reminded me of the transparent white hard candies on the dark glass dish in the bakery shop window near my home.
Every once in a while I fell asleep, thinking of the candies, and my aunt woke me, touching my hands and feet. “Are you cold, Natalia? Don’t sleep. We’ll be home soon.”
I nodded yes, but then I fell asleep again. I wasn’t cold, my hands and feet were warm, but I was so tired and my eyelids were so heavy that I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
I was woken by my father’s voice. He took me up in his arms and carried me into the house. He put me on the sofa and my mama began taking off my fur coat. Very, very far away I could hear the voice of my aunt recounting the story of the boot, and my father’s laugh. My head grew heavier and heavier, the vault of heaven descended, and I had the sweet taste of candy in my mouth until I fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning my father woke me as usual, since my mother always left home early to go to work. I got my schoolbag ready because after breakfast I had to go to nursery school. Then, suddenly, the memory of the stolen boot. I looked in the corner where the boots usually stood and I saw both of them in their place. I was so amazed that my mouth fell open, and Papa began to laugh.
He told me that a few days before, a neighbourhood boy named Boria had had a boot stolen in the public baths. This morning, while I was still asleep, he’d gone to ask Boria’s mother to show him the boot. It was for the left foot and the one I still had was for the right foot. Papa measured them: they were almost the same. So he asked the woman to sell him the boot, but Boria’s mama gave it to him for free because they’d already bought a new pair for Boria and the extra boot was just taking up space. But I wasn’t completely happy, because when I put on Boria’s boot it wasn’t as comfortable as mine had been.
Fortunately, a month later my parents bought me a new pair of leather boots. My feet had grown and the snow had melted, so it was no longer possible to walk with felt boots, which were only good for the dry snow of the great freeze.
My aunt Valentina took me to the public baths another two or three times. Then we moved to a flat with tub and shower and I forgot the public baths.
Once in later years when I was grown, passing nearby, I had the urge to go in. The cloakroom seemed narrower and lower, and the room with the baths was tidy and not the least dark. The sauna was a small room with a burning-hot stove; there were two women sitting on the benches and there were no birch twigs in sight. There wasn’t much steam, there weren’t many people, no trace of the long queues. The cashier told me that the public baths were going to be closed before long because by now in Moscow all the flats had a bathroom and people could bath conveniently in their own homes.
Even the weather has changed – there are no more great freezes. The winter are milder and rainier.
“The times change and everything passes,” the wise say. But buried deep in my memory remains the happiness of a little child presented with a glass of lemonade after the warm bath, and the experience of a small loss shared with others.
Natalia Soloviova was born in Moscow in 1946. She has lived in Cardano al Campo (Varese) since 1973. She has a degree in mechanical engineering and does technical translations. She has taken part in the competition Eks&Tra, and was among the winners of the 1998 edition.