The Great Glass Sea (22 page)

“My mother?” In her confusion, might she have made a phone call? Regressed in memory to The Past Life, reestablished some old connection? The man motioned for Dima to dump out his basin, but Dima simply stood there, started, “Why do you say my mother’s—”

Grabbing his basin from him, the man splashed it out over the grate, pushed it back at him, all the while nodding, smiling, shaking his head.

“I’m not a Communist,” Dima said.

“Of course you are.” The man’s palm slapped Dima’s back as he pushed him towards the faucet. “Why else”—he turned the red lever on—“would you be amassing the proletariat in the square?” The hot water thundered into Dima’s basin. “Why else would you be rousing the workers, rousing
us
, against those paid-off thugs of the capitalistic regime?” He reached over, turned on the cold tap, too. “Why else,” he said, dipping his hand in Dima’s basin, splashing it around, wiggling his fingers in the water before turning the hot tap off, “would we have brought you here?” He yanked the cold lever shut.

“I don’t know,” Dima told him.

The man’s face was a father’s amused by some small failure of a child he knows will eventually succeed. He flapped his hands once at Dima: go ahead, get splashing.

Dima reached into the hot water, sloshed it over his front.

“How is your mother?” the man said. “It’s been too long since I’ve seen Comrade Zhuvova.”

So, Dima thought, it was this man, and not his mother, who had dug up some connection from the past.

“She was always such a pleasure to have at meetings, Galina Yegorovna. Brought the most delicious cranberry pies, was such a devoted parent.”

Dima slopped more hot water at his belly.

“She spoke,” the man said, “with such love of you and your brother. Like she spoke of her love for the Party.”

“I’m sorry,” Dima said, “I just came for the bath,” and he upturned the basin over his head. The hot water crashed over him. He wiped his hair away, squeezed out his beard, cleared his eyes with the heel of his palm. There was the old man’s shriveled, sagging rear, turned to him. The veiny backs of his knees, the heels of his bright orange flip-flops, the wet-furred back, the crinkled neck, the drooping ears, the black tips of the ear grips of his glasses. He set his red water basin down on the bench, and when he turned back to Dima he held a switch of birch branches in his hand.

“Then why,” the old man said, “did you quit your job on the Oranzheria? A good job? A well-paid job? Why would you do that?”

Through the dripping from his hair, Dima watched the man.

“Why would any sensible wage slave, any right-thinking worker dreaming of his place among the bourgeoisie, why would such a man, a man like
you
, do a thing like
that
?” The old man whapped the birch sheaf lightly against Dima’s chest. The wet leaves stuck to his skin, then pulled away. “Because,” the old man said, “you aren’t like that. You aren’t such a man. You’re your mother’s son. Dmitry Lvovich Zhuvov.” He held up his fist, rattled the birch switch. “Shall we go into the heat?”

But even as he stood Dima couldn’t help wondering if he’d heard wrong, if the man hadn’t said
Yaroslav
instead, if whoever had conceived of bringing him here hadn’t mixed up the man Dima was with the one his brother had become. Or maybe just the boy their mother had always expected Yarik to be. Of Dima she hadn’t ever expected anything.
You are,
she used to tell him in exasperation,
such your father’s son.
Their mother’s son would have never followed the man towards the stream room. Yarik would have heard
leave
and
turn around
and steered his brother back long before Dima had ever neared the sauna he was stepping into now.

It was a small room already full of men, old men in pointed gray hats woven of nappy wool, guts white and round as the bulging bellies of frogs; a few middle-aged ones marked with tattoos—a spider crawling across a shoulder, a star stamped on a knee—that must have meant something back when they were young and the world was different. Some stood still, arms akimbo, breathing slow; others sat on the wood bench slapping branches at themselves; a few bent over with hands on the worn-smooth rail while their helpmates flogged their backs. All of them were sopping with sweat. Dima squinted at the dimness, the gust of heat on his eyes. The naked men looked back, blinking at their sweat, crammed closer together, slid a little left or right—long row of low parts swinging—to make room.

The man with the poppy seed teeth poured a ladle full of water over the hissing rocks, led Dima up the stairs to stand among the others. He introduced them—Comrade Murin, Comrade Gergiev, Comrade Agletdinova, Comrade Korotya, Korzhanenko, Nevolin, Comrade, Comrade, Comrade—and put the question to them all: why would a man like Dima quit a job like the job that Dima quit?

The ones beating themselves stopped. The ones being beaten took a moment to breathe. The ones sitting there, sat there. They all seemed to give it some thought.

Finally, one old man two bodies away leaned over, looked at Dima as best as he could, his sweat dripping off his face, and said, “Because you were tired.”

The men in between the speaker and Dima nodded like the man had said something profound.

“You were tired,” the man went on, “of being a commodity.”

The men in between nodded harder. Dima could feel the drops of sweat flung off their chins.

“You were sick and tired,” the speaking man said, and another man said “sick!” out of the dark, and the speaker continued, “of your worth as a man . . .”

“As a person!” another said.

“Sick and tired of who you are, what you are worth as a
human
, being resolved . . .”

“Into a
price
,” someone said.

“. . . into an exchange value.”

“. . . a rouble.”

“A
dollar
.”

More sweat flew off nodding faces.

“You were nauseous at it,” someone said.

“You were bilious!” another shouted.

“No.” The word came out of Dima’s mouth so suddenly he wasn’t sure he’d said it. Then he said, more quietly, “I think I was just tired.”

“Of what?” the poppy seed man said.

“Of bourgeois claptrap,” someone called out.

“Of oppression by the overseers,” another offered.

“I think,” Dima said, “I just wanted time.”

They were all quiet.

“To do what?” asked the one who’d brought him. For a moment, the man waited for an answer. Then he reached down, cupped his hand around his balls, lifted them, and lowered himself to sit on the wood. With his other hand, he patted the bench beside him. Halfway through Dima’s sit, the man’s hand shot out. His fingertips snagged Dima’s scrotum. Midcrouch, Dima paused. “Careful,” the man said. “Hot.” And another hand came out of the mass of old men and placed a rag on the bench and the poppy seed man let go of Dima’s balls, nodded, said, “OK.”

Even through the rag, Dima could feel the burning of the bench. He waited until it had turned to just a warming heat. Then he said, “Nothing. Time to do nothing.”

A few questioning grunts.

“Nothing?” someone asked.

Some grunts of dissent.

“Like this,” Dima said. “Time to—”

But the poppy seed man had stuck a finger to his lips. Too late. Another old man was already revving up to a shout: “Nothing? To do nothing?”

“Maksim Grigorevich . . .” Dima’s guide tried.

“To do nothing is to make . . .”

“Max . . .”

“. . . the worker to your right, to your left . . .”

“Max, please.”

“. . . do more! To want to do nothing is the most dangerous thing, the hope of the bourgeois, the capitalistic dream, to be rich enough to do nothing, to be master of the worker to your right, your left . . .” In the far corner, a man—it must have been the one shouting—had begun to smack the wood before him with his birch-branch switch. “Either an aristocrat,” he shouted. Someone else spat: the sizzle of spittle on hot stone. “. . . or a bum!” Another hawk, another sizzle. “Nothing more than an anarchist . . .”

The spitter tried to hawk up more, but either couldn’t get enough or missed the stones. The man who’d brought Dima leaned over, whispered, “Comrade Korzhanenko . . .”

“Nothing more than social scum.”

“. . . believes this is a dangerous class.”

“A piece of passively rotting mass,” the man shouted, thwacking at the wood, “thrown off by the lowest layer of dead society.”

There was the thwack, thwack, thwack of Korzhanenko beating at the wood railing with his switch, then just the man’s hard breathing. In the silence a few others timidly whapped at themselves with their branches: the rustle of leaves, the smack of twigs on inner thighs, a few grunts.

The poppy seed man put a hand on Dima’s shoulder, gave him a look as if to reassure him all was OK, pushed on his shoulder a little harder. “Bend over,” he said. “I’ll do your back.”

Dima looked at the men beating themselves: some had stood, whacked away at bellies, calves, turned to let their neighbors get a swing at their rears. A roomful of switches slashing and leaves shaking and a dozen pairs of eyes watching him. He bent over his knees.

The old man started easy, a few light slaps along his spine. “I think,” the man said over the rustling and thwacks, loud enough the others could hear, “that what Comrade Zhuvova, a clearly learned man, a scholar of Pushkin, what our new comrade means is it takes time to cultivate the mind.” He gave Dima a playful whap on the back of the head. “For reading,” he said. “For making art.”

“For memorizing poetry,” someone offered.

“For
reciting
poetry,” another said.

“For Pushkin.”

“For self-improvement.”

“The cultivation of the mind,” the poppy seed man said. “After all,” he asked the gathering, “what else allows life its pleasure? From what else does a satisfied proletariat come?”

A flurry of rustling and whacking.

“The time?” the man said, as if to Dima. Then, to them all: “The time to pursue one’s natural inclinations.”

“One’s proclivity,” someone agreed.

“One’s passion in life,” another said.

“What”—the man leaned down a little, spoke to Dima’s bent wet head—“is your inclination?” He smacked at him with the branches, paused again. “What is your passion in life?”

Someone put more water on the stones. The heat rolled through the tiny room. Dima felt it wash across his skin, burn in his nose, steam away the breaths he was trying to take. Even their father had loved to carve, to fish. Their uncle to tell tales. Their mother to see her son succeed. His brother?

The man sat poised with the switch above Dima’s back. The others swatted at their neighbors and themselves in silence. After a minute, one of them offered, “Is it poetry?”

“Pushkin?” another suggested.

“Engineering?”

“Carpentry?”

Dima’s head felt dizzy. He tried to lower it between his knees.

“Music?”

“Automotive repair?”

He shook his head. Someone called out that he needed air. Someone held a plastic cup of water towards him. The poppy seed man pushed it away. “Your passion!” he said, and smacked Dima’s back. “Your proclivity!” He hit him again. “Your inclination!”

But how could he tell them the truth? That he didn’t have a
what
but a
who.

“I guess,” Dima said. “Maybe . . .” The poppy seed man stayed his switch. The others leaned in. “Farming?”

A hearty rumbling of approval rose among them. “A man of the soil,” they called him, “solid peasant stock,” and, slapping him on the back, helped him down the stairs.

Outside the sauna, in the bathing room, they crowded around again. Someone filled his tub with cool water. Another poured it over his head. He sat on the bench, dripping, breathing, not even trying to clear his hair from his eyes. He drank from the cup that was handed to him.

The poppy seed man poured some shampoo into his hand, plopped it on Dima’s head, started sudsing his hair.

They were talking about agriculture, about the days of the giant collective farms, about how much wheat was harvested by how many machines, the biggest tractors they’d seen, the days when fieldwork was under open sky instead of ceilings of glass.

“But,” Dima interrupted them, “what if you can’t?”

“Can’t what?” they asked.

“What if someone is kept from it? From being able to pursue that inclination?” His eyes were shut, the suds dripping down his face. “What does that do to someone? What’s someone like that supposed to do?”

The poppy seed man’s fingers on Dima’s scalp went still. “Do?” he said, and they gripped Dima’s head. “You
take
it.”