Cathedrals of the Flesh (12 page)

On top of all the food bounty, old maps of St Petersburg were dusted off. Irina then drew us little walking tour maps and
made lists of places for us to visit — Anna Akhmatova's house, Dos-toyevsky's house, the Engineer's Palace at midnight. Irina
was suddenly the full-service host mom, all because she thought my friend was an exiled Russian princess. 'Where did she learn
such beautiful Russian?'

The next morning at breakfast, Irina, who now understood my banya mission, decided that she must weigh in. As we drank our
second cup of tea, Irina gave us an unsolicited list of inconvenient places we shouldn't miss.

'And after all this activity, which banya should we visit, Irina?'

She took a deep breath and looked dreamy. Marina and I glanced at each other with raised eyebrows. This would be our third
dramatic monologue by Irina. Last night we'd sat through a forty-five-minute exegesis on the tempestuous relationship between
Turgenev and Tolstoy, and yesterday afternoon it was twenty minutes on the noble life of long-suffering Russian poetess Anna
Akhmatova, whose Modigliani portrait hung in the kitchen.

Ever the drama queen, Irina looked at us with the mysterious smile of a woman about to confide. 'I collect banyas in my heart.'

I dared not look at Marina for fear that we would fall apart laughing. Get ready for
Banya: The Miniseries,
I thought. By injecting her favorite English word,
turmoil,
often enough, Irina could make any story sound like an epic melodrama.

'Many, many banyas I visit, and I store in my heart. Beautiful memories. All my life I visit banyas. But then there was much
turmoil.'

She paused, as if to steady herself for an outpouring of emotion. 'The banya was my muse. Picture this, Alexia, I used to
go skiing with my ex-husband outside of St Petersburg at our dacha. We skied very long and got very cold. After skiing we
light banya fire and the hot banya on my cold skin felt very nice. There we would stay many hours, telling stories, eating,
using the veynik, ex-husband and other men drinking, always drinking. Then I would come home. I would try to sleep but couldn't.
I would get up and write all night until dawn, my head clear. All worries removed by the banya.'

Before we could say anything, she continued, 'I remember well my first trip to the banya. The year was 1945 and I was living
in Leningrad with my mother and her sister and her daughter during the war. Such turmoil. All the men away. Victory is announced
and we go to the banya to celebrate. I remember this banya on Nikravsava Street. It was built before the revolution in the
1890s, so it was well built, with marble floors and a beautiful cast-iron staircase. I remember a huge line to get in. Finally
we get tickets for the first class on the third floor. There's an enormous bathtub for children there. It's my first time
to see a bathtub like this, and I cannot believe it. Our mothers leave us there for hours, and still my cousin and I do not
want to leave.

'In the 1950s more banyas open, only they not so nice. No more bathtubs, just parilkas and pools. Everything very common.
Nothing beautiful. Stalin very bad man, so bad banyas. In the 1960s less turmoil. Khrushchev opens the borders and we meet
the Finnish sauna and soon many banyas add Finnish sauna.'

'Why?' I ask. 'The banya is so lovely.'

'It's foreign. It's chic. Who knows. Maybe because sauna is dry heat and cleaner than the wet banya with leaves all over the
floor. Alexia, rule one for journalist, Don't interrupt my story. I used to go to the Palace during Soviet times. It was a
very beautiful banya, much marble and many statues, and it cost three rubles to get in. A lot of money! But I don't drink
vodka, so I put money other people spend on drinking to the banya. But my favorite is the Sandunovskye Banii in Moscow. Have
you been there?'

'No, not yet, but Marina and I will go next week.'

'Oh, you must go. This thing I really cannot describe, the statues, the carpets, the paintings, the luxurious waiting room.
And then inside enormous plunge pool next to banya, just like prerevolutionary banya down on Nikravsava Street. And when I
leave this place, I feel more beautiful.'

After all this outpouring of banya emotion, I asked, 'Irina, how come you don't go to the banya anymore?'

'It's bad for my hair,' she replied, and lit another Capri cigarette.

Marina's Version of Russia

I was so glad to have Marina, expert on all things Russian, to guide me through the slippery streets. It's one thing, when
you lack language skills, to amble your way through a comparably sane city like Istanbul. Chaotic as Istanbul was, the people
and their behavior made sense. But here in Russia, I couldn't find my center of gravity. The cabs were private cars with no
meters, and on a particularly
Twilight Zoneish
ride, I almost got kidnapped by a scar-faced driver who kept asking me if I wanted to go out for shashlik (shish kebab). I
watched a businessman in front of the covered market alternate bites of his ice-cream Popsicle with a bag lady. A band of
teenagers rode through the streets on horseback at midnight. And I was tactlessly bounced at the ballet for impersonating
a Russian and ordered to pay the $65 foreigners' surcharge.

Marina is not Russian, but after a childhood in Moscow and a two-year stint at a Russian investment bank, she both speaks
the language perfectly and understands the peculiar post-Soviet style of getting things done. We had booked tickets to Moscow
on a new private airline. Hours before the departure, my passport was still being registered by the authorities. When my entreaties
were shrugged off, Marina knew exactly whom and how to bully to get my passport back. So we kissed Irina good-bye, thanked
her for the tvorog breakfasts, and headed off for four nights in Moscow.

The first and last time I visited Moscow, in midwinter 1994, I came to see my then boyfriend, Josh, who was teaching English
at a private school and living in a shabby satellite city. It was a dark, depressing, vodka-drenched visit. Josh had taken
Pushkin's famous verse much too literally: 'We drink to escape our woes/Where is the cup? Our hearts will be more gay.' Beyond
the drinking, there was a lot of Russian posturing. He and all his expat friends put a ridiculous amount of effort into pronouncing
'Pushkin' (Pwohush-kiin) and glorified their street barters for butter and eggs.

Anything would have improved on my last poisonous visit. The weather was the first surprise. I arrived in July, when Moscow
was bursting with sunshine. The second great leap forward was in lodging. Staying at an airy, elegant loft five minutes by
foot from the Kremlin obliterated all previous negative associations of the city. The gargantuan and sumptuous loft belonged
to Marina's friend and former colleague, an aristocratic Frenchwoman named Simone, who was tall and elegant and spoke impeccable
English with charming trilled Ls. I had no idea how splendid the life of an expatriate banker in Moscow could be.

From my vantage point in her blue, airy guest room, Simone had mastered the art of expatriate living. Her maid and chauffeur
both adored her and said she was 'like a sister.' Pictures of her travels across Russia, looking ravishing in fur, dotted
the apartment, as did little treasures from her excursions. Somehow, in a completely uncontrived manner she transported 16th
Arrondisement opulence to the Volga. Aesthetic harmony reigned in the loft's luxurious, eclectic blend of bear and zebra skins,
Russian folk art, black-and-white prints of pouting ballet dancers, and the odd piece of furniture upholstered in French fabric.
Despite her tailored, perfectly accessorized appearance, Simone had no princessly airs. She was warm and engaging, yet just
aloof enough to remind me that she floated in a different orbit. Irina in St Petersburg and Simone in Moscow were both perfect
representatives of two very different stratospheres in contemporary Russia.

With just a small taste of its high life and with introductions to interesting people who didn't belabor the names of Russian
authors, Moscow was proving a most enticing destination. Marina was happy because she could buy cheap fox furs and see old
friends. I was happy because we were going to pay a visit to the Sandunovskye Banii, the most famous and stately of the Moscow
banyas, where Pushkin went for inspiration until his untimely death at thirty-eight during a duel with his wife's lover. And
there is no better tour guide than 'Pwohushkin.' Truth be told, though Pushkin is the Sandunovskye's most famous patron, he
never actually visited it. He died fifty-nine years before Sila and Elizaveta Sandunov opened the Sandunovskye Banii in 1896.

The 104-year-old Sandunovskye Banii was right in the middle of Moscovian action near Teatralnaya Ploshchad. The banya was
originally a country institution. Each village had at least one banya built on the banks of a lake, river, or pond. This ideal
of a village banya endures today in a more personal form. Despite the fact that the majority of Russians live in cities and
that the Communists tried to make everything communal, most Russians dream of having a country house, or dacha, with their
own banya. This dacha-garden-banya scenario for them is the embodiment of an idyllic existence.

For centuries, effectively until Peter the Great took power, the cities in Russia were nasty, crime-ridden places. City dwellers
preoccupied with trade didn't spend time or energy improving their quality of life with frills like banyas. The earl of Carlisle
noted in his
Relation of Three Embassies,
written for Charles III in 1663, that banyas 'were as rare at Mosco as hunting.' Seventeenth-century Moscow must have smelled
like a vodka-spiked sewer, and deliberate measures were taken: banya owners were exempted from taxes.

Our driver in an old smoky Lada took a 50-ruble note, about $2, and would take us only as far as the inner ring road. Marina
knew the way and guided me through the steep, cluttered streets toward the Sandunovskye. Construction crews were everywhere,
and scaffolding swayed in the breeze. Of course, one doesn't walk under scaffolding in Russia; it is like having unprotected
sex - a big risk for a nominal inconvenience. So Marina and I were walking down the middle of the street, when suddenly we
heard choral chanting emanating from a small onion-domed church.

The ethereal melody and vague scent of incense drew us into the tiny, crowded nave. Rows of bowed congregants stood in front
of an altar with a diptych of Russian icons gleaming gold and magenta in the darkness. The women sang one verse and then alternated
with the gathering of priests near the altar. After a few minutes, the congregants started to form a line near the altar.
They approached the priest, received his blessing, and bent to kiss their favorite icon. One right after the other, the women
pressed their lips to the painted wood blocks. All of the women, wrapped in shawls, heads covered in scarves, seemed possessed
by a deep-felt fervor, whereas the men, shifting in their seats, seemed to tolerate the proceedings. A few women near the
back turned to look at us. Their lack of a welcoming nod or a small movement to accommodate us in the pew was sufficient notice
that we were not wholly welcome.

It was starting to rain, and we rushed down the small street to where a caravan of shiny black foreign cars, Mercedes and
Lexus SUVs, was parked. As the hoity-toitiest banya in all of Russia, the Sandunovskye was a magnet for 'New Russians,' which
is synonymous with an entire class of people who became rich, generally through questionable or shady means, in the freewheeling
wake of perestroika. The men's side of the Sandunovskye is known to cater to a devoted clientele of Russian Mafia; for this
reason, some people avoid the place. For a vicarious experience of a banya filled with Russian mobsters, read the book or
rent the video
Gorky Park;
the 1982 thriller depicts the protagonist visiting the Sandunovskye in order to eavesdrop on Mafia deals.

First, I must say another word about the nature of banyas. After many sessions with the St Petersburg witches, I had a banya
epiphany. I realized how banyas are different from the Roman thermae and Turkish hamams. Banyas, unlike hamams, aren't paved
with marble. Nor do banyas have the soaring, curvilinear architecture of hamam domes studded with skylights that glisten like
diamonds. Hamams are gently heated with soft, vaporous steam that lulls the body like rich cello notes bowing across your
body.

Banyas are pure village. The wooden-beam architecture is dark and coarse. The banya is a mad wizard's treehouse with a forest
inside. Banya heat is infernal, the pure Stravinsky staccato notes of a violin piercing rays of heat through a prostrate body.
Banya heat purges and punishes. Banyas are about suffering, the release from that suffering, and the j oy that comes from
the resultant equilibrium. Inside the hamam, ladies in flower-patterned cotton dresses ply you with tea and oranges; they
use soap and washcloths to clean and massage you on a warm marble slab. Hamam life is soft and sweet and altogether feminine.
In the banya, the
banshitsa
whips you with branches and then leads you, dizzy, blood pressure dropped to 80/ 50, to the cold pool to shock your body back
into consciousness.

Yet despite the externally more pleasurable, indulgent aspects of the hamam, hamam culture, at least in Turkey's largest city,
was in a sad state of decline. Visiting local hamams in Istanbul was like walking through a cemetery, visiting a stone marker
to a former epoch. A remembrance, a deserted monument to a previous age. Here in Moscow, the banyas were packed. Russians,
like the Romans before them, believed in the simple recipe for political stability: bread and banyas will keep the people
content. A well-fed, well-bathed citizen is a happy citizen. And I remembered Irina's banya treatise that, consciously or
not, evaluated banya developments through the different Soviet leaders: 'Before the revolution, banyas very well built. Stalin's
banyas not so good. Khrushchev build very nice banyas indeed. But Sandunovskye best of all.'