Cathedrals of the Flesh (19 page)

In her silver Volvo, during the twenty-minute drive to the wooded Arcadian Espoo, the rambunctious Axel and Anders were inspiring
an endless battery of'Axel, Anders, Axel, Anders.' I began to hallucinate about what a four-hour drive to southern Karelia
with Charles and me scrunched between the car seats might feel and sound like. We arrived at Reeta's condo. The floor was
littered with toys, mostly LEGO from a recent trip to LEGOLAND in Denmark. Reeta showed me around, including the upstairs
bathroom, where instead of a pedestrian tub and shower there was a sauna unit with a shower inside. Through the glass door
I could see the two tiny wood-slatted benches.

'Boys and I take a sauna here every other day,' Reeta informed me. 'They love it.'

Axel concurred by chanting, 'Sauna, sauna, sauna,' with an enthusiasm most children reserve for sugar and toy guns.

'I first took Axel in the sauna when he was six weeks old,' Reeta said. 'I covered him with a damp towel, and we stayed for
just a few minutes.'

'It's so little. Can you get comfortable in there?' I asked.

Axel opened the door and perched on the bench, where he demonstrated 'sauna position': legs spread slightly, arms resting
on thighs, head bowed in religious observance. In his five-year-old sauna reverence, he was suddenly more Finn than Italian.

Anders ran in. 'Sauna? Are we taking sauna?'

'Maybe later tonight. Right now we are showing Alexia what a little apartment sauna looks like. Do you want to show her how
you sit in the sauna?'

Anders jumped up next to Axel, assumed sauna position, and they sat, hunched over and serene, like two little blond Buddhas.
Anders grabbed the wooden bucket and ladle and demonstrated. 'It's my job to throw water on the rocks,' he said, ladling invisible
water on the tiny electric heater topped with several layers of grayish black rocks, 'and steam goes
ssssssssss
and makes the sauna soft.' Impressive, even a preschooler could articulate the sauna phenomenon.

I decided to take a bus back into Helsinki after dinner. The sun was still high in the sky at eight-thirty as I waited at
a bus station that seemed buried in the middle of a forest. It was hard to believe that Espoo is the second largest city in
Finland after Helsinki. A huge bus rolled by, filled with stacks of books. The lady next to me explained that it was a traveling
library that delivered books to remote areas of Finland. 'This is why our taxes are so high,' she said dourly. Utopia doesn't
come cheap.

Reeta issued our marching orders. Take the train from Helsinki to Imatra, where she and the boys would collect us for the
rest of the eastward journey into the Karelian countryside, stopping just shy of the Russian border. Charles, newly arrived
and sleep-deprived, dreamed of a relaxing weekend in the country punctuated by naps, a sauna, and an occasional walk. I planned
to dip into the
Kalevala,
Finland's national epic, inhabited by heroes with names like Väinämöinen (Zeus' Finnish cousin) and Lemminkäinen, an Arctic
Casanova. Reeta could spend time with her boys. We prided ourselves on being low-maintenance guests.

The verbal air-raid siren started before hello: 'Axel, Anders, Axel, Anders, make room for Charles and Alexia.' Charles smiled,
eyes rolling back in his head from fatigue. 'Sauna is the best cure for jet lag,' Reeta informed him.

While the weekend wasn't as tightly scheduled as the first day of basic training, as guests of Reeta's we did have certain
obligations to hop to whenever a new opportunity for Finnish cultural education presented itself:

11:40 — Grocery shopping in Imatra.

1:10 — 'Axel, Anders, Alexia, Charles, time to heat the sauna. Come on, everyone.'

Charles looked at me desperately and popped two Advil. We traipsed across the lawn to a log cabin, carrying kindling and firewood.
Reeta explained in minute detail how the sauna worked. Charles slumped on a sauna bench, and I nodded enough for the both
of us.

1:20 - The preparation of lunch.

2:15 — Sauna time.

We went in shifts, Charles and me, then Reeta and the boys. When we were finally alone in the soundproof sauna, Charles said,
'I feel like I'm at camp. I don't know how many more scheduled activities I can take.'

'She's trying to give us a flavor of Finland. We should be grateful,' I said.

'I'd prefer a gradual induction as opposed to total immersion. I think I heard her say something about going to a traditional
dance tonight.'

'Very funny. I'm sure things will calm down tonight.'

4:40 - Reeta announced that her friend Mariella, who possessed a postcard beautiful lakeside sauna, had invited us over for
an evening session. We threw together a picnic of beer and sausages, boarded the Volvo, and drove down narrow dirt roads deep
into formerly Soviet territory. Mariella lived alone with her loom and her dogs in a treehouse perched high above the lake.
The cabin didn't have running water or electricity. The outhouse was up by the dead-end road that was her driveway, and the
sauna was down by Lake Saima. Mariella may not have had much in the way of earthly possessions, but she had a fine sauna.

4:50 - Reeta announced a vasta-making lesson. We all headed off, clippers in hand, to collect as many leafy birch twigs as
possible. Charles returned with three, I had about ten, and Reeta an entire armload full. When we set about creating the birch
whisks - following instructions to line up the tops of the branches and to make sure the leaves faced the same way — I told
Reeta about the veyniks used inside the Russian banyas.
Banya
and
veynik
were new words to her. Reeta, like most Finns, had no concept that the Russians had a similar bathing tradition. Generations
of internecine Karelian warfare and swaps of this territory has made the Finns much more eager to discuss their dissimilarities
to the Russians than to recognize any kindred customs.

5:00—8:00 — Charles was won over by the country sauna spectacle. A merry-go-round of swimming, sauna, swimming, drinking beer.
Shampooing our hair in the lake, beating each other with vastas, total tranquillity.

The next morning at 8:00, Axel and Anders jumped into bed with us. In her efficient Finnish way, Reeta threw together a traditional
breakfast of gravlax, assorted whitefishes, piles of dill rye bread, and rivers of coffee. Charles said, 'Reeta, thank you
for a most delightful day yesterday. We don't want to put you out at all, so really, don't worry about us today. We'll just
read and maybe take a walk.'

'It's not an inconvenience for me at all. I love showing you Finnish culture. Today I thought you might like to see the cabin
that my mother is building.'

'That sounds wonderful,' I said before Charles could get a word out.

Getting to the cabin required forty minutes of trekking through felled timber groves, swatting flies, and tripping over mushroom
patches, with Reeta stopping us for mandatory berry tasting. 'That looks poisonous,' I said.

'It's not. I'm a Finn. I know berries. Eat it.'

When we finally reached the cabin, set back from a small lake in a young grove of spruce trees, Charles asked, 'And how does
the refrigerator get here?' We New Yorkers, with narrow hallways and six-story walk-ups, are fixated on the installation of
appliances.

'No refrigerator, no electricity, no running water. This is her
country
house,' Reeta explained.

Charles and I exchanged baffled glances. Most would consider the other house where we were spending the weekend to be a country
house. But in Finland, the true ideal of a country house means no lights, no flushable toilets, and no phone lines. But invariably
a sauna, and hopefully a savusauna.

The second day of our weekend in the country followed similarly frenetic lines, but by then we had adjusted to Reeta's frequency,
though we still hadn't adjusted to the flurry of 'Axel, Anders, Axel, Anders, boys, where are you . . . boys, come here .
. . boys, don't climb on Charles.' One thing Charles and I were in complete agreement about: We could not endure the four-hour
drive back to Helsinki. An hour into the ride, Charles's near perfect temperament was showing the first signs of fracturing.
His innate sense of fun displaced by a very practical request, he asked, 'Reeta, it's pretty tight back here. Maybe you could
just drop us off at the train station.' We spent the next two days recovering.

Charles and I had seen a lot of saunas in the last two weeks. We'd been up to Kuopio and watched the sunset from inside the
world's largest savusauna, men and women together wrapped in togas covered in the savusauna's telltale soot. We'd spent a
morning with Hanu the sauna major, drinking coffee and throwing alder wood into the 700-degree-Fahrenheit fire. Charles had
had his own experience out in Lautasaari with the men of the Finnish Sauna Society and reported it lovely but lonely. Everyone
was very quiet, drinking their beer, talking occasionally in Finnish. Charles remembered a joke he'd been told before coming
to Finland: How do you spot an extroverted Finn? When conversing with you, he's actually looking at your feet instead of his
own.

And now, two weeks after my excursion with Rainer Hilihatti, Sauna Island was about to make its Sauna of the Month debut.
As soon as we arrived at the harbor to catch a water taxi, I recognized people from the society. I waved to Sinikka. This
was the sauna social event of the month. 'Charles, we're in with the sauna cognoscenti,' I whispered. They all looked cheerful
and expectant.

'Sinikka, everyone looks so excited,' I said curiously.

'I know, we're all very excited to see Rainer's saunas. Also, no one much liked last month's Sauna of the Month. The Suomenlinna
military sauna was too humid and soggy.' With all the excitement and anticipation in the air, I felt like a wine connoisseur
on the way to taste the first Beaujolais nouveau. The only person not looking happy and relaxed was Rainer, who was talking
with the water taxi captain and looking at his watch nervously.

The forty-person water taxi was filled to capacity, and twenty-five people were still standing on the dock. I was witnessing
the Finns at their most aggressive. Rainer's eyes had retreated far into their sockets. I walked over to him and asked,
'Hur m
å
r du?'
He looked over to see who was speaking Finnish so badly. 'Did you finish the savusauna?' I asked.

'Yes.' He smiled, and I noticed beads of sweat across his hairline. 'We tested it for the first time last night at one A.M.
My son-in-law is sweeping the sawdust away right now.'

I congratulated him, delighted by the notion that finishing a sauna on time could take on the urgency of a space race.

I sat back down next to Charles, and he took my hand. I adored him, but it wasn't enough. My friend Julia had summed it up:
'How did you manage to find a straight gay man?' He was the envy of all my girlfriends. Charles was smart, attractive, organized,
sensitive, and charming, and he loved to shop more than any woman I knew. Truthfully, I couldn't imagine a better companion.
Yet something elemental was missing - a lump in my throat, an occasional bout of the shivers. I kept thinking excitement would
come later, the better we got to know each other. But familiarity steered us further and further from spontaneous tango music,
and I wondered if this romantic inertia was mutual. He smiled at me and snapped a digital picture.

All forty of us, carrying bags filled with towels and vastas, filed off the water taxi and into the wilderness. We walked
Indian file through the woods, silent save for the sound of snapping branches. At the smaller inlet, where the boat sauna
was moored, everyone stood in silent awe as Rainer pointed out the many charms of his sauna colony - the pagoda sauna, the
two large (one enormous) savusaunas, the Japanese soaking tub for ten. The landscaping, the birch trees and berry bushes,
shielded one sauna area from the next, so that, Rainer explained, just last week the nurses association and the police association
had separate sauna retreats and didn't even see each other. And in this country, generally ranked 'the least corrupt' in the
Economist's
annual poll of ninety-one countries, there was little danger of a randy policeman trying to sneak a peek.

The women outnumbered the men, so we were awarded the inaugural use of the new, larger savusauna, Sauna Island's crown jewel.
In über-democratic Finland, it was refreshing to see rule three turned on its head. For once, women were getting the choicer
facilities. After depositing our clothes in a cushy pagoda changing room and dousing ourselves with warm water, we lined up
to enter the smoke sauna's miniature door. We had to duck through the three-foot door (the smaller the door, the less hot
air that escapes) to enter the large, double-platform structure, but that turned out to be a good thing. So hot was it inside
the savusauna that bending over at the waist was the only way to avoid getting scorched by the upper echelon of air. If I
had raised a wet finger to the sky, it would have sizzled.

I hobbled to the second level and spread my towel on a soot-covered bench. A few small windows lit the large, octagonal room
in silhouettes. At least fifteen of us were inside, yet a reverential hush kept things quiet. The expression 'In the sauna
you must behave as in a church' came back to me. I heard the sibilant sound of a deep inhalation through the mouth. Finns
are fond of making a sucking-in sound through their mouths, especially when they are thinking about or savoring something
delicate. Everyone was tasting the heat. It was as hot as the Sandunovskye, but the air was dryer and softer. I was waiting
for the verdict.

And so was Rainer, who when I went out for a break was pacing by the buffet table. 'I think it's incredible,' I said. He smiled.
I wasn't a Finn, so my opinion was close to irrelevant. What did I know about saunas? The more discerning connoisseurs came
out later with blissed-out smiles.

I expected a day of sauna parties, some lighthearted reveries, storytelling in the soaking tub, dancing naked in the woods,
any gregarious element of a Brueghel peasant painting. We were on an island with alcohol, after all. In Finland I didn't have
to hanker after the glory days of the public bath. The Finnish love affair with the sauna continues full steam ahead. But
it's an intimate love affair. I kept forgetting that the Finns don't go in for bacchanalias or free-spirited abandon. Excitement,
if it existed for the Finn, was taking place on the inside. I found myself wishing that a pushy person would come over and
lecture me on sauna posture or tell me that I was using my vasta incorrectly. I would have welcomed the witches from St Petersburg,
Gallia muttering, 'This country has no future,' or Natasha not allowing me to leave the parilka midsession.