“What pictures flash in your mind when you hear something
about the public baths? Probable like most people, not very nice, do not have
nothing to do with cleanliness, hygiene and enjoyable pastime. But it’s all
superstition, friends. Currently, public baths, for example, up to 20 people,
for the comfort of not much different from private ones… We are waiting for you
to look in the Russian bath!”
-From www.banya-lefortovo.ru
(translated by Google)
When my roommate John Mark and I began preparing to travel
to Russia, we knew a visit to a banya would be in order. In our research we had
read accounts of the renowned Hermitage Museum and the Mariinsky Ballet, but it
seemed to us that nothing would display this country’s soul better than a
steamy room full of naked old guys beating themselves with birch branches.
For the uninitiated reader, a banya is similar to a sauna,
differing only in its steam, which is wet rather than dry. For centuries,
Russians have visited banyas to wash, recover from illness, and enjoy
community. As one Moscow banya claims: “In the life of a Russian man, the
tradition of the washing bath holds a special place… banyas in Moscow bring the
magical health benefits.”
Choosing the right banya was no easy matter. Like most
tourists, John Mark and I were eager to escape other tourists. With this in
mind, we bypassed any banya website written in English. Instead, we found
websites made for Russians, and we relied on Google for a translation. Which is
always a good idea.
The first website we found offered various banya
experiences, including but not limited to the following:
-Russian bath on the 1st
person: 600 rubles, at one o’clock
-Starorussky massage – a broom in
the steam room – 1 person (brooms not included): 1000 rubles
-Hovering in the steam room of
honey – 1 person (honey is not included): 650 rubles
The banya also offered a service called “massage and the
guy.” Massage and the guy was available for “honey massage the belly,”
“lymphatic drainage massage,” and “massage cervical zony,” none of which
sounded remotely appealing (or possible, considering my lack of a cervical
zony). And although hovering in the steam room of honey piqued my interest—I’m
only human—I worried this one was for pros only.
So we kept looking. After scrolling through pages of banya
websites, we found Coachman’s Banya and decided it was the one. According to
their website, “the walls of [their] baths remember Lenin, Dostoevsky, and
Mussorgsky.” This would seem to go against our aim to avoid tourist traps, but
the entry price of 150 Rubles ($2.17 USD) gave us hope that this banya was a
local joint.
Owing either to a busy schedule or to sub-conscious
trepidation, we waited to visit Coachman’s until our last day in Russia. Inside
the poorly-marked building, a woman on the first floor sent us up three flights
of stairs to the men’s banya. Walking through the door, we expected to find a
lobby where we could pay. Instead, we’d entered directly into a dank locker
room filled with wrinkled men in various stages of nudity. Inside a booth at
one end of the room sat a dour man who would take our money.
When we travel, John Mark and I try to keep a low profile.
We talk in low tones and try not to act blatantly American. I walked to the
booth and blew my cover right away.
“One—um—one banya, please.”
I gave my rubles to the man, and he returned a few coins
change. John Mark offered his credit card, but the man wouldn’t allow it. John
Mark left to find an ATM, and I motioned to the man that I would return in a
few minutes, but the man wanted me to take my money back first, an awkward
process involving my counting back to him the change he had given earlier. John
Mark and I descended the three flights of stairs, found an ATM several blocks
away, and returned fifteen minutes later. So much for a low profile.
We found a locker for our clothes and walked into an
adjoining room to shower. The room was lousy with naked men. I’d visited the
Hermitage museum the day before, where I’d beheld the beauty of the human form
in myriad paintings and statues. I’d seen men so elegant they resembled women,
women so resplendent they looked like angels. Collarbones burst forth into
marble wings.
The banya welcomed me back to Earth. No painting had
depicted such lumps and sags; no marble bellies had grown so large as to fold into
themselves. These men resembled nothing so much as spuds, which, if forgotten
in a cool, dark place, might soon sprout roots. Looking at them and trying not
to look at them, I thought, this is what I will look like in thirty years.
Not that my body is anything sculpture-worthy. After
comparing myself to human perfection in gilded halls, there was a part of me
that felt relieved to be back among my fellow unshapely men.
I showered and walked to a heavy wooden door in the back.
This was it. I opened the door to an explosion of steam and walked in. My lungs
seized and my eyes stung, and I stumbled toward a place to sit in the darkness.
Several men shouted crossly at me, and I realized I had left the door open. I trotted
to the door and closed it, trying not to laugh hysterically—my reflex response
to awkwardness.
I sat. The room resounded with the sound of men beating
themselves. I had read about the use of the venik,
a bundle of birch branches soaked in water and used to beat oneself. Ostensibly,
the practice draws blood to the surface of the skin and opens the pores.
Somehow I had not imagined the beating to be so loud, so heartily administered,
or to release such a pleasant aroma. The men employed the venik with gusto, boisterously whacking their arms, their chests,
their thighs. I could feel the spray of their branches on my skin. They grunted
and breathed; they loosed throaty yelps. It was hard to imagine women doing the
same, only one floor above.
For me, there was something inherently masculine in the
Russian banya. How many Russian men I had passed on the street, looking
formidable and impassive. Here I saw these same men with guards dropped.
Whatever burdens they carried through life, whatever bulwarks they raised to
steel themselves, were here abandoned. Here they were only men. I wondered if
they knew I was American.
John Mark sat beside me, and we sat and sweated in silence.
Somehow, after anticipating the banya for several months, we had at the last
moment forgotten to buy our venik. In
the shower room, I’d noted rows of benches with buckets holding birch clusters.
I considered taking one at random, but feared being confronted by a burly, nude
man deprived of his birch. (Come back,
birches!)
A man behind us lay down full length across a bench and
enjoyed the beating of two friends on his back, buttocks, and legs. He seemed
to enjoy it. As one banya’s website describes so poetically, “And what an
unforgettable feeling of lightness and purity will give you an effective use of
a broom experienced master!”
I wondered what a banya would look like in America, but I
couldn’t imagine it. There is something too self-conscious in the American man,
too well-groomed. Glancing discreetly at the other men in the room, at their
slack, contented faces, I felt our key difference: None of them were thinking.
The heat rose. Or maybe it simply maintained its sweltering pitch.
My body temperature climbed until sweat pattered on the floorboards between my
feet. I couldn’t help thinking of an oven, and of poultry that I’d made edible in heat not much more than this. I finally fled the room and found the cold water tank in the shower room.
I am squeamish about cold water, and also about tanks where hundreds of sweaty
men have bathed, but none of that mattered as I climbed the ladder and dropped
into cool, refreshing water. My muscles chilled. My whole body relaxed.
I was ready for another round.
At the door to the banya I found a trashcan of discarded
birch clusters and stared into it enviously. Was I desperate enough to use
another man’s venik? I grabbed the
one on top and examined it, reevaluating my hygienic spectrum. These branches
certainly weren’t “Used—like new.” The leaves were withered and still damp;
worse, I had witnessed the most recent departure and could give their former
owner a face—along with a belly and jocular buttocks.
I didn’t care. I hurried into the banya, climbed a platform
where the heat was greatest, and commenced the beating. The leaves stung, and
their bite only grew as the air baked them. My skin burned. I lowered my head and breathed deeply, letting my thoughts slow to a
halt. John Mark came in from a dip in the tank, and he leaned forward so I could
hit his back with the branches. I leaned forward while he returned the favor.
All around, men were enjoying the “magical health benefits” of the sauna, and I
too could feel the magic. Bowed and naked, sitting blankly in the primal heat,
I felt like a man.
