Brooks Sterritt
The building’s facade was smooth concrete, giving it a bunker-like appearance, though oddly topped with an ornate cornice. Its function was announced in neon: “RUSSIAN, TURKISH, SAUNA, BANYA, TANNING, DAY SPA, MASSAGE.” I entered the lobby via steps bordered by iron railings capped with tall spikes. An extended chime began as soon as the door closed behind me, gradually decreasing in volume until inaudible, giving the impression that the sound continued at a lower frequency.
The man behind the front desk asked me if I had any medical issues. I said I didn’t think so.
“High blood pressure or other cardiovascular conditions?” he asked.
“No.”
“Are you having trouble conceiving a child?”
The locker room was empty except for the older gentlemen I’d expect to find in such a place. I put on a bathing suit of thin black material with white netting inside. Considering the slippers and flip-flops I had been provided, I rejected the slippers as likely to absorb moisture in the baths. I debated what kind of cleaning regimen the flip-flops were subjected to, and weighed the risks of wearing the flip-flops versus going barefoot entirely. In the end I slipped them on, put on a complimentary robe, and opened another door, entering a corridor with tiled floor, wood-paneled ceiling featuring recessed lighting, and walls of wooden beams (likely cedar). Moments from film history occurred to me, specifically films containing steam rooms, of which there were many, including:
S*H*E (1979)
247°F (2011)
Steambath (1973)
T-Men (1947)
Eastern Promises (2007)
Spartacus (1960)
John Wick (2014)
Gorky Park (1983)
Goldeneye (1995)
House of Strangers (1949)
What Time Is It There? (2001)
The War of the Roses (1989)
The Steam Experiment (2009)
Thunderball (1965)
Saw VI (2009)
The Avengers (1998)
What’s New Pussycat? (1965)
One wonders about the frequency of sauna deaths in film, a phenomenon no doubt connected to vulnerability and the sound-dampening womb-like properties of the steam bath experience, as well as the obvious sexual pleasure linked to rising temperatures, relaxation, and the removal of clothing. I passed a series of beach chairs reclining in front of a row of television screens, one screen featuring a soldier in a shaggy, red, faux-fur rocking chair, oscillating. No audio. A single man in a reclining chair watched the broadcast, a towel on his head. I found another door, entered it, and walked into a chamber of heat and lavender.
I took deep breaths of vapor. A few bathhouse attendants administered beatings to those stretched out on slabs. I located a bucket of water and ice, which I emptied over my head.
A nearly endless succession of rooms followed. Becoming dizzy and weak, I lost track of how many rooms I had passed through: hot and dry, hot and steamy, warm and fragrant, hot and fragrant, warm and dry, hot and steamy yet again, shockingly cold. I dipped myself in frigid pools to the point of exquisite pain, relishing the brief clarity. Nevertheless, each seriate wave of dull heat encased my brain, slowed my plod. At length I found a sink in a hallway lit by blue light, filled a nearby pitcher, and drank from the brim.
I pictured spending sixty years exploring the baths, and still not exhausting the possibilities and interconnections therein. I struggled to think of a term other than labyrinthine. This was the Mammoth Cave of bathhouses: the longest bathhouse in the world, the one whose end no explorer could find. I lumbered along, seeking a bucket whenever I felt presyncope or whatever I was feeling. Temperatures ranged from maybe 35° in the cold pools to 200° or more in the banya. I became engrossed with patterns on mosaic tile floors. My mental record of turns taken was hopelessly jumbled. If forced to guess, I’d say I was being driven toward some central point, though this too could’ve been an illusion. For a time, a repeated pattern of two right turns followed by a long straightaway were followed by two left turns and a straight stretch of similar length, suggesting the regular movement of a figure on a game board, e.g. an electronically manipulated snake image ingesting rows of eggs or other objects. Later, I became convinced that the frequency of left turns meant I should have already encountered my earlier path. I was tempted to shake the occasional fellow bather, to plead for directions. Crowds thinned, then disappeared. I lugged my body through room after room, beginning to wonder when I’d see daylight.
It was only in what I later came to think of as the final room that the figure, in effect, materialized. How long had he been waiting here? Had his presence eluded me in earlier rooms? Upon entrance to this so-called final room, I walked into a wall of steam. Seating areas were cut into stone in a stair-step configuration, and covered with wooden slats, likely cedar; each of the levels was obscured by progressively more steam, and was therefore several degrees hotter. I considered what might happen to a person, sauna-trapped. If unhealthy enough, an infarction or appearance of a thrombus would be the likely and least unpleasant result. Failing such an event, dehydration could lead to renal failure. One way or another, following death, the body would proceed to fall apart.
I counted four levels of seating around the room’s perimeter. Standing in the room’s central point, I heard an odd sound, or rather a sound not odd in and of itself, but for its lack of connection to any apparent source. The sound I heard was that of a creaking door, specifically, what any viewer of television or film would recognize as a “creaking door sound effect,” lasting at least five seconds and followed by the sound of a door closing. At the highest level of seating, in the room’s corner, I discerned a pair of feet and legs, the latter covered by a white towel from the shins upward. Hands on knees, the outline of a torso—all other anatomical aspects were wreathed in steam. This mass of white mist billowed between me and the figure.
“I want to thank you for coming all the way down here,” he said.
Brooks Sterritt’s writing appears in The New Republic, Subtropics, Vice, and The Believer. “Karst System” is excerpted from a novel concerned with the novel-film relation.
