A fourth man spoke up, quietly.
“It may be some sickness. It has never happened before. Perhaps we should be praising the bath manager, instead of being so angry. We should take their advice and return in a short while. As for carrying our linen about, there are many decent cafes in the district, where one could easily while away the time. Is it not so?”
The group slowly dispersed. Palewski couldn’t tell if they still meant to return, after the last man had raised the possibility of disease. He thought, probably, yes. The Turks, after all, are fatalists. Like me.
That the baths could be closed down because of sickness surprised him more than the probability that everyone would come back in spite of it.
He wondered what to do. On the one hand, he had been looking forward to rubbing the blacking off his feet. On the other, though the delay might not make him late for Yashim, he was not yet quite as fatalistic as the Turks in the matter of disease.
He decided to sit and have a coffee somewhere, keeping an eye on the hammam. If it re-opened, and the signs were good, he could choose whether to go in. If not, he would simply go on to see his friend at the appointed time, and save his feet for the pump later. Or tomorrow morning, more likely, he remembered, thinking of all the vodka in his bag.
He turned, walked a short way up the hill, and chose a coffee shop from where he could watch the door of the hammam without moving his head. He could even look across the dome of the baths, and over the roofs behind, to watch the sun set into the Sea of Marmara, gilding the rooftops and the minarets, the domes and the cypress trees.
[ 92 ]
Eslek had picked up fast, Yashim thought. He had not refused payment, to his relief: the task was crucial, too important to be carried out purely as a favour. He’d had his favour already, anyway. It was time to make returns.
He slipped off his clothes and handed them to the attendant, shuffling into a pair of wooden clogs to protect the soles of his feet from the hot stone. Inside the hot rooms of the hammam the floors were always dangerously slippery. Naked except for a clout around his hips he clip-clopped through the door into a large domed chamber filled with steam. The dome was supported on squinches which created semi-circular niches around the walls, where one could sit by a flowing spout of hot water that ebbed away downhill to the drain in the centre, scooping up the water to clean one’s body to the very depths of one’s pores.
Yashim stepped gratefully into the steamy room. He set his feet apart, arched his back, and stretched until the joints in his shoulders cracked. Then he ran his fingers through his black curls and looked around for somewhere to sit. He took possession of a niche, and sat on a small low bench with his back against the wall and his long legs stretched out in front of him. For several minutes he did not move, allowing himself to absorb the heat, feeling his sweat begin to run. At last he bent forward and picked up a tin scoop at his feet.
He stretched out an arm to fill the scoop, and very slowly tipped the water over his head. His eyes were closed. He loved the way the water sought out runnels through his hair and trickled, like soothing fingers, down his neck. He did it again. He heard a man laugh. He smelt the animal scent of clean skin. After a few more minutes he picked up a bar of soap and began to lather himself completely, beginning with his feet, working his way up his body to his face and hair.
He continued to pour the water over his head and shoulders. Eventually he began to wash the soap away, from top to toe, working at his skin with his fingers, watching the way the hairs on his legs followed the course of the water. It always reminded him of Osman’s dream, the dream in which the founder of the Ottoman dynasty had seen a great tree, whose leaves suddenly trembled and then aligned, as if in a wind, pointing a myriad sharp points towards the Red City of Byzantium. Finally he gave his feet a thorough kneading with his thumbs, and stood up and crossed to find room on the raised platform in the centre of the room.
He climbed up languidly onto the hot platform, the so-called belly of the hammam, spread out his towel, and lay on it, face down, his head turned to the left and his eyes closed. The huge masseur, bald as an egg, every ripple of his flesh hairless and shining, closed in, and began to work Yashim’s feet with great force and dexterity, rhythmically smoothing and digging at Yashim’s flesh until Yashim felt his whole body rocking up and down. Up and down. Head to toe on the burning marble.
Invisible shivers ran up his legs. He thought of the pile of plates. He saw Eugenia’s white breasts, a tangle of sheets, her lips swollen with the heat. This was another kind of heat, a heat which sucked at his will, sapped him of all his strength. Once or twice he kicked out, involuntarily, as he rose from the sleep he so desperately craved. “Salright,” he murmured to himself. A few minutes, then the masseur will tap him off the bench and wake him up. Sleep.
Slowly the room began to empty out.
The masseur kept on working on Yashim’s body.
Slowly, and more slowly.
There was only one man left in the hammam, asleep on a bench. The masseur raised his fingers from Yashim’s neck. Yashim didn’t move.
